Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

Director: Michel Gondry

Cast: Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Kirsten Dunst, Mark Ruffalo

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. It felt like in the mid-aughts it was not obligatory to have seen it, but to have seen it ten or twelve times…

But then again, I’ll be the first one to admit that my mid-aughts were a little bit different than others.

Did I Like It: It was a fascinating watching the movie after having not seen it for many years. The flow of the plot had long since escaped my memory, but there were moments that have been living rent free in my head all this time.

Never has there been a movie where that strange, chiaroscuro quality to memory is more apropriate. The film is still funny, eccentric, and well acted and observed. But, back in those days when the film first came out, the question the film brings up is whether or not erasing pain erases the joy associated with, but as an older man I tend to think about it all in another way:

Can we ever really forget anything? I’ve met some people who would insist that they have and have put on a pretty good show of keeping up that claim, but I wonder. I guess I also wonder if, with a little time, the film’s conceit of those little moments that can vascilate wildly between being fond or painful memories have no hope of surviving. Joel (Carrey) and Clementine (Winslet) may not remember any of the particulars of why they grew to resent one another, but it’s not like removing those memories made them any less miserable. I too have probably lost more details of pain—to say nothing of getting completely wrong still more details—than I am probably aware of. There are still times I view as painful, and times I view fondly. They’ve even changed hands a few times back and forth.

Yes, indeed. Memory is a funny thing.

Hot Fuzz (2007)

Director: Edgar Wright

Cast: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Jim Broadbent, Timothy Dalton

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure.

Did I Like It: I’ve always thought it was a fair bit less than Shaun of the Dead (2004), but that may be too quick of a judgment. For one thing, Timothy Dalton is in the movie, and I’ve long since stopped pretending that every movie he appears in isn’t great. Doubly so for any film in which (spoiler) he’s the bad guy. Yep, I’m counting both The Rocketeer (1991) and the 2009 Doctor Who Christmas special.

Maybe the film grew on me after I finally saw The Wicker Man (1973), because as much as this film owes a debt to movies like Point Blank (1991) and Bad Boys II (2003), it’s entire structure owes far more to that singularly British horror film. I think it has far more to do with the fact that it becomes far more resonant with American audiences not because it plays with the fundamental imagery and impulses of the Western, but more that the deep, evil at the core of Sandford is about preserving some kind of image that the Chamber of Commerce has for the town. It’s going to be a long, long time before anyone uses the syntax “Make (blank Great Again” and any American evolved beyond single-cells doesn’t laugh with derision. Doesn’t matter if the film pre-dates the dark times by a decade.

The most likely, answer, however, is that I really don’t want to make the kind of comparisons that rank trilogies—even loose ones—and series. Just because Shaun caught everyone by surprise, doesn't mean that Hot Fuzz is less. It still has pop culture awareness to spare, while still offering a dynamic enough story, the hallmark of Wright. It still has pitch-perfect performances by both Pegg and Frost. There’s nothing more one should try to expect from a film.

The Testament of Ann Lee (2025)

Director: Mona Fastvold

Cast: Amanda Seyfried, Thomasin McKenzie, Lewis Pullman, Stacy Martin

Have I Seen it Before: Never.

Did I Like It: This is going to sound like I am damning with faint praise, but if I just happened to be a Shaker, this would quite obviously have been the best film ever made.

And yet, I am not. So it’s going to have to be something other than that.

I’m always a little leery of a pointedly religious film. A sermon is one thing. A film is another. When a sermon is working at its best, it has to tell us something. When a film is working at its best, it has to show us something. The two are at odds with one another.

Here, we are clearly shown something, and the moments where Mother Ann (Seyfried) experiences religious ecstasy are exquisitely produced. I don’t for one moment doubt Seyfried’s performance.

And yet, I’m left to wonder. Are we supposed to feel as Shakers do when the film is unfurling before our eyes? I don’t think I’m any more interested in a life of celibacy after having watched the film than I was before seeing it. I can’t help but wonder if the way the Shakers… er, shake… is nothing more than theater trying to paper over oceans of doubt. Is Ann deluded for thinking that she is the second coming? Are the Shakers doomed* as an ongoing concern if they’re dead-set on not making any new Shakers? Are all religious movements merely byproducts of their charismatic leader’s hangups and trauma**?

If I’m think about these films, has the film really worked its magic on me? Perhaps an even better question is: Is its magic even meant for me?

*Stick around for the end credits. They are, indeed, doomed.

*I mean, probably.

Jason X (2001)

Director: James Isaac

Cast: Kane Hodder, Lexa Doig, Lisa Ryder, Chuck Campbell

Have I Seen it Before: I cite this movie whenever I feel the urge to bend over backwards to defend the Friday the 13th series. Many years ago, I spent a Tuesday at a second-run theater* seeing as many movies as linear time and a handful of quarters would allow me. I remember—just with that scene in the K-Mart holodeck—thinking that I got exactly 25 cents worth of entertainment out of the film.

Did I Like It: Well, flashforward 25 years, and I spent a few dollars for a Apple TV copy of the film—along with every other film in the series—and I’m prepared to say that I got taken.

Everything about this film is cheap, and never seems to want to be anything else. The sets are cheap, both of Jason’s (Hodder, contributing his swan song in the role) costumes are cheap, the acting is terrible**—even for a slasher film, and somebody somewhere decided that overlaying openign credits over bad CGI of the innards of an eye was the way to open a film. Some films immitate those that worked quite well in their genre. Unfortunately, a copy of copies is all we have here.

This isn’t reveltory. Anyone going into a film featuring Jason Voorhees ought to be expecting a cheap affair***. They’ve been doing cheap since the original, but even the things the series did well are offered with a healthy dollop of indifference. Harry Manfredini was often able to produce a reasonable facsimile of Bernard Hermann, but left here to try and create a xerox copy of a Jerry Goldsmith or James Horner score, he’s lost at sea.

*Kids, ask your parents.

**No, a cameo from David Cronenberg does not help matters.

***Anyone genuinely excited about the prospect might need a team of therapists to tag in full-time.

A Private Life (2025)

Director: Rebecca Ziotowski

Cast: Jodie Foster, Daniel Auteuil, Virginie Efira, Mathieu Amalric

Have I Seen it Before: Never.

Did I Like It: The movie could have been about almost anything, with the promises that poster is making, and I would have been on board. Foster is incapable of picking a worthless film, and even less constitutionally able to give a bad performance in a movie that maybe doesn’t qutie rank among her best.

You all see where I’m going with this one?

There’s an inconsistency at play here, and it can be just as singularly tied to that poster. We’re meant to believe that this is going to be an exceeding french romp—a cosy mystery*, even—with Jodie Foster running around outsmarting clever miscrients, using only card catalogs as her weapon.

I’m happy to report that Jodie Foster is indeed, in the film, and she is indeed quite good in it. Also, there is a scene that features a card catalog, and there is even an undercurrent throughout the film where Foster’s character, Lillian Steiner, is resolutely just behind the times when it comes to the media with which she records and organizes information, but it’s hardly a movie about card catalogs. It probably would be too much to hope for to have Foster wielding other antiques, especially a microfiche reader, as she was the star of one of the great microfiche reader sequences in all of moviedom in The Silence of the Lambs (1991).

This might all be easily, if even reflexively, forgiven. It’s unfair to judge any movie by its poster—except for, perhaps, The Rocketeer (1991)—but the mystery proffered leaves a bit to be desired. We spend long stretches of the film confident that something unpleasant is goin on, veer slightly as things move to the third act that Steiner is perhaps crazier than she lets on, all coalescing into an anti-climax.

*A term I am obliged to loath.

Driven (2018)

Director: Nick Hamm

Cast: Jason Sudeikis, Lee Pace, Judy Greer, Michael Cudlitz

Have I Seen it Before: Never. In one of my Apple TV movie buying sprees, this one came across my radar, and I was probably more than a little helpless against its pitch.

Did I Like It: This is easily one of the top 4 films ever releaased that relied upon the Delorean Motor Car for a vital part of its plot.

Har. Har. Har.

It’s a reasonably entertaining deep dive into a story that—over forty years later—is even a bit of a one-line footnote in the making of time machines of note, but it isn’t reaching for much more than that. Sudekis is playing a slightly scuzzier version of his Ted Lasso personae, and Lee Pace is more than a little bit playing his character from Halt and Catch Fire, except with a grey wig. It’s a semi-amusing little trifle that you enjoy while wtching, but have no trouble understanding why it has become mostly forgotten in the years since.

I’m a little surprised that a film so dependent on the car with the gull-wing door, we never see one throughout the vast majority of of the runtime. Even John Delorean (Pace) himself is never seen driving one, as if he knew something we all expected way back when. Only at the end do we see someone—Sudekis, in one of the film’s less likely pontifications on what we know about the DeLorean sting operation—behind the wheel of the DMC-12, and even then it is played for something of joke, driving home the point that the car never really worked that well. Had this film somehow come before those other films that made the car famous, Zemeckis and Co. might have opted for some other totem for their time travel.

Come to think of it, the fact that this, a Universal production, managed to avoid any references to those other films is something of a marvel of restraint.

And now that I’ve gone this whole review without bringing it up, all I want to do is watch those three.

Big (1988)

Director: Penny Marshall

Cast: Tom Hanks, Elizabeth Perkins, Robert Loggia, John Heard

Have I Seen it Before: If I had to rank the top 10 VHS tapes played in my house in the years before DVD broadened all of our cinematic horizons, I’m reasonably sure this one would make the list.

Did I Like It: It’s a charmed comedy that can play just as well when I was kid than when I was middle-aged adult. The thrill of the fantasy of waking up one morning and all of the restrictions of childhood are gone might have terrified some, but it thrilled me. I was the opposite of Peter Pan, and so any world where my life had to suddenly halt in favor of a supposedly immediate need to take out the trash, or—God forbid—a world where I could be grounded was an enticing one indeed.

Now, the thought of living a world where room and board are a foregone conclusion, where a pittance of a paycheck can suddenly become a fortune, and all the communication you need with the outside world is a walkie talkie and somebody with a corresponding handset just next door does have a certain simplicity to it.

Is that the secret to the film’s longjevity? Probably, it’s hard to discount the profound well-cast Hanks in the title role. Legend has it that Robert De Niro was set to play Josh Baskin, but backed out at the last moment. That’s a pretty great endorsement for De Niro’s sense of what ought to work and what has no right working whatsoever. While David Moscow—the young Josh—might be just a hair more believable as an outer-borough kid that will eventually become De Niro, there are few—if any—actors at that point in time who would have been better suited than Hanks to play a twelve-year-old trapped in the body of an adult.

A Mighty Wind (2003)

Director: Christopher Guest

Cast: Catherine O’Hara, Eugene Levy, Harry Shearer, Michael McKean

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. I’m not sure I’ve ever mentioned this in these reviews, but my parents were local folk musicians growing up. I was well into my twenties before I realized most families didn’t generate dulcimer albums in the 90s. So, of all Guest’s movies, this one probably hits closer to home than most.

Did I Like It: No review of the film in the early months of 2026 would be complete without mentioning Catherine O’Hara. I spent a lot of my review for Home Alone (1990) singing the praises of her career in total, but it’s hard not to watch this film specifically and be blown away  by her strengths as a dramatic actor. There are laughs-a-plenty with the New Main Street Singers and the organizaers of the concert, that she and Levy are allowed to exist in a sad love story that has already ended by the time we meet the characters. And before you think that the end (of the rainbow, if you will) is a better place for either Mitch (Levy) or Mickey (O’Hara), hear O’Hara’s plaintive wail, singing for her new husband’s (Jim Piddock) catheter company.

Even though it is only just over twenty years old now, there are moments that feel like they might not threaten to age unfortunately. If you read the final moment with Marta Shubb (Shearer) as “Oh, this person is a transgender woman. That, in and of itself is objectively hilarious.” It becomes a low-level Ace Ventura moment and might very well ruin whatever other pathos and actually good music the film has to offer. I tend to take it not on that front, but as a genuine human moment. Marta was there all along, and she’s just as a much of a member of the Folksman as she ever was. Maybe it’s not throoughly earned by the movie that preceded it*…

But at least it isn’t Ace Ventura.

*Is interest in skin care an indicator of being transgender? I’m honestly asking.

No Other Choice (2025)

Director: Park Chan-wook

Cast: Lee Byung-hun, Son Ye-jin, Park Hee-soon, Lee Sung-min

Have I Seen it Before: Never.

Did I Like It: I’ve been frozen for a day or so regarding writing this review, because I feel like it deserves a fair bit more than saying this would have been a heck of a way for the fifth season of The Office to go.

It’s more incisive than that, although that may be the larger sum of my letterboxd review.

It’s truly fascinating how noir (and I would argue that this is at the very least neo-noir) translates to different cutlures. Had this story been told in America* it feels like Yoo Man-su (Lee) would never be able to keep far enough ahead of his schemes to not get caught in the end. Americans always get caught. Just ask William H. Macy. Lora had even mentioned that she wondered why he just didn’t team up with his targets to form a new competitior that could be the solution to all of their problems. If there ever was an American resolution ot the plot, that is it.

Instead, the film’s bleak heart only leads to something of a happy ending, which for my money becomes only darker with the realization that these people are going to have to likely live a long time with the knowledge of what they’ve done. Is that a worse punishment than imprisonment? Maybe. Probably. But even living with guilt would have been far easier than having to continue living in a world that has no use for your skills.

Maybe that’s the reason I’m having a hard time focusing in on this review: It seems like all of these characters would have been able to get better solutions to their problems by realizing that they could all get jobs in other fields. For an entertaining, thought-provoking, well-made fim, that kept taking me out of the whole affair.

Honestly, people. It’s possible to make a living. It isn’t always possible to make a living doing what you want to do.

*It is, indeed, based on an American novel by Donald Westlake, and now I’m legitimately interested to see how the concept would work out in the context of an airport paperback.

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.

Home Alone (1990)

Director: Chris Columbus

Cast: Macaulay Culkin, Joe Pesci, Daniel Stern, Catherine O’Hara

Have I Seen It Before: Oh, sure. I’m six years old in 1990, it would have been a marvel of avoidance—or a set of parents far more concerned about cartoonish violence than the ones I had—to somehow get to my 40s without having seen it probably half a dozen times.

Did I Like It: I’d be remiss to start this review without a word about Catherine O’Hara. That’d be the big reason why the review gets written now, as she passed away on Friday. Shee could play the imminently believable Kate McCallister here and seamlessly switch gears in the span of just a few years between the hateful/delightful Delia Deetz in Beetlejuice (1988), Sally the Ragdoll in The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) and spend most of the rest of the next decade regularly being the best thing in a series of Christopher Guest movies where there were plenty of candidates for the MVP. I don’t say this lightly, but: She shared and was ultimately the heir to Madeline Kahn’s reign as the livewire in whatever movie she appeared. Now that they are both gone, I can’t think of talent that reaches anywhere close.

Yeah. Pretty safe bet that a review of A Mighty Wind is coming pretty quick.

But let’s try and make this review about something this movie offers that doesn’t get talked about all that much. There’ve been a dozen times when I seriously gave consideration to adding a field in the early matter detailing the credited screenwriter. One can make all the arguments about the auteur theory they can, and there are plenty of films where those arguments are unassailable, but I think the real reason I didn’t include the field is the prospect of going back to all of the previously written reviews and having to add that info. This film does feel of a piece with other Chris Columbus films, but that may be in no small part because this film was such a success that studios continued to hire him with the hope that he would bring some of Home Alone to those subsequent films. But we really need to talk about John Hughes’ work here. From all angles, this is obviously a family comedy, but it has the seemingly breezy, complicated plotting of the best thrillers. One can see the raw material for Kevin’s (Culkin, with enough charisma to spare that one never questions why they built a movie around him) war on crime all around the house, but the moments that drift in during act one that make the conceit work are unfurled so as not to make the viewer aware that they are seeing a plot unfold, but that Christmas is chaotic and anything can happen. Definitely, Hughes’ screenwriting work is not given enough credit here.

Dog Day Afternoon (1975)

Director: Sidney Lumet

Cast: Al Pacino, John Cazale, James Broderick, Charles During

Have I Seen It Before: Oh, sure. I’m almost embarrassed to admit it, but it’s been so long since I saw it, that some where in the back of my head I thought Pacino and Cazale played lovers in the film. How did I misremember the final act so thoroughly?

Did I Like It: I’ll go a little beyond the question of just liking it—Cazale is in the film, ergo it’s a classic, and your cinematic education is likely incomplete until you’ve seen it. It’s a perfect picture of the collective American psychosis decades before it ever took hold of us all. The irretrievable fusion of rationalization and desperation. Violence as heroism. Masculinity never quite being what it appears on the surface. The media as a willing accomplice for… well, whoever is willing to use them at the moment. There is nothing about the story of Sonny (Pacino) and Sal (Cazale) that couldn’t happen today, other than the fact that I don’t think the FBI would take so much pains to not put down a hostage situation over fourteen hours.

So many people I talk to blanche at the idea of classic movies. I even had a friend who proclaimed that he never watches movies released before he was born. After they brought me back to consciousness, I eventually got to the realization that people like me might oversell such cinematic staples*, so let me try to make this a little more attractive to you:

It seems like it’s the kind of drama that people in the 70s used to keep themselves in a state of perpetual depression. Or maybe it’s a thriller. Stories about bank robberies are often thrillers.

It’s really a comedy. Pacino even says as much. Dramas usually end in catharsis: This doesn’t. Thrillers—especially the ones about bank robberies—are about plans that go wrong. This is about three guys with no plan, and their scheme almost works.

*I refer you to the top of the last paragraph.

Tomorrowland (2015)

Director: Brad Bird

Cast: George Clooney, Hugh Laurie, Britt Robertson, Raffey Cassidy

Have I Seen It Before: I think it might have indeed been the last film I ever saw in 35mm outside of the Circle. There was definitely some grain there, and some cigarette holes.

I’ll admit that it might have been that the second-run theater* was really having some trouble with its digital projection.

Did I Like It: I’m kind of heartened to re-visit the film, if I’m being honest. It’s total failure means that I can sit, enjoy the film for what it is, have my opinions about it, and not have to engage in some kind of half-assed tribalism in the internet about it, and most importantly, I don’t have to sit through half a dozen sequels that have no rationale for existing beyond the fact that it’s been a few years since the last time we had a Tomorrowland film, and George Clooney would like to buy a new villa**.

That being said, I think there are some real reasons the film failed. It wants to have lofty ideas*** but only manages to put together a tame adventure story that pretty much ends exactly where you would think it was going as you’re watching the film’s first few minutes. Trying to grab the world’s problems with both hands is noble, sure, but if the last ten years have taught us anything****, its that focusing on what you think are the world’s problems to the exception of everything else tends to create new problems.

*Kids, ask your parents.

**I may still be working through some issues leftover from recently watching the Pirates of the Caribbean. Come to think of it, what other possible explanation would there be ofr making a point like that?

***If we broaden the definition of “lofty ideas” to include the gentlest possible version of Ayn Rand-ian self-absorption possible.

****Fairly confident we haven’t learned anything; call me an optimist.

This is 40 (2012)

Director: Judd Apatow

Cast: Paul Rudd, Leslie Mann, John Lithgow, Megan Fox

Have I Seen It Before: Nope.

Did I Like It: I’m not sure why I waited until I was 41 (or 41 1/2, technically, and even more technically eight hands and an extra finger and a thumb) to watch this one, but it seemed like there was something sort of ominous and defeatist about watching it in my thirties.

And that feeling was probably unwarranted. There are things about reaching your forties that are unavoidable, and most of them aren’t even that bad. I think middle age is probably mostly something of a cakewalk, as long as one doesn’t burn through money at a rate that might otherwise cause someone to become a ward of the state. If you’re like Pete (Rudd) and Debbie (Mann), the early portions of that fifth decade are a rapidly combusting race to becoming their own fathers (Lithgow, and Albert Brooks). If Apatow makes good on his threats and some of use feel compelled to sit through a This is 50, I’m assuming they’re going to have to mainain emotional distance and borrow money from Maude and Iris.

There’s no way to view the comedy as glutted in its runtime can be consistently satisfying. Write it up to too much praise over a short amount of time for Apatow, and so we’re subjected to a two-hour plus home movie. It’s occasionally funny, because it is made by funny people. But that doesn’t make a great comedy. A great comedy obscures the author to become something a little more in service of a story, and a little more in service of engendering the sympathy of the audience.

And, above all, it needs to be a lot funnier. Some chuckles over two-plus hours? Your average is way, way down.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017)

Director: Joachim Rønning, Espen Sandberg

Cast: Johnny Depp, Javier Bardem, Brenton Thwaites, Geoffrey Rush

Have I Seen it Before: Maybe, probably? I have a vague inkling that I saw Bardem’s character before, but I may have just seen an ad at some point during the initial film’s release.

Did I Like It: I’m more than a little stuck trying to come up with at least 300 words more to say about this series. The <first film> surprised everyone. It did this largely by being made despite the studios seemingly better judgment and actually making a simple action movie that was mostly about a lunatic pirate who was willing to do absolutely anything to get his ship back.

Three more movies ensued, and the Mouse House—as they can occasionally do—gave us more of what they thought worked. More byzantine plots, more water-logged monsters, and more and more special effects.

This film shaped up to be something of a course correction from the previous sequels, with Jack Sparrow (Depp) back in the position of an underdog pirate captain with no ship to captain. That gets us through half an hour, during which we have a fairly fun action set piece involving Sparrow and his crew largely failing at a bank robbery. Then we are lost in a sea (pun not intended, but I accept the responsibility for it) of cascading plot developments, to the point where the boredom of the previous sequels are back with a vengeance.

We’re now nearly ten years since this film, and the entire time we’ve been living under the threat of one more entry. Could you even bear to look at Sparrow in his 60s* trying to swagger his way through a laundry list of “We need to go get the item from the place!” lines?

Yeah, me neither.

*No worries there, Disney is plenty willing to de-age him, as evidenced here.

Office Space (1999)

Director: Mike Judge

Cast: Ron Livingston, Jennifer Aniston, Stephen Root, Gary Cole

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. We all had a good laugh when I started the day job that still drags on 40 hours per week and every cubicle had a brand new red Swingline stapler.

I’m not sure if everyone got the joke at hand…

Did I Like It: As with any cult comedy—and Mike Judge is certainly hit the target twice on that with this and Idiocracy (2006)—it’s the lines people tend to remember. You took my stapler. O face. That’d be great. TPS reports. Even silent moments live in the collective consciousness, like the scene where our heroes exact their righteous vengeance on the fax machine* that had so thoroughly stymied their days.

What we don’t really talk about is how insanely relatable not only the drudgeries of life at Initech are—regardless of whatever field you may have conned into pretending to give you a living wage. Whatever problems I—and, from what I understand, Judge himself—has with the too-tidy ending, there is something profound in the film’s meditation on how not only most people don’t like their jobs, but a job is fundamentally unreliable as a source of any kind of real happiness.

I kind of wish I had internalized that lesson before the proverbial they handed me my own red stapler way back when. Might have made the last fifteen or so years a little easier to swallow. At least I think I’ve worked out what does work about life for what may end up being the next fifteen.

*Because killing Lumbergh (Cole) would have been a lot harder to slink out of in the third act with only a positive attitude and a deus ex machina to guide them.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011)

Director: Rob Marshall

Cast: Johnny Depp, Penélope Cruz, Ian McShane, Geoffrey Rush

Have I Seen it Before: Yes. I’m almost sure I did. I have a fairly distinct memory of watching Depp escape from London. Lora and I talked about it, and although the memory is dim, we were together and almost had to have gone and seen it.

Did I Like It: Remember when I said, in my review of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (2007) that, at the very least, I could always attach myself to the fact that Geoffrey Rush always seem to enjoy being in these movies.

So much for that. Barbosa gets his moments as the film ramps up to its conclusions where he can shed off the inexplicable obedience to the crown, where glimmers of fun start to come back up again—it’s as close as any character gets to having a character arc—but they are diminished indeed.

Beyond that, the franchise feels supremely out of gas. Whatever chaos made him so watchable in Curse of the Black Pearl has become so predictable that it spent most of the last decade seeping into every character he plays other than Sparrow. The brilliant scenes of ships at sea are restricted to the barest of minimums. The story is bereft of any sort of forward momentum, leaving us with a relatively short runtime, but I can’t get the sense at any point that we’re being treated to anything other than a handful of long pre-determined action set pieces lightly glued together with some padded runtime.

I might close the book on the series—and maybe films based on theme park rides at large—by saying that this might be a textbook case of a film being created simply because it has been a while since we’ve been subjected to an entry…

But then there’s always the ominous clouds of a fifth movie, and the ever-present threat of a theoretical sixth, spinoffs, and beyond.

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (2026)

Director: Nia DaCosta

Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Jack O’Connell, Alfie Williams, Erin Kellyman

Have I Seen it Before: Nope.

Did I Like It: Is it entirely possible that my favorite zombie movie of all time is resolute in its desire to feature the least amount of zombies possible and still be called a zombie movie?

I think it’s certainly possible. My favorite—and it really should have been your favorite—part about last year’s 28 Years Later was Fiennes masterful performance as the simultaneously slightly insane, but also deeply kind Dr. Ian Kelson. On that front, this almost-immediate sequel doubles down on Feinnes and his character. It even let’s Jack O’Connell slowly cement himself as the 21st century’s answer to Donald Pleasance* after last year’s Sinners with another suitably villainous turn.

It’s well made, often very surprising, and as is so often not the case in this genre, the ending is both tragic and satisfying. It is truly a synthesis of the best of last year’s horror.

So, why do I feel so muted about the whole experience. There’s at least something to saying my theater experience attempted to ruin the whole experience. With a screening delayed over half an hour and a concession stand drowning in late stage capitalism, I’ve long since wondered if the multiplex is prepared to live much longer. Now I’m sure their days are numbered.

Really, I think this film is giving me too much of what I wanted from it. O’Connell doesn’t really surprise me here. I know what he is capable of. Kelson as a character isn’t a refreshing bolt of humanity in a genre and film series that could be understood if not quite forgiven for abandoning the human qualities. It’s exactly what I wanted out of it, and I guess I’m looking for films to take the wind out of me.

*I said what I said.

Demolition Man (1993)

Director: Marco Brambilla

Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Wesley Snipes, Sandra Bullock, Nigel Hawthorne

Have I Seen it Before: Lives with that long line of R-rated actioners that were waiting for me when I turned 17 and not even the MPAA could stop me. It might live a little interchangeably in my head with Judge Dread (1995). Yet another reason to view Rob Schneider (uncredited but positively pockmarking the film) with suspicion.

Did I Like It: You, know I’m almost willing to say that I do. It is at or near the top of Stallone films in the 1990s. even though that isn’t exactly the decade he shined most brightly. It’s made with a brisk pace, and while it’s humor might be confused for being just on the wrong side of winking, but it’s all in service of its fundamental concept, introducing admittedly stock action movie characters into a classic sci-fi dystopian utopia.

And yet, I’ve got some issues, too. Had the film been set centuries ahead of the 1990s-set prologue, instead of decades, they would have been able to sell the whole thing a lot better, and all they would lose for the tweak is a small moment between Stallone and the one cop (Bill Cobbs) who had been around in Spartan’s time as a rookie, but now is an old man. I might be willing to cede that this becomes all the more glaring as I am writing this just a stone’s throw from the future the film depicts, but am I supposed to believe human society changed that much in the span of thirty years? The pop culture of the 1990s has all but disappeared? Language has changed that much? Sex* and going to the bathroom have changed so much that there’s barely even the language to be aware of the differences?

Not quite.

*Which Spartan seems all too eager to jump into just hours after realizing his wife is dead.

The 4:30 Movie (2024)

Director: Kevin Smith

Cast: Austin Zajur, Nicholas Cirillo, Reed Northrup, Siena Agudong

Have I Seen it Before: Never. It appealed to me more on spec than any Kevin Smith film since Clerks II (2006), and yet I couldn’t quite bring myself to go to the theater.

Did I Like It: When the film is about characters falling in love while trying to sneak into what is obviously, but legally distinct from Fletch (1985)*, it’s very possibly Smith’s most heartfelt, honest, and charming film. Kevin Smith’s got a good fifteen years on me, but I’ve got my own story about the slings and arrows of young love, and one of the ancillary pieces of trivia from that moment in time is a VHS copy of Chevy Chase’s best movie.

That would have been more than enough to sell the movie, but apparently it wasn’t enough to satisfy Smith. When the film is a shooting gallery for “reference to just how much a sacred cultural cow of the 1980s is viewed differently in the mid-2020s” it begins to become something groan-worthy. I leaned into a bit of a headache when Sam Richardson stops the movie cold to go on a little Bill Cosby rant. Not because Cosby doesn’t deserve it, but because there was more winking at the camera in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001).

Then there’s where the film really started to lose me, mostly in its final minutes. Plenty of people have probably moved on from the point where they were most into Smith’s work. So, a film that decides to unravel from being a lightly autobiographical romp to a full blown attempt to make Bluntman Begins. There’s an extended scene—after the main plot is exhausted, you’ll know it when you see it—where it is 100 percent clear the entire time what the reverse angle is looking at, even though you hope against all hope that Smith won’t go there. The scene goes on forever, just holding that other shot at a distance.

Then Smith goes there. Oh, well. I guess we’ll always have Fletch.

*Which, incidentally, was not rated-R, but these are minor quibbles.