Former editor: Paste Magazine, Cokemachineglow
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Jurassic World Dominion 2022
150 minutes with 14 main characters navigating the least likely version of a world overrun by dinosaurs, devoid of all joy and imagination and aesthetic competence. Bryce Dallas Howard and Chris Pratt have the chemistry of two lead pipes sorta just knocking into each other, absolutely wretched performances. Chris Pratt doing the opposite of what he’s doing in Thor by here squinting like a synecdoche of Clint Eastwood But Dumb. None of the dinosaurs look cool or are badass, just…
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Year of the Dragon 1985
as much as Oliver Stone seems committed to portraying trauma as an endlessly complicated facet of the American identity, Cimino brings out the worst tendencies in what could just be subtext by fetishizing the only two Chinese characters who have any real effect on the main character in addition to fetishizing White’s (that’s right) specific Vietnam-based trauma, especially in the absolutely mesmerizing climax followed by the absolutely dopey ending. Not that Stone is exactly a master of nuance either. Otherwise, a goddamn excellent looking film.
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Capone 2020
I have been asked by the PR company to take down the review due to an embargo they only just now informed me is in effect.
EDIT -- Embargo up, here was my original review:
As redolent of pee and poop as Hard to Be a God; as miserable and creeping as The Death of Louis XIV; very grotesque and dumb. Somehow there is no joy to be had in watching Al Capone in a diaper, smoking a carrot, mowing…
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Ambulance 2022
“LA drivers! They’re all mamalukes.” - Randazzo, disposable pig-nosed Italian
I thought of Seijun Suzuki during this, how the audience’s perspective is all that matters, the camera the only source of spatial truth, especially when working in the impossibly small ambulance set against the impossibly sprawling (and geographically absurd) City of LA. This is how Jake Gyllenhaal can hide behind a neon vest with a huge gun, how a man can survive a ruptured spleen and four hands inside of…
