Movies I’ve seen

publish #needswork: Nowhere near the full list and not very organized Opened 2024-06-10. Related to Movies to watch. Overlaps with several Musings.

The list

A randomly-ordered list, honestly, biased towards things I’ve seen recently and liked. (!) means I especially liked it. The bottom of this page has the stuff I reeeally, recommend though.

• (!) The Grand Budapest Hotel
  • My favorite Wes Anderson film. Incredibly aesthetically compelling, and has a cute, enjoyably unpredictable storyline.
• The Boy and the Heron
• (!) Dune 1
  • Liked the set design. See it in the original dimensions if possible with a good speaker system, not the cropped streaming version.
• Dune 2 … liked the original more
• Shogun
• Late Night with the Devil
• (!) Saving Private Ryan
  • Pretty brutal and authentic. Good costume design and some A list actors
• Feels Good Man (Pepe/Matt Furie documentary)
• (!) The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
  • Surreal storytelling and likeable characters. Nice, bite-sized entertainment
• (!) Love, Death, and Robots
  • Ultra polished, often CGI, bite-sized, self-contained episodes. Occasionally really disturbing lol. I like “Lima Blue” and the yogurt episodes the most.
• O Brother, Where Art Thou
  • I actually preferred the other Russo Bros. films, and didn’t like this one much
• Fargo
  • Shaggy dog story like all Russo Bros. films
• The Hurt Locker
• Train to Busan
• (!) Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
  • Just good, simpler-times, fun
• The Emperor’s New Groove
  • I often pine for this era of American animation
• (!) The French Dispatch
  • I like how artsy it is.
• Squid Game
  • Hot take: I adamantly disliked it for a few reasons I feel compelled to rant about here:
    • Aesthetically: nothing special. Looks like a typical real-world game show.
    • Writing: Bad. Plot twists are unpredictable and make no sense.
    • Symbolism: Also bad (imo). The whole “real enemy is capitalism and greed” rings hollow when your villains are just inherently evil people; them having money is totally separate from those character traits.
• This Place Rules
  • Andrew Callaghan / Channel 5 meme footage movie published by A24 about media echo chambers leading up to the 2021 Capitol riots. Kind of disturbing honestly but played for laughs
• (!) Good Will Hunting
  • Great character drama. Occasionally edgy. Hard to tell how much I like this for being set in Boston and having watched it during my edgy, academia-romanticization phase. Would recommend just for the male chemistry between Matt Damon and Robin Williams.
• Fight Club
• Shaolin Soccer
• In Bruges
• Now You See Me
  • The dumbest kind of fun. But fun
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
• Goodfellas
• (!) Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse
  • The most aesthetically pleasing animated film I’ve ever seen. Any still in this film could be turned into a poster.
• The Big Lebowski
• Let It Be (Beatles original footage)
  • Nice to have on in the background but hardly a film.
• The Godfather
• Princess Mononoke
• (!) Spirited Away
  • Everyone loves this one.
• Howl’s Moving Castle
• (!) Your Name
  • Made me tear up, even as an anime-neutral person. Likable characters, has an incredibly weak first act, but makes up for it tenfold in its second and third acts. Beautiful art
• Suzume
  • Didn’t like it quite as much although the chair was cute
• Bee and Puppycat
• (!) Adventure Time
  • Some part of this show tickles my brain. Introducing emotional intelligence to kids in a casual, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it type way is the best way to make them internalize it, I think. It makes me feel warm and fuzzy.
• (!) Knives out
• Knives out sequel
  • Meh.
• Blue Eye Samurai
  • Overindulgent and not for me. The screenwriting bends over backwards to make the main character look cool.
• The Sympathizer
  • Falls into the horror movie trap of amazingly strong premise + too many shock scenes = disappointing ending that can't explain itself
  • Lots of frustratingly inconsequential plot threads
  • Sub par casting decisions imo. Especially Robert Downey Jr playing 5 characters for, literally, no really, literally no reason other than probably to Oscar bait us.
• Shoplifters
  • I liked this.
  • Warrants a lot of thoughtful discussion afterwards.
• (!) Arcane
  • 250M budget is absurdly huge
  • Suffers from Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse syndrome where any still from the show could be made a wallpaper. Fortiche’s worldbuilding is beautiful.
• The Substance
  • I didn’t like this movie.
• Severance
  • Wow it starts slow. It felt like 40 minutes of filler and 5 minutes of moving the plot forward per episode. But by the time Season 1 ends there’s a lot going on.
• Common Side Effects
  • The art style was such a blunder imo. But the plot here is solidly written, borderline too fast as episodes cram a lot of content into ~22 min packages. One single episode contains like 2x of what a full 45 min Severance episode contains.
• Mystery Cuddlers
  • Doesn’t recapture the Pendleton Ward-style magic I expected it would. I didn’t watch the whole thing. I felt it would have benefitted from having two likable main characters — like Adventure Time’s lead duo — instead of one cowardly character who is kind of a bummer to have so much screen time.

Movies I’ve seen and strongly recommend

Movies

• Exit Through the Gift Shop
  • Currently (as of 2024) my favorite film of all time. Ask me for the pitch on this film. The trailer and online summaries totally fail to explain how unlikely and cool it .
• Apollo 11 (CNN film)
  • Pure vibes. Real footage of the Apollo moon landing, lost for decades, then regraded and upscaled and turned into a dramamentary.
• Good Will Hunting
  • To do: explanation

TV shows

• Pantheon - finished 2024-04-10. Wow I love the ending.
  • Budget clearly went 100% into the story and not the animation.