filmatbest

This could be my personal bias and general sense of burnout, but I really appreciated Presence for how tightly scripted it was. In the age of Big Tech's endless torrent of slop content, it feels like prominent films (and television series) have metastasized into bloated projects that don’t artistically justify an often self-indulgent sense of scale.* 

Presence resembles classic horror in the sense of a tale like Turn of the Screw - not terrifying per se, but deeply discomforting and atmospheric. Its portrayal of this dysfunctional family system may present as eerily relatable to some viewers. 

These characters’ complexities, their internal motives and the ensuing interpersonal conflicts all feel richly developed. Though we don't experience it firsthand, their established milieu feels just as vibrant; I could easily recognize and empathize with whatever social circumstances alternately anguish these characters or stir them to action from outside their home.

However stoic Lucy Liu is for the majority of the film, seeing the increasingly fraught Rebekah finally break down in the film’s ending was especially impactful because of Liu’s restraint and subtle performance. 

My main qualm with Presence is how Soderbergh finally fumbles when we arrive at its climax, and that’s even after its Big Reveal, an unconvincing plot twist that suddenly takes the film into cartoonish territory. Not everything needs to be social commentary, yet Presence would have felt more compelling if Ryan remained a slightly sociopathic albeit typical cishet teenager rather than morphing into some serial killer archetype.

One Battle After Another captures more of a revolutionary aesthetic over a revolutionary sensibility. It almost convinces you at certain points that it has something deeper to articulate, but to its detriment doesn’t quite capture a sense of destination or genuine struggle. 

Outside of the first act - featuring a montage of direct actions organized against The Man - we’re watching things happen to these characters and seeing how they react. Typically at the hand of some external force or state actor. There’s little sense of collective agency, while the aspects that do depict individual decision-making lean heavily on throwing Black women under the bus to propel the plot forward. 

Perfidia Beverly Hills bears very little resemblance to Assata Shakur outside of her race, gender, and status in exile of the United States. Characterizing her as such a revolutionary then feels like some liberal fantasy rather than a recognition of actual leftist history. Simply put, Assata would never.

As far as the other members of the French 75, it would appear Black women have no conception of collective interest as opposed to individual gain. If it sounds like I’m saying Black women shouldn’t be characterized as complex or imperfect in film, I’m not. But given the film’s subject-matter and Black women’s historical impact showing the opposite is true, I’m hard-pressed to throw down the towel and say I'm just nitpicking.

I’m not suggesting either that U.S. leftists are politically coherent at a movement level, meaningfully effective at challenging the power of the Trump admin, or beyond merely apathetic to U.S. imperialism abroad. (With the apparent coup in Venezuela yesterday, I’ll wait with bated breath to see how outraged Americans actually are in terms of sustained, disruptive political action.) 

That’s also not to say fascists don’t historically operate this way: police forces, for example, occupy Black communities on colonized lands in analogous fashion to the Israeli military in Palestine since 1948. In so many ways, oppression isn’t home-grown; it’s imposed from the outside-in because it has to be. It’s an artificial state of being that, without the threat of state violence or a deeply propagandized population, people wouldn’t (and don’t) accept.

From that vantage point, I’m still unclear what the political ideologies of these supposed revolutionaries was meant to be. What are they opposed to exactly, and by whom? What is the strategic basis for freeing detained migrants then robbing banks? I’ve heard some argue that the film isn’t about politics per se, but about the characters it depicts, but that feels like a cop out. Consider just how central politics was to these characters and their plights, consciously or not. 

I came out of this film with questions and curiosity mostly. Admittedly some chagrin too, but can you really blame me? In the age of the neofascist Fourth Reich, One Battle After Another feels at best like a missed opportunity, at worst an unwitted attempt to demobilize and misdirect Americans away from bona fide radical politic and toward bourgeois fetishization of the revolutionary.

All that said, you have to appreciate how riveting Anderson’s directorial mastery feels at key moments, whether it’s the beautifully sustained tension throughout the second act culminating in Pat's arrest, or the kinesthetic camera work during the dizzying car chase sequence. If Anderson had a vision as substantively bold as he thought it was, he could have taken this film beyond entertaining to genuinely provocative, even politically generative.

Keeper evokes a lot of the current gender discourse for Gen Z, namely young women expressing less enthusiasm for marriage than men amid the ongoing regression in gender roles and heightened economic toil. It at least seems to be what the film is nodding at, although the screenplay itself feels so scant and at times Rorschachian that this may as well be projection.

It’s not just the themes either, but also the character dynamics that feel elusive, and not always intentionally so: when an interaction escalates or someone says something odd, it tends to feel quizzical rather than unsettling. There’s one overt reference to the film’s ostensible subtext during one of Liz’s phone calls with Maggie, who scolds Liz along the lines that this isn’t who she is; she’s not a “kept” woman. 

The problem is, Maggie seems to be discussing a problem that feels ill-established in the screenplay. If there is some larger context outside of Liz's relationship lasting nearly a year and being her longest thus far, there’s not much else suggesting Liz actually is being “kept”. Liz, who is often recalcitrant toward Malcolm and sometimes affectionate, who while watching Keeper made me wonder if she actually liked Malcolm much, if at all.

The film’s central conflict, then, is clumsily established, though it doesn’t seem to be cohering… That is, outside of the film’s climactic monologue. When Malcolm for some reason explains to Liz he plans to keep her, that he’s the Big Bad, filling her (and the viewer) in on all the requisite lore. It feels so artificial, and nearly as awkward. If it is at some level totally arbitrary to critique this aspect of Keeperwhile having no gripes with Longlegs, another Osgood Perkins film, essentially doing the same, I’ll just have to accept that. 

I almost feel bad because Tatiana Maslany’s performance especially is often gripping, and so much of Keeper’s visual compositions are interesting, imposing a deep-seated sense of claustrophobia throughout. (Even as the frequent imagery of running water feels redundant after a while.) But for a film to spend so much time being intentionally cryptic instead of somehow developing its lore and themes organically, Keeper felt both eternal and tedious by the end (and it’s only 98 minutes!). 

Folk horror in general seems to tend toward the cryptic - and I enjoy others in this genre - but there’s a bold difference between cryptic and incoherent, however subjective that difference might be.

With each watch I find myself admiring different facets of Black Christmas. Not only in how progressive it is on the politics of women’s bodily autonomy - almost anachronistically so for its time, and depressingly so for 2025.* But this past time, I appreciated how it evades the exploitative trappings of true crime and the slasher genre as a whole. 

Unlike with more recognizable genre tentpoles as Halloween or The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, I don’t need to worry about studios greenlighting some contrived prequel project on the origins of what’s-his-name, whoever the killer may be. Which actually goes to my point - we don’t learn the killer’s name here. Is it Billy, as he refers to himself? We don’t see this confirmed, though, nor do we even see his face. We discern at most the obscure silhouette of someone resembling Peter, likely by design.**

Black Christmas is so impactful because of this: The filmmakers don't neatly individualize the social problem of violence against women and girls in a patriarchal society. When we think of “The Killer”, who’s to say it isn’t “Killers”, plural? What of the societal factors that drive (mostly cishet) men to kill? What do we gain from pathologizing The Killer, in the tradition of slashers, as this ostensibly aberrant figure bereft of sociopolitical context? Peter may not be The Killer formally, but when he tells Jess she’ll “be sorry" and later corners her in the sorority house basement, he surely seems like a rational threat, no?

An audience culturally attuned to recognize only some forms of violence against women as problematic won't fully grasp the ways gendered violence is foundational to our social mores. The male gaze that made the slasher genre so controversial - reducing women to mere tropes, positioning them as objects for consumption and ridicule - conceals the regularity with which women experience everyday violence. 

It’s not just The Killer we should concern ourselves with. It's not just the Michaels or Jasons, or the Ted Bundys or Jeffrey Dahmers. Rather, it’s all men who kill, otherwise inflict all sorts of physical and psychological injury, or are simply capable of such; it’s the society around them accepting this violence as just, if it’s perceived at all; and it’s the underlying structures upholding the social conditions that ensure gendered violence is a feature, not a bug. 

Sergeant Nash makes for great comic relief, but at multiple instances he serves as a grim reminder of the casual dismissiveness with which many regard women in peril. When Barb remarks offhand, “Darling, you can’t rape a townie”, she’s also clarifying that her sympathy for survivors of SA is conditional. And early in the film, Peter’s disregard for Jess’s future planning reveals just as much indifference toward her full humanity as her agency.

Obviously, none of these are groundbreaking observations for either the slasher genre or gender studies. But it’s also what makes Black Christmas feel notable. Fifty-plus years back, it captured the problem of violence against women with more nuance, coherence and empathy than most modern horror films, slasher or not. That’s not to say the film evades other critique, seeing as it doesn't acknowledge intersecting forms of systemic violence, i.e. those based on racial categorization, ability, and class. Giving credit where it’s due, though, always feels apt. And besides, it’s just a fucking monumental horror film in so many respects.

2025/12/23

* With that said, it is cool and deeply affirming to hear women in the audience cheer Jess on as she tells off Peter when he discourages her from getting an abortion. The American political landscape may have reverted in the short-term, but liberation is timeless.

I believe in Theo James and the emotive qualities of Theo James’ performances in The Monkey, but I don’t totally believe Theo James as these characters. See if you can make sense of that one. I don’t know if it’s the screenplay feeling underdeveloped in some aspects or if I’m just typecasting in my head. Either way, this movie is fun, and I haven’t laughed out loud this much in a while. So yeah, it’s a ride, especially if you enjoy the most excessive, tasteless, ooey gooey variety of gore. (I’m talking blood-n-guts, and… bees? This movie is wild lol)

There's a lot I enjoy thematically about this film, as well as an unsettling relatability to the eponymous character. Asako, whose phlegmatic exterior belies an inner turmoil that, however rarely, leads her to relinquish control to selfish impulse. The underlying concept of doppelgangers in Asako I & II feels cartoonish as hell, but lends itself well to the familiar relationship issues I'm sure many of us have grappled with. I also appreciate the film's final scene's demure cynicism. As with Drive My Car, Hamaguchi is humanistic in portraying his characters, ably acknowledging one's deep flaws while discarding judgment for empathy. 

I do have mixed thoughts on Karata Erika's performance as Asako, which occasionally feels more stifled than restrained. Although, between Hamaguchi's direction, this character's subdued disposition and Karata's own abilities, it's hard to assess fault. (I'm conscious of the fact that critique sometimes veers into, "I would have made a different choice from the director's", and it could simply be that Hamaguchi wanted that much of a blank slate for the viewer to engage with.) Even so, I've found myself thinking back on this character in the past few weeks since I watched this film, and Asako must be one of the more memorable ones from recent watches.

Emotionally profound, deftly layered, tightly written, and highly conceptual without collapsing in on itself like some turgid black hole. All without even acknowledging the production value itself, which in its sheer impressiveness doesn’t instill some admirable distance from the viewer as much as it does create a genuinely novel experience. It’s not some quaint Claymation for Adults, but it is a mature story that could only properly be told in this liminal medium - not live-action, but still plainly tangible - and it largely succeeds because of it.

However quietly devastating its final act, Anomalisa is also one of the most hopeful films I’ve seen in a while, one I’ve learned to truly appreciate with age.

On one hand, I think Sarah Connor's character is flattened by the familiar sexism that a woman's significance is necessarily rooted in the men in her life. On the other, I do appreciate the Messianic overtones, and as a protagonist she's as savvy as she is relatable. 

Mostly, I just don't want to ask too many questions and watch Arnold do his thing (the proverbial thing being 'smash-shoot-run').

Not the most riveting or emotionally profound film among Ozu's later works. Although, it does feel notable Early Spring is more overtly critical of the postwar capitalist order - and its ensuing economic and psychological toll on working class families - than one might expect. For Ozu's standards, at least.

It feels strange to consider Lorne Michaels the underdog even for 1975, though you can't say it's not apt. There wasn't even a void in the comedy world for Saturday Night Live to fill, it was that far out for the time. Reconciling this portrayal of Lorne with the one I've come to know today seems impossible having read Maureen Ryan's fantastic Burn It All Down, which exposes a lot of the sordid details of #MeToo and the television world including Lorne's history at SNL. (Highly recommended reading.)

But Lorne's character and whatever veracity aside, Saturday Night is an entertaining (and actually funny) retelling of the lore of SNL's beginning. Outside of Lorne the screenplay doesn't take much interest in fully developing the iconic Not Ready For Primetime Players - which is a shame for fans of the late Gilda Radner, for example - but I at least found their portrayals amusing and endlessly charismatic when they weren't merely uncanny. 

It's one aspect that I think helps the film: you want to root for these folks, and even knowing SNL would become the behemoth it is today, seeing how they land this inaugural episode is riveting stuff. And occasionally you might also make the connection between how the showrunners' experiences with SNL's launch cohered into the unforgiving working culture of the writers' room, though whether you'd call that culture caustic or competitive is your perspective. 

By the way, who knew the young Dan Aykroyd was such a babe?

The more I rewatch Alien, the more I admire basically everything about its layers: the subversive theme around sexual assault and gender, the visceral but not tasteless body horror, the use of practical effects and terrifying creature design, the political subtext around the military industrial complex's dehumanizing penchant for profit over people, the (mostly) timeless retro future aesthetic that at times recalls 2001.... When 30 Rock was airing, Alan Sepinwall in his reviews would occasionally say an episode was so funny beat-for-beat that he'd just list a few of his favorite jokes and throw the towel in that week. I feel similarly about Alien, a movie there's so little to say about at this point, yet it has so much praiseworthy material. 

That's why on the contrary, the more I rewatch Alien the more I lament the way subsequent installments bastardize the vision set out by the original. Alien is so masterful in its self-contained, small-scale horror that expanding its worldview feels gratuitous at best. Don't get me wrong: Aliens is a classic in its own right, but it suffers from the usual "bigger-is-better", "more-more-more" approach to sequel-making. Not every successful studio film needs to become a franchise; scaling up and scaling out isn't an inherently productive approach to world-building.

At least my gripes don't spoil the experience of viewing Alienfor me. Even knowing the trajectory of the film I still enjoy the deep-seated dread that blankets so much of the first act before escalating to actual chills and terror. I also enjoy the minutiae of seemingly inconsequential moments where you get to observe characters in isolation, Ash for example, and reify what you learned the first time you watched the film.

It's near-impossible not to tie everything to politics these days, but I think there is a lot to value about certain characters who modern right-wingers would write off as DEI shoe-ins (including Ripley herself). It goes to show, for one, how manufactured current outrage against the "woke mind virus" (thanks Elon) is, given how magnanimous Alien is in the horror and sci-fi genres. It's a shame Ridley Scott doesn't quite live up to the promise of his early works such as this, but hey, death of the author, right?

Though my first watch felt incredibly mixed, I've literally thought about this film every day over the past month. My reaction being from insurmountable anticipation and the retrospectively brave decision on the part of Boyle and Garland to totally elide audience expectations with this one. For all my initial reservations, I've come around to admire certain aspects of its creative decisions. In particular, Garland's screenplay is thematically layered and boldly pivots the franchise into a wildly different, challenging direction that's apparently excited as many fans as it frustrated.

Having just watched this for the second time, 28 Years Laternow feels immensely more rewarding as my thoughts and feelings crystallized. It's a cliché that Days "reinvigorated" the zombie genre in the aughts, and the long shadow it inevitably cast on subsequent projects suggested (along with the mid Weeks) that this new installment would continue in the zombie genre. Instead, it feels more folk horror than anything, presenting a fablelike tale steeped in aspects of English folklore and history that give the narrative a timeless quality. I stay almost immovably in the "this-didn't-need-a-sequel" approach to filmmaking - not everything needs to be a franchise - but I'm glad Boyle and Garland had the luxury of waiting until they felt proper inspiration before resuming work on this project. 

There's a grandiosity to Years and its newfound concerns with the metaphysical that poses genuinely thoughtful foundational questions about society and culture. Considering the three adult figures in Spike's life, whose competing outlooks on life and death inform his character and narrative, provokes thoughts around the morality of whose humanity we're willing to recognize, the value or wisdom of radical empathy, and the myriad ways we might square our existential angst and fear of the other. Does ensuring our self-preservation necessitate killing threats to our survival, perceived or imagined? Once infected, does a person cease to be human, a member of our own tribe entitled to shared existence?

Still, Years isn't purely some heady philosophical undertaking - a lot of it is admittedly macabre, and the night-vision sequences in particular are quite chilling. From what I've heard of the sequel, The Bone Temple may be even more grotesque and horrifying than this first new installment, so I can't say the film feels completely untethered from the horror genre (even if for the most part the scares felt more thrilling than horrific). What I can say is that Years manages to balance these different facets as it establishes the underlying dynamics of this new order in post-rage UK.

Even as I appreciate this film more on rewatch, it's not as if my initial critiques were transfigured into praise. In a way, they're still outstanding; I think what actually shifted was my emotional response as the viewer. For example, there's an overwhelming sense of plot armor enveloping Spike at all turns as he brushes up against mortal danger. This is most prominent on his journey with Isla to see Dr. Kelson - Isla, who's terminally ill and in delirium, except when she conveniently isn't. 

I can only say the plot armor simply didn't dim my enjoyment as much, and that the main difference upon rewatch is rooted in some subjectivity: (1) my own subjective experience as a viewer; (2) the subjective perception of Spike's point-of-view as a young child (in parallel with young Jimmy's POV in the opening sequence, whose trauma-ridden memory is more explicitly presented as fractured); or alternatively, (3) the subjective worldview of the adults guiding Spike along his journey in each act and how they individually elect to survive in this world. (If Jamie takes Spike hunting for infected, is it a surprise when they end up hunted?) 

Even so, what Boyle and Garland present in 28 Years Later is so deeply thoughtful, viscerally moving, and visually captivating, any lingering qualms almost feel secondary in nature. For all the silliness around, say, a head-ripping Alpha, there are unfathomably gorgeous sequences like the nighttime chase on the causeway, or the fantastic editing throughout that conveys characters' states of mind as much as passage through space and time. The energy I could exert picking this film apart feels misplaced when I could simply engage with the wealth of intriguing themes and ideas.

I've been a casual Marc Maron fan for over a decade now - solely in terms of ubiquity,WTF is quintessential entry-level podcasting - so this special could have passed me by. Luckily, the recent fervor over Maron calling out Joe Rogan and the Manosphere at large caught my attention as someone resigned to the perception that MAGA essentially won the culture war (for the time being at least). 

Much of the special recalls Maron's previous material for obvious reasons, as well as similar sociopolitical observations in some of Sarah Silverman's stand-up. Though like the year 2025, the political feels inescapable, and the tonal asymmetry of some absurd moments (like Maron's anecdote about his cats against the backdrop of the L.A. fires) mean the special ends up equally silly, self-deprecating and severe. But this is stand-up, and rather than purely resorting to some offputting political diatribe in a stereotypically liberal way, it's genuinely funny throughout. Also, unlike Silverman, Maron isn't a liberal Zionist, so his politics feels immeasurably consistent in an era where the larger political sphere - occupied by genocide enablers, demagogues and sycophantic influencers - is baldly anything but. 

I felt a sense of catharsis, sure. But mostly I felt relief, sane even, hearing a comedian of his stature take aim for once not at "cancel culture", but at bona fide fascists.

Pretty mid, if charming overall, with some funny moments. It feels like a pretty scattershot experience, as a modern viewer at least, for what was probably characteristic of romcoms of the era.

The horrific: The depiction of when rape culture was just theculture at large, though at least William Douglas-Home had the sense to frame David Fenner as the antagonist. The gender politics generally too, though I mean... 1958. 

The ensemble: A young John Saxon (of Black Christmas and Nightmare on Elm Street fame)! Angela Lansbury! For her part, Kay Kendall was wickedly funny in a way that feels outsized for her role being limited to the chauvinistic depiction of shrewish stepmom.

The tragic: Having just discovered Kay Kendall and then reading she passed from leukemia at 32 just a year after this was released... What a loss.

The visuals: The Technicolor era was magnificent, and I kind of grieve the way studios embraced vivid color palettes at one time over the milquetoast color grading we have today.

The bemusing: This film is a great reminder that Italians were once considerd 'POC'. Also, is there anything nearly as simultaneously boring yet aesthetically gorgeous as British high society?

I found Celine Song’s writing here unceasingly earnest despite the occasional satirical observation on relationship culture. Even so, whether that earnestness felt endearing or a bit precious vacillated wildly for me. The portrayal of cave people, for example, doesn’t fully resonate in tying the narrative to some grander humanistic context the same way the analogous idea of “providence” did in Past Lives. So as Song bookends Materialists with this idea of prehistoric love, it feels at best superfluous, at worst verging on self-parody, even as her intent feels genuine.

If Materialists doesn’t totally evade the minefield that is the bevy of tropes and redundant social commentary endemic to the romantic comedy genre, it’s still charming enough that its flaws don’t completely besmirch the experience. Though for what it’s worth, I found myself engaging most with the subplot involving Lucy and Sophie.