Consistently funny throughout, but I forgot we only lasted one film in the LEGO Movie franchise before the stop motion realism was dropped.
The dog was a very good boy, yes he was, yes he was.
A lot of time for this - quietly understated, and Ronan is as good as ever. Love the hair colour as chronology device, whilst still leaving a decent amount of ambiguity up to interpretation.
Does not feel its runtime (a compliment!). It’s a whole load of stuff thrown at the screen and a good amount of it sticks.
Rewatched for the first time in quite a while - still a big fan of a lot of it, even if maybe not as enamoured as back in 2014.
Hmm. Was hoping for more, but fun in its own way.
Rewatched at the Watershed post its big win, with Alasdair. I think the way it bifurcates is beautifully done and adds a remarkable amount of heft to the final scene. Ruined by George Ferguson’s wife sat next to me talking all the way through it.
Watched at the end of a very long, stressful week, and felt all the better for it.
Kind of dramatically inert for a lot of it, as you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop. It doesn’t, not really, but maybe?
Won me over eventually, at the point at which I just decided to stop caring to try to track every bit of detail and just let it wash over me instead.
Inevitably remarkably one-sided, but a perfectly serviceable mid-budget drama.
Really liked this for the majority of its runtime until the epilogue which really rather soured me on the whole thing. Unlike the rest of it, it was showy for showiness’s sake, and completely self indulgent, which you’d almost be able to get away with if it wasn’t after 3 hours of the rest of the film.
You know what, I enjoyed this more than I thought I would. It’s fun to look at, but it’s all empty calories.
Solidly good fun, moreso when it’s just enjoying the premise rather than getting bogged down in the details.
Suffers a little from “The Zone Of Interest syndrome” - it feels like a lot of the rapturous reviews (and just look at the distribution of ratings on Letterboxd) are conflating being good and being important. It is at least more narratively compelling than Zone, but come on, this is not the 100th best film ever made just because it deals with a historic atrocity.
Sue me, I like Sorkinesque harried backstage “before the big show” drama
Having absolutely no particular interest in the veracity of this as a representation of Bob Dylan’s life story, I enjoyed this. It left me wanting to actually go and listen to his music, so that’s a win, and Chalamet is typically strong. Elle Fanning takes the cake, though.
Not as bad as everyone else says - if you think this is the worst film you’ve ever seen, you need to watch more films. But! That doesn’t mean it’s good! Or should be nominated for Best Picture! Quite the surprise to me that the least explicable musical moment in a film where a song about gender reaffirming surgery is performed in a Bangkok clinic with the lyrics “from penis to vagina” is that, at one point, a swing version of Supreme by Robbie Williams features heavily.
As someone who actively avoids looking in a mirror if they can help it, this.. this was a difficult watch at times. Profoundly affecting, and a real measure of Lynch’s ability for self-restraint.
It’s fun, in retrospect, watching the three of Coogan, Bryson, and Winterbottom figure out what would become the cornerstone of The Trip in realtime.
(Absolutely no recollection of having watched this for a second time in like the third week of uni, according to Letterboxd)
Suitably interesting, if mostly for the guided but light touch questioning that prompts the direct narration from John himself. I love how much he loves new acts, to be fair. A really interesting moment where he takes against, instinctively, an artist self-describing as “queer”, and watching David Furnish explain it is, hmm. Yeah. Fascinating.
So preoccupied with how to stop Donald Trump and the far right from stealing an election, they forgot to consider that people might just vote them in anyway.
Rewatched as a light thing to have on in the evening with a bad cold, and this was just the thing. It’s adorable, and it’s such a shame that Pixar’s three-film late resurgent period coincided with a global pandemic and thus shunted straight to streaming. This, Soul, and (to a slightly lesser extent) Turning Red deserve more credit.
I wouldn’t change it, lord no, but my god the score is so hilariously 90s.
Incredibly horny, to the extent that I don’t think it really does what it wants to do.
Surprisingly charming, given how much the trailer for Memoir Of A Snail has rankled me.
I know they’re obviously distinct things, affecting different people, but oddly I think Nickel Boys did this more effectively.
Just as bad as 7 years ago! Baffling at every single possible opportunity. Alasdair asked me to pause it at 30 minutes in because he was convinced it must somehow nearly be over. But no.
Fair enough, I was tearing up at the doorman phonecall. It is not, in the scheme of things, much consolation, but it is still nonetheless a relief that through him and the unseen veteran reporter, there are men here who, y’know, care. Shouldn’t have to be noteworthy in 2025, but here we are.
If this had been made 10 years ago, everyone would be describing it as Allenesque and I do find that funny. A really lovely set of performances, in various levels of subtlety and broadness, bringing the most out of a strong script and inspired direction. That last shot!
It’s fun and not without its charms, but it never quite clicks in.
It’s fun and not without its charms, but it never quite clicks in.
The perfect film to watch on a TV with motion smoothing turned on and your boyfriend’s mum talking over.
Big fan of having them see The Importance Of Being Earnest at the theatre. Otherwise, wonderfully Wilde.
Feel like I got scammed when I realised Them There were completely uninvolved in this. Some good gags dotted throughout.
Complicated feelings about this one! About pretty much everything other than the cancer. Does at times feel like the trailer existed first and someone thought “that looks great, flesh that out another 1h45 and we could have a film on our hands”.
Complicated feelings about this one! About pretty much everything other than the cancer. Does at times feel like the trailer existed first and someone thought “that looks great, flesh that out another 1h45 and we could have a film on our hands”.
Begrudgingly, I quite enjoyed this. Amiable Sunday afternoon fare, and honestly amazed it wasn’t longer, which is a higher compliment than it might seem.
Maybe I’m getting soft in my old age (31) but while the writing is still absolute dross, I didn’t mind it so much? I mean, still terrible.
Really liked this. The use of first person POV is handled incredibly deftly, with the right level of subtle and unsubtle cues to indicate transition in viewpoint. Some really fascinating choices in service of deeper story telling (older Elwood’s “perspective” being more removed and how that came to be, the use of doubling up moments without cutting but with different outcomes) that I’ll be thinking about for a while.
There’s a moment in Hollywoodgate where the Taliban laments that if they had had all these resources that the Americans had had, they would be ruling the world right now. The remaining 90 minutes somewhat casts that into doubt.
Watched in 35mm at the Watershed. Gorgeously shot, fascinatingly monochrome throughout in different ways.
I miss when Letterboxd wasn’t overrun by gen z
Happy new year indeed. Tell me more of the man who just had half a phone handed to him. 6 years ago I apparently wrote that this might be PTA’s most ambiguous film, and I think I stand by that.