Ghost World (2001)

Director: Terry Zwigoff

Cast: Thora Birch, Scarlett Johansson, Brad Renfro, Illeana Douglas

Have I Seen It Before: In nearly 1,100 reviews, I’ve expressed some degree of uncertainty as to whether or not I’ve seen some films before. Half-remembered cable viewings in the 90s. Endless series that become more forgettable the more patience you have for them. The stray movie you have the clearest of memories seeing in the past, and the movie you watch now is completely different than what you remembered.

This one is a little different. I’ve never been less sure I’ve seen a movie before. I remember so clearly being told by someone so many times around 2005 that I absolutely had to sit down and watch the movie. I probably would have relented, but I’m not entirely sure I did. It’s entirely possible that I just refused to watch any film that I hadn’t already come to under my own power.

Golly, knowing me in the mid-2000s must have been something of a chore.

Did I Like It: Am I the only person that views this as something of a spiritual sequel to High Fidelity (2000)*? You look at the semi-happy ending of that earlier work for Rob Gordon feels like it could never stick. He might be more able to be interest in the happiness of his partners, but is he really changed? Add another fifteen years to this guy’s life, is he not more like Seymour (Steve Buscemi) here? The store is gone, but he is still peddling 78s out of his garage, and he’s making every unhealthy decision about his love life for which he could reach?

Maybe if the film had been pitched to me like that all those years ago, I’d be a little more certain.

*Despite being completely unrelated.

Jurassic World Rebirth (2025)

Director: Gareth Edwards

Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, Jonathan Bailey, Rupert Friend

Have I Seen it Before: Nope. Missed it in the theater.

Had a sense that there was probably a reason for that.

Did I Like It: Sometimes a movie will be helpful and give you its whole mission statement in the first line of spoken dialogue. It can be as simple as “Anything Goes” — Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), or as profound as “What came first, the music or the misery?” High Fidelity (2000). It can be in the high-class, as in bringing us into the mystery by whispering “Rosebud” Citizen Kane (1941), or as mass-market entertainment as when Lor San Tekka (Max von Sydow) opens Star Wars - Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015) with “This will begin to make things right.” It doesn’t even have to accomplish the goal set forth, they’re just calling the shot before it’s taken.

So it’s telling that the first line of this, the seventh entry in the Jurassic series, that a wear worker of inGen mutters to one of their hapless colleagues, “How many more times are we going to have to do this?”

That’ll pretty much tell you everything you need to know about the film. It feels not only perfunctory, it seems disinterested in even going through the motions for the sake of everyone else. It may be a tall order to get the movie-going audience excited about dinosaurs walking the earth, but depicting a world that is as bored of this series as we are isn’t the way to accomplish that lofty goal. It may sufficiently divorce itself from what preceded—there is one references to Alan Grant, blissfully no references to whoever Chris Pratt’s character was, and only one scene with raptors—but the movie not only can’t justify its own existence, it refuses to even reckon with the issue.

We really don’t need another Jurassic movie, and now that Amblin has finally scraped the final elements of Michael Crichton’s original novel to adapt (rafting, anyone?) maybe we can all move on.

But then, it made plenty of money in an age where other seemingly sure bets can’t find the fairway. This may be the Jurassic World that we’re actually looking at.

Asteroid City (2023)

Director: Wes Anderson

Cast: Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Jeffrey Wright

Have I Seen it Before: Nope.

Did I Like It: Anderson’s movies remain triumphs of immaculate art direction. The juxtaposition between the televised examination of the play we never quite see and the delightful weirdness surrounding the alien which visits them both is a delight. There are plenty of absurd laughs to be had, and he has really tapped into grief in a way that he hasn’t really managed to tap into since The Royal Tenenbaums (2001). So, before I get into the large meat of this interview, please know that I enjoyed the film immensely. It’s worth catch, and worth catching in the theater, especially as it looks like it will show up on streaming by the time I finish typing this review.

And yet, for every element in his work that is just as strong as it ever was, I wonder if something hasn’t quite been lost over the years. His early films, especially Bottle Rocket (1996), and the aforementioned Tenenbaums had a certain quality about them as if Anderson were convinced the powers that be would take away his ability to make movies. Now there is a serenity to his films which only servers to keep me at an (admittedly negligible distance. The early films had the vibrant energy of a someone not sure if they were going to get away with what they wanted to do. Maybe he is just in a bit of a slump on this front, and I may be having a reaction to this and The French Dispatch (2021). Maybe as Anderson has aged and matured as an artist, it is unreasonable to expect him to hold on to that rebellious spirit.

Maybe he just needs to work with Owen Wilson again. I’m honestly not sure why they don’t write together anymore. And I really don't know why he isn’t in this film at all. Honestly, as I type this, that may be my only real complaint.