Movies
Sidney Lumet’s brutal satire of capitalist mass media has been on my list for a relatively short time.
Since this film is way older than I am, I don’t really have a personal sense to gauge how the culture of its time was in relation to the message of the movie, especially in a, by then, foreign culture like the US, but its cynicism proved to be a bullseye hit.
The film centers on the excesses of television stations, namely the exploitation of sensationalist content and the ruthless abolition of rigour and taste in the pursuit of higher audience numbers.
While the particulars of the plot are centered, of course, on TV, we can see the same patterns in modern media, “influencer” culture, and Internet algorithmic-driven content, making Network seem oddly prescient.
In the end, it just means that, unless we put care and attention, mass communication media can be easily exploited, putting us all in a race to the bottom. Dehumanizing us in order to sustain a flawed system.
If I remember correctly, this is my first Wim Wenders movie. And what an incredible way to start experiencing his filmography.
Wenders has been dubbed the master of the road movie, however we could say about Paris, Texas that it has road movie elements, without fully being one.
That’s not a bad thing, as the way the film transforms and adapts as the story matures is one of the great joys of watching it.
If I have to highlight a couple of elements in the film, they would be the amazing performance of Harry Dean Stanton, in a rare lead role, and the beautiful photography throughout the entire movie. Half-empty gas stations and desert roadside bars have never looked so good.
I’ve had this one on my list for a long time, and I’m afraid it might have been past its best-by date for me.
I get it. This looks like a movie that can impact someone very much if they encounter it at a particular age, in a particular moment of our history as a species.
Watching it now in 2025 didn’t have the same impact for me, unfortunately.
And you can be sure that I’m not against slow-paced, near silent movies. —Kim Ki-duk’s 3 Iron is one of my favorites— However this one didn’t hit for me.
But hey, if you want to see a tale about an OCD Japanese librarian living in Bangkok, and his entanglement in the lives of a local Thai woman, and the Yakuza, you may want to check it out.
Adam Curtis is a filmmaker I wasn’t very familiar with before becoming aware of HyperNormalisation. From then on, he’s become one of my go-to documentary directors. I don’t think you’ll see me review much of his work here since he most often favors the mini-series format, but HyperNormalisation is a feature film, and therefore fits well here.
This is a film that explores the new dispositives of power on what’s been called the “post-truth” era. The rise of the financial class calling the shots, and the increased apathy, fragmentation and isolation that western hyper-individualistic cultures find themselves immersed in.
Like most documentaries, it shows, of course, a bias in the information it presents to craft a narrative, but it nevertheless contains a dense quantity of thought-provoking material. Further research is left as en exercise to the audience, one I will emphatically encourage.
I certainly wasn’t expecting to find a movie about the history of the Blackberry company, much less one full of Canadian comedians and some YouTube personalities. It’s a very good one, too!
It must have had poor marketing, because it flopped pretty hard at the box office. Coming out at the tail end of the pandemic probably didn’t help either.
The plot follows the entire arc of the company that built Blackberry phones, the rise in size and tech advancements, and its eventual fall due to a double whammy from of the consequences of corrupt management in one side, and Apple’s release of the iPhone on the other.
The movie was directed by Matt Johnson, of Nirvanna The Band fame, who also plays Doug Fregin, the sidekick of Mike Lazaridis, founder of Blackberry. Likely not by coincidence, one of the coolest characters in the movie.
Despite its light tone, the film does a really good job of establishing the big personalities and major players involved in the development of the company, and manages to create some poignant character moments as well.
It is a musical biopic. Not really much more I can say. It follows the formula, has some musical numbers interspersed with plot, and so on. I imagine one might enjoy it more if they are fans of Bob Dylan and/or his music.
I’ve heard Timothee Chalamet’s performance has been praised, but to me, it just looked lazy and fake. I understand that this may be due to my unfamiliarity with Bob Dylan’s mannerisms, and he might have seemed lazy and fake in person as well (which would make this a correct portrayal).
I didn’t personally get much out of it, but your mileage may vary.
Another Sidney Lumet classic. Although not as often cited as Network, I find Dog Day Afternoon is a more straightforwardly entertaining film. Following the real-life story of a bank robbers Sonny and Sal, hitting up a branch office in Brooklyn, things go off the rails and the story and motivations for the robbery slowly get revealed.
For some reason, there was a brief blip in the algorithm around June which resulted in increased mentions of John Cazale, who played Sal in the movie, and Dog Day Afternoon got mentioned a few times. By that point I had already seen the film months ago, but I found it interesting. It just happened that the year I watched this film for the first time happened to be Cazale’s 90th anniversary.
One day, going through a YouTube rabbit hole, I learned about the subgenre of low-stakes, feel-good comedies that the production company Ealing studios was famous for in the 40s and 50s, but this is not about any of those movies. It is, rather, about the kind of movies Bill Forsyth made in the 80s, out of love of that 40s subgenre. In particular, Local Hero.
An American petrochemical company has plans to buy a new refinery, then sends a disenchanted businessman to Scotland to buy the village of Ferness, but once he arrives there, things don’t go as smoothly as he expected.
It is indeed a feel-good comedy. The inhabitants of Ferness are happy to be bought by a big corporation, and indeed through Gordon, who is both the accountant and the local inn owner —played by Denis Lawson, of Wedge Antilles fame— they try to negotiate the price up to make everyone in the sleepy fishing village a millionaire.
And it is also low-stakes. The world is deliberately depicted in a laid-back, take it easy way. Even the president of the petrochemical company is more of an eccentric guy who inherited an oil business than a ruthless industrialist with no qualms about destroying the coast of Scotland with a refinery complex.
One shouldn’t search for political messaging or realistic depictions in these films. They are meant to evoke a different vibe, and sometimes, that’s very refreshing and human.
It’s technically not the first time I’ve watched this movie, but until now, it had been the only one from the trilogy I’d watched, so I revisited it as part of my viewing of the entire Before saga for the first time.
And it does hold up great. It is still my favorite of them all because I’m a sucker for any “spirit of youth” movies since I was in my first twenties.
That includes everything. The awkwardness that makes one cringe, in this film, is intentional. You know, Linklater does like his naturalism.
Fantastic watch and, if for some reason you can only watch one film of the three, make it this one.
Second entry in the Before saga.
Nine years after the events of the first movie, Jesse is now an accomplished writer, traveling on a book tour of his semi-autobiographical novel based on his day with Celine covered in the previous movie. Celine finds out about it, and she attends one of his book signings, reuniting for the first time.
We then follow the characters, almost a decade more mature, reminiscing about their previous day together, its meaning and what their lives since have been. Jesse has a plane to catch, therefore they have to part ways again, before sunset.
It’s a very nice continuation of the story, and the growth of the characters is palpable. While the film is mostly walk and talk scenes, you get a lot of great Linklater dialogue. Feels like having an stimulating conversation with a good friend.
The latest entry in the Before saga. At least, at the time of this writing.
If Before Sunrise is my favorite, Before Midnight is definitely the most interesting.
Another nine years since the last film, Celine and Jesse are now married with two kids. They are spending some time at a writer’s retreat in Greece.
The staple Before elements are all there, but while I’d say that the previous two movies are firmly in the “feel good” category, focusing on idealized romance, this one, and quite astutely, I must add, is the first one introducing some real, ugly conflict, based on the realities of day to day life for a couple. It’s incredibly artistically sensible of Linklater to do this, even if it pisses off some “fans” looking for more of the same.
That said, yeah, in purely inner, visceral enjoyment terms, this one is harder to watch than the other two. Still, amazing dialogue and conversations throughout.
World War II films are, generally speaking, not my thing —I have nothing against them. They’re just not a genre/setting that draws me in— however, I saw an interview where Tarantino was praising this movie for its cinematic value, and got curious to watch it.
If anything, it is definitely an Artistic experience. Old Quentin wasn’t wrong on that. Nolan delivers a beautifully crafted work of Cinema, as per usual.
It’s been noted that the story Dunkirk isn’t very interesting per se, when told linearly, but Nolan here, as he likes to do, cuts and edits the timeline, remixing the depiction of events, to make the experience more exciting for the viewer.
Overall, a stunning work of cinema, that’s probably best experienced in IMAX. However, watching it as a standalone viewing, at home, is not disappointing at all, unless you’re predisposed to hate Nolan’s work, I guess.
First film I watch from indie darling Sean Baker and, I have to say, based on this, I kinda get his popularity.
Well crafted comedy, with the right amount of social message, intriguing plot, and touches of poignant meaning.
But despite the undeniable good craft of the movie, I’m kind of left thinking that this is just a normal movie.
Let me explain. Movies like Anora are simply what normal movies used to be in the late 20th to early 21st centuries, before the Marvel/Disney conglomerates reduced all movie options to either Whedonesque amusement rides full of special effects or artsy experimental A24 pseudo-indie stuff.
While I have to say that this film has a slight tinge of “Really Makes You Think”-itis and feels a bit Oscar-baity, it is good overall. Films like Anora were allowed to exist, and they weren’t anything special. Comedies, or dramas. Down to earth plots. No genre stuff, no experimental, wacky shenanigans. Just regular cinema.
A lesser-known action flick from the early days of Dolph Lundgren’s career as an action star.
Lundgren plays Detective Jack Caine, and gets involved in a bizarre drug-dealing case with multiple homicides.
There is a formulaic buddy cop dynamic with him as the renegade, loose cannon cop who is forced to work with the nerdy FBI agent. The whole thing reminds me of The Hidden, except with a more “video rental” action movie vibe, and not nearly as good. Still, a perfectly fine , entertaining movie.
Wow, what an absolute mess. I admit I wasn’t able to pay a lot of attention while watching this one.
An Italian SF production —more like sci-fi, to be honest— overambitious, hilariously poorly executed material by a company called “Artuniverse”.
The story revolves around the titular Creators, powerful godlike figures meddling with the forces of the universe. They need to search for some doodad that will either save Earth or destroy it. Can’t really remember. The writing is already something to behold. Take a look at the cast, too: Gerard Depardieu, William Shatner, and famous scenery-muncher Bruce Payne of Dungeons & Dragons and, to a lesser extent, Highlander fame. Imagine these genre stars reciting the awkward lines in this script. Even considering that English isn’t the author’s first language, it comes across as unnatural and uncanny.
I was intrigued because the dialogue for some characters evokes concepts from the Lensman series, which I’m pretty sure was an influence for the author (the movie’s mcguffin is called the Lens, too ). However he completely failed to make something that does justice to the possibilities of what Lensman evokes, such as planet-level telepathy. The characters end up bland and generic.
It’s actually a pretty fascinating movie to watch, but it is most definitely not a good one.
This was a pretty good watch. Adaptation of a best-seller novel, if I’m not mistaken.
After the Pope dies, the Catholic Church must undertake a conclave to elect a new one. Intrigue abounds at the secretive ritual, while Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) tries to navigate the event he’s tasked to conduct.
I found the whole thing to have a slightly Oscar-baity smell, particularly the ending, but it was still overall a fascinating story, well paced and produced, and not shying away from making incisive observations about the state of the Church as an institution. Consider the writing at this point forward a complete lack of notes.
Clearly a “nourishment” film for ATJ and Miles Teller, who for some reason is being pushed as a leading man now.
Very, very edgy, in a bad way. Sci-Fi crap about a gorge in a classified location that two mercenary operatives are hired to guard, strictly forbidding contact with each other.
The premise is ridiculous from the get-go. You have a highly dangerous area to protect, but only have two people on duty and some automated turrets to do so. Miles Teller’s character is on one side and Anya Taylor-Joy on the other. They don’t let them communicate with each other and, of course, they break this rule immediately. For some reason, they start their respective shifts simultaneously.
They soon discover that they are guarding some abandoned military facility, yadda yadda. Very edgy, nonsense stuff that the author thought sounded cool.
It’s entertaining but way too stupid, and the action setpieces and special effects aren’t even that good.
I was pleasantly surprised by this classic by the great Keita Amemiya. Mostly by how it could achieve such great results with such a small budget.
The plot is pretty ambitious: A bounty hunter lands in Japan to capture an escaped dangerous bioweapon called Zeiram.
Of course, we know Amemiya is a master of special effects and creatures, so that part is great, but on top of that, the whole setup is cleverly constructed so that the scenes in the Japanese town don’t require a lot of budget. The gimmick is that Iria, the bounty hunter, sets up a dimensional barrier in the vein of those in the manga X, that only lets her and Zeiram interact while protecting the local population, but she mistakenly traps two Japanese deliverymen in this separate dimension, causing trouble.
Overall a pretty great watch for fans of more gritty tokusatsu.
Researching the background of the movie I learned that it was not, as I assumed, an adaptation of a manga or anime. The live action movie came first, and the same year an OVA titled Iria: Zeiram the Animation was released covering a prequel story. There is also a live-action sequel from 1994 that I haven’t watched yet, but am now looking forward to.
An odd, low budget SF movie where a father (Michael Shannon) escapes with his son, who has special powers.
The start of the movie is pretty promising. Suspenseful and mysterious, and it quickly introduces the different factions going after the kid —The US Government, a strange cult who preaches that the kid’s powers will usher in a new age, and the escapees themselves— as well as the key characters that are part of each one.
It seems to be pointing to something exciting, but never really manages to deliver that initial optimistic promise, and while it has one or two cool setpieces here and there, the ending unfortunately devolves into something pretty dull and insipid.
I’m not sure if this if due to a deficiency in the writing or due to producer’s meddling, but it feels so close to having something cool there, and then it botches the execution with cookie cutter plot points and platitudes. It’s a shame because it really has some cool ideas.
I don’t normally go for these popcorn horror movies, but the trailer for this one intrigued me basically because of its visuals.
The film manages to have a visual flair that’s unexpected and unnecessary in a production like this, but it can single-handedly make it worth a watch, even when the rest of the movie isn’t interesting.
Some often say that horror is a genre for women. The nature of the genre makes it so that it’s amenable for women to enjoy, since it covers pretty much all the taxables: female characters are prominent in the plot, when not the protagonists outright, there’s increased representation of female characters, depictions of them having relatively increased agency, sometimes in the case of slasher films even “kicking ass” against monsters. There’s the adrenaline spikes of jump scares, and so on.
Smile 2 is firmly in this camp as well, as the themes are pretty much a bingo card of what middle class, American women are scared of in our culture.
The body horror parts are perhaps the most laughable ones. Maybe if you are 15 and this is the first horror movie you see they may have an impact, but they are so goofy and unconvincing that they work pretty much only as a cheap shock.
The handling of the villain or evil entity is also not satisfying. If anything can be an illusion, the stakes can never be real. By the end of the movie, it’s impossible to tell if everything has been a hallucination, or if the protagonist has even been in any real danger. Then again, perhaps that’s simply a clever reinforcement of the female-centric themes.
I know I’m way too late watching this one. Lots of people have recommended it to me over the years as a masterpiece. They were not wrong.
Memories of Murder is essentially a literary classic made cinema. A masterful blend of crime thriller, social critique and dark comedy, all set within the cultural milieu of 1980s South Korea, only a few years before the nation’s transition into its democratic Sixth Republic.
The main plot line of the movie follows a police investigation of a series of killings in a rural Korean province. It’s getting so bad that Seoul sends trained detective Seo Tae-Yoon to aid in the investigations, where he witnesses the poor preparation of the police force there.
The penchad for fabricating evidence and corruption of the police, who are more interested in showing some work done to their superiors than on finding the serial killer on the loose is problematic. However Tae-Yoon looks into these practices detachedly, not actively fighting against the system in place.
This narrative is realized with scenes of day to day life in the town, with darkly comedic scenes highlighting the incompetence of Park Doo-Man, the rural policeman who relies on hunches and brute-force torture over careful investigation. All the while the killer keeps taking more and more victims.
It’s incredibly well done in every aspect. Joon-Ho’s cinematography is top-notch, and the different themes and approaches to storytelling are used judiciously and deliberately. When (good) critics reproach a movie for mixing tones or styles, they are most definitely not referring to works like this one, but rather clashing to styles and incompetently used tropes.
I honestly forgot how this movie made it into my list. I’m not sure if I followed some random IMDB thing or what.
It’s basically just a throwaway romantic telefilm to watch in the evenings. I think there’s a bland category of movies they refer to as Hallmark movies, which are produced by the greeting card company for their cable TV channel. Although this movie does not, as far as I know, have any connection to Hallmark, the blandness of its message and sheer dullness of the plot reminds me of the idea I have of these Hallmark movies.
I’m finding it difficult to put myself into a 2012 mindset to evaluate this movie on its own cultural terms, and there’s a possibility it hit with more impact back then, but today its themes feel too evident and the plot too linear and predictable, and I can’t recommend it in 2025.
Before Blade Runner 2049 and the new Dune movies, Sicario was Dennis Villeneuve’s must-see movie.
Having arrived a bit late for it, I was left pretty underwhelmed.
Don’t take me wrong, it’s an expertly crafted film. Visually stunning and well paced and directed. The night vision ops scene in particular is a highlight.
However, after having watched the sheer spectacle and fantasy that both Blade Runner and Dune part 1 and 2 have to offer, this more grounded tale inevitably feels smaller in scope. Don’t let me discourage you, though. It’s still a solid movie and worth a watch.
There is a 2018 sequel that I haven’t watched, where both Benicio del Toro and Josh Brolin return in their roles, but not Emily Blunt and, perhaps more importantly, doesn’t have Villeneuve in the director’s chair, so I can’t comment on how they compare.
I didn’t know this movie existed, but now I do, and I watched it, and… I’m rather upset at it.
The entire thing seems to have been crafted to capitalize on South Korea’s Memories of Murder, an extremely well-regarded film that also happens to be incredibly well made.
This is not even “We have Memories of Murder at home”.
Never mind that the title, at least the localized version, deliberately tries to evoke it, but some shots in the movie itself seem to only exist to remind you of Bong Joon-Ho’s much better movie. Doubly so because they are disconnected to the rest of the film.
In this one, we follow the steps of a serial killer, but it’s depicted sympathetically because he only kills people who he deems bad persons. Don’t expect much moral ambiguity beyond that because, coincidentally, the kind of persons the murderer happens to consider bad align pretty much with what most people would consider bad.
He suffers a car crash and gains an eye twitch tic, and Alzheimer’s. He then meets another serial killer —one with different views on who should die, and therefore the bad guy—, who decides to target the protagonist’s daughter, complicating things. All of this leads to a movie that tries too hard to be too clever, as the audience can’t trust the unreliable memories of the protagonist.
It all ends up feeling like a version of Memento if you removed all the insight and thoughtful themes, crossed with a bargain copy of Memories of Murder.
There are better things to watch, but this one is at least interesting in how blatant and diminished it is in comparison to the films it’s ripping off.
It’s kind of weird covering this sequel after having watched the previous entry. See, the previous movie from 2014 had an open ending, suggesting follow-up adventures and a continuation of the story in a possible sequel. The sequel we got instead had no connection to the previous movie, a completely different protagonist and supporting cast, no continuity, and a completely different direction.
Billed as a “prequel”, despite the lack of connection to the original movie, the story follows another kid who grows up to be both a Go master and a martial arts prodigy. Unlike the first movie, where there was a plot-related reason for the protagonist to become that (he was already a high-level Go player, and after ending up in prison he learned martial arts), in this one, it just happens. We have a child Go prodigy that trains absurdly hard to get better at Go, to get revenge for her sister against a revered Go master, but also becomes really good at punching people, because yeah, that’s the combo of skills a Divine Move protagonist must have.
Despite leaving all pretenses of storytelling aside, the movie is quite entertaining because of the ridiculous, over the top encounters Gwi-soo has on his path to get to the main villain, Heo il-do.
There is a game of Go played with a weird shaman where players bet their own arm, an assassin who was also wronged as a kid who kills his victims by chalenging them to a game of Go played on a hot iron board filled with burning acid, which triggers based on who loses more stones, and nonsense like that.
It’s over the top, and absurd, and definitely a worse movie than the first one, but it is also a really fun watch.
Fell into the trap of Netflix promos and watched what was ultimately a pretty bland German thriller.
Set almost entirely within a US embassy, a mother starts a frantic search for her son, who gets lost in the waiting room of the embassy. Such mom happens to be a highly trained special operative with major PTSD episodes, triggered after being the sole survivor of a military operation.
It’s a weird mix of “momcore”, action stuff with some weirdly convoluted subterfuge, but the setup is pretty boring and formulaic. Not worth watching, in my opinion.
So, I finally tackled this infamously bad movie. Not sure if its reputation was widely known, or it was just within my local milieu, but it remains in my mind as a notorious trash flick.
The first thing that hit me is that the movie looks like a million dollars. Not a bad accomplishment for its $70 million budget!
Jokes aside, we take it for granted these days, but movies shot on film with a competent crew will look pretty good by default.
Another thing is that, 23 years later and many more garbage flicks watched, this one wasn’t even remotely the worst one. It’s hilariously edgy, and the actions the characters undertake make no sense, but it’s a watchable and entertaining movie with decent action scenes, lots of pyrotechnics and production values. Good enough for a late 90s action blockbuster.
One of those stories of manners/picaresques set in the world of the US Army, with a roguish protagonist, Ray Elwood as played by Joaquin Phoenix, taking advantage of his position as a requisitions officer to smuggle goods into the local area.
Right away, the film sets clearly its tone of dark humor by showing us the most banal death of an American soldier. Despite the subject, it’s not always in good taste, but as an early 00s movie, it never gets too bad by modern standards either.
As you might expect, events complicate the life of Elwood, especially when a love interest enters the scene, played by Anna Paquin.
Once the movie is over, it feels like you’ve just watched a very late 90s dark comedy. It’s nothing remarkable, perhaps worth a watch if the topic interests you.
I recall reading reviews praising this German SF movie from the old io9 blog. I see now it’s under the Gizmodo umbrella. Haven’t read it in years, and I suspect all the original writers have left. Anyway, the source of this movie’s place in my to-watch list is not the issue. Let’s talk about the film.
Ultimately, it’s a pretty average SF tale where Dr. Laura, the protagonist, accepts a job in an interstellar cargo freighter run, with a total round trip of 8 years. She does this to earn enough money to finally move to live in a paradise colony with her sister.
The beginning is, sadly an Alien clone setup. I think it was a legally binding thing that if you made a movie about a crew working in a spaceship you had to use the Alien template.
The rest of the movie, while generally entertaining, is not so for the right reasons. There’s plenty of subterfuge, twists that can be seen a mile away, and massive plot holes that can’t.
Other than the fact that this movie did a lot with little, budget-wise, I can’t recall how it could have possibly got such good reviews.
This is basically “Ocean’s Eleven for girls”. In every sense of the word.
It features an all-female cast that make up the team of criminals doing the heist, with Sandra Bullock as the long-incarcerated sister of Danny Ocean from the original movie.
It was written with such a pop-song precision of its target audience that they managed to swap every plot element into a pink-hued “for girls” version.
Instead of stealing cash, the girls are robbing a collection of jewels. Instead of robbing a casino, they are robbing the posh Met Gala in NYC. Even the meta plot twist of the true motive for the heist is revealed to be revenge against a bad Ex-boyfriend.
It has it all! To the latest detail. Including how the investigator looking for the stolen jewels basically catch the true culprits easily, but let them get away with no accountability. It would be brilliant if it wasn’t so bad.
The writing is awful, the heist plan makes no sense, and it basically only succeeds due to pure luck and the incompetence of everyone surrounding the team. Not very empowering!
Good for a laugh (at its expense), and nothing more.
Event pic about the 2021 Gamestop stock squeeze against hedge fund firms, revolving mostly around the YouTuber Keith Gill (played here somewhat unflatteringly by Paul Dano), who drove a historic financial maneuver coordinated through Reddit and YouTube livestreams, that left financial titans looking for “dumb money” flabbergasted.
It’s an interesting view into the events of the squeeze, told in an entertaining manner. Nice as a historical piece, and not too propagandistic, but cinematically it is pretty average.
Much has been said about the fairly successful vampire movie Sinners. I heard rumors that it was initially meant to be a spin-off Blade movie, but plans fell through.
Glad they did, though, because Sinners is really good as it is.
Not only is it a tense vampire horror thriller, with appropriate action moments, but it’s surprisingly full of slower paced moments giving all the characters time to develop, and the audience time to reflect. That’s not a use of screen time that you typically see in blockbuster action films.
You may also have heard that the movie is “secretly a musical”. I wouldn’t go so far as saying that. It would be more correct to say that it contains several long musical scenes, but you could omit or halve most of them, and the film’s essence wouldn’t be significantly affected.
It’s sort of a miracle that a film like this was allowed to get made nowadays, and it’s reassuring that it apparently was pretty successful.