Hello, you've reached the winter of our discontent.

An extended vibe of a movie.

are you here to tell me what a bad eugoogoolizer I am?

Liked the gasoline fight scene about as much as I disliked the rest of the movie. Which is to say, a lot.

Ernest Hemingway once wrote, "The world is a fine place and worth fighting for." I agree with the second part.

Liked this more on rewatch.

You're ok, Jack. I think... under different circumstances you and I probably still would have hated each other

Extremely Planes Trains and Automobiles coded

He looks for the good in all of us and somehow, he finds it!

Hate to rate a movie that I did enjoy so low. It was cute and hit all the family movie beats, but really left very little impression on me.

My body had travelled fast, but my heart… she took a little longer to arrive

British propaganda, not a single genre trope was skipped, and I loved it anyway

Enemies see each other better than friends

There were a lot of things I liked about this movie. But I do wish the emotional moments had more time to breathe. It felt like a lot of things were not given enough space to cause impact before their service to the plot was made clear and then the movie moved on.

Told you I don’t work with anyone who’s carrying a loaded weapon.

I can get behind a shootout movie that cuts out all that pesky stuff about plot and gives the people what they want. I guess I am a sucker for movies that choose to overly commit to a single bit.  Both a respectful and biting satire of the genre in how it sets you up to forget about Brie Larson’s character, the way that priority is given to chaos over clear understanding of who is where in space, the stormtrooper level aim, and the cheesy ending.  And of course I have to mention it made really good use of John Denver.

I-I've never seen that before. I've never seen anybody drive their trash to the curb and beat the hell out of it with a stick... I've never seen that before.

The garbage men were my favorite part of this movie.

Perhaps I can contact you, possibly through my poetry falcon.

Lesser movies would have leaned into cringe comedy to communicate Walter’s awkwardness. Instead Walter Mitty is made to be a believably dissociative and socially inept character who is easy to root for.    You can also really see the seeds of Severance in this movie. The way beautiful shots are constructed, the fascination with blurring the boundaries between the internal and external aspects of mind. The music, the casting choices.

Chad: Do you remember the last time you went out with friends as a kid and just played pretend the whole day?

Elliott: I remember doing that a lot.

Chad: Yeah? Do you remember the very, very last time you ever did it?

Elliott: No.

Chad: Isn't that sad? You know, to think that there was a time when you were out biking around with your friends, pretending you were getting chased by zombies, you were just all dirty and sweaty and having the best time and then... you went home and parked your bike in the garage and went to bed, not realizing that that was the last time you were ever going to get to do that.

This movie wrecked my old ass. I miss you every day. I think about going back in time to warn my younger self about what was coming all the time. It must be a common grief fantasy.  I watched this movie on the plane to Toronto, my first time on a plane since you passed. I have been dreading this work trip for weeks— since I learned I was being asked to go. I wanted to stay home where it’s safe. Where the reminders of you are carefully hidden, where there are no reminders of the me I was around you. I should have seen the closing message of the movie coming, but I went into it stubbornly aligned with Aubrey Plaza’s character. She captured the essence of being fake okay, frozen and blind, so well. I have been letting the years pass me by, “never leaving the house.” Thinking about going back to school, focusing on the trivial. Deceiving myself.  The shared Toronto on the horizon, the empty seat next to me freeing my tears, the last minute Instagram reel that convinced me to watch this instead of the other two movies I had downloaded. Are you out there tickling the conspiratorial parts of my mind, sending me a message? Or perhaps the world has just had enough of my moping.  And yet, I still won’t listen to the obvious. I’m stubborn that way. I’m only 28. I’m not ready for the acceptance of looking back at 39. I haven’t so much as thought about touching shrooms since you passed. I know their antidepressant effect would be second order to grappling with your absence. And brought face to face with my younger self I would still tell them to do more, to try to bargain, to deceive death. But this movie twisted a stuck gear in my depths. Rust chips are flaking away as I begin the descent into this new city. What I wouldn’t give for one more of your wholehearted hugs.

He’s a psychological tire fire

Both funnier and cornier than I expected. I think all the star actors really carried the very formulaic script on their backs.

The worst thing that ever happened to me was on Christmas. Oh, God. It was so horrible. It was Christmas Eve. I was 9 years old. Me and Mom were decorating the tree, waiting for Dad to come home from work. A couple hours went by. Dad wasn't home. So Mom called the office. No answer. Christmas Day came and went, and still nothing. So the police began a search. Four or five days went by.

Neither one of us could eat or sleep. Everything was falling apart. It was snowing outside. The house was freezing, so I went to try to light up the fire. That's when I noticed the smell. The firemen came and broke through the chimney top. And me and Mom were expecting them to pull out a dead cat or a bird. And instead they pulled out my father. He was dressed in a Santa Claus suit. He'd been climbing down the chimney... his arms loaded with presents. He was gonna surprise us. He slipped and broke his neck. He died instantly. And that's how I found out there was no Santa Claus.

Imagine going to the theaters to see this as a PG movie.

Say, Lou, didya hear the one about the guy who couldn’t afford personalized plates, so he went and changed his name to J3L2404?

A real aesthetic respect for snow, 90s automobiles, and parking lots in this movie that I can get behind. Had a hard time thinking about anything other than how much Peter Stormare’s character reminded me of Ryan Gosling every time he was on screen.

You can’t win an argument just by being right!

Appreciated the one-liners a lot. It was hard to choose just one to feature. Few movies dare to actually explore the lower end of human intelligence like this one does. But it does so without devolving into caricature or dehumanization. It pairs that with pretty clever critiques of post-9/11 British politics. The red-bearded white jihadist who wants to target a mosque because he’s completely lost in the ideological sauce, and the Benedict Cumberbatch led British police arresting the studious brother and interrogating him a storage container that is “legally Egypt” come to mind.

She chose to disguise President Lincoln in blackface and travel with him along one of the many secret slave routes. When Lincoln scoffed at the plan, Tubman, never one to mince words, reminded him of the huge bounty on his head. She said simply, 'We're both n****** now, Mr. President.'

A fascinating cross of sharply unfunny British-style satire, and Bush era left wing criticism of America. A layered piece of social commentary that effectively leverages many niche historical details, that I found valuable to watch still in 2024. It effectively mirrors the Ken Burns documentary style in nearly every way, even in the way parts of it don’t hold up under more detailed scrutiny or the benefit of hindsight.

Childs, Childs... Chariots of the Gods, man. They practically own South America. I mean, they taught the Incas everything they know.

I had to look away often because I really cannot handle gore, which is one of the main strengths of the movie (so I’m told). But I enjoyed the whodunnit style imposter plot, and the overall atmosphere. Though, in classic horror movie fashion, I was compelled to spend most of the time complaining about the stupid decisions the characters made.

Data data data. I cannot make bricks without clay

Not quite as British as I wanted. My slight disappointment in the mystery plot was balanced out by the over-delivery on stunts and special effects.

only those in a nightmare are capable of praising the moonlight

They should let near-dementia directors produce passion projects more often. My hot take is that Coppola knows this isn’t a good movie, and wants it to be a conversation starter— like he repeats over and over in the movie. I loved its respect for consciousness and the mind, did not think it needed its time twisting mechanics, thought it was brilliantly cast, and was— intentionally or not I can’t tell— extremely funny.

Come, come, sir. I'm a man who would rather be known as a cuckold than a fool.

I was really invested all the way up to intermission, and was so disappointed by the second half. It could have done with so many fewer scenes of European nobility, and the overall rags to riches to rags arc felt tired and cliché. The first half managed to be beautiful while also being funny, engaging, purposeful, and full of characters who teeter on the edge of likability. The second half was just beautiful.

[over-answering a job interview question] In high school I felt like that mouse that gets dropped in the snake cage and just sits there, frozen, trying to blend in. I guess I remember being happy when I was a kid. Back when you just naturally expect good things to happen.

A movie that hits all of my soft spots. A time travel romcom with a moody Aubrey Plaza, Mark Duplass killing it, and a background plot that isn’t irony poisoned or masking some deep moral lesson. It’s not a particularly good movie if what you want is a sci-fi exploration of time travel, nor is it exploring any new ground in the romcom genre. But it hits on a few of my personal favorite artistic messages— namely trust in madness and the reality-challenged, and rejection of the “Big Machine”.

Before becoming useless, we’re wonderfully useful to people

Like reading a short story collection, there were hits and misses for me in this film anthology. Overall I was captivated and carried through them all by the animation style.

When did I start writing messages I could never send?

Sentimental but not sappy. A movie a younger me would have benefitted from watching, but cynical older me related to more for the soul crushing day job arc. A good reminder to take my eyes off the distant horizon every now and then.

An insane fluoride-phobic semen-retention-pilled general makes for a much more relevant villain than 90% of even modern political satire.  Peter Sellers is out of this world, each shot was beautiful (especially in the first half), the jokes were well written and well delivered, and the way it engaged with its themes was extremely effective. There was a little too much switch flipping in the second half of the movie hence the loss of half a star from me.

Rita: What's wrong with you?

Jack: Let me think about that. I'll tell you the next time I see you.

The most engaged I’ve been by a Wes Anderson movie. Obviously there’s the classic Anderson strengths: color, music, shot framing, time manipulation, but I was more invested in these characters than in anything else I’ve seen by him before.

Two little mice fell into a bucket of cream. The first mouse quickly gave up and drowned, but the second mouse, he struggled so hard that he eventually churned that cream into butter and he walked out. Amen.

I really do love watching this movie.

A movie all about spectrums. Really impressive non verbal acting, uncomfortably relatable at times.

Not a fan, I feel like a whole industry of bad DID movies is exemplified by this one.

The plot was straightforward but the characters were much smarter than the average serial killer horror movie. Near the edge of my scary movie tolerance, but not too many scenes made me look away.

Not my kind of movie

We are who we protect I think, what we stand up for

Simply too long. Kinda fun if you can suspend your disbelief and just let the history parts wash over you without digging into them too much. The writing was bizarre, but some of that is Dan Brown’s fault. I am currently sporting the same hairstyle Tom Hanks has in this movie and I can’t say it’s working that well for either of us.

It gave me the ick, but I also couldn’t stop watching.

This is not a war anymore than a war between men and maggots. This is an extermination

Hot take, I like the ending. I didn’t like much about this movie other than its respect for Mother Nature.

I’m always impressed by how Denis looks at things. His choice and framing of detail is remarkable. I love the way he strings together a series of close up shots of ginormous objects to communicate important details about how they function and move in space, while also giving a sense of massive scale that leaves a lot to the imagination to fill in. I think there are some chemistry issues between Timothee and Zendaya but other than that I don’t really have any notes.

“To England!” ”To Mankind!” ”To Manchester United!”

The shots of the wave pouring through the streets of New York were awesome. I couldn’t get over how often Dennis Quaid sounds like Will Ferrel in this movie.

“First rule in government spending: why build one when you can have two at twice the price?”

Definitely my favorite use of oscilloscopes in film so far.

“Not a sort of thing l should confess to a stranger, but you have to break the rules sometimes. Humanity - is a duty.”

At multiple points I was impressed with the realistic emotions in the actors’ eyes. The zither in the score rocked and it came as no surprise that in a 2014 interview about the score of Grand Budapest Hotel, Wes Anderson said: “I sort of also thought of Third Man with that Anton Karas theme using the zither. We didn't use it, but were inspired by it in a way.” (Credit to Griffin for putting his finger on what the music reminded us of)  Only note is there should be more stray cat scenes.

Somehow feels like this was always made to be a Gen Z movie and now we have it in all its Tik Tok glory.

“When I was fifteen years old, when I got this job, I said to myself, ‘I am going to work here until the day that I kill myself.’"

I have absolutely no idea who this movie was made for, but I’m so happy it got made. Out of pocket is the only way to describe the comedy style, and aside from the bodily function humor which was hard to sit through, most of it landed.

“They won’t say nowt about your personality neither. Which is good because you’re basically a bastard. Bollocks to your personality - this is what they’re looking at, right? And I’ll tell you summat mate. Anti-wrinkle cream there may be, but anti-fat-bastard cream there is none.”

I often struggle with British comedies, but this was incredibly enjoyable. I was impressed with its subtlety of acting juxtaposed with its outrageous situations.

“You don't need proof when you have instinct.”

I get that the writing is supposed to be more crass and simple to reflect the characters, but I felt the result was that it left them underdeveloped. Great classic plot, good pacing, well edited. Just missing a little something.

“If we don’t stick up for the cooks, who will?”

Everything a family movie should be.

The reason that Iran-Contra happened is because nobody did anything substantial about Watergate. And the reason that Watergate happened is that there were no consequences from the Bay of Pigs. They are all the same operatives, didn't you notice? The foot soldiers in the Bay of Pigs, the plumbers that got busted at Watergate, the gunrunners in Iran contra: they are all the same people. The same faces. Now it doesn't take a genius to make the connection here. A secret government beyond the control of the people and accountable to no-one.

And the closer we are to discovering the connection, the more the Congress turns a blind eye to it. "We can't talk about that in open session!" they say. "National security reasons"

The truth lies dormant in their laps and they stay blind out of choice. A conspiracy of silence.

At multiple points I had to re-confirm that this movie was from ‘92. Holds up creepily well. Team America World Police may have made fun of Tim Robbins for this, but I think Robbins got the last laugh with a much sharper and lasting satire.

“You want people to stop talking shit about the police? Do better police work.”

Too many jump scares and too much gore for my taste, but way less than in a typical werewolf movie. Would have liked more mystery but didn’t dislike the choices it made.

"We've lost intelligence! I repeat, we have no intelligence!" about sums it up. The puking scene was unbearable and the puppets were just so hard to handle. The satire was decent but every joke was repeated a half dozen times until you were tired of it.

“I love you, Broseph Goebbels.”

One of those 2000s comedies where even the extras are big name stars.

12/30/2023

“Without trust, there can be no love. Jealousy, yes, jealousy will drive you mad.”

Watched again with the family in full. This movie starts at 11 and stays there the entire time. Just wonderful.

Noodle: “The greedy beat the needy, Willy. That’s just the way of the world.”
Willy: “I guess that’s why there’s only one thing we can do.”
Noodle: “What’s that?”
Willy : “Change the world!”

Not unlike the experience of eating an entire bar of chocolate. Overwhelmingly sweet, great for a few bites and then it just keeps going. The acting was really good though.

Tina Fey took me out of it a little bit but otherwise a very solid whodunit

A simple movie, but in a humble way and not a small way. Many of the landscape shots were visually and conceptually remarkable and are likely to stick with me.

Missed about the first fifteen minutes, but was brought up to speed.

Endearing, Scrappy, Charming, Clever. Alone with Primer far atop my leaderboard for time travel movies

Definitely biased by the fact that every other scene was in a location I recognized, but I really loved this movie. You can’t avoid comparisons to Dead Poets Society, and I found many things about The Holdovers more satisfying, and almost a response to its predecessor’s shortcomings. It was by far the prettiest and most well-composed (musically and otherwise) film I’ve seen in the boarding school micro-genre, and it only loses half a star for the limited scope of its ambition.

Just in case you didn’t have enough reasons to hate French and Belgian colonialism.

David Skylark: “Kim must die! That’s the American way.” Sook: “How many times can the US make the same mistake?” David Skylark: “As many times as it takes!”

A very realistic amount of silence in this movie.

The European mind cannot comprehend this film.

Not one to be watched with the parents

I just wish they gave me more about any of the characters. It was so focussed on the love triangle that it forgot to flesh out any of its members. I liked how it explored long distance relationships, and there were lots of pretty shots to look at.

"Everybody is just on their feet screaming 'Kill Kill Kill'! This is hockey!"

Had issues with the pacing, but I’m a sucker for hockey fight scenes

A movie to be felt more than seen. Beautiful, surprising, and well acted.

“I asked my friend what kind of writing pays best. He said ransom notes.” - Harry

A very enjoyable watch. Probably my favorite performance by John Travolta.

“The TV is both a clock and a calendar. It's your school, your home, your church, your friend... and your lover. But... my lover's song is too short.” — Dae-su Oh

More blood than I would have liked.

The manual windshield wipers were probably my favorite part. Beautiful and insane movie.

Simply too many r*pe scenes for an 80 minute movie to go any higher than 3.5

I really loved this movie. A genuinely good take on a Groundhog Day premise and an incredibly satisfying romantic arc. The dialogue was emotionally believable and compelling in addition to being funny. Every minor character is brilliant, and the aesthetic was thoughtfully considered. It is definitely in my top 5 comedy movies in terms of enjoyment watching.

Latest in a series of self aware comedies that are more enjoyable to watch than they are actually good movies. Every shot was visually interesting, most characters were well acted and written, but otherwise a pretty straightforward whodunit.

Gonna have to noodle on this one for a while

Self-aware enough to turn what could have been cringey sequences into very enjoyable absurd comedy.

Was only a 3 until the closing scene

Such an extremely masculine film, with all the unflattering baggage that implies. That said, very enjoyable to watch and generated many interesting Wikipedia rabbit holes.

An extremely feminine film that was as self aware as Oppenheimer wasn’t. Had small issues with some of the messaging around empowerment (wasn’t a fan of weaponized jealously or helpless women in the face of a patriarchal virus) but overall extremely fun to watch, and anyone mad about it takes themselves far too seriously.