Super charming two-hander. Emma Thompson remains the best.
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My Favorite Year 1982
Fathers Day pick, went over smashingly. Peter O’Toole plays an astonishingly funny screen drunk and then turns around and gives you epic pathos and even some heroism. Mark Linn-Baker is his perfect foil, and every line of the script is quotable. “I’m not an actor! I’m a movie star!”
A perfect perfect movie.
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The Kid Detective 2020
Have been revisiting The OC recently and got curious about this Adam Brody vehicle. It’s very good, committing to the absolute tonal weirdness of its concept — basically, “What if Encyclopedia Brown was still a private eye in his 30s, but was haunted by a kidnapping he never solved as a boy?” — in ways that are both funny and immensely sad.
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Everything Everywhere All at Once 2022
Man, that was incredible. Put Dr Strange to shame for multiversal hijinks and creativity (and somehow also gave its hero a third eye for a crucial sequence). Fantastic action, funny, smart, emotional, and a wonderfully elaborate homage to the weirdest part of Ratatouille. What’s not to love?
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Top Gun: Maverick 2022
Two things can be true: Maverick is the most shameless piece of pandering towards its star in the history of cinema, and it is also an enormously entertaining piece of pandering.
That said, I came out of it most impressed by the three actors in the three most thankless roles: Jon Hamm as Lame Boss Who Thinks Maverick's Washed, Jennifer Connelly as Generic Love Interest Here To Make You Forget That We Didn’t Invite Kelt McGillis Back & Glen Powell as…
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Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid 1969
I had somehow never seen this before. That was clearly a mistake.
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Knives Out 2019
Despite having one of my best in-theater experiences ever the first time I watched this, I had resisted it every time it came up in a streaming or VOD browse. I just worried that the surprise of the movie, and the ways it keeps upending our expectations of what exactly the story is and why anything is happening, was too important, and that watching with that knowledge would make it less fun a second time. I was wrong. If anything,…
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Nobody's Fool 1994
A perfect movie. Virtually everyone in the cast has never been better (or if they were, they were great in different ways, like Newman in The Verdict), it is full of warmth and joy and a whole lot of big laughs. Spectacular comfort food.
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The Quick and the Dead 1995
I reviewed this for the college paper, loved it, immediately saw star power in Leo and Crowe, and was baffled it came and went from theaters so quickly. Glad blank check gave me an excuse to watch it again for the first time in a while. Honestly, I think it’s my favorite Raimi.