Cool. I just really liked Men.
He’s making Elden Ring next I think.
I watched the biopic Judy on my local PBS station last night. Renée Zellweger’s performance was excellent. She won the Oscar for that role. I can’t say whether it was the best performance by a lead actress that year, but she definitely deserved recognition for it.
I also liked some of the actors in supporting roles. Jessie Buckley was good as Judy Garland’s production assistant in London.
I think Darci Shaw was miscast as the young Judy Garland. She didn’t look much like Garland, and she really didn’t sound like her. Judy Garland was a contralto. Even as a teenager, her voice was pretty low. Why did they cast a soprano?
Louis B. Mayer was portrayed as avuncular on the surface with a mean streak underneath. Everything I’ve read about Mayer suggests his mean streak was right on the surface.
Some important aspects of Judy Garland’s life were sanitized. It portrayed her last husband, Mickey Deans, as a happy-go-lucky guy she met at a party who failed to come through on a business deal that would have rescued her financially. In real life she met him when he delivered amphetamines to her hotel room. Lorna Luft said that when Judy and Dean met, Judy was in the final stages of drug addiction and was “dying in front of his eyes.” The real-life Rosalyn Wilder said “…if she put an advert in a newspaper for the most unsuitable person to take care of her, she wouldn’t have had a better response. … I don’t know what possessed… well, I know what possessed her because he gave in to her and he fed her all the things she wanted." That’s Hollywood though. You can’t learn history from a Hollywood movie. I don’t know whether The End of the Rainbow, the play the movie was based on, was this inaccurate.
I also thought the end of the movie was very schmaltzy, but again, that’s Hollywood.
So this new Avatar movie. It made enough to almost certainly (financially) warrant the 4th and 5th being made, right?
Hamnet
Highly recommended. Very highly recommended.
Wow. I do not care one bit if this story involving Shakespeare and his wife is true or not. It is a stunningly great movie and as a little bonus, it shows how stupid Shakespeare in Love was. This is a proper film that makes a indirect suggestion about how Shakespeare wrote Hamlet.
Don’t go see if for that premise, though. This movie could have been about anyone. Shakespere is not needed for this film, though the final act does involve his play. This movie is about love, loss, and how we process pain.
I loved it. Absolutely loved it. After being massively disappointed by Marty Supreme, I wholeheartedly recommend Hamnet.
Oscar nominations has best come in for both adult lead actors(William and his wife). And for the director Chloe Zhao. And honestly, even more. A great movie.
I already had published(so to speak) my top 10 of 2025. This movie would have ranked 2-4th best of the year. Not replacing Weapons, but right up in the top 5 for sure.
Go see it. Powerful. Just powerful.
It’s already over $1 billion in just two weeks so that’s probably likely.
Cool! I absolutely adored the book, so I’m glad that its translation to the screen was successful.
Best In Show, 2000, Amazon. Really enjoyable mockumentary done by many of the same people who did This Is Spinal Tap, but this time about dog shows. Inna enjoyed it more than she did Spinal Tap.
Limitless, 2011, Tubi. Kinda goofy, ‘don’t think about this too much’, film about a guy who takes a drug which makes him smarter for a day. Bill Simmons put this as #16 on his list of most rewatchable movies this century which had his Rewatchables co-hosts just die with laughter and became enough of a Twitter moment that the Merriam-Webster dictionary posted this:
Anyway, Best In Show is highly recommended, Limitless is… not.
A Mighty Wind, another substantially improvised movie about a modern reunion concert of old 1960’s folk singers, is also quite good. It has more or less the same cast. Though it does resonate a little better if you recognize some of the people (or types of people) they’re parodying/caricaturing (like The Kingston Trio, Ian & Sylvia, or The New Christy Minstrels). So it’s possible Inna may not get some of the cultural references.
The complete set of Christopher Guest mockumentaries would also include Waiting for Guffman and For Your Consideration, in addition to Best in Show and Mighty Wind.
All are directed by Christopher Guest, are largely improvised, and draw on roughly the same cast (Guest, McKean, Catherine O’Hara, Eugene Levy, Fred Willard, Parker Posey.…)
You forgot (maybe for the best) Mascots.
Watched Ford v Ferrari for the first time. A pretty decent movie and fairly accurate other than for dramatic effect.
Nothing Serious (2021) is a movie about a woman and a man from failed relationships giving up on relationships. They each tried a hook-up app, and hooked up with each other on the first try. Just sex, nothing more. Eventually plot happens as their pasts catch up with them.
It’s labeled as a comedy, but it’s only a comedy in the sense of not being a melodrama. Very little trying to draw intentional laughs, but fun to watch. Lots of great acting by the leads and the supporting characters. I was not expecting to watch the whole thing because I get bored watching Korean dramas, but this is not one of those. It was very engaging.
I started watching it last night, also first time for me. Enjoying it thus far, about halfway done.
Other than the fact that Leo Beebe was not the jerk portrayed in the film. He got along fine with the racing team, and didn’t deliberately set up Ken Miles to lose.
As I said: dramatic effect.
Everything you say here is absolutely true. AIUI, Best in Show was not fully scripted? A lot of the dialogue is the actors riffing.
[ETA:
Aha, yup.]
“For God loves a terrier…” 
Argylle
Saying this again. I love this movie, think it is a hoot, and my wife and I laughed throughout. Fun movie.
Rewatched A Knights Tale.
Everyone thought Jocelyn was the wrong pick for him. She actually enjoyed watching him get hurt- which she asked for.
Lurker: a parasocial store clerk latches onto a rising pop star and his entourage, and finagles his way into making a documentary for them. Theodore Pellerin, playing the clerk, is incredibly good at telegraphing his desperate need to be liked, and to fit in, and he becomes increasingly willing to do whatever necessary to keep his place. I found it intense enough that it was uncomfortable to watch, and I stopped several times.
Nominated for four Independent Spirit awards, and very well done.
The Pink Panther (1963) It had been some time since I saw this and I was surprised at how well it holds up. Peter Sellers is not yet at his full Clouseau in this movie and he really is more of a side character to the main story. Although it is a comedy, it really does not have as many comedic beats as the later installments and plays more like a heist movie, which I think was the original intent. The other thing that I found surprising that although it has a cringe moments related to the times it was made it actually gives the female characters more agency than I remembered. The setting in the alps was great making me want to learn how to ski, though I am sure I would fail at it badly.
The Return of the Pink Panther (1975). In this installment you do get the full Clouseu as developed in A shot in the dark, which I have watched maybe once before. This one is definitely a comedy with some serious elements mixed in. The opening sequence when the diamond gets stolen is in my opinion one of the best action sequences in film. The way the movie moves along is really two stories that end up crossing mostly at the end, with the comedic elements on one side and the more serious bits on the other until they meet in the finale. There are some problematic issues with regards to the character of Kato and what he represents which is a definite product of the times. Overall, a fun watch and I had forgotten that Christopher Plummer was in this one, which was nice since I had seen him most recently in Knives Out.
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