weekend watchlist: some much needed yet very realistic eco-optimism
Plus adventures in drinking, hanging out in bars, and murder. (First published August 7th, 2022, on Substack and Patreon.)
Philadelphia
Glass movie review: superhero ’splaining
Earnest and humorless, this is a faux-intellectual Comic Book Guy ponderously well-actually-ing us about shallow superhero tropes and clichés as if those are the most intriguing bits of these stories.
Unsane movie review: is she or isn’t she?
As a piece of craft, this is a smack in the face to Hollywood’s bloated blockbusters. As a piece of pulp, it brings a sharp, smart feminist twist to familiar tropes of cinematic paranoia.
Creed movie review: the boxing ring of truth
Feels natural and organic, not forced by the dictates of movie franchises. A smart, engaging, unsentimental portrait of male friendship and male emotion.
God’s Pocket movie review: rot in the city
The cast is amazing and the film has a certain grim visual beauty. But ultimately there is little here but ugly senselessness.
Silver Linings Playbook (review)
Sometimes uncomfortable, often funny, and always electrifying…
Devil (review)
Ever drop your toast and despair to watch it land on the floor jelly side down? You know who’s responsible for such calamity, don’t you? Satan. It’s true.
is Betty Draper misunderstood?; the end of cable TV?; why never to throw away someone else’s action figures; more: leftover links
Every week my browser gets cluttered up with tabs for stuff that I stumble across and figure I might be able to use as a Question of the Day or a WTF Thought for the Day or grist for some other post…
Law Abiding Citizen (review)
It had me at *kaboom,* this thorny moral conundrum of a film, and then it lost me when it threw out all the tricksy pointedness in favor of thoughtless, counterproductive badassery.
The Happening movie review: nonevent
This appears to be a movie about an incident that occurs to a certain number of people across a particular region consisting of a few states.
