Best Movies I Watched in 2025
- Alice Fraser: Chronos (2023)
Synopsis: A standup special about trying to write the standup special that you are currently watching.
For some reason I really like things where the framing device is a medium-length journey. Most episodes of Cabin Pressure, this, Kate Colby’s Dream of the Trenches. It just works really well as a container for a story, or even just a collection of associated thoughts.
Anyway Alice Fraser continues to be one of the best comedians around, inimitable delivery, narrative throughline with a strong emotional core, and very funny, which is everything I want from a comedy special. Plus banjo! - Boys Go To Jupiter (2024)
Synopsis: A boy finds a little alien dude and there’s something with oranges, I don’t know man this was 10 months ago and I got covid immediately after.
A quirky, whimsical coming-of-age tale filled with beautiful set pieces and some surprisingly good songs about food.
Also I just looked up the cast and I didn’t realize how many of these people I knew. I mean obviously Miya Folick and Demi Adejuyigbe and Janeane Garofalo and Joe Pera, but also Grace Kuhlenschmidt and Cole Escola from Search Party, River Ramirez from Birdgirl, Eva Victor from Billions, Julio Torres from a bunch of things, and Elsie Fisher from Eighth Grade which I haven’t actually seen yet but also Barry. Anyway everyone does a great job here. - Cameron Esposito: Four Pills (2025)
Synopsis: A standup special about being diagnosed with manic-depression. And other things (that it’s about not that they were diagnosed with.)
You wouldn’t think an hour-long special could feel like 7 years worth of material and yet somehow this does. Absolutely worth the wait, Esposito is still one of the best. - The Castle of Cagliostro (1979) [also watched in 2020]
Synopsis: A thief has to rescue a princess (whose an orphan) from marrying an evil dude and that’s it, there’s no ships or ancient magic or Mark Hamill. (This joke would make more sense if it came at the end of this list.)
I didn’t realize how different watching this would feel after Future Boy Conan. Where the first time I watched it it felt like an outlier in Miyazaki’s career, and even as I was wrapping Conan I assumed it would still feel like an interruption given that it doesn’t have most of the themes that that show shares with his later work, now I can see it’s pretty clearly in continuity with Conan (from which comes the cartoonishness I highlighted in my original review, and perhaps the unevenness of the female lead’s characterization (the jagged transitions between daring-doer and damsel)) and Nausicaä (toward which you can see the art style heading, not to mention the similar character designs between Nausicaä herself and Clarisse, and in which we see a more typically agential Miyazaki female protagonist which Lana and Clarisse could be read as struggling toward*).
And there are aspects of it that are less jarring now that I realize it was intended for an audience that had already watched the Lupin III show and were familiar with the characters. Being familiar with them myself, and their backstory, from having watched The Woman Called Fujiko Mine (which, if you haven’t, I can cautiously sort of recommend for some people (and have, in fact, done so, in Exploits Issue #88); it’s pretty goofy, middling quality fluff for the first 7 episodes and then quickly ramps up into a surprisingly weird (in a good way) and emotional arc for the last 5. Also, fair warning, really puts the “gratuitous” in “gratuitous nudity.”), I had a better appreciation for the relationships between the main cast, and I wasn’t surprised when a samurai showed up out of nowhere like I was the first time.
And in general I think the plot hangs together better than I originally gave it credit for, though the central mystery is still pretty underwhelming.
Overall I not only understood it more, both in itself and in the context of Miyazaki’s career, I also enjoyed it more.
* Monsley and Fujiko are obviously not damsels, and are similar to later characters like Lin and Lady Eboshi, but they’re not protagonists. Still good characters, just not what I’m talking about. - Castle in The Sky (1986) [Also watched in 2019]
Synopsis: An evil empire raids a ship to capture a princess. A young orphaned farm boy teams up with some criminals to rescue the princess. There’s a robot who serves the princess. There’s a big thing in the sky with a giant laser. The princess and the villain are secretly related. There’s an old man who explains about an ancient magic. One of the criminals is very hairy. Mark Hamill is in it.
I mean it’s great every time, but watching this was kind of a formality as far as my Miyazaki watchthrough is concerned. I’d watched it recently enough that it was relatively fresh in my mind while watching Conan and Nausicaä, so any new thoughts I might have had about it ended up in those reviews. I don’t really have anything to add here, except that it’s impressive this came out only 2 years after Nausicaä, as it’s a noticeable step up in quality across the board. Just an absolutely beautiful movie. - Chris Grace: As Scarlett Johansson (2024)
Synopsis: Chris Grace plays Scarlett Johansson (playing Chris Grace (playing Scarlet Johansson (etc.)))
I mean, the initial conceit is already a brilliant joke, and the rest of the special is very funny. And for the most part I think the emotion hits as well……..but I don’t know, there were a couple moments where it felt like, “this doesn’t follow.” Like not that I’m doubting the authenticity of those beats, but just that it felt like there was connective tissue missing to bring me along for the ride. I’m thinking of the big identity crisis montage bit and the final sort of essay bit, I think (it’s been two months, I didn’t review it at the time because I felt so conflicted and couldn’t work out how to untangle that and now of course I don’t remember it as well as I’d like so that hasn’t helped and I probably should’ve just tried to write something at the time but oh well).
Anyway, it’s good! Very inventive, very funny. Just felt a slight disconnect at times. - Courtney Pauroso: Vanessa 5000 (2024)
Synopsis: A futuristic tech demo / existential crisis.
Another Dropout special I watched and then didn’t review but this time it’s just because I forgot.
I mean as soon as she says “Just kidding I am a sex robot ha ha” you’re either bought in or you’re not, and I bought in because her delivery is so perfect. Very funny and absurd, and yet that one moment of sincerity toward the end somehow works. - Derek DelGaudio’s In & of Itself (2020)
Synopsis: A one man show about magic and identity.
As a fan of magic, I cannot tell you how vindicating it is to watch a magician gift someone emotional catharsis with a card force. Weirdly, for me, it was the brick that did it. - The Death of Stalin (2017)
Synopsis: Stalin dies.
I think my experience of this movie was hampered slightly by its reputation. I’d heard it was this brilliant comedy, and there are very funny moments, but it’s more of a historical drama in which people happen to be funny because of the absurd situation they’re in. So I was just expecting to be laughing more and it took a bit to readjust my expectations. But it’s a good movie, compelling plot and everyone’s on point but especially what you might think of as the core trio of Beale, Buscemi, and Tambor, they’re all so good I think you could’ve made the movie entirely about any one of them and they would’ve carried it. I’ve not seen Beale in anything else but he’s amazing here, the tone shifts he goes through as everything starts falling apart around him, just astounding. - Duck Soup (1933)
Synopsis: Freedonia stands on the verge of war, and the only man who can stop it is Groucho Marx so I mean that’s not gonna go well.
I love the sheer existential bewilderment of the lemonade vendor in that first scene between him and Chico & Harpo. I love the sidecar gag, perfect rule-of-threes execution. I love the safe-to-speaker bit. The mirror scene, obviously. And then snatching victory from the jaws of defeat right at the end (why is an ambassador leading the army? who knows).
Notable that there aren’t any solo performances from Chico or Harpo in this one, unless you count the bit with the clocks (which also prefigure’s the piano-to-harp transformation in…I wanna say At the Circus?). As much as I love them their removal does make this one of the paciest Marx Brothers movies, which is a fun change. And for that matter there’s no (serious) romance subplot either.
All in all I’d say it holds up pretty well. - Flow (2024)
Synopsis: A cat. A flood. A boat.
Didn’t think it was gonna get me and then it absolutely got me. - Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999)
Synopsis: A mob hitman has one last job. Also he’s a samurai. In ’90s New Jersey.
My friend and I were talking about the little details in movies that don’t need to be there, but they kind of make the movie, and this movie is all details. The way Ghost Dog flips the CD before he puts it in, the kids skitching behind the station wagon, the way everyone in the mob watches cartoons, the kid locked in his apartment throwing his toys at the mobsters, the guy building the boat—none of these are strictly necessary, but there’d be no movie without them.
p.s. I thought this was my first Jim Jarmusch movie but I didn’t realize he did Paterson, a movie that’s even more all details than this one. - Hackers (1995)
Synopsis: Some hackers gotta hack the hacker to stop the hacker from hacking. Also there’s a scene that, and I cannot stress this enough, is not filmed in the same location as a Doctor Who scene. There is no connection between the two.
So my dad was looking up the cast after and realized that Dave Stewart was the hack on the terrace in London in that one shot toward the end, and after he pointed out that was in London I was like, “Wait, I think I’ve actually seen that terrace before…in a Doctor Who episode? In a scene that’s about hacking? WAS THAT AN INTENTIONAL REFERENCE?” (EDIT: NO. IT WASN’T. BECAUSE IT’S NOT THE SAME TERRACE.)
So step 1 is find the Doctor Who scene, it’s Season ___ Episode ___ (it’s Doctor Who, ask 5 different episode tracking services you’ll get 6 different listings), “The Bells of Saint John,” about 27.5 minutes in. It’s a terrace with metal-and-glass railings and round metal-rimmed tables, just like in the movie. Sure the railing and the chairs look different but a lot can change in over 20 years. So far it’s feeling plausible. (EDIT: BUT UNFORTUNATELY IT IS NOT.)
Then there’s the view. In the movie we can see Tower Bridge in the background, whereas in Doctor Who we can see The Shard. A quick look at Google Maps and—Yeah, actually, they’re really close. There’re definitely buildings on the north side of the river from which you’d be able to see both, depending on the angle.
Can we can get more precise? With the movie, we only have the one shot, but given we can see buildings behind the bridge it seems fairly likely we’re looking at it from the northwest, which is exactly where we want to be to also be able to see The Shard. On Doctor Who, given the building we can see to the right of The Shard, we’re looking at it from the northeast—exactly where we want to be to also Tower Bridge. (EDIT: OR MAYBE THAT’S ALL NONSENSE AND YOU CAN’T FIGURE THESE THINGS OUT FROM LOOKING AT A SATELLITE VIEW OF A CITY YOU’VE NEVER EVEN VISITED.)
From here we can easily find a strong candidate: The Three Quays building, which has open-air terraces on both sides from one could definitely get both of our views. I’m tempted to say this is definitively the place, but there’s one problem. In Doctor Who, we can also see a nearby building with a cupola—and I can’t find that cupola on Google Maps. But, I also can’t find that cupola near any other location that would also provide the view we have of The Shard. I think it’s very possible that building has actually digitally added. (EDIT: NOPE, IT’S THERE ACTUALLY.)
So, given all that, I can fairly confidently say that the Dave Stewart scene from Hackers (1995) and the hacking scene from “The Bells of Saint John” (2013) are filmed in the same location, and that I have an astonishingly good memory for terraces. (EDIT: ACTUALLY THEY AREN’T AND I DON’T)
Is it an intentional homage? (EDIT: NO!) Hard to say. (EDIT: IT’S NOT!) The reveal in that scene is that the villains are, in fact, headquartered at The Shard, so that location may very well have been chosen solely because it provided an opportunity to have Clara dramatically look at The Shard after figuring that out. Other than the general hacking of it all I don’t see anything else in the scene that explicitly references the movie. On the other hand, I find extremely believable that someone on Doctor Who was a big fan of Hackers. So, it’s anyone’s guess really. I wasn’t able to find any discussion of this online or any interviews with the show’s staff the mention it (EDIT: BECAUSE WHY WOULD THEY TALK ABOUT A THING THAT NEVER HAPPENED?!), so we’ll probably never know.
(EDIT: WE DO KNOW, THEY’RE NOT THE SAME LOCATION, THIS WAS ALL A HUGE WASTE OF EVERYONE’S TIME AND EMOTIONAL INVESTMENT, I’M VERY SORRY.)
Anyway, Hackers is actually an alright movie, like yeah I guess it’s silly at a glance, but it’s fairly internally consistent and I found myself buying into it way more than I expected to. There was something about the ending that left me a little cold, maybe it was that too much of it relied on what are essentially influencers, which just feels entirely antithetical to the hacker ethos, even the made up version in the movie. But still enjoyable. That scene where Fisher Stephens skateboards by and grabs the disc is amazing, who came up with that? - Inside Man (2006)
Synopsis: A cop tries to stop a bank heist while the bank’s owner tries to keep his secret from getting out.
A fun heist movie that’s fairly upfront with its twists. Solid performances all around, except Jodie Foster who’s overacting and really annoying. I do think there are a couple more interesting directions they could’ve taken it in (e.g. making Plummer’s character more complex morally could’ve added some depth to the story, and like they gesture at that but dude’s hanging out with Margaret Thatcher, he’s clearly a piece of shit and a hypocrite) but it’s enjoyable enough as is. - Jacqueline Novak: Get On Your Knees (2024)
Synopsis: A standup special about…well…I mean…
Novak bridges the cerebral and the somatic, an exquisitely constructed treatise on the most vulgar of topics, her breathless delivery implying someone barely able to keep up with their own thoughts but also perhaps due to the sheer physicality of her performance, as she paces and jogs and rolls and pirouettes around the stage with nary a pause. You barely have time to laugh before she’s moved on to the next link in the chain of ideas, each one following seemingly inevitably from the previous (though no one else could make it seem so).
And saying this is a special about blowjobs is like saying “Paradise By The Dashboard Light” is a song about high schoolers hooking up in a car, which is to say, yes, obviously it is that, but it’s more than that too, it’s about the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and how those stories can trap us or free us and what it means when we’re told those stories aren’t true. - James Acaster: Hecklers Welcome (2024)
Synopsis: A standup special about performing for audiences.
I mean, you know I love it when a great artist fails at an experiment but has to make something out of it anyway. For the hype the intro builds around the premise, there’s not really anything tonally different about this show compared to Repertoire or CLHM99 (if anything it’s actually significantly lighter), and Acaster himself acknowledges at the end that the audience hasn’t really changed their behavior.
But that fits with the show being a sort of wholesome mirror of Burnham’s Make Happy, a performer dealing with his anxiety by inviting the audience in rather than shutting them out. That’s not meant to be a judgement on Burnham, I think Make Happy is great, but it’s interesting to compare his (not unjustifiable) antagonism to Acaster’s congeniality (especially given the friction between him and the audience/Audience in CLHM99).
In the end intellectual satisfaction is not quite enough to elevate this to being a great show, given it’s not as emotionally evocative, formally inventive, elegantly constructed, or just straight up funny as his previous work. But it is still all those things, and if it’s not great it’s at least pretty good. - Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989)
Synopsis: A young witch moves to the big city to make a name for herself.
I was feeling pretty exhausted from work so I was only going to start this, but I ended up watching it all the way through which should tell you something.
Another one I hadn’t seen since I was a kid, but for my money holds up much better than My Neighbor Totoro. Though it’s comparatively mundane (which I get is an odd thing to say about a movie about a witch, but it’s a movie in which being a witch is fairly mundane, so), the plot, characters, and more tasteful score all come together just about seamlessly, and where the seams do show it more than gets by on charm.
p.s. I have been avoiding watching the CJ the X video about this one because I don’t want to make myself sad. But I should probably watch that at some point. - Kimi (2022)
Synopsis: A moderator for an AI assistant (basically Amazon’s Alexa) overhears a murder.
I don’t know if this movie is too good for what it is or too bad for what it’s trying to be.
What I mean is, Kimi has the bones of a mediocre film, fleshed out by characteristically kinetic cinematography (made only more engaging by its confined spaces), a ruthlessly efficient plot, and most of all a stunningly good lead performance. The premise is boilerplate, the execution flawless. The character is a cliche, the performance human and idiosyncratic rather than stereotypical (the little ballet en pointe thing she does when she’s on the phone with Terry? Perfect.) The film has very little to say but what it says is largely inoffensive. The pat ending belongs in a stupider movie but you can’t help but admit it’s the ending you were rooting for.
I find myself, shockingly, wishing it were longer? Given another 30-45 minutes, could it have become the movie all these pieces deserve to be part of? Or would it just make the missing pieces more obvious? Am I asking more of this film than it is capable of providing?
This movie does most things right and very little wrong. It’s not bad, not mediocre. It’s a good movie. It’s not even good but forgettable, it is just plain good, by every metric I can think of. I did, in case it wasn’t clear, enjoy it.
I just…I don’t know. Something.
p.s. The only reason this entire review didn’t run head-first into the fact that Devin Ratray’s character’s name is Kevin and fall flat on its ass is because I only just processed that. Or started to, anyway. Will I ever be done processing that? Only time will tell.
p.p.s. Kevin as a sort of modern-day Boo Radley is actually better than that comparison makes it sound. Maybe I’m being too generous but I never felt like the film was trying to make us see him as creepy, even once the binoculars came out. And once we actually meet him, he is in fact not all that creepy. I feel like I had a more sophisticated point to make here and it slipped away. But yeah I just feel his character is handled pretty well given what it could’ve been. He’s just a guy who does the right thing, and his mental health issues are part of that but not an overriding part of that. It’s tasteful.
p.p.p.s. I have had pretty much that exact conversation. You know which one.
p.p.p.p.s. “I am gonna take everything you love and put it in a garbage bag!” God I love Andy Daly.
p.p.p.p.p.s. I just keep coming back to the fact this movie spent 3.5 minutes on Angela filtering the audio on the file. Like, she didn’t just click a magic button or have Kimi do it. She PULLED OUT a PHYSICAL MIXER from HER CLOSET. That is such narrative dedication to verisimilitude but only for this one thing and nothing else. I feel like somehow this is the most important scene in the whole film. I have no idea why.
p.p.p.p.p.p.s. Gotta watch The Conversation again, really. Maybe that’s what I wanted. Zoë Kravitz playing tenor sax in a stripped apartment. - Look Back (2024)
Synopsis: Two girls who are aspiring manga artists make manga.
This one fucked me up good.
The story feels pretty on the nose at first, then there’s a wholesome twist and you think “oh, ok, it’s going to be this” and then there’s a bittersweet twist and you think “oh, ok, it’s going to be this” and then there’s a tragic twist and you think “oh, shit, I guess it’s this now” and then there’s time travel and by that point you’re just a puddle of emotions.
Not to mention stories about artists (of any kind) working hard always hit me harder than they should, because I’m reminded that I’m lazy and talentless and have never worked that hard at anything I supposedly care about. And then on top of that it’s a story about two people making friends through their art which I haven’t done since college and anyway I’m just really sad right now. - Marc Maron: From Bleak to Dark (2023)
Synopsis: A standup special about stuff and things and yes, that one thing in particular.
I don’t remember much of Maron’s last two specials, but I remember Too Real as being kind of peak middle-aged comedian fluff, and End Times Fun as being a little disjointed, with a Carlinesque ending that got a little too…something, for me.
But I don’t know that we’d have From Bleak to Dark without those two, and it’s his best stuff in years. Building on the themes of aging, apocalypse, and death, Maron doesn’t shy away from anything, but has clearly put in the effort to transform his angst and grief into a tight, funny set. There are far fewer quiet emotional beats than you’d expect under the circumstances, but somehow those emotions are still able to poke through around the edges enough that it doesn’t feel like he’s sweeping them under the rug.
p.s. And I found out later that probably the funniest and darkest line in the whole set was improvised on the night. - Mary Poppins (1964)
Synopsis: A witch and her cronies go around manipulating people into maintaining the ideal of the British nuclear family. There’s a war on you know! (I actually have no idea when the movie is set but it’s clearly not the 60s so I assume there’s a war on or about to be on or was just on.)
What I realized watching this is that as a kid I did not know enough to be appropriately impressed by this movie. Phenomenal effects for the time, delightful musical numbers, some legitimately funny moments, it’s a good time! Shame it’s conservative propaganda.
p.s. Bert and Mary Poppins are clearly just manipulating all the other characters in order to orchestrate a crisis point for George. Bert tells the kids they need to be nicer to George and gaslights about how big a jerk he was being, but then turns around and tells George he should try being less of a jerk. Why the contradiction? In order to make Michael feel bad and give the tuppence to George so George will realize what a piece of shit of he’s been. “Cages come in all shapes and sizes, some of them are bank-shaped” actually you don’t believe that Bert, or should I say Mr. Dawes Sr.? The point isn’t to make George a hippy, it’s to preserve the nuclear family because the film is fundamentally conservative, they just recognize that George needs to be slightly nicer to keep the family together, but obviously he should still work at the bank. So Bert pretends to be Mr. Dawes Sr. in order to instigate the crisis, than fakes his own death in order to get George rehired.
p.p.s. The bit where Mrs. Banks (no first name) gives her sash to be the kite’s tail kinda sucks right? I mean obviously the movie never takes her feminism seriously and that sucks, but it also doesn’t really do anything to build towards “I need to give up being a suffragette in order to spend more time with the kids” being the conclusion of her arc. Like it’s obvious from everything else about the movie that that’s what the point is but it does nothing to earn that, at no point does her being a suffragette actually cause friction between her and the kids or cause problems, and she’s very supportive of them. So it’s bad politics but it’s also bad writing.
p.p.p.s. “But George, you don’t play piano!” “Madame, that is entirely beside the point!” Love that line.
p.p.p.p.s. I also love in the scene where’s she’s unpacking her bag that they choreograph it exactly the same way a magician doing that trick would do it, with those precise and seemingly unnecessary bag movements acting as provers. I assume they didn’t actually do it the way a magician would, but it’s cool they make it look like they could be doing it that way. - Matchstick Men (2003)
Synopsis: A con man finds out he has a daughter he never knew.
Honestly was pretty thrown by how dark the twist was, and then was equally thrown by how cheery the ending was. At first I almost wished they’d leaned into the darkness but I don’t think that would’ve actually been the way to go, I just think him and Kathy already being married and having a kid is a bit much. Him completely forgiving “Angela” and learning from the experience is plausible but harder to believe when we don’t see him doing the work, so having a little bit of that, or at least showing that it’s still in process, would’ve made the ending less jarring.
Also this is the first Nic Cage movie where I got to see him go really big, which was fun. I can’t speak to how accurate his portrayal is of someone with…psychosomatic OCD? If that’s even a thing? But it felt emotionally true, and better than Monk.
It’s probably best if you don’t think too hard about the plot though, this is one of those cons that feels so clever in the reveal until you realize how many unpredictable things had to go exactly as they did for it to work.
p.s. I was so surprised this was a Ridley Scott movie, and I found an interview (which of course I can’t find now) where someone asked him about that reaction (“Ridley Scott did this? Really?”) and his response, and really the whole interview, was very thoughtful and it made me like Ridley Scott more. - Mickey 17 (2025)
Synopsis: A guy get’s cloned over and over for science but then one day one of the clones doesn’t die before the next one is made so now there’s two of them and that’s a big no-no.
Pretty fun, some great economical filmmaking (love the practical effects), great performances all around (exception below), and I like that they have a somewhat novel take on one of the more existential issues of cloning (romantic relationships) without getting bogged down in the “science” of it.
But the Trump of it all was tedious (I haven’t found Trump impressions funny for about 10 years, and I don’t think they were that funny to begin with) and worse, baffling, as I have no idea what it was supposed to add to the movie (particularly the assassination attempt reference). And does Ruffalo only play buffoons with absurd voices now? - The Naked Gun (2025)
Synopsis: Cop investigates crimes, hijinks ensue.
Well they nail the jokes-per-second feel of the original. Honestly I was actually too tired to laugh as much as it deserved. I really wanna stress that while this isn’t, like, mind-blowingly good, it is a type of movie that I would like to see more of, because sometimes you just want something that’s 85 minutes and doesn’t let one of those minutes go by without 2-10 jokes. They don’t make comedies like this anymore and they really should. - Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984)
Synopsis: A ship crash lands in a peaceful valley and then bad things start to happen and it’s up to the princess of the valley to stop it and also there’s a young orphaned boy and some airships and an evil empire and a weapon of mass destruction but Mark Hamill is not in this one.
Even better than I remembered, though you can definitely tell Ghibli (err, many of the people who would become Ghibli) is still finding their sea legs, particularly with the sound design and the over-reliance on “character talks to themselves in order to give audience exposition,” and you can definitely start to feel the runtime in a couple places toward the end.
Visually, it’s a noticeable upgrade from Castle of Cagliostro, and even more so compared to Conan, with which it obviously shares many similarities. I hadn’t realized how flat his earlier stuff was until the opening scene in the jungle that has at least three or four layers of foreground and background, and even parallax. And every scene with the glider is amazing.
Thematically it’s hitting the same environmentalist, anti-industrialization, and anti-war themes from Conan, but more cogently, with less of the awkward cartoonishness and weird vilification of solar power.
And Nausicaä is just such an immediately sympathetic protagonist, capable and daring but also kind and vulnerable. You really can’t help but root for her. (And then there’s Shia the Beef, who gets introduced way too late in the movie to really have an arc or even much of a personality but he’s fine I guess.)
As I said, not a perfect movie certainly, but such a strong showing out the gate. It’s easy to see why Ghibli became such a powerhouse when this was their starting point.
p.s. The similarities between this and Conan include the settings, plots, and themes (though fortunately the female lead in this only faints once), but also there’s a red-headed authority figure who eventually comes to respect the protagonist and she has a male underling who at first sees her as cold and unapproachable but later says to himself, “Is it just me or is she kind of cute,” and honestly I’m starting to think Miyazaki might have a thing for redheaded authority figures.
p.p.s. It’s interesting that Conan, Nausicaä, and Castle in the Sky are not just anti-war but specifically involve the villain trying to resurrect a terrible weapon from the past (Giganto, the Giant Warrior, the Death Star I mean Laputa’s big laser). From what I can tell Japan’s commitment to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty has been up for debate ever since they signed on, and it’s not hard (or perhaps hard not) to read these specifically as a warning against those arguing for Japan to resume its nuclear weapons program.
p.p.p.s. Introduces my favorite Miyazaki character, Man Whose Whole Face is Beard. - Only Yesterday (1991)
Synopsis: A young woman goes out to the country to work on a farm and try to figure out what she’s doing with her life and also remembers being a kid.
Wow. I did not expect to be crying by the end of this but it really sneaks up on you.
It turns out it was a stretch to include this in my Miyazaki watchthrough as he was only a producer, though apparently it was him who got Takahata to take it on because he liked the original manga. But it was Takahata who came up with the framing narrative of adult Taeko reminiscing about her childhood while trying to make sense of her life, and it’s that relationship between the two time periods that really makes the movie.
It is interesting to compare Takahata’s work to Miyazaki’s (though admittedly I’m working with a much smaller sample size in case of the former compared to the latter.) Where Miyazaki is clearly inspired by epic adventures and fairy tales, Takahata here shows a fascinating idiosyncratic mix of slice-of-life realism with occasional flights of fancy, not to mention how he plays with time in such an unselfconscious way, culminating in what is essentially magical realism right at the end. I have no idea how much of that was in the manga, but I assume that final sequence is completely original to the movie.
It’s also interesting to look at their different approaches to the natural world. Where Miyazaki’s is more mystical, Takahata portrays a more grounded pastoralism that centers the human connection to the natural world, rather than viewing humanity as apart and largely antagonistic to nature. Both seem to come from a place of deep respect and a passion for environmentalism, but their nostalgia is for different ages—Miyazaki for the ancient, mystical past, Takahata for the more recent, pre-industrial one.
Again, this is based just on this one movie so I have no idea how much of this is true of Takahata’s work generally, but I’ll certainly be watching more of it once I’m done with my Miyazaki retrospective. Which I’m aware means I’m going to have to watch Grave of the Fireflies; hopefully by then I have the mental fortitude for that.
p.s. Oh my god the backgrounds in this movie are so good! The suburbs in that scene right after the baseball game, the rain-slicked city streets at night, the mist rolling over the mountains—absolutely stunning.
p.p.s. Reminded me of Look Back, which is doing a lot of similar things—the impact of childhood friendships, the disappointment of adulthood, likewise playing with time in an unexpected way. Probably don’t make them a double feature, though, I’m not sure anyone could survive that. - Polite Society (2023)
Synopsis: A young girl wants to be a stuntwoman and also to stop her older sister from giving up on her dreams of being an artist and instead entering into an arranged marriage, and these two things are related.
Top-notch performances, especially from the core trio, and several solid guffaw-producing bits throughout. I don’t think the criticism of the action is really all that fair given the story and the humor are clearly the highlights here. The fight scenes may not be spectacular but they function as a vehicle for character expression, they contribute to the game the movie is playing with its heightened reality in really fun ways, and they don’t overstay their welcome. The comedy and the characters are more than good enough to make up for any lack in the choreography. Truly a delight to watch.
p.s. In the scene just before the wedding, Clara is clearly holding Andúril, Flame of the West. Why? No idea. Do I love it? Obviously.
p.p.s. I don’t think the “heavy flow” line needed to be set up by the scene with the iron pills, and in fact I think it’s funnier if it comes out of nowhere (since no one involved in that scene was in the scene with the iron pills so it’s actually kind of distracting that they’re ‘referencing’ it).
p.p.p.s. The cutaway from the dance number is such a good gag. I just want to appreciate how good it is. Mmmm. So good.
p.p.p.p.s. This does have the exact same problem as Enola Holmes, though, which is that our protagonist starts the movie trying and failing to pull off a combat maneuver, then they fail again in the middle, and then they inevitably succeed at the end, but we’re never told what is actually getting in the way of them pulling it off so when they finally do there’s no sense of what they’re overcoming, just a vague, generic “yay they can do the thing now.” There should have been some effort to explain the difficulty in a way that ties into the theme of the movie so that when they pull it off at the end it actually feels like a payoff and not just a formulaic obligation.
p.p.p.p.p.s. I do really like how they don’t fully resolve Lena’s arc at the end, given how earnest the movie is it easily could have fallen into a very pat ending with her that wouldn’t have really felt earned. - Porco Rosso (1992)
Synopsis: A pig who flies planes does some plane flying.
Fun movie, definitely a different vibe for them but obviously still recognizably Ghibli.
I’ve been reading a collection of Miyazaki’s essays, talks, memos, and interviews (Starting Point: 1979–1996), and I was gonna just quote one of his directorial memos where he says the movie is for “middle-aged businessmen whose brains have turned to tofu” and leave it at that, but in between watching the first half of the movie and watching the second half I read a short piece he wrote about his dad, whom he was not particularly fond of, and how he got kicked out of the military for saying he didn’t want to go to war but then went to work making planes for them. Really recontextualizes the movie for me, especially Porco’s feelings of cowardice and his best line: “I’d rather be a pig than a fascist.” Behind Miyazaki’s plane obsession there’s definitely some grief and guilt around his dad (he seems to feel some inherited guilt both about his dad’s cowardice and his aiding the war effort anyway), which adds a whole other layer to what’s otherwise a fairly light adventure movie. Really glad I read that piece before finishing the movie, I don’t know if I would’ve been able to feel it after the fact. - Saturday Night (2024)
Synopsis: Opening night of a new late night variety show, and things are a bit hectic.
So I had a slight little meltdown about this one. But I’m over it now. Probably. It is almost definitely technically a good movie I think. - Trance (2013)
Synopsis: After their inside man loses the painting he was supposed to steal and gets amnesia, a gang of thieves hire a hypnotherapist to try to restore his memory. I was gonna say it’s less goofy than that makes it sound but honestly not much less.
What’s both obvious and not obvious about this movie is that it’s a heist movie (it’s just that the heist isn’t the heist), and I think if you accept that your enjoyment of it will be roughly proportional to how much you generally enjoy heist movies, with the caveats that there are a couple moments where it might be hard to follow and there are some horror-adjacent vibes. I love heist movies, and for me the real kicker is this is a movie that respects its audience—for all the ways in which it plays with reality, it’s never really lying to you, and it lets you see enough that even if you don’t figure out the twist ahead of time it definitely doesn’t come out of nowhere.
Plus, McAvoy acts the shit out of this, the way he builds the character up to that climax, hoo boy. Masterclass stuff. Worth it for that alone.
p.s. I just can’t with the Nolan fanbros saying this movie is “trying to be clever” as if Nolan isn’t the fucking poster child for “trying to be clever.” I like Memento and Inception and I love The Prestige but jesus christ there’s so much style there you can barely see the substance.
And specifically the “this is Memento for dumb people” comments, the thing I keep thinking about is that moment in Memento where you’re looking at Stephen Tobolowsky and then there’s one frame of Guy Pearce and like, there’s no reason for that. Not that it doesn’t mean anything, but that within the logic of the movie there’s no reason why we’re seeing that at that moment, really, except that Nolan wants us to, like Penn & Teller “revealing” how the trick is done (and again, I say this as a huge fan of magic generally (thus my love of The Prestige) and Penn & Teller specifically). And I mean how can you react to that in any way other than, “ooh, isn’t that clever, aren’t you a special boy?”
And if you compare that to the first big memory scene in Trance, the first time we see him get hit by the car and we see a brief flash of her face on his phone, they don’t draw attention to it, it’s just there, and why do we see that? Because it was actually there in that moment. Why do we see her in the place of the woman in the car? Because that’s how he was actually perceiving her in that moment. His anger, his violence, “You made me forget!”—it’s all laid out for us barely 45 minutes into the movie. Nolan is arbitrarily choosing to let the artifice slip for one moment toward the end to elicit a reaction, while Boyle is just being honest with us and letting our own suspicions convince us we’re being lied to. That’s not trying to be clever, that’s actually clever. And then, you know, there’s a whole other half of the movie because being clever isn’t the point.
If you don’t like Trance, fair enough, I’m absolutely not claiming it’s a perfect movie or to everyone’s taste, but the “trying to be clever” takes really just reveal your own insecurities. - Wicked (2024)
Synopsis: There’s a witch, she’s green, people big mad about it, there’s another witch, she’s pink, eww, but then yay?, there’s a wizard, he’s evil., intermission.
I’ve only listened to the soundtrack (a lot), but as far as I can tell this is a pretty good adaptation (thus far). I was worried about Ariana Grande doing a Kristen Chenoweth impression, but I needn’t have been because she does an excellent job. Cynthia Erivo, meanwhile, is not doing an Idina Menzel impression at all and completely owns her performance, and her “Defying Gravity” absolutely got me (though the constant interruptions for plot did undercut it a bit). Everyone else is pretty good too (Goldblum is giving maximum Goldblum and I love it), but honestly they didn’t even need to be (well, Fiyero did a little bit, and he is, so that’s good).
Mostly it’s just refreshing to see a Broadway adaption not direct by Tom “I Will Ruin Every Show You Ever Loved” Fucking Hooper.
p.s. Speaking of, isn’t it amazing how well a cameo from the original stars works when they’re not given a tiny part and yet still overshadow the current star because he can’t sing worth a damn YES I’M STILL ON ABOUT THIS COLM WILKINSON COULD OUT-SING HUGH JACKMAN WITH HIS DIAPHRAGM TIED BEHIND HIS BACK, I DON’T CARE IF HE WAS TOO OLD HE. IS. VALJEAN. AND DON’T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON RUSSELL CROWE BUTCHERING “STARS,” I SWEAR TO—hm? Mmhm. Yeah. Ok, I’m being told that it’s been over a decade and no one cares anymore and I should stop yelling about it every couple weeks. I hear the note and I’m taking note.
So…every three weeks? Once a month?
p.p.s. (Obviously The Bishop is not a tiny part in terms of the plot, he sets Valjean on his path to freedom but also instills in him the moral compass to know that his freedom is not worth someone else losing their’s, so like he’s a pretty big deal in that sense, I just mean vocally his part is not much to speak of.)
p.p.p.s. (So yeah like the Menzel/Chenoweth cameo was fun because 1. they get to actually show off their chops and 2. you don’t desperately miss them when their scene’s over because Erivo and Grande don’t give you a chance to. Like, Menzel even gets to do the run which you’d think would spoil Erivo’s take but Erivo’s take is so her own that Menzel’s just feels like a teaser, it’s great. And honestly I don’t know that I ever really got the run until now.)
p.p.p.p.s. Aside from some of the plot inserts there were several instances (I mean, basically every instance) where the use of the silly nonsense words (“definish,” “confusled” or whatever it was, etc.) also undercut the emotion of the scene and I honestly wish they had talked normally. It’s bad enough I’ve gotta take Nessa singing “We deserve each other / Me and Boq” seriously. And like, ok, some of them were in the songs, but not “manifestorum” which you decided to stick in during the emotional climax of the movie which just seems like a weird choice.
p.p.p.p.p.s. Anyway, Wicked is the kind of show that’s pure feels for me, so I don’t really think about it that hard. Obviously there is Discourse that could be had about it, and I’m not uninterested in hearing some of that, but I don’t think I’ll be participating myself. Like I said, “Defying Gravity” absolutely got me, and I have no doubt that when Part 2 comes out “For Good” is going to make me cry, and that’s really all I wanted. What can I say, I’m a sucker for a good tragedy, especially one where the tragedy is as baked in as it is with this, because the audience already knows the story, or they think they do, and then their preconceptions are constantly coming into conflict with the new information the show is revealing which creates this delicious metatextual tension and oh no I’m doing analysis I should stop and go to bed good night.
Honorable Mentions
Certain of Eventual Failure 