Nuns trying to build a convent in the wildnerness... Where have I read that before? Oh, right, Lillies of the Field, though I had never seen the movie. Lillies of the Field -- 1963 Famously starring Sydney Poitier, who garnered the very first Best Actor Oscar nomination for a black man**, as an itinerant handyman who runs into a group of five German nuns who want to build a chapel in the Arizona (?) scrub. The Mother Superior feels that Poitier has been sent by God to build their chapel, and who is he to be able to confront the power of God? The book was sweet, but I've not thought it much in the last 40 years. This is a sweet movie, and I doubt I will think about much other than to wonder why Poitier got an Oscar nod for this movie. (Unless it was to make up for Raisin in the Sun, which surprisingly I've never seen.) No, the star of this show was Lilia Skala as the Mother Superior (who I just read also garnered an Academy Award Best-Supporting Actress nomination.) She's deceptively funny. When writing to many philanthropic organizations to raise money for her chapel -- The Lions, The Elks, the Moose -- she ponders what kind of animal a "kiwanis" is. Her English just isn't there. And she gets the star turn to end the movie. She realizes that Poitier is going to be leaving, back to the open road, almost before he does. The anguish on her face is palpable, and they give her a full minute of screen time. It's a satisfying watch... ** Edit to add that Poitier won the Academy Award. Also, according to Wikipedia, the principal shooting for the movie took place on Linda Ronstadt's family's farm.
They Will Kill You (2026) Dir. Kirill Sokolov After shooting her abusive father in the hope of saving herself and her younger sister Maria, Asia Reaves gets sent to prison for nine years. Upon her release, she hires a private investigator to help track down her missing younger sibling. The P.I. informs her that his trail goes cold after tracking down Maria to her last known place of employment: The Virgil, a high rise apartment building in NYC that caters to wealthy tenants and where Maria had gotten a job as a maid. Asia manages to get inside the place posing as one of the new maids herself. Even shortly after her arrival, she can quickly conclude that the Virgil definitely appears weird, both in terms of the super-secured nature of the structure itself and the eccentricities of its residents. Though nothing can prepare Asia for how weird things are about to get. Horror action comedy with a very good Zazie Beetz in the lead role. I wouldn't call this a Ready or Not rip-off, though both movies mine similar material and are tonally related. And then there is both features' love for copious amounts of fake blood. Patricia Arquette turns up as a character with unclear loyalties, Heather Graham plays one of the weirder tenants. Not earth-shatteringly good or original, but a solid 90+ minutes of entertainment.
May Flowers #3 The War of the Roses ~ D. DeVito A divorce lawyer, Danny DeVito, tells the story of Barbara and Oliver Rose's marriage before turning to their divorce that is beyond acrimonious. I can see this as being quite funny in 1989. Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner had obvious chemistry going in and the dialogue is snappy and sharp, though Turner really gets all the best lines. The escalating domestic violence does make it a bit trying to watch, though. I'm vaguely interested in how they managed the remake last year and what they might have changed to make it slightly more palatable in 2025. DeVito's direction had some interesting shots. I especially liked the scene when they're sitting across the long table from one another at dinner mostly for Douglas's stupid grin while mumbling to himself while eating and Turner's incredulous stare.
Bugonia (2025) It took years to find out the truth. Ages spent in the dark corners of the internet piecing together disparate items about Andromedans until Teddy himself became a leader among his terminally on-line cohort. He knew their space ships. Their society. And he's convinced Michelle Fuller, the CEO of the drug company that trialed his mother on an experimental drug that put her in a permanent coma, is one of them. He and his cousin Don kidnap her days before the eclipse, which is just the sort of thing that hides an incoming spaceship. The first thing they do is cut off her hair. It's how they communicate, dude. Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons both had epic performances as the lead characters, and there were a couple of really cool visuals in the movie. But I just didn't enjoy my time in Bugonia. It frequently felt like it was dragging. I had the constant urge to skip forward. It was unnecessarily gory. But my biggest problem was that it was just so predictable. It followed the general outline of every other kidnap victim holding movie, so much so that instead of being swept up in the story I was conscious of goings on and multiple times saying to myself "oh, man, please don't do this" shortly before the film did it. There's a couple morals that could conceivably be taken from the ending, all bad.
May Flowers #4 The Yellow Rose of Texas ~ J. Kane Roy Rogers is working undercover on a showboat named The Yellow Rose of Texas in order to recover a payroll box for an insurance company. The DVD was a copy of a VHS, so the the quality could be part of the reason the plot seemed so unintelligible. It's also just a badly written mystery where the big reveal is interrupted for no good reason. In the final show medley, a bonkers horse mascot shows up to replace Trigger. Why? Probably not a good introduction to Roy Rogers.
Black/Dark Hearts (Coeurs Noirs) [2023 - 2 seasons] A French show about French Special Forces operating in Iraq during the whole ISIS/Mosul era. I enjoyed this show and thought for this type of genre (obviously not anything new), it was done rather well. I didn't recognize any of the actors.
Shrinking [3 Seasons] This was cute and overall, I enjoyed it, but they really stretched it out with 3 seasons. A lot of great guest appearances, including Michael J Fox.
May Flowers #5 From Up on Poppy Hill ~ Miyazaki G. Umi works to keep up a boarding house while going to school. At school, the old clubhouse is under threat of being torn down as everyone looks to modernize ahead of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. As is usual for Studio Ghibli, the animation and direction (from Hayao Miyazaki's son) is excellent. The parts with the clubhouse are very fun and enjoyable. The central conflict that arises midway is a bit weird, but not enough to really throw off my appreciation of the film.
May Flowers #6 The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum ~ Mizoguchi K. Kikunosuke is the next in line of a famous kabuki family led by his father. He soon learns that while nice to his face, everyone secretly thinks he is a terrible actor and mock him behind his back. Everyone except the house nursemaid, Otoku, who tells him he's bad and should work harder on his acting. Smitten with her sincerity, he courts her and is disowned, pledging to go off and become a great actor without the family name. A melancholy drama focused on Kiku's devotion to his art and Otoku's devotion to him. The story is very good, but the camera work (for 1939) really shines. There are terrific tracking, low-angle and long shots that weave throughout the Meiji era sets with interesting blocking and mise-en-scene. A lot are striking but one dynamic tracking shot of Kiku as he rushes down an Osaka alley toward the camera near the end is perfect.
Wandering Ginza Butterfly ~ Yamaguchi K. Meiko Kaji stars as Nami, The Red Cherry Blossom, an ex-con trying to settle back into life as a hostess in Ginza. The area is rife with yakuza, however, and she can't avoid trouble with these clowns. Kind of a fun yakuza film. Meiko Kaji is great with her piercing stares and restrained guilt of her previous crime. That these films were made quickly, though, is apparent. The editing is sometimes poor and the final fight scene lacks visual coherence that could have made it great. Still enjoyable as a pulpy 70's yakuza film, though.
Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1978 version) Year: 1978 Platform: Criterion Summary: A club owner ends up in serious debt and must do a favor for his debtors. Rating: 7/10 Cassavetes is an interesting one for me. I think his stuff grows on you after you watch it and I also like him as an actor more. Especially if he's with Peter Falk. That said, one thing he excels at is bringing you into the world he creates. And making you feel like you're a part of it. I mentioned before how I felt drained And in this case, I felt like I was in the 70s, in a seedy part of LA, and you feel like your flesh is crawling when you see the criminals involved. But it's also great when you see what the main character is going through. I decided to check this out when the creator of Cowboy Bebop said he loved it. I had plans to watch it later but hearing Shinichiro Watanabe's endorsement moved it up to the list. There's also two versions, the original in 1976 which was pulled after a week. And then the edited version in 1978, which Cassavetes felt was his true vision. My rule with stuff like this is that it's the creator's decision ultimately. And I believe both Cassavetes and Ben Gazzara prefer the 1978 version. Which, fair enough.
Apex (2026) Dir. Baltasar Kormákur During a risky climb of the Troll Wall in Norway, Sasha loses her partner Tommy. Five months later, she is in Tommy's native Australia, on some level to say goodbye and get closure. She visits a national park, where a ranger warns her of a worrying number of visitors who have gone missing the past few years. She also has a tense encounter with some locals at a gas station, though eventually she does arrive at the camp site suggested to her by another chance encounter at the same stop, the seemingly more friendly Ben. After camping out for just a couple of days, Sasha wakes up to find most of her gear missing. She tracks another nearby campsite, occupied by Ben. Who is initially friendly enough, if a bit weird. Then he reveals his true nature and Sasha is left fighting for her life. An action thriller that is essentially almost entirely a two-hander between Charlize Theron and Taron Egerton. I like both performers, I think both of them have done better work than they display here. Egerton especially does not rise above a very cliche portrayal of a psychopath. As for Theron, we have seen her do these tough woman roles in more memorable turns. If Spejic is interested, this is definitely another entry in his Most Dangerous Game sub genre.
I'm just the opposite. Whether it's movies, books, music, the stage, in general, and not knowing anything else, I'll take the edited version. I think editorship is a good thing. Has there ever been a director's cut that has been shorter than the theatrical release? When the artist is unchecked, the end result is more tedious and precious.
There's definitely been an uptick in these movies. I wish I could take credit, but it's more coinciding with my fixation rather then being preceded by it.
May Flowers #7 Water Lilies ~ C. Sciamma Marie wants to get into the synchronized swimming team to get closer to Floriane while her friend Anne crushes on a boy. The film capture these teenage girls' attempts to come to terms with their bodies and their sexuality. In that sense, it's as awkward as you can imagine 15-year-olds to be. This was Sciamma's feature debut. I found it very similar to Girlhood in a coming of age story that has a certain objective gaze on the characters. I think it may be where she places the camera that causes that feeling. There aren't a lot of high or low angle shots that suggest how you should feel about the characters. It feels like a deliberately non-judgmental approach to telling the stories of teen girls. I wish I could remember Portrait of a Lady on Fire better to compare. My memory of Petite Maman was a similar passive camera with more pronounced framing of shots.
Take it from someone who has been edited and who has been an editor: Like many things, editing is either needed or it can ruin the work. People like George Lucas and Grant Morrison (Especially so with Morrison, that work is all over the place) need editors. Smart creatives realize that even edits are needed. But not a lot of creatives are smart enough to realize it. In this movie's case, even Ben Gazzara told Cassavetes that it was too long. And Cassavetes was smart enough to redo it and rerelease it. I think it says a lot that the original was pulled after a week.
Sciamma's Portrait de la jeune fille en feu is the ultimate modern example of tableau vivant film-making. Because of it, it's one of the most beautiful looking movies I have seen this century. Every frame is a meticulously curated canvas. The use of blocking to illustrate the act of looking. Center-weighted composition, but for the opposite reason of why George Miller used it in Fury Road (there it was meant to allow the audience to be able to follow the action with all of the fast cutting going on). Here it is meant to convey the feeling of the contemporary art of that era (central to the story is the painting of a portrait). Vast use of negative space to draw the eye to the emotional core of any scene. A fairly static camera.
Can't remember who it was who described a good editor as someone who knows more about writing than the person he or she is editing but no longer feels the terrible urge to write him or herself.
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973) Dir. Sam Peckinpah New Mexico, 1881. Pat Garrett rides into Fort Sumner to see his old pal, Billy the Kid. This is no friendly visit, as Garrett has taken on the post of Sheriff in Lincoln county and is delivering an ultimatum: if the Kid does not flee for Mexico, Garrett intends to come from him and either arrest him or kill him. Some time later, Garrett does successfully arrest Billy after a stand-off, only the Kid promptly escapes. For weeks and months after, the two men circle each other, until their inevitable meeting with fate and history. I am a big Peckinpah fan and thus I had seen this before, though not for probably two decades. Revisiting this was worth it, it definitely hits very differently watching this in middle-age than as a young man. Suddenly you realize the entire thing is drenched in a sort of melancholy, a sadness over the passing of time and the inevitability of things coming to an end. Embodied primarily in Coburn's Garrett, but also in Kristofferson's Billy the Kid. The fact that both men were considerably too old to play their respective parts is one of those things that you notice for the first three minutes and then no longer care about at all. Impossible to talk about this film without mentioning Bob Dylan's music, its nature kind of further heightening the features elegiac nature. And then there is the cast (which includes Dylan), you really don't get any features nowadays filled with so many great faces and character actors: Jason Robards, Barry Sullivan, Matt Clark, Jack Elam, Gene Evans, Harry Dean Stanton, Elisha Cook Jr. (even in a one scene five minute cameo he is playing a sad sack) and Slim Pickens. The latter one famously the protagonist/POV character of Dylan's Knocking on Heaven's Door. It's rather rare for me to rewatch movies, since there is so much good stuff out there I haven't seen even once, definitely was worth it to come back to this one.
Man on Fire [2026 - 1 season] Like the movie with the same title, this is all about revenge and pretty much that's all this really was. I can't say it was anything special and some stuff did resemble more Rambo than Denzel, so a pretty meh show for me. The Brazilian music though was great.
Tim's Vermeer: A Penn and Teller Film (2013) Tim Jenison is not a painter. He's the guy that invented the software that created the space scenes in Babylon 5. He's also a guy with a lot of free time and money and an obsession with Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer. He's traveled the world to see the paintings in person, to see where the paintings were done. And inspired by a couple of modern revisionist theories of how the masters used optical mechanisms to help achieve their stunning realism Tim came up with a multi-mirror scheme that seems to match their results. So he takes a few years off, hand builds a studio that matches Vermeer's and decides to duplicate The Music Lesson. If you watch a lot of YouTube you've probably seen ads for a camera lucida, a device for superimposing a image of your subject onto your drawing surface. Deciding to learn more about it sent me down a rabbit hole eventually ending in this movie. The camera lucida and the camera obscura were definitely used by many painters at the time, although to what extent isn't recorded. They were probably a big help in difficult problems of perspective, like foreshortening objects or recording fabric patterns over ripples. The problem is while they give you an amazing 2D luminous movie image of the subject and you can trace outlines, you can't paint colors based on them. Enter Tim's system, evidentially something like Vermeer's. Not quite one of the great documentaries with some rough editing, and while I always love watching people create it's also a pretty dry topic for a movie. But I was still entertained and honestly feel educated. My favorite part has to be the nearly wordless detail painting scenes with the light music. Very ASMR. Penn and Teller seemed to be trying to get away from the Bullshit! style and they almost succeeded.
Project Hail Mary (2026) Dir. Phil Lord & Christopher Miller A man wakes up on a space ship, the other two crew members deceased. He realizes he has no memory of how he got there, or even who he is. Piecing together information he finds on board, he realizes that he is on a vessel on its way to a system twelve light-years away from Earth. Then slowly more memories come back to him, like how exactly he ended up in this predicament: Ryland Grace is a middle-school teacher who also holds a doctorate in molecular biology and one day finds himself visited by Eva Stratt, the person overseeing the vast international effort to find a solution to the so-called astrophage, a micro-organism that is causing the sun to dim and will likely cause mass extinction on earth if a solution is not found in the next few decades. However unlikely, middle school teacher Grace is invited ever deeper into the research effort and does some key discoveries of his own. Stratt's very international team's ultimate plan involves sending a crewed vessel to the Tau Ceti system, where its star seems one of the few in the Solar system's neighborhood not infected by the astrophage. Something about Tau Ceti thus has to be special, and the idea is for the crew to study it and return its findings to earth, in the hope to replicate the same effect on our Sun. Grace now knows how he ended up on the ship, though not yet the exact circumstances of going from an unlikely researcher to one of the three man crew. Things take on a whole new dimension when after his arrival in the Tau Ceti system, he finds out he is not alone. Another ship is there, one which dwarfs his own in size. He successfully makes contact with the rock-like and friendly life form on board, one he names Rocky. Rocky is there to find a solution for the astrophage, which is also impacting his planet's sun/star. Like scientists on earth, his race, the Eridians, also figured out that Tau Ceti was a rare anomaly in that it had not been impacted by the astrophage. The two work together to find a solution and a rather unlikely cross-species bond emerges. Like with the Martian, I have not read the Andy Weir book this is based on, so my only frame of reference is the film. Perhaps this caught me in the right mood but I find myself enjoying this a lot. It's a breezy watch even at 2.5 hours of runtime. It's essentially just pop-corn scifi, with in-universe science that requires some suspension of disbelief. It's also very much a buddy comedy two-hander between Ryan Gosling and a puppet. Contained within is both a very positive view of humanity - they work together to solve a big problem - but also a more cynical one, encompassed in Stratt's assumption that if they fail, humanity will make the food shortages worse instead of better by hoarding. It's hard to imagine anyone other than Gosling in the lead role, since you need someone who can do the comedy as well as the dramatic moments and remain earnest with both. The use of practical sets is obvious on the screen and appreciated. Some people apparently hate the ending, which I don't understand, since it's so much better than the alternative. From both the trailer and the promo campaign I had imagined Sandra Hüller's part would be bigger, she appears primarily in the first act. The ultimate B+ film, but the kind of which I wouldn't mind seeing two or three every year.