Watching Alien Covenant rn. The seej (CGI) is mid, the story is mid. The production design is really cool. The lore kind of ruins Alien. I wish Ridley Scott would adapt more sci fi novels instead of retreading dead franchises. Make a Ubik movie!

The Fifth Element. You should watch/rewatch it too!

Rental Family

The whole cast are excellent and it's a fascinating topic.

Minons & Monsters 1/5 - The current trend of "collection of loosely related scenes with little narrative connection" comedies has its strengths but boy does it fall apart here. The Minions speak just enough real language to distract you into thinking it's real, the plot is incoherent while also contradicting previous movies, and just referencing a bunch of old Hollywood stuff doesn't make you cultured, it makes you lazy

American Psycho 4.5/5 - This was a special Fangoria screening which was odd because my theater was laughing at the memes while I was laughing at the jokes. It's frustrating so many people don't understand this as a critique despite it being a British man, directed by a woman, and written by a gay man talking about the insanity of white American business culture

Edward Scissorhands 3.5/5 - This was much more adult than I expected. I don't fully understand why so many people are emotionally attached to this but it's fine

The Game 4.5/5 - At first I thought this was a little lost in the sauce especially with the on the nose Parallax View reference. However it really won me over in the end and I only had a few minor gripes along the way

The Invite 3.5/5 - Pretty solid comedy with very good writing. It very much feels like watching a play

Ghost in the Shell (2017) 3/5 - Obviously the movie is the first point of comparison and this isn't as good. Still the stuff that works in this is really cool and looks good on screen, the stuff that doesn't is its own thing and that's fine too

A Quiet Place Part II

I know it is kind of silly but I have never seen A Quiet Place Part I, but I have seen Part II and I have seen A Quiet Place Day One.

A Quiet Place Part II was a fine monster movie. It is starts out with a family at a baseball game and quickly establishes that the oldest daughter is deaf. The movie did a really cool technique of switching back and for from the “quiet” world of the daughter experiencing events and to the world of sound. That was a great technique and added a lot of cool shock and jump scares.

The movie starts with day one. You see the baseball game and some very large object crashing to earth and then the creatures attack. After that it skips to day 450ish and then the story starts. Clearly the first movie takes place in those 400 or so days.

It is a monster movie so you will see the various attacks coming but it works. Now I am going to find part I.

Dragonfly - touching-harrowing tale of loneliness in modern Britain, touching on social care, foster systems, and classism.

气球 - a film that manages to go from "oh, maybe Tibetan sexual ideas are more progressive than Han China" to "all traditional beliefs are patriarchal and harmful to women and should be overturned" in 100 minutes. Some great shots and use of reflection, and the near documentary style of cinematography makes for an interesting experience, and it's nice to hear a lot of Tibetan. But the narrative, perhaps due to political concerns is ultimately more of a love letter to Chinese Modernity (set in the near past because the present is always as perfect as possible) than an exploration or ode to Tibetan culture/modernisation.