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Midweek Movie Free Talk
Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.
Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.
Any sort of movie related resolutions?
I have given myself a watchlist of 52 movies with the Criterion Challenge on Letterboxd, making for a good combination of a reason to watch something that has been on my watchlist for a while already and some completely unknown stuff from the more restrictive categories.
I intend to continue with exploring Italian cinema in basically any form and genre. I also want to get a bit more into Japanese drama films from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.
I would also like to dedicate more time to rewatching stuff, and look at some of all the various extra material and commentary tracks on my blurays. I tend to prioritize watching new things, but whenever I actually open up an old favorite with a rewatch and some extra material, it is always worth it.
that's pretty awesome. I might be overthinking this, but where are you finding stuff like The Twenty Least Watched Films?
The original challenge list has helpful links for many of those categories. Like for least watched
sweet. I've been compiling a lot of the stuff into one spreadsheet so I can map out my year. I'll end up putting more time into the sheet than watching
My first year doing the criterion challenge. I’m pretty excited for it!
My family was took turns choosing holiday movies last week and I had the pleasure of introducing them to The Holdovers. It's a lowkey Christmas classic, which I'll probably throw on every other year.
On top of that, I saw Marty Supreme yesterday. Not at all what I expected despite seeing the preview several times this year. That alone made it worth the cost of admission.
Spoilers for Marty Supreme
I thought it was going to be more of a sports movie/relationship drama, like Rocky for ping pong. I was quite surprised when it turned out to be a longer, fuller Good Time. I'm one of the few who enjoyed Good Time more than Uncut Gems, but Marty might have the edge. My only issue is that it felt like there were 2-3 too many hijinks. Also, I love a heart-racing thriller with a killer soundtrack as much as the next guy, but I hope Josh Safdie mixes it up a little bit going forward. Oh, and it kills me that Mr. Wonderful was good in this, even if he was playing himself.Also, just to put this in a separate post since I do this every year, and every time I do it reminds me of the inevitability of time and the stagnation of my own life. Here’s my most anticipated of 2026.
ok! Here's my mostly nailed down Criterion Challenge list. I likely need to make some changes, but I think its all good. The ratings included are a combined score from IMDB, Metacritic, RT, LB, and TMDB. My spreadsheet just does it... and I wouldn't put any real stock in them.. but I like to include them anyway.
My List
I've seen a lot of these but want to see them again or its been a long time. My watchlist has me set until next November now.
edit 01/04: watching The Fellowship of the Ring... I think I've simply watched this too many times. I'm doing the extended for the first and theatrical for the other two. The 4K rip I have has the shitty green to it. Whoever did this... I just don't know why they would do that.
I like to think that Lurtz longs for his missed youth in his downtime.
Y tu mamá también can’t possibly be a least watched film? It is Cuaron’s massively popular breakthrough
surprising, right?
the first time I saw it, this gal i was hanging with said that she saw the most magical road trip movie when she was living somewhere in south america. i guess she saw a heavily edited version that didn’t have the sex or wanking… so imagine her surprise :)
Without all the sex it must have been categorized as a short film.
Letterboxd just released their wrapped. Here are my stats:
228 film logged |. 76 films reviewed |. 409 hours watched
Most watched actor: Steve Zahn
Most watched director: Tony Scott
Highly rated 2025 film: Weapons (5/5), One Battle After Another (5/5), Marty Supreme (5/5)
Most watched week: May 26 - June 1 (17 films)
Most watched day: Sunday (56 films)
First Watch: Summer of Love
Last Watch: Die My Love
50th movie: Little House on the Praire, 100th: We Need To Talk About Kevin 150th: In The Heart of the Sea, 200th Bugonia
Most watched theme: Horror, the undead and monster classics
Most watched nanogenre: Horror, Twist, Death
I watched two incredible movies this week, Citizen Kane and Total Recall (1990).
Citizen Kane
This movie has been on my watch list for a while and it was nothing like I expected, but I loved it. I could definitely see how it had such an influence on the movie industry and why it's often regarded as one of the best and most important movies ever made.
Orson Welles acted and directed his fucking ass off. While there were a few weak performances in there, most of the main characters were incredibly believable and emotional. I especially loved the breakfast scene, Kane's fight with Gettys, and the scenes at Xanadu near the end. Not only was the acting phenomenal, but the direction was just incredible. Some of the shots used are sticking with me a couple of weeks later. There was just so much emotion conveyed all over while using (to our modern eyes) relatively simple techniques.
I enjoyed how detailed and well framed most of the sets were. There was a pretty careful use of angles to sometimes make Kane appear larger than life or to make certain spaces feel massive and empty while others felt small and cluttered. It's something I probably wouldn't have noticed without specifically thinking about it, but it adds a lot to how the characters are framed throughout.
I very much enjoyed this one and I'm glad I watched it.
Total Recall
Firstly, I love Schwarzenegger. He's one of my favorite actors and 80's/90's action movies are a guilty pleasure of mine. I've somehow just never watched this one before. This was also not anything like I was expecting, I managed to go in blind despite this movie being 35 years old. I had absolutely no clue that it would be a mind bender. To me, it was the perfect blend of stupid action shit, a drip feed of a sci-fi setting that wants you to learn more, and a mind bender of a main plot, given you never really know if the movie is real or a rekall memory.
My one complaint would be that I think it moves too fast the entire time and never really gives you a break. I thought it might at the end when Quaid was about to activate the reactor, but then it went into the set piece of Cohaagen appearing and trying to stop Quaid. I thought this was just completely unnecessary and the movie would have benefitted from Quaid and Melina having a quiet moment after the ridiculous fight they just had, but alas. It's a very small mark on an otherwise amazing movie.
What I adored was the world building, the setting, and the story. There was very little exposition on how the world actually works in this setting and I liked that they let you just figure it out and it left me wanting more. You barely get anything on how technology works in this setting, what space travel is like, etc., but you don't need it to enjoy the movie and they leave you with just enough to figure things out.
The story, while basic on the surface, was complex enough where I've been rolling over it all weekend trying to figure out if I think the movie is all real, if it's a rekall memory after Quaid goes to the rekall center, or if the entire movie from the first second is a rekall memory. I was reading what sentiment was and what Verhoeven has said and I'm glad that it's entirely ambiguous and that it's just as correct to have one theory over another. I really can't decide what I think is true. I am closer to thinking that the entire movie was real, but there's just enough there for me to be doubtful.
For example, even though I think it was real, how does that explain the rekall techs essentially describing the plot of the movie, down to the reactor + "blue skies on mars"? Why was Melina literally on the monitor when they asked Quaid what his ideal woman is? That could be explained by him being delirious at that point and it's just from his point of view, rekall could have been pulling images from his mind since he was already dreaming about her, or apparently the novel has a line where Melina mentions she previously modeled for rekall. Then there are other things, like how can Quaid realistically muster the strength to break out of the rekall chair near the end? You'd think that's obviously part of the secret agent package, but then you realize this is an 80's/90's action flick and Schwarzenegger does something like that in every movie he's in.
On the other end, I can very much see how someone would think everything from the rekall chair after is just an implanted memory. At the start of the movie, Quaid's dreams of Melina + Lori trying to turn his attention away from the news, convince him against rekall, etc. are usually theories supporting the theory the movie is real, but at the same time, Quaid could just have been dreaming up some random ass girl on mars because dreams are just weird, and Lori could just have been seeing her husband is stressed and troubled and that's why she turns off the news (not because she's an agent). Perhaps Quaid saw advertisements of rekall's Mars adventure before, where Melina could be present in the ads, and that's why he's dreaming about her.
There are hundreds of tiny details that can lead you to think one way or another, but it seems pretty well balanced and I'm genuinely second guessing myself as I type this up. I think this was about as perfect as it can get for an action movie and this might now be one of my favorite movies.
Does anybody want to talk about:
A Christmas Story (1983): ★⯪☆
Brave (2012): ★★☆
Dead Poets Society (1989): ★★☆
A Separation (2011): ★★☆
Grand Hotel (1932): ★☆☆
Almost two years since I saw A Separation but I called it a small masterpiece in my review. I really liked the characterization of regular people really just trying to do their best, but pushed to their limits by very unfortunate circumstances outside their control.
Yeah, it's one of those "cooler heads should prevail, but you can totally understand why everyone is having trouble keeping their cool" situations.
I had a realization during the first scene. At first, it seems like they're breaking the rule of "show, don't tell," but then I realized that they're showing us the main characters' personalities based on their body language, tone of voice, etc. So while it tells you an infodump to explain the premise, your focus should really be on how the two of them are acting.
I can recommend The Salesman from 2016 by the same director which also won an Oscar for best foreign. Not quite small masterpiece level for me but Farhadi has a special ability to get authenticity out of his actors.
I remember when that won, leading up to it Trump had just passed the muslim ban thing and Farhadi couldn't get on the plane as a result of it. Before all that the Palme D'or winner Toni Erdmann was the front runner.
I guess that kind of thing will only get worse as the new travel requirements for entering the US are outright dangerous for foreigners, like progressive film makers from other continents. Perhaps we won’t see many accept best foreign language Oscar’s in person in coming years.
After checking - yikes, I can't find the Region A blu-ray of The Salesman for under $70. I might have to wait for the price to drop (or a miracle find at a store). I avoid streaming services on principle, but sometimes that means I miss a movie like this (even finding A Separation was tough).
It looks like Farhadi's About Elly and The Past are available at more reasonable prices. Would you recommend either of those?
Oh The Past is even better. It is one of those films where you are just thrown directly into a complicated family drama with lots of backstories that we don't get explained, but it works really well as you have to just navigate by emotions and interpersonal dynamics.
Another couple things came to mind later. I wonder to what extent they are interesting and to what extent I just don't watch enough foreign films to be used to them.
It was interesting to hear them talk about money in the Iranian currency. The values IR 300,000 and IR 40,000,000 come up throughout the film, but I had absolutely no idea how much money that is. I think it actually helped me stay immersed instead of getting hung up on the amount too much.
It was also interesting that nobody ever had a lawyer at any point during the divorce or legal proceedings throughout the entire movie. I wonder if that's actually typical in Iran, or if it was a creative decision by the writers to give the characters more chances to interact.
I think I looked up the currency value, though now I don't remember. And it doesn't matter anyways, as it is easy to deduct from context what sort of relative levels of money we are talking about.
Alright last day of the year. I was catching up on the Globe nominees that blindsided me, so all the foreign stuff (except The Secret Agent which hasn't come out digitally or wide theatrically). Some of it comes from Cannes, and I've learned over the years that I don't like a lot of the stuff that gets hyped up coming out of it. TIFF is more my speed. Anyways here we go:
It Was Just An Accident
The Palme winner. I was reading some of the reactions to this before watching it and they all called it thrilling. Something interesting I noticed is that they mentioned that it was like a play, but in a positive way as opposed to how it's usually used as a criticism when we're talking about movies.
This was so boring. Not thrilling in the slightest. The whole middle half of the film is slow, uninteresting, and the conversations the characters have are repetitive. I don't think it's shot well, I thought it looked a bit rough if anything (they were shooting it in secret so some of that could be explained by this). And I thought most of the performances were actively bad, even if it's in a language I can't understand it just felt off.
It made me appreciate Anatomy of a Fall a lot more since that actually felt like a thriller. I don't know, it feels like people are overpraising this for the political aspects of it.
No Other Choice
This feels like Park is making his version of Parasite. That sounds like a superficial comment since, you know, Korean film. But it does feel like a black comedy/thriller/crowd-pleaser.
I liked this! I thought it was really fun. It gets a little repetitive, but overall I liked it's energy throughout. It made me audibly laugh in a lot of places. Parasite felt more elegantly put together, but this is good, even if the commentary is kind of basic and not as layered as Parasite's was.
Die My Love
I don't like Lynne Ramsay as a filmmaker I've discovered. I watched We Need To Talk About Kevin earlier this year for the first time, and I had watched You Were Never Really Here a few years ago. I have no issue in describing her work as pretentious. One of the most ironclad uses of the word I will use. They're also so slow.
I don't think any of the performances here are great. I think the characters are shallow. This has been a critique for all the films thus far, but it's also quite repetitive with Lawrence being sad and then acting crazy to showcase her BPD and her regret with being a mother.
If I Had Legs I'd Kick You
I thought this was good. Not as exciting or as tense as I've heard it described (it got comparisons to Safdie's work for example). But it is good, and it's a good showcase for Rose Byrne who I always thought was underrated. Conan O'Brian was also surprisingly good and subtle in the film.
This is following Die My Love's theme about regretting motherhood. Which has been a trend this decade from female filmmakers (The Lost Daughter being the first one with this theme that I watched). Where there's even a monologue about how they regret having children and they think about how much better their lives would be without them. I'm sure there's an essay in there somewhere.
Doesn't feel like anything major, but solid.
Blue Moon
Feels quite minor from Linklater. It's contained, takes place in one room. It's somewhat entertaining and Hawke delivers a great performance. Better than the other Linklater film this year at the very least.
Getting the new year of the ground with It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World which was an incredibly long and epic screwball action gold rush comedy. Huge cast all on their own hectic adventure, but since everyone is chasing the same thing, it is easy enough to follow. Despite its massive length, there is barely a dull moment. It is cartoon-like destruction and violence on all cylinders all the way. The amount of chaos and demolition is insane, and way more enjoyable than the present day CGI destruction films. The whole concept behind this film is just crazy and almost unbelievable to imagine, with a comedy action filmed on 70mm in super widescreen. It doesn't sound like a movie this should exist, but it does. Still, it does shows its length as the madness became somewhat less exciting to follow after 2 hours.