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No Sudden Move 2021
Up front:: I enjoyed this, was invested if not enthralled for most of its runtime. But maybe I’ve been watching too many Old Hollywood classics lately…
I kept waiting for side characters (and there are many, talented actors all) to distinguish themselves, but the script kept coming up short. Script refinement is a different phrase for pushing a political bent these days, be it redlining or global warming or both, in this case (sometimes it’s even subtle). A big chunk of…
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The Matrix Resurrections 2021
Significantly better than Revolutions, and certainly bolder. There are genuinely subversive choices here (and I’m not referring to the meta stuff, which wears thin almost immediately) — e.g. the therapist character and the body bombs (phrased to avoid spoilers, I hope), which both feel like pieces of inspiration from a better film with more ideas under the surface. Resurrections is a fan service vehicle but it’s one in which the audience surrogate is portrayed, thoroughly, as a hate object — you…
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Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning 2023
First hour-plus never flags for a second, and the runaway train compartments are on the same level. In the middle, it bogs down a bit in the repetitive exposition and attempts to emotionalize the stakes. Still a top tier franchise with more to come.
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White Hunter, Black Heart 1990
The only Eastwood performance of its kind, and it’s something of a miracle. His compadre, on the other hand, is pure audience surrogate, which is why he’s just got one distinctive feature — eyes that’ll pierce your soul. He wants his happy ending, and he’ll get it, in the Hollywood script only. In this life, too much sin for fairy tales.
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Under the Volcano 1984
The mystery at work, which keeps me and a few others coming back, is not the tragedy of what happens to our man — simple cause and effect, the only possible outcome of a choice made long ago and again recently, and every day in between: to drink until he can drink no more. That’s no mystery, whatever the specifics.
But Yvonne has come back, and that is indeed inexplicable, a miracle even, if the opening prayer sequence is not…
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Under the Silver Lake 2018
Has a comedic side that I’d noticed previously but hadn’t fully appreciated. Pretty much love everything about this movie — a new experience with every tilt of the head.
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