no surprise I loved this

I loved RETRIBUTION, Kurosawa's supernatural thriller where the post-war urbanization of Japan manifests as a ghostyard of liminal landfills and inevitable violence. one of his best and saddest movies. the composition is especially incredible:

I pretty much loved SPIDER-MAN: BRAND NEW DAY, the first of these in forever that feels like it was made by human hands

others have said it but the way this is clearly influenced by TENET is making me lost my mind. so incredibly happy to have Bradford Young back. it looks so slick

she's a very funny lady

for months I've read DISCLOSURE DAY is offensively, boomerishly naive, an out-of-touch Hollywood fantasy; rather, it's Spielberg at his most openly conflicted and uncertain, a dialectic between hope and cynicism that asks what we're willing to believe: lareviewofbooks.org/article/disc...

No surprise I loved THE ODYSSEY, an apocalyptic epic obsessed with societal collapse and the cost of violence; dreamily elusive and crowd-pleasing at once, Nolan blends the poetry of Homer with a moral reckoning entirely his own. Flawed but deeply emotional, a major achievement

For me, DUNKIRK is still Nolan’s best and most total film — it’s as mythically heroic as THE DARK KNIGHT, as dreamy as INCEPTION, as morally uneasy as MEMENTO, and as much a Borgesian labyrinth as INTERSTELLAR. Every shot a perfect study of movement and behavior. A masterpiece

when you turn on WAGON MASTER only to discover John Ford is a god damn fraud

one last one: I love how Mann and Alton designed this shot so it looks like the bear is sticking its hands up too lol

can't get over this incredible lens flare either

watched Anthony Mann's RAW DEAL expecting a nifty little noir before he became a god of westerns, only to get a wilderness crime caper full of some of the most stunning deep focused Wellesian compositions i've ever seen

my favorites of the decade so far:

the thing about THE FURIOUS is that it has dozens of incredibly tricky moves per fight but they happen so fast you barely register how crazy the logistics must've been to pull them off -- like a hammer-fist fight standing on the backs of some wrecked grunts

I loved THE FURIOUS, a walloping greek tragedy of a martial arts movie with each fight is propelled by a character's passions. some of the wildest hits, kicks and throws in years, with a tilting wide-lensed camera that lets you follow every hit. I have no idea how they made this

happy to see PRESSURE has reached its target audience

it's wild how much THE MANDALORIAN AND GROGU is not really a feature film. it reminded me most of anime movies that try and condense a season into two hours and guts everything good about the series. it's offensively bland, ugly and oddly joyless. periodically an okay time

I was winding down with a really great COLUMBO last night only to be hit with this reveal when it cut to credits

DRIFTER is hard to talk about without giving up its tricks, but it's one of the ugliest, meanest, and oddest westerns I've ever seen, truly "revisionist" in how it flays the contradictory, often conservative values at the heart of the genre bare. the town is literally painted red

finally watched HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER and loved it. a gothic horror where Eastwood uses his iconic status to subvert the classic western in the most morally scathing terms. how often can you say you saw something truly unlike anything else? a dark, strange and special movie

the photos NASA is releasing of the moon mission are really incredible

watched A HIDDEN LIFE for Easter and man, the film's unwavering rejection of complicity while asking hard questions about faith, suffering and moral obligation hits incredibly hard given everything that's been happening in the U.S. in the last 12 months. one of Malick's best

I wrote about Best Picture winner ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER for @nextbestpicture.bsky.social, and how Anderson allegorizes revolution as a dad's confessional on time, parenting, and trying to support your kids to save a world you couldn't: nextbestpicture.com/in-one-battl...

finally saw LE BONHEUR and loved it, Varda's rictus portrait of doomed domesticity and solipsistic male violence; it reminded me of PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK in how it corrupts picture-perfect spaces through haunting absences. one of the most upsetting endings I've ever seen

like ordering assassins to hit Armando with a "hole in his mouth", nearly every action in THE SECRET AGENT centers the act of disrupting the collective memory, and thus the future, of those in Brazil, and I wanted to write about it: nextbestpicture.com/how-the-secr...

I wrote about the dreamy awe of Pandora, Jake and Neytiri's love story that turns into a family crucible, the series' reputation and why it may be wrong, and how Cameron's digicinema style makes Pandora feel real. Each is covered in its own chapter: brightwalldarkroom.com/2026/03/02/d...

finally caught up with NO OTHER CHOICE and there's nearly nobody better at digital cinema shenanigans than Park Chan-wook

for @letterboxd.social's list of underseen romances, I wrote about Lubitsch's TROUBLE IN PARADISE, a flirty caper about lustful thieves:

YI YI is one of the most widely beloved films this century, becoming as influential to DRIVE MY CAR as PAST LIVES. Now out on the much-anticipated physical release of its 4K restoration, I had to write about Yang's kindest and most healing film: letterboxd.com/journal/yi-y...

there's been many complaints STRANGER THINGS suffered from endless planning scenes and characters who'd vanish for huge periods, but those same flaws oddly apply to THE FINAL RECKONING and FIRE AND ASH too, so I broke down that frustrating trend: nextbestpicture.com/closing-time...