the nice guys (2016)

it feels like all of this movie's cynicism is saved fur the world it's a part of, not fur its genre space or its own ideas, which i think allows the goofiness of its clawmedy and its moments trying fur some genuine heart to actually land. russell crowe and ryan gosling play off each other really well, makes sense to me they signed on fur this specifically beclaws they wanted to work together. a very colorful and funny movie whose mystery is a lot of fun to watch unfold

raising arizonya (1987)

second time watching, just as good as the furst time. nic cage is the purrfect actor fur this kind of earnest fuckup goofball criminyal character. he might be purrfect fur any role furankly. i think i would also be put under that baby's magic spell if i met and/or stole it.

miller's crossing (1990)

a hell of a breakup movie. efurryone expects tom to be a rational actor in some way and tries so hard to read what he's thinking but his stone-faced stoic silence and bone-dry deadpan wisecracks render him unreadable. nobody seems to propurrly pick up that he is just spiralling into impulsive self-destruction beclaws he's in love with his boss but his boss loves the woman he's sleeping with. even at the end he hints to leo he wasn't really thinking about his actions.

several great scenes where guys casually talk to each other as they walk away from some huge commotion, only to later be startled as their conversation is interrupted by distant gunfire. lots of amazing hair, copious amounts of boozing and getting punched in the face and putting hats back on heads before their associated faces are punched again. yet, in some ways i think it's my least favorite of the coen bros filmography i've seen so far? but that's kind of just a testament to how good they are

logan lucky (2017)

fun, but not very good i dont think! no reason fur this movie to be 2 hours. i really strongly feel the only reason it got to be that long was beclaws it did not have a concrete idea of what it was trying to do or say and so ended up setting up a bunch of spinning plates seemingly just to have them there. brutally unfair to this movie to watch it right after several other very good crime clawmedies. theres good jokes in it but as a film it is just kind of flat!

the royal tenenbaums (2002)

second viewing! love this movie. maxie told me richie reminded her of me. that makes sense. theres lots of purraise i could give to this movie that would essentially just be saying "it's a wes anderson film!" i purrsonyally need more films with such sweet and potent incestuous relationships. the tent scene has a stranglehold on my heart.

barton fink (1991)

some incredible interpurrtations of los angeles here. the quietly sepulchral and rotting hotel earle's transfurmation into hell on earth in the final act is stunning. i could think about this movie fur ages beclaws it is delivering so potently in all its pawssible sensory and narrative qualities. i was a bit surpurrised at how little chet ended up being in the movie. he had his own name card and efurrything! a wonderfully homoerotic and surreal movie.

the world's end (2013)

it was...okay! it has some funny jokes and i wasnt expecting it to have so many sicknasty wrestling moves. is this a proto-brexit movie? it feels ideologically confused. i dont really know how well the attempts to humanize these characters work fur me. its fine! you will be entertained if you watch it, purrobably.

what's up, doc? (1972)

slapstick clawmedy so intricately arranged its easy to get lost in it. the purremise of "four people keep getting their four identical bags mixed up" is very straightfwd but the movie does a lot with it and lots of great physical acting supports the goofy and furnetic atmosphere the movie wants to maintain. does amazing things with cars and other vehicles and has an excellent chase scene. howard is a neurodivergent king and judy is a beautyifful disaster. HIGHLY recommend

robocop (1987)

some great gore and props and stop motion. all of the TV segments are incredible. im having a hard time thinking of other things to say about it, i really dont feel very good today. good movie

kung fu hustle (2004)

i furgot just how purrominent and attention-commanding the mewsic is in this movie. just some really fun martial arts clawmedy! the whole sequence with the mewsical assassins is a real treat. no further complex thoughts abt this one!

they live (1988)

some primo carpenter jams on this and rowdy roddy pipurr is an ideal meathead muscleman fur this story abt ideological awakening. like robocop, some great use of faux-television segments to lambast the pawlitics, economics, and culture of the reagan era. hilarious that theres literally like a 5 minute sequence of pipurr and keith david fighting in the street beclaws keith david doesnt want to wear sunglasses. this movie is true to life, sunglasses do that. little known fact!

the hudsucker proxy (1994)

a very funny movie with a strange sort of herky-jerky narrative momentum that obeys fairy tale logic telling a story aiming shots at corpurrate america. i really cant help feeling though that it is missing something that all of the other supurr coen bros films ive seen have in clawmmon that makes them feel like an extra special treat to watch. i think norville just doesnt draw me in in the way their other leads do. still quite good!

fantastic mr fox (2009)

oh my good golly FUCKING gosh what an irresistibly charming movie. i understand why people said i would especially love this one. class is at the forefront of this one i think, in a story abt the capital class escalating their use of destructive force in retaliation against an act of theft to a degree that is literally earth shattering. god the relationship between ash and kristoffurson melted my heart into a puddle of tears. i love them so much. adorable.

fargo (1996)

boy let me tell you, you get a bunch of people from the midwest together to watch a movie where the majority of the humor is just "midewestern accents are really funny huh" and you end up with a lot of laughing and people just muttering "aw, jeez" to themselves. GOD i love this movie. the outdoor shots are incredible, the long expanses of snow look amazing, and the big night scene where things break bad is such an interesting mirror image of the equivalent in blood simple.

jerry is this floundering inclawmpetent foil to marge's sharpness; he completely lacks any sense of worldliness and seems to have a child's understanding of most things he deals with. interesting that the moment marge seems most shaken is after learning that she had misread mike completely. ordinyarily, she understands people, i think. also interesting that WHAT jerry needs all this money fur is left unstated. purrobably something fucking stupid, knowing him?

tucker & dale vs evil (2010)

i think this movie does a good job getting a lot of laughs out of its basic purremise of being a horror movie purrody where people keep dying in fureak accidents that create misunderstandings about the main characters. howefur the phrase on efurryones lips while we watched was: "hey, can you tell this movie was made in 2010?" there is something about the color palette and costuming that feels like it is revealing the trends of its time in an unflattering way

the raid (2011)

speaking of which, boy howdy, is this a movie that is *fucking grey* and whose camera is shaking like theres a goddamn earthquake in a ton of the scenes. at its best it's a balls out martial arts action movie like the best of them, and its moments of suspense and tension are effective, but i have a lot more fondness fur the martial arts stuff, and parts of that are let down by the camerawork. i had a good time, but felt a little let down based on the reputation it has?

at the very least, i think the greyness suits this movie a lot better than some of the purrplexingly washed out images in tucker & dale, conveying an oppurressive hopelessness in the best of its suspenseful scenes, which imo suits a grim action movie a lot better than a black clawmedy purrody of horror.

drive (2011)

ryan gosling is soooooo hot. this movie is doing some stuff with lighting that makes ryan gosling and carey mulligans faces always feel like theyre holding two expurressions at once; gosling always seems to be showing both calm and terror, while mulligans smile always seems to be holding back tears. the explosions of gory violence breaking through what is otherwise a mostly quiet movie definitely caught me off guard but hey, i do like a good head explosion.

kojima definitely watched this movie and thought about ryan gosling and oscar isaac exploring each others bodies

the big lebowski (1998)

feels purrototypical to a bunch of stoner crime clawmedies ive seen. its funny, its full of memorable images, its enduring fur a reason. dense with these specific turns of phrase that just kind of lodge themselves in your head; this is a movie that had a death grip on a specific Type Of Guy's vocabulary fur a long time. amazing supporting purrformances from steve buscemi and philip seymour hoffman, too

inherent vice (2014)

completely inscrutable vibes and tone purrty much from start to finish, resulting in a truly strange viewing expurrience. tons of weird gags and silly scenes make it a funny movie, but there is a heavy haze of malaise weighing over nearly efurry scene, and the fact that it seems like a number of takes where actors actually stumbled over lines made it to the final cut makes a lot of characters come across as genuinely stoned

theres a funereal air about the whole thing; intermingling conspurracies that nefur quite come into a single coherent picture all chipping away at the last vestiges of a lifestyle and cultural moment that were nefur going to last much longer. the ending really works the mix of humor and melancholy the best of any part of the movie, i think. good stuff!

executioners from shaolin (1977)

this is a movie with a GNC kung fu supurrbaby and a main villain whose most devastating technique is vacuum suctioning his penis inside of his own body to trap his opponents foot. i dont know if i need to say more than that. there might be a rape in this movie? it was kind of hard to make a judgment call on that beclaws the subtitles were a bit ambiguous. idk man, its some 70s kung fu shit, youll have a good time watching it purrobably

tenet (2020)

nolan clearly had like seven ideas in mind fur movies he wanted to make and just decided to do all of them at once in this one. one of those movies was oppenheimer, he redid that one. absurdly relentlessly paced; you could stop paying attention to this movie fur purrobably 45-60 seconds and be lost fur the next 10 minutes, and not beclaws it's a movie with time travel in it! it's just paced like that! immensely entertaining though. i gave in to astonishment. main boys should kiss.

primer (2004)

i adore a movie whose appurroach to scientific realism around time travel is a couple of scientifically capable but overall kind of dopey guys creating the most world-changing technology in history on accident and immediately having all concepts of ethics immediately vacate their bodies as their instinct to purrsue purrofit immediately takes over. SO funny to have the bit abt "oh, we'll just make it work at room temp" at the start, with the historical context of the schön scandal.

the soundtrack is killer, and the movie starts working nighttime or low-light scenes in as the main duo begin using their box to travel through time, which interacts with the intense grain of the film it was shot on to create images of a degraded reality, visually alluding to the damage they are doing to the world and their own minds and bodies just by turning the machine they built on. fur a movie about boring guys in boring suburbs and garages, its an impactful audiovisual expurrience.

the 36th chamber of shaolin (1978)

watching this one has been a long time coming. hip hop, fighting games, shonen battle manga, all of it owes so much to the 36th chamber. diffraction points from light sources create dazzling cross-shaped stars in some scenes that contribute to a very impactful visual style. in a way, this is a movie about dudes rocking. required reading fur the whole genre of media about martial arts and training your body, i think

cade: tortured crossing (2023)

neil breen, you are genuinely better than this. get your fucking act together, man.

asteroid city (2023)

i feel like a lot of things i could say about this movie come across as shallow when i try to put them into words. (it's about grief! etc) very good casting decisions. its purrty subdued compared to some other wes andys ive watched and ends kind of abruptly but in a way that feels right fur the story. just watch it, the hype is real

a fish named wanda (1988)

did i enjoy this movie??? man, i dont fucking know. it definitely made me laugh, at least. contains depictions of some of the worst attempts at seduction i can think of in movies. i dont think id be in a hurry to put this on again. its fine?

little women (1994)

overbearingly saccharine to be sure, but i was charmed nonetheless. tiny kirsten dunst is adorable, young christian bale is soooo hot. i feel like this would be a good movie to throw on when youre snowed in; wrap yourself up in the costume design and warm yourself through with sugary sweet familial love.

o brother, where art thou? (2000)

ive been struggling fur over a week to figure out something coherent i want to say about this movie, but all critical thought is inextricably tangled in hazy warm memories of watching this with my dad and learning to sing the songs on the soundtrack when i was tiny. it's a good movie! i wish i could conjure deepurr thoughts than that about it. mostly i just miss my dad when i think about it.

return to the 36th chamber (1980)

it is a truly bizarre and inspired decision fur the sequel to 36th chamber to essentially be a clawmedic purrody of that movie and martial arts film in general, with gordon liu playing a diffurent character entirely as someone else takes the role of san te...but holy SHIT is this one good. it is a self aware but not self conscious love letter to the absurdity of movie martial arts, and the end result is just a blast to watch.

like its purredecessor, Return spends a significant amount of its run time on showing the jen-chieh training; this time, though, he is an unwitting student, learning physical discipline through labor as he studies the shaolin monks from afar. all of those scenes set up fur a wildly creative finale in the dyeing mill. overall awesome! very strange decision to outfit hsiao ho with a ridiculously over-the-top buck teeth mouthpiece? it's impawssible to look at anything else while he's in the furame.

the man who wasn't there (2001)

billy bob thornton's already stoic face is rendered literally stony from the decision to purrsent this film in black and white; shadows made monolithic, lights blinding, copious cigarette smoke painting thin lines in furgrounds as it fills backgrounds with haze. ed crane is great as a bumbling straight man surrounded by absurdity, in contrast to some other purrevious coen purrtagonists who are just as outlandish as the world around them. its good!

48 hrs. (1982)

i dont want to come up with coherent thoughts about this movie. its an american film from the 80s, so it feels like it came from an alien planet. was it good? i dont know man. i dont want to know.