Love watching movies from when media companies had disgusting amounts of excess cash, such as Crocodile Dundee, in which Mick Dundee’s lavish NYC jaunt, including a suite at the Plaza, is funded by fucking *Newsday*

Gotta say I did not enjoy spending most of the day with a pit the size of a Buick in my stomach worrying whether our psycho president was going to destroy the world or not and I do not relish doing this all over again in two weeks

Perfect box office weekend, this used to be a real country etc

They added two more screenings!

Moved to be one of the oldest people at this sold out screening of Sátántangó, a sign the kids dig the big screen but also slow cinema in which an hour is devoted to a drunk getting tanked, running out of booze, trudging through the cold for more booze, then passing out en route home

Congrats to PTA for belatedly nabbing some Oscars. Boogie Nights came out just after I started film school in '97 — and what a movie to see at that age/in that major — and also I'm pretty sure the only time I've caught Covid (that I know of) was the time I went to see it in 70mm

2025 Best Picture rankings:
Police Academy
Police Academy 3: Back in Training
Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol
Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment
Police Academy 5: Mission: Miami Beach
Police Academy 6: City Under Siege
Police Academy: Mission to Moscow
Hamnet

I’m glad I finally caught up with Hamnet because it’s healthy to periodically remember what truly bad cinema is like. Watching only the good-to-great or at least rich text stuff can not only give you a lopsided idea of the medium’s capacity but also make you feel less alive

Fair enough

Revisiting Taxi Driver for the first time in an awfully long time and instead of taking Betsy to the dirty Swedish movie (at the Lyric Theatre, which now houses the Harry Potter play), Travis, had he been smart, could have taken her across the street to Clint’s The Eiger Sanction

A long time ago I swore I saw Tom Noonan in the East Village but I wasn’t sure it was him. A friend said, “If you think you saw Tom Noonan, you saw Tom Noonan.” RIP

Frederick Wiseman spent 1967 on, some six decades, wandering America and the world filming how it works (and, often, doesn’t), retreating to an editing room, then going back out and doing it all over again. What a life! RIP to one of the actual greatest

That’s another

Phil Collins solo albums are wild because they’ll have a minimalist, menacing, anguished masterpiece followed immediately by the lamest, most vanilla track ever recorded. I’m especially thinking of “Do You Know, Do You Care?” into “You Can’t Hurry Love” off Hello, I Must Be Going

Someone do a rep series of W. Somerset Maugham film adaptations and call it Mars Needs Maughams

I liked Marty Supreme a lot but preferred the one where someone hates living a panic attack existence over the one where someone thrives with it

An absurdly mixed bag year! Emergency spinal surgery over the summer made it an ordeal, but I still managed to watch new movies and cross off plenty of oldies off my to-see-list. Thanks to all who helped me get through 2025 and may 2026 be considerably less garbage

TIL: We could have gotten David Lynch’s American Beauty

Revisited Broadcast News and the part where the news head jokes to Nicholson that the layoffs would be less brutal if he shaved a million or so off his salary, then spends a solid 30 seconds apologizing to him and swearing he was just kidding, is my new favorite part

Belatedly made Metropolitan a staple of my holiday movie repertoire starting in 2022 and it’s become one of my favorite Yuletide traditions

Once I interviewed Rob Reiner and asked about his incredible work in Wolf of Wall Street. He said, "I don't know what was more unbelievable: that I was DiCaprio's father or that DiCaprio was a Jew." An incredibly lovely and funny man. This news is beyond awful

This is arguably the wildest aspect of David Lynch’s Dune

Because of their Marty Supreme getup in the big window of AMC Lincoln Square 13, New York finally has the giant head of Abel Ferrara looking down upon it

My half-filled theater included a row of people who snickered throughout at this movie from a bygone era, but then enthusiastically discussed how it was unusually insightful about specific concerns plaguing us today, so I don’t know what to think! (I mostly liked it)

Ella McCay: I enjoyed this kooky movie and its plethora of faults and its far more plentiful pleasures. Very nice seeing a comedy in the year 2025 that repeatedly pauses so characters can cry while sad music plays. That Soike Fearn guy is intense

Is it good

Is “chicken bake” even a thing or a CostCo invention? Also never been here before and was horrified/impressed by five pounds of Hershey’s and 50 pounds of powdered sugar

Would watch a sitcom about Roberto Rossellini bringing a kangaroo home to Ingrid and the kids

Trier has this annoying habit of mercilessly tackling specific-to-me anxieties, this one hitting two of them