Lover - Stalker - Killer, Whiplash, El Conde, Maestro, Men in Black, Jurassic Park, In the Mood for Love, Einstein and the Bomb, The Lost World: Jurassic Park

- Lover, Stalker, Killer [2024] - 78

Talk about fun and engaging documentaries. Netflix’ Lover, Stalker, Killer will have you saying “no way” from start to finish and covers an excellently interesting story. What keeps this journey that I genuinely loved and was very engaged with from a higher score is its general oversight towards either unsuccessful or simply ignored police work during the case. There comes a point in the story where some genuinely excellent investigation occurs and we follow that very closely, but there’s many pieces of the puzzle that simply don’t make sense because it’s never explained if there simply was no investigation or a failed one. This is likely something that will frustrate only a small number of viewers, however, and the ride is otherwise well worth your time.

- Whiplash [2014] - 93

Y’all… I saw this movie when it was new and remembered liking it. What I didn’t remember is just how absolutely and incredibly genuinely excellent it is. Whiplash is a movie with characters we’ve seen before and a plotline one would be scolded for calling “original”, but execution is everything when it comes to simple ideas and if it’s 5 Oscar nominations [3 wins] have anything to say about it, this film is executed to near perfection. At 107-minutes it is concise, engaging, and powerful in what it intends to convey. This is one of those rare non-action films that really amps you up and you’ll catch yourself holding your breath all throughout its runtime. If for nothing else, pop this on for J.K. Simmons’ simply tremendous performance and find yourself a good sound system to appreciate the care and attention taken with the mix. Whiplash is a film everyone should see and a very easy recommend for just about any audience.

- El Conde [2023] - 60

El Conde, on the other hand, was pretty lame. It was certainly very nice to look at [has an Oscar nom for it, in fact], but didn’t really have much going on otherwise. I’m not sure if this is due to my total lack of knowledge on Chilean history or if the script was just vapid and kind of empty. Too many characters with too many motivations that all seemed vaguely similar and too many disparate plots make El Conde a heavy meal right before a long drive home on a straight, quiet road. At times it’s funny and the entire approach to the narration is excellently entertaining but, beyond that, it’s just a movie that sorta keeps happening… and then happens some more. At just under 2-hours, El Conde feels more like an art piece than a narrative, and that’s simply too much time for something of this sort.

- Maestro [2023] - 55

Which uh… is similar to my complaints about Maestro. As we well know by now, I struggle with biopics in general, but I especially disdain ones that don’t even try to teach me about why the subject matters. It’s worth mentioning that both Cooper and Mulligan are well deserving of the nominations for how they played their roles here as is the cinematography particularly noteworthy, but those are the only things that got me through this horrendously boring film. I feel like I’m talking about runtime a lot today, and I’m going to do it again here, because 2-hours and 10-minutes is a lot of time to maladroitly personify the importance of a historical figure. I knew nothing about Leonard Bernstein or Felicia Montealegre going into this film, and the only things I know having finished it is that he was a composer who had a hard time being faithful and she had breast cancer. Maestro was an incredibly empty experience that I wouldn’t recommend for anyone.

- Men in Black [1997] - 83

Turning the dial back a few years, I’d been meaning to re-watch this for some time now… and I’m so glad I did. From visual effects to humor, Men in Black has absolutely stood the test of time. While there’s certainly elements of the film that go somewhat unexplained, it’s such a fun ride that it’s not the end of the world. I know I’ve seen the others, but I don’t remember them in nearly any way, and there’s no chance they compare to the original. Of particular note here is the film’s pacing. This is a journey that starts you running about 30mph and, before you can realize that your feet shouldn’t move that fast, kicks it up to 100mph and dares you to try and slow down. It’s also much funnier than I remembered and just a genuinely good time. If you haven’t thrown this on recently, I can’t recommend it enough. Just be sure to have your sugar and water handy so you don’t have to pause part way through.

- Jurassic Park [1993] - 93

While we’re on the subject of long-time favorite films I haven’t watched in close to 10-years… Jurassic Park is unreasonably good still. Yes, there’s parts where the 1993 visual effects don’t look great… but they consistently look just as good [or better] than some of the nonsense we see spewed out by major studios 30-years on now. This film is simply incredible in every way and I’m shocked it wasn’t given more Oscar attention the year it came out given that it’s soundtrack has become one nearly as eponymous as that of Star Wars. Regardless, if you haven’t watched Jurassic Park lately, I really think you should. There’s a lot of cool history around how the effects were made that lends this film some impressive weight in terms of film history and, if I had to point to a single film that informed who I am today… even more than Godzilla, I’d point you towards Jurassic Park. Offhand, I can probably think of five moments in film that consistently get me right in the tear ducts, and Jurassic Park has three of them.

- In the Mood for Love [2000] - 64

2000’s In the Mood for Love is a strikingly impressive feat of period filmmaking but, despite genuinely talented cinematography and editing, it’s narrative simply doesn’t justify how long you have to wait for it to happen. This is one of those movies that would have made a killer 45-minute short film, but struggles in a huge way with a feature-length runtime. It’s still worth having on for how well-made it is, but have it on while you do something else, because the story it tells simply doesn’t need to consume the amount of space that it does. It’s slow, it’s transparent, and it relies heavily on a gimmick that, though fun, gets old once you realize you’re revisiting it for the 4th or 5th time. Had I watched this on my own, I likely wouldn’t have finished it and I was relieved when it finally ended. Finding out this movie was only 1:38 long was probably the most shocking news I heard all week.

- Einstein and the Bomb [2024] - -

The award for “First thing I couldn’t bear to finish” in 2024 goes to Einstein and the Bomb. This mishandled docu-drama is not only boring and inane, but unintentionally funny without being any kind of fun at all. Cherrypicked quotes from Einstein’s life dot tacky and stilted conversations while the film insists it’s all “genuine” and “really happened”. This is easily the worst way to do a documentary and the whole thing just comes off as phony when you’re even engaged enough to care. I guess I did go 32-years of life without knowing that Einstein was Jewish… so I didn’t learn nothing, I suppose.

- The Lost World: Jurassic Park [1997] - 68

Speaking of nothing in particular, The Lost World: Jurassic Park is not very good and mostly corny and boring. It’s overly long for what it wants to be, loses all sense of grace, wonder, or excitement [mostly] from the original film, and spends almost its entire runtime setting up an entirely transparent and two-dimensional villain that you care so little about it’s difficult to even cheer when he gets eaten in the end. Where the first film instils a sense of beauty and awe at these amazing creatures, then lets you decide where you stand on the rights of man to decide their fates in a world no longer theirs, Lost World just points you towards the guys with guns and trucks and says “hey that’s bad, look how bad they are”. Genuinely, save for the scene where the rexes attack the trailer after Ian and the gang give their newly healed baby back, this movie is mostly super boring and not worth your time. It does still look excellent in terms of visual effects and, even though the score mostly eschews the theme music from Jurassic Park, I do still love the music here. It’s not that it’s a low quality movie, it’s just… it’s just really flat and boring. The Lost World: Jurassic Park feels like a film developed from focus group surveys where the results have been filtered to only retain things related to making an action movie- and anything actually intriguing or thought provoking has not only been thrown away, but eaten or burned.