Last (x) movies you saw (II)

Davies? this guy?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Howard_Davies

Russell T. Davies, the writer of A Very British Scandal. Roughly every second of his works deals with different facets of men-attracted-to-men negotiating a homosociality within heteronormative culture - Very British Scandal is the first that is a period piece, rather than directly contemporary.

Cucumber, his previous main project (eight episodes, twinned with another series called Banana, and a docoseries called Tofu, all named for the hardness of erections), was the best thing he's done ime.

Laundrette's focus on gay stuff is at most 33%.

I just figured Frears was on yr slate because you'd said you were planning to watch Brit Scandal; to me he's a director who is efficient in service of a script's tone and agenda, rather than having an authorial throughline or preoccupations that can be tracked through his work.

if you watch the Laundrette Criterion supplements, he denies being an auteur while his producer insists that he is. Frears does say he considers his string from The Hit thru The Grifters to be a reaction to Thatcherism.

I'm not actually likely to watch that scandal show anytime soon... always drowning in things to watch.

Frears otm! The Grifters as the end of Thatcher reactions, vs the good first step into a bad period of Americana, is interesting, would be curious to rewatch with that in mind.

("gay stuff" is only 7% of AVBS at most, except for how the closet is the driver for every bad action across the fifteen years or so it covers. fascinatingly handled, re. it being a period piece, is how no "character" in it identifies as gay, it's not even an option to consider: those who come out to each other instead compare to what point their bedroom preference is for which gender, how much marriage is a thing they genuinely value vs are having to take on for optics, etc.)

Mississippi (2015), streaming on Netflix - 36/42

*Mississippi Grind

xp I’m not sure what I think of A Very English Scandal. It had a breezy quality, but it was in a very different key than I was expecting.

I loved how lizard-like Hugh Grant was, though. Was he wearing contacts? because there was something very creepy about his black irises

OK, I had no idea Frears directed A Very English Scandal (u have to spell things out, sic) -- because why would I? I haven't seen anything of his since Dirty Pretty Things in 2002. Then he started doing all that Peter Morgan royal shite.

Dream Tower (7.0)
Our Nixon (7.5)
20th Century Women (9.0)
Eighth Grade (6.5)
Demon Seed (5.5)
Quadrophenia (7.5)
McQueen (6.0)
Ocean’s Eight (4.0)
BlacKkKlansman (7.0)
A Stranger Among Us (6.5)

The last one is a late Lumet I saw at the time and completely forgot about. Relatively low key for him. Explicitly quotes from Hud when Melanie Griffith says "I already put in time with one cold-hearted bastard, I'm not looking to find another one." Good one for that last-line-should-have-been-the-title thread: Ask Your Rabbi.

Mission Impossible (Christopher McQuarrie, 2018) - yup, that's how badly my year is going.

It was fun etc.

I forgot to note earlier how amused I was that it was j.lu who pitched for an Electric Boogaloo subtitle on the new thread.

/The Counselor/ (Ridley Scott/Cormac McCarthy, 2013). I saw this in a theater and didn't like it much, but recently learned that the Blu-Ray included a director's cut that was 20 minutes longer. I bought it on eBay for $5 and miraculously, the long version is a really good movie! Recommended.

last batch for a while

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (David Lynch, 1992) - 10/10
Heat (Michael Mann, 1995) - 9/10
Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday (Jacques Tati, 1953) - 8/10
This Happy Breed (David Lean, 1944) - 8/10
Ordinary People (Robert Redford, 1980) - 7/10
Fantastic Planet (René Laloux, 1973) - 3/10

China Gate (Fuller)
The Search (Zinnemann)
From Here to Eternity (Zinnemann)
A Man for All Seasons (Zinnemann)
The Longest Day (Annakin, Marton & Wicki)
The Army of Crime (Guédiguian)
La Vie en Rose (Dahan)
Grace of Monaco (Dahan)
Cop (A. Refn)
Once a Cop... (A. Refn)
R (Noer & Lindholm)
Key House Mirror (Noer)*
A Hijacking (Lindholm)*
A War (Lindholm)*
A Second Chance (Bier)
Summer With Monika (Bergman)
Sawdust and Tinsel (Bergman)
Smiles of a Summer Night (Bergman)
The Virgin Spring (Bergman)
Morvern Callar (Ramsay)
We Need to Talk About Kevin (Ramsay)
Katalin Varga (Strickland)
For Those in Peril (Wright)*
Hyena (Johnson)
Ex Machina (Garland)
Beast (Pearce)
Under the Skin (Glazer)
Her (Jonze)
Lucy (Besson)
Ghost in the Shell (Sanders)

All 3.5/5:
True Stories (1986)
Blackkklansman
Won’t You Be My Neighbor?
The Lost City of Z

Mission Impossible Fallout (McQuarrie, 2018) 8/10
the Happy Prince (Everett, 2018) 7/10
Yellow Submarine ( Dunning, 1968) 8/10
Unseeworld U.S.A (Fuller, 1960) 7/10
The Last Emperor (Bertolucci, 1987) 6/10
Paddington 2 (King, 2017) 9/10
Hostiles (Cooper, 2017) 7/10

Um, Underworld U.S.A. that should be.

Gone With the Wind (1939) 7.5/10
Iron Man (2008) 7/10
Tangerine (2015) 8/10

bunch of airplane streaming on the way to and from berlin, the only one i'd seen before is philadelphia story:

all about eve (mankiewicz, 1951) 10/10
paddington 2 (king, 2017) 8/10
rocky (avildsen, 1976) 8/10
the philadelphia story (cukor, 1940) 9/10
happy death day (landon, 2017) 6/10
inside out (docter, 2015) 8/10

honestly happy death day was surprisingly enjoyable for what it was

the gospel of the bear film has reached the troposphere

lol

The Raid: Redemption (Evans, 2011) 6
Mission: Impossible Fallout (McQuarrie, 2018) 7
Disney Christopher Robin (Marc Forster, 2018) 4
Marwencol (Jeff Malmberg, 2010) 8
Icarus (Bryan Fogel, 2017) 8

read that marwencol has been adapted & now will have steve carell in it

https://www.meta-sphere.com/wp-content/uploads/welcome-to-marwen_tete-600x220.jpg

yeah I watched it because i saw the trailer for the zemeckis movie. The trailer makes it out to be an "inspirational" true story but it's not really, not exactly.

baby driver (2017 edgar wright) 6.5/10
mollys game (2017 sorkin) 2/10
suburbicon (2017 clooney) 2/10
the killing of a sacred deer (2017 lanthimos) 6/10
angelo my love (1983 duvall) 3/10
eighth grade (2018 burnham) 8/10
thoroughbreds (2018 cory finley) 4/10

thoroughbreds (2018 cory finley) 4/10

I don't do the out of 10 thing but I'd give this at least a 6. It made me laugh a lot.

lil too try hard idk

*The Naked Spur : 7/10
Vampire's Kiss : 6/10
Dying Of the Light (Paul Schrader Edit): 7/10 -- only 7/10 because Nic Cage is in full on weirdo mode and Schrader's noodling around on Final Cut. The doctor accent is...wow...almost as great as the accent in "Vampire's Kiss"
*The Young One: 7/10 - minor Buñuel for me but still great

Crazy Rich Asians – kind of a riff on Philadelphia Story, but with better-looking people. Lots of film history embedded in it.

What Price Jazz (Baerwitz, 1934)
Felix Gets Broadcasted (Messmer, 1923)
High Flyers (Cline, 1937)
Inflation (Myers, 1933)
Felix in Fairyland (Messmer, 1923)
*Roast-Beef and Movies (Baerwitz, 1934)
*Big City Fantasy (Henabery, 1934)
The Magician (Bergman, 1958)
BlacKkKlansman (Lee, 2018)
Smiles of a Summer Night (Bergman, 1955)

Re-watching Whit Stillman's Barcelona tonight.

I was hoping for good things from Crazy Rich Asians, but found it fairly bland. I may have had the wrong expectations for a mainstream PG rom-com, but I felt like it needed sharper jokes.

kind of a riff on Philadelphia Story, but with better-looking people

!!! I'm sure this cast looks fine, but you are aware that Cary Grant and Kate Hepburn were considered pretty attractive, right?

in theaters July 26 - August 22

Killer’s Kiss (Stanley Kubrick, 1955) - 6/10
Summer Interlude (Ingmar Bergman, 1951) - 9/10
Eighth Grade (Bo Burnham, 2018) - 8/10
Three Identical Strangers (Tim Wardle, 2018) - 6/10
Blindspotting (Carlos López Estrada, 2018) - 7/10
Teen Titans Go! To the Movies (Peter Rida Michail, Aaron Horvath, 2018) - 3/10
BlacKkKlansman (Spike Lee, 2018) - 9/10

! at low rating for Three Identical Strangers

I knew nothing about the backstory before seeing it at SIFF but on a str8 narrative level it’s my favourite doco of the year

it is an incredible story. a documentary that makes itself, really. what bothered me was how much they reused the same footage from the same Donahue, NBC, + other TV appearances. the same lines. it kinda falls apart at the end, and felt padded even at ~95 minutes. that has nothing to do with the actual story being unresolved, i just thought with so much material to go through (and so many years passed over) the reuse of footage was bizarre.

and fwiw I knew not only the backstory but most of the twists before I saw it. I would've rated it higher if I had gone in completely cold, I wish I could've.

yeah fair enough! the repeated lines are very few & read in SUPER different context the second times around, but if you’re not seeing it / that footage cold, those won’t have the same kick

a documentary that makes itself, really.

this undermines the work they do in visuals and research and in editing the story though — I felt v impressed by how manipulative it was without cheats in the first half-hour, and how well the makers shift to mostly-archival telling thereafter.

i've seen much worse evaluations of 3IS

Apostasy (Dan Kokotajlo, 2017) - fairly ho hum drama around Jehovah's witnesses.
The Heiresses (Marcelo Martinessi, 2017) - this is going to be top 2/3 for the year. Loved the use of (de-)focus to mirror the main character's state of mind (which could've been too on the nose), the script really nails the intricacies of class mobility across a more Latin American milieu, and then the final encounter between Chela and the much younger Angy -- all that hidden passion and desire across age and class -- really was a terrific driver for the last 1/3 of the film.

Missed a trick by not taglining this thread "Oh yes... There will be blood"

https://resizing.flixster.com/2vtSOfiWCmXUQ8Brs-b4y5qFYIY=/206x305/v1.bTsxMTE3NzU3OTtqOzE3ODU5OzEyMDA7ODAwOzEyMDA

Electric Bloodaloo

Kagemusha (1980)
RoboCop (2014)
The Endless (2017)
Deadpool 2 (2018)
*The Social Network (2010)
Super Troopers 2 (2018)
A Ciambra (2017)
Frenzy (1972)
Call Me By Your Name (2017)
*The Cabin In The Woods (2012)
A Futile and Stupid Gesture (2018)
*Nightcrawler (2014)
First Reformed (2017)
*Drugstore Cowboy (1989)
Super 8 (2011)
30 Days of Night (2007)
One Sings, The Other Doesnt (1977)

I really loved how it balanced the tones. John Huston great at playing wealthy monsters.

The Paper (S1 – 6.5)
Ulzana’s Raid (6.0)
Dead Man’s Wire (6.5)
Aloha, Bobby and Rose (7.0)
American Hot Wax (8.0)
Breakfast at Tiffany’s (8.0)
Euphoria (S1 – 5.0)
Hard Times (7.0)
Winter Kills (6.0)
The Eyes of Laura Mars (5.0)

december and january:

all the presidents men 8.5/10
hamnet 6.5/10
the new yorker at 100 👍
orwell 2+2=5 👎
the secret agent 8.5/10
nouvelle vague 6/10
materialists 3/10
wake up dead man 6/10
the mastermind 8/10
marty supreme 8.5/10
it was just an accident 7.5/10
on becoming a guinea fowl 8/10
oh. what. fun. 2/10
a pickleball christmas 0.5/10
anniversary 5/10
*casablanca 10/10
train dreams 8/10
frownland 8/10
people we meet on vacation 4/10
if I had legs I’d kick you 8/10
highest 2 lowest 6.5/10
the rip 4/10
left-handed girl 7/10
*meshes of the afternoon 10/10
daddy longlegs 8.5/10
cover-up 👍
misericordia 8.5/10
*blue moon 9/10

January:

What's New Pussycat (1965) 5/10
Marty Supreme (2025) 7/10
Sentimental Value (2025) 6/10
I'm Going Home (2001) 8/10
Dead End Drive-In (1986) 7/10
Behind the Mask (1932) 6/10
In Praise of Love (2001) 8/10
Frankenstein (2025) 5/10
Flowers of Shanghai (1998) 9/10
The Rip (2026) 6/10
No Other Choice (2025) 7/10

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (5.5)
Rachel Getting Married (6.5)
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (6.0)
Steve Schapiro: Being Everywhere (7.0)
The Paper (1994 movie, not the TV show--5.5)
DJ Ahmet (7.0)
Dior and I (7.0)
Die My Love (6.0)
Mindhunter (S1/2 – 8.5)
Who Killed the Montreal Expos? (6.0)

I thought "Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie" was one of the funniest things I've seen in a while. Had a blast.

Watched Sentimental Value last night which was fine, I guess. Some nice interiors. BUT it has raised a question for me - what are the best movies about aging Boomer parents who are simultaneously career-focused and have a certain joie de vivre and think their kids just need to relax? and who have evolved a sophisticated set of emotional release valves that make it difficult for them to actually connect to others?

Asking uh, for a friend.

Mom only, but 20th Century Women? The Kids Are All Right? (Saw that just once many years ago.)

Watched Sentimental Value last night which was fine, I guess. Some nice interiors.

Wrong.

Excellent interiors.

Recently watched Ashes and Diamonds (Wajda, 1958) and We Are The Best! (Moodysson, 2013) - completely different, but both excellent.

Watched Sentimental Value last night which was fine, I guess. Some nice interiors. BUT it has raised a question for me - what are the best movies about aging Boomer parents who are simultaneously career-focused and have a certain joie de vivre and think their kids just need to relax? and who have evolved a sophisticated set of emotional release valves that make it difficult for them to actually connect to others?

I haven't watched Toni Erdmann yet but from what others have written, maybe that?

February

Magnificent Obsession (Sirk, 1954) 6/10
Code Unknown (Haneke, 2000) 7/10
Saboteur (Hitchcock, 1942) 6/10
If I Had Legs I'd Kick You (Bronstein, 2025) 7/10
Pictures of Ghosts (Filho, 2023) 7/10
Neighbouring Sounds (Filho, 2012) 7/10
Taxi (Panahi, 2015) 7/10

Nirvanna The Band the Show the Movie (2025) 4.5/5
* The Thief of Baghdad (1940) 3/5
Little Caesar (1931) 3/5
Sun Ra: Do the Impossible (2025) 3/5
Black Coal, Thin Ice (2014) 3.5/5
La Tête d'un homme (1933) 4/5
Five Star Final (1931) 3.5/5
Hotel by the River (2018) 3.5/5
Blue Moon (2025) 3.5/5
* Best in Show (2000) 4/5
The Daytrippers (1996) 3/5
* Waiting for Guffman (1996) 4/5
The Snow Woman (1968) 3.5/5
Shanghai Blues (1984) 4/5
Deadline at Dawn (1946) 4/5

Sun Ra: Do the Impossible (2025) 3/5

Was this a disappointment? A Joyful Noise (1980 Ra film) is my all-time favourite music doc.

Orgy of the Dead (1965)

couple get tied up in a graveyard by Criswell and forced to watch about 20 horror-themed topless dances. that's pretty much the entire plot, if it counts as a plot.

Afire
The Producers
Woman At War
Nights Of Cabiria
The Fabelmans
Abashiri Prison I, II, III
The Case of Marchel Duchamp

woman at war was icelandic film about an eco warrior attacking pylons.

nights of cabiria was fellini.

fabelmans is the lightly fictionalised life of s spielberg, including michelle williams as his mum, which tied in nicely with he role in dawson's creek given that dawson was spielberg obsessed.

abashiri prison didn't have a lot of prison after the first. hard to see the appeal (and nothing like teruo ishii's later career)

Marcel Duchamp thing was interesting in that it was a documentary about him, but presented by sherlock holmes and his clunky home computer...

Cinema:
Resurrection (Bi Gan, 2025) 3.5/5 - less than meets the eye
No Other Choice (Park Chan-wook, 2025) 3.5/5 - didn't land the satirical targets as it might have
The Secret Agent (Mendonça Filho, 2025) 3.5/5 - flash-forward scenes should have been excised
Magellan (Diaz, 2025) 4/5 - Lav Diaz selling out to the mainstream at only 2.5 hours
Sinners (Coogler, 2025) 1.5/5 - ineptly plotted CGI hellscape with the absolute worst 'bravura' scene I've ever witnessed onscreen
In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-wai, 2000) 4.5/5 - more like it
Cure (Kurosawa, 1997) 4.5/5 - ditto
Strongroom (Sewell, 1962) 4/5 - taut and tight Brit b-flick, maybe there are more like this?
Ganja & Hess (Gunn, 1973) 3.5/5 - top marks for originality if not coherence

Other:
The Ox-Bow Incident (Wellman, 1943) 4/5 - crowd psychology-themed western, Dana Andrews great as always
Heavy Metal in Baghdad (Moretti/Alvi, 2007) 4/5 - Vice documentary that goes to show metal dudes are exactly the same the world over
The Terminal Man (Hodges, 1974) 4/5 - paranoid '70s SF from Get Carter/Flash Gordon director
Flesh and the Fiends (Gilling, 1960) 4/5 - Burke & Hare story with Donald Pleasence consuming the scenery as a graverobber/murderer, look out for Melvyn "Gloria" Hayes too
Brute Force (Dassin, 1947) 4/5 - broke new ground for the depiction of onscreen violence apparently, I can believe it, the first we see of "hero" Burt Lancaster he's ordering a prison fink to be forced into a steam press with blowtorches
Kansas City Confidential (Karlson, 1952) 4/5 - Neville Brand AND Lee Van Cleef as double bad guys, I felt personally menaced watching this
20 Million Miles to Earth (Juran, 1957) 3.5/5 - generic Quatermass ripoff enlivened by Harryhausen effects work
Green for Danger (Gilliat, 1946) 3.5/5 - turns into run-of-the-mill whodunnit after a promising start, Alastair Sim truly was a comedy genius though
You Can't Take it with You (Capra, 1938) 3.5/5 - wherein the Capra folksiness descends into mawkish contrivance, some would say it was always that
Singin' in the Rain (Donen/Kelly, 1952) 4/5 - not the 11th greatest film of all time, sorry
The Jazz Singer (Crosland, 1927) 3.5/5 - can we ignore the blackface? I think we can't
The Naked Gun (Schaffer, 2025) 4/5 - I'm calling it: better than the original
Unearthly Stranger (Krish, 1963) 4/5 - decent enough SF from the director of legendary railway-themed warning film The Finishing Line
Weapons (Cregger, 2025) 3/5 - I'd heard this was great, it wasn't
Thelonious Monk: Straight No Chaser (Zwerin, 1988) 4/5 - filmed in 1967
Osama (Barmak, 2003) 4/5 - depressing-as-hell depiction of life under the Taliban
Santo Versus the Vampire Women (Blake, 1962) 4/5 - lunatic horror/wrestling mash-up, better than Suburban Commando among wrestler flicks
Step Across the Border (Humbert/Penzel, 1990) 4/5 - 'improv documentary' about Fred Frith, very good
Macbeth (Welles, 1948) 4/5 - filmed on leftover Western sets apparently, castle interiors appear to be set in a cave
The Brain That Wouldn't Die (Green, 1963) 4/5 - only a dullard would fail to be entertained by this
P'tang, Yang, Kipperbang (Apted, 1982) 4/5 - for fans of Gregory's Girl
The L-Shaped Room (Forbes, 1963) 4/5 - social message film that thankfully doesn't linger on the message
Seance on a Wet Afternoon (Forbes, 1964) 4.5/5 - kidnap drama focusing on the psychology of the kidnappers
Planet of the Vampires (Bava, 1965) 3.5/5 - 4.5/5 for the costumes/design, 2/5 for the story = the final score
The Cry Baby Killer (Addis, 1958) 3/5 - incoherent early Jack Nicholson JD vehicle, the print available on YT is so murky the action appears to be taking place during a solar eclipse
Ace in the Hole 5/5 (Wilder, 1951) 5/5 - Kirk Douglas as washed-up newspaperman Chuck Tatum, this might be the biggest asshole in cinema history
Blind Shaft (Li Yang, 2003) 4/5 - psychopathic goings-on in the illegal Chinese mining industry

Strongroom is a fun watch. Darren Nesbitt's eyebrows make him look like a Thunderbirds puppet come to life.

yeah Strongroom is a great B picture

Singin' in the Rain (Donen/Kelly, 1952) 4/5 - not the 11th greatest film of all time, sorry

was this your first time? it really does rip on a big screen

Cregger’s debut Barbarian was much better than Weapons imo (but is totally an audience flick)

Yeah somehow I'd never seen Singin' in the Rain before, I watched it on an in-flight entertainment system though which is about as far as you can get from a big screen. As far as musicals go it was a lot better than the last one I watched which was Grease.

https://i.ibb.co/Wpg2nqKK/IMG-6513.gif

Sentimental Value (Trier 2025)
After the Hunt (Guadagnino 2025)
*The Dead (Huston 1987)
*One Battle After Another (PT Anderson 2025)
*John Wick (Stahelski 2014)
Trap (Shyamalan 2024)
King of the Hill (Soderbergh 1993)
Ritual in Transfigured Time (Deren 1946)
Girl with Hyacinths (Ekman 1950)
*John Wick Ch. 2 (Stahelski 2017)
Sorry Baby (Victor 2025)
The Illumination of Jim Woodring (Brandt 2020)
The Secret Agent (Mendonca Filho 2025)
To Live and Die in L.A. (Friedkin 1985)
Predator: Badlands (Trachtenberg 2025)
Ben-Hur (Wyler 1959)
Blue Moon (Linklater 2025)
Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In (Cheang 2024)
A Tale of Two Cities (Conway 1935)
The Amateur (Hawes 2025)
Hamnet (Zhao 2025)
Dead of Winter (Kirk 2025)
Zabriskie Point (Antonioni 1970)
*John Wick Ch. 3, Parabola, Barbellum, whatever (Stahelski 2019)

Tar (7.0)
Bonnie and Clyde (7.0)
Bird on a Wire (3.0)
The Internecine Project (5.0)
Norma Rae (7.5)
Strangers on a Train (7.0)
Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette (7.0)
Black Mirror (S1-S4 - 7.0)
Education (Small Axe) (8.0)
No Other Choice (6.0)

It Was Just an Accident (2025) 4.5/5. The best ending I've seen in a long time.
The Secret Agent (2025) 4.5/5
A Snake of June (2002) 2.5/5
* Citizen Kane. Why should I give a rating? It's Citizen Kane, come on.
Angel's Egg (1985) 4/5
Nothing Sacred (1937) 3.5/5
The Black and the Green (1983) 3.5/5
Videoheaven (2025) 2.5/5. God I hate Troma Films.
Man on the Run (2025) 3/5
The Dirties (2013) 4/5

March:

Crimson Gold (Panahi, 2003) 7/10
Father Mother Sister Brother (Jarmusch, 2025) 4/10
La Ciénaga (Martel, 2001) 8/10
One Last Deal (Muldowney, 2026) 6/10
The Bride! (Gyllenhaal, 2026) 6/10
What Happened Was... (Noonan, 1994) 8/10
*Parasite (Bong Joon Ho, 2019) 10/10
Project Hail Mary (Lord/Miller, 2026) 6/10
In Jackson Heights (Wiseman, 2015) 7/10
A Hard Day's Night (Lester, 1964) 8/10
Lurker (Russell, 2025) 6/10

two good ones i saw recently:

Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes (2020) 9/10
Paris, Texas (Wenders 1984) 9/10

does every wim wenders movie peter out at the end? i've only seen this one and wings of desire (and documentaries).

Watched Sentimental Value last night which was fine, I guess. Some nice interiors. BUT it has raised a question for me - what are the best movies about aging Boomer parents who are simultaneously career-focused and have a certain joie de vivre and think their kids just need to relax

Assayas' Summer Hours.

Project Hail Mary. I j is there’s a thread but I’m in my phone on zing. It was alright. For whatever reason I have a harder time suspending my disbelief when things are presented as “scientifically plausible”

Let's anticipate PROJECT HAIL MARY, with a cute-ass Ryan Gosling in a space suit

what are the best movies about aging Boomer parents who are simultaneously career-focused and have a certain joie de vivre and think their kids just need to relax?

I remember seeing a film a few years ago about a centenarian lady who coped with the loss of her daughter by diving back into her work - despite leading a pretty awful life she still had a certain amount of spunk, and eventually she connected with a kind of surrogate daughter who had basically lost her own childhood. There were lots of soppy scenes of mother-daughter bonding.

There was also a cool scene with these robot sentry guns blasting aliens that went dakka-dakka-dakka until they almost ran out of ammunition and there was alien blood spraying everywhere. The main antagonists were aliens on an alien planet who were completely alien. I think it was called The Armoured Personnel Carrier That Couldn't Slow Down.

Akira (1988) 5/5
Deep Red (1975) 4.5/5 - saw the longer version with extra romance/comedy scenes that, it turns out, were rightfully cut in the first place.
Fires on the Plain (1959) 4.5/5 - almost a Japanese precursor to Come and See, unsettling in the extreme.
It Happened One Night (1934) 4.5/5 - the walls of Jericho! Love all the minor walk-on characters.
Fat City (1972) 4.5/5
My Grandmother (1929) 4.5/5 - completely insane Georgian surrealist comedy, highly recommended. A "grandmother" is a benefactor who can recommend you for a new position at a company btw, or at least it was in 1920s USSR.
Red Shift (1978) 4.5/5 - Alan Garner adaptation for the BBC's Play for Today strand, back in the days when the Beeb did worthwhile things.
Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948) 4.5/5
Jigoku (1960) 4.5/5
Charulata (1964) 4.5/5
Opera (1987) 4/5
Flowers of Shanghai (1998) 4/5
Yi Yi (2000) 4/5
Highway Patrolman (1991) 4/5 - Alex Cox's best after Repo Man, not that I've seen Bill the Galactic Hero or Tombstone Rashomon.
The Last Detail (1973) 4/5
Walkabout (1971) 4/5
People on Sunday (1930) 4/5 - slice-of-life Berlin goings-on from pre-Hollywood Robert Siodmak, co-scripted by Billy Wilder. Lots of hyphens in that sentence.
The Navigator (1924) 4/5
A Swedish Love Story (1970) 4/5
Terra em Transe (1967) 4/5
Sound of Falling (2025) 3.5/5
Two Prosecutors (2025) 3.5/5
The Stranger (2025) 3.5/5 - so-so Camus adaptation, now at least I know where all the pretentious 80s dorks got their pseudo-existentialism from. Predictable Cure song plays out over the end credits.
Exit 8 (2025) 3.5/5
On Falling (2024) 3.5/5
Birds, Orphans and Fools (1969) 3.5/5 - surrealist Czech drama, one for the Valerie and her Week of Wonders fans.
On the Silver Globe (1988) 3.5/5 - long and strange SF tale from Possession director, full marks for not compromising on the artistic vision but it goes on a bit.
Vampire Moth (1956) 3.5/5 - nutso Japanese murder mystery set around the fashion world.
England Made Me (1973) 3.5/5 - Graham Greene adaptation starring Michael York that doesn't quite come off.
The People in White (1996) 3.5/5 - another abstract Buddhist yarn from the director of Why Has Bodhi-Dharma Left for the East?.
Zorns Lemma (1970) 3.5/5 - I will admit I'm not mathematically-inclined enough to understand what's going on here but it was oddly restful nevertheless.
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy 3/5
Hell's Angels on Wheels (1967) 3/5 - biker films are really dull and I have to stop watching them.
Rose of Nevada (2025) 3/5
Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987) 2/5 - I'd completely forgotten about the existence of this terrible film and I'm probably not the only one.

Short films:
Listen to Britain (1942)
The House is Black (1963)
La Cabina (1972) - aka The Telephone Box, Spanish horror short legendary at my and everyone else's school in the UK back in the 70s.
Léontine's Electric Battery (1910) - worth 10 minutes of anyone's time, the Léontine chracter is due for a revival if you ask me.
How a Mosquito Operates (1912)

Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987) 2/5 - I'd completely forgotten about the existence of this terrible film and I'm probably not the only one.

I'm assuming it was Gene Hackman's dubbed-in alien voice that elevated the score to a 2.

2 = bad but not totally unenjoyable
1.5 = both bad and unenjoyable
1 = bad and enraging

It was more Nuclear Man's hairstyle that gave it the extra 0.5

Black Mirror (S5 – 7.0)
Drama (6.5)
Notorious (7.5)
Mile End Kicks (6.0)
Sunrise (revered silent film)
Little Lorraine (6.0)
The Devil Wears Prada 2 (6.5)
House of Cards (S1-6 – 8.0)
Kiss Me Deadly (6.5)
Black Mirror (S6 – 6.0)

i haven't felt like watching good movies recently

Street Fighter 1994
Anaconda 2025
The Incredible Melting Man -- with the same ending as The Substance
Who Killed Captain Alex?

all enjoyable

Watching a lot less movies these days

May so far:

Hokum (McCarthy, 2026) 7/10 maybe a bit convoluted at times but I thought this was an improvement on Oddity

Dark Angel (Baxley, 1990) 6/10 good ol' Dolph

Sirat (Laxe, 2025) 8/10 looooved this

Went out to the local microcinema the last two nights, saw a mystery screening on Thursday of Wicked Ways, or A Table For One, starring Rebecca de Mornay. Truly strange domestic drama(?) where de Mornay plays Ruth, a deeply unstable woman with a habit of setting booby traps around her rural home, married to Michael Rooker, who has a secret family in the big city. Another troubled couple moves in next door and things get increasingly tangled. Reminded me a little of Donald Cammell's White of the Eye but I genuinely had no idea where it was going the entire way through. De Mornay's performance is pretty incredible - the scene of her pointing a gun repeatedly shouting "tell Ruth the truth!" is really going to stay with me. Available on Tubi!

Last night went to the screening of Belinda M. Wilson's Black Mamba, a shot-on-video feature from 2016 that might be the most deranged movie I've ever seen. Black Mamba is a magician who makes potions with her collection of demons in jars and has the ability to transform people into furniture or send them to Hell. Various people come to her for help - a couple wants to be able to have a child, a young woman wants to be beautiful, a dude wants to meet some mermaids - and she provides them with potions and very specific, usually gross, instructions. Invariably their wishes go horribly wrong and their lives are destroyed. It's kind of impossible to describe how nuts this movie is, the green-screen usage is out of control and I would really like to talk to the actors about what the process of filming the main sex scene was like. There's very little information out there about anyone involved, though supposedly the writer/director claims that Black Mamba is based on a family member.

Also I watched The Tall T last week, very good, pretty brutal for a 1950s western.

May (* = rewatches)

Desert Hearts (Deitch, 1985)
Carolina Caroline (Rehmeier, 2025)
Power Ballad (Carney, 2026)
Who Framed Roger Rabbit (Zemeckis, 1988)*
Go Fish (Troche, 1992)
Con Air (West, 1997)
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri (McDonagh, 2017)
The Devil Wears Prada 2 (Frankel, 2026)
Killer of Sheep (Burnett, 1978)
Marty: Life Is Short (Kasdan, 2026)
King Kong (Cooper/Schoedsack, 1933)
Antitrust (Howitt, 2001)
Stranger Than Paradise (Jarmusch, 1984)
Original Cast Album: Company (Pennebaker, 1970)
The Truman Show (Weir, 1998)*

How was Carolina Caroline?

I enjoyed it -- think I gave it 3.5 on Letterboxd. There are some familiar beats/tropes with the whole "lovers on the run" story, but I found it all fairly well done.