The Tic Tac Incident

Few directors in the world speak the language of film quite as fluently as Spielberg. With Janusz Kaminski’s beautiful cinematography, John Williams swelling score, and the push in on an actor's face, he just taps into something in all of us and he never fails to create a sense of awe and wonder. 

That’s still true in Disclosure Day, but the impact feels dampened here because the screenplay often prevents the scene from feeling particularly wondrous or awesome.

The masterful filmmaking tells us to feel something, but the story doesn’t quite pull it off.

There are hints of Spielberg classics like Close Encounters and E.T., as well as larger themes similar to impactful sci-fi films like Arrival, Contact, and even Signs, but the story can feel disjointed and the pace uneven enough to prevent the emotions from resonating in a deeper way. 

The wide-eyed idealism that this “disclosure” could improve the world actually takes a lot of steam out of the film in the third act when the driving forces of the separate storylines crescendo and all the characters finally converge. The film wants us to feel the awe, the hope, the inspiration, but it just doesn’t land with the desired emotional punch—possibly due to the grim reality of our actual world. 

Even with the lack of emotional resonance, Disclosure Day is certainly not a bad film—due in large part to the G.O.A.T. delivering his unmatched filmmaking skills—it’s just that it’s a pretty good film when it should be an outstanding film.

Full review on Trashwire here and quick review on YouTube here.

With the success of young directors like Kane Parsons and Curry Barker changing the horror genre, Abhinav Sunder Nayak's Mollywood Times couldn't have arrived at a better moment. 

Naslen stars at Vineeth Madhavan, an aspiring director who wants to make the scariest Malayalam film of all time, but quickly realizes that the real horror is in trying to keep any shred of integrity while navigating a career in the film industry.

It made me want to rewatch Neninthe, The Player, and The Ba***ds of Bollywood, as well as more uplifting movies about movies like Dolemite is My Name and Cinema Bandi.

Featuring stylish visuals, great performances from Naslen, Sharafudheen, Sangeeth Prathap, and the entire cast, and a script from Nayak and Ramu Sunil filled with betrayal and frustration, Mollywood Times is a story about unshakable drive for greatness in the face of unforeseen obstacles. 

Quick review on YouTube and Inatagram

Young director Kane Parsons’ viral YouTube short film series comes to the big screen with A24’s Backrooms, exploring the eerie mundanity of liminal space and the internal turmoil of its original characters.

The short films build on the mysterious aspects of the backrooms and the strange threats lurking in the seemingly endless maze of yellow-wallpapered corridors and faintly buzzing fluorescent bulbs. 

The film, however, is more concerned with the psychological trauma of our lead characters, failed-architect-turned-furniture-store-owner Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and his therapist, Mary (Renate Reinsve). While both performances are excellent, the focus shift can sometimes bring the pace to a halt.

The film boasts great cinematography and production design (they actually built 30,000 square feet of backrooms across four separate soundstages), along with a score and sound design that really add to the vibe, with occasional distant footsteps breaking the quiet room tones of the uncanny parallel world and building visceral tension. 

Despite some narrative and character stumbles, Backrooms is at its strongest when it lets us marinate in the uneasy feeling of liminal space horror, questioning every unentered doorway or unexplored room. 

Full review on Trashwire here

Can you guess what movie I’m seeing tonight?

YouTuber-turned-filmmaker Curry Barker’s Obsession is like Get Out for "nice guys", blending funny, disturbing, and highly entertaining horror with surprisingly impactful themes about male entitlement, mutual consent, and female autonomy.

In this classic monkey’s paw story, Bear (Michael Johnston) is a timid guy with a huge crush on his co-worker, Nikki (Inde Navarrette). After purchasing what he thinks is a novelty toy, he makes a wish for her to fall in love with him, and of course, everything seems great until the grave consequences begin.

Navarrette gives one of the best performances of the year. It’s horrifying one minute, hilarious in another, and tragic in a way that makes the film linger with you emotionally.

Full review on Trashwire here.

As someone who was feeling pretty burned out on Star Wars, I greatly appreciated that The Mandalorian and Grogu was a standalone story. It’s much easier to have fun when every scene isn’t trying to set up a spinoff, create an applause break for a legacy character, or push forward a larger phase of a cinematic universe. 

We also get some solid action and a lot of great creatures—some CGI, some puppets, and some stop-motion. It’s a refreshing visual change that adds a vintage vibe to the film, making it feel more like classic Star Wars than streaming Star Wars. 

And, of course, it wouldn’t be The Mandalorian without the incredible music of Oscar-winning composer Göransson. A major highlight is a sequence set in an urban underbelly reminiscent of Blade Runner with a synthy score that elevates the whole experience. 

But even with all these solid elements, that’s not to say that The Mandalorian and Grogu is a great film. 

The structure is strange. In many ways, it feels like a bundle of episodes squeezed together for a feature film. While that three-episode arc structure worked for Andor, in The Mandalorian and Grogu, it feels like the story concludes, only to keep going into the next story block with a major lag in the middle. Even the die-hard audience in my packed theater was visibly fidgety at the start of the second half.

Some of the dialogue is clunky and obvious, almost as awkward as the prequels. Rotta, in particular, spends the majority of his lines repeating the same two or three sentences about how he wants to be different from his father. It completely limits the character, making me wonder why they even bothered to put Jeremy Allen White in the role.

Overall, if you like the show, you’ll probably like The Mandalorian and Grogu. It’s not particularly memorable, but it’s a fine time at the movies—and at least we didn’t have to endure any CGI legacy characters to come take all the agency away from our protagonists. 

Full review on Trashwire here.

Exit 8 taps into the game’s frustration and tedium of starting back at zero, the confusion of second-guessing your own memory, and the unsettling tension of wondering what’s awaiting you around the corner, and stitches these game elements into themes and messages. What begins as a relatively simple challenge becomes a harrowing affair for The Lost Man as he’s confronted with his own apathy, his inner fears, and opportunities to break out of the repetitive loop of his own life.

Full review on Trashwire here 👇

It feels bold to release a movie like The Drama when media literacy has declined so much.

Robert Pattinson and Zendaya star in Kristoffer Borgli’s jet-black comedy about a happily engaged couple whose love is put to the test after a shocking revelation during a party game.

While the humor certainly won’t hit for everyone, I appreciated the twisted humor, especially the way Pattinson plays Charlie awkwardly attempting to appear chill and carefree while masking his complete crash out. 

Quick review below.

This is now a Carl stan account. 

Project Hail Mary hits a perfect balance between sci-fi, humor, and heart. We get the enormous scale of space, with some stunning cinematography from Greig Fraser, but also an intimate story grounded in emotion, due in large part to a phenomenal performance from Ryan Gosling. 

The science stays grounded, allowing the story to feel real while leaving room to focus on larger themes of connection, collaboration, and compassion. Similar to The Martian, it’s just complicated enough to make it believable, but never overwhelming. 

This also opens the door for a Spielberg-like sense of wonder, reminiscent of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial or Jurassic Park. The blending of sci-fi and sentiment works wonders here, filling us with a sense of hope and optimism that feels so needed right now. 

Full review on Trashwire here 🔗

Between this and the infamous Variety headline, media outlets really are incapable of celebrating Sinners.

The Bride! is absolutely stuffed with ideas, references, and style. From the Mary Shelley framing device (which randomly comes and goes) to the detective B-plot (which randomly comes and goes) to Frank’s obsession with a movie star played by Jake Gyllenhaal (which randomly comes and goes) to The Bride inspiring a female revolution a la Joker (which also randomly comes and goes), there are way too many storylines and themes competing for our attention, and none feel very fleshed out. 

The viewing experience is similar to bingeing a streaming series, but only watching odd-numbered episodes. I bet they did more with this storyline in that episode I missed. Lots of things are set up, but so few are ever really paid off.

On top of feeling disjointed and overstuffed, we also get the most basic and clunky Feminism 101 themes. Can someone please tell me why being the constant victim of sexual assault is the only way to show a Strong Woman™ in film? It’s honestly wild for a movie that tries so hard to be female-empowering to basically give us a heroine who feels like a manic pixie dream corpse half the time, despite the incredible skills of Jessie Buckley. 

There are a few references and nods that feel fun instead of frantic. Several quick cutaways to Jake Gyllenhaal’s black and white movies are genuinely funny, and a nod to the “Puttin’ on the Ritz” scene in Young Frankenstein got a smile out of me, but it faded as soon as we whipped to another half-baked storyline.

I’m a person who loves a big swing, and I applaud Maggie Gyllenhaal for going wild with it in The Bride! but this reinvigorated monster of stitched together ideas and themes would probably be best left in the grave.

Recent Letterboxd reviews

A few recent watches

Sam Rockwell is a man from the future, trying to save humanity from an AI-driven technological apocalypse in Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, from director Gore Verbinski and writer Matthew Robinson. 

But he can’t do it alone, so he’s joined by an ensemble cast featuring Michael Peña, Zazie Beetz, Juno Temple, and Haley Lu Richardson. 

On paper, the idea of mashing up a Black Mirror concept with tones from Everything Everywhere All At Once, Ready Player One, and even a little sprinkle of The Umbrella Academy, all while utilizing chapter-style story structure, should work like a charm. And many times, it does. But those tones can sometimes clash, keeping the film from consistently feeling like more than the sum of its parts. 

Quick review below. Full review on Trashwire here.

Send Help is economic in scale with a bare-bones premise that allows Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien to really flex their skills, and Sam Raimi to bring his trademark horror comedy fun to the filmmaking. 

Similar to Triangle of Sadness, the film throws our characters into a survival situation in which class and privilege become irrelevant. As Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson once said, the hierarchy of power is about to change. Because it’s Raimi, it’s also filled with over-the-top gore and lots of fun twists. 

Send Help is an ideal film to watch with a crowd in a packed theater because it brings the laughs and the gasps in an old-school horror way that is perfect for a communal experience.

Full review on Trashwire here. Quick review on Instagram or YouTube.