The Last of Us Season 1, Your Name, Waterworld: The Ulysses Cut, Nocebo, Mayhem, The Woodsman, The Virgin Suicides

"So much has been said about the girls over the years... But we have never found an answer. It didn't matter, in the end, how old they had been, or that they were girls... but only that we had loved them... and that they hadn't heard us calling -- still do not hear us calling -- them from out of those rooms where they went to be alone for all time, and where we will never find the pieces to put them back together."

-The Last of Us [2023]- 84
I wrote a full review on this that you can find just below on the page, but this was a fantastic journey. Similar to the video game it's based on, the low points only hurt as bad as they did because the heights to which the show soars are so extreme.

-Your Name [2016]- No rating
I cannot believe this film ever received any acclaim at all. The premise is Freaky Friday but between two high-schoolers [boy and girl] who have never met and live in vastly different areas. It's an anime, so I expect it to be a little horny; kind of a trope of the style. This one, however, is so wildly inappropriate that I didn't even finish it. The schtick is, every time the boy swaps into the girl's body, the first thing he does is touch her breasts to confirm where he is. We, as the audience, as supposed to think this is funny... It isn't. I'm shocked anyone found this appealing and especially shocked that it has an 84 and 94 on IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes respectively. Though, I guess I shouldn't be, considering that pedophile-celebration-flick Call Me By Your Name won an Oscar. The story itself is very cute and sweet... But the use of sexual assault as comedy is absolutely disgusting.

-Waterworld: The Ulysses Cut [1995/2019]- 74
Waterworld is a movie that nearly the entire world remembers with a scoff. Somehow, re-editing one of Hollywood's most expensive flops into a 3-hour epic... Fixes almost all of its issues and turns it from a soulless Mad Max rip into one of the shortest 180-minute films I've ever watched. I genuinely recommend that you give this a shot. It's still very silly, but it's silly with a genuine spirit and some seriously incredible production value to boot.

-Nocebo [2022]- 73
This is a fairly bland horror/thriller about the morality of our actions from the creators of 2019's Vivarium. It wasn't bad by any means, it just wasn't great. I recommend this as a light version of either Hereditary or The Queen of Black Magic. The film's moments of excellence are very strong, they're just few and far between.

-Mayhem [2017]- 60
An entirely bland action/comedy/thriller, Mayhem is the perfect example of a 6/10 film. It has an interesting premise, opens with some seriously excellent editing/ filmmaking, and then completely forgets what it's trying to do several times throughout it's 87-minutes on screen. Somehow this sub hour-and-a-half film needed to be 15-minutes shorter. It's not bad... It's just really forgettable.

-The Woodsman [2004]- 86
Some movies push envelopes people aren't comfortable with, and this is one of them. In, The Woodsman, Kevin Bacon plays a pedophile who's just served 12-years in prison and is trying to restart his life. It's an uncomfortable film that frames battling addiction around something utterly abhorrent... And it is incredibly well done. Unlike the above-mentioned celebratory film, this one manages to both be gentle with the subject matter and damning of Bacon's actions while telling a meaningful story about unseen damages. It's very smart, it's very difficult, and it's very brave. Easy recommend.

-The Virgin Suicides [1999]- 79
I cannot wait to read the book this is adapted from. I'm not sure the film entirely works without the space that books are both able to fill with inner-dialogues and allow to be left open without visuals to guide the readers. It's still a great film, though it's one who's greatness is all tied together by it's closing lines, not so much any climactic events. As a film it's most interesting to see the very clear thematic ties to Donnie Darko, which would come out only 2-years later.