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

   I'd originally planned to post one of these once a day, then it became at least one a week, then came doubt that I could even do one a month cuz life happens; man plans, God laughs. In defiance of God's will I'm compromising by consolidating everything into one post (I also have been trying to revisit a few here and there). Thankfully, there's so much to cover - almost overwhelming how many good movies have come out this decade.

 SINNERS

  Like The Batman in 2022, talking about Sinners is kind of impossible. Everything that can be said has already been said over and over because its popularity and good will is overwhelming. If you stick your head up and try to offer anything, you're just another soundwave arch in the mountainous cacophony and your voice will probably be an unintended plagiarism of echoes.

  I do want to point out that it's neat how Remmick is Irish so there's-- no, it's already been said.

  But I could say that it's great how Michael B. Jordan plays two ro-- lol, that was the first thing everyone pointed out.

  Oh! The generational music sequence is a work of-- really? Stop.

  I know: I love the fact that Coogler used squibs. So many movies—this year alone—have foolishly relied on cgi blood and it annoys the fuck out of me (The Monkey, Final Destination: Bloodlines, Toxic Avenger). I appreciate that Coogler used corporeal red goo spraying everywhere; haven't seen anyone talk about that yet. Or! The fact that Remmick and Sammie's dynamic turns the magical negro trope inside out. To Remmick, Sammie exists solely to help him reconnect with his family. And, saddled with the guilt his father put on him about the devil following him, Sammie would have caved if it weren't for his [found] family protecting and preventing him. Hell, who's to say if Sammie's magic would have even worked if he'd been turned into a vampire? Coogler's characterization of Sammie is so thorough as he doesn't let Remmick's myopia define him; a lesser movie would. And that's why so much has been said about this movie because it's simultaneously thoughtful, artful and highly entertaining.

  Everything positive you've read about it (and its soundtrack) is true: a real-life crowdpleaser that more than earns its reputation.

  EEPHUS

  A deliciously fizzy hangout movie that has so many odd twists of lemon; funny and wholesome but also acerbic and sad. It hits even better on rewatch, like adding new condiments to a second hotdog. This is also the kind of movie that never compromises its initial set-up no matter what, barreling forward with defiant formal fortitude. Every moment of drama, comedy, catharsis and/or poignancy are deliberately unforced. Hell, the whole premise pointedly negates any conventional inclination to root for an underdog: everyone is equal. There's no moustache-twisting villain to hate because the reckoning for this beloved diamond is in the form of—checks notes— the construction of a middle school to help reduce the commute for local children. You even get the sense that the characters almost wish they were in a movie, so that this final game would be 'worth it' for them. Throw in the ticking-clock element and all the fun is undercut by an unending tension of the narrative denying their wish fulfillment but, at the same time, it reinforces its verisimilitude.

  THE FABELMANS

  Totally knocked on my ass by how confrontational and honest this is. Spielberg, via Judd Hirsch, grabs us and tells us he has an addiction and it's one that all artists have, like an inherent defect. It's such a wild moment because it's set up like a wholesome 'old-man-gives-sage-advice-to-a-young-protegé' scene when it's more of a harsh warning by a weathered cynic. Hell, it even sort of validates a spooky scene of prophetic delusion as his Mom says she was warned by her dead Mother that something terrible was coming. I also didn't expect to be reminded of Blow Out as Spielberg uses the tools of cinema to uncover the 'conspiracy' of his Mom's apparent infidelity. Then there's that^ moment of him in the mirror showing us just how dependent he becomes on his art just like his Uncle said he would.

  Absolutely none of these and other weird, thorny elements (like the borderline Oedipal scene of Sammy filming his Mother's sensuous headlight dance, where her dress is practically translucent) could have been predicted. The experience is a kind of shock to the system that almost equips the viewer to actively crave the typically saccharine Spielberg schmaltz. He even gives a kind of explanation as to why he leans on populist romance: it's a coping response. He just...can't help himself. This kind of autobiographical criticism impressed the Hell out of me, not to mention its incredibly sly, but playful, final shot. (David Lynch also kills it as John Ford)

  KAJILLIONAIRE

  A very pretty and refreshingly earnest movie about arrested development, the allegory of the cave, unconditional love, and how vital nurturing is. As a tragicomic character study of a woman learning to live authentically after being raised to scam it operates as a kind of inverse of Red Rooms (one of the funniest frames this decade is a shot of space with the subtitle 'your brain is in your tits' floating in the stars). I also love how unpredictable it is thanks to a mostly plotless script. Evan Rachel Wood gives the best performance of her career and Richard Jenkins (always great) somehow does the same. Miranda July's usual quirk shines through and with this one, more than her other work, feels like a Wes Anderson movie with a full-blooded pulse.

  KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

  Makes me especially sore that this one is being relegated to a short blurb instead of its own individual post as it's too dense, ambitious, tragic and contradictory to merely sum up here. Wisely changed from the 'whodunnit' aspect of the book to an adamantly matter-of-fact look from within, Scorsese dissects the clogged aortas of America's poisoned heart. If I wasn't queasy I was fidgeting from the festering chills, my lip almost constantly curled upward. But this isn't misery porn, shockingly, because it's so reflective. Along the way Scorsese asks if he's committed artistic malpractice by even telling this story. And since this is a movie about complicity, evil, and the silent continuum of erasure it serves as a surprising thematic knot while also denying the audience a proper ending since there wasn't one for the Osage people; "there were no mention of the murders" being the final line of the movie just adds to the 3-hour dysphoria. Taking the time to include himself in a metatextual coda about authorship is such a bold act of self-examination that simultaneously sobered me and bewildered me.

  Soraya Roberts: "This is not a film about the Osage, but a film about settler America’s relation to the Osage, and, more largely, to the world. Specifically, it’s a film about a country’s colonialist, exploitative, violent, destructive, patriarchal subjugation of the world. This is a story of white America, as Scorsese has always been eager to tell. And just as Scorsese could not tell the Osage story, the Osage couldn’t quite tell this one."

 RRR

  Another story about the history of white supremacist imperialism but it's the diametric opposite of Killers Of The Flower Moon; where Scorsese opted for something subdued and, at times, quiet, this is pure uncut maximalist filmmaking. It's 3 hours long, highly stylized, cartoony, brutal, heart crushing, and just fucking running up and through and in every kind of eye-bugging image it can in the Dudes Rock canon. It even invites cliche lines like "just when you think it's topped itself, it does something new" because it really does that shit. It's equal parts buddy-cop action and a sprawling story about resisting against violent oppression that spans decades. I swear it takes an hour [or damn near close to it] to get to the full title card as it makes its personality known with two[!!] prologues. I'm exhausted just thinking about it and also nostalgic for this scene, that scene, etc. I stocked up on commas for this thing: all the shootouts, dance numbers, chases, wire work, and fight scenes to whet the largest appetite for action movie gluttons who are realism-intolerant. Eat up.

ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER

  This isn't just tactile entertainment, it's refreshing to see P.T. go outside of his comfort zone and make something so intentionally modern. Dismissive cowards, like his contemporary Quentin Tarantino and especially newbie Robert "No Cars Or Cell Phones" Eggers, resign themselves to the past. In turn, they reveal a lack of imagination and initiative. P.T. reworked Vineland specifically to liberate himself from the Oldhead Unc stereotype in favor of sentimental optimism about Gen Z, while his eccentricities flow undiluted. This is just as big-hearted and perverse as anything else he's made: no fear, like Tom fucking Cruise. The last act car chase (and its fallout) is some of the best filmmaking he's done in his career; in another universe we got his Mission: Impossible movie and it made $1,073,872,627 dollars. P.T.'s knack for sparking idiosyncratic characters and matching them to pitch-perfect actors remains combustible, especially in the case of Teyana Taylor as Perfidia Beverly Hills. Even with limited screentime she's one of the most striking, potent, challenging, and layered characters he's ever written. She is the endocrine system of the film; every decision anyone in the ensemble makes comes back to her. Her absence leads to the best line in the movie, where Bob tells Sensei how he doesn't know how to do Willa's hair. Just incredible stuff all-around because, while Leo is firing off in every direction, Benecio Del Toro does some of his most understated acting as he responds so affectionately, "Don't go dark on me, Bob." Sensei is the kind of role that only someone as skilled and seasoned as Del Toro could pull off because it might seem like he's underplaying it but he's just expertly riding the line so that he doesn't overplay it.

  Like Christopher McQuarrie, Ryan Coogler, Jordan Peele, and especially Chris Nolan, P.T. Anderson is striving to make blockbusters great again.

  And this is what I mean when I say surplus cuz I can barely fucking keep up; Ridley Scott isn't seeing enough movies if he's bitching that "everything is shit." Even if I agreed with him I'd have to say that he's actively contributing to the problem, thus he's a hypocrite. He really thinks Napoleon or House Of Gucci are superior to any other modern movies? Or is he just resigned to make shit? Typical old man lose-lose. Do yourself a favor and look up what Paul Thomas Anderson said about movies in 2025 and look into his contributions to Napoleon...

  I can't even finish this surplus post because there's too much to cover, there'd have to be a Part 2 or 3, so I'm nipping it in the bud now. So many movies from this decade have made the list and so many more could very likely make the list on rewatch. There are more bad movies being made but there aren't less good movies out there because of it. There are hundreds of movies per year that I miss and end up in my queue. Thus there are nearly 500+ movies I haven't seen from 2020-2025, so could I even make a blanket statement like "movies suck now" without telling on myself? If I don't engage with the material then I can't speak on its quality, that would be arrogant, near-sighted, and presumptuous of me. Plus, considering there's so much I haven't seen, that's yet to come, that means there's hundreds more. I'll agree that the American film industry is the worst it's ever been but cinema as a medium is very healthy (and young), that should be reassuring so long as one isn't dismissive or incurious. When anyone proclaims "movies suck now" but they skip every other movie that comes out, I just assume they don't like movies.

THE SURPLUS (NO ORDER)

Soft & Quiet

On Becoming A Guinea Fowl

Titane

Better Man

The Vast Of Night

Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets

Rebel Ridge

Reflection In A Dead Diamond

The Mastermind

Civil War

Sorry, Baby

A Quiet Place: Day One

Godzilla: Minus One

Catch The Fair One

Kinds Of Kindness

The Hunt

Fallen Leaves

Train Dreams

Hard Truths

Bacurau

The Killer

Tár

May December

Malignant

Decision To Leave

The Banshees Of Inisherin

The Holdovers

Marty Supreme

Challengers

Knock At The Cabin

Nickel Boys

Gretel & Hansel

Mad God

The Kid Detective

Bones And All

No Other Choice

Everything Everywhere All At Once

Presence

How To Blow Up A Pipeline

Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made

Red Rocket

Flow

i'm thinking of ending things

Shin Ultraman

The best movies of the 2020s, so far: EVIL DOES NOT EXIST

  Eddington, despite anything I enjoy about it, has a major pacing problem. Aster has so many unjustifiable—and thus unnecessary—long takes that build to dead air.

  Typically this is done to be contemplative, heighten kinetic movement, build atmosphere, build tension or suspense, or to strictly observe. I see him going for all of the above but none of it ever coalesces, especially the latter. There's not much to observe, really, so it's just a lethargic watch; it's not thrilling enough to be a thriller nor funny enough to be a comedy so all I'm left with is an experience that feels inert.

  By contrast, Evil Does Not Exist's long takes are goddamn exquisite. This is observational cinema at its most chemically pure. The use of routines—and interruptions of said routines—make for a deceptively serene watch. The pace couldn't be more disciplined and engaging, sometimes hypnotic, like watching a shimmering glacier melt. What makes for a borderline ASMR movie is broken up by its tonal shifts which are not unlike its own form of climate change. There's a point where the natural 'melting' accelerates and cracks appear, giving way to large chunks falling off of the glistening frost, disrupting the equilibrium.

  Eiko Ishibashi's score is so peculiar while also one of the prettiest albums I've heard this decade. Hamaguchi actually enlisted Ishibashi to compose the score first as he planned to shoot his movie after the fact, based on how the score sounded. Her strings over shots of snow, frozen lakes, fallen feathers, a canopy of treetops and headlights in a dark cabin give the overall experience magnificent synergy.

  Shot almost entirely with a large depth of frame so the actors are absorbed by the forest around them, arguably because the forest itself is the main character. But, as the narrative slowly closes in with the patience of a venus fly-trap, there's constant discomfort. It feels like an anti-thriller negating any conventional sense of character allegiance or structural frameworks (no chase scenes, no suspense sequences of any kind). There's a sensationally tense town hall meeting where the heat is finally at a boiling point but it's not long before it comes back down to a simmer. From there we're challenged at every turn to have a nuanced view of everything we thought we felt or will feel.

  A long driving scene (honestly, it feels like it was shot in real-time [complimentary]) allows us to see two seemingly unlikable characters in a different light and thus we have a better view of their shades. This is the exact kind of sequence that a lesser movie would otherwise not give much thought but is absolutely vital. The closest the movie ever gets to showing us any real villains is a scene orbiting the driving sequence but it lasts probably.....4 minutes before they leave the narrative entirely. Nothing of consequence happens to them because, realistically, nothing would.

  So when the extremely polarizing ending collapses the ground from under your feet, all you can do is try to desperately search for a why. Or WHYs, plural. It still has me revisiting the movie weekly, turning it over, checking for new insights. It's a confident choice, one that, even if I hated, I'd still admire for how ballsy it is (and it deserves credit for being set up multiple times throughout: it doesn't come out of nowhere). But I love it beyond that because there's so much to get out of it.

  Everything flows downhill.

The best movies of the 2020s, so far: 28 YEARS LATER

Spoilers

  My Mom told me, very bluntly, that she was dying. No, that's not why I said spoilers, Lol.

  She'd gotten a cancer diagnosis in early October 2021 and died December 3rd. She said she wanted to have a Living Funeral before she went (something that never ended up happening). But I was in classic denial. I didn't accept it. I couldn't accept it. My family and I have had rampant health problems, hospital visits, surgeries, etc. for decades. My childhood was spent basically being ⅓ bubble boy; I spent most of middle school at home or in the hospital. My Mom had been through even more: in 2006 she got cancer and survived after having the tumor removed. In 2018 she had a heart attack and survived that, too. She'd survived so much before that that we would joke that she was indestructible.

  So when the cancer came back and riddled her entire body, including her blood, I handwaved it away with "She'll be okay, it'll get worse before it gets better." She would tell me, pretty persistently, that she was dying, but I kept denying it. She'd tell me to plan for it, to brace for it, to accept it; it's happening. I'd plead with her to go to other doctors, other hospitals, to see specialists, get second or third opinions. Eventually she just went along with it, opted to comfort me instead of telling me over and over that she was a goner. She enabled me.

  I don't know if I resent her for that now or love her for it or a complicated mix of both. Probably both, to be honest. I wish I had accepted it and spent more time with her. It was in my delusion that I didn't always prioritize visits with her because, again, she's not going anywhere right??

  One morning I woke up for work and I'd had 5 missed calls from my Stepdad and a voicemail of him telling me she was gone. I called him and asked what room she had been put in at the hospital; still in denial. I was screaming and panicking and shaking my head uncontrollably. I hung up on him, called him back, kept saying "but she said she was going to go to a specialist, she was going to get better."

  I think we simultaneously know our parents are going to die someday but also think it's not going to happen anytime soon. I didn't properly prepare for it. It didn't fit into my plan. Hell, I still catch myself in disbelief; I've grieved her and I've accepted it but I'll never be used to it.

  So when 28 Years Later gets to the last act where Isla is diagnosed, Spike has a moment of teary denial, Dr. Kelson kills her with morphine and Spike is presented with her skull: I'd never felt more vulnerable in a theater.

  When Dr. Kelson tells Spike to "pick a spot for her," I closed my eyes, and when he finished it off with "best one of all," I joked to a friend of mine "Haha...I need to leave." Watching Spike hold it in disbelief and then climbing up the tower, kissing it, placing it on top and facing her toward the sun...fuck. And I'm not just susceptible to the Dead Mom trope, it has to be executed well (lol, remember The Flash?) so know that I'm not caving to the trap of relatability. Genuinely, with no hyperbole: this is one of the most profound depictions of death I've ever experienced in media.

  ...but it's also one of the most morbid? It's not far off from keeping or spreading one's ashes, which is what we did for my Mom. But...to actually hold her skull? It reminds me of the first time I learned that Ed Gein was, apparently, a really good babysitter? No joke: he was really good with kids and was frequently asked to babysit. Now imagine if he was your grief counselor: Dr. Kelson is kinda like that. But in the Post-post Apocalypse where death is treated coldly and only referenced in terms of spectacle or warning, Dr. Kelson's methods are the more humane approach.

  The way Boyle and Garland constantly juxtapose and dichotomize the infected from the uninfected is so unexpectedly thoughtful, in a movie that's bursting with surprises. The score itself is so odd it's kind of unbelievable. Sometimes it's so on the money and really soars while other times it's the complete opposite of what a scene calls for, yet...Boyle makes it work no matter what. The way Promised Land plays over the opening is so fucking inspired. Or the absolutely magnificent Causeway making the big chase scene feel gargantuan; it's such a beautiful track that it feels deceptive considering the horror on screen. Then there's the use of BOOTS or the end track, Pals, sending us off with tense, threatening uncertainty.

  That extends to Boyle's editing, with how borderline glitchy it is but also, again, very thoughtful. There's a great scene where Isla talks about losing track of time around The Angel Of The North statue when she was a child because her Father told her that statues last for hundreds, even thousands of years. And now, with her brain cancer, she is lost to time again, regressing and calling Spike "Dad," asking him how far into the future they've fallen. Boyle then cuts to a time-lapse of the statue as the clouds and their shadows zip past the landscape; the whole movie is full of shit like that (not to mention Spike's Dad saying the infected "Have no brain so they've got no soul," a uniquely callous thing to say while his wife's brain is dwindling from cancer).

  I don't have the time nor inclination to cover just how formally bold this movie is. Every image is memorable: every kinetic movement, every vista, every crunchy iPhone pixel being blown up to give us some of the brightest color I've seen in a major release. Ugh. It's overwhelming how good this movie looks and how fun it is to just experience Boyle's hyperactive imagination; he shot this movie like he had a gun to his head and the threat of death if he did anything boring. At no point was he ever close to death. One of those life-saving choices was mounting a Go-Pro shot on one of the infected's back and when it cuts to a reverse shot, it's revealed that this was the POV of a crow picking at the infected. Just................

  And the ending, my God! This is where Boyle shows us that he was the one holding the gun because only a madman would make something like this, with Sony's money, no less.

  For about 2973636 reasons: one of the most unforgettable movies of this decade and it's not even close.

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

   Anora, my most anticipated movie of last year, turned out to be one of the most disappointing movies of the decade. I was so sucked in for the first third but I kept floating further and further from the screen. So much potential is gradually sanded down, I kept having to refocus. It's not just baffling for its Oscars sweep but because Sean Baker showed so much promise before this; Florida Project is good, Red Rocket is excellent and neither have any of Anora's faults. Almost everything about this movie is aggravating: the photography is ugly, the editing is tedious, the story isn't engaging, the characters are annoying and uninteresting, the tone...ugh, the tone, is the most egregious offender.

  It's like navigating the warm spots of piss in a pool as his first big comedic sequence is wildly out of touch. There's a detachment between what his titular character is going through and what he wants us to feel: we might know there's no danger for her, thus it's [meant to be] funny watching these goons bumble around, but she doesn't know that. To her, she might be killed or raped, even begging them not to tie her up...and Baker wants us to laugh during this. It's truly bizarre to see a filmmaker be so out of touch with his own material. This doesn't feel like Anora's movie, she's an afterthought, which is why her only moment of true characterization is shown at the tail-end of this story. Baker's virtue-signaling 'support' for sex workers under the guise of being "non-judgmental" flattens Anora. No, it's not a cautionary tale about sex work, but it's not discerning in any other way whatsoever.

  Everything negative I said about Anora is flipped for Zola: I couldn't get enough. It could have been an hour longer and you wouldn't read a single complaint from me.

  Based on a Twitter thread written by a stripper, A'Ziah 'Zola' King, Zola is a period piece that captures what it feels like to be chronically online: during a montage of penises one especially thick cock is given a flashing heart react. When we're updated on the time it looks like an iPhone lock-screen. Screenshots are taken of passing billboards. Certain lines are punctuated by the Twitter notification chirp. And during a standoff when tension starts to escalate Zola disassociates to a kind of undulating screensaver.

  Shot with glorious 16mm and expertly lit, sharply edited with a firm command of tone from the jump, Janicza Bravo expertly establishes—and follows through—with this being Zola's story. And, since this is Zola's story, there's plenty judgment thrown around; Her freeze-frame observations or asides about what's happening, what happens off-screen or what will happen never lose pop. Everyone around her range from repugnant to pitiful but they're never not engaging and funny. I need to reiterate how funny it is because so much of it has me screaming every time I revisit it. Bravo uses the color of piss (and how people piss) as character exposition - no one is working on her level of sleaze.

  There's a sequence where we see Zola dance and it's evident that she's not only good at what she does but she enjoys it. It's a sexy performance but it's also just downright gorgeous, the longer it goes on the more hypnotic it gets. After all this build-up of eroticism and beauty it ends with an old redneck giving her a tip and earnestly telling her she "looks a whole lot like Whoopi Goldberg." The way Taylour Paige plays Zola processing this comment, while slowly gyrating her crotch, is one of the funniest things I've ever seen.

  So many moments play out like that: Bravo will build a scene only to knock it down with a well-timed punchline. The amount of times this movie pulled the rug out had me constantly on my ass, perpetually amused. When it suddenly switches focus to 'STEFANI,' as she hijacks and retitles the movie, I was in the clouds the way I blasted off with laughter. It even took me a while to come down, too, with how it just kept going. Riley Keough's performance is one of her more underappreciated turns. Stefani's blaccent and, more importantly, the one moment she drops it, is so fucking spot-on but so easily could be a bland caricature. She makes Stefani a fully realized, layered human being instead of just a mockery: she, too, is giving a performance.

  Speaking of performances and accents: Colman Domingo's X, with his aggressive paranoia, is probably the funniest character... but also the scariest. He is the epitome of this movie's tonal tightrope and it's shocking how well Bravo finds balance. His accent switch-up is funny until he coldly switches back and takes Zola's defiant power away, his out-of-focus mouth dominating the frame. Bravo knows how and when to empower Zola but also to show us realistic disempowerment.

   Two POV shots show us just how isolated she feels: one is of a massive Confederate flag casually waving and the other is a black man being brutalized by cops. There's also a moment by the pool where X grabs her face and threatens her. One of the staff goes to step in but reluctantly leaves and we never see him again. When she's asked why she wasn't looking out for Stefani (a job forced on her) she asks "Who's looking out for me?" Zola is trapped here but she never loses her agency in the story.

  The same can't be said for Derrek and Stefani: everything about them is about ownership, even the way they express 'love'. She'll point to her heart and ask "Whose is this?" and he'll answer "Mine," then she'll do vice-versa to his heart, "Whose is that?" and, of course, he says "Yours."

  This happens every time he has a meltdown about her doing sex work and lying about it; he vows to take care of her so she doesn't have to keep doing this. What Derrek doesn't realize is that he, too, wanted to pimp himself out: to Vine and YouTube. The whole movie he's watching videos on his phone of people hurting themselves on a loop and declaring "I'mma make movies like this someday," missing the irony that he'll be exploiting his body to keep Stefani from exploiting hers. It's not until the ending where X proudly proclaims he owns every part of Stefani—her heart, her tits, her ass, and her face—that Derrek realizes, on some level, X owns him too. So he does what he's been watching on his phone: he hurts himself. And that's where it ends.

  For those saying it lacks an ending, I mean, objectively I can't disagree, but subjectively: not only does it end on a fitting thematic note, it ends where the Twitter thread ended, no more no less. If you want any more than that then you, like the entitled people on this insane road trip, think Zola owes you something.

  She doesn't.

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 movies of the 2020s, so far: I SAW THE TV GLOW

  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.

  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. 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. 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.

  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.

  Thus the only thing Nash 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 that long but time moves differently when you're being 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 movies 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 without falling into a moral quandary; 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 fascist propaganda films, so Glazer abandons every cinematic rule possible. This isn't a movie that's 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's being said 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.

  It never tells you what's going on, it just plays on what you already know and brought with you. 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.

  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, thus compromising his intention, 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 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.