The best movies of the 2020s, so far: ASTEROID CITY

   I don't typically enjoy Wes Anderson's work (except The Fantastic Mr. Fox) but ASTEROID CITY has been such a hyperfixation that it makes me wanna reassess his entire filmography. I haven't gotten to The Phoenician Scheme or The French Dispatch [yet] but if they're anything like this then I might just become a convert.

  First off: the cinematography is fucking insane. Like, look at this shot! It looks like a painting but it's just a frame I plucked out of the movie.

So much of his work is plagued by Tumblrcore One-Perfect-Shot fetishism (locked down, overly symmetrical and twee) but here Anderson and his cinematographer opt for sun-bleached Norman Rockwell that has both fluidity and tension. The depth in every frame has so much to pay attention to, which is emblematic of the script's dense ensemble.

  It's so compulsively rewatchable because it's the least straightforward comedy I've seen from him. For a filmmaker who has cultivated a reputation as a snooty perfectionist, it's refreshing to see something so deliberately messy and full of contradictions; dude lets loose and it's incredibly liberating to experience. He almost seems to be interrogating his own whimsy at times, too (especially with a kid who thrives on Dares whose arc comes to a fantastic finish).

  There's so much to reflect upon with the way it persistently breaks and repairs its layered fourth wall: a meta Russian nesting-doll about confronting pain (which is, itself, a comedy burying a tragedy). All of it is written with a non-linear approach best described as Jeopardy-esque (What is "Payoff then Set-up," Alex?) that's oddly rewarding. There's a point where the entire thesis of the movie is literally shouted at us by multiple cast members but, even then, it feels too easy. The wrinkle is how so much of the script suggests ideas and existential questions with no clear answers, not just externally but for the characters themselves.

 A Every character (all 296 of them) is so unique, including three little girls who inexplicably get into witchcraft and a teacher* who's gradually losing faith in what she's teaching. Scarlett Johansson, someone who, like Anderson, I don't typically like, is given a note-perfect role to play and she lands the goddamn plane. Everyone here is weaving in and out of their respective characters in each narrative switch-up but Margot Robbie and Jason Schwartzman share an incrementally emotional two-hander that's as intense as any match in Challengers. This is what kind of unlocked the movie for me and, hopefully, the rest of Anderson's filmography.

  *The 'Dear, Alien' musical number is fucking superb; fun, catchy, charming. I don't have much else to say about that but I wanted it mentioned because I can't stop listening to it.

The best movies of the 2020s, so far: BAD TRIP

  "The feel-good movie of the year" isn't usually said about movies involving gorilla cum but that's exactly what this Gorilla Cum Movie was in 2020.

  There are only a few ways to say a movie's funny so I'm not gonna do that cuz 1) I don't wanna spoil any of it and 2) it'll be redundant to keep saying "this was funny," "that was funny," etc. So to get it out of the way: Bad Trip is consistently funny as hell. What I love past that is how it's kind of the anti-Borat. Where that movie's a cynical satire about how dumb and toxic everyone is, this is a weirdly wholesome hidden-camera prank movie that reveals how helpful people are. As a die-hard fan of The Eric Andre Show, where he routinely traumatizes people, I just didn't expect him to make something this sweet and it gave me some much-needed optimism during the pandemic. And I'm happy to say it hasn't lost its edge one bit.

  I've danced around calling this 'performance art' because it's not just a prank movie where a man is raped by a gorilla, it's a slice-of-life road trip movie where a calamity man gets, for the most part, everyday people's best side. Well, for the most part.

  Eric's a natural provocateur; He gets yelled at, cussed, kicked, threatened, and even has a knife pulled on him at one point (and has to break character to run away). It's funny but it's Eric's usual shtick so it didn't shock me. Instead, I'm taken aback at how most reactions aren't of people being victims to Eric's shit, he's the butt of the joke instead, but they selflessly try to help him out of whatever crisis hole he's deliberately dug himself into - unbeknownst to them, of course. A nurse comes to check on Eric after he falls off of a bar, cleaning ladies comfort Michaela Conlin after a frantic meltdown, and a random patron tries to lift Lil Rel Howery up after he falls into a porta-potty.

  There are even scenes where complete strangers have brief bonding moments with each other over their shared experience of Eric, Tiffany Haddish, or Howery's mayhem. It's just so heartwarming to see people being nice, especially in the face of gross-out pranks or Haddish threatening to murder Eric and Rel.

  Had this been entirely scripted and staged I'd like it much, much less than I do. I mean, the laughs that this trio get out of me would remain intact, but the frame narrative is as predictable and cliche as any buddy comedy since the '80s. That's by... well, not 'design,' per se, that implies effort: it's a thrown-together boilerplate script and the reason it works so well is because of its formal framework transforming it into something else. The funniest shit in the movie doesn't come from the Cast but from the People. Had they been simple Extras with stock reactions, it wouldn't have even 1% of its charm.

  Like there's a wonderful scene where Eric sits next to an older guy on a bench. He needs the thrust of this old-timer's sage wisdom to propel him to take the movie's road trip to find the girl of his dreams. As far as this man knows, Eric is just some guy but, remarkably, he still fills the very role Eric wants him to play and Eric plays off of that. It's pure magic. This is just one example, too, it happens at other times in the movie to various other pedestrians. So not every interaction is Eric doing crazy shit, there are these sweet little bits where he prompts small-talk from random folks (including a funny bit with a waitress where she talks about courting and sex, "genders and genres").

  That bench scene transitions to a musical number where Eric performs "I Saw A Girl Today" in the Food Court of the mall he 'works' at. Now, again, usually this would be a rousing scene where everyone joins in to wish Eric well as he goes off to New York in the name of love. But no, everyone's weirded out and even secondhand embarrassed that this bloody-handed maniac is singing about some lady named Maria. This extends to a later scene where Eric and Bud have the typically heavy-handed, dramatic 2nd-act 'falling out,' followed by a big 3rd-act speech where all-is-forgiven. Eric chases down the bus Bud gets on to leave and gives said speech where, again, everyone is caught off guard. Just like the musical number, all of the reaction shots are fucking funny and add to the movie's magic of blending its narrative with Real Life. He takes out what would usually sink a buddy comedy like this: the predictability.

  There's even a shot where a girl hides her face because she can't believe how lame Eric is (I cherish this moment).

  The Buddy Comedy stuff, like when it's just Eric and Rel by themselves bantering, works too. They have effortless chemistry because they're friends in real life, so you don't have to 'buy' their friendship: it's completely free. Unlike the sentimental stuff in Bad Grandpa that falls completely flat, there's a scene here that anchors the movie. In their hotel, following Chris' stunt at a bar, Chris says he wants to celebrate his best friend Bud and passes out, covered in dried vomit. Bud takes off Chris' shoes before getting ready for bed himself. It feels 'real' because I've been immersed in this as a 'hidden-camera' prank movie. I'm not even distracted by Ludwig Göransson's organ score, I'm even more immersed in what they're aiming for: now I'm the random pedestrian watching this shit play out. It shouldn't work as well as it does but I'd be lying if I said it doesn't.

  As I was already pretty smitten with this, the end credits take it to yet another level. The credits are typically where a comedy shows us a blooper reel but, here, they show us everyone's reaction to finding out they're in this movie (or, in some cases, relief that the crises Eric or Haddish put them through has all been averted). It's the most potently wholesome note to end on because it's just hugs and laughter, like watching multiple people react to a surprise party thrown for every one of them.

The best movies of the 2020s, so far: ADAM SANDLER: LOVE YOU

  With The Naked Gun coming out Friday (and looking mighty good), Happy Gilmore 2 doing numbers on Netflix, and Friendship being the funniest shit I've seen all year, I figured I'd just make this Comedy Week. We've gotten quite a few good comedies this ½ decade and I hope Naked Gun is a hit that studios take the right lessons from (hope is delusional). Lots of them didn't make my list for one reason or another but they're absolutely worth mentioning based on sheer laughs alone. First, though, I wanna talk about those that are absolutely on my list:

  Right from its stressful, bewildering opening, Adam Sandler: Love You had me in its grip.

  Directed by the Josh half of the Safdies (a Halfdie) this is one of the most formally ambitious and unique comedy specials I've ever seen.

  Experimental but also rigidly blueprinted, there's a great sense of wonder and confusion with every passing moment. Safdie and Sandler are prankish architects blurring the line between what's real-life shit falling apart and their gleeful machinations; everything seems to have an invisible string attached to it and, if you follow it, chances are you'll end up behind the cameras...or not. The venue is dank and intimate, as opposed to the arena showcases most established comedians stage their specials, which makes it easier for Sandler & Safdie to manufacture believable fuck-ups. As it kicks off it feels like Sandler himself has been yanked from reality and Last Action Hero'd into the Uncut Gemsverse: after pulling up with an inexplicably busted windshield and coffee on his hoodie, he's inundated from every angle by his agent, overzealous fans, a rabid dog(??), a security guard whose bloodied son is in the hospital, and a gigantic bodybuilder. That signature Safdie tension makes the comedy hit harder because it's reassuring on top of being amusing. The sound mixing just buries you alive and the editing so smoothly navigates you and the chaos out onto the stage with him: there's never an escape.

  Sandler's songs and jokes are also just fucking great, so this isn't some gimmicky variety show to make up for his lack of material. He tells these elaborate, shaggy, surreal, and fantastical jokes that become more unpredictable and odd the longer he lets them go on (my favorite being a bit about a balloon following him home from a birthday party and he has to figure out how to make it cum). Even if some of the set-ups are a bit predictable, the punchlines hit because his delivery is so affable. And the ending is perfect in so many ways but mainly because he delivers a sincere ballad to Comedy itself and the comedians who've made a living making us laugh for nearly 100 years.

  When it truly settles into its groove, this is Josh Safdie's Stop Making Sense. Adam Sandler adds yet another great movie to his increasingly eclectic filmography. I think I'll skip Happy Gilmore 2, though.

The best movies of the 2020s, so far: CHRISTMAS EVE IN MILLER'S POINT

   CHRISTMAS EVE IN MILLER'S POINT is the holiday hangout movie of my dreams (fingers crossed for one based on Halloween, though).

  It's impossible to fully describe because it's constantly changing shapes. Like, it's as cozy and schmaltzy as it is cynical and blunt but even that dichotomy is too easy! It's also a poignant drama, a goofy comedy and, at times, a tense, kaleidoscopic, acid-dipped flurry.

  Every moment—no matter how big, small, internal or shared—lasts just long enough to get us invested but nothing is spelled out with overwritten monologues or proclamations...and then we move on to something else. There's no plot obstruction, just facial expressions, dialog, and textures to carry us through; the comic and dramatic timing are both impeccable.

  It's not a slice-of-life movie so much as a whole platter of life to feast upon; cinema as charcuterie board. As scant and varied as the conversations are amongst the 55,000 characters, there's no shortage of verisimilitude. These people have plenty of history behind them and between them; with that comes plenty of unspoken depth and complexities. Director Tyler Taormina allows himself spontaneity, whether it's to stage a gag or let a moment breathe longer than you'd expect or have tragic brevity leave you wanting more. Even the way he lets friction build and build only to eventually cool, WHILE NOT losing any of the tension, is pretty remarkable.

  Even if everything else wasn't so magnificent it's, at the very least, one of the absolute best-looking movies of the decade (and it joins Terrifier 3, of all things, as a great new Christmas movie). Every frame is just so giddy and thoughtful, there's almost an anxious monopolizing going on where the filmmakers take advantage of every idea they have. During the opening credits I got anxious that it would eventually drop the ball because I was so bowled over by how good it was but! it never lost that, just gained momentum.

  The ending is the most unexpected because it fades out as soon as the sun starts to come up on Christmas day, putting a firm punctuation mark on its very literal title: it's strictly about Christmas Eve, nothing more, nothing less. I fully embrace it as a new classic that I can't wait to turn into a tradition.

The best movie of the 2020s, so far: I SAW THE TV GLOW

  I had titled my Zone Of Interest post "The best movie of the 2020s, so far" because it is my favorite movie of this decade. But that's not entirely true because I Saw The TV Glow is also my favorite movie of the decade. Depending on the day, it flips from one to the other and, no, I can't pick nor do I want to.

  That said, some movies I watch and I'm immediately like "Yep" cuz we connected without interference (Zone, for one). Glow was a very different experience. Or, rather, experienceS; I watched it probably six times in its initial release on VOD. I liked it a lot the first time, felt about the same the second time, but the third I kinda wasn't sure...maybe I don't like it? I would sit and overthink it on my lunch breaks or menial tedium at work. Then I watched it a couple more times and had a fraught push/pull with it where I wondered why I felt such distance from it. There was clearly a pull for me but it wasn't hitting like it did those first two times due to some nebulous distortion.

  But I watched it again after a very bad closing shift and it unzipped me. I wasn't just totally on its wavelength but the ending, for the first time, just destroyed me. In fact, the ending is the most contentious part because it really can go either way: hopeless or hopeful.

  This is a horror movie about indecision; the scariest thing in the world is never quitting that shitty job and boxing yourself into a life you never wanted. You don't blink and there's a monster at the foot of your bed but you open your eyes and 20 years have gone by because you never took the leap—any leap—to change. The lore overall is almost impenetrable but I love it for that. Just like The Return: I'll never find my way out of its maze and I'll drop to my knees in despair if I ever do.

  Jane Schoenbrun's pop-cultural diet has been so full of nutrients that her intertextual elements don't weigh her down; she's crafted the single-most relatable movie of this new century. Her devotion to authenticity of textures is only outmatched by her world-building; big and small she brings everything to life, on the page and in front of the camera. The '90s atmosphere is so real that, when the nostalgia goggles are yanked off, your skin hurts from the strap indentations. The soundtrack she curated mixes so well with her direction that my feelings on the movie aren't even complex: she is, purely and simply, a born filmmaker. It's literally just the "PURE CINEMA" Scorsese meme come to life.

  Her most impressive filmmaking prowess comes during a scene of purely visual exposition: it's both a long take and a montage where the soundtrack and hand-drawn notes all mix into a fucking cinematic alchemy. The way she brings so much personality and and and and and, uhh, fucking charm and creativity to this sequence had AND HAS me in awe. Every time.

  In fact, I threw it on while writing this because that's usually what I do when I make these posts, but...it's genuinely distracting. I'm just watching it instead of writing and that's all I want to do: stop writing and just fucking watch it.

  That's part of why I hate writing about this movie: because every word feels too small. The way it affects me and how I get almost addicted to watching it and talking about it feels diminished with every letter I type. To call it "devastating," "creepy" and "fascinating" all feels accurate and cheap. It's like trying to take a picture of a breathtaking sunset but your phone camera just can't capture it the way you see it. You spend more time futzing with the settings than just appreciating what's right in front of your eyeballs.

  Lynch referred to watching a movie as having a conversation with it and I Saw The TV Glow is, in my mind, never not talking to me.

The best movies of the 2020s, so far: NOPE

  For a while, this was my favorite movie of the 2020s. It easily surpassed anything from 2022 and rode pretty hard through 2023 (until Zone Of Interest kicked my ass harder...and then I Saw The TV Glow complicated things even more).

  Peele said he started writing it during the pandemic, when everyone thought movie theaters were dying off, to forgo the extinction of everything  we hold sacred in Nicole Kidman's AMC veneration. But not only did he write his version of a big summer blockbuster to get people back to the theater: he admitted that he no clue how to actually adapt it. He deliberately approached something ambitious and intimidating with abandon: Fuck, do I respect that. And I respect him even more because he actually pulled it off while leveling up at the same time.

  Everything about NOPE could have its own post as Peele and his team have crafted one of the finest blockbusters of any decade: from the top-tier performances to Hoyte van Hoyetma's handsome and innovative cinematography to Johnnie Burn's criminally underappreciated sound design to Michael Abels' eclectic score to the seamless visual effects — every single fucking aspect is in top form.

  It features probably my favorite performance from Daniel Kaluuya (which is really saying something). He's such perfect casting with his expressive eyes and effortless knack for simmering emotion, constantly showing us new sides to O.J. Haywood, but in the smallest ways. In the context of horror movies he's so refreshingly intelligent, pragmatic, and patient - there's no contrived hard-headedness making him jump into action for the sake of tension or plot momentum. He takes time to assess each situation which makes the tension more organic and makes him exciting to root for when he goes into action; he gets into danger, sure, but not without some sharp decision-making first.

  

  Miscategorized by the ignorant/Logan Paul as stoic, I see O.J. as someone who's incredibly shy, thoughtful, anxious, curious, and skeptical. He's reserved, sure, but the gears are always turning. Interestingly, he's more sociable with his horses and even interacts with other people with the same idiosyncrasies (how he clicks his tongue at Angel to point the camera up, for example). Well, except for his sister. He really comes to life around Emerald because she brings it out in him, which gives them history beyond anything they explicitly say. Around her he's animated because he's annoyed, playful, reassuring, or amused — because he's comfortable.

  The same can be said for Steven Yeun as he's tasked with playing the most crucial character of the movie; his performance is about giving a performance. Ricky 'Jupe' Park is a tragic mural of undulations painted on the wall of a dam and, behind it, is his neverending storm. There's so much awe in Yeun showing us how Jupe has used his sustained winds to dry the layers of his mortar, particularly during his creepy SNL monologue; he's desperate to prove he's not bothered. So when he's finally, devastatingly faced with Jean Jacket's swirling gusts: every fucking brick comes loose as a brief smile cracks him open. The whole movie hinges on getting this just right and Yeun fucking delivers exactly what the script demanded.

  And this is where I always struggle to write about Nope. There's so much to unpack but this isn't supposed to be some long analysis, just a "this is what I like about" whatever movie I plucked from my decade list in random order. But Nope is so dense with its parallels that's it's hard to not talk about a portion of its enormity. 

  Consider this my truncated 'Pepe Silvia' rant:

  We don't ever actually see Jupe in Jean Jacket's throat along with everyone else from the Star Lasso Experience. We do see 'him' consumed when Jean Jacket is shoving a balloon caricature of his younger self into its mouth. As a child he was forever changed by a balloon: it popped because it was too close to the stage lights and that sent Gordy into a fearful and violent frenzy. Jean Jacket similarly dies because it felt threatened and, yet again, there's a tragic balloon pop. Otis Haywood Sr. dies because a nickel went through his eye (I'll come back to this 'one eye imagery') and Emerald uses a coin to operate a camera to take a picture of Jean Jacket attacking the Jupe Balloon. A nickel is also on the poster for Jupe's starring role as a child: Kid Sheriff, the character made into a balloon. Young Jupe's cartoon is winking, which is a recurring image in this movie: one eye opened, the other closed, much like one does looking into the viewfinder of a camera. To avoid being consumed by Jean Jacket one must close their eyes or avert their gaze; engaging in spectacle gets you killed. Em and O.J. want to profit off of turning Jean Jacket into a spectacle just as Jupe died doing after he already turned his tragedy into a spectacle he was profiting from. Also Jean Jacket is both a giant mouth and an eyeball and its inner form looks like a camera lens and it's staring at us all throughout the opening credits.

  And I have to cut it off there, otherwise I'll have 8 paragraphs of me losing my mind over how thematically rich this movie is.

  It's a true shame that this wasn't the hit that Peele wanted it to be, not just because I want him to make money to make more movies but because it's the cliche of "they don't make 'em like they used to." Everything is so studio-mandated and focus-tested until it's finally pushed out on an assembly-line that's unfriendly to Directors and Writers, resulting in unremarkable, under-seasoned entertainment content product rife with synthetic visuals; cgi and green-screen. There's no pulse and it's hideous to look at; lacks texture, warmth, depth, tangibility. Nope deserves every dollar that every vacuous movie Hollywood cranks out. So much about this movie goes against every artless shortcut or workaround used to make movies now; shot in real locations with dynamic lighting and thoughtful blocking. The Mission: Impossible movies are the exception to this rule, particularly with stunts and action staging, but the scripts don't come anywhere close to this.

  With so much personality and thought behind the camera, Peele managed to make an Amblin-coded movie that handily outdoes not just other Spielberg rip-offs (Super 8) but Spielberg himself, without being derivative. Spielberg has a UFO movie coming out next year and I'm mostly curious because of the cast. Peele also has a movie coming out next year that I know nothing about; guess which one I'm more excited for?

  There's a meme on Twitter that anytime Nope is mentioned, a 'best scene' is brought up without specificity. It's funny because there is no singular Best Scene. Anyone who loves it can easily think of about five or six different examples of what it might be. My favorite is O.J.'s Run: from the exciting tonal switch-up and genre-morphing Peele pulls off (going from horror to straight-up western adventure) it's just so fucking thrilling and fun. Considering the sheer amount of indistinguishable CGI (which is the best kind of CGI) in every shot is stupefying. Like, the clouds are cgi, for fuck's sake. And I don't mean the clouds in this scene: every cloud in the movie, which is staggering because it's insane. The run itself is dangerous so there's tension but the score allows us to enjoy it at the same time and goddamn is it fun. Watching O.J. whip open his satchel and unfurl the rainbow pennant streamers behind Lucky as the, again, seamless Jean Jacket soars over them, all while Michael Abels' 'The Run' is propelling everything...

  That's what I define as Movie Magic.

  And, still, Nope asks if Movie Magic is even worth it since it involves so much exploitation for profit. Peele clearly loves this medium but he truly despise those who use it irresponsibly and erase the contributions of the exploited, human and animal alike.

The best movies of the 2020s, so far: CRIMES OF THE FUTURE and THE SHROUDS

    Frequently annoying, frequently funny, and way too long at 2 hours 40 minutes, marbled from condescending redundancies, The Substance is a slab of meat in desperate need of trimming.

  Deep behind all of its needlessly ornate botox is a fun but insecure exploitation movie (unlike the Chad Malignant). Thankfully, the ending is where the filler finally bursts and we're shoved into 30 absurd, blood-drenched minutes of slimy phantasmagoria (with fantastic make-up and gore effects). But what it looks like in the mirror is much less desirable: a vapid, self-hating metaphorror movie with empty platitudes about body-image issues and dreams of prestige. Even worse is how it constantly explains itself even though it's already insufferably unsubtle. Met with Oscar nominations and hyperbolic raves that seemed to stack on top of one another, this thing would not die.

  What really irked me was seeing "Cronenberg" name-plopped around the discourse, not unlike seeing splotches of bird shit at the park (one might say Pollockian). It's not even a direct comparison to his work but more of a lazy, uninformed wielding of his name as a buzzword. But anyone who uses his name like that is telling on themselves: clearly they don't engage with his newest works (and they've also never seen any Yuzna or Henenlotter). Calling something 'Cronenbergian' has taken on new meaning as he's operating in a different mode altogether now; [rhetorically] what era are they referring to? To them he's still the bODy hoRrOr director from the '70s and '80s and if he's not doing anything in that realm then he's not worth a shit. Which, I guess, in that way his name would be synonymous with The Substance: those who are stuck in the past dismiss his new works as disposable now that he's wrinkled by time. They've flattened him into a brand, no longer an evolving artist.

  He explicitly stated in an interview that he's not into the Body Horror label. Hell, even before that interview it was evident: the Ear Man, who's all over the marketing for Crimes Of The Future, is referred to in the movie simply as "escapist propaganda." Sure, the body is still a major focus and texture in his work, but for more thoughtful pursuits than shock or ick. It's the other half— Horror—that he's abandoned completely. Crimes Of The Future is sci-fi noir and The Shrouds is a coming-of-old-age drama. I've already written about Crimes Of The Future and my feelings haven't changed beyond finding more appreciation for the same things.

  Written after his Wife died from cancer (after taking time away to care for her) The Shrouds is Late Cronenberg at his most absurd and sincere. Our protagonist, Karsh, isn't a one-to-one avatar for Cronenberg but Vincent Cassel definitely looks the part; some shots he's pretty much identical to Cronenberg.

  So in scenes where he dreams about talking to his Wife and reliving painful moments of her body deteriorating from cancer...it certainly feels autobiographical. These moments are so earnest while also incredibly tense because her body is so brittle that any contact risks harm. Thus he becomes convinced that the Doctors are not only not helping her get better but are working to make things worse.

  From that framework he treats grief as more than just a limp metaphor manifested in some monster or possession, rather in literal terms of uncertainty, resentment, insecurity, longing, obsession, paranoia, denial, and stupidity. For a movie made by someone recovering from loss, it's pretty funny and playful about how desperate we are.

  So much of this is genuinely profound and fucking dumb; the very idea of a 'digital graveyard' and an open casket app (or how Cronenberg points out the Crypt in Crypto, among other puns) is so galaxy-brained that it loops back around to being fantastically moronic. It's also forward-thinking considering Cronenberg is nearing his 80s and he's so curious about modernity, still blessed with an active imagination — as opposed to his contemporaries who are stuck in the past. I'm even impressed by little idiosyncratic details he thinks to include. There's a bit where a blind woman's text-to-speech reads things out imperceptibly fast so she has to slow it down for the normies who can't hear as quickly. Or how she has to feel people's faces to 'see' them, just like how we use the haptic tech to interact with our touch-screens. The visual ethos of this is in shots of screens which, for us, means screens within a screen.

"I'm often watching movies to see dead people. I want to see them again, hear them. In a way cinema is a cemetery."

Cronenberg

  The closest it gets to horror/thriller is in an A.I. avatar, fittingly enough. Her name is Honey and holy fuck is every scene with her fucking tense. She's so plucky and flirty and cunning. And I don't mean cunning in the sense that she's sly or anything, she's not. It's almost creepier that she's not aware of how bad she is at hiding her—I just realized I've been saying 'Her' when It very much is not human. I digress. Uhh, oh yeah: It's not aware of how bad it is at hiding its ulterior motives*, especially when it impersonates a horny Koala bear.

  Honey is voiced and mo'-cap'd by Diane Kruger, pulling triple duty as Karsh's wife and her twin sister. She makes every iteration of her distinct, particularly her pained existence in Karsh's dreams. Interestingly, the only time we see his wife's body outside of hazy dreams of memories is in digital recreations. Her twin is the only corporeal approximation we have of her. But, again, that isn't really Her. Karsh is asked if he wants to see her actual body and he silently refuses. Meanwhile he goes out of his way to look at her pixels on his screen. There's a sickening scene of Karsh hallucinating Honey transforming into a mangled version of Karsh's dead wife as she It dances around pantomiming masturbation. Shit made the hairs on my neck stand up and induced a fever.

  Save for that scene, there isn't much in the way of a 'thriller,' despite a mounting conspiracy. I'll go ahead and say now, at the risk of spoiling the experience: there is no conspiracy. Or, there is, but that fuse gets snipped before it explodes. Cronenberg is more interested why we cozy up to conspiracy theories rather than giving us an actually satisfying thread to knot. What's more distracting from your grief than a mystery to solve? Because, after all, if you find catharsis—any catharsis—then you can move on.

  Right?

  Anyway, have you seen The Substance?

The best movies of the 2020s, so far: IN A VIOLENT NATURE

  Art stirs me and writing about it helps straighten me out. That said, I'm at a loss when it comes to my keyboard purge this time. I haven't posted anything about In A Violent Nature yet, despite wanting to, because it's just too dense. I've tried, multiple times, to dredge my feelings from my turbulent brain but they clamor, bottleneck, and die in my frontal lobe. So many specific verbs, adverbs and adjectives this movie conjures clog me the fuck up. For a while I worried that if I gave my cascading thoughts any momentum they'd snowball and I wouldn't be able to stop the avalanche. But the truth is that no linguistic arrangement is satisfying enough because this movie exists on such a specific wavelength as it's predicated on our histories with other movies but also fiercely original.

  

  For what it is—from the perspective its director, Chris Nash, gives us—there's so much to unpack from so many different angles. By doing something so minimalist, observant and ambient, it's given me the complete opposite reaction: maximalist analysis. It's so subtly clever in how it bucks tradition while also not changing things that I'm not just watching and analyzing the movie itself but how it fits into the slasher subgenre and picking apart what it does, what it doesn't do, and the WHYs therein.

  While I don't share their enthusiasm for this movie, this must be how some people felt when they first saw SCREAM: an exuberant awe at someone doing something so different.

  Sometimes we'll hear cliche conversations happening in the distance or in the periphery of our killer Johnny's orbit; warnings, lore, and other exposition relegated to the margins. More intimately, there's a great scene where Johnny takes a rest by a tree to play with a toy car because, like Michael, Jason, and Leatherface, Johnny is a giant kid. It's such a tranquil moment that functions successfully because of the established authenticity of the rest of this world's absurdity.

  Since this is, like, Part 6 or 7 of some slasher franchise outside of time there's no shortage of off-kilter dialog and acting but, impressively enough, it doesn't try to wink about how bad it all is: it embraces it head-on. There's no snarky postmodern meta analyses, ala Scream, nor any genre gentrification for 'elevation'. Realistically, this is exactly how the characters in one of these movies would sound. The Friday The 13th-meets-Terrence Malick clash speaks loudly enough without insecure, pseudo-clever snootiness masking artistic self-harm; its nose remains because there's no spite in its heart. If Nash were to try and clean this movie up, he'd out himself as a poser. Thus the only thing he changes is the perspective while retaining the good stuff: creative kills with buckets of blood and creepy sound design. He also mines a fuckton of tension from this angle.

  The way Golden Rules and Genre Expectations are married here is fucking sublime, especially the ending. We all know that the less we see of the killer, the scarier it is. And we all know the killer is never really gone, it's predictable that he/it will come back at some point at the end. OR: that anyone who helps our final girl isn't to be trusted, they're pretending to help to deliver her back to our antagonist. Nash knows what we know and we know he knows what we know, so he works from there. We don't see the killer, Johnny, but because of genre conventions we're waiting for him to pop back up. Shockingly, he never does. Nash suspends us in air, bound by our expectations, and leaves us to die. This immensely tense sequence just goes on and on for an agonizing 15 minutes (and I know 15 minutes doesn't sound long for a runtime but it's a hell of a long time to be dragged blindfolded).

  Truly one of the best endings to a horror movie this decade. It hinges upon a truly inspired concept, great comic timing, and a deconstructionist spirit that doesn't treat its dismembered parts like trash.

The best movie of the 2020s, so far: THE ZONE OF INTEREST

  This is a Holocaust movie but it's impossible to see.

  Jonathan Glazer didn't want to make a Holocaust movie because there's no accurate way to depict such horror; it's either going to be too sanitized or too unbearable, both are irresponsible.

  Even more than that: cinematic language as we know it, for the most part, was pioneered in Nazi propaganda films, so Glazer abandons every cinematic rule possible. This isn't a movie that's even meant to be watched, necessarily.

  He 'depicts' the Holocaust solely with audio and, visually, we're locked in with the Nazi family who live next door to Auschwitz. Just as a wall separates profound suffering from idyllic family life, Glazer creates an audio-visual bifurcation; the movie you're watching and the movie you're hearing are polar opposites. Even the subtitles are sometimes obscured by some of the natural light because what they're saying is irrelevant; we're not meant to be invested. No matter how pretty you think a flower looks or how breathtaking the sunset is on the vista: there's the billowing smoke from the crematorium or the steam from a train arriving with more victims somewhere in the frame.

  There are scenes of mundanity at breakfast, tranquility in their garden, love in their bed, and fun in their pool...but the soundtrack is the most horrific shit you've ever heard, courtesy of Johnnie Burn's sound design; gunshots, dogs growling, babies crying, gathered screams, Nazis laughing, and ghoulish gargling. The most prevalent noise (and I mean it's fucking CONSTANT) is the rumbling of the ovens. That hum never goes away, even when you shut the movie off. It never tells you what's going on, it just plays on what you already know and brought with you.

  There is a reprieve but, like the rest of the movie, it's denied any cinematic varnish. A series of vignettes are strung through as we check in on a polish girl hiding apples around the camp every night. Since Glazer doesn't want to use artificial light and thus compromise his intentions, he shot these scenes with a thermal camera. It's such an ingenious innovation but it's also like Glazer himself 'hid' this from the main narrative; her warmth is quite literally glowing for us to see.

  And when we finally see her outside of such obfuscation, she's playing a song she had found in the mud; Joseph Wulf's 'Sunbeams,' written while he was in Auschwitz. In Yiddish we're told what it is and the lyrics appear, without being sung:

  “Sunbeams, radiant and warm/Human bodies, young and old; And who are imprisoned here, Our hearts are yet not cold.”

  It's such an astonishing moment because we finally have something of an expression by a Jew but we can't see or hear them. Even just typing about it right now feels diminutive of the existential enormity. Of course it's brief as there's inevitably a cut back to the lives of the Nazis for the rest of the movie.

  Of all the movies from 2023 about evil, complicity, and ignorance (Oppenheimer, Killers Of The Flower Moon, May December), none of them came close to what The Zone Of Interest accomplished.

  At the 2024 Oscars, after winning for Best International Feature, Jonathan Glazer said this as his voice trembled, his hands shook and protestors stood outside the building chanting about the genocide in Gaza:

  “All our choices we made to reflect and confront us in the present. Not to say ‘look what they did then’ — rather, ‘look what we do now.’ Our film shows where dehumanization leads at its worst. It shaped all of our past and present. Right now we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people. Whether the victims of October 7 in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza — all the victims of this dehumanization, how do we resist?”

  And, just like Oppenheimer, Zone Of Interest ends looking at the future. But, unlike Oppenheimer, Zone's future is our present and the look is a 4th wall break that rhetorically asks us which side of the wall we live on.

The best movies of the 2020s, so far: OPPENHEIMER

  It's almost the go-to critic cliche that a movie had them "on the edge of [their] seat," or the millennial evolution of it, "that movie had me levitating." Oppenheimer damn near had my ass hovering for 3 hours. It was so intense and I was so invested in it that I just couldn't sit anymore, like the movie was a culling song pulling me toward it. During the last act, though, the opposite happened: it became a courtroom drama and I felt like the gravity had been pumped up because I had sunk into my seat. It was so engrossing, especially when Emily Blunt's momentous speech happened, that I would have continued to watch it if the theater was on fire. I'll burn, I don't give a fuck, I need to see this play out.

  BarbenHeimer made this seem more 'accessible' than it is; Nolan does some of his most ambitious filmmaking here, getting weird with arthouse sensibilities the likes of which I haven't seen from him since Memento and some I haven't seen from him ever. Not to mention he let his editor go nuts too. As a Russian nesting-doll of montages within a montage moving at a breakneck pace with non-linear cross-cutting it's wild how it's structured and paced. And outside of that are Nolan's narrative stylings where one is purely objective (shot in black and white) while the other is purely subjective (shot in color). It's a queasy, exhilarating, disturbing, paranoid, borderline psychosexual nightmare that belies the typical historical biopic.

  Oppenheimer is shockingly straightforward in its indictment of the U.S. government and its history of violent posturing on the world stage. Nolan doesn't just demythologize American exceptionalism here, he shows the horrors of American imperialism. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are, thankfully, not depicted as Nolan wisely avoids the pornography of suffering (much to James Cameron's chagrin). What he does show us, in scenes with Boris Pash, Henry Stimson, and especially in Oppenheimer's meeting with Harry Truman, is creepy enough and act as drops of paint-remover for any glorifying Rockwellian brushstrokes that otherwise might bleed through.

  He also heavily alludes to the government [allegedly] having Jean Tatlock [allegedly] murdered.

  Oppenheimer doesn't just look at the damage done in the past but it looks forward, past us, at what damage will eventually be done. The older I get the more sturdy I am with Horror movies but the depiction of environmental catastrophes completely rattle my foundation. It's no wonder why Paul Schrader loves this as much as he does considering the ending is a more explicit depiction of First Reformed's dire warnings. Nolan leaving us on that note couldn't be more perfect because the only way this could end is in flames.

  This is a rapturous movie that just keeps hurtling you around for 3 hours until it reaches a sublime and devastating crescendo: this is an American tragedy.

The best movies of the 2020s, so far: PUSS IN BOOTS: THE LAST WISH

   Puss In Boots: The Last Wish is a modern animated classic. I've seen it countless times and it hasn't lost a bit of its magic. From the opening seconds of Antonio Banderas reciting "Star light, star bright" I'm never not captivated by it, even if I throw it on for background noise.

  One of the first to adopt the Spider-Verse blend of traditional 3D animation with hand-painted textures and 2D backgrounds, every character, landscape, and surface have brushstroke blemishes and deliberate imperfections eschewing the rubbery smoothness that Pixar and Illumination perpetuate. The noticably sketched action is low frame-rate, high personality with bold staging and choreography that almost seems to be in service of a breathless self-one-upmanship complex. Every prevailing set-piece is more ambitious than the last until it truly outdoes itself with one Hell of a climax that's also just as rich thematically.

  The stacked cast match this with lively performances as this isn't a barrage of celebrity names to slap on a poster, they're actually doing some fucking Voice Acting. As much as I enjoy John Mulaney, his name initially worried me because his other animated outings sound exactly like they are: checks cashed over the phone. But here, with Jack Horner, he creates a truly despicable villain who's also the funniest character in the movie - for once, he's perfectly cast.

"You're not gonna shoot a puppy, are ya Jack?"

"Yeah. In the face. Why?"

  Horner bucks the modern trend of sympathetic villains whose malice is undercut by a trAgiC baCkSToRy. He is truly just a loathesome maggot designed for pure hatred and the worse he gets the funnier it is. What makes it better is he's paired up with the most moral character in the movie, Jiminy Cricket, so we get a punchy and potent Odd Couple dynamic.

  That said, Last Wish actually has a whole spectrum of villains so anytime one (or four) do soften up, it's not a letdown. Goldilocks and the Three Bears are set up as outright antagonists but evolve into a charming unit who parallel nicely with our main trio as they're all equally flawed outcasts (save for Perrito). Their characterization isn't undercut by their development, quite the opposite. This keeps the scales from tipping because of Jack Horner's plentiful evil but also because of Death itself.

  Wagner Moura sinks his teeth into this role and, with the animators (and sound designers), they carve out one of the best villains in the medium, so much so that Ryan Coogler took inspiration for the look of his vampires in Sinners. Along with an icy whistle that acts as both a warning and mockery, Moura's menacingly lyrical line deliveries sound more like a Salamanca relative than a cartoon wolf in a kids movie.

Lalo? No: Lobo

  In both the writing and character design, Death is handled with balance; it isn't too scary for kids but it also doesn't treat them like they're too precious to face it either. I admire how condescending this isn't as movies tend to over-explain themselves, especially kids movies. Kids aren't exactly receptive to subtlety but they're not entirely out of touch either. The Last Wish trusts its main audience and that maturity toward immaturity is in short supply.

  There's a scene where Death cuts Puss and the whole screen is abruptly stylized with bright red lighting. It then cuts to a super tight close-up of Puss as blood drips between his eyes, his heart starts pounding, and his fur stands on end like fuzzy needles. As he's on the last of his 9 lives and faces actual demise, it legitimately scared me. I can't remember the last time I saw blood utilized like that in a PG-rated animated movie.

  Puss' vulnerability is set up with a montage of how he lost (see: wasted) his other 8 lives and essentially eroded his plot armor. It's funny as each death is a different kind of silly perishing, from elaborate and ridiculous to blunt and dry. But after seeing his eventual brush with this movie's literal grim reaper, that montage truly sinks in as a record of careless self-destruction. That continues at the end of the second act as Puss faces his dead selves in a cave, until he hears that hair-raising whistle. Death re-appears and brutally destroys all 8 of them again. Wisely, this doesn't end with Puss defeating Death, just staking a claim to his current life. Death will prevail, no matter what, but it has to be respected; being fearless is dangerous, being afraid is a necessity.

  I haven't seen something this profound or challenging in a kids' movie in a good while. The way it depicts a panic attack/PTSD, confronts mortality, loneliness, narcissism and depicts consequential violence with the actual threat of death is seriously impressive.

  It disproves that notion that kids' movies should be seen as lesser-than, disposable, or get a pass for phoning it in. This is a consistently captivating, highly entertaining, emotionally affecting sequel to a Shrek spinoff.

The best movies of the 2020s, so far: THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH

   This is the logical culmination of one of the many things that the Coen Brothers have excelled at: dialects.

  We heard it all throughout Fargo, Hudsucker, Miller's Crossing, O'Brother, Ladykillers, a fun bit in Hail Caeser, and most pronounced in their westerns, True Grit and Buster Scruggs. And even after all that: The Tragedy Of Macbeth is the most daring example. Half-a-Coen's script is so committed to the source material's authenticity that it's beyond just an If-It-Ain't-Broke-Don't-Fix-It approach, but more impressive in how linguistically ambitious it is.

  And with someone like Denzel Washington at the forefront of the play/character, there's no room to go wrong. He's such a great actor that he could play anything. Even in Macbeth his fucking undeniable New York drawl punches through ("cross" and "thought" bare it the most) and I don't just buy it, I cherish it. It's anachronistic as fuck but that's just a testament to how good he is. He could play Crocodile Dundee and I don't doubt I'd be like "Denzel is radiant in this."

  As Allison Wilmore lays it out, "Washington manages the near impossible feat of delivering his lines as though he's putting them together in the moment, speaking some of the most famous sentences in the English language as though they're actually being dredged up out of Macbeth's roiling consciousness." For so long I've been annoyed by stage-acting austerity in these kinds of movies. The kind of one-note haughty line deliveries that sound regurgitated rather than given natural cadence or personality (the flat tone most of the walk-and-talk dialog has in Game Of Thrones). As redundant as it sounds, these performances come across performative - not an issue for Denzel Washington. It's also significant how old this Macbeth is: 66 year-old Denzel imbues the role with world-weary, coming-of-old-age resentment and bleakness. This Macbeth is such a cynical, exhausted, paranoid, delusional, cocky, insecure wreck and he nails every utterance of a man clinging to anything to take with him down the drain. Circling the widening gyre with him is Frances McDormand, giving her best performance in years, as the two share an uneasy chemistry. She's desperate and conspiratorial, cultivating her husband's deteriorating mental acuity.

  This is matched by the milky, dreamy photography. There's a great sense of alienation as Coen's sound stages operate as a paradox of world-building: the more of the world we see, the more desolate it feels, like the threatening unease in Part 18 of The Return when 'Richard' and 'Carrie' set off for Twin Peaks. So, for every composition or lighting choice that inspires eye-bugging adoration, there's a tension, a pressure behind the eyes that makes it impossible to be comfortable because the mind is always looking for something hiding in the fog. This is the closest either Coen has gotten to the horror genre and it's clear at least one of them should get even closer. It has the tension of No Country but it's not flirting with something supernatural, it's fully communing with it.

  And this is as good a time as any to summon Kathryn Hunter's moniker to the conversation because, holy shit, does she establish herself here. This is arguably the role that required the most of any of its actors and she's not just chewing the scenery but binge-eating it like a buffet, just plate-after-plate snarfing the shit down. She's a scarier witch than any double-V Eggers creation* as this being genuinely feels otherworldly and unpredictable. She's a tormenting presence that lights mist on fire. The whole cast bring their A-game but Hunter and Washington are beyond enchanting.

   Every story beat had me rapt and the tumbling final act is a clinic on editing as, unsurprisingly, this thing is immaculately paced. All of this can be said for the story itself: well-tread text that Coen tricks us into peering into for the first time. Astonishing what he has pulled off here.

  *Excluding The Lighthouse, Eggers has been hopelessly chasing this kind of movie his whole career, especially with Nosferatu, to no avail.

  I love this movie so much. It's so good that it makes me want to reassess other movies' grades.

  Speaking of unfairly judging movies on the basis of other movies, I'm gonna open my Honorable Mention trophy case and sneak one out that I'd hidden cuz I can't not mention That Other Coen Movie: I adore Henry James' Drive-Away Dolls Dykes or, my personal title: Sapphic Lebowski.

  Rejected upon release as being too zany, too weird, too kooky—especially compared to the diametrically opposed austerity of Macbeth—it's finding its audience as a potential cult classic. Of course I get the impulse to compare these two but I'm just thankful we have them at all. Like any child of divorce: I'm sad they split up but now we get two Christmases! So I'm not gonna venn-diagram 'em — that's been done to death.

  This has remained as funny on my 201st watch as it was on my 1st. Even the filmmaking is funny in itself as Tricia Cooke and Ethan Coen's transitions ebb from acid-dipped psychedelia to confrontationally stupid. So many wipes/flips/spins had me begging their unbelievable pardon; cackling with my eyes rolling, befuddled, or genuinely impressed by how cool they were (sometimes a delicious swirl of everything).

  Margaret Qualley's performance, which she based on Nic Cage and Tommy Lee Jones, crackles on the same eccentric wavelength of this movie, oscillating from genius to foolish to absolutely baffling - but always entertaining. So is every Dutch angle, snap zoom, and flat medium shot, as they're all executed for optimal comedy.

  Because of the Looney Tunes tone this establishes, I was surprised at how tender and sincere it managed to be while somehow never fumbling these tones. As it ventures into perpetually earnest flashbacks and present day breakthroughs about sexual awakening, the movie reveals itself to be more thoughtful than just some whacky crime caper. But there are also these odd moments where we're subjected to quaint juxtapositions between characters that I'm still scratching my head over (complimentary).

  What's funniest of all is Macbeth doesn't leave me with my head cocked to the side like this, it's confidently straightforward. Yet this is the 'dumb' one. The best thing about a Coen movie is how enjoyable it can be on the surface but also how confounding it is underneath that - every new watch is rewarding for one reason or another. They're literary dudes and even if ½ of them is making an abrasively goofy "low-brow“ movie about lesbians and dildos with his gay Wife, it's not without artful integrity.

The best movies of the 2020s, so far: FURIOSA

   

  Speaking in the abstract, as an Agnostic, movies are my scripture and the theater is my Church. When I see a really good one, it's the closest I get to having a religious experience; I can ignore shitty A/C, rowdy kids, and dawdling old people walking around because I'm in another world. FURIOSA was that cinematic oasis. I sat through the credits then sauntered down the stairs in an actual daze, wanting to turn right back around and watch it again. Credits are never long enough for me to process my feelings and wax nostalgic about the past 2+ hours or so. Not to mention, like, I hate making the AMC employees feel like they can't come sweep up popcorn and candy because I'm sitting there sobbing.

  Narratively and temperamentally FURIOSA is more in line with George Miller's 3000 Years Of Longing than Fury Road - though it shares plenty of genetics with the latter. I love Fury Road as a propulsive road movie but I didn't want the same thing again. Wisely, George Miller doesn't hold a lightning rod in the same scorched crater, he conjures a new storm from up on high in the Australian dunes. It's almost a shiny-and-chrome Trojan Horse situation; come for the cool action choreography and stunt work, stay for the mythmaking, disciplined pacing and a sharp tire-burning swerve on the final lap. The action is as thrilling as ever but it's much more character-driven than plotty.

  Right off top George Miller differentiates from Fury Road by taking his time with everything. There are more than a few extended takes as he lets every scene...breathe...and even exhale...before letting the battle cries ring out. Even the overall structure is mostly set-up as Miller carefully places every piece on the board for nearly 2 hours. And after all the build-up he takes us all for fools by the time he brings it all to a close. And he's right.

  The climax, alone, was so unexpectedly cathartic and admonishing in ways that really knocked me out. I, quite literally, could not believe what I was seeing. He takes one of the most well-worn tropes of a vengeance plot and forces us to truly reckon with it, rather than committing a cliche copout. It's challenging and bold and I'm forever impressed by it.

  Chris Hemsworth and Anya Taylor-Joy are both fantastic but Hemsworth, particularly, gives probably the best work of his career as Dementus is a single showcase of his range. He's as funny and despicable as he is scary and pitiable. The ending works as well as it does because he brings so much to it. His pained, trembling intensity when he delivers "To feel alive we seek sensation, any sensation to drown out the cranky black sorrow" stung my heart all three times I got to hear it in Dolby.

  It still hits at home but nothing like it did in the theater. Some movies in this era never have a life on physical media, they're confined to the wasteland of streaming while others never even have a life in Theaters, for that matter. So I don't think it would be unreasonable for some movies to just stay in theaters indefinitely. In a perfect world, Furiosa is still playing.

The best movies of the 2020s, so far: RED ROOMS

"The tragedy of Laura Palmer was that she was murdered. The tragedy for Audrey Horne is that she wasn't murdered."

Matt Murray

  This is a corrosive character study of Kelly-Ann, a crypto-femcel hacker who moonlights as a model, and her slow dissolve in the belly of a gruesome murder trial she willfully crawled into. Along with a groupie, Clementine, they dwell on a broad spectrum of True Crime fandom, from the annoying to the extreme. Unlike Clementine, Kelly-Ann isn't just a groupie of the alleged child killer, but also an amateur sleuth.

  She has devoted herself to digitally foraging for snuff films, hustling online poker games, and cyber-stalking the Mother of one of the three young victims. The wheels of justice turn slowly and she's intent on greasing the machine from the shadows no matter how much of her soul wilts in the process. One especially thrilling sequence is the most intense auction scene since Uncut Gems' opal bidding war and it functions as the most naked glimpse into what makes this woman tick. So many close-ups steep us in her dysphoria and, during night scenes where her stalking goes beyond the Internet, the light becomes diffused like we're peering at her through foggy hazmat goggles.

  Thankfully, she's not fully detached and apathetic—which has become a cliche with movies about the terminally online—but her emotions are definitely packed in ice. There are two key emotional breakthroughs but there are so many ways to interpret what she's feeling and why; is she driven by concern, attention, hubris, or morbid curiosity? It's never entirely clear what she gets out of it, what—or if—she has an end goal in mind, or what's even real by the end of it, but the voyage is nonetheless sickening.

  I've seen [more than enough] people make the case that she's cruel and has nothing but ill intentions but I don't just disagree with them: I have irrefutable evidence to the contrary. There are so many formal and narrative choices that point to something else, something much more layered and sad. One particularly shocking scene is the crux of the entire movie and people consistently miss the point of it.

  Annoyingly, David Fincher's GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO never got a sequel, but RED ROOMS is a phantom limb to scratch that elusive itch...the trade-off is that it leaves the rest of your skin crawling.