wait. what?

Taking Tiger Mountain By Sexuality

It's the movie-watching equivalent of just wanting to grill.

He isn't uncultured. He appreciates Tarkovsky, Bergman, Fellini, etc. He *loves* Lynch, Kubrick, and Scorsese. But at the same time he is anxious about what it might say about his sensibilities if he only engages with Important Art. That might smack of aspirational bourgeois pretension. Or youth.

Guys my age look in the mirror and think, “I’m starting to look like my dad.” Whether they're actually a father or not, they start slipping into whatever they think a Dad Life is. It's certainly preferable to the standard midlife crisis of chasing one's youth.

The ones I see most often discussed are:

The Fugitive
Master and Commander
A Few Good Men
Die Hard
The Hunt for Red October

At very worst, it's about a return to capital-M Manhood and a rejection of "wokeness". At its best, it's nostalgia for an increasingly extinction-bound middle tier of filmmaking.

Is the revival more ironic than poptimism in its original sense? Yes. But all discourse is, at base, semi-ironic now.

I do get a sense of an anti-elitist impulse in the way some people praise the Dad Movie. Not from everyone, mind you. And it was really more of a Twitter thing.

The “dad movie” revival, in its loosening of hierarchies—treating mid-budget films marketed toward men, often dismissed as “solid, not serious,” as worthy of sustained attention again—is a kind of poptimism. I don't mean this pejoratively, but we should call it what it is.

I'm an Alex Garland fan and I've never played Elden Ring, so this might actually work on me.

Sophie Bonhomme (Sandrine Bonnaire) and Jeanne (Isabelle Huppert) hold one another while watching an out-of-frame TV. Each of them has a matching haircut, which is one of the most horrible I have ever seen.

La Cérémonie (1995)
If this is a thriller, it's one of the most glacially paced I've ever seen. While the Lelièvres, a rich Breton family, is shown falling into the banal decadence of late 20th century life, its the almost spiritual friendship between Sophie and Jeanne that mystified me. (3.5/5)

Kim Jin-kyu, as Dong-sik Kim, is standing on the left side and is dressed in a suit without his jacket on. In his right hand, he is lighting his lighter. On the right, Lee Eun-shim, as Myung-sook, stands with her back facing him.

The Housemaid (1960)
Melodrama of the highest order: exaggeration to the point of surrealism. Dong-sik Kim takes advantage of the housemaid, Myung-sook, working in his cavernous new home. This exploitation pulls him into a living nightmare. The only thing stranger is its moralizing epilogue. (3.5/5)

"We gotta feed the babies!"
"Yeah, they don't have enough to eat."
"We gotta shoe the children!"
"Sure, kids need shoes."
"We gotta house the people!"
"Yes! They're livin' on the street."
"Oh, oh, there's a solution!"
"What is it?"
"I want to fly like an eagle... to the sea!"
"Wait... what?"

More Puppy

Less Skinny

New Massive Attack and Boards of Canada coming out on the same day is a big deal for a certain kind of guy (me).

The Housemaid (Kim Ki-young, 1960)

I used to think jokes about movies spelling out their own moral stance, a character turning directly to the audience and saying, “this is bad, the author disapproves”—were strawmen of certain kind of sanctimonious, puritanical viewer.

And then I saw a film last night that did exactly that.

Rotating Villain theory strikes again.

The Return of the King

Exactly. I don't think it'll work either. This is just my theory as to what the point of all this is.

Destreamerization. The elimination of streamers as a class

Four actors out on the hunt in Jean Renior's Rules of the Game. They are dressed in coats, hats, and scarves. On actor on the right, Nora Gregor, is raising a telescope to her left eye.

The Rules of the Game (1939)
I'm grading this on my experience watching it- as a contribution to the development of cinema, it's a 5/5. Personally, I found it charming, witty, and a tremendous orchestration of a hundred moving parts. I was appalled by the (real, actual) killing of animals. (3.5/5)

Russell Crowe is playing Herman Göring, the Nazi official. He is wearing a light blue officer's uniform and is framed in the center.

Nuremberg (2025)
A potentially entertaining performance by Russell Crowe (as Herman Göring) is buried under an avalanche of exposition written at the level of a high school (not even AP) History class. Every other actor in this dull slog is phoning it in. The trial itself is barely depicted. (1/5)

is that EVA Unit-01 in the sky?

I disagree with people quite often about art, but I typically don't make judgments about their character based off such things. One of a few major exceptions is when people say this about Skyler White. If you think like this, I'm gonna assume you're a bad person.

Happy 40th, Trevor!

I certainly hope so.

I wasn't making that argument. I'm only saying that this might be more politically significant than merely stanning.

I don't follow streamers too closely, but I believe that ship has sailed.