- Thirst feels like lesser Bergman, a little disjointed in its narrative, but there are compelling moments throughout.
- Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is a high-octane thrill-ride with a lot of great set-pieces and performances…and yet it’s not altogether difficult to see why the film so badly underperformed at the box office. If you’ve seen Fury Road, a lot of this prequel can feel redundant, fleshing out Furiosa’s backstory, but not in any meaningful, much less necessary, way. Fury Road felt like a huge cultural moment, maybe the best movie of its type ever made, and this one, while thoroughly entertaining, can’t help but feel like just another movie made in that style.
- Blood and Wine was almost certainly a re-watch, though I say that only because it felt so incredibly familiar, not because I actually remember watching it before. (But it feels like the kind of movie I would have gone to see in theaters in the late ’90s, or rented on Netflix.) That said, there’s a lot to like here, from the committed performances to the way the movie takes its plot (and increasing desperation of its characters) seriously.
- In a Violent Nature is such a weird inversion of the slasher movie—fascinating as an experiment and intriguing as a meditation on violence, but not particularly entertaining as a film. It’s more upsettingly gross than scary, especially as the violence ratchets up to brutally cartoonish levels; and while I respect what the film is trying to do with horror movie tropes, by its (long-approaching) end, it was just kind of tedious.
- Jeremiah Johnson probably wouldn’t work half as well without Robert Redford’s performance, but it’s a nice, understated, and old-fashioned Western.
- The Day of the Triffids is cheesy and dated, and often feels less interested in the triffid part of its apocalypse, but it’s also pretty good fun.
- Wicked Little Letters is a lot of fun, mostly because the cast is incredibly game, though it is pretty slight as a story.
I also re-watched Go, which is a very 1999 movie but otherwise holds up pretty well.
