Did not see myself liking this but it's a super meta, and self-referential action movie and not in a cheesy, annoying way. I mean it is cheesy but it's not annoying about it.

And weirdly surprisingly strong commentary on adult male friendships, being vulnerable with, and opening up to other men. Didn't expect that. Doesn't even play out in a stupid, homophobic way like literally every other movie that ever approaches the subject. For that, alone, I'd recommend it.

Very stylish, very stupid. My favourite thing about films like this is imagining the actors prancing around in front of a green screen saying stupid-but-very-serious lines and wondering how the hell their career ended up here.

I wasn't into Wes Anderson films until recently, and I'm not sure why.

On watching them recently, many for the first time, I realise that he's one of very few directors who uses every available feature of cinema to tell his story. They're so excessively detailed and beautifully-photographed (almost to the point that they remove you from immersion to marvel ar what you're seeing), but in terms of story they're fairly simple. I think it's a wonderful skill, to tell a simple story in a complex and baroque way without seeming contrived and unnecessary.

Ridiculously beautiful. Unbelievable attention to detail the the characters and set designs. Want to watch it again right now.

Visually it's aged surprisingly well. The rest of it is just kinda...fine? I guess.

Absolutely terrible.

I didn't like this at all.

I feel like I've been kicked in the chest.

Stupid. Funny as shit. Aubrey Plaza.

This is why you shouldn't watch trailers. Was super excited after the trailer but this was a mess. It's a combination of so many different films, nothing interesting happens but it seems like there's really interesting stuff going on all around the story. I don't know who I'd recommend this to.

Perfect.

I watched this film because it's one of those films people watch, but I have absolutely no idea why. I got to the last 20 minutes when things actually start happening and I think the film is trying to be a commentary on the cycle of abuse and manipulation that women suffer in Hollywood (but that's really more than meeting it half way). But it's done in such an opaque and obstructive way, and with characters that are so shallow and unlikeable that I just didn't give a single shit about what ever was going on or being said.

It feels like David Lynch would like to be an enigmatic and subtextual storyteller but I see no evidence of any relevant ability here. Telling an esoteric story in an unclear and obtuse way does not make you Christopher Nolan.

Billy Ray does get punched out, though. That bit was cool. I love Billy Ray but he does have a punchable face.

This is the first Hitchcock film I've ever seen and I absolutely loved it. I must have loved it because the first hour is basically Cary Grant getting unbearably gaslit by every single person he meets, and it almost gave me a panic attack, and I still finished it. I'm so glad I did.

This is a proper storyteller's film. It's a bunch of crazy things happen to a guy and he says "nah fuck this" and does some pretty crazy shit to clear his name. He also wears these bright yellow boxers that I really want, and he stops to have room service press his trousers. And I'm not even mad that they constantly work how handsome Cary Grant is into the dialogue. I enjoyed it that much.

The things I didn't like about this film were:

The sex/romance/whatever the hell that was on the train. I nearly cringed my skin off; it was like watching two coat-racks who hate each other attempt foreplay.

The end. Yeah this film just stops being made and they edit the credits onto it. It's very jarring. I suspect this might be A Hitchcock Thing but I didn't like it that much.

How women were treated at the time this film was made. Yes I know it's hardly a relevant criticism of the film but I think it's important to remember that things are improving, however slowly. The only woman at the CIA basically gets eyes rolled at her for being a reasonable human who isn't happy to let Thornhill be murdered because of their fuckup. And the absolute tirade Roger unleashes on Eve for treating him exactly how he treated her is just so typical. Even now, I suppose. I'd like to think these were intentional hypocrisy but I don't think they were, and it didn't spoil the film for me.

Would definitely watch this, and more Hitchcock, again. Every time I watch a film from the 50s and 60s I say I should watch more.

Many things make me feel old, these days. The Matrix Resurrections made me feel old because The Matrix is no longer an essential film. I think this is how old people feel when things that used to be essential and iconic are no longer so. They say things like "I can't believe you haven't seen Heat" and "why would you listen to Justin Bieber when you could listen to Elvis?" and everyone rolls their eyes and waits for them to stop talking.

This is how The Matrix Resurrections made me feel. Old.

But also The Matrix Resurrections made me feel sad. When the people making a film spend the first quarter of it telling you they really didn't want to make it, and are only making it so some other hack doesn't come along and make it instead, that's just sad.

However, The Matrix Resurrections also made me feel kinda nostalgic. It must be kinda liberating to be able to make a film where anything is plausible. Deus Ex Machina is literally the entire point of this film, and it allowed them to do some pretty cool stuff here. I mean they essentially made the first Matrix film again, and you can tell my opinion is tainted because I know all this and I still enjoyed it. And I love the thought of all the snowflake redpillers getting butthurt that Trinity can fly and Neo can't whilst moaning about the feminist agenda and legal marriage to guns or whatever the fuck else those idiots moan about.

Still, I don't recommend you rush out and watch this. If you haven't already, you're probably not going to, but if someone puts it on, you could probably enjoy it for the effects and the thin topical commentary and laugh at the low-effort ageing they did on Jada.

I had a friend who loves this movie. He's not dead or anything, he just didn't want to be my friend any more. I get it; I think I'm an acquired taste like coffee or anchovies, and some people hate me, and some people are like "if you stick with it for long enough you forget how objectionable it is".

My friend was really unhappy about how his friends had abandoned him, as he abandoned me. That's a false equivalency, of course. He shouldn't be friends with me just because he's sad about losing other friends; that's just how that irony landed with me.

I never really got Wes Anderson films. I didn't hate them, I just didn't see what all the fuss was about. I have watched quite a few of his films recently and I think I get it now. These are not intricate stories, but they're told in such a dense and ridiculously detailed way that it's almost hypnotic. They're visually so beautiful that if the story was any more complex, it'd be redundant.

So anyway I think I've been doing things I know my friend loves because I miss him. I know it's not sustainable but it's helping a bit now. Friendships as an adult are fucked.

This movie reminds me of Death Cab for Cutie and Futurama.

You can't have the good side of love without the bad side. Well, it's not that you can't have it; it just doesn't exist.

You can't make someone into something you feel you need, and if you happen to find someone who fits that, they might not always fit it forever. Holding onto them out of fear of loneliness will eventually make it go stale.

James Acaster said "what if every relationship you were ever in was just the other person discovering they didn't love you as much as they hoped they would?" and I think about that a lot.

I will never understand why they get American actors to affect garbage accents in films like this. I get that big names draw crowds, but why would you want to draw a crowd to laugh at woefully inconsistent accents? If this had been "Ridley Scott directs the story of Maurizio Gucci in Italian, with an all-Italian cast" I would watch and recommend this in a heartbeat. Visually it's beautiful - the clothes, the cars, the photography; it's all lovely. It has good pace (if a little long overall), and is generally a decent movie which is ruined by borderline comedic performances. Shame, really.

And what is Jared Leto's problem? He's the worst of all of them, and he seems to not care how moronic his performances are becoming.

I didn't know this was a Predator movie because apparently I'm a moron. I've never really been into that franchise at all but this is by far the best of the ones I've seen. Visually incredibly stylish (save for a few bits of questionable CGI), and certainly not boring; it's just that I don't enjoy these sorts of films.

Also it should've been filmed in Comanche then subbed to English. That probably would've pushed it to a Like for me. That's a heck of a beautiful language.

God I absolutely hated this. It felt like one of those sorts of films that thinks it's being really smart but it's actually stupid and kinda pointless. A younger version of me might have thought "I'm not smart enough to get this" but the current version of me just thinks it was a waste of time.

I don't think I've seen anything Cronenberg before and I won't be rushing out to see more.

This has been on my list for ages, and I should have watched it sooner. This is my high water mark for zombie films (not counting Zombieland because that's a parody). It's realistic (considering), well acted, good pacing, emotional, funny.

Mental note: watch South Korean films with trains. 2 out of 2 have been brilliant.

I found this plot really woolly, and there's entire portions of the story that are totally irrelevant. I watched this on my bike so I might have just not been paying sufficient attention but I just didn't enjoy it at all.

It's just a teen movie with film grading and a nostalgic soundtrack. And not a very good one. Feels like it jumps around all over the place but actually these kids just have hectic lives. At one point, Alana says she's 28 and I thought "oh good some time passed!" and then she corrected herself to 25.

Pointless, inconsequential cameos do nothing to advance character development or the plot, but I guess they juice up the cast a bit. If you like Sean Penn or Bradley Cooper you are not going to get value for money here.

And I don't care how they try to justify it, the whole Japanese accent bit is completely unnecessary, cheap, and just feels at odds with the atmosphere of the rest of the film. It doesn't give colour to a relevant character or anything like that. It just felt like an excuse to be racist and it almost made me switch the film off.

It's a specific type of film that draws you in for three hours, then you have to spend half a day thinking about what it's actually about. Like I know what happens in the story, but what does that mean? And I usually rate my ability to understand this sort of thing fairly well but there's big gaps here for me.

So on the surface, this is a film about a man who can't deal with death, but is forced up close with some very big deaths. Rather than process the death of his daughter, he and his wife shut down emotionally. She communicates with him via their sex life, otherwise doling out platitudes in an emotionally numb deadpan. He doesn't communicate with her at all, other than to repeat what she's said back to her.

But I think a more zoomed-out view of this film makes it more about the damage we do to ourselves in ignoring things that make us sad, or the things we really want but feel like are unattainable, or things that make us feel shame or regret. In the parts of our lives we drape a sheet over and hope no-one mentions, but also we're unconsciously drawn to in a purely self-destructive way, and about how we use the fallout from that behaviour as a wall around our real pain so we don't have to talk about it or deal with it, or an excuse for why we failed. It's really fucked up and a lot of this hits me very hard to write about, even as writing this now serves to understand what I've seen a bit better.

But I think I need more time with Uncle Vanya. I only know about it what I saw in Drive My Car, and I suppose there's a literal subtext here (i.e there's a reason it's Uncle Vanya and not some other play, because of its story) and a figurative one (i.e the acting out of the film in different languages at the same time serving as a metaphor for how we all run our lives in our own little worlds, speaking on cue regardless of what's been said before, but there's real moments of joy in making a real connection with someone else through all that mess). But I can't bring it around to be anything other than me projecting my own struggles with relationships, communication, and understanding why I do the things I do when I don't really feel in control of them. 

I suppose what I'm saying is, if you like films that make you think and feel, and think about what you feel, then this would be a great film for you. But if you like something with a strong narrative and a satisfying conclusion then avoid it. I personally found it very beautiful, and it has made me think about a lot of things, and will probably continue to. And I suppose I'll have to read Chekov, which I've never done.

You wanna know how I did it, Anton? I never saved anything for the swim back

This is one of those films that I've been meaning to watch for ages. Probably since I was 15-16 and we did a bit on DNA in biology and Mr Lungley mentioned Gattaca so I looked it up then never watched it.

One thing I love about this kind of sci-fi, is how clearly you can see why they predicted certain things the way they did. Teslas literally sound like the cars in Gattaca.

The art direction and cinematography remind me a lot of Equilibrium; so bold and self-assured that it almost feels more like a stylish documentary or propaganda piece than it does cinema. This is absolutely one of my favourite sorts of film - it's so lucid and coherent that I really don't see how you couldn't enjoy it.

In a way, I suppose it shares a lot of doomed-fate threads with Everything Everywhere All At Once, and has a similar message about life being what you make of it, and the hand you're dealt and birth only being part of your story. Would happily watch this again.

It's refreshing to see a film set in American prospecting times that doesn't focus on violence and lawlessness. I don't think I've ever seen anything with this setting that focuses on friendship and trying to carve a (relatively) honest path.

It starts out very confusingly, before settling into a sensitive portrayal of friendship and collaboration in an incredibly violent time.

Thoroughly enjoyed this once it got into a rhythm, although all the dialogue sounded like it was recorded in a soundproof booth with ASMR mics, which I found slightly jarring. Overall didn't detract from the film itself once I got used to it. I think all general release films have much more cinematic audio now, which just seems weird on a smaller screen.

We blew all our budget on the soundtrack and photography so we're not paying you to act.

This film is bafflingly long, the story is stupid, the acting is so wooden in places it genuinely reminded me of an episode of Garth Marenghi's Darkplace.

But the soundtrack is absolutely amazing. I've never really listened to much Wang Chung but I'm about to! And it's visually incredibly beautifully shot - locations, compositions, titles are all so good. But yeah; kinda dreadful as a film. Could be 30+ minutes shorter.

Very short but a nice story with a well-told resolution. Loved the soundtrack as well.

It's so weird to see Brit Marling as someone other than The OA, and Robin Taylor Lord as someone other than Oswald Cobblepot.

The most 90s film to have ever been made? Honestly if you told me this was made last year I'd believe you. Except for the fact that I saw it 20+ years ago.

Solid soundtrack, completely nonsensical dialogue, excellent wardrobe, rollerblading. What's not to love.

The first Doctor Strange film is my favourite Marvel film, and this didn't disappoint. Enjoyed the darker style, which I guess is to be expected from Sam Raimi.

Loved this. Sweet, funny, silly. The Irish have the best turns of phrase.

I've wanted to see this ever since I first saw The Departed. I knew it'd be better and I was right. Don't get me wrong, The Departed is good, but if you watch Infernal Affairs and your first thought isn't "if you can't be bothered to read subtitles, you don't deserve to consume this incredible story" then we're incompatible on some level.

I think I'm on the verge of liking this and just, well, what's the point? I feel like some films only exist to give actors and filmmakers something to do. I feel that way about a lot of Scorsese's films.

It's not a clever story - a bunch of things happen to some very bad people, there's the constant threat of violence, someone cheats on someone, all hell breaks loose, then 10-15 minutes of hyper violence, and roll credits.

There isn't a solid commentary - this film's entire take is "Vegas was way cooler when it was run by the mob", which is a weird kind of nostalgia. It's like Scorsese figured out how to make the kind of prospecting/gold rush film he'd make. With Italian-American gangsters; old men with their trousers pulled up round their nipples, complaining about old man problems whilst slitting people's throats or crushing their heads in a vice. And Joe Pesci's in it, playing that "yeah he's short but don't fuck with him because he's an absolute psycho" character, like a Jack Russell with a coke problem.

Scorsese leaves absolutely nothing to the imagination. There's no room to misinterpret any of this incredibly shallow plot, or any of the characters' motivations because it's all delivered in voiceover. Sometimes the characters on-screen will talk to each other in voiceover, like some morphine-induced DVD commentary. This film is a train journey - you get on where you expected, it makes some stops along the way like you'd expect, and then it stops where you thought it would (OK so maybe not like a train journey in England).

I realise a lot of this criticism misses the point in some people's eyes, and I suppose these films just aren't for me. I just feel like a lot more could be done with the source material. Yes I'll keep going on about it until I die but look at what The Sopranos achieved - that show deep-dives into the personality constructs of the characters in films like this. I guess post-gangster can't exist without gangster.

Anyway, as far as train journeys go, it's more beautiful coastal route than delayed underground sweatbox. That is to say, if you're going to switch off for three hours and watch something, you could do a lot worse than Casino. But people sing high praise about this film and I don't think it's still hitting the mark in 2022. Especially when compared with how well Boyz n the Hood aged.

If I did stars, which I don't, it'd be +1 for De Niro's wardrobe alone.

It's the manual for navigating high school as a teenage girl, for all I know.

After I finished this I had to look a few things up. I never knew anything about Ip Man before watching the movie the other day, so seeing another movie about Ip Man seemed like too much of a coincidence. And it was; same guy. Bruce Lee's master. I guess I'm the last person to know.

Another thing I had to look up was about the Japanese occupation of Southern China during World War 2. I didn't know anything about China and Japan's involvement/activity during this period and I've read about it now and again had no idea that Nagasaki and Hiroshima were basically America going "OK cut it the fuck out, Japan". If that seems like I'm excusing it, it shouldn't. I just meant I didn't know about anything that preceded any of this. Obviously here we focus on what happened in Europe in WWII and I had no idea just how brutal and devastating the conflict was in China and how it ended up. I clearly need to find a podcast about this!

Anyway the film is OK. I'm not a huge fan of the grading. It seems like it's shot to look more natural for the time (greased lenses, soft focus) but then it's graded to be really dark and contrasty with lots of quick cuts, slow motion, angles to make the action look more frantic and intense. It's a bit of a mish-mash, visually.

And that runs with the narrative. It's difficult to judge things when they're on the subject of someone's life because life obviously doesn't follow a neat narrative structure, but this hops around from being about Ip Man and his path, to his relationship with Gong Er, and then her relationship with her father and Ma San, then back to her relationship with Ip Man, then a draw-the-rest-of-the-horse style montage that tells you about the rest of Ip Man's life. It's odd.

Zhang Ziyi is absolutely incredible though. Very emotional performance, incredible martial arts stunts. She seems to really inhabit the role, and outshines all of the other performances.

Overall an OK martial arts movie that lacks structure, is pretty light on action, and drags towards the end. Much preferred Ip Man to this.

Just the best Jackass film ever made. But you have to have seen them all to appreciate why. For what this is there's so much history, so many characters and jokes. Even the soundtrack contains in-jokes. It's unreal how they constantly improve on this silly shit.

The new people are all great, but like Tremaine says; surely there isn't another movie left in this.

Rachel Wolfson's OJ joke is one of the finest jokes I think I've ever heard.

Also Spike Jonze is one of the coolest people to ever exist and I hate him.

RIP Ryan.

When I finished watching The Sopranos, my first thought (or any subsequent thoughts, for that matter) wasn't "I wonder what Dickie Moltisanti was like". I don't see the point in this, there isn't any self-contained story, it doesn't add anything to the Sopranos lore.

It feels a lot like "can we assemble a cast that can do loose impressions of The Sopranos characters, and embody some of the exposition that's alluded to in the TV series?". The re-creation of the characters feels cheesy and borderline caricature. Seeing Livia, Corrado, Silvio, and Pauly's mannerisms emulated feels more like parody than anything else.

If you're a fan of The Sopranos looking for some flesh on the history of these characters, you won't find it here. Maybe instead you can just think about and remember how excellent The Sopranos was. A far better use of your time.

Hadn't seen this before. Not much you can say about it, except heartbreaking.

This is one of those films where you hear the premise and your reaction might be "oh yeah that's a cool idea I'll watch that" and so you watch it and it's a good premise but it's not a film. It's an episode of The Expanse where Holden lands on a planet and there's already people there and this is what's happening.

It's got no atmosphere (lol the moon) and that is made worse by the fact that Sam Rockwell is not a leading man by any stretch, and there's a really uncanny valley feel to some of the parts later in the film. Plus I can see Kevin Spacey's shit-eating face every time I hear his stupid computer-voice.

Entirely predictable from start to finish, and ends just as it might get good but then someone somewhere would've needed to put pen to paper and actually write a story.

Had never seen this before. It's basically a proto Fast and Furious film. Some of the dialogue is absolutely dreadful but if you're watching films like this for their dialogue then you're going to have a bad time.

Not sure if it's the sort of film I'd rewatch - I find a lot of these older action films like The Last Boy Scout are enjoyable but they're not as easy a watch as something more modern. I guess the genre in general has been an exercise in refining that formula to the point that it is a rollercoaster and you can ride it as much as you want.

There's like two decades of cinema that could never have been made at any other time and I'm so glad they were because this is pure, brain-off, rollercoaster fun.

Had never seen this before, but it's exactly what I want from this kind of film, and I would happily watch only this type of film.

Aged surprisingly well. I had completely forgotten about Kirstie Alley. Remember when she was in everything?

Completely lacking in atmosphere, character, pacing felt so rushed, Danvers' disdain for Mrs. de Winter totally understated, Maxim is aggressive rather than cold. None of it is how the source material landed with me, even down to the visual details. It's still a good story though.

I need to watch the Hitchcock one. An optimist would say this isn't bad, but an alternative view is that it just isn't good.

I get a sense, when watching Shane Carruth, films that I've missed something important, or something happened that I didn't fully understand and I maybe need to watch two or three more times to really appreciate what's going on. It's interesting to me that his films are able to do this because, on the surface Upstream Color is very sparse and it doesn't seem like lots of things are going on that need your undivided attention, but the visuals and interconnected narratives are so dense and detailed that you absolutely do benefit from paying constant  attention.

I immediately read quite a bit about this film after I finished it, and I feel like I have come away with a sufficient understanding of the plot and what happened and why, and it's another fascinating sci-fi film from Shane Carruth that feels both familiar and completely different to anything else I've seen before.

I find it really tricky to write about films that don't really focus on a specific story, because that's normally what I'd focus on. Instead, Upstream Color is about taking control of your own life as it tends to chaos, how our lives intertwine, and how something beautiful can come from something truly traumatic. How can you review that?

To me, this is a very beautiful, unsettling, bittersweet film about losing control of your life through no fault of your own (really the malice of others), taking back control, and breaking the cycle for your own sake and the sake of others. It's not easy to watch - my emotions were very close to the surface throughout, but it's something I'd recommend if any of the above sounds like something you'd like. It's one of those films where the score is essential but I don't think it'd stand alone on headphones.

What a contrast from the others. John Cena steals this, in an exceptionally strong cast. I love Margot Robbie as Harley, and Idris Elba does a pretty decent job as Bloodsport. I get the impression that low effort, disinterested trope is bordering on type-casting for him now. He was Stringer Bell - he doesn't need to show up for roles any more.

The thing that got me about this film is how effectively they are able to hint at a tantalising level of character depth without having to actually deliver on it. I came away feeling like there was so much more to Harley, Peacekeeper and Bloodsport in spite of there being very little evidence!

Genuinely laugh-out-loud in a lot of places (especially Cena - I loved him in Trainwreck and he significantly expands his comic timing and delivery here) and a fairly competent story (if a little derivative - but if you watched this for the story you may have bigger problems upstream). This is a great Friday night movie. Definitely one to rewatch.

Loved this. Tense, fast, thrilling. Feels like a South American Lord of the Flies in the 21st century. Very dark, creepy, brutal. Super unsettling soundtrack. There isn't much here in the way of depth of characters but a lot happens and it drags you along with it.

The story is either all-over-the-place or multi-faceted. It feels like it swirls around trying to decide what it's going to be for a while, before eventually settling on something.

Without The Big Lebowski, this film would not exist. And it's not even a very satisfying crime reveal or anything. It's really just a bunch of things that happen to a guy who keeps showing up in the wrong place at the right time.

Look, it's Josh Brolin and Joaquin Phoenix and it's 2 hours 40, and there is always music playing, and Eric Roberts is there and so many names (Owen Wilson, Joanna Newsom, Maya Rudolph) and there's minidresses and Joaquin Phoenix looks just like Johnny Galecki and this review is not entirely unlike the film. You get the impression that the person telling you the story was pretty out of it when they experienced it (I was on my bike), and they're telling you things as they remember them. And, honestly, if you're going to give that person a grade, it's not going to be high (or even passing), but I bet you were into the story whilst they were telling it!

Oh and the ending makes no sense and Owen Wilson might as well not be in it, but I did enjoy all of it. Sometimes all you need is a bunch of things happening to some good characters and that's enough.

For real though I think the soundtrack runs constantly through this film. I don't think I've ever seen that before. I looked it up and it doesn't seem to be a thing, but there is no silence in this film. There's always some music playing.

You know I think it's so important to constantly remind children that it's OK to be yourself in spite of what your parents might want for you (or, vicariously, for themselves), that I'm not even mad that literally every kids film seems to be about that at the moment. When my daughter grows up and figures out her own path, I will know I've done a passable job at the very least.

Plus there is absolutely no Lin Manuel Miranda in this film; I promise.

Let's just get it out the way. I watched this a few days ago but I wanted to get some of my thoughts into some order because I do think this is important. I know nobody reads any of this but that doesn't mean I don't want to get it right. And I want to preface all of this by saying that I don't know anyone with Tourette's. I've never met anyone with Tourette's. If I say something that upsets someone, it is absolutely unintentional. It is not your responsibility to educate me, but if you feel like it, please reach out to me because I don't want to piss people off - I want to do better.

Every review of Motherless Brooklyn should have two parts. The part that addresses the problems surrounding Ed Norton playing a character with Tourette's, and the part that actually reviews the film. Everyone involved in this film had to know that this was what would happen.

The problem with Ed Norton's portrayal of someone with Tourette's is quite circular in my mind, and that is seeded in the fact that it's based on another story. If there wasn't external source material then I would just pose the question: "why did you make this character this way, if you're planning to have Ed Norton play them?" and be done with it. But you can't remove a Tourette's character from an existing story without incurring a totally separate (and arguably much worse) wrath.

So we have a character with Tourette's (and if I'm critiquing the source material or maybe the screenplay, his condition has almost no impact on the story), and the issue with Tourette's is control. When you're making a film, you need your actors to be able to mould their character around the character and the schedule. If you hire someone with Tourette's, it seems very unlikely to me that you're going to find an actor with Tourette's who's going to be able to turn it off at will, to be able to actually make a film. They are not the character, so their tics will not match the tics of the character. And, I suppose, that is why you have actors!

So you need to find an actor who is going to inhabit the character and play it with sensitivity and authenticity and not feel like they're mocking the condition. For me, Ed Norton does achieve that. It never feels like cheap shots, but it does sometimes feel like they sneak in a tic to remind you that Lionel has Tourette's. During the parts of the film where levity and gravitas (OK, no Tourette's) are required, you get Ed Norton as Ed Norton. And Lionel feels like a layer on top of that character, rather than the actual character.

You might be able to tell that I've been turning this over and over in my head, but I think this is important. I firmly believe that people getting good and faithful representation in media is crucial to not only feeling like you're part of a species, but also allowing people to see you and live some of your experience with you. And in order to do that, it has to be an authentic performance otherwise it's just "this is what I think it's like".

Ultimately, Ed Norton's performance in this movie fluctuates between the exceptional quality I expect from him, and something that makes me feel very uncomfortable because I feel like he's playing it as a tourist. This may be my liberal snowflake showing, but that's just how it lands for me.

With all that being said, and with that constantly in the back of my mind, damn it this is such a good Noir/conspiracy drama with an incredible cast, beautiful photography, a jazz soundtrack that I actually like (I hate jazz), and a lovely platonic relationship that could, so easily, have awkwardly skewed romantic and I am very glad they resisted that temptation.

The pacing of the story is absolutely perfect. You can tell that the editors watched it over and over, and aggressively cut it to ensure that it moves along in the right way. I genuinely wouldn't cut a moment of it.

But damn it I wish there was a way we could've approached Tourette's sensitively. I feel like this wasn't it, but is potentially as close as you can get.

Has some brilliant ideas but doesn't do anything with them. Has that classic immediate-acceleration-to-extreme-violence that got me even though I absolutely knew it was going to happen, but for me this misses all the marks that Midsommar hits.

This is a film about a dead cultist who uses her family to bring the spirit of one of the guardians of hell to earth, and yet there's almost nothing about the conspiracy, the cult, the spirituality, any of that. It's all just hinted-at then you get five minutes of detail at the end and it's over. There's an interesting story begging to break free here but it's never allowed out. I don't know a lot about films like this, though, so maybe some people like that sort of thing.

It has the hallmark exceptional photography and soundtrack, but I prefer Midsommar in every way. However, I do think if Hereditary was the story I wanted, I would prefer it.

It's definitely worth a watch, I just think there's better stuff out there.

I'm glad I watched this in two halves. The first half spends too much time scene-setting nomad life and taking swipes at Amazon, and not enough time building Fern's character. She feels more like Louis Theroux dipping a toe into vanlife culture, than an actual real person. I said after the first half: "I don't care about any of these characters or what happens to them".

But that changes significantly in the last 45 minutes, which are packed with character and relationship building on Fern's family, life, struggles, and personality and I grew to identify with her and care about what would become of her. Nomad life is almost entirely inconsequential, apart from being a catalyst for Fern contacting an estranged family member.

You could argue that nomad life is a metaphor for how lives drift into and apart from each other as you get older, and that it's an important visual that allows you to view all relationships as ephemeral. It's a bit pessimistic, but I don't disagree. It just feels to me that it only exists to give a blue-collar poverty backdrop to the story that is not all that relevant to the main attraction of this film, which is Fern's character and identifying with her.

The shift in focus turns this from a documentary on nomads to an emotional study on people who struggle to find their way in life, with who they are, and where they belong, and this is where it shines brightest. The choice of music, poetry, photography, and pacing wonderfully illustrates the cyclical and ultimately futile nature of life (especially relevant right now!) and Fern's decision to break free from her past and her memories and get on with her life. It doesn't matter what she decides to do; what matters is that she takes control and does it for herself.