AWholeCroissant

Call me a hater, I wear it proudly. I hated part one too. And I’ll hate parts three if I have to! But at least the first movie had 1 (one) decent song compared to this musical’s zero.

The movie is laughably bad. Almost so bad it is good. Almost. I did chuckle a bit at the absurdity and dumbness of the final act. Speaking of act, Sidney Sweeney can’t. There is a lack of soul in here eyes or voice. As if she was bored at being on set and being an actor. Thrown into even more contrast with Amanda Seyfried’s high-energy (and quite good) performance. I will be avoiding Sweeney though in any leading roles in the future.

Admittedly, I haven’t seen Kurosawa’s “High 2 Low”. So my dislike is not some scree how Spike Lee ruined another Asian Cinema Classic. I just think this movie is bad.

I was thrown off by the cheapness of the early goings: poor green screen, very noticeable continuity errors I generally like him, but no idea what Jeffrey Wright was going for in his performance.

It is hard to articulate what makes this not work where previous Coen Brothers’ movies succeeded. It feels like a cheap knock-off that is trying too hard.

Probably the worst dialogue ever? So much so that it must be a stylistic choice to just not have any subtext. People just literally stating their wants and feelings. That makes me feel angry! I don’t think it’s trying to be funny, considering how dry and boring it is. Though the script does have Dakota Johnson’s talking about how she isn’t a good actress…. Maybe it’s like an Andy Kaufmann prank. But being bad on purpose is still bad. Though its badness is at least memorable.

The hottest take on the list consider how universally praised it was. While I did laugh here and there. And the squirrel was cute. The movie was mostly dull noise that involves a lot of face punching.

Chris Stuckmann is a prominent YouTube movie reviewer. I never much engaged with his content since he seemed boringly middle-of-the-road. The milquetoast movie critic serves up milk & toast for his first film. Starts off fine enough but falls apart by the end.

Võib tulla suure üllatusena, et paljude meelest aasta parim eesti film on nii madalal kohal. Olen nõus, et kõik noored näitlejad olid üllatavalt tublid ja mõjusid väga veenva ja eheda seltskonnana. Minu probleemid selle filmiga on fundamentalsemad.


Filmitegijate-poolne mõtlematus.

Oh look, it’s Sidney Sweeney again. And surprisingly she wasn’t the reason this movie is so uninteresting. A very by the numbers sports biopic without any hooks – right or left. (That was a boxing joke).

A life-affirming movie about living every day to the fullest.

Pssshh… Lame!

I’ll admit I may have not been emotionally receptive to the message when I saw the movie which colored my experience. I was intrigued by the first third which was less hokey and more mysterious. Then there was the prolonged dance number and I completely checked out.

Another movie that is mostly harmless, but doesn’t excite me. A murder-mystery-thriller on a yacht. One where the reveal left me feeling “Sure, why not.”

Felt like a Hallmark TV movie, except starring Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson. My main takeaway is that I should try give Neil Diamond a shot. First Midnight Mass and now here.

Sooooo, Sooolaimon
Soolai, soolai, soolaimon

Boisterous and chaotic, but something is off with Edgar Wright. The editing doesn’t have the same high-level sorcerer rhythm and flash like his other movies. And that’s like his whole thing.

I guess horror comedies just aren’t really my thing. “Happy Death Day”, “Bodies, Bodies, Bodies”, and a third example. All of them had the same issue where I end up disconnecting from the scenes that want to be genuinely tense. As an aside, I wish the trailers hadn’t explained the premise. At least the imdb plot description is a bit more vague.

Conceptually interesting. A guardian angel showing ‘what if your life was different’ and then the person preferring their new reality. Keanu Reeves is perfectly cast as the charming and well-meaning albeit very naïve angel.

The themes get quite muddled and I would have preferred a higher concentration of laughs along the way. And more Keanu

I found it to be overwhelmingly self- indulgent, a script infatuated with itself and writing. And I don’t have much personal connection to 1940s musical theater. (Except one song from Oklahoma! for unrelated reasons)

Hot take: Margaret Qualley is not a very good actress. Too clarify, she is great at emoting and body language, hence why her performance worked in ‘The Substance’.

A big step down from the director of my favorite movie of last year (“Conclave”). Colin Ferrell is memorable as a sweaty, awkward sap, but the movie surrounding him is a bit of a mess.

It begins with intrigue: a professor caught between a he-said-she-said assault between a student of hers and a close friend professor. Andrew Garfield plays the accused, a silver-tongued devil who does sound convincing enough in his innocence. Maybe? A drop of doubt. But he is barely in the movie, proceeding instead with a lead character who doesn’t have much to contribute.

My least favorite out of the three Benoit Blanc Mysteries. Daniel Craig with his exaggerated accent is still as fun as ever, but I never felt engaged in the religious themes nor the central mystery. Too many characters and not enough doubt cast to suspect any of them.

Not quite as good as the original Naked Guns. As weird as it is to say, I feel like the old ones (at least the first one) was cleverer and more original with its dumb jokes and goofy gags. (This one straight up ripped of an Austin Powers joke). Still, as a absurd comedy, its easy watching.

My favorite part was the Snowman.

As a non-fan of F1, a lot of this movie was nonsense. As a non-interested person in car movies, it was a step below ‘Rush‘ or ‘Ford v Ferrari‘. As a fan of Brad Pitt, his role was mundane. As a by-the-numbers sports movie, it was acceptable enough entertainment.

First, Baumbach makes an auto-biographical movie where his character is called a genius by everyone else (‘Marriage Story’) and now a masturbatory work about how important making movies.

My eyes could not roll harder at the end-of-movie people-watching-movies-and-crying scene. Other than that it was decent fun. George Clooney is a charming performer.

I’ve skipped most of the recent Pixar movies. Once a studio who was the gold standard of animated films, now their movies are just “pretty good”. I laughed, it was pretty, but I wasn’t blown away. No tears were shed.

What a coincidence that Pixar’s quality dropped off just as I matured into adulthood.
Curious….

A finale to a superhero movie that doesn’t (mostly) involve punching people in the face is a nice change of pace. The metaphor for depression and trauma is a bit on the nose, but considering the genre, I’ll allow it. I did get emotional at the end there. Kudos for that.

I really liked the trippy sequence with the Kipling poem at the beginning. And it had its fair share of interesting world building. But it mostly just being a zombie movie, so it can only rise so high. Spoiler alert though, the sequel is much better.

Tim Robinson brings over his loud, obnoxious, crash, socially inept humor from ‘I Think You Should Leave‘. Though I also wish the movie didn’t feel so much like a series of sketch concepts. At least this year also had ‘The Chair Company‘ which adds just enough structure and overall narrative to his unique brand of chaos.

One of those movies that I don’t really get. Not that it is too confusing. Scene to scene I understand what is going on. There is intrigue, I was engaged (most of the time). But when the movie finished I was left mostly indifferent to it all. It’s fine I guess. Maybe it was the high expectations by the awards and whatnot.

“[Victor], you are the monster.” So is written in a nominee for the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar. The story is very straightforward, as much nuance as that line implies.

However, it is still gorgeous. Would have been nice to have had the opportunity to see it on the big screen. But I suppose watching on a phone on the bus is just as cinematic of an experience. Thanks Netflix!

Your enjoyment of this film may hinge on two key: your tolerance of the quirky Tim Key (he can be a bit much. I was bemused), your enjoyment of the music (I didn’t much care for it).

Regardless of the other two points, it is a sweet tale of love lost and attempts to rekindle.

I want to shout out Alexander Skarsgård for taking on interesting projects. Like the insightful notion about Brad Pitt: A character actor trapped in a leading man’s body. Though in this case he is just supposed to be really handsome and stoic.

Beneath the untraditional love story dynamic is a unique and touching tale of self-discovery and figuring out what you want in a relationship, when and how to compromise.

After the Best Picture and Best Director win, seems like Bong Joon Ho got his blank check movie. And he is back to something more ‘Snowpiercer’ than ‘Parasite’. Sci-fi dystopia, clones, clones getting killed, clones in love triangles, weird aliens, Mark Ruffalo as a Trump-inspired leader (though not as literal so I don’t think it will age poorly).

The movie has a distinct voice in it’s quirky humor. Keeping the heavy subject matter at a distance with a shield of levity. Though the jokes didn’t always land for me. Maybe I am just getting old and out of touch (I say, being only three years old than writer/director/lead Eva Victor). Still, I appreciate it for what it’s going for.

2024 had ‘The Substance’, a frenetic and flashy (and gross) movie about the roles of women in Hollywood and femininity. It was nominated for Best Picture. 2025 had a frenetic and flashy (and bloody) movie about toxic masculinity. It gets no awards.

Not that it should, since it stumbles through it’s concept. But it was so close to being great. Just someone a bit more talented behind the camera to clean up some of the corny dialogue, or streamline the cacophony of on-the-nose symbolism.

I liked the retro-futuristic aesthetic. I liked the depiction of Galactus and the cosmic horror that entails. I did not like the monarchist vibes. Or the “trolly problem” that the human race goes along with.

Like, ok, so giving up one baby is too much of a cost to save humanity. But lets take on this huge construction project to save the day instead. I wonder how many workplace accidents happened in that process? People falling off of scaffolding. Getting crushed in industrial machinery.

At the beginning Caught Stealing strongly resembles a crime-thriller-comedy-funtime movie. Exaggerated characters, threats of violence, and a lead that is too-cool-for-school. Lulls you in with expectations about how the story is going to go. But turns out, crime stuff isn’t actually all that fun. The movie doesn’t go grim-dark, but it does have it’s own distinct tone to separate it from ‘Snatch‘. and the like.

Sure, the metaphor is as thin as paper.

Co-dependence manifest. But the result is still a fun, ridiculous body horror movie. Too silly to be truly upsetting or disturbing, and creative enough to give a good cringe.

I may be the most sentimental person I know, and yet I did not connect with this movie emotionally. It’s one of those movies that I rationally recognize as well done and will not argue if someone says it’s their favorite. Just didn’t work for me.

The most fantastical film of the year, requiring the most suspension of disbelief. Imagine if you will, the US government is filled with competent people who want to do their jobs well and do good for the country and the people. Laughable, I know. People really seem to hate the ending, I think it’s fine.

Is it racist to bring up Parasite because it is also an anti-capitalist Korean film. This time by the other well-known director? Maybe. So I won’t.

I don’t always vibe with Park Chan-wook. But I really appreciate his work. He is always doing something intriguing and memorable. There were times were I felt like the film was building in an odd direction, taking aim at the wrong thing, but ultimately it completely redeems itself at the end.

Sometimes a movie can just be fun. A good time. It’s just good guys vs super villains. Thematic complexity goes as far as “it’s good to be good and bad to bad.” And most important jokes on jokes on jokes. All in an animation style that gives the sense of it being a child’s imagination (which canonically it is in the books). ACAB, but this might be the exception.

Lanthimos’ early films had the actors speaking more like robots or puppets rather than real people. It created a distance from reality and heightened the comedy. Despite the horrific things that were taking place, it kept some levity as it never felt like the characters were really people-people.

There is something about Ari Aster’s style and taste that just works for me. Like his previous collab with Joaquin Phoenix, ‘Beau Is Afraid’, I may not have been blown away end-to-end by this one, but there is almost always something interesting happening. Interesting narrative choices or interesting shots. Another movie where there is a lot going on which gets thematically muddled. But the ‘lot’ that is ‘going on’ keeps my watching.

It has an eye-catching premise: a guy loses his identical twin and in a support group, becomes friends with another twinless dude. The story goes almost immediately in an odd direction. It’s funny, it’s sweet, it’s weird, it’s charming.

I hesitate to mention ‘The Substance‘ again since ctrl-F seems to indicate that I have already mentioned that movie twice. But it is relevant. This is also a journey of a woman conforming to societal expectations of beauty to her own detriment. This time though with Middle-Aged beauty procedures. Which are disgusting and unpleasant. Appropriate for the grotesque origins of most fairly tales.

I can make an educated guess that the director’s favorite movie might be ‘The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford‘. There’s the very similar narration (except not as good). It has a similar aesthetic, similar score (even so far as having a Nick Cave song at the end).

I appreciate the first half which is just a solid drama film about grief and unexplainable loss. Part of me wishes it wasn’t a horror allegory, but then maybe the subject matter would be too heavy for most. Plus, then we would’ve missed out of one of the most iconic endings of the year. Cregger really showing his sketch comedy roots.

The sad movie about a sad thing happening and people being sad in all its sadness. It is beautiful and tragic, etc.

I just want to point how there are so many instances of multi-child families in this “kid dies” movie. Agnes’ brother and half-siblings. Will has multiple siblings and his mother talks about losing several children young. Agnes and Will have multiple children. And there is even talk about a cat with six kittens. I don’t really have anything insightful to say about it. Just thought it was interesting.

PTA has made so many iconic drama films. Magnolia, Boogie Nights, There Will Be Blood, The Master. And yet this one, his funniest film and the one with the most broad-appeal, is the one that seems like will finally get him his long overdue Best Director Oscar. Appropriately hilarious.

Often the complain nowadays is that movies and tv-shows are being turned into 8-10 episode miniseries. Meaning movie concepts are being stretched out or TV concepts don’t have enough time to cover everything they need to.

Sinners is the opposite. The world and characters felt so rich and with enough back-story intrigue that I would love a mini-series instead. I love the slow build up, setting up the juke joint, meeting everybody.

Usually when movies have maximum tension, it involves large sums of money or people’s lives are in immediate danger. But all Rose Byrne wants – as a mother of a young child with a medical issue – is some peace and quiet. She just wants to relax, to zone out a little bit, and relieve some stre–B E E E P!!