No, but in the beginning scene there is a very impressive and humorous application of his prodigious mathematical skills. I don’t want to go into further detail because seeing it without fore knowledge definitely makes a difference.
The list of films featuring accountants as the lead character, let alone forensic accountants, is presumably a very short one.
I wanted it to be good. I write and read action romances, this is my jam. And ironically the romance part they did pretty well (it’s usually the reverse) but it was functionally two movies, here’s a romance, oh, okay, now we’re in a bog standard action movie, the two pieces were not well-integrated, it was kind of a mess, and Sigourney Weaver was wasted yet again. (As someone who does this kind of thing, I understand why so many are bad, because it’s hard. A good, complex romance requires a totally different pace than an action story. It can be done, I’ve seen it done, but it’s rare. But usually when it fails, what happens is a great action story with a lackluster romance. This was the opposite.)
I’m just dying for Miles Teller to be in something as cool as Whiplash again.
The one thing that has always bothered me about the movie is, who exactly is she?
I mean, him, it’s pretty clear. Middle-age actor, fading movie star, there on a gig. Fine; makes sese. But her? She’s a 20-year-old Yale graduate, married at 20, doesn’t seem to work for a living, completely comfortable with absurd levels of wealth and luxury… what is this person? Of all the strange and alien things we saw in Tokyo, to me, her character was by far the strangest.
(Of course, the answer is that she’s Sofia Coppola. The disconnect, to me, is that Coppola seems to think that she’s a normal, ordinary person).
Good post 
Whiplash was disturbing. 
Amazing bit of acting.
I expect to see Anna in more action movies. What a body and athleticism.
The literal and figurative cliff hanging was overdone and I’m not much on zombie movies ever.
She’s nothing consistent. Johansson was actually 17 when it was filmed. She’s supposed to be a Yale graduate. She’s supposed to be married. She’s supposedly in her early twenties. This is just sloppy character creation. Sofia Coppola was 32 when the film was released and 31 when it was filmed. She went to college at Mills College, California Institute of the Arts, and Art Center College of Design, but she never graduated. She had no knowledge of Yale, as far as I can figure out.
To me The Gorge did not have a good romance at all. It just looked like lust from two lonely sexually frustrated people. I much preferred the action.
Let me walk that back. The romance was good…for an action movie.
I couldn’t have rolled my eyes any harder when he started spouting poetry. My favorite part was before they started talking and were just writing stuff to each other.
I’ve never, almost never seen a truly good romance on film and I’ve never seen an action romance that just nailed it. The closest to something that almost did it for me was True Romance but that’s for the epic fight/proof of love scene at the end. That’s how hard you should fight for the one you love. That was a morally messed up film, though.
I’ve tried to like romantic comedies, a few are great, but generally if the stakes aren’t literally life or death, yawn.
Co-signed. As I always say: Comedy, fundamentally, is about things going wrong. Love, fundamentally, is about things going right.
It’s possible to make a creative work that really integrates both of those phenomena honestly and plausibly, but unless you are literally Shakespeare, you probably aren’t going to succeed very well. Because it’s difficult.
The original Star Wars movie was a very fun blend of derring do and good sarcastic comedy.
Does not need to be one or the other IMNSHO 
I disagree that comedy has to be going wrong and love going well. A blend is the best - think of the tension between two people who are at odds then end up in love …great opportunity for fun, romance, biting sarcasm and great danger …think African Queen.
Thunderbolts - The New Avengers
Last night I did something I haven’t done since I was a kid, and that is go to a movie for 2nd time in two nights, and I am just so glad I did! If you are at all a Marvel universe fan, you are going to love this movie.
They did a great job introducing the new characters and making them totally three dimensional in terms of their personalities, powers, and personal demons. Each is very attractive, and the humor along with the action is great. The ending is great because there can be something stronger than super powers, and the spin in all takes in the final scene made for a great conclusion.
I agree with all of that. The only issue I can see is if you haven’t seen a bunch of other shows and movies you don’t have all the background needed to truly understand the characters. Most importantly the relationship between Red Guardian and Yelena. At the minimum you should see Black Widow, Falcon and the Winter Soldier and Hawkeye. However I went with my 25 year old daughter who likes the MCU but has fallen behind and she loved it.
Comments in this thread oversold me on Thunderbolts. I saw it today and It did nothing for me. We’re at the point now where none of the characters or storylines are anchored in the era of comics I read. I now wonder how much of my excitement for the first dozen years of the MCU was dependent on my previous enthusiasm for the comic books I read when I was younger.
I still have my 1980s comic book collection. Many of the plots were based on stories I read the month they were on the news stand. Days of Future Past. Dark Phoenix. Death of Electra. I understand where you are coming from. On the other hand my daughter is 25 and never cracked open one comic book in her life and she likes the MCU and loved this movie. I had to shush her because she was laughing too loud.
A Minecraft Movie
Not recommended.
The Lego Movie showed us you can take a simple little toy or game and turn it into a really creative, funny, and enjoyable movie. A Minecraft Movie is none of those. Just really the most generic and dull film with no real effort to do anything interesting.
I was not expecting to be bored. The movie is actually quite colorful and there is a fair bit of action, but the whole thing is yawn inducing. Jack Black is completely just doing the exact thing he does in any movie and to be honest, Jason Momoa contributes almost nothing to his role. The two children are generic.
I don’t seek out movies I wouldn’t enjoy so I am surprised to say that so far, this is probably the worst 2025 release I’ve seen.
Skip it.
Glad to hear.
We are doing a double feature next weekend - Thunderbolts and Sinners. Can’t wait.
It’s our first time dipping our toe back into Marvel waters in quite some time. We just got so tired of it.
Saturday night, it seemed ok, I’ve seen the first episode of SNL (and season) a few times, from the torrents, but the show was only ever experienced second hand via movies in the UK, so the beats and accuracy didn’t strike me as important compared to other people who might remember it first hand…
The only real problem I had was with Andy Kaufman and the idea that he was basically Latka as his normal personality, Which anyone who had seen Man on the Moon (rather than only knowing him via this and Taxi) would know as nonsense.
Striking to see Chevy Chase as an important person rather than the faded out character which was given a last chance on Community and blew that.
True, but Kaufman was also the type of guy who would stay in character all evening just because he felt like it.
There’s a lot of foreshadowing in that scene with JK Simmons as Milton Berle.
Sometimes it’s nice to find an older movie you might have missed on a streaming service and discover a gem.
Looking for something to watch, we happened upon Mulholland Falls, a noirish 1996 effort starring Nick Nolte and a cast of other once-notable people you haven’t seen in 30 years. I seemed to recall it got good reviews, but unfortunately I was confusing it with David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive.
My God what an awful movie! We made it about 30 minutes into it before hitting the STOP button. Nolte - no great thespian under the best of circumstances - grunts his way through it and the rest of the cast is no better. It was all style - much too much style - and no substance. And parts of it were just really offensive. Somebody actually greenlighted this?
There were some younger actors in it who went on to better things in the ensuring decades and it’s a wonder their careers survived this steaming pile.