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Saw with LD at the theater (on the last day it was playing!) and am really glad I did. I saw the 1922 version in college and have been mesmerized with it since. People are pretty surprised, like I was, to hear that the story is an unlicensed Dracula knockoff. This is a really immersive movie. It’s E…

This is $JASON_STATHAM_MOVIE and I absolutely love it1. It’s familiar, there’s no pretense, you’re a 13-year old, and it feels really nice spending your evening watching some evil-looking people get their (highly improbable) comeuppance from a single and very determined operator. It’s like huddling…

All the usual suspects (for a movie like this at least): What is memory? Does the past exist? Where and what am I, what the heck is this, and how do I know that it is real? And so on. No worries there, standard fare so far (for a movie like this that is). What’s truly amazing is how succinctly Chris…

Saw with LD. A (really dark) teenage space adventure that made me feel like I was 14 and was watching “Alien” for the first time on our family TV (a 21" Belson). They tugged at every dormant heartstring from our childhood. Graininess, floppy drives, joysticks, lots of CRT displays, and clunky m…

I will (a) watch the original and this prequel again soon and (b) name a lot of things “Furiosa” (starting with the tillandsia I’m going to get this weekend). A mad ride like the first one and I’m amazed again by how they managed to arrest my attention for 2.5 hours. Watched on the big screen with M…

Tidy, as usual when it comes to his movies, but total rubbish. I imagine that I would get this shit if I guided ChatGPT to generate a parody of his most indulgent excesses. Meat for the most hardcore of his fans and a (meticulous) waste of the sheer amount of talent involved. How this has a 75% on R…

Decent background-watch. Whoever did the ‘visions’ knocked it out of the park. A waste of Anthony Hopkins and Colin Farrell, who play clairvoyants whose powers wax and wane in service of the utterly predictable plot. Like Next1 but slightly better. Which is a fantastic fucking movie if you love Mr.…

Saw with LD. Very heavy subject matter loosely inspired by harrowing real-life cases and I skipped watching a few scenes. Sai Pallavi was intense and excellent, of course, but we were very impressed with the raw vulnerability and menace Saravanan brought to his character (also called “Saravanan”, lo…

A giant, disjointed fucking mess. Tried to pay attention but I zoned out twice watching it. I couldn’t even tell you what this movie is about.…

Saw with LD. Revenge flick set in Scandinavia in 895 AD. LD thought that the ultraviolence was a bit gratuitous and didn’t serve the plot very well. I don’t know what one would expect from a story about a beefy Viking beserker hell-bent on revenge. Lush, beautiful, amazing visuals from Eggers and cr…

Excellent cinematography and art direction. Bouncy background score by Thaman. Rana Daggubati stole the show, is magnetic in every scene he’s in, and we were all amazed by the ease with which he plays arrogant douchenozzles 💯 Could’ve been at least an hour shorter. Lovely poetry.…

Tedious “I can make longass movies like Marty too!” stuff from Ridley Scott. Fascinating and tragic story in real life though. Adam Driver is reserved. Lady Gaga is outstanding. Jared Leto is a fucking clown and is either trying too hard or doesn’t give a shit anymore. Al Pacino is in this movie as…

Adrien Brody is a great actor and I love watching him act. I absolutely love good, easy revenge flicks. So this was an easy pick. Mr. Brody channels his inner Travis Bickle (for the most part.) This was Taxi Driver meets Taken meets John Wick, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Brody produced, wro…

Saw with LD. This was our first Asghar Farhadi movie and it won’t be our last. Everything was magnificent: story, acting, screenplay, all of it. I remarked to LD that he managed to punch us in at least ten emotional centers in our hearts. So masterfully paced we didn’t feel two hours flow by. Here’s…

REALLY 📢 LOUD 📢 NOISES 📢. It’s really, really loud. This is Boyapati Srinu’s third movie with Balakrishna after Simha (loud) and Legend (louder.) Akhanda is the loudest and shittiest collaboration yet. The story is a complete afterthought and, very loosely, holds together punch dialogues, fight s…

Saw with LD on Christmas Eve. I thought it was well-done millennial nostalgia porn. Nothing wrong with that. I loved the humor and digs at techbro culture and co-option of “red-pill” by the far-right (which led to my favorite set of Tweets.) Thought it could be a deconstruction of the original Matri…

Saw with LD. Saw it listed some place as a must-watch Korean thriller. As action-packed and entertaining as it is forgettable. Chock-full of clichés, excellent chemistry between the two main characters. Don Lee is a force of Nature. Can’t wait for an Indian remake starring S. J. Suryah (and Vijay, o…

Absolute shit that was thrice as long as it needed to be. A total waste of my time and Amruta Subhash’s talent. When I was done, I wished I’d spent my evening watching every available video on the Island Boys on YouTube.…

"Robert Pattinson said to me before agreeing to this, ‘I don’t want to make a movie about a magical lighthouse. I want to make a movie about a fucking crazy person.’” Jess Joho, “What the hell did ‘The Lighthouse’ even mean?”, Mashable Saw with LD. Noir, Jung, myth and mythology, Proteus, P…

Saw with LD. An absolute delight. Maeve Higgins is just wonderful. Will Forte does Will Forte things with aplomb. I thought it was Edgar Wright meets Stranger Things (kinda.)…

Saw with NN. At least twice as long as it needs to be. Didn’t care about the score. It’s three hours of Vijay doing Vijay things with gusto. Spoiler: I understand that mass Indian entertainers, particularly the South Indian ones, have a tenuous relationship with reality. But we are to be OK with two…

Saw with BE and NN. Eh. Clear messages about creatives’ struggles and temptations, and the importance of continuing to tell past and present stories of horrific pain and suffering. I suppose I just lazily wanted to watch a well-made scary movie without actively engaging with it, without searching fo…

Academy Award-winning Helen Hunt is a pharma-stunned alien who doesn’t enjoy any screentime in a disjointed plot that prioritizes misdirection over coherence. Great cinematography. I loved the background score by William Arcane.…

A God descends into Hell to slay its demons on a whim. Squint hard enough and you might even find some compassion in his caprice and ruthlessness. Just a beautiful movie.…

Watched with LD. Nuclear apocalypse via submarines. At least as exciting as “The Hunt for Red October”. Watch on the largest screen you have and with a good sound system. The premise and last half hour were (I hope) pure flights of fancy. Excellent stuff by Francois Civil, Reda Kateb, and Mathieu Ka…

Watched because I’m a sucker for any movie that calls itself a ‘thriller’. A case-study in nepotism. She shouldn’t have been allowed anywhere near a camera. Good God. Vijay Yelakanti considers Lakshmi as one of the best female actors of this generation. While he was directing her for a commercial,…

One of the best black comedies I’ve seen. Amazing attention to detail. Watched with LD. Reese Witherspoon was just perfect. Indeed, it was a breakthrough role for which she won a bunch of awards. Learned that Jessica Campbell who was also perfect as the angsty Tammy Metzler sadly passed away in Janu…

The OG “roaring rampage of revenge.” Watched with LD. Endlessly creative and I imagine way ahead of its time. “Oh so that’s what Tarantino was paying homage to.” 🙏…

Shit. Stallone wrote it. Background-watched because it looked revenge-y and Netflix listed it as a Top 10 movie in the US. Jason Statham is B+ as Jason Statham. This time, he growl-mumbles through this shit movie as an undercover DEA agent (with Special Forces training of course) who speaks with an…

Saw with CK. Didn’t expect to like the movie as much as I did. Tilda Swinton and Ben Wishaw were brilliant. “Pure Christian pleasure.”…

Absolute garbage. Another self-indulgent snooze-fest. A total waste of Sienna Miller and Alec Baldwin’s talents. Makes you mad at yourself for finishing it.…

Absolute rubbish but I enjoyed the heck out of it.…

Watched with CK. This was Hitchcock’s favorite movie: This was my father’s favourite movie, and it was because he loved bringing the menace into a small town1, into a family that had never known any bad things happen to them. They adored this uncle. They just adored him. Yet they had no idea what h…

Watched with CK. The plot doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. But very, very entertaining. Anyone who claims to understand what’s going on after the first 32 viewings is a damned liar. A perfect one-line review: So suit up […] for what may not be Nolan at his best, but is definitely Nolan at his mo…

Entertaining. Thought the alternate ending would’ve been more likely (the highly-trained armchair psychoanalyst that I am 😆) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwO0gb2gIYA…

Watched because Denzel and Revenge. Not sure why I bothered finishing it. Absolutely awful. The cinematographer appears to have borrowed the ghastly verdigris-like palette from this terribly photoshopped poster, and keeps twitching the camera with the giddiness of a raver who’s taken two of them Mit…

Watched with LD. Reminded me of “Hereditary” (it’s a slow burn) but with The Evil being this chimera of financial insolvency, really bad trust issues, childhood trauma, and severe affluenza. Jude Law was perfect, but Carrie Coon was so fucking good as the beleagured yet passively complicit partner a…

Michael Keaton and Christopher Lloyd were excellent. But Peter Boyle steals the show as “Jack McDermott. Christ fixation. Megalomania.” BILLY Hey, Doc, isn’t it true that if even one of those tiles were to come loose, millions and millions of gallons of water would come pouring down on us and squas…

Saw this after about 18 years. Some assorted notes: Thought I heard “Boléro”. Every frame is a fucking painting. Just so wonderful: sunshine through the leaves and at the interrogation, characters walking into and out of the audience, the gate’s history and state of decay, and of course Tajomaru’s s…

Stars David Lynch, his spouse Emily Stofle, a monkey, and a chicken. The oddest and most hypnotic thing I’ve seen this year (and twice.) A mere 17 minutes in length and like if film-school students used GPT-3 to generate a script an hour before the assignment was due. Toototabon 🐓…

Saw with CK. Excited because Charlie Kaufman. Mostly self-indulgent tripe. The conversations in the car were interminably tedious1 and missing PBR hats and gauloises. The weirdness in the first third-to-a-half of the movie was excellent. Top-notch performances and camerawork. No, this is neither cle…

About as predictable as it gets. Chadwick Boseman is excellent.…

Am a sucker for a good revenge story. This one was very slow and kinda haphazard. But I didn’t think it was bad enough to deserve this: The film received negative reviews from critics and was a box-office bomb, having the worst wide opening weekend of all-time, the biggest drop in theaters, and is…

An entertaining, unsettling, dissatisfying Lovecraftian allegory for suburban life and child-rearing (esp the teenage years.) Dragged on for a bit: I imagine it would’ve worked great as a Black Mirror episode. Jonathan Aris and Senan Jennings were supremely creepy and magnificent and perfectly cast…

Another jingoistic saffron shitshow a la “Padmaavat”1. Quite the visual spectacle: like walking through a racist and revisionist Amar Chitra Katha. Saif Ali Khan’s Uday Bhan is the only interesting character. Of noble Rajput blood, he succumbs to eating crocodile meat, sexual assault (of chaste Hind…

“Hey Sonu, we’re gonna need you to do some PCP before you show up to the set. Certainly before the dubbing. Go for that Nandi bro.” Sayaji Shinde as Anwar was the MVP. Ode to The Exorcist and The Ring.…

Ireland. Liam. Mick. Belfast. Mary. IRA. Patrick. Belfast. Liam Hennessy. Sean. Sinn Féin. “You should try a real whiskey. Two Jamesons, Single Malt.” Belfast. Belfast. Also Jackie Chan. But watch for Orla Brady 🇮🇪…

Saw with PLG. Plan on doing things around the house to the soundtrack. When they hand him his second Oscar, DiCaprio should just stare at the glitterati, play the trailer scene, and walk away 💯 🙏 🙌…

Finally saw this with PLG. Daniel Day-Lewis’ best performance IMO. Astounding, really. Mr. Day-Lewis’s outsize performance, with its footnote references to Huston and strange, contorted Kabuki-like grimaces, occasionally breaks the skin of the film’s surface like a dangerous undertow. The actor see…

Slow start but gets pretty exciting towards the end. I couldn’t wait for Lynn to rid herself of her parasitic friends (especially the cloying Grace, played to perfection by Eisaya Hosuwan.) Cheating on standardized tests is big business in India and China. The Atlantic has a relatively recent articl…

The last 15 minutes are the best depiction of old age, loneliness, and isolation I’ve ever seen committed to film. Two masters at their very best. I love all the memes about its length but (a) the pacing was brilliant and (b) I am someone who grew up watching 200-minute family-values extravaganzas a…

Moody and plenty gruesome. Got tired of the commune’s many ‘rituals’. Florence Pugh is 💯, as is the creepy-ass soundtrack. Learned about senicide. First half is a bit of a slow burn like “Hereditary”.…

Entertaining, very nicely done, two-hour long desi “Black Mirror” episode1. Taapsee Pannu was 💯. You will want to hug Vinodhini Vaidynathan’s character. Saw with Deepu and we wondered what makes Tamil directors so good at this genre. “Presented” by Anurag Kashyap. Not sure what that means.↩︎…

A wafer-thin afterthought of a plot undergirds an important and harrowing commentary on the history, pervasiveness, and evil of the caste system in India. Excellent cinematography and performances by Ayushmann Khurrana, Kumud Mishra as Jatav, and Sushil Pandey as Nihal Singh.…

Jaspreet Singh on the awful abandonment fantasy beloved by desi parents (starts around 1:10.) Here’s the entire shitshow of a movie. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPGXj4e8imE Yakeen maan-na, Baghban dekhne se pehle mujhe idea bhi nahin aaya tha ki maa-baap ko nikaala bhi jaa sakta hai.…

Watched with Paaji. Third Anurag Kashyap and Amit Trivedi film. Superb. Maybe a little too drawn out at times (gotta fit in all 14 tracks of that sweet Trivedi score) and was dismayingly Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam-predictable towards the end. “Gray Waala Shade” (with the accompanying opening scenes) is…

Why? This travesty should make it very clear that Guillermo del Toro loves and paints his monsters better than anyone else in the business.…

Completely predictable plot and twists, ridiculous ending, cookiecutter songs (features the laziest, dullest, ‘You composed it the day before it was due didn’t you?’ qawwali I’ve ever heard.) Fantastic cinematography. Sikander Kher is great. Got a lot of digital errands done whilst watching it, so t…

Excellent stuff again from Jordan Peele. Thought the first half was about slavery and lost identity. Wisecrack has a great video on the movie’s various interpretations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDMgFplACaQ…

Watched because “Sherlock Holmes.” An awful, unnecessary, ghastly shitshow.…

The first two-thirds are brilliant. As for Olivia Wilde and her riveting performance: [. . .] it’s still good to see a cunning and capable actress rise above her usual projects, such as stupid fodder like Tron or Cowboys and Aliens, or labels like “Sexiest Vegetarian Celebrity of 2010.” After Enoug…

Captured the city’s many contrasts quite well. Felt like I was watching Mirzapur again. The excellent Pankaj Tripathi plays the same wealthy, powerful, morally bankrupt, declining patriarch as in the show. Pretty much the same deal if they’d cast a mannequin instead of Akshay Oberoi.…

Everything I expected from an Anurag Kashyap movie. Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Vicky Kaushal were 💯 The real Raman Raghav story is quite crazy.…

Remake of the Telugu Temper. Saviour Porn. Read this article on “procedures established by law” and mind-boggling backlogs in the Indian Legal System.…

Not much of a story but loved the cinematography and pre-Independence setting. Easily the best Indian horror movie I’ve seen after Manichithrathazhu.…

Fell asleep about three times trying to finish this visual overload. Ended up taking a walk right after this exchange “You expect me to call you Your Highness?” “No, I expect you to call me… Ocean Master.”…

Saw with LD. Long, slow, visceral, beautiful, gory. Kept me guessing. Excellent stuff. There’s a pervasive hush and sense of stillness that lingers over the region of Gokseong, and scenes of brazen, crazed madness are often preceded by shots of tranquil mountain vistas whose lush, thickly forested…

Rajnikanth was 49 when this “mega-hit” was released.…

Watched with D and M. Good thriller. Dharmendra was great. Was made aware of Neil Nitin Mukesh jokes.…

“No really, why do you do this to yourself?” - KS Features, in my estimation, the greatest solo special ops scene ever committed to film. No expert, but the knee-pillow fire might be related to why Seal Team Six attempted to destroy one of their damaged choppers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgC6…

I don’t understand the ratings and the hullabaloo over what was affluence porn with a tired Bollywood plot (Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham came to mind but I’m sure there’s something else that aligns better with CRA.) Might be a satirical, over-the-top take on new and old money in Singapore, though I wond…

A slasher version of A Quiet Place except The Monster gets you when you open your eyes (but only at key moments that further the plot.) Snoozefest after the first half. Had no idea that the lanky, highly tattooed extra is a famous rapper. A few plotholes that bugged me: What exactly constitutes a s…

Recommended by Uber driver. Watched since I love a good revenge flick. Terrible. Had a good nap, though.…

As wonderful as the first one. Could not fucking stand Sarah Silverman’s cloying Vanellope von Schweetz, which I suppose was the intended effect.…

Venom goes from evil alien mastermind who wants to take over the planet to Toothless in “How to Train Your Dragon” in about five minutes. His new motivations make no sense whatsoever. But in the case of Venom, the action follows nothing. There’s no reason for Venom to risk his life because he does…

Watched with LD. Clever, clever! Loved all but the last 15 minutes.…

Excellent stuff. Tabu is a National Treasure 🙌 Second Sriram Raghavan movie, first being Ek Hasina Thi.…

TL;DW? Denzel Washington is Liam Neeson from Taken (with a lot of that movie’s tropes.) Over on Reddit, an essential discussion of who would win a fight. Features my favorite hipster-henchman, Tait Fletcher whom I last saw in The Accountant. Loved the first half of this song: https://www.youtube.com…

Dan Fogler is as awesome in this one as he was in the first. A role he was born to play: Did you feel like you had an advantage while auditioning because you’re actually from New York? I think I brought some real authenticity to it. I grew up in Brooklyn. When I read the part, I thought, “Oh, man,…

Decent thriller. Cannot get over the fact that the antagonist’s makeup was awful and kept reminding me of the coconut and turmeric Varalakshmi Puja heads from my childhood 1. Which looks like this in a cheap wig Source Which, in turn, remind me of Jivaro shrunken heads.↩︎…

Because I saw Naseeruddin Shah and Anupam Kher in the cast. And they were excellent. The climax is an absolute knock-out with an accolade-winning speech by Naseer who becomes a flag-bearer for all those nameless, ordinary people battling with this modern-day scourge, the world over. The highpoint o…

Title made me think it was a sequel. Not bad as far as remakes go.…

Terrible. Expected this, so not sure why I did this to myself. Thought it was a weird mashup of Varsham and Dredd. Features this ‘Grandmaster Shifuji’ who attempts to act like a Kung Fu/Kalari master in the movie and a combat veteran and “special forces trainer” in real life. Watching what they did…

Based on “–All You Zombies–” by Robert A. Heinlein. Sarah Snook is phenomenal. But “John Doe” is an extended, uncredited cameo by Leonardo Di Caprio and I won’t be convinced otherwise.…

Like if Rashomon and The Usual Suspects had a child. The ending got me.…

Deeply upsetting. One of the best horror movies I’ve ever seen. Anthony Lane of The New Yorker on what gives it its potency Should you want to measure the psychological disturbance at work here, try comparing “Hereditary” with “A Quiet Place.” That recent hit, for all its masterly shocks, is at bot…

😴. Watch for Tom Cruise being a stuntmaking beast (esp in the helicopter chase scene.)…

Watched with Catherine. Dark, tense, predictable. Uashamed to admit that I thought Logan Marshall-Green was Tom Hardy for the duration of the movie (even after watching “Upgrade” … must’ve been the hair.) Excellent stuff by Lindsey Burdge.…

Eh. Some amazing camera work and a great soundtrack.…

This is the jingoistic view of American force so familiar from films like ‘Black Hawk Down.’ This is American power as an unstoppable beast. Yep. You would be forgiven for asking what religious extremists have to do with a film series that previously focused on Mexican drug cartels. You would als…

Watched with JS and LT. A solid 2.5 hours of Telugu Sampradayam-porn for the 50+ members of your family. Culture and Tradition are static and immutable constructs that are absolutely not subject to examination and revision, especially when it comes to gender roles. Features cameos by yesteryear sup…

Michael Cavna at The Washington Post with a roundup of the cultural appropriation controversy around the movie. Steve Rose at The Guardian: Some critics are barking “appropriation!” on Twitter and online, but where Ghost in the Shell and Doctor Strange (and there are many more) took a Japanese stor…

Too much Ryan Reynolding but hey, with a ~900% ROI, whatever works 🤷‍♂️…

One and two. Excellent production and performances. Sunita Chowdhary at The Hindu with a few vignettes from Savitri’s life.…

I’ll watch any Ravi Teja movie but this one was dismaying. Here’s a screen capture that should explain why.…

Spielberg managed to Indiana Jones Sherlock Holmes 😐…

Jesse Plemons steals the show even though he has very little screen time. In my book, he is no longer Todd from Breaking Bad, and is never to be referred to as “Meth Damon” or “Discount Matt Damon”…

Predictable twists. This guy was awesome.…

Based the novella by Jonathan Ames. Saw the trailer via RT (this is the amazing song in the second half.) First Lynne Ramsay movie. Looking forward to listening to the soundtrack by Jonny Greenwood.…

Saw this with SC. Doesn’t let go for 90 minutes. Jim from The Office is killing it these days. MS: “This is what happens once you get away from a toxic workplace.” 😂…

Visually impressive, tedious, misogynist, Islamophobic shitshow. Barkha Dutt has a great review (via AD.)…

A “state-of-the-nation” Netflix mini-series. Excellent performances by Jeany Spark, Carey Mulligan, and John Simm. Plenty of commentary (pontification?) on the refugee crisis.…

Unbelievable.…

Entertaining Rashomon-esque whodunnit. Great performance by Akshaye Khanna.…

Longer than it should’ve been and unevenly paced. Predictable ending. Still very enjoyable, since I’m a sucker for a good vengeance flick. Lee Byung-hun was absolutely fantastic (first saw him in “I Saw The Devil”.) Found myself hating this guy’s character with the same bile as Imelda Staunton’s Dol…