{"version":1,"author":"Lenny Chen","description":"Film ratings and reviews. watchedDate is the viewing date, not a publication date. Null ratings mean unrated.","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews.json","reviews":[{"type":"review","title":"Club Kid (2026)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/club-kid-2026/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/club-kid/","filmTitle":"Club Kid","filmYear":2026,"rating":3.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-11-13","reviewText":"This review may contain spoilers. I knew Jordan Firstman first from I Love LA, and then from the little scuffle that he got into with the Heated Rivalry creators and cast. From those moments I had some idea about the kind of queer stories he wants to tell, and I was right. He did a great job here with this dark coming of age story that is sincerely funny and heartfelt. Nothing forces you to mature more than having a dependent that needs your care. Even caring for a cat has been a very grounding force—whenever I have irresponsible thoughts, I remind myself that Preston still needs me to top up his water fountain. An actual child complicates this a lot more, because it’s not just about your growth anymore, it’s also about the welfare of the kid. Peter showed rapid growth after having Arlou in his life, but it was not enough for Arlou, however much Arlou wants to live with him. Big house Sharon was the better parent for the club kid. I do often think about how crazy it is that by my current age, my parents already had me and I was already three years old. Actually, I’m not sure my parents, who grew up in rural China and just found food security at age 25 and 28, were more ready to have a gay kid than Peter was. This story, with the drugs and the parties, made Peter’s ill-preparedness very dramatic, but the same kind of story happens every day everywhere in the world if you think about it. Also, I’m sorry but Oscar is a terrible social worker. Setting aside the fact that he immediately starts f**king the child’s father, he also did not identify the Arlo’s citizenship issue! Arlo is very likely a US citizen by birth since he was born to an American citizen father and it’s literally on his birth certificate. All the drama in the third act could have been entirely avoided if Oscar had simply done his job. This is groundbreaking representation for queer immigrants who are bad at their jobs. Honestly slay."},{"type":"review","title":"The Christophers (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/the-christophers-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/the-christophers/","filmTitle":"The Christophers","filmYear":2025,"rating":3.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-11-12","reviewText":"Making art is such a poignant endeavor. The final piece you put out is a product of your technique, vision, emotion, story, and really a piece of your soul. Everyone can critique it, and yet no one but the artist themself can know what went into producing it. It's all painful enough as it is, and you add money to the process and everything just becomes a hot mess that can embroil and undo even already established artists. Perhaps I would have enjoyed this more if I could relate to this struggle more viscerally, but the most consistent creative output are my film reviews, and these are so personal and completely text-based that I can easily use words to preempt/invalidate criticism coming my way, and therefore I do not think it's at all a comparable level of vulnerability. But that did not preclude me from enjoying this wonderful and deeply human story. There is a thread there about the relationship between artists and critics, how sometimes harsh criticism can intimidate and stymie early artists. It made me wonder if I'm ever too mean in the reviews I write, that I'm sure the creators never see, but if they ever did see, whether they'd be too hurtful. I don't think so, primarily because for better or worse we live in a world where art is also a business. In such a world, unvarnished critiques of works that were blatantly not made to provoke or connect, but only to make money, is about the only means of discipline we have against the money devouring everything. Sometimes there are misfires, but as long as the critics are not mean-spirited, I believe the critique would be a net good, even if it's scathing. So I will continue to drum the hate train against the likes of the Super Mario Galaxy movie. I must complain that I did not very much enjoy Michael Coel's performance. I loved her in I May Destroy You, but she's just not giving since making that masterpiece. She makes the same face in every scene. I think maybe she just needs to write and direct another thing where she can do that and it still works."},{"type":"review","title":"Wild Horse Nine (2026)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/wild-horse-nine-2026/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/wild-horse-nine/","filmTitle":"Wild Horse Nine","filmYear":2026,"rating":4,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-11-07","reviewText":"This review may contain spoilers. So I didn’t think I’d recover from being sick this quickly, and didn’t make any plans for today, which was why I ended up booking this last minute after chores and gym. I also needed an excuse to go to Tokyo Central to buy 3 pounds of Japanese bento boxes to feed myself for the week and get their 20% after-7pm discount. This ended up being the most serendipitous theater experience I’ve had this year. It’s deliriously funny, in addition to being surprisingly heartwarming and profound. The first 20 mins very quickly establishes Lee and Chris as basically irredeemable characters--I honestly thought the movie was just going to let us revel in their misery--but the story is actually a great lesson on what redeemability is. As horrible as Lee and Chris's past were, nothing in the film disgusted me more than that female agent's \"I'm sorry\" after her failed attempt on the Chilean student's life. Her weak protest before her boss to convince herself she's still a good person, and then the decisive action to doom someone who's completely innocent when she 100% could have looked the other way since no one else in her party even knows what the student looks like. And then she turns around and says \"I'm sorry\"? Makes me sick just to remember this. On the other hand, while both Chris and Lee should still be going to the Hague (and hell for sure), their self-awareness and acceptance at this moment in time make you no longer delight in their pain. From where they were 100 mins ago, that feels like pretty drastic redemption to me. It's kind of crazy if not for the less fortunate circumstances of this weekend, I probably would have never watched this movie because the premise honestly read repelling--I am almost never interested in the CIA. I am so happy I did. Also, I think I will put \"Democracy leads to gays which lead to cheese\" on a tshirt and print it. DM me if you want one."},{"type":"review","title":"It's What's Inside (2024)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/it-s-what-s-inside-2024/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/its-whats-inside/","filmTitle":"It's What's Inside","filmYear":2024,"rating":2.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-11-06","reviewText":"The premise is fun and just the mechanics alone really forces you to engage your brain when watching, so you stay focused on the story. But why waste this idea on stupid high school drama? At one point when I was trying to remember who's who I realized I actually don't care at all what happens to any of these people. Maybe let Bong Joon Ho do a remake and I'll watch that."},{"type":"review","title":"Colony (2026)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/colony-2026/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/colony-2026/","filmTitle":"Colony","filmYear":2026,"rating":3,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-11-05","reviewText":"Solid movie that manages to entertain for most of its runtime. It found a new idea in evolving zombies and manages to keep raising the stakes, but otherwise follows the rather formulaic zombie film story beat. There were a few scenes, including that death spiral scene, that looked very cool visually. But to achieve that the film paid a pretty steep cost in focus -- I think this film would have been more interested if it was wholly contained in that mall and given its side characters a little more room to shine. That also would have helped the social commentary that it attempted to do but wasn't really successful. As aways **Jun Ji-hyun** slayed, perhaps a little too much. That perfect face of makeup would always take me out of the scene a little bit even after the sprinklers."},{"type":"review","title":"La Bola Negra (2026)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/la-bola-negra-2026/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/la-bola-negra/","filmTitle":"La Bola Negra","filmYear":2026,"rating":4,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-11-02","reviewText":"This review may contain spoilers. Beautiful, heartbreaking, and erotic, this is truly a queer epic that we rarely get to see on screen. First of all, I must emphasize how hot this movie was especially in the first half. You really get to see bodies and dicks of all shapes and sizes and all in extremely homoerotic light. The eroticism eventually gave way to platonic longing and the general weight of history, but it left a mark on me for sure and it’s going to be how I remember this movie primarily. I’m trying to ask myself why seeing harrowing love stories somehow soothes me. I was in a discussion recently about whether romance is a solvable problem. Why is it that in the bay area, with every avenue available to us, it’s still hard for queer men to find love? Sometimes it’s easy to get bogged down in guilt, rejection, and loneliness and attribute it to the death of romance. Then I realized that perhaps it’s not about that at all, but because life outside the world of romance is already hard enough that you wish love was easy. Seeing Sebastian and Rafael find their way to each other in the most hopeless of places helped me remember that a lot of that stuff doesn’t truly matter. When we feel connected to each other, few things do, as long as we have each other. That’s why it’s soothing. So with all that said, criminal that those two didn’t get to have sex in such a horny movie. It could have been easily justified like “they may make me kill you later so let me at least suck your dick beforehand” kind of situation. Not even a kiss was unnecessary cruelty that I don’t endorse."},{"type":"review","title":"Wicker (2026)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/wicker-2026/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/wicker/","filmTitle":"Wicker","filmYear":2026,"rating":3,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-10-25","reviewText":"This review may contain spoilers. Quirky, whimsical, if a bit overtly cynical, Wicker is an entertaining adventure full of quippy one-liners, though I’m not sure how I feel about what it appears to say about love. Wicker man’s says he fixed the roof to make the fisherwoman happy. He loves her, so he’s happy when she’s happy (then they have to fix the bed again.) I wonder if this is to remind us that love is simple. But it isn’t simple. For the fisherwoman from the very beginning, it wasn’t enough that the wicker man loved her, she also needed him to fix her roof and straighten her door. He did so much in addition to loving her that it made her the envy of the whole village, and even that wasn’t enough. All this makes the claim that wicker man learned love from the fisherwoman a bit of a hard sell for me. After a bit of reflection, the truest love I see in the story is actually bottle washer who attempts to improve his roof to impress his wife. Yeah, he was insecure, but who wouldn’t be intimidated by an Alexander Skasgard shaped tall wicker man with undying devotion to his wife, unlimited home improvement skills, and unending erections? Instead of lashing out, he works through his insecurity and attempts to mend their marriage. It ends in tragedy, quite ingloriously so and much less romantic than the main couple’s story, but it felt more real to me. This is a tangent but after watching Wicked I did pose the question “would you still let jonathan bailey hit if his dick was burlap?” Given this movie’s entire premise was basically that, and the similar name, I was wondering if there was a connection, but no, evidently it was based on a book."},{"type":"review","title":"Lady (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/lady-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/lady-2025/","filmTitle":"Lady","filmYear":2025,"rating":4,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-10-24","reviewText":"This was delectable. Isabella is a little bit of Claire from Fleabag (and fleabag herself honestly), a little bit of Valerie Cherish, and a little bit of Moira Rose. Just most fun to watch. Insecurity was on my mind a lot during my viewing of this story. I feel like insecurity gets such a bad rep because so much violence and other human badness stem from it but really it’s not inherently a bad quality and everyone is insecure at something. Both Isabella and Sam start the film as hopelessly insecure people, and when they act out they are annoying. However when they find the patience and grace to sit with themselves and be vulnerable with it, it feels like the hottest thing a person can do. As far as flaws go, the back-and-forth dynamic between Sam and Isabella did feel repetitive towards the end of the movie. At some point it felt like both characters regressed multiple times, which is forgivable, because this journey is not meant to be linear anyway. Lastly, how does one say no to being adopted to a Sian Clifford-shaped aristocrat? When I learned I was going to Monterey for grad school, it was my dream to be adopted by Reese Witherspoon. Of course I would be crushed to learn later that it was all a lie and Big Little Lies wasn’t even filmed in Monterey. All to say that Sammy was a brat and he really doesn’t know how good of a bag he fumbled."},{"type":"review","title":"Klara and the Sun (2026)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/klara-and-the-sun-2026/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/klara-and-the-sun/","filmTitle":"Klara and the Sun","filmYear":2026,"rating":2.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-10-22","reviewText":"This wasn’t terrible as the Rotten Tomatoes score would have you believe, but it did not fully succeed in translating the magic from the book. Sometimes I think Taika Waititi sabotages himself too much, or maybe this is just the only way he knows to make films. The constant gag jokes were probably the most to blame for the story losing its emotional resonance. I also didn’t like the direction they took with AI—this book was written pre-ChatGPT and they should have kept it that way. It was not necessary to make the points they were trying to make and it only detracted from other themes like grief and faith. Also, the main character and the character with the most agency is literally a robot, so it wasn’t particularly effective either. Jenna Ortega did a great job capturing the naïveté and wonder of Klara, and Amy Adams of course kills the grieving mother role. Josie’s actor...is good too, but she really, really looks like Lina Khan and it kind of took me out."},{"type":"review","title":"You Can See Everything (2026)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/you-can-see-everything-2026/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/you-can-see-everything/","filmTitle":"You Can See Everything","filmYear":2026,"rating":4.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-10-19","reviewText":"This review may contain spoilers. (Spoiler warning! Literally go see this at your earliest convenience if you haven’t already) I am blown away. What the actual fuck. This is the most mesmerizing, hilarious, and emotionally scintillating cinematic experience I’ve ever had. I mean I already knew this after The Rehearsal, but Nathan Fielder is truly a generational talent. Armed with a creative partner that is as daring as Amanda Seyfried, this film is a must-watch of this whole decade. The way he weaves artistic intent and his own state of mind when interacting with her into the storytelling is remarkable. I really went on the same emotional rollercoaster that he was on, from the same initial guardedness, to the provisional sympathy towards Holmes, and then frustration that she would again hand over so much of her own agency to another controlling and abusive man, and then the final realization that while yes you can see everything, it doesn't mean that you can tell what's real vs not. My favorite scene was probably when Amanda was first brought to Billy, the way she immediately goaded Billy to disastrously reveal who he is with laser precision within an hour of their meeting. That was not what I expected when she said she would be \"disarming\", but that was such a masterclass in dealing with insecure bullies. Billy Evans really thought he was more media savvy than Amanda, when they are not even remotely in the same league. It was very satisfying to see him get schooled like this. In Chinese middle school, we were taught that Mao Zedong didn't really launch the Cultural Revolution that killed millions of people and devastated the country in every sense, but rather he was misled by his scheming gang of ill-advisers into doing so and that ultimately it wasn't his fault. Elizabeth was the CEO and chairman of the board at Theranos. She remains the person who is in charge of her own life, despite giving Billy her power of attorney (I looked it up she can revoke this anytime). This might be a completely unhinged thing to say maybe instead of being the female Steve Jobs, she is actually the American Mao Zedong. Lastly, I am thinking about the intent behind showing Billy's very hung dick. Why is that there? I don't know if it's a callback reference to the \"cherry-tomato boys\" scene in The Curse, the only scripted show he's ever done. Perhaps it's offered as conclusive evidence that people with big dicks don't necessarily have big dick energy."},{"type":"review","title":"Primetime (2026)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/primetime-2026/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/primetime-2026/","filmTitle":"Primetime","filmYear":2026,"rating":3.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-10-05","reviewText":"Striking that in a movie about catching pedophiles, the pedophiles themselves are not the ones creeping you out. At the end of the day, even the most morally repugnant perversion, when regulated by shame, is still less sinister than sadism driven by unchecked self-righteousness. Bringing both craft and hustle, Robert Pattinson is working harder than even Anne Hathaway this year. Poor Dan-–the things he had to do for that union health insurance."},{"type":"review","title":"Saving Face (2004)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/saving-face-2004/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/saving-face/","filmTitle":"Saving Face","filmYear":2004,"rating":4,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-10-04","reviewText":"Intimate, serene, and rich both in theme and narrative. I enjoyed this so much. Between The Wedding Banquet in 1993 and this in 2004, it's kind of comforting to know that while we didn't always have good amount of representation, we've had good quality representation for a long time. Now we are just missing a trans version. Cho's date with Ma stirred me in ways that I really didn't expect. In an opening salvo to their first date, Cho declares \"I want to treat you well and make sure you live in comfort and free of worry for the rest of your life. I'm happy just to see you happy.\" What a thing to say on a first date, but the earnestness in his voice made my heart flutter a little. Is this supposed to feel romantic? Would I be swayed if someone who I am not attracted to at all, just said this to me on a first date? Ma then asks him why he doesn't want to marry someone younger than she is, since he must have good options from being wealthy. He says \"Young people. Today they say they love you. Tomorrow, who knows?\" That catches Ma off guard and she grows pensive for a moment. We find out later the obvious reason why, but I wonder in that moment if she is also thinking whether she is capable of the same mercurialness to the person sitting in front of her. Poetic that Cho is wounded in the most devastating way possible by Ma in the end, which goes to show that it's \"tomorrow, who knows?\" no matter how old they are. I agree that the overall chemistry from the two romantic leads are somewhat lacking, but the one scene where in an attempt to avoid intimacy, Wil literally falls for Vivian was enough to carry me through the movie. Part of me used to wonder the point of films like this, because the people who most need to see this are not the ones seeing it. But actually, I'm going to recommend it to my parents this week. Saving Face managed to tell two intricately interwoven stories with aplomb in 90 mins. Can't help but make me think of Verity which I saw yesterday that took 2 hours to not be able to stitch together half a decent story. Sorry I keep going in on it but that was so bad."},{"type":"review","title":"Verity (2026)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/verity-2026/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/verity-2026/","filmTitle":"Verity","filmYear":2026,"rating":2,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-10-03","reviewText":"Unfortunately this was bad. Highly questionable choices that were made in nearly every aspect of storytelling, together with the most cringeworthy ending sequences I’ve seen all year. Waiting until streaming is advised unless you have AMC A-list and are otherwise bored and have nothing better to do. The core issue is with our protagonist character. Lowen is meant to be who we can empathize with, but even with a flat and nondescript personality, she is not relatable at all, not to mention the crazy shit that the story ends up having her do. As a viewer I constantly wanted to yell at her instead of feeling what she’s supposed to be feeling. I was thinking this film would have had a lot more potential if they did an “All About Eve” thing and made her a freak from the get-go, but as we’d later find out from that 10 min voiceover at the end, that’s not the story they wanted to tell. The funny thing is that I think they had hoped it would elevate the story, but it only revealed how utterly they had fumbled and that the themes they wanted us walk away with were just not there in the story in any way. There were other mistakes made: criminal underuse of Anne Hathaway herself. Josh Hartnett is not nearly hot enough for Anne or Dakota. And what was even the point of that nurse character, or the son, or that car accident she’s in at the beginning that wasted like 15 mins of runtime? I honestly have a hard time naming a single thing they did well. Perhaps the fact that it feels like this is a film they had fun making. They kind of just followed every whim and went completely off course like 30 mins in and only when they were editing did they realize \"oh shucks this is a mess\" and had to try to reel it back. At that point though, just commit."},{"type":"review","title":"Dear You (2026)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/dear-you-2026/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/dear-you-2026/","filmTitle":"Dear You","filmYear":2026,"rating":4.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-09-28","reviewText":"This review may contain spoilers. Throughout college and my early post-school years, I always considered Mary and Max my favorite film of all time. A couple of weeks ago I talked to someone about how I felt like I've started to outgrow that film, and it's kind of fitting that the universe put me in front of another movie about how letters exchanged over vast distances change lives on both sides. Heartwarming and heart-rending, 给阿嬷的情书 is a beautiful story about longing, perseverance, and the importance of 情义. Bagshang had to flee the country to avoid being conscripted in a civil war. Sogriu had to raise three kids through widespread famine and the cultural revolution on her own. They both had much bigger problems, but still they made room for each other and sustained their connection through letters alone, when Bagshang couldn't even read. Bagshang's selflessness was so infectious, it made Namgi, who only cared about her own family inn at the beginning of the film, willing to support a whole family of four across the ocean whom she never met. Longing and connection like this sound like fairytales now, but I want to believe that we haven't changed, and that it is still possible. If you have bravery and heart, like 阿嬤 says, eventually you will find your people, even if it brings you loss and heartbreaks in the process. This story is not what I expected at all. Because the title mentions love letters, I was expecting a story that centers romance. My life for the past 2+ years, or perhaps the past 7 years, has been breaking hearts and getting my own heart broken. I was sort of leaning on this film to make my own closure over a recent heartbreak, because the person who did it to me was not willing to help me find it. Instead of a love story, I was given something much more profound and just as heartbreaking, and in a way, it really helped because it made my problems seem so small. Yeah, this loss hurt, but this story reminded me that I will suffer so many more losses that I'm sure are going to be much more painful in the future. Oddly, that gave me the relief I needed. Had to catch this in film an hour away from where I live starting at 10 PM on a Sunday. I didn't get home until 1 am in the morning. Worth it."},{"type":"review","title":"Coyote vs. Acme (2026)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/coyote-vs-acme-2026/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/coyote-vs-acme/","filmTitle":"Coyote vs. Acme","filmYear":2026,"rating":3.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-09-20","reviewText":"From the premise to the execution, Coyote vs Acme is relentlessly entertaining and fiercely creative, full of witty one-liners and a surprising amount of heart. I highly recommend. I didn’t grow up with Looney Tunes, so I watched about half an hour of it to prepare for this movie. I had started making a list of cases where Coyote would have a claim, but that turned out to be unnecessary because the film goes through them in detail. The natural comparison was to Tom & Jerry, which I did grow up with, but the fact that Road Runner is never in danger made me feel a lack of tension. I know that's kind of the point of the cartoon, but that also makes it hard to take advantage of this dynamic for a feature film. Nonetheless, they found a way. Coyote's undying persistence in the face of repeated failures as a virtue certainly isn't a novel reading of this cartoon, but I still find it quite clever for the writers to have come up with this David vs Goliath parallel pitting a personal injury attorney against a seemingly omnipotent corporation. They also knew how to leverage the invincibility of Road Runner to create very satisfying scenes. The feeling of anticipation I felt when I realized I was going to see the combined might of Apple, Amazon, and Raytheon failing to catch a bird was pure delight. The cameos by the other cartoon characters did go over my head, since I didn't grow up with them either. The ending was a bit messy and paced just a smidge awkwardly, but I think those are forgivable flaws. The real missed opportunities were: 1) Cameo by Ann Phong, and 2) I am not sure if this is a bit to make John Cena play his most clothed character ever, which I admit is a mildly funny bit. Even if it is a bit, I think it would still have been better for that commotion at the end to strip his clothes off. Objectively that is the funnier bit."},{"type":"review","title":"Resident Evil (2026)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/resident-evil-2026/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/resident-evil-2026/","filmTitle":"Resident Evil","filmYear":2026,"rating":3,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-09-19","reviewText":"I had completely forgotten that they have tried to make this film franchise before and I had seen almost every single one. This was the first time I had seen one after having played a few of the games though. I don’t recall if the previous films tried to do the same thing, but this feel does do a very good job of capturing the campy atmosphere of the games with a horror core. I loved the small details like digging through drawers of abandoned apartments to find ammunition and supplies. The hilarious bit about the invincible locks. It’s not a deep cut in any sense. The girlfriend/pregnancy storyline honestly felt very trite and redundant — I wish they had just made Bryan single and found a few more creative ways to humiliate him. My biggest complaint is that there was not a Chris Redfield type character. The zombies that have to be killed twice and the sheer human cowardice are bleak enough. Our adorable little sub deserved a moody buff daddy for at least part of his journey to hell, and so did we."},{"type":"review","title":"Battle Royale (2000)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/battle-royale-2000/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/battle-royale/","filmTitle":"Battle Royale","filmYear":2000,"rating":3,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-09-16","reviewText":"Inspired by my recent Hunger Games rewatch to finally see this. I had been under the impression this entire time that the Hunger Games series was inspired by Battle Royale, but after watching this I realized that's not the case and they explore entirely different themes. Battle Royale is messier and more interested in the character stories than constructing a convincing dystopian world. Unfortunately this did not quite work for me. Its central theme of the adult hostility towards youth just did not hit for me. And there is a little too much teenage angst. I wonder if this would hit harder if I lived in especially the immediately post-bubble Japan when I can feel the state oppression compounded by adult condescension more viscerally, but thankfully I don't have to."},{"type":"review","title":"After Life (1998)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/after-life-1998/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/after-life/","filmTitle":"After Life","filmYear":1998,"rating":4.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-09-08","reviewText":"This is another one of those \"has this already been talked about extensively and I'm just 28?\" moments. At the end of last year I saw Eternity, and I thought it was such an original and fresh premise. Not that Eternity doesn't add nuance, but I now see it as a focused iteration of ideas that were already proven and established by a much more ambitious film almost 30 years ago in the year when I was born. After Life is phenomenal. I thought the choice of deciding the person you spend eternity with was heavy enough, but choosing an individual memory that you spend the rest of eternity remembering is truly a debilitatingly hard and poignant exercise. What emotional state would I want to be put in for eternity with no other context? Do you want to be happy? content? hopeful? grateful? Do you choose a happy moment knowing that it ends with sorrow, even while knowing that you won't remember how it ends? The idea alone overwhelms me. Recently I learned my childhood friend's mother passed away. She and my mom were very good friends too. My family moved to a different city when I was 8, physically separating our two friendships. Years after we had moved, I got a call from my friend during dinner, who told me to look out my window. There they were -- standing outside our apartment building. They ended up staying with us over the weekend and it was probably the happiest I'd ever been over 48 hours. I was beyond euphoric by this surprise and I was so young that I didn't think about how insane this behavior was for someone in their 30s. I texted my mom today to ask: did she not really not know? Did this woman literally drive hours to take herself and her son to a friend who she hadn't seen in years with essentially zero notice? This was before smartphones. They did not really keep in touch. And it turns out yeah, she really did that. She and my mom eventually grew apart, and as did I from my friend. When she was diagnosed with cancer in 2023, my mom did not know and had to learn from me. I did not find this out from him either, but from someone else. Despite that, it's extraordinary that this is the first memory that came to me that felt final and happy enough that I'd cautiously say I can maybe live with this forever. Like Mochizuki, she most likely didn't know how much her memory meant to someone else's happiness. That leap she took on a random Friday, purely based on faith in the strength an old friendship, feels so deep and so beautiful now. I can only hope to be half as brave as she was."},{"type":"review","title":"Practical Magic (1998)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/practical-magic-1998/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/practical-magic/","filmTitle":"Practical Magic","filmYear":1998,"rating":3,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-09-07","reviewText":"Takeaways: 1. Never hide who you are to solve a relationship problem. 2. Quality friendships are durable objects that survive fights, distance and time apart. They also heal wounds. Lean on them liberally and be there for them unreservedly. 3. If you do 1 and 2, the man of your dreams who you literally didn't think possible to exist might actually defy a generational curse to find you, after hearing your laughter from a mile away Actually a good film for me on a rough night caused by men problems. Also, this explains the Nicole Kidman/Sandra Bullock press tour stuff so much and adds to much context. I'm ready for that sequel."},{"type":"review","title":"Slanted (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/slanted-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/slanted/","filmTitle":"Slanted","filmYear":2025,"rating":2,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-09-05","reviewText":"I know this is supposed to be satire, but it’s so completely enveloped in cringe that viewing is an utterly unpleasant experience. If the comparison is to The Substance, this is not close unfortunately. Many of the allegories used don’t fully work and are internally inconsistent. If the thesis is becoming white is self-erasure, the arbitrarily inserted consequence of her face falling apart undermines it, not to mention the ending that directly contradicts the key constraint established at the very beginning of the story. Come on, if you want to tell a story based on an unhinged premise, then commit. Speaking of, I thought this was a good premise for a film, but maybe it’s actually just not. It’s only a fun thought experiment and cannot sustain a feature length film. I actually cannot think of a way you can remove the fundamental flaws of this story. The weight of the premise already basically makes it impossible to inject nuance and there isn’t really anything you can do to not make it so predictable. The dad is very, very hot though."},{"type":"review","title":"The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/the-hunger-games-catching-fire-2013/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/the-hunger-games-catching-fire/","filmTitle":"The Hunger Games: Catching Fire","filmYear":2013,"rating":3.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-09-04","reviewText":"Caught this one in theaters with a friend who is really passionate about The Hunger Games series. It’s been at least 10 years since I last saw this film. I had written off a lot of franchise movies I had seen in my teen years as profit seeking hacks — but this one holds up surprisingly well. Despite the really long run time and introducing so many new characters, the whole film stayed impressively tight and focused. The costumes absolutely slayed. Many very good actors gave strong and memorable performances. A little trippy to think about the fact that Josh and JLaw were much younger than I am now when they filmed this. Also unrelated, I just realized tonight Joanna is played by Jena Malone, after 10+ years of thinking that was Amy Adams ☠️ This series gave teenage me the biggest crush on Josh Hutcherson that never really went away. Today I wonder if that gave anyone who watched this story unrealistic expectations on love. Peeta’s love for Katniss is truly unconditional. Usually that’s cliché, but existential situations like the Hunger Games make them believable. Where are you going to find that in real life when things aren't as glorious as volunteering as tribute to go through a cannibalistic death match, but you have to share a mortgage and house chores together?"},{"type":"review","title":"Coherence (2013)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/coherence-2013/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/coherence/","filmTitle":"Coherence","filmYear":2013,"rating":4.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-08-29","reviewText":"Decided to do a double feature with this after watching The End of Oak Street. I watched this film over the pandemic and it has stayed with me since then. I have wanted to rewatch rewatch this for a very long time but have always been too scared. But I watched this in a remote watch party where we each watched it at home and texted through the movie our reactions. It's actually not a bad format to enjoy a movie with your friends in, but I think it needs the movie to be quite good to really work, and this really is a great film! Sometimes films i liked during that pandemic turn out to be really bad when I rewatch them but rewatching has affirmed its quality for me and I highly recommend. The ultra-low budget of the film did not dull its genius. Everything I've learned about the making of this film makes me respect creator and cast more and more. The fact that was no written script is insane. The tension rises steadily throughout the story. Based on the Freudian theory about the primal fear of \"the double,\" the story gets darker and darker. The scene where Emily and Kevin realize they are not each other's Emily and Kevin after hugging in the darkness haunts me to this day. There was some over-reliance on music to build suspense, but when the film had to work on this low of a budget, that is nothing to complain about. There are many useful social lessons to be taken from this film. Don't sleep with your friend's wife and still go to a dinner party with them. Don't leave written evidence of things you do not want people to know about you. Don't be friends with people who are murderous alcoholics. The first time I watched this and it really freaked me out, I comforted myself by saying that if you trust your alternate self, then you have nothing to be afraid of. Rewatching has made me realize that the horrifying implications of a decoherence situation is actually much darker. Yes, I trust myself now with another carbon copy of me, but do I really trust a version of me for whom life really went wrong in every critical juncture? I really don't know and it's a terrifying thing just to contemplate."},{"type":"review","title":"The End of Oak Street (2026)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/the-end-of-oak-street-2026/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/the-end-of-oak-street/","filmTitle":"The End of Oak Street","filmYear":2026,"rating":3,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-08-29","reviewText":"Extremely campy and irreverent movie. Scattered throughout this organized chaos of a film is enough laughter and heart that will keep you entertained. I do recommend. (The rest of the review contains spoilers) Early in the film they establish that Denise and Greg had massive differences on how they'd like to deal with problems in their marriage. Denise wants to face them but Greg only wanted to avoid and delay. Greg dies, they escape and reunite with Greg in another timeline. I was confused because it felt like they never resolved those differences. After a bit of reflection I guess maybe the point is that those differences didn't matter that much, as long as when push comes to shove, he really loved her and was willing to sacrifice everything for her. That was enough for Denise. Incredible that Denise called the Pizza delivery to save her husband, and just left the rest of the family, including herself and two kids that are from this alternate reality inside the bubble?? She is so much more efficient than the girl from Coherence at eliminating her duplicates. Also incredible is the fact that they wrote an entire arc of the kids escaping the house and saving the rich girl, whose character ends up having zero narrative value. Did they write this whole sequence just to make a joke about private Catholic schools? Respect. Anne Hathaway remains the biggest reason to watch this film. When Greg gets eaten by the dinosaur and she just goes quiet and disappears Homer Simpson style really had me dying laughing."},{"type":"review","title":"Clue (1985)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/clue-1985/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/clue/","filmTitle":"Clue","filmYear":1985,"rating":2,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-08-28","reviewText":"I was expecting a well-crafted classic whodunit from the 80s, and this ended up being very different from what I was expecting. I can’t say I enjoyed this. Most of my frustration probably came from mismatched expectations. The film starts with a very interesting premise and I kept expecting an intricate resolution to slowly unravel it, but kept being thrown unserious shit. Only about third into the movie did I realize that this is not that kind of movie and by that point it was a bit hard to recover. Most of the jokes didn’t land for me either. The last time I played Clue was probably over 8 years ago in the TBC lounge back in college. I barely remember how the game works, nor do I remember the cohort I played it with, but I do remember having fun. If I had watched it then, knowing that it’s a silly film, especially if it was in theaters where they only played one ending, I probably would have loved this. I suppose the truly timeless stories are rare. Most are like this one, meant to be enjoyed with certain people at a certain time. If I tried to imagine an alternative reality where I did get to enjoy this film, the expiry date almost makes it beautiful, but in this reality, I did miss the window on this one unfortunately."},{"type":"review","title":"Shoplifters (2018)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/shoplifters-2018/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/shoplifters/","filmTitle":"Shoplifters","filmYear":2018,"rating":4,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-08-13","reviewText":"I might have watched this film in 2018 when it came out, but I definitely didn’t have the capacity to appreciate it then. This is a moving and complicated story about being misfits in Japan: what society does to them, how they cope, and what the consequences are. I think for a long time, perhaps the answer most stories produce to being misfits is to find your chosen family. I should know because I ate all of it up. Shoplifters wants to remind you that it’s not so simple. Yes, you can have a lot of genuine love and affection for the people you find, but love alone does not give you the capacity to care for one another well. If you are lucky, you may pick it up as you learn how to survive, but not everyone is, and that stunted sense of caregiving can bleed into all their relationships. Osamu loved Shota like his own son, but still chose to abandon him when Shota got caught stealing. Nobuyo wished she could give Lin all the love in the world through her hugs, but eventually could not protect her from being returned to her abusive family. Everyone loved Hatsue like their real grandma, but no one knew how to tell her, I wonder if in her last moments there were parts of her that still wondered if they stuck with her for her pension. And for Aki, she had to hear from an interrogator the ugliest version of her grandmother’s motivations for inviting her to move in, and she’ll never have the opportunity ask Hatsue herself whether that’s true. They were always on the run, fearing one another was only out for themselves, never allowing themselves time to sit with who they've become and what they've come to mean for each other. The comforting part is that as viewers we can all see how real their love for each other is, even when they don't necessarily know it themselves, as it must be with our own chosen families. For us, let's remember to tell them."},{"type":"review","title":"My Neighbors the Yamadas (1999)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/my-neighbors-the-yamadas-1999/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/my-neighbors-the-yamadas/","filmTitle":"My Neighbors the Yamadas","filmYear":1999,"rating":3.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-08-01","reviewText":"This may be the first time I've seen a slice-of-life film in an animated format, and there is no better way to do it than in the uniquely quaint, dreamy and whimsical art style of this 1999 film. This film really shows off the narrative and emotional range of watercolor art. The Yamadas' home has a blend of pastel colors that give you just enough shape to know it's inviting, but also leave so much room for you to imagine the rest. When Matsuko turns on the light, a splash of yellow drapes over the top of the frame to create a wonderful cozy glow. The world is realistic and unpredictable when interacting with strangers who pose a threat, but becomes a fuzzy dreamscape when it's just the Yamadas and the people they know. I am not sure if I am drawing too many far-fetched connections, but I can't help but wonder if stories like this were heavily influenced by the historical backdrop in Japan as the country first started to confront the post-bubble world and turn away from stories of grandeur. No one is exceptional in this story -- in fact all the Yamadas are pretty incompetent, but whimsy, earnestness, and the plain love and care they have for each other make their stories feel worthy of attention. While it's a good film, I would not recommend watching this film alone. If you can't find a theater that shows it, you should at least watch it with someone, or you might find your mind wandering away or physically doze off, in which case the entire message of films becomes lost as you conclude actually their lives are not interesting or worth your time."},{"type":"review","title":"I Want Your Sex (2026)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/i-want-your-sex-2026/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/i-want-your-sex/","filmTitle":"I Want Your Sex","filmYear":2026,"rating":3,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-07-30","reviewText":"I did not go to Dore last weekend, so the universe planned for me to get my dose of kink exposure through this film. I Want Your Sex is like Baby Girl meets Pillion. It’s packed with belly laugh moments and witty irreverent commentary about art. Great choice if you can’t get tickets to The Odyssey IMAX 70mm and don’t want to watch Spider-Man. This is another triumph for Olivia Wilde. She looked like she was having so much fun in this. Cooper Hoffman (who was in The Long Walk) feels like he's gonna get perpetually typecast in the white boy sub roles now -- he is too good in this setting. Also I love seeing unexpected Charlie XCX guest appearances. The whole cast seemed be enjoying the making of this film. My favorite scene was Elliot and Apple getting ready together for their wild night with Erika. Apple's character really had a lot of potential here both with her insecurity and her desire to be involved in escapades. This is where the story started to fall flat for me a bit because Apple really feels like so much more interesting as a person than Elliot? And yet she ends up being an odd accessory in his story with an unfinished thread At the end of the day though, it doesn't cut quite as deep as the other two films I compared it to. It doesn’t have the messiness and meatiness of Baby Girl, nor does it take you on an intimate emotional roller coaster like Pillion. It's a lot of quick wit and it more than entertained me for 90 minutes, but I'm not sure it will stay with me."},{"type":"review","title":"Persona (1966)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/persona-1966/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/persona/","filmTitle":"Persona","filmYear":1966,"rating":null,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-07-23","reviewText":"I think I need to rewatch this film, maybe with some help from Adderall, to better absorb it. There is no understanding this film. That much is obvious from the first watch. It’s very unclear what happens at all or whether Alma and Elisabet are two people or one person. The dialogue goes from hyper-specific to extremely amorphous in minutes. I think I was too focused on trying to put together a thread that I lost the plot."},{"type":"review","title":"12 Angry Men (1957)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/12-angry-men-1957/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/12-angry-men/","filmTitle":"12 Angry Men","filmYear":1957,"rating":4.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-07-22","reviewText":"In grad school, one of my program's professors had a class on Leadership™️. Every semester she taught this class, she would spend one lecture on leadership lessons™️ exhibited by characters in film. The cohort before us watched 12 Angry Men for that lecture in 2019. My class did not watch this film so I missed out on the opportunity to view this film like how most other people I know watched this film, by being told to do so in some class. I had to catch up at home this evening. The ideas in this film are not quite as revolutionary anymore. Well actually, are they? I am not so sure these days. The plot direction is predictable. However, the writing itself is so strong that even though you kind of know ahead of time that the jury would eventually turn, the way it happens still surprises you and keeps you engaged. This works brilliantly in tandem with the message of the film. I mean, there are no notes on the execution. I do feel like my rather cynical view of American institutions has blunted how I received its message. All the things that make me think are still how the story was perceived at the time and how a similar trial would unfold now. The film was made in 1957. Would a jury in 2026 do better than them? Is that a reflection of the state of the institutions? Does it matter? It's one thing to watch a great story from seven decades ago point out the flaws in the justice system and another to be like 70 years later everything feels worse and people are even more jaded. Maybe I'm only projecting, hopefully. By the way, in our class instead of this, we watched Black Panther. This was 2020."},{"type":"review","title":"Babe (1995)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/babe-1995/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/babe/","filmTitle":"Babe","filmYear":1995,"rating":4,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-07-19","reviewText":"I almost didn't watch this today because I said I was going to try to catch the World Cup Final, which I thought started at 3 PM, when it was 3 PM EST, so by the time I wanted to start it, the match was basically done. I therefore put this on to commemorate my last day of having a non-functional nose. The first thing I compared this to was the Paddington series. This was basically the original Paddington, only with a much more melancholy core. It opens with a brutally realistic world setting for the pigs, and our protagonist Babe has to suffer an incredibly cruel realization about the world and their owner. Against the cheery and innocent tone that the story is told in, the contrast is even starker. We do not know what Babe's inner dialogue was when he was trying to starve himself in his bout of depression, nor do we know what Arthur was thinking when he sang to Babe to get him to eat again. Was Arthur actually concerned for Babe's health, or was he only worried about his prospect of winning the competition? Did Babe question this sudden affection he is beings shown? We don't know any of this. We only see Babe buckle up, smile, charm, and off he goes. I wrote before that even the darkest and most mature installment of the Paddington series read like fanciful fairytale to me in 2026. But Babel felt real, and through impeccable direction, witty dialogue, and an incredible ensemble performance (talking about the animals), it never became cynical and managed to make this bitter pill pleasant to swallow. Preston was SAT for this film. The animals he was interested in included the cat, the dogs, the ducks, the chickens, and the pig. He did not care about the sheep. Also I can definitely see how this film would inspire a militant PETA, and for a second was worried if this would affect my own enjoyment of pork dishes in the future. After a few moments of reflection I now feel secure that it would not--my cognitive dissonance skill level especially as it relates to eating animal products is too high. Out of respect I won't eat pork today, but I suspect that is only because I plan to fast through dinner and don't have pork in the fridge right now."},{"type":"review","title":"Marie Antoinette (2006)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/marie-antoinette-2006/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/marie-antoinette-2006/","filmTitle":"Marie Antoinette","filmYear":2006,"rating":3.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-07-17","reviewText":"I watched this during recovery from a surgery that has left me unable to breathe through my nose for a week. I badly needed something frivolous, yet able to confer meaning through its whimsical randomness. Marie Antoinnette delivered. The whole thing is so splendorous and dreamy and the music absolutely rips. It's a film, but also a very well done video album? Watching this film made me realize how little I thought about the French revolution. Not that this is something that should have been on my mind very much but there were some immediate implications of what happened that I should have considered, if not after middle school history classes, then at least after watching Les Mis. Specifically, for example, the pettiness and out-of-touch-ness of the French monarchy to be sending aid to the Americans, who were ardently opposed to the very institution they rule, completely out of spite for the English, is nothing short of awe-inspiring. I've always said I love the French, because I think they are such a disgust-motivated people. You can see this in their election results today, but I didn't know it goes so far back, with such deep historical roots, and so high up at the same time. I wonder how my life would have turned out differently if i was inspired to be more driven by spite like this. This film did not review well when it came out in 2006, probably because people were put off by parts of the story that looked like they were meant to garner sympathy for the decadent French aristocrats. I'm glad that it managed to find the appreciation and cult following it deserved in the decades that followed. It's not that she didn't deserve the guillotine; it's that she shouldn't have been put into this position by society and its institutions in the first place. No one should - things worth remembering."},{"type":"review","title":"The Invite (2026)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/the-invite-2026/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/the-invite-2026/","filmTitle":"The Invite","filmYear":2026,"rating":4,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-07-04","reviewText":"What a recovery for Olivia Wilde after Don’t Worry Darling. The Invite is a deeply delicious treat packed with sharp writing, tension, and belly-laugh moments. I highly recommend. The simplicity is probably what made the difference. Don’t Worry Darling tried to address class, power, gender and had to create horror tension all at once, while The Invite is a simple relationship story with few revolutionary ideas. This allowed her to focus on crafting the script and pacing of the film and it showed. Also I think they were just having so much making this: one auteur working with three extraordinarily talented actors of a generation working together in a flow state. Of course it’s going to produce something special. (slight spoilers below) I appreciate how the film sets up the expectation that both couples are dysfunctional. With Angela and Joe, that’s the first thing we see. With Pina and Hawk, that’s what we assume because of all the unconventional things about their relationship. We see the occasional friction between them as breadcrumbs that will lead to some big reveal about their hidden mess, and Pina’s outburst made everyone think that was it, but they simply resolve it with very normal conflict resolution skills. It’s a good reminder that friction is not a scandal but is the norm in any relationship. Beneath the sharp writing and comedic genius, the underlying truths this story tells are nothing new, which can make the ending feel a bit of a whiplash in terms of it being anticlimactic. But after some thought I think it’s actually a neat metaphor for relationships in general. Drama and emotion that are inherent in our humanity can make things feel complicated and overwhelming, but all it takes is a bit of humility and openness to being vulnerable. In the end, connection really is that simple."},{"type":"review","title":"Toy Story 5 (2026)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/toy-story-5-2026/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/toy-story-5/","filmTitle":"Toy Story 5","filmYear":2026,"rating":3.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-06-28","reviewText":"When Toy Story 4 came out in 2019, I remember being very skeptical, but decided that it was more than good enough to justify its existence. 7 years later, I feel the same way about Toy Story 5. If you liked the the first four movies, this one, at the very least, will not bore you. I was just telling someone this week about how IP and franchise films, while the easiest thing to make profitable, are the hardest thing to make well. Well, it’s hard to think of any other franchise whose financial value has been maximized as tastefully as this one. They made sure to 1) focus what the series does best, 2) builds upon it to add at least a little nuance every time and 3) most importantly, not to do it too often. Their restraint is what allowed this universe to grow with us as we matured without us souring on it. From its very inception, this series that started from a seemingly childish idea, that toys have their own lives when we are not watching, has had a bittersweet theme at its very center all along: all good things come to an end. It is perhaps because the creators understand the central message of their films that they've been able to make deliver on this increasingly more difficult game of Jenga that is to add one installation to a beloved franchise after another. As with toys that we ultimately retire, this film's job is to make most fans of the series happy here and now. Maybe it doesn't elevate the franchise in artistic value, but what does it matter?"},{"type":"review","title":"Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (2026)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/teenage-sex-and-death-at-camp-miasma-2026/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/teenage-sex-and-death-at-camp-miasma/","filmTitle":"Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma","filmYear":2026,"rating":4,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-06-28","reviewText":"This is an unapologetically creative and self-obsessed film. Very much more on the vibe-based side, trying to engage you beyond a conscious level than telling a tight story. Despite that it is cohesive, entertaining, and deeply hilarious. It has a highly specific theme about how we are often shaped by perverse media and stories that affect us in ways that are out of our control. When I came out to my parents in 2021, my mom went through everything in my childhood to interrogate if it made me gay. If I really try to connect these things to sex, I guess it makes sense. Two most influential pieces of media were Detective Conan and Digimon. Maybe that explains why I’m sometimes attracted to men on a very wide spectrum, with one side being nerdy twink Kudo Shinichi, and the other side being War Greymon. I feel very coherent now. I waited in the rush line outside outside Castro theater with friends in the cold for 2 hours to see this screening accompanied by a Q&A with Hannah and Jane. The theater was packed to the brim and I sat all the way up in the balcony with a view of the screen that made it look smaller than my laptop. This experience was personally informative about the optimal amount of community I’d like to have in my film watching experience. When the crowd laughs out loud at every single joke, and the laughter takes so long to die down that it often makes me miss the next sentence, it’s definitely too much. AMC metreon can feel a little sterile, but can be a good experience when you go with friends and order HeyTea. The best crowd is still at Kabuki."},{"type":"review","title":"Leviticus (2026)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/leviticus-2026/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/leviticus-2026/","filmTitle":"Leviticus","filmYear":2026,"rating":4,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-06-23","reviewText":"I was not ready for this. When I heard about this “pray the gay away” queer horror premiering during pride month, I was expecting a light-hearted campy film more in the vein of Bodies Bodies Bodies. Instead this was immensely heavy and profoundly unsettling. I really should’ve known from the Australian accents in the trailer (that I really thought were rural British). Mild spoiler warnings below. The story uses a clever supernatural metaphor to convey the horrors of conversion therapy. It works very well, perhaps a little too well. Even as a viewer, you experience in real time how quickly intimate moments between Ryan and Nate that were supposed to inspire joy become dreadful turnoffs that exude only unease and horror. As someone who was never subjected to conversion therapy I was surprised at how much rage and sadness this viewing experience brought me. I wonder if all queer share this deep-seated fear on an id level. It ends on a bittersweet note that does not coddle you in the slightest too. There is no cure for the trauma that was inflicted. Nothing really bad happen to the perpetrators either. All they have to overcome what has happened to them is each other. Cold, and realistic. This is undoubtedly a good film. Though, I am not sure I recommend watching this during Pride month if you are queer. It is for sure a downer. If you are straight however, go and watch it. It is my hope that you feel at least a little bit guilty, and I encourage you to use that guilt to treat your gay friends nicely this pride weekend. And I am happy to be said gay friend if you have no other outlet."},{"type":"review","title":"Contact (1997)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/contact-1997/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/contact/1/","filmTitle":"Contact","filmYear":1997,"rating":5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-06-22","reviewText":"Watching Disclosure Day last week made me want to revisit this. This rewatch, and comparing it with the alien movies we got this century, including the good ones like Arrival, only reaffirmed for me that this film is peak sci-fi, unbelievably ahead of its time. What sets this story apart for me can probably be summed up from a single scene. After the leading candidate for the mission withdraws because his son asked him not to risk his life, Palmer asks Ellie why she is willing to throw away everything she has on earth, knowing she may well never return, to go on a suicide mission with no promise of any reward. She replies that if there is even just a sliver of hope that she can make the tiniest bit of progress towards learning the meaning of \"who we are, and what are we doing here\", then it is worth **one** human life, and she's excited to be the one to give it. The way Jodie Foster delivers this line, full of both external curiosity and unmistakable introspection, has been living in my head rent-free ever since. Most films in this genre either only lean into hard science, or collapse into cheesy hacks like the infamous Interstellar \"love transcends time and space\" gobbledygook. I'd never seen a more beautiful acknowledgment of space exploration as both an outward exploration of the universe and a deeply human exercise to look within, and it's still crazy to me that this was made in the last century, before I was born. There is simply no movie that seriously wrestles with the existentialism of communication with alien life that does it as elegantly as Contact. It threads a compelling story between science, politics, and faith, showing through the characters how curiosity and wonder are constantly entangled with ego, power, and, thankfully, humility. Every beat of the story adds both momentum and sophistication. It neither coddles or condescends. For every bit of incredible imagination, it pairs with even more refreshing honesty. I was never even much of a spiritual person, but this film actually made me see parallels between science and faith when we are pushed to the edge of our capability in either direction. I love this film so much and cannot recommend it enough."},{"type":"review","title":"Girls Like Girls (2026)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/girls-like-girls-2026/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/girls-like-girls/","filmTitle":"Girls Like Girls","filmYear":2026,"rating":null,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-06-19","reviewText":"This was cute. I somehow don’t feel like giving a star rating is even appropriate here because this feels like a situation where someone took a risk and put herself out there creatively. Last month I went to Bodega bay with friends over Memorial Day weekend for a ✨creative retreat✨, during which we made a 5-min short film and it was the exact same movie as this. Maybe I’m biased but i actually think ours was better. This didn’t need to be as long as it is."},{"type":"review","title":"The Furious (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/the-furious-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/the-furious/","filmTitle":"The Furious","filmYear":2025,"rating":3,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-06-15","reviewText":"This was delightfully unhinged. If you loosen up a bit, which the movie will force you to even if you aren’t so inclined, it could be a great experience. The fight choreography of this film is actually out of this world. Intentional or not, between the undying meat assassin, the homeless punk archer in the squid game costume, the gay cop with a conscience and a literal death grip, and the multiple grown adult men that bite people, the way this film completely dispenses with the rules of reality was extremely funny. Actually, the scenes where the movie tries to be the tiniest bit of serious are probably the ones that hurt it the most -- some of the lines were so cheesy that they were painful to sit through. They should have done without those. Similar to the John Wick movies, this is a movie about crashing out. Also extremely funny is the way the writers of the film crashed the fuck out about how they couldn't say anything about the Chinese police. Very clear that put all their pent-up frustration into making the police look hilariously both corrupt and incompetent in this unspecified Southeast Asian country. Good for them."},{"type":"review","title":"Disclosure Day (2026)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/disclosure-day-2026/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/disclosure-day/","filmTitle":"Disclosure Day","filmYear":2026,"rating":3,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-06-14","reviewText":"First off, the good stuff. This was an engaging film with great production value. It keeps tension well throughout its very long runtime. Everyone’s acting is online. The score is great. It's a good movie that is worth watching. It could have been a great movie if it had come out in the previous century. In 2026 though, it adds little substance to the conversation on this subject. For a movie that’s about alien life, nothing in the story that directly concerns the alien civilization makes any sense. The aliens are entirely a plot device for the conversation about empathy and humanity that the director of wanted to have instead. The film constantly invokes the existential weight of discovering alien life, but there is very little curiosity in examining where that comes from. I understand that perhaps this was not the point of the story, but nonetheless the arc that the film wants you to follow does not fully work because this discussion is missing. As a result, I felt none of the emotional weight when the climax hit. Perhaps I should just accept that alien movies really peaked in 1997 with Contact, which honestly is a pretty deserving peak. One tiny thing did move me. At the news station towards the end the film, the staff ask out loud \"Why am I doing this?\" before doing the things they are asked to do, which felt like a sweet metaphor for human existence. This fleeting moment was maybe the only time the movie addressed the existentialist backdrop that underlies the whole story outside of religion. I didn't feel it was enough, but did notice and appreciated it. A few asides: Emily Blunt was very good in this, but the bit about her doing the alien sounds was a bit overmarketed. The sounds weren't that alien - I feel like I could make them. Josh O’Connor is still fully imprinted in my mind as dirty tennis otter from Challengers. Every time he gives his signature earnest stare of concern, I automatically think he is in a sweaty locker room looking at Art with his dick out."},{"type":"review","title":"Backrooms (2026)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/backrooms-2026/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/backrooms-2026/","filmTitle":"Backrooms","filmYear":2026,"rating":2.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-06-11","reviewText":"This was an ambitious project that managed to be deeply disconcerting, but struggled to be coherent left me unsatisfied in the end. I feel like the vision is there, and maybe the director just needs a bit more experience to execute something as avant garde as this. My reading of it is that the story gives you a world where everyone’s deepest trauma, insecurity and destructive tendencies are interconnected. The scariest thing in your house is a version of yourself that you barely recognize, lurking underneath a furniture store in a strip mall that happens to be the cruelest realization of someone else’s dead dream. The idea is actually promising, but the delivery was lacking and it took too long to establish the characters, and the twist came so late in such a whiplash that I was mostly busy interpreting the story and didn’t have enough bandwidth to sit with the emotional implications, which are the real basis of what makes it scary. The over investment of establishments the mystery does not pay off if I’m not given time and space to feel it. Unrelated but I actually wonder what kind of therapists have offices like Mary’s. I swear they only exist in film and TV and real-life therapists either work at universities with billion dollar endowments or make poverty wages on betterhelp."},{"type":"review","title":"Masters of the Universe (2026)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/masters-of-the-universe-2026/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/masters-of-the-universe-2026/","filmTitle":"Masters of the Universe","filmYear":2026,"rating":1,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-06-06","reviewText":"I was lured here by that ridiculous abs-forward trailer so I guess I deserved it. This was barely watchable - worse even than the Mario Galaxy movie. Why start a bunch of silly bits if you’ll just end up committing to nothing? It’s okay to want to make an unserious movie but this cannot be an excuse to make slop. Don’t watch this."},{"type":"review","title":"What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/what-ever-happened-to-baby-jane-1962/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/what-ever-happened-to-baby-jane/","filmTitle":"What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?","filmYear":1962,"rating":3.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-06-05","reviewText":"I will say this is the first film during this classic kick of mine that didn't quite meet my expectations. I had heard of this film for quite some time, ever since I heard about the TV show Feud (2017) back in college. I didn't watch Feud, but I was in a Wikipedia rabbit hole over the beef between Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, so I really did look forward to this. Unlike All about Eve, where I had to take extensive notes to remember and connect dots between all the directions the script was going off in, I found myself getting hyped thinking that they'd introduce an interesting conflict, only to see the story doing a trope-ier and more vapid of version of what I'd hoped to see. The film sets Blanche up to be a calculating woman with an early childhood flashback but it never really materializes. I wanted to see emotional/intellectual manipulation vs raw impulsive abuse, but power ever only flowed in one direction in the whole story. There is that twist at the end, but what was supposed to be the nuanced part of the argument did not feel earned to me. Also, I was hoping that addition of Edwin the middle aged adult baby would result in some brilliant interplay with the deranged elderly barbie, but that became a dud too. Over the course of the runtime, the film's inability to surprise me also made its flaws more obvious. I was less forgiving of plot holes and characters inconsistencies that I normally would have tolerated in a film from 60+ years ago. Still, this film is delightfully unhinged and super campy. It builds tension and suspense well and keeps you engaged. Bette Davis gave a stellar performance as always. Super appropriate for watch parties where you want to honor a classic but still focus on having laughs with friends. And the lore behind the lead actresses's longstanding feud certainly adds to its appeal. I really do wonder how real that slap was. Lastly, can someone tell me what is shown in this movie really reflects what Vaudevillian theater was like? Who would watch that? I am very concerned for people who would consume something like this during its time"},{"type":"review","title":"I Love Boosters (2026)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/i-love-boosters-2026/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/i-love-boosters/","filmTitle":"I Love Boosters","filmYear":2026,"rating":3.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-06-04","reviewText":"An audacious, fun and maximalist film. It has a very clear thesis that it is unabashedly loud about from the very beginning, and spends the rest of the film *synthesizing*. Normally, a proselytizing film like this one would feel lecture-ish, but I Love Boosters avoids this pitfall by going all in on absurdism and making itself a visual feast. The costumes are especially astonishing. There are clear weaknesses too, namely the underdeveloped and under differentiated characters. When your story is an argument, it pushes your characters towards caricatures. Despite the herculean efforts of a great cast, I didn't think any character here was compelling enough that I'll still remember them in just a few weeks (maybe except for the demon--I want the demon). I know this is an intentional tradeoff that the creator had to make in service of their loud message, but these are flaws nonetheless. There is one line from the movie that stuck with me. When Demi Moore was talking about using fashion as her paint brush and people as canvas to create her art, her assistant said to her: \"I don't think people want to be the art. They want to be the artist.\" This somewhat awkwardly placed line is this story's central thesis, that we need build systems that empower everyone, not just an elite few, and give them the space to create and find meaning. On the other hand, the creator of this film did also spoon-feed this to me, which did not make me feel like an artist. I am aware that a single film cannot do everything. Sometimes you have to beam the deconstructor before using the situational accelerator, but I can't help find a bit of wry irony in that."},{"type":"review","title":"All About Eve (1950)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/all-about-eve-1950/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/all-about-eve/","filmTitle":"All About Eve","filmYear":1950,"rating":5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-06-02","reviewText":"Decided to celebrate the start of pride month by watching this historic piece of gay idolatry. Absolutely mesmerizing film. Again I was locked tf in the entire time. I am realizing how dense the dialogue is in these old films - so much so that I started taking notes just to keep myself laser focused on every line. There is so much information, so much rich context-appropriate commentary on film, theater, and showmaking as well as being a woman in showbiz. I did wonder for a bit if you are supposed to feel sorry for Eve. Watching old movies forces me to imagine what people from that era would have received it, and I always imagined pre-second wave feminism people in general were pretty unenlightened, that really was me being presumptuous. Even with her towering talent, unstoppable drive, and cut-throat killer instincts, Eve was not able to overcome the overwhelming oppressive force of a system that spares no one. That's one of the sharpest critiques of the picture business (and the patriarchy) if I've ever seen one. 70 years later you'd still need to stack The Substance on top of Barbie to get close to this. Lots of things here are going to stay with me. Eve slipping up on her meek humble facade from picturing a world where she would feel secure in the knowledge she'd have the love of thousands because of her fans, but it would take her a life of pain and regret to find out that 1) wanting to be someone is not the same as loving them and 2) what she thought was her dream was yet another golden cage. In addition I will be looking for every possible opportunity to say \"the general atmosphere is very Macbethish\". Must say that I felt very proud of myself for genuinely not being able to tell the men in this film apart. I guess one thing that Hollywood culture has changed in a positive direction (even if under warped incentives) is that men are now also forced to distinguish themselves in this business and they are way behind women who has had centuries of lead time in this race. There is a reason Keira Knightly looked exactly the same in that Red Nose Love Actually short while Hugh Grant had to make fun of himself for \"looking like a scrotum\". On that note, Happy Pride."},{"type":"review","title":"Enemy (2013)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/enemy-2013/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/enemy/","filmTitle":"Enemy","filmYear":2013,"rating":2.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-05-31","reviewText":"This film did not work for me at all. If it weren’t for Jake Gyllenhaal’s absurd face card I probably would have fallen asleep, despite the heavy-handed stylistic aesthetic and non-stop eerie sound track to keep me alert. Spoilers a head. The premise of it isn’t terrible, and I imagine was relatively novel in 2013 and only feels cliché now. Where it missteped was the subject - it is not worthy of the form. Using split personalities to abstract infidelity feels like, I don’t know, hiring a full orchestra to sing happy birthday for a child? By the end I already I had a good idea of what was going on, but when the reveal happened, it felt so underwhelming that I thought maybe I misunderstood the message, because like, that’s it? and I became more disappointed after confirming yes, that was indeed it. Maybe I haven’t seen enough but I feel like there is still so much potential themes and material in the actual twin topic. I’ve been thinking about this ever since Twinless. What happens if one actually meets someone else that looks and sounds identical to themself in the wild, especially if the relationship is curiosity rather than fear/animosity driven? That could be a great comedy. Someone should make that."},{"type":"review","title":"Obsession (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/obsession-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/obsession-2025/","filmTitle":"Obsession","filmYear":2025,"rating":3,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-05-28","reviewText":"This was very fucked up, but ironically it also stayed a little too safe and ended up over familiar. Between that and the excess of eerie music and jump scares, it didn’t quite meet my expectations given the glowing reviews. Being in a codependent relationship with an overly controlling and possessive partner is a nightmare, sure, but what else is new? In the past couple years alone we’ve already had Pearl and Together, which explore related themes with greater nuance and better execution. What I would have loved to see explored more was Bear’s guilt over claiming love that he didn’t deserve, or just the burden of receiving smothering amounts of affection over long periods of time, without it veering into actual abuse. This film actually touched on both of those ideas but ultimately played it safe instead of actually going after them. Overall though, it’s still an entertaining film that will keep you on the edge of your seat, if only because you are always wondering when Nikki would burst out a bone-chilling scream at any given moment. It’s also pretty funny (get ready for all the memes that’ll for sure come out of this). If conditions allow, I would recommend watching this in the company of someone who rejected you, for maximum immersion."},{"type":"review","title":"Casablanca (1942)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/casablanca-1942/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/casablanca/","filmTitle":"Casablanca","filmYear":1942,"rating":5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-05-24","reviewText":"On a classic kick this week. I’m sure there is nothing I can say about this film that hasn’t already be said but I’ll try regardless. The writing is so goddamn clever. There are two extremes to interpreting the ending and a million variations in between, and all of them are beautiful. There is something that the creators did that make human devotion, love, and sacrifice shine in the best way without being cheesy or naive. There is not a single wasted line of dialogue - I already look forward to rewatching this to discover new details I missed on first watch. Relating this to current events is also a trip. It’s a bit depressing that a film like this could come out and make big waves, and still not enough to push the US out of isolationism - it had to take Pearl Harbor to get there. On the other hand it’s also comforting that in the height of Nazi Germany’s power, there were enough clear-eyed and brave people to have made a film like this. It must be wild to be an American watching this in 1942. Not all of us can be Victor. The hot people can be Ilsas, but most of us probably can’t even be Rick or Ferrari. But we will have a chance to decide what kind of character we want to be when history finally corners us. Heck, if you really are down bad, you can even be Captain Renault. That may be the film’s most generous idea: courage is not reserved for heroes. Sometimes it arrives late, embarrassed, and buried in cynicism, but it still counts"},{"type":"review","title":"Citizen Kane (1941)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/citizen-kane-1941/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/citizen-kane/","filmTitle":"Citizen Kane","filmYear":1941,"rating":5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-05-23","reviewText":"It’s embarrassing of me to not have watched this until now, and I’m so glad I finally did. Even after disregarding all the technical aspects this film was pioneering, it is no less a true classic. It’s impressive to me when a film from the 90s ages well; I can’t imagine the prescience and taste it takes to tell a story that still feels fresh after almost an entire century. I spent some time thinking about how meta it was that I completely missed how significant the earliest scenes of Charles being separated from his parents was. I wondered if the whole viewing would have registered differently if I had the context of a 1941 audience. In the end I concluded it didn’t matter. Like everyone else I was most drawn to Charles Kane the newsman, the egotist, the strongman, and not the simplistic and most consequential aspect of his identity. The mere fact that an 85-year-old movie taught me something new - that no matter how grand and influential someone is, their Rosebud is probably no more dramatic than our own, and however quotidian a life is, few will get to know their Rosebud nonetheless - feels almost surreal. Also, I am not sure if it’s the context of knowing this was made before WWII, but there is a unique sense of reverence and humility that feel long lost to American films made in the post-war eras. What a film. I’m in awe."},{"type":"review","title":"undertone (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/undertone-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/undertone-2025/","filmTitle":"undertone","filmYear":2025,"rating":2.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-05-21","reviewText":"So I did watch this alone in the dark and it did creep me out enough that I had to 1) switch on the light, 2) start to look away from the screen 3) start using my laptop 4) generally pay less and less attention as we got closer to the end and 5) watch two episodes of Girls to shake the bad vibes off. Ergo, take this review with a grain of salt as I clearly was not fully present. As creepy and scary as this was, it was overly reliant on cheap shots and was not an intellectually stimulating thriller. The nursery songs, the creepy sound effects, the phone rings, and a bunch of general horror tropes. They are scary but just not interestingly so, otherwise I feel like I would have kept watching instead of withdrawing. It’s a cheap thrill that can be fun when watched in a group but I do not recommend solo viewing."},{"type":"review","title":"Mortal Kombat II (2026)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/mortal-kombat-ii-2026/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/mortal-kombat-ii/","filmTitle":"Mortal Kombat II","filmYear":2026,"rating":2.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-05-19","reviewText":"On principle I should be against this movie because I hate hollywood IP mining that has no respect for the craft, but I actually didn’t have the worst time watching this. Partly because my expectations were genuinely on the floor, and partly because this movie doesn’t put on any pretenses, which in turn almost feels like some kind of respect to filmmaking? It throws character development out of the window and does not even try to give Johnny Cage any nexus to change but he just does. It uses random flashback sequences liberally to drive completely foreseeable plot twists. All of this I find plainly hilarious and honestly pretty refreshing. This was the right move, because This whole universe is so ridiculous that it would have backfired miserably if they had tried anything remotely serious. Instead, they just show hot people commit creative and gruesome violence against each other, which to no one’s surprise proves to be entertaining just by itself, exactly like the game. My only complaint was that Johnny Cage nut punch could have used a bit more of a kick."},{"type":"review","title":"Dead to Rights (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/dead-to-rights-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/dead-to-rights-2025/","filmTitle":"Dead to Rights","filmYear":2025,"rating":4.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-05-18","reviewText":"My reviews generally have too much levity to discuss this. Gonna have be a diary entry for this one."},{"type":"review","title":"Top Gun (1986)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/top-gun-1986/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/top-gun/","filmTitle":"Top Gun","filmYear":1986,"rating":1.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-05-17","reviewText":"Caught this at its 40th anniversary for the first time. Hard to overstate how much I hated this. How was this made in the same era as Die Hard and be this unserious (and not in a self-ware way)? Looking at the makeup of that locker room it should be called top twink not top gun. Also, I first heard the Danger Zone tune was in Parks and Rec where Ben sings “high way to the calzone zone”, so that’s what I was thinking of whenever it played which probably didn’t help."},{"type":"review","title":"The Devil Wears Prada 2 (2026)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/the-devil-wears-prada-2-2026/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/the-devil-wears-prada-2/","filmTitle":"The Devil Wears Prada 2","filmYear":2026,"rating":3.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-05-16","reviewText":"Work and life got in the way of my amateur film critic career and I’m just getting to this now. The Devil Wears Prada 2 is an earnest piece of work that clearly reflects deep care from the people who crafted its world, but suffers from factors that are largely beyond its control. The original film earned its classic status because not only did it capture the personal cost of prestige and glamor in the fashion world, it did so while sculpting these perennially iconic characters. 20 years later, so much has changed in the fashion industry and the world at large as should have driven these characters far apart. How do you address this and take care of the characters? You can’t. You have to choose. And with the new massive budget and cultural sway, this sequel was bound to have the equally pervasive scope creep it did, ultimately leaving the characters with the short end of the stick. That’s why Andy Sachs still behaves like a secretary, why Emily moved on to a much better role and yet still has to be obsessed with Runway, why Nigel still waits for Miranda’s permission to claim spotlight, and why even Miranda herself had to soften and regress. Still, the cast brought 20 years of growth themselves to the table and it showed up, however subtle, despite their characters being weakly written. Seeing Emily and Andy sharing carbs still brought a smile to my face. It made me think that maybe sometimes holding onto certain naive parts of yourself is just acceptable an outcome as growing out of it. I’d say this sequel is still worth watching for this reason alone. That, and the clothes."},{"type":"review","title":"Mother Mary (2026)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/mother-mary-2026/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/mother-mary-2026/","filmTitle":"Mother Mary","filmYear":2026,"rating":2,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-04-25","reviewText":"Like many things I’ve seen lately, this is another story that doesn’t have a plot. Storytelling without a plot is hard mode. In this case, they really tried, but the result is just not there. This just ended up being self-absorbed and pretentious, not to mention torturously long. Not even Anne Hathaway could make this viewing experience pleasant. I really tried as well. When someone takes a risk and puts themselves out there creatively by making a movie as shapeless as this, the least I can do is give them the benefit of the doubt, so I really made an effort to take these characters seriously. I imagined Mary as a combination of Reputation-era Taylor Swift and Melodrama-era Lorde. Didn’t work. Perhaps this was on purpose but the conflict here is so shallow that I could not find any substance. The visuals are stunning. The costumes are rich and expressive. But that’s about all Mother Mary has to offer. One of the most important things that make a successful plotless film is dialogue. Actually good, cutting dialogue. But the dialogue in this film is repetitive and dull. And no amount of dreary whispering can make it good. All it does it put the audience to sleep. Seriously, if Michael Coel’s character spoke at a normal volume and speed this film would be half as long, and for the better"},{"type":"review","title":"Fuze (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/fuze-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/fuze/","filmTitle":"Fuze","filmYear":2025,"rating":3,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-04-23","reviewText":"We came to see hot men strip and do stunts and that is what we got. This film understood the assignment by having Aaron Taylor Johnson change his shirt within the first 2 minutes of the movie, followed up by him refusing to wear a helmet during an active bomb threat just to show his gorgeous hair. Even the trailers knew what we were here to do, showing us Jake Gyllenhaal, after whom it was Henry Cavill, after whom it was then Andrew Scott, covering a whole spectrum. This is what Gladiator 2 could have been if they weren’t so pretentious. The highlight was of course a scene that was very integral to the plot: Aaron Taylor Johnson taking a shower and then taking a phone call afterwards wearing nothing but a towel. The lighting and cinematography here is top notch. Dialogue was superb, by which I mean there was none, or none that I remember because I was understandably distracted. Not that it mattered, because between the Northern England accent and the British military slang I only ever understood 70% of his lines at best anyway. I was further pleasantly surprised to see that there is a plot, and that the plot even has a twist. The film kept tension (both narrative and sexual) well so that you didn’t just always want to get to the nudity. It’s a solid entertaining action thriller. Would I have come to see this without the male body whoring? Well, no. But I can say the same about Top Gun Maverick, and lots of people love that movie. So you know, I gotta be fair. If anything could have made this better, it would probably be more nudity. They could be more creative about it too. Theo James has to use his shirt to make a tourniquet, or ATJ forgets to wear pants. Also, there could have been more body diversity. Rahim could have shown skin too. As long as you nail the tension, I hope the director understands that one doesn’t have to be jacked to be hot."},{"type":"review","title":"Normal (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/normal-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/normal-2025/","filmTitle":"Normal","filmYear":2025,"rating":3,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-04-18","reviewText":"I was on the verge not sure whether I should watch this, because this movie was only 77% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes and I usually go for 78% and above. It’s overall a well-told story built on a thoughtfully absurd premise, which made up for its underdeveloped characters. This may be the only time where you see both Minnesotans and Japanese people get violent in the same film? There were lots of Fargo references, but it’s obviously a very different movie. I don’t know if it’s the writers argument to say that this is what Fargo would have turned out in today’s economic conditions. But Fargo was set in the Reagan era, so whatever riches they had would have inevitably led to where we are today. Bob Odenkirk plays more or less the same character he did in Nobody. Doesn’t mean it it’s not fun to watch him lob explosives on crowds of people somehow righteously. Lena Heady, even with a terrific midwestern accent and that terrible wig, when she drinks alcohol she still looks like Cersei. I’m just glad they both looked like they are having fun."},{"type":"review","title":"Adaptation. (2002)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/adaptation-2002/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/adaptation/","filmTitle":"Adaptation.","filmYear":2002,"rating":4.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-04-11","reviewText":"Six years ago during the height of the pandemic, I watched Becoming John Malkovich under the heavy influence of substances, unsure if the film was really that trippy or I was merely having a stroke, but certain that I was witnessing something brilliant. It's only poetic that I would stumble upon this piece of genius completely unaware of where it came from and having the same out-of-body experience years later. This film touches on so much so broadly, yet still feels like it cuts so deep. Everything is wonderfully both existential and pointless. I loved Charlie's freakout over his twin brother's success. Loved Susan's empathetic laissez-faire way towards life that pulled her in Laroche's orbit. Loved Tilda Swinton slutty little bob and Nichola Cage's unapologetically receding hairlines. This film kept you guessing at every turn, but it never felt exhausting. Somehow it doesn't try to pique your curiosity, but you are engendering all of it yourself. I recently went to a play whose writer said they specifically did not want there to be a plot, and it sucked. I was bummed, because I truly believe stories without a plot can be good stories, and things like that bad play give plotless stories a bad rep. I wasn't even particularly looking for a case to prove the contrary, but this movie ended up on my screen anyway, so it was all very serendipitous."},{"type":"review","title":"28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (2026)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/28-years-later-the-bone-temple-2026/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/28-years-later-the-bone-temple/","filmTitle":"28 Years Later: The Bone Temple","filmYear":2026,"rating":2.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-04-07","reviewText":"Missed this one in the theaters and only catching up now. This sequel didn't feel impressionable to me. While 28 Years Later set up poetic themes that felt fresh to me last year, this sequel building on those themes felts like a regression. As I understand it, the metaphors used in this film are to allude to cultural decay in the apocalyptic order. This I can get behind, but there was more opportunity for this metaphor to be a little bit more nuanced. The fingers are this cartoon villain-esque torture group which was just boring to watch when they could have been so much more interesting. Even if they just swapped the Mormons in it would have been more fun to watch than this Falun Gong type shit. Also it was insulting to have Samson put on loincloth 20 mins into the movie. You knew how much the masses liked the zombie dick in the last film. You are making a trilogy of zombie films and this is the second movie which you've preemptively structured to end on a cliffhanger and and therefore hard to stand on its own, which should already be an embarrassing move. You can't show a little good will by showing a little more zombie pole? That's suddenly beneath you? (Slight spoiler below) The only saving grace was Ralph Fiennes's phenomenal performance, especially towards the end. I laughed out loud. That campy-ness managed to bring this film back a bit for me. Good luck making the third movie work without him"},{"type":"review","title":"The Drama (2026)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/the-drama-2026/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/the-drama/","filmTitle":"The Drama","filmYear":2026,"rating":4,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-04-03","reviewText":"Razor-sharp, hilarious, and wonderfully daft, The Drama may be the best romcom for the mentally ill since Silver Linings Playbook. I had a lot of fun. It’s often said that you shouldn’t judge someone by the worst thing they’ve done. Kristoffer Borgli took just 20 mins to set up one of the most thought-provoking premises in a romcom I’ve seen in a long time to show how naive this common wisdom is. Not only do we absolutely judge someone based on the worst thing they’ve done, but in intimate relationships, we even judge people on the worst thing they didn’t do. We call someone dramatic for having an overreaction to something that ought not to be a big deal. The Drama, very aptly named, shows that deep down, we are all judgmental and dramatic creatures. It’s often hard to land a story that starts off on a wild premise, but this film manages that too, with a satisfying ending that doesn’t pretend to answer all the questions and clean up the mess, but with openness and grace. Definitely worth a watch, preferably with an expressive theater audience like the people at AMC kabuki. Also, a couple years ago I went to a wedding where the bride and groom didn’t write their own speeches or vows. They read some Bible verses and that was it. I thought it was so disappointing then, but after this film I realize for some people this may not be a terrible idea. This film has given me the grace to judge them less now."},{"type":"review","title":"The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (2026)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/the-super-mario-galaxy-movie-2026/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/the-super-mario-galaxy-movie/","filmTitle":"The Super Mario Galaxy Movie","filmYear":2026,"rating":1.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-04-01","reviewText":"I already had low expectations, but this truly sucked. Meandering all over the place, this sequel is an absolute mess. Its lack of plot is only overshadowed by its desperation to cram in one more easter egg that does not fit in this oversaturated hodgepodge of Nintendo IP. The characters make completely non-sensical decisions that carry no consequences whatsoever. Things happen without rhyme or reason. The jokes do not land. It felt like I was watching an amateur improv class. Super Mario Galaxy was the first console game I ever played, and to this day it remains one of my favorite video games. I was under no delusion that this was going to be a good movie, but I still came to see it because I thought even if it’s a bad story, as long as it was at least delivered competently, the nostalgia alone would make this a pleasant viewing experience, like the first movie. However, Illumination could not even deliver something remotely coherent. It’s honestly disrespectful. Skip this one. It’s not worth your time. The only people who I’d recommend this to are children under the age of 7 who cannot grasp the futility of what’s being shown to them on the screen."},{"type":"review","title":"Wake Up Dead Man (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/wake-up-dead-man-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/wake-up-dead-man/","filmTitle":"Wake Up Dead Man","filmYear":2025,"rating":3.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-03-29","reviewText":"A year ago I watched Conclave and said that the Catholic heart of the film did not not reach me. Well, after laying with a 27-year-old Catholic priest in New York last June, I think I have changed. I really dig this movie. The writing is relentless and disquieting, yet still light and acerbic. The presentation is pleasantly stylized. And it has a god-tier cast: I never thought I'd see James Bond, Olivia Pope, Tasha Dunken's dirty otter, Hawkeye, and hot priest share the same stage. Religion is a fascinating aspect of the human experience. I think of it as surrendering a part of yourself to a higher abstraction, and we all do it regardless of whether we consider ourselves religious. At the end of this surrender is a reward, which I think is the real reason we participate in the religion, whether we'd like to admit that to ourselves or not. Martha and Grace both gave everything they had to the poisonous church that took and took from them until they had nothing left to give. Shows that you have to got to pick a belief system that doesn't completely backload its rewards, just to protect yourself from abuse, if nothing else. The only flaw is that the film doesn't have a real emotional core. It mostly offers characters that you laugh at and feel pity for, not empathize with. Still, it's somewhat cathartic to laugh at these people, because they very much resemble certain real people that I see on the the internet more and more, and they really are sad. Love a woke film when it's good, even when it's a little condescending."},{"type":"review","title":"Project Hail Mary (2026)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/project-hail-mary-2026/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/project-hail-mary/","filmTitle":"Project Hail Mary","filmYear":2026,"rating":4,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-03-22","reviewText":"This rules! Propulsive, emotional, and singular, Project Hail Mary is an epic space odyssey about friendship and sacrifice. It has an engaging story, memorable characters, witty dialogue, and dazzling visuals to match. It's not perfect--could have had a cleaner ending if it didn't drag on a bit much to set up a sequel, but probably still the best commercial film in 2026 so far. The choice to board a ship to go on a one-way trip into deep space reminds me of Contact, still my favorite sci-fi film. It's actually hard to pull this off because the motivation for anyone to perform this ask is usually too bland or cliché, and yet it grounds the whole story. In Contact, Dr. Arroway does it from a place of curiosity and collective introspection. In Project Hail Mary, Captain Yao tells Grace that the bravery it takes to make such a sacrifice is not something you are born with, and that you just need to find someone you are willing to risk everything for. Grace has to figure that out on the go, and we get to do it together with him. Glad to see Sandra Hüller in more mainstream films, again delivering a mommy character I'd trust with my life. I am convinced Rocky is actually a cat, though nowadays literally every single nonhuman character only reminds me of my cat. And I do wonder if Eridians do actually want to watch either sleep--it's entirely plausible that Rocky made it up just to watch Ryan Gosling sleep(again, very feline-coded behavior). Besides that, it’s hard to get into specific scenes without giving major plot points away. Go see it! In IMAX if possible."},{"type":"review","title":"The Shadow's Edge (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/the-shadow-s-edge-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/the-shadows-edge-2025/","filmTitle":"The Shadow's Edge","filmYear":2025,"rating":3,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-03-20","reviewText":"With the recent focus on hyperrealism in film and television, it’s been a long time since I saw a crime film like this, let alone in Chinese. I’ve lost so much context to evaluate these things in kept vacillating between “yikes this is terrible” and “wait it’s kind of brilliant”, but I never stopped being entertained. There are times when you have no idea why a fight is happening, but is the plot as non-sensical as the last Mission Impossible movie? No. There are also times when dialogue is awkward, but is it as cringe as Top Gun Maverick? Also no. I came to the conclusion that this is perfectly acceptable entertainment, with well choreographed stunts and an averagely bad storyline for a film of this genre. I will say it is a massive trip to see such positive portrayal of both the police and AI. Very moving to see Jackie Chan and 梁家辉, both near 70 in age at the time of filming, still moving so effortlessly to do these demanding physical stunts, and pulling leagues ahead in both their acting chops themselves and their devotion to their roles. I wish I could say that the young actors are looking like they are trying because people are dunking so hard on their acting, but it's really hard to say that when you so clearly prioritize looking good for your fans over fidelity to the character. 梁家辉 looked like shit in this personally but his performance was impeccable. I hate to say this but please learn something from your elders or the next generation of actors is going to crumble so hard."},{"type":"review","title":"Dìdi (弟弟) (2024)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/d-di-2024/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/didi-2024/","filmTitle":"Dìdi (弟弟)","filmYear":2024,"rating":3.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-03-08","reviewText":"Predictably, just like every other time I’ve watched a film about a first generation Asian American story, I ended up empathizing more with the immigrant parents than the child. Chris felt like a massive brat the entire movie. Though as much as I found Chris annoying, I was never truly hated this character. Not only that, the entire movie felt strangely comforting even as it was filled with teenage angst. As I try to interrogate where this incongruity comes from, I find that maybe this was the point. Chris didn’t have to deal with overt trauma and be an adult early. Just normal teenage rebellion and angst, in what is ultimately a safe environment. That’s why it’s comforting. Gorgeous use of lighting. Half the time I was just muttering “omg the light”. If you have a window that gets directly sunlight during sunset let me know. I want to get some shots like that."},{"type":"review","title":"Hoppers (2026)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/hoppers-2026/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/hoppers/","filmTitle":"Hoppers","filmYear":2026,"rating":3,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-03-07","reviewText":"Hoppers is funny, and light-hearted, but at the end of the day juvenile. The conflicts in this film were so existential and its resolution so hand-wavey, that the supposedly unifying message only rings hollow. The suspension of disbelief required to take this plot seriously without cutting through the empathy you build up for the characters is so immense that I can only imagine children capable of it. I think this really illustrates how bad Avatar was. It did move me how loyal and adorable the animals are in this film. Reminds me of Preston. He is a very affectionate and cuddly boy but I don’t always indulge him. Sometimes I am impatient and would repeatedly move him away from me after he hops onto me on the couch. I’d go to bed feeling bad thinking about the sad meow he’d give after realizing I didn’t want to spend time with him, also worried if he’d hate me the next morning but he will always forget all about it and be all cuddly again. I don’t think he actually understands that I need alone time sometimes just like him; he probably does think I’m just mean sometimes, but he still forgives me. Unconditional love like i’ve never known. I know animals being adorable is not new in any means, but living with a beast in the past year and a half has made me appreciate them so much more. Jerry totally should have been squished."},{"type":"review","title":"Sentimental Value (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/sentimental-value-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/sentimental-value-2025/","filmTitle":"Sentimental Value","filmYear":2025,"rating":null,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-03-05","reviewText":"Watched this on a plane. Fully acknowledge that I did not pay full attention and honestly just did not care enough about these characters to do so. The ensemble seems cool but the emotional core of it fully escaped me."},{"type":"review","title":"Train Dreams (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/train-dreams-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/train-dreams/","filmTitle":"Train Dreams","filmYear":2025,"rating":3,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-03-05","reviewText":"Yes, I am doing last-minute catchup of the oscar nominees before the ceremony happening in 10 days. I will be posting about what I think should win in the coming days and this will be another test of whether the Academy has good taste after last year when they showed that they could make good decisions if they wanted to. Train Dreams is ethereal, emotional, and toiling. Grainier spends his life moving from passivity to passion, to grief and finally to wonder. I can’t help but think if this is just what existence is—it’s all just these stages mixed up in different orders lasting different times. At the end of the day though, perhaps precisely because it’s so expansive, the story failed to truly move me. Maybe it will catch up with me later like how the Chinese laborer they threw off the bridge started haunting his dreams, or maybe it’s just catching me at a passive stage. Only time will tell."},{"type":"review","title":"Blue Moon (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/blue-moon-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/blue-moon-2025/","filmTitle":"Blue Moon","filmYear":2025,"rating":3.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-03-02","reviewText":"What an odd little film. Throughout history there were greats whose work was so immense that we overlooked their (sometimes egregious) flaws because their work proved more timeless than their personhood. We never think about those who didn't make the cut, but maybe could have if they were just slightly more pleasant to be around. Well, Lorenz Hart was one of them. I once thought I'd never live to see the day when Ethan Hawke is no longer hot, but here we are. Lorenz's mind is a treasure trove of genius, his body of work clearly magnificent, and his ambitions even more boundless. However, everything about this person is repugnant. He is insufferably elitist, grossly unprofessional, and much more self-obsessed than he lets on especially towards the people he wants to flatter. However, Ethan really brought so much depth to this character. At the end he was sympathetic despite everything, because he really did love with his whole heart. He loved Richard. He loved Vivianne. He loved Elizabeth, but as the best line Casablanca goes: \"No one ever loved me that much\" He wishes people loved him as much they loved his work, and as much as he loved them, but he is just a hard person to love. He doesn't want to write to please the masses, but he still so badly wants their's approval, which is a fatal combination for any artist, and it did kill him. Superb dialogue as always in any Linklater film. I'm glad he made something so reverent to address something as niche as this. Beyond it all this film is both a love and a curse letter to the art of writing. As Amy Poehler put it in a plausible Shakespearean quote, writing really is a bitch, but it's also the greatest thing you can ever do."},{"type":"review","title":"The Housemaid (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/the-housemaid-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/the-housemaid-2025/","filmTitle":"The Housemaid","filmYear":2025,"rating":2.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-02-24","reviewText":"This was engaging, but at the end of the day overlong and had too many missed opportunities. Amanda carried this film. She delivered both the terrifying freak and the overwhelmed housewife with aplomb. Sydney Sweeney on the other hand, gave the same drab performance as everything else she’s in. Millie had the potential of Orphan-level slay, but all we got was generic woman with zero personality and an equally uncompelling character arc. If she just brought a little more to this character, this film would have been so much more interesting. So many characters are given screen time yet are nothing but props discarded just 2 seconds later. I almost feel bad for Enzo’s actor — all that ominous buildup for what? At least they are all hot."},{"type":"review","title":"Pillion (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/pillion-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/pillion-2025/","filmTitle":"Pillion","filmYear":2025,"rating":3.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-02-19","reviewText":"(mild spoiler warning) Dreamy, surreal, and hysterical, Pillion takes you on the steamiest romantic ride of your life, and then sits you down, ultimately uncoddling. More than anything it is a reminder that self-discovery often demands a lot of vulnerability and pain, especially in romance and sex. I came in with high expectations, and I have to say not all of them were met, but I would still recommend it to everyone. The relationship depicted in this film is far, far from anything I’d personally enjoy, but I was still moved and felt fuzzy feelings whenever Ray would show an iota of concern for Colin. I tried to figure out what that’s about and it reminded me of Fleabag’s speech to Hot Priest in the confession booth: >I want someone to tell me what to wear in the morning, every morning; someone to tell me what to eat, what music to listen to, what to buy tickets for, what to like, what to hate, what to rage about, what to joke about and not joke about, what to believe in, who to vote for, who to love and how to tell them I think that’s Colin as well, and I think there’s a little bit of Colin in all of us. My big complaint is that the prosthetic dick used in this film is too fake. They looked like rubbery rolling pins. The production crew need to consult The Pitt and get some realistic looking penises. Also, the Asian grandma who looked like she was in her late 60s or 70s who came to watch this movie alone on a Thursday night at AMC Kabuki, who are you? If you see this please reach out I really would like to know your story - thanks"},{"type":"review","title":"Raising Arizona (1987)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/raising-arizona-1987/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/raising-arizona/","filmTitle":"Raising Arizona","filmYear":1987,"rating":3,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-02-16","reviewText":"We spent our final night in Arizona watching this movie. It’s silly and whimsical, but quietly reflective as well. This must have been quite a radical film back in its time. While some of the ideas don’t feel quite as fresh anymore, they also didn’t age badly. I think modern films and TV has tunneled on the theme of “childlike wonder and whimsy vs crushing responsibility of adulthood” much deeper than what this film has to offer now. So I wasn’t super moved by the McDunnoughs’s lostness and the choices they made because of it. Adulting is hard and sometimes, people commit crimes because they don’t know how to adult. I think we have moved way past the arguments where this maladaptive pattern is acceptable. What did move me was Nicholas Cage pioneering the himbo twink. Such an archetype must have held such promise. Unfortunately, the modern audience is fickle and this genre of men never quite panned out. It does comfort me, looking at Cage now, to know that there truly endless ways to age out of twinkdom gracefully. After all, not every one can pull of a Jake Gyllenhaal."},{"type":"review","title":"The Moment (2026)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/the-moment-2026/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/the-moment-2026/","filmTitle":"The Moment","filmYear":2026,"rating":4,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-02-07","reviewText":"I feel like I was mostly on the sidelines during brat summer in 2024, probably because my own oddity of mostly only enjoying music that you listen to while sitting still rather than music you can dance to. As a result I mostly missed the opportunity to understand Charlie as an artist This film touches on the fundamental conflict of making art as a business. Art is provocative and thus alienating by nature, while business always want a wider range of paying customers. From the outside it seems easy to conclude that you should always prioritize your artistic vision because the business will follow, and while that is true to an extent, this film shows us unless you are an egotistical megalomaniac, this is very difficult to stick to. Charlie’s vulnerability and self-awareness is such a gift that would have never gotten through to me via her music. But I’m really glad it did, through this film that I wouldn’t not even have known about if I didn’t randomly notice a poster on my way to watch Send Help while with a friend who was excited about it. It’s my serendipity of the week."},{"type":"review","title":"Send Help (2026)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/send-help-2026/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/send-help/","filmTitle":"Send Help","filmYear":2026,"rating":3,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-02-06","reviewText":"This was a great riff on Triangle of Sadness, though instead of a focus on class, Send Help focuses on power dynamics in a more private and intimate setting in less garrulous way. Instead relying on a well-conducted ensemble, this film fully leans into the star power of Rachel McAdams. This is great if you are a Rachel McAdams fan like me, who can watch her throw up on her bitch boss for indefinite amount of time, but its flaws are just as salient. Rachel as Linda is not only wonderfully unhinged, but also a well fleshed out character, but the same cannot be said of any other character, all rendered as plot devices that revolve around her, whose choices and executive function fall apart entirely upon examination. At least the film knew to paper over this flaw with Dylan O’Brien’s irresistible puppy face, but it ends up making Bradley very inconveniently sympathetic, so much so that it made parts of the film a little harder to enjoy. Though I must admit, I was at least a little turned on when he was bound and paralyzed. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t just me."},{"type":"review","title":"Paddington 2 (2017)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/paddington-2-2017/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/paddington-2/","filmTitle":"Paddington 2","filmYear":2017,"rating":3.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-01-25","reviewText":"It's been said that within the Paddington franchise, the first and third movies are perfectly entertaining flicks, while Paddington 2 is a genuinely good film. After this viewing, I agree: this film is much stronger than the other two both in writing and on message. If I had seen this movie in 2017, it would probably be right up there with Zootopia as one of my favorite animated features. Watching this in 2026 though, I somehow felt like I had a lump in my throat the entire time, because this film portrays a world that takes more and more cognitive dissonance to imagine still exists. One of the most satisfying scenes of the film was all the neighbors showing up to help the Browns start their car to help Paddington, running the contemptuous Mr. Curry off the street. It's a moving moment of community strength overpowering fringe cynicism and xenophobia. Even in 2017, I would have been convinced that we did, or at least could, live in that world. But today, it's clear we were never there, and maybe will never get there in our lifetime. We live in a world where, far from fringe, half of the people are Mr. Currys. Worse, instead of being a pretend neighborhood watch member, they have money, guns, and power of the state. Hard to imagine the neighborhood folks pushing a barely functioning car through a barricade of trigger-happy cops isn't it? Maybe I'm just not in a great mental state this weekend. I wanted to watch something uplifting, and Paddington 2 is definitely in the top 5 percentile for that purpose, but it wasn't enough today. What I did manage to find comfort in, is that even if the whole world turned against them, the Browns would still hold onto and take very good care of Paddington. It would be impossible to feel hopeless, as long as you have Sally Hawkins smiling at you."},{"type":"review","title":"If I Had Legs I'd Kick You (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/if-i-had-legs-i-d-kick-you-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/if-i-had-legs-id-kick-you/","filmTitle":"If I Had Legs I'd Kick You","filmYear":2025,"rating":4,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-01-16","reviewText":"Unrelenting and suffocating, this new mom-gone-crazy film transports you into this venomous state of despair, frustration, rumination and supreme irritability by asking two questions: “what’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to you?” and “what’s the worst thing that happened to you today?” Rose Byrne is absolutely fantastic. After seeing her in Bridesmaids and Spy I knew this women could do anything and so happy to see her finally acknowledged as someone who can really ACT. Her simmering rage was so visceral and guttural. I was getting chills. It made me think of the 2024 Chinese film Decision to Leave. Both movies are about the outsize systemic oppression faced by women. In Decision to Leave, Li Hong and her daughter both fight for the ability to work, in addition to all they shoulder at home, just so they'd be able to leave the relationship if things got too rough. In If I Had Legs I'd Kick You, Linda complains to her absent husband that parts of what's crushing her is precisely that in addition to the household responsibilities, she also has to work."},{"type":"review","title":"No Other Choice (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/no-other-choice-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/no-other-choice-2025/","filmTitle":"No Other Choice","filmYear":2025,"rating":4.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-01-13","reviewText":"Knowing that the premise of the film is about a man deciding to murder all other competing candidates just to get a job, I expected this film to be another indictment of the kind of late-stage capitalism that warps humanity. This has become a quite oversubscribed theme since Parasite so I was actually a little concerned that it was going to be tired. Instead, it is much more nuanced and layered. I find in this propulsive and hilarious film more mockery of the boys' club that the men in the story want to construct for themselves, as well as the silliness of men who ascribe meaning to work underwritten by a system that is by nature mercurial. They say that they do this for their families, which is technically true, but they don't really see their families as human beings they need to be vulnerable to and connect with, but rather only as bodies that come with mouths they need to feed and feet they need to shoe. As much as we hate to admit it, life is mostly labor. It's always been this way. And a lot of what decides if you are happy or not is how you find meaning in that labor. Man-su wanted to believe that he derived meaning from taking care of his paper mill workers -- that turned out to be false as he commits serial murder to take a job where he only oversees machines. He chose the industry he works in over the people he worked with to tie his identity to, which was perhaps the biggest mistake that he makes over and over again. He chose the family house over weathering the storm with his family together, chose face over being vulnerable to his wife, and chose to believe in zero-sum over working with the one person he actually connected with. Maybe the system he chose to live by rewards this behavior. The film seems less interested in whether he wins than in what playing this game at all costs him, and I hope we are too."},{"type":"review","title":"Resurrection (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/resurrection-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/resurrection-2025/","filmTitle":"Resurrection","filmYear":2025,"rating":2.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-01-07","reviewText":"Avant-garde, delirious (literally), and macabre, Resurrection is an enigmatic collection of unevenly compelling story that mostly fail to construct a cohesive narrative. Friends and I left the theater confused and not moved. We all had some vague sense of what this movie is about, but by and large unmoved and sometimes amused when that probably wasn’t the intention. In many ways this is the point of the movie. Stories, (maybe much like life) do not have to make sense. It’s more enjoyable once you give up on trying to understand it and simply try to feel the vibes, for the cinematography really is gorgeous. In that sense, it really did need to be as long as it is."},{"type":"review","title":"Marty Supreme (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/marty-supreme-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/marty-supreme/","filmTitle":"Marty Supreme","filmYear":2025,"rating":4,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2026-01-03","reviewText":"First movie of 2026, we are starting off strong with Marty Supreme. Nail-biting, relentless and electric all at the same time, this was a supreme cinematic experience. When I first learned they were making a movie about an American ping-pong player, I thought “how good can this guy be?”, knowing that Americans never really had much representation in this sport that’s dominated by East Asian countries. Then I learned that it was set in the 1950s, which explained things. Marty is objectively a terrible person. He has no scruples and is basically pure poison that burns everyone who shows him even a shred of kindness. So it’s karmic that he would end up with the equally unhinged Rachel. Why did I still root for him? Because as power hungry and manipulative as Marty is, the capitalist pig who is so drunk on power that he has forgotten how to treat others, including his own wife, as people, is still much, much grosser.  I’m pretty sure Timothee Chalamet wants that Oscar as badly as Marty wanted that championship, if not more. Well, he might just get it with what is easily his career-best performance. If he does, he should thank the Mao government for keeping Chinese people preoccupied with being starved throughout the late 1950s and 60s, without which this movie probably wouldn’t exist."},{"type":"review","title":"The Birdcage (1996)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/the-birdcage-1996/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/the-birdcage/","filmTitle":"The Birdcage","filmYear":1996,"rating":null,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-12-30","reviewText":"watched it on my last night in miami. not attaching a rating because i was distracted and unfocused during the viewing just wanted to say it’s a bit sad that while so much has changed since the making of this film, so much of the fundamentals stayed the same. when this came out people must have had so much hope, but florida has gotten arguably worse for gay people in 2025. such a travesty."},{"type":"review","title":"The Secret Agent (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/the-secret-agent-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/the-secret-agent-2025/","filmTitle":"The Secret Agent","filmYear":2025,"rating":null,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-12-20","reviewText":"Not attaching a rating because I think i would be unfair to rate it when I should have known this is not a move that is made for me and didn’t take the time to learn about the background beforehand. This is not a movie that you can just walk into completely blind and enjoy."},{"type":"review","title":"After the Hunt (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/after-the-hunt-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/after-the-hunt-2025/","filmTitle":"After the Hunt","filmYear":2025,"rating":3,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-12-16","reviewText":"Grating but engaging, you’ll need patience and capacity to tolerate a certain flavor of sanctimoniousness and pedantry to enjoy this one. However, if you do manage to stay with it, it actually has a thoughtful and cogent massage about power and discourse that cuts much deeper than some headlines written about this movie will have you believe. Julia Roberts carried hard here - it would have been a lot harder to watch Alma if it weren’t for the depth and mystique she brought to this character. Ayo Ediberi held her own as well. Casting Andrew Garfield in this role may have been a great move on a meta level too, because he does play arguably the most morally bankrupt character in this entire story, but somehow almost the least annoying just because he is so freaking charming. I don’t know if I can recommend this if you haven’t seen any movie in a while and want to watch something you want to be reasonably sure you’ll enjoy, but it would make for decent in-flight entertainment if it’s offered on a 3+ hour flight."},{"type":"review","title":"The Sun Rises on Us All (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/the-sun-rises-on-us-all-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/the-sun-rises-on-us-all/","filmTitle":"The Sun Rises on Us All","filmYear":2025,"rating":2.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-12-07","reviewText":"unbelievably bleak and generally very hard to watch, this is a true tragedy though and through in that there is not a single thing that happens in this movie that will make you feel good in any way. it’s giving manchester by the sea only more hopeless, like past lives but for voodoo level cursed karma. 辛芷蕾 really did serve but i don’t think most people can stomach this story so i cannot say i recommend it."},{"type":"review","title":"Hamnet (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/hamnet-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/hamnet/","filmTitle":"Hamnet","filmYear":2025,"rating":4,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-12-06","reviewText":"Haunting, propulsive, and emotional, to me Hamnet is about the ubiquity of tragedy, how powerless it makes us feel no matter the form it takes, and how it both unites and divides us. I fell and sprained my ankle on my way back from this film, but I think it was still worth it. The story of how Hamnet dies really is nothing special -- medieval child dies medieval plague -- happens to almost every family of their time. Chloe Zhao did a lot of interesting things to dramatize this everyday tragedy, sometimes to a comical degree. Shakespeare's inexplicable bouts of fits and emotional outbursts were hard to watch. At the same time, the actual sensational death of Hamlet the Danish Prince was rendered as still as possible as a literal play. One nearly killed her, while the other gave her life. On brand for Zhao, the cinematography is amazing. All the shots of Agnes in the woods; the way every symmetrical image becomes just slightly but definitively asymmetrical and unstable after the death of Hamnet. Absolute fantastic use of lighting to tell the story. I do wonder what it's like to be married to the greatest literary genius of a millennia and not being aware of it in the slightest until your husband writes the the death of your son into the greatest play of all time. Then again, Agnes is the kind of bad bitch that demands to give birth to her children alone in the woods, so I doubt I will never come close to knowing what it's like to be her. Oh well."},{"type":"review","title":"Eternity (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/eternity-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/eternity-2025-1/","filmTitle":"Eternity","filmYear":2025,"rating":4,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-12-04","reviewText":"I actually really, really enjoyed this. It’s not easy to find something original to say about love, but this film found a way. Eternity confronts you with the impossible question: which love is greater? The dreamy, sparkly fairytale one that you only knew before you knew loss, one you can only fantasize about because you never had the opportunity to see how it would end, or the messy, thorny, but real one that you spent decades building with someone that you sometimes can’t even stand?Many may think the movie answers this question definitively based on the ending, but I actually don’t think it does. I think the story captures the nuance well that both kinds of love are among greatest gifts life has to offer, but depending on who you are as a person, you may opt for one over the other at different times. The scene that moved me the most was when Joan was racing back to find Larry, and was being shown all the bad memories of their marriage, all their fights, the bad and the ugly, I was worried that she’d escape, only to decide not to choose Larry again, but she didn’t even waver. She knows the bad and the ugly comes with every relationship and that real love is knowing that and choosing the other person regardless and trusting they’d do the same for you. And Larry did.  Realistically though, I think all three of them should have gone for their own eternity. They all should have taken up the offer by the perpetually tipsy woman at the bar peddling the debaucherous sex eternity. But this is a movie about love, and by that virtue, it has a good ending. I recommend."},{"type":"review","title":"Zootopia 2 (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/zootopia-2-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/zootopia-2/","filmTitle":"Zootopia 2","filmYear":2025,"rating":3.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-11-30","reviewText":"This was delightful. I was worried because from the trailer it seemed like the story would follow essentially the same arc as the original, just with carnivores replaced by reptiles, but it actually builds upon the original message and gracefully layered on a bit more nuance, though it does lose focus occasionally. The films throws a lot at you. It has lots of clever lines, countless easter eggs, and is filled with belly-laugh moments. Somehow, it doesn’t get tiring - it’s a rare case of more is more and it actually works. However, what I loved most about the first film was how the duo was directly involved in the central conflict of the story. The way Judy and Nick bonded and built trust with each other over a set of impossible circumstances was so moving to see. In contrast, their dynamic in this film was frustrating and their conflict feels more manufactured than organic. Though I was just as moved when they reconnected, I’m not sure how much that is credit to this story as opposed to the first film. PS: Always love to see great injection of DEI, especially in films with children as a"},{"type":"review","title":"Tangled (2010)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/tangled-2010/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/tangled-2010/1/","filmTitle":"Tangled","filmYear":2010,"rating":5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-11-29","reviewText":"Rewatched this on a whim, because I wanted to know what it was about this film that really spoke to me. I first watched this movie in 2013, basically right after Frozen became a global hit. I remember loving it so much that I made my mom watch it with me months later. I also remember loving Eugene so much that none of the Disney main male characters ever left an impression after him. Why did I want to watch this with my mom? I remember feeling so uncomfortable watching the scene with her when Eugene tells Rapunzel that it's a rite of passage for kids to rebel and break their parent's heart, when i knew that scene was going to be there. If it was just because I wanted to send her a message about my own rebellion, why is it speaking to me even now?Why was I so obsessed with Eugene? He is flirty and mischievous, which may be a bit novel at the time for Disney movies, but sure has become a whole archetype for male characters in every genre of storytelling. I don't really have answers even after today, but I think I got a little bit closer. I adore the sensitivity of Rapunzel's innocence and the strength she finds in herself to confront her abuser, and I yearn for the reliability of Eugene's love and how he shows affection in a way that allievates Repunzel's deepest insecurities. It relieves me that 12 years later the magic of this film has not dulled. That lantern scene moved me as ardently as ever. With this rewatch Tangled has solidified its place as my personal favorite Disney film of all time."},{"type":"review","title":"The Roses (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/the-roses-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/the-roses-2025/","filmTitle":"The Roses","filmYear":2025,"rating":4,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-11-23","reviewText":"Painful, mesmerizing, and sobering, The Roses paints the saddest rendition of marriage and long-term intimacy I've seen in a long time. Reminds me of Marriage Story, but more mordant, dramatic, and hilarious. Both Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman were marvelous. Olivia can give performances like this for shits and giggles but I actually feel like this was a career-best performance for Benedict. The barbs they trade were just so delicious. They say the most deadly emotion you can have in a relationship is contempt. Once it's there it digs, and rots and poisons everything good. The scary thing is that you'll hardly notice it unless you know specifically to look out for it, because when it gets you too look at your partner in the least favorable way possible, in the moment everything feels justified. Though at the end, I still am not sure if both Roses and SNL couple had the same marriage, just different standards and levels of inertia, or there is a fundamental difference in the levels of trust they allow each other. I did think the bits at the end were too over-the-top and uninteresting. They could have cut that and gave us more Andy Samberg. It does allow you to come to the realization that, even if the very end of the ending didn't happen, this relationship still won't have made it, and the damage would be almost just as bad."},{"type":"review","title":"Wicked: For Good (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/wicked-for-good-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/wicked-for-good/","filmTitle":"Wicked: For Good","filmYear":2025,"rating":2.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-11-22","reviewText":"This film is actually as good as can be expected as an adoption of act 2 of Wicked the stage musical. All the flaws from the stage musical are still here, perhaps more salient because it doesn’t have the protective veil of a stage performance. Things that were already rushed in the stage version felt more jarring in a film, even after they stretched the runtime. However, it also knew to lean on its strengths which were Cynthia and Ariana (and Jonathan Bailey). It’s disappointing that the original numbers added were subpar, but they got really good mileage out of For Good and No Good Deed Goes Unpunished, thanks to the committed performances from the two leads both individually and together. Ultimately this is not a movie that will touch you emotionally the way the end of act 1 does, but it will keep you entertained as long as either lead is on screen. Michelle Yeoh is comically bad in this film even more so than the first. Should have given more of her time to Bowen. The ending poses an important question: would you still love Jonathan Bailey if his dick was burlap? Worthwhile to think about."},{"type":"review","title":"Frankenstein (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/frankenstein-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/frankenstein-2025/","filmTitle":"Frankenstein","filmYear":2025,"rating":3,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-11-19","reviewText":"This film was visually stunning, but because I did not grow up consuming any media related to Frankenstein, some of the iconic-ness of the tale is lost on me. The theme of the film didn't quite resonate with me, but I'm glad I got an actual introduction to this classic monster. This film actually made me appreciate Poor Things a little more, with the hindsight that most people were expected to have the Frankenstein context. I did not know Frankenstein was played by Jacob Elordi. I wonder, would Barry Keoghan still drink his bathwater even in this form?"},{"type":"review","title":"Twinless (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/twinless-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/twinless/","filmTitle":"Twinless","filmYear":2025,"rating":4,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-11-16","reviewText":"This movie starts out melancholy but still optimistic, and then very quickly reveals itself to be one of the darkest stories about grief and the desire to belong that isn't a straight up horror film. It's a gay, more emo version of Dear Evan Hansen, but somehow less sinister. All throughout the writing remains sharp and full of wit. I had a great time. I realize I've written about himbos multiple tangentially. but this time I need to address it directly because it's so central to the plot since Roman is probably the hottest the himbo to ever grace the screen this year. Watching this movie got me wondering why people like himbos. Aside from the obvious points of their kindness and hotness, I think the deeper reason is that it's hard not to feel safe around a himbo. They wear their heart on their sleeve. If they don't like something you say or do, they will manifest their frustration immediately and never let it simmer. This is kind of a funny realization, because it's not like the rest of us can't also just start doing this. Although I must say, just like how Dennis says he likes the version of himself when he is with Roman the best out of all his selves, my favorite part of the movie was also the first 10 minutes. This is probably an intentional meta point the director wanted to make, but I really wanted to see a version of the story where Dennis actually has a dead twin brother and he and Roman actually bond to heal their grief. I was actually disappointed when I realized that's not what I'd be seeing today. Maybe it's the person I am at this very moment - once in a blue moon, when I'm feeling wistful and hopeful, I actually want to see something sweet."},{"type":"review","title":"Die My Love (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/die-my-love-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/die-my-love/","filmTitle":"Die My Love","filmYear":2025,"rating":2.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-11-12","reviewText":"Jennifer Lawrence is always at her best when she plays someone mildly insane, or in this case, very insane. I really wanted to like this movie, but while Grace is one of the most unhinged characters I’ve seen in a while, she’s not unhinged in the way I’m tempted to be, so the catharsis is not there, only endless visceral embarrassment. There was someone in the audience who kept talking very loudly during the movie with the person they were sitting next to. It was annoying to the point I was starting to feel like I was having some king of immersive theater experience. Like Grace is right here in the room with us. I almost yelled out “Grace, is that you?” when the person said “More popcorn?” during a scene that was supposed to be very quiet and intimate. When the movie was over, I turned around to see who it was. Turned out it was this man with a very obvious developmental disorder and his caretaker. Thank god I didn’t say anything 😅"},{"type":"review","title":"Twisters (2024)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/twisters-2024/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/twisters/","filmTitle":"Twisters","filmYear":2024,"rating":3,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-11-11","reviewText":"Goofy and charming, Twisters rides off of Glen Powell’s irresponsible charisma to more than deliver on its promise to keep you entertained for 2 hours. It has been a while since I’ve seen a good enemies-to-lovers arc. I found the relationship between Kate and Tyler pretty convincing. Though I would have slept with Tyler as soon as he brought me that pizza. I would have made him tell me where he was taking me, and as soon as he says it’s to the rodeo I’d have informed him of my native Oklahoman identity and that I have seen plenty of rodeo before and suggest some alternative forms of riding we could do right in that motel.Jokes aside (or am I joking?), this is the worst tourism ad for Oklahoma. I may never set foot in that state simply because of this movie."},{"type":"review","title":"Force Majeure (2014)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/force-majeure-2014/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/force-majeure-2014/1/","filmTitle":"Force Majeure","filmYear":2014,"rating":4,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-10-27","reviewText":"Very uncomfortable movie. It’s interesting to me that when I saw Triagle of Sadness, where class was at the center while gender is at the fringe, I thought the wit of the film was cutting and delicious. With this film almost exclusively focused on gender, the same incisiveness felt almost a little mean. At the end of the day Tomas is a very small man. Unable to face up to his own cowardice in the face of imminent danger, he gaslights, grovels, and manipulates. But does he come off this way because he failed the standard of what we expect masculinity to be, or because he is just a shitty person? Do we judge every shitty person by how they react and the immediate aftermath of their reactions during their most vulnerable moments? On the off chance that his breakdown is real, who is responsible for it? Should we expect his wife to care for it, despite having just had to pull teeth to get a fully grown man to acknowledge reality? On the other hand, as much as I loathe to defend a gaslight, you never humiliate someone into being vulnerable. We don’t know how Tomas would have reacted if she had addressed this with him privately first instead. Gender really is messy. Surprised but elated to see Tormund yet again representing the big ginger himbo genre of men, single handed demonstrating that even a (mildly) fragile ego can be adorable as long as you are not an asshole about it. Where does one get models like this? Asking for a friend."},{"type":"review","title":"Armageddon (1998)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/armageddon-1998/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/armageddon/","filmTitle":"Armageddon","filmYear":1998,"rating":3,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-10-26","reviewText":"This movie is very earnest. It’s not trying to be anything it isn’t and it doesn’t shy away from pulling tricks that it knows are cheap and yet works for the masses of its time. Twink Ben Affleck, as cute as he was, feels like concrete evidence to me that twink death can be good for some because the Daddy Affleck of today is so much hotter. Of course, neither version compares to the pristine Bruce Willis of this era."},{"type":"review","title":"Bugonia (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/bugonia-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/bugonia/","filmTitle":"Bugonia","filmYear":2025,"rating":3.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-10-25","reviewText":"Entertaining but ultimately unserious film that threatened to wander lost and adrift multiple times and would have, if not anchored by Emma Stone’s mesmerizing performance. Emma is truly one the most committed thespians of our time and we are lucky how prolific she is. I do wonder if her partnership with Lanthimos has run its course. Like any good director with ambition, Lanthimos is expanding the scope of his work. The film touches on logic and persuasion, class, conspiracy, environmental justice, and a tad bit of nihilism, but there is not much depth to any of the subjects discussed. The ending betrayed the same kind of condescension seen in Don’t Look Up. His movies have always been larger than life, but this ever-expanding scope is causing him to lose focus. He can get away with this because Emma Stone is here, which is why I think a pause in their working relationship might benefit them both. At the end of the day this is still a perfectly engaging and at times very funny movie created by two of the most daring artists working today. I had high expectations for these reasons and not all of them were met, but I still encourage everyone to see it. If nothing else, you’ll have fun."},{"type":"review","title":"One Battle After Another (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/one-battle-after-another-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/one-battle-after-another/","filmTitle":"One Battle After Another","filmYear":2025,"rating":4,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-10-21","reviewText":"Very late to the party, but I finally got to watch One Battle After Another. Meaty and scintillating, this film daringly and gracefully addresses the culturally zeitgeist that is our current political anxiety. It does not have all the answers, because no one does, but the blunt and gentle tone still makes it both steeling and comforting at the same time. All the praise feels duly deserved. When Junglepussy took a gun, stood on a desk during a bank robbery and said “this is what power looks like,” she did hold power in that moment. But power gained through violence and intimidation is fragile. Perfidia made sure to pass along the lesson she learned after a life of regret to Willa: Be happy and have love first, and then change the world. That message is crystal clear. I only hope it is not lost on us that we also have to show up. Complacency put Willa and Bob’s life both in imminent peril and this film stayed in the weeds with us to remind us that revolution is hard. First do no harm, but if you want to actually change the world, you have to drive that three and a half hours (or take the BART) to Oakland in the rain."},{"type":"review","title":"Like A Rolling Stone (2024)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/like-a-rolling-stone-2024/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/like-a-rolling-stone-2024/","filmTitle":"Like A Rolling Stone","filmYear":2024,"rating":4.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-10-12","reviewText":"This movie hit very hard. It reminds be of Thelma and Louise, only this story is much more suffocating. If you let it, it will make you feel things. You do not have to have experienced systemic misogyny to empathize with Li Hong. I used to think that it was a somewhat of a cowardly thing to run away from your suppressors instead of actively fighting them, but the truth is walking away is often the bravest thing you can do. I want to say that I related to how heartbreaking and scary it is to walk away from an entire value system that you were raised in. But I don't feel like that today, and this really isn't a man's story, so I will not hijack it.also just learned the main actress went the same undergrad as me. crazy."},{"type":"review","title":"2046 (2004)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/2046-2004/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/2046/","filmTitle":"2046","filmYear":2004,"rating":3.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-10-08","reviewText":"2046 is a film about being lost, and being stuck, trying to get answers where they don't exist. Of course, I didn't know this as I watched this, because I started this film with zero awareness that this movie is a sequel to 阿飞正传 and 花样年华. Despite feeling lost basically the whole movie, I still enjoyed the sheer whimsicalness and romanticism of 2046. Even though I did not connect the backstory of Chow in In the Mood for Love to this story, I nonetheless felt the anxiety of his character. In Chow's novel, the main character falls in love with a robot with aging hardware, causing delayed reaction time to everything. He never knows if the robot is in love with him or not, because no matter what he does, her reaction will not come until much later, and when they do happen he is not there to see them, or know that it's even about him. In the end, he concluded that it didn't wasn't because of the delay that she didn't react, it was because she was already in love with someone else. Love is about meeting the right person in the right place at the right time. Sometimes it really feels the chance of that happening is vanishingly small. What if you missed that train and can never catch it again? If something didn't work the last time, can you really find out why and extrapolate to the future? In Chow's novel, he decided that the robot was already in love with someone else, but in real life, he doesn't get an answer. Jing-wen says that the ending of his story was too sad and asks him to change it, but is it really? In 2047, there was at least certainty. In 2046, all he has is the terrifying unknown."},{"type":"review","title":"Bring Her Back (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/bring-her-back-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/bring-her-back/","filmTitle":"Bring Her Back","filmYear":2025,"rating":null,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-10-03","reviewText":"put this on in the background while i’m high on narcotic painkillers so not going to give it an actual rating.only takeaway is that sally hawkins playing deranged is actually terrifying."},{"type":"review","title":"The Long Walk (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/the-long-walk-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/the-long-walk-2025/","filmTitle":"The Long Walk","filmYear":2025,"rating":3,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-09-25","reviewText":"Francis Lawrence simply cannot stop making The Hunger Games. The Long Walk is simple and focused, and by that virtue alone it manages to bring some freshness to an oversubscribed genre. Most post-apocalyptic films spend a lot of its runtime on world building. The Long Walk does not bother and instead just demands your suspension of disbelief. Because the plot is so simple, it’s not hard to oblige. (slight spoilers below)I appreciate the approach it takes to human relationships in zero-sum life-and-death situations. It’s not realistic, but it’s fresh and hopeful. If you take me out of this walk, would I believe that someone as well-adjusted as Pete would enlist to do the long walk in the first place? No. But within this walk, I could be made to believe that camaraderie between fellow men in a doomed system can outshine cynicism. I’d like to live in that world. It’s also somewhat relevant to recent discourse about whether political violence is ever justified. It doesn’t try to answer the question, but I hope reasonable people can conclude that it adds perspective."},{"type":"review","title":"The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/the-life-aquatic-with-steve-zissou-2004/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/the-life-aquatic-with-steve-zissou/","filmTitle":"The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou","filmYear":2004,"rating":2.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-09-15","reviewText":"My experience with Wes Anderson films went roughly like this: blown away by The Grand Budapest Hotel -> Impressed with The French Dispatch. By Astroid City I began to tire of the focus on aesthetic and found most of his stories lacked strong emotional cores that I need to find a film memorable. I was told by a friend that he found this one to be an exception to the rule, but at the end of the day it still felt lackluster to me.Still, there are enough things that I found interesting to say that I don’t regret watching this movie. I don’t need to comment on the witty dialogue - that is always a given with Anderson. I liked seeing Cate Blanchett in what is probably the youngest role I’ve seen her in (I really need to watch The Aviator) - her voice sounded so different. I liked the whimsical special effects as well. I’m not sure if the comedic effects were intentional - they probably are - but they did inspire a sense of wonder in me, the same sense of wonder I watched Steve rediscover, along with everyone else in that submarine."},{"type":"review","title":"Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/downton-abbey-the-grand-finale-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/downton-abbey-the-grand-finale/","filmTitle":"Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale","filmYear":2025,"rating":4,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-09-12","reviewText":"I was just saying yesterday how I wasn’t sure why they needed to make a third movie. I take it all back. This movie rules. It’s frivolous, heartfelt, and sentimental all inthe best ways. Truly a proper sendoff for the Crawleys. Spoiler warning if you plan to see it. Mary being vulnerable but growing to be willing to lean on other for support instead of ruminating like when Matthew died. Edith really settling in her girlboss Marquess era. Hugh finally passing the reins to Mary (again). Cora mothering like how she always mothered. Oh and Thomas gloriously becoming the treat to a thespian power couple - I guess the gays have been secretly puppetting the cultural zeitgeist for much longer than we let on. When they hit us with the Mathew, Maggie Smith and Sybil combo at the end, I fully lost it. I forgot how comforting this family made me feel and am forever thankful for Facebook ads for showing me the trailer of the first Downton Abbey movie when I was standing in line for the Minions ride at Universal Studios Japan, which made me decide to binge all six seasons of the show in two months right before the movie came out. Auld lang syne Downton, Auld lang syne"},{"type":"review","title":"Splitsville (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/splitsville-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/splitsville/","filmTitle":"Splitsville","filmYear":2025,"rating":3.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-09-11","reviewText":"Splitsville is a riot. It’s absolutely hilarious: many actual belly-laugh moments. It’s engaging: constantly subverting your expectations in clever ways. Most importantly, despite the sheer absurdity of the plot and its completely mental characters, it commits, and delivers. Dakota Johnson continues to play the same character from everything she’s ever been in, but her screen presence proves to be perfect for comedy. She is so grounding when things get too chaotic yet can be so effortlessly unhinged and so fun to watch. Both male leads (also co-writer and director) are wonderful as well and very much punch above their weight in their acting. Pleasantly surprised to see Greg here, playing another character that is not a clown in name only. Also, just the appropriate amount of male nudity - I appreciate. I always thought polyamorous relationships demanded more commitment and maturity from each participant than monogamy. Splitsville teaches us that if that is too tall an order, you can also make it work by being equally insane. Truly an inspiring message"},{"type":"review","title":"The Amateur (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/the-amateur-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/the-amateur-2025/","filmTitle":"The Amateur","filmYear":2025,"rating":2,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-09-07","reviewText":"demon twink blowing things up is entertaining but this was way too long and he really should have just committed"},{"type":"review","title":"The Legend of Hei 2 (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/the-legend-of-hei-2-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/the-legend-of-hei-2/","filmTitle":"The Legend of Hei 2","filmYear":2025,"rating":3,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-09-06","reviewText":"和平共处五项原则"},{"type":"review","title":"Honey Don't! (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/honey-don-t-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/honey-dont/","filmTitle":"Honey Don't!","filmYear":2025,"rating":2,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-08-28","reviewText":"As much as I wanted to like it, this is not a good movie. It is like how it describes a lot of its characters: lost, confused and seeking something, though unclear what it is seeking Pros is that you do get to see Margret Qualley in heels clink-clanking for 90 minute straight and a lot of lesbian sex with Aubrey Plaza, some of it even public. I feel a little bad for Chris Evans. I believe he specifically wanted to do less movies where he sells seats by being naked and wanted to more indie films with depth. Well, he is in an indie film, but his role still seems to be selling seats for his body. Hot as he is there’s nothing in here that we haven’t seen already elsewhere (if you haven’t seen What’s Your Number you should)."},{"type":"review","title":"Die Hard (1988)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/die-hard-1988/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/die-hard/","filmTitle":"Die Hard","filmYear":1988,"rating":4.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-08-26","reviewText":"Courtesy of Kyle’s movie nights I am finally caught up with this monumental cultural touchstone. It’s every bit as thrilling and satisfying, and surprisingly emotional today as it must have been when it came out almost 40 years ago now? The GOAT status in the action genre is well-earned. John and Holly only had one scene together until basically the 95% mark of the movie, and their relationship was fraught at best. But their unwavering faith in each other in the most existential situation felt impressively genuine. John’s speech to Al about his last words to Holly, despite it being the most macho straight man propaganda, had me tearing up. Sometimes all it takes to steal your heart is an earnest himbo isn’t it? I was telling my friends Bruce Willis looked tough but very dominatable and I stand by that statement. Also, another interesting observation I made is that McTiernan is the anti-Tarantino. Instead of a copious umber of intimate shots of well-manicured women’s feet, this films had an exorbitant amount of dirty, mangled and gnarly men’s feet. Pretty refreshing honestly even though maybe this was exactly what inspired Quintin in the first place."},{"type":"review","title":"Weapons (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/weapons-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/weapons-2025/","filmTitle":"Weapons","filmYear":2025,"rating":4,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-08-14","reviewText":"The buzz around this movie compelled me to see it even as I am just coming out of an excruciating food poisoning episode, and it did not disappoint. Subverting your expectations at every turn, it’s engaging, provocative and also unexpectedly hilarious. There were a couple jump scare in there, but on the whole I didn’t think this was that scary. Even if you usually try to avoid horror, I think this one is worth it. This film has inspired much discourse, some of which criticizes the movie for “not really about anything”. I think that’s just a really disappointing reflection of the current viewing expectations of art and actually makes the case that more movies should be like this. It doesn’t take more than a couple hours of reflection to connect the dots to understand the sobering and potent message it’s trying to convey. It’s right there in the title. Also wanted to give a shoutout to the much needed representation of gay men in healthy monogamous relationships who love sugar and eat six hotdogs for lunch while watching nature documentaries. I’d like a man who will choose from the cereal options I present him through non-verbal communication whilst him performing emotional labor because he cares about his nice colleagues. Another w and instant canon for the alphabet mafia in pop culture."},{"type":"review","title":"The Naked Gun (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/the-naked-gun-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/the-naked-gun/","filmTitle":"The Naked Gun","filmYear":2025,"rating":2.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-08-08","reviewText":"I came into the theater not knowing anything about this except a few of my mutuals saying the is was the funniest thing they’ve seen in a long time. However I thought it was going to witty and thoughtful funny, but instead this was more like the looney tunes. I’m not the biggest fan of slapstick humor, but this movie managed to do everything without being tasteless which is impressive for this genre and probably why it earned a lot of good will. Unfortunately I cannot earnestly say I recommend this. Maybe something to throw on while you eat, not my kind of cinema :( For 84 mins I’d rather watch 10 episodes of Tom and Jerry"},{"type":"review","title":"Together (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/together-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/together-2025/","filmTitle":"Together","filmYear":2025,"rating":4,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-08-06","reviewText":"I must put a public safety announcement out first: if you have an avoidant attachment style, do not watch this movie; if you have a friend with an avoidant attachment style who is about to watch this movie, stop them at all costs. This movie will likely push anyone avoidantly attached irreparably over the edge. For the sake of your/their own happiness and the health of this dating market that is already teetering on the edge, if you see something, do something. Deeply unsettling yet mesmerizing on a soul level, Together is the scariest movie I’ve seen in a long time. In addition to being psychologically unnerving, this body horror is also full of jump scares. One of them did make me scream in the theater. I literally don’t remember the last time that happened. It plays on our’s deepest fears about intimacy: being trapped, feeling unworthy, becoming codependent, changed beyond recognition, and worst of it all, realizing you did it all to yourself. I was once a boy trapped in the suburbs not knowing how to drive. The way he felt like such a baggage and inconvenience asking to be dropped off at the train station - I can only wish that on my enemies. Dave Franco is a seriously underrated talent, and so, so hot. He can play the biggest loser in a story and still make you feel nothing for the put-together guy down the street that you are supposed want an affair with. Honestly, if I were to corporally merge with anyone, there are worse options."},{"type":"review","title":"The Fantastic 4: First Steps (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/the-fantastic-4-first-steps-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/the-fantastic-4-first-steps/","filmTitle":"The Fantastic 4: First Steps","filmYear":2025,"rating":2.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-07-31","reviewText":"Finally Marvel has made a movie that is not a complete drab to watch. The story, despite making basically zero sense, is generally well-paced, stands on its own and makes no exhausting reference to the MCU. Despite being entirely predictable at least it’s no-nonsense. That said, this movie is still inferior to The Incredibles in every single way. They didn’t even let Pedro Pascal or Jonny Storm show skin? If the director thinks they were making something above thirst traps they are sorely mistaken. Their prudish decisions left Vanessa Kirby carrying this movie entirely on her own which is very disrespectful."},{"type":"review","title":"Triangle of Sadness (2022)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/triangle-of-sadness-2022/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/triangle-of-sadness/","filmTitle":"Triangle of Sadness","filmYear":2022,"rating":4,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-07-29","reviewText":"This is the first class satire after Parasite that moved me, made laugh, and made me go \"you so clever\" at the creators of the film multiple times and kept me glued to my seat over its long 147-minute runtime. I asked myself - what makes this story fresh? What does this film do well that the likes Saltburn and The Menu and other Parasite wannabes fail? I think ultimate it's how well it integrates class issues with gender. Act 3 is a master piece, so eviscerating the way it mocks at the idea that you can establish a system of financial equality if you start over somehow, when our very bodies are commodified and valued unequally from the moment we’re born. I've learned that Östlund is a director who basically owns the gender satire genre. Imagine my excitement when I found out that this is considered to be far from his best work. I'm so excited to see MajeureI didn't realize the Babygirl twink had been in something notable before Babygirl. If I'm being honest, I do see his appeal a lot more as a princess himbo deeply jealous of the perks the female sex gets to experience and so so eager to sell his body than a psycopath intern who engages in BDSM with his CEO. Very spoilable. Masterpiece really. I was going to say that I can't believe I missed this gem in 2022, but actually I can because I really was a mess in much of 2022."},{"type":"review","title":"Thunderbolts* (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/thunderbolts-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://boxd.it/avJKCT","filmTitle":"Thunderbolts*","filmYear":2025,"rating":1.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-07-27","reviewText":"Sometimes it’s hard to imagine this franchise having a chokehold over the collective psyche of my generation during our college years. Remember it being cool to debate team ironman and team cap? I shudder to recall. Has it really gotten this much worse, or have we really changed that much since then? Guess I’ll never know because I am not interested enough to rewatch the movies to find out."},{"type":"review","title":"Eddington (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/eddington-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://boxd.it/asgLzr","filmTitle":"Eddington","filmYear":2025,"rating":2.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-07-23","reviewText":"I’ve decided that I just don’t like creative works that are way too fixated on recent/current events. There is just no way to avoid sensationalizing/glossing over nuances and it always leads to cringe. I’ve read the thoughts of the people who liked this but I’m still not convinced. Did you all really need an Ari Aster movie to tell you that people are crazy?"},{"type":"review","title":"Swallowed (2022)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/swallowed-2022/","sourceUrl":"https://letterboxd.com/lennessy/film/swallowed-2022/","filmTitle":"Swallowed","filmYear":2022,"rating":2.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-07-23","reviewText":"not nearly enough dick compared to what i thought i was promised"},{"type":"review","title":"Sex and the City (2008)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/sex-and-the-city-2008/","sourceUrl":"https://boxd.it/alkDwz","filmTitle":"Sex and the City","filmYear":2008,"rating":3,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-07-15","reviewText":"Does it work as a standalone movie if you don’t know the show? But if you are a fan of the show, this is a delightful addition to the unfinished story of the original show. \r\n\r\n There was one scene that has really stuck with me. When Big failed to show up to the wedding and Carrie’s car ran into his on the street, the first thing she said to him as she slammed him with that bouquet wasn’t to ask why, or even call him out on his cowardice. The first thing she said was “I’m humiliated.”\r\n\r\nThere’s a world there I would have despised her for these priorities, but I actually really emphasized with her when she said this. Carrie is vain and she cares a lot about what others think of her - she knows this - and Big knows this. All is fair in love and maybe it’s fair for you to get cold feet, but how can you humiliate me so in front of all these people whose opinions of me I really do care about? Do I not matter to you at all? \r\n\r\nFor very different reasons, both of my prior relationships probably ended somewhat abruptly to my friends (the last one was quite unexpected even to myself) and there was definitely part of me that felt similar embarrassment in addition to heartbreak: I gushed about you in front of all my friends. Do I now look like a fool? \r\n\r\nYes, I am outing myself as a big Carrie apologist (in addition to being an apologist of Cynthia Nixon’s bagel order). She’s probably the least principled and the most flawed out of the four. She may be vain, painfully indecisive, and she gets carried away easily and forgets to be considerate, but when push comes to shove she isn’t afraid to face the most unglamorous part of her and she doesn’t carry shame around it and I think that’s so beautiful. It’s why I love her."},{"type":"review","title":"Superman (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/superman-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://boxd.it/ajDlcL","filmTitle":"Superman","filmYear":2025,"rating":3,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-07-12","reviewText":"You know, I didn’t think it was possible to make a superman hotter than Henry Cavill, but they somehow did it with David Corenswet. It’s not just looks either - I think it’s the himbo-ness of this version of superman that is the biggest draw. I’ve been told that this is closer to the original character from the comics, which I think is working. \r\n\r\nPersonally, I feel a little discouraged that this is where we are with superhero movies. Yes there is a nice pro-immigrant and pro-Palestinian message in there and it’s woven in somewhat nicely, but everything is surface-level and it’s not a film that engages you intellectually. \r\nZack Snyder tried to do something more meaningful but it didn’t quite work out, so everything is turning into Marvelian family films. \r\n\r\nActually I change my mind about the pro immigrant message. Something was rubbing me the wrong way when I heard that line comparing superman to an immigrant and I just realized what it is. Clark Kent is a white man who works as a successful reporter at a prestigious newsroom with exclusive access to an extremely high profile source. On top of that he is almost universally adored and has literal crazy superpowers. Is he really the right persona to represent the struggles of immigrants?\r\n\r\nThere’s no dying James Gunn is really good at making this type of films and this is definitely gonna make a lot of money. But this genre really doesn’t have to be like this. The fact we still have really daring and fresh superhero TV shows proves that they can make something good if they wanted to. But I guess good is niche and niche doesn’t pay the production budgets these movies demand. I guess we’ll have to live in the universe where The Dark Knight series is the peak and it will never be surpassed."},{"type":"review","title":"Sorry, Baby (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/sorry-baby-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://boxd.it/ajDpkz","filmTitle":"Sorry, Baby","filmYear":2025,"rating":4,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-07-12","reviewText":"A wonderfully understated film about trauma without making it a spectacle, featuring poignant and witty dialogue and a deeply sympathetic performance from writer-director star Eva Victor. \r\n\r\nNot exactly a new idea: trauma is often not an overwhelming calamity that collapses in on you all at once. You can survive the initial shock fine because you are surrounded by your support systems. But it’s insidious and creeps in on you years later when you are on a drive by yourself, or when you are asked during jury duty if you’ve ever been victim of a crime in such a way that would make you impartial, or when your cat mortally injures a mouse that you’ve had to put out of its misery by slamming it repeatedly with a book. You’ll need to find support in the kindness strangers, and find strength in yourself, and the cute neighborhood boy toy. \r\n\r\nGod. Can you imaging running to your neighbor’s house in the middle of the night yelling “would you please come fuck me?” and have them answer yes with no hesitancy only excitement, care and concern that he can barely find time to put his shoes on? that could probably heal me from anything."},{"type":"review","title":"M3GAN 2.0 (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/m3gan-2-0-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://boxd.it/ad6z7b","filmTitle":"M3GAN 2.0","filmYear":2025,"rating":2.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-07-03","reviewText":"A largely adequate sequel with an unnecessarily complicated plot. I did enjoy watching Megan deliver more iconically sassy one liners, but I did not enjoy the AI regulation lobbying that this film somehow felt obliged to do. This is not the right format or the place. \r\n\r\nIt’s missing the edge and focus of the original, but it does at least in part make up for it in spectacle. The filmmakers know what we want now, which is to watch megan serve, and it gave us loads of that, but i still feel like it could have given us more. \r\n\r\nSide note: Gemma was supremely annoying. Thankfully I think the writers know that and gave her plenty of good torture that was really satisfying to watch."},{"type":"review","title":"KPop Demon Hunters (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/kpop-demon-hunters-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://boxd.it/abPEBd","filmTitle":"KPop Demon Hunters","filmYear":2025,"rating":3,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-07-01","reviewText":"Delightfully absurd and refreshingly creative, I enjoyed this film a lot, though maybe not quite as much as I would have if I were a true Kpop fan.  \r\n\r\nThe playful art style is visually distinct - feels like a nice cross between code lyoko annd into the spiderverse. It actually made me wish that this movie had come out in theaters. The songs really sound like Kpop songs - catchy and giving Blackpink. The sheer absurdity of the story is the strongest draw for me. It kept me engaged and made me laugh out loud more than once. \r\n\r\nOn the other hand, I feel like I’m missing too much context to make enough meaning out of the story. Or at least I would have appreciated what I did manage to connect more if I were more familiar with the Kpop discourse. There’s commentary about Kpop idols being unhealthy role models, also about how Korean idol factory companies mistreat these idols and solely use them to make money at the expense of both the idols and their fans. But as someone who doesn’t follow Kpop (or any idol culture if I’m being honest), I just kind of .. don’t care about this😅? I was hoping some themes of this movie would break through to me even though I’m not a big Kpop fan based on the rave reviews, but they did not. \r\n\r\nSome parts of the story also don’t quite work for me. Why did the ending for the boy need to be the way it is. Who is Celine and what does she represent? I can mostly overlook this because this story is so ridiculous and such details don’t need to make sense, but it would be nice if they did."},{"type":"review","title":"Elio (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/elio-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://boxd.it/aabvg7","filmTitle":"Elio","filmYear":2025,"rating":2,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-06-29","reviewText":"The NY heatwave forced me to watch a movie right after a 2 hour play with no intermission. In Elio I find a lost Pixar, dogged by right-wing complaints that the studio has lost its luster because it turned woke. Now it literally refuses to take any risk. None of its characters have any real identity, and none of them feel like real people. \r\n\r\nThe film touches on parenting, grief, friendship, and sense of belonging - all worthy and complex topics, but it stays so far outside of the safe distance that it is unable to say something meaningful. Conflicts resolve magically, and character development seemingly happens in an instant with no nexus. Supporting characters weave in and out of nowhere like a Californian driver on a highway. The climax has zero emotional weight. \r\n\r\nPixar needs to recognize that it has long lost the monopolistic hold on visual spectacles in animation - every studio can do that now. Flow literally did it with Blender. It made its best work in Turning Red, Luca, and Soul because it was willing to get messy and personal. None of that is here."},{"type":"review","title":"28 Years Later (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/28-years-later-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://boxd.it/a56qt1","filmTitle":"28 Years Later","filmYear":2025,"rating":4,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-06-21","reviewText":"(mild spoiler warning)\r\nPoignant, idyllic, and comforting - words I never thought I’d use to describe any zombie movie, yet 28 Years Later is all of these things and more. \r\n\r\nA surprisingly inventive approach to this arguably quite oversaturated genre, this is probably the best zombie movie I’ve seen since Train to Busan. It’s so smart to make death the central theme in a genre where it is ubiquitous. This movie makes you ask:In a world where the default honorable death is often a violent one done in sacrifice, will we forget how healing it is to die with dignity and comfort, surrounded by loved ones? \r\n\r\nThe movie starts with a father training his teenage child to kill with ease, setting up the expectation that this is going to be a story about necessary cruelty and survival. Yet the idyllic shots of the Scottish highland meadows and the blooming flower fields were all there to remind us the story is gentle at its core. \r\n\r\nSpike’s dad repeatedly tells him to look death in the eye to harden him in a world with dangers abound, while his journey with his mom has him hold death in his arms as a reminder to hold onto his softness. Brilliant storytelling.\r\n\r\nThe only mild gripe I have is with the ending scene, which I can only imagine is just there to set up another sequel, yet it really detracts from the main theme of the story. It should not have been there. \r\n\r\nOther things that surprised me but in a good way:\r\n- Close up shots of massive zombie dick swinging around as a man who’d win a Jason Mamoa look alike contest chase you down a train (Along with hundreds of other average sized zombie dicks)\r\n- Jodie Comer again playing someone who is sane only 30% of the time yet so different from Villanelle and just as delectable \r\n- The UK is like, really pretty."},{"type":"review","title":"28 Weeks Later (2007)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/28-weeks-later-2007/","sourceUrl":"https://boxd.it/a4mv8F","filmTitle":"28 Weeks Later","filmYear":2007,"rating":2.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-06-20","reviewText":"i watched this in preparation for 28 years later which i am watching tomorrow. halfway through i realized i may have watched this 4 years ago, but it was too similar to the first that i barely remembered it. \r\n\r\ni think there’s been so many zombie movie that it’s really difficult to stand out at this point. it’s passing entertainment value aside, nothing in this movie is particularly new. disappointingly it also didn’t invest enough in its characters for their deaths to feel impactful. the only moderately complicated character (the dad) was dead so early and everyone else felt like the same person. i have come to expected more from zombie movies with social commentaries after train to busan (and if that’s not fair because it came later, at least dawn of the dead). \r\n\r\nhowever, glad i watched to be reminded of the general tone of the franchise. i have heard great things about new one and im looking forward to having my expectations subverted."},{"type":"review","title":"Materialists (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/materialists-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://boxd.it/a0zggp","filmTitle":"Materialists","filmYear":2025,"rating":3.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-06-14","reviewText":"Celine Song has a lot to say about love. She decided that she didn’t say enough in Past Lives and needed to make another movie with the three most gorgeous people on earth. Hot as they are, unfortunately I don’t think there’s enough chemistry between the main leads to nudge this story into believable territory. \r\n\r\nWhat did appreciate was the witty dialogue about modern dating - both the cold, paint-by-numbers materialism of matchmaking, and, the terrifying unpredictability of romantic connections. Celine certainly is good at writing dialogue, but the first rule of good storytelling is to show and not tell. And there is so little show that even her exceptional writing is straining not to make the conversation sound trite at times, especially between Chris and Dakota. \r\n\r\nIf you haven’t seen Past Lives, I strongly recommend watching it first before this so you can better contextualize what the film wants to say. One last thing, I think the hot priest’s speech in Fleabag can also add to this experience and i was reminded of this a lot in the theater:\r\n\r\n“Love is awful. It’s awful. It makes you doubt yourself, judge yourself, distance yourself from the other people in your life. It makes you selfish, makes you creepy, makes you obsessed with your hair, makes you cruel, makes you say and do things you never thought you’d do. It’s all any of us want, and it’s hell when you get there. So no wonder it’s something we don’t want to do on our own”"},{"type":"review","title":"The Phoenician Scheme (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/the-phoenician-scheme-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://boxd.it/9WbKJ3","filmTitle":"The Phoenician Scheme","filmYear":2025,"rating":3.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-06-08","reviewText":"Picturesque, unknowable, and replete with wit, like all of Wes Anderson’s works, The Phoenician Scheme is an ornate visual feast that goes down with the smoothness of a well-whipped tiramisu, albeit a shallow bite.\r\n \r\n I like how much clout auteurs like Anderson have accumulated that all these A-list actors were just throwing themselves at his feet to be included, even for tiny roles. Every scene brings a nice new big name surprise. \r\n\r\nHowever, I personally have not been able to resonate well with the underlying themes of the story, which to me just never quite cohere into something tangible. I enjoyed it, and laughed (quit hard) at Bryan Cranston and Tom Hanks as iconic basketball duos, at Mia Threpleton’s communion wine to pipe and whiskey shot conversation, and at Michael Cera’s rendition of “girls becomes hot after taking off glasses”, but I’m pretty sure this story won’t stay with me in a couple of weeks. I suppose this is what writing is for, to crystallize these small things that make me smile and easy to revisit after my memory has long let them go."},{"type":"review","title":"Friendship (2024)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/friendship-2024/","sourceUrl":"https://boxd.it/9UOCth","filmTitle":"Friendship","filmYear":2024,"rating":2.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-06-05","reviewText":"Surreal, occasionally hilarious, and profoundly pointless. I walked into this film completely blind, not having seen any of Tim Robinson’s work. While I can’t say I’m a fan after watching this, I can respect the risks he takes and the commitment he has to his brand. This feels like a funky mix of The Office, Nathan Fielder, and maybe a sprinkle of The Banshees of Inisherin, though maybe without the emotional core, at least not to me. \r\n\r\nI think one could make meaning out of this story if they really wanted to (hetero male friendship and loneliness epidemic etc.), but it’s not really meant to be enjoyed that way. For most people I would just take the silliness at its face value and have a good laugh, because there is a lot of that in there."},{"type":"review","title":"Mountainhead (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/mountainhead-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://boxd.it/9TeHpX","filmTitle":"Mountainhead","filmYear":2025,"rating":1.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-06-02","reviewText":"A friend who watched this said this movie is like every VC dinner party in SF. I have not been to any VC dinner parties so I cannot testify. However, it’s safe to say I did not enjoy this. When I watched the trailer, my first thought was that it was just going to be a soulless succession copycat with all of the noise and none of the heart, and I was correct. \r\n\r\nCredit to the writers: it’s a complete dialogue-driven movie and the dialogue itself is decent writing. But if a story is entirely driven by dialogue, you need to be able to care about the characters that say these words. They don’t even have to be likable but there must be some variance to them so they can have substantial conflicts that mean something. There is none here. They all essentially have the same personality and same insecurities, which renders the conflict between them not just meaningless, but also very boring. \r\n\r\nMaybe that is the point -  and point made - but the movie doesn’t work because of it. Wasted performance from a very talented cast. The only saving grace is that Ramy Youssef begging for his life from the window of a sauna room in his underwear is lowkey kind of hot."},{"type":"review","title":"Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/mission-impossible-the-final-reckoning-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://boxd.it/9NoWx9","filmTitle":"Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning","filmYear":2025,"rating":3,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-05-24","reviewText":"an entirely vibe-based movie. nothing makes sense. it’s even funnier when you consider when they showed the doomsday vault it’s probably just some aws data center in ohio. and when they showed the source code of the world-ending ai it was probably lines of css centering a div. when they say “upload to cyberspace”, do they mean like google drive? at the end of the movie the world apparently looks very happy - where is the widespread economic malaise we were promised? \r\n\r\nhowever, it’s got some palm-sweating suspense especially during the climax, one of the most epic aerial stunt pieces ever seen, and an earnest tribute to one of the most beloved action franchises ever. if you have the right expectations, you won’t have a bad time."},{"type":"review","title":"Final Destination Bloodlines (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/final-destination-bloodlines-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://boxd.it/9KYkk7","filmTitle":"Final Destination Bloodlines","filmYear":2025,"rating":3.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-05-20","reviewText":"It’s been at least a decade since I last saw a final destination film - this was the very franchise that made me swear off horror films for years. And this film - campy, self-aware (scream 5 writers i see you) and nostalgic - was the perfect venue to confront those old demons again. \r\n\r\nI watched three of the films in a row when I was 14-ish during Chinese new year at my grandparents’ place up on a mountain during a snowstorm. On our way home, we had to drive down these steep, winding, and slippery snowy roads. At one point, we actually did slip and briefly lost control of the car and the front of the car (not the wheels just a bit of the front-right side corner) was actually hanging off the ledge. I was so convinced we were going to die that I started writing my own posthumous notes on my iPod Touch.\r\n\r\nI shared this story with the friend I saw this movie with, and he asked me what I wrote. What did I want the world to know about me after my untimely death at 14?  It took me a bit to remember, but I was writing a letter to my first ever crush. Sadly, I don’t think I was brave enough to tell him I loved him even in death. It was a bunch of “It was great getting to know you in the past year” bullshit. I don’t know what I was afraid of.\r\n\r\nAnyway, back to the movie. Um, solid. I do think you’d enjoy it a lot more if you did watch the older movies when you were young and had the unique traumatic paranoia inflicted upon you in a memorable fashion, maybe partly in realizing that you’ve grown a lot since the last 10+ years and there were things that used to scare you that do not any more."},{"type":"review","title":"Thelma & Louise (1991)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/thelma-louise-1991/","sourceUrl":"https://boxd.it/9CyE11","filmTitle":"Thelma & Louise","filmYear":1991,"rating":4.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-05-05","reviewText":"I have had this classic on my watchlist for probably a decade now (goes to show how little these lists actually mean) and I can't believe it took me so long to watch it. Just as this movie was ahead its time in depicting how the female predicament under the patriarchy, both individually and institutionally, the unapologetic rebellion by the two leads is equally cathartic, furious, and liberating. The last twenty minutes? Pure perfection. \r\n\r\nSo many scenes I loved. It's obviously very hard to beat that ending scene, but my favorite was when Thelma formally declares that there is no going back to the life she had before. \"Something’s like ... crossed over in me and I can’t go back.\" In just a few days, she lost almost everything she once held dear, but she says this not with fear or grief, but with lightness, almost joy, even though she and Louise both know they don't really have a future where they are going. I've always found comfort in seeing characters I've come to love thrive after total loss. It's a reminder to myself that the weight you carry is not permanent and that the sky will not fall if you drop it. It's not an easy thing to remember so I'll take as many reminders as I get. \r\n\r\nBut ultimately, this story belonged to Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis. The soulfulness they each bring to Louise and Thelma - and the chemistry between them - is what makes this movie as tender, radiant, electric and heart-rending as it is. This movie will be 35 years old next year, and I bet there are going to be anniversary screenings, who's going with me?"},{"type":"review","title":"The Wedding Banquet (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/the-wedding-banquet-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://boxd.it/9BfRoP","filmTitle":"The Wedding Banquet","filmYear":2025,"rating":3.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-05-04","reviewText":"Saccharine and hilarious, this is a refreshing, if less focused, update to the 1993 original film. It gracefully acknowledges how the cultural acceptance of gay people has (unevenly depending on where you are) evolved over the years, but it doesn’t mean being gay has become easy. Yes, we have much much better problems today  than we did in 1993, but you can still find yourself in conundrums where marrying a straight person in a sham wedding feels like the only solution. \r\n\r\nMy favorite scene was the conversation between Min and his grandmother during the wedding photoshoot. This is where I must say how phenomenal of an actor Youn Yuh-jung is. After meeting Angela’s mother, who literally made a lifestyle out of having a lesbian daughter, Min’s grandma only asks him three questions: “Do Chris’s parents know he’s gay? Are they pleased? Have you met them?” You see the realization in her that all of Min’s friends have supportive parents and that her grandson is the only one who didn’t feel safe being himself with his family.  The guilt and heartache and care and love she had for him was so palpable in everything she left unsaid. \r\n\r\nPlease go see this movie in theaters! Sometimes living in the Bay area makes you forget this but we really don’t get representation like this often. It’s made by a great queer asian director who’ll only get to make more movies like this if they can make money!"},{"type":"review","title":"Sinners (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/sinners-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://boxd.it/9wrjDF","filmTitle":"Sinners","filmYear":2025,"rating":4.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-04-25","reviewText":"Suspenseful, brilliant, and overwhelming. Do not be deterred by the horror label - this is not a horror movie. It’s just a fiercely creative thriller that is bursting with tension and heart. Easily one of the best movies to have come out this year.\r\n\r\nI’m so glad vampire movies are making a comeback - and in true gothic fashion. Vampires really are the mythical creatures with the most storytelling potential. Feeding on blood, turning other people, living in perpetual darkness, and dead inside. Plus the campy elements like need for invitations and aversion to garlic. This film puts all of that to _good_ use and then some. It makes you interrogate the essence of fellowship and community, the role art plays in preserving your identify, and art's cannibalistic relationship with money and power, all while immersing you in good-old vampiristic fun. \r\n\r\nThe film also features the most apt use of a post credit scene, that actually fits with the narrative and elevates the entire material. It removes some of the value judgement on individuals, recognizing that life is not black and white and people are not human or vampire. To top it off, very committed performance from the entire cast, and Michael B. Jordan is hotter than ever. \r\n\r\nDo not miss this movie in the theaters - this film is great with a crowd! I watched this in IMAX in a packed theater and it's hands-down the best cinematic experience I've had all year."},{"type":"review","title":"Sacramento (2024)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/sacramento-2024/","sourceUrl":"https://boxd.it/9s7jgl","filmTitle":"Sacramento","filmYear":2024,"rating":3,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-04-18","reviewText":"I'm a bit conflicted about this one. On the one hand, the film does address the important issue of men, especially straight men, on societal level, not being taught how to be vulnerable with each other, or to anyone really, and do not have the capacity to cope with stress and loneliness. On the other hand, I do feel like this film is preaching to the choir, and if you are already in the choir, it becomes a little difficult to tolerate the two incredibly immature and emotionally stunted leads, especially when contrasted the women in their life who has to not only pick up their slack, but also forced to indulge their endless childish follies. \r\n\r\nOn an unrelated note, I recently watched the netflix series adolescence and felt the same way. I'm left wondering: are there that many men like this? we are supposed to help them? how? who has the patience? why do they deserve this extra handholding that no one else has? I guess both the movie and the show wants to say that this is important work that needs to be done, and that honestly just makes me sad. \r\n\r\nPersonal gripes that aren't the movie's fault aside, this was overall an enjoyable movie. I'm glad I have friends who were whimsical enough to commit to the bit that we actually took a day off to go to Sacramento to watch this movie. After all, Glenn and Ricky are saved because they both have a friend who'd go with them to Sacramento. And I didn't even have to make up a lie about a deceased parent to get my friends to do so."},{"type":"review","title":"The Wedding Banquet (1993)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/the-wedding-banquet-1993/","sourceUrl":"https://boxd.it/9js81P","filmTitle":"The Wedding Banquet","filmYear":1993,"rating":4.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-04-03","reviewText":"90s is probably my favorite decade for films. There is something special about the way they used to shoot movies - without the overreliance on green screens when everything was more tactile and grounded, and something about the way they used to write dialogues, without the current hyperfocus on realism, but with a emphasis on making things poetic and romantic. \r\n\r\nThere is also something really comforting in seeing how a film from 30 years ago can still speak so clearly to today. That the struggles and joys it captures haven’t aged out, but remain relevant and relatable. Tender, funny and thoughtful, The Wedding Banquet is such a 90s film in the best of ways. \r\n\r\nFor a movie about being gay made in 1993, this one has so much heart. It walks a really delicate line in telling the struggles of being gay without being patronizing, showing the joy of being gay without becoming caricature. It gracefully critiques the Chinese cultural obsession with filial piety/familial continuity without being condescending, and portrays the weight of the immigrant experience - the way people shape themselves to belong, to survive, and not to disappoint - without simplifying it into a single narrative. \r\n\r\nVery much worth a watch before Bowen Yang’s remake comes out! This one will be difficult to top, but I am excited to see what the a new generation brings to the story."},{"type":"review","title":"The Assessment (2024)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/the-assessment-2024/","sourceUrl":"https://boxd.it/9dkZFt","filmTitle":"The Assessment","filmYear":2024,"rating":3.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-03-23","reviewText":"The Assessment is an ambitious and thought-provoking film with many layers, and it executes on all of them pretty well! We live in a society where the first instinct we have to solve any problem is to throw technology at it. This film, with a low-touch post-apocalypse sci-fi setting, makes you confront the honest, if unflattering, reality of what that looks like from the POV of a couple going through a Kafkaesque assessment that will decide if they are fit to have children. \r\n\r\nOne of the central questions it wants you to ponder is the meaning of parenting when it is completely divorced from biology. It then expands on that and interrogates the meaning of existence when you remove all the ugly parts: conflict, disease, and even aging. Humanity has come up with the technology that seems to solve all of our mortal problems, but is that what we want? \r\n\r\nVery nice to see Elizabeth Olsen in her post-Marvel art house era. She’s in her element with these independent productions, serving, queening, and literally mothering. Also, Himesh Patel, that dad bod and those loose fitting sweatpants, that made me feel things. Anyway, very hot leads. Worth a watch!"},{"type":"review","title":"Snow White (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/snow-white-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://boxd.it/9cMBW3","filmTitle":"Snow White","filmYear":2025,"rating":1.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-03-22","reviewText":"Obviously, this was a hot mess. And I knew that, coming in, but I love mess. In addition, I decided I wanted to watch more bad movies this year so I can appreciate the good ones more. Also, I wanted to support Rachel Zegler, so I came out and watched it with my face in a twitched grimace for a good 60 of the 90 minutes. \r\n\r\nThe movie doesn’t know what it wants to be. It wants to do a modern retelling of a classic fairytale but it doesn’t commit to anything. I do think it's hard to adapt this story, especially if the goal is commercial success, but it is not an excuse to write something so devoid of meaning. With a rotten core like that, nothing was gonna be able to salvage it. \r\n\r\nThen there’s Gal Gadot’s acting. I came with the expectation of being amused by how bad it was going to be, but I just ended up feeling bad for her, because I think as much as a good script can inspire solid performances out of an unskilled actor, a bad script makes every flaw that much more salient. I watched her struggle with the limited tools she has as an actor to make her character even just minimally compelling, but she flails like a mannequin possessed by an overcaffeinated ghost. She was just making faces. I literally heard the girl next to me say  \"this makes me want to eat the poisoned apple\" during her meltdown in front of the mirror. \r\n\r\nRachel Zegler truly is the only good thing here. I kept beckoning myself to feel something throughout the movie and the only times when I managed were during her numbers. She brings genuine joy and good vocals to a bewildering and vapid story. God help her get cast in something better next time."},{"type":"review","title":"I'm Still Here (2024)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/i-m-still-here-2024/","sourceUrl":"https://boxd.it/99uqer","filmTitle":"I'm Still Here","filmYear":2024,"rating":4,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-03-16","reviewText":"raw, poignant, yet grounded, i’m still here walks you the havoc left behind by state violence that its survivors must navigate. fernanda torres is brilliant here. if the academy wasn’t so US-centric, she would’ve won that oscar. \r\n\r\na memorable scene for me was when eliana returns from beach volleyball on the day of her father’s disappearance, complaining about not being able to return to her game. when told what had happened to her father, she has a moment of terror, but immediately brings herself back, because she now has to take care of her younger siblings now. trauma doesn’t give you time to grow up. you just do because you have to."},{"type":"review","title":"Flow (2024)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/flow-2024/","sourceUrl":"https://boxd.it/96ouCj","filmTitle":"Flow","filmYear":2024,"rating":4.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-03-11","reviewText":"gorgeous, serene, and therapeutic, flow is a masterpiece in visual storytelling. with zero dialogue, the movie nonetheless pulls you in with a well-paced rhythm and deft cinematography. i’m also giving extra half a star on behalf of preston who stay glued to the TV basically the entire time. \r\n\r\nat its core,  flow is about friendship, resilience, and bunch of other themes that we’ve seen before, but that doesn’t matter. in a world ravaged by biblical floods, the way this film still manages to bring you calm and makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside is nothing short of marvelous. well-deserved oscar win."},{"type":"review","title":"Mickey 17 (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/mickey-17-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://boxd.it/957YAp","filmTitle":"Mickey 17","filmYear":2025,"rating":3,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-03-09","reviewText":"Another installment in Bong Joon Ho’s capitalism-is-the-end-of-humanity cinematic universe. It’s not a particularly well-told story - the sheer amount of exposition will agree, but it remains entertaining for most of its runtime. \r\n\r\nBeyond the typical political satire, which I feel like has gotten old with all the movies that want to be Parasite from the last 5 years, there’s some nicely crafted (also cliche, but at least doesn’t feel preachy) message about the role rage plays in protecting your humanity. A capitalistic society will always treat you as an expendable, and it’s on you to treat yourself like a person. Sometimes, that involves some fury, and even violence. \r\n\r\nI can imagine how much fun the cast and crew all had in making this movie. Mark Ruffalo plays a great Elon Musk. Robert Pattinson is hotter than I remember. Bong Joon Ho is trying something new, and not everything is going to work out as well as Parasite, or even Snow Piercer, but at least he is not stagnating, and that’s worth commending in of itself."},{"type":"review","title":"Look Back (2024)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/look-back-2024/","sourceUrl":"https://boxd.it/93FRO5","filmTitle":"Look Back","filmYear":2024,"rating":4.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-03-07","reviewText":"Beautiful, poignant, and concise, Look Back is a love letter to manga as an art form. Life is short, and so much of it is often consumed by work that seems to contradict the fleeting urgency of existence. This movie is a reminder, both in its brevity and message, that art’s true power lies not in isolation or escape, but in its ability to connect and express the depths of the human experience. This had been in my backlog for a while, and i’m happy I didn’t let it sit there forever."},{"type":"review","title":"A Complete Unknown (2024)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/a-complete-unknown-2024/","sourceUrl":"https://boxd.it/8Xsx55","filmTitle":"A Complete Unknown","filmYear":2024,"rating":3,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-02-25","reviewText":"this felt like a middling biopic with no particular outstanding aspects. i think a lot of it fell flat because i could not credibly take timothee chalamet as bob dylan seriously. even in all the makeup he looks like the same angst teenager with attachment issues in lady bird than an once-in-a-generation musical genius. i think he needs to live a little more life before taking roles like this to deliver a nuanced performance."},{"type":"review","title":"Ne Zha 2 (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/ne-zha-2-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://boxd.it/8T1dBP","filmTitle":"Ne Zha 2","filmYear":2025,"rating":2.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-02-18","reviewText":"No doubt this represents a technological leap for Chinese animation. I remember seeing the first movie 5 years ago and it was already impressive and today the effects are nothing short of dazzling. If you want to see a superbly animated spectacle with some traditional Chinese mythology elements, this movie is an absolute treat.\r\n\r\nIt manages to convey the perennial theme in Chinese mythology—the tyranny of Heaven and the paradoxical mortal effort to both resist and join it—and it does so with style. By style I mean intricately imagined magic patterns and a fuckload of twinks (I mean seriously, even the thousand-year old dragon daddy has zero facial/body hair and the complexion of an airbrushed infant, what in the world?)\r\n\r\nIts flaws are also obvious. The jokes are crass. The dialogue is awkward. Most importantly, it utterly fails to build upon the message of its predecessor. \r\n\r\nAfter Ne Zha defies heaven’s will to change his destiny in the first movie, it would have been a natural progression for the sequel to deal with Ne Zha’s own growth. If the question of what kind of order he would have instead of the one he overthrew is too ambitious, then surely at least what he wants out of life for himself? Instead, this sequel completely punts and throws in more of the same: more gods to scorn and unbridled rage as solution to every problem. After its 140-min runtime, Ne Zha’s only growth seems to be his abrupt physical metamorphosis into, you guessed it, another twink, nothing else."},{"type":"review","title":"Emilia Pérez (2024)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/emilia-p-rez-2024/","sourceUrl":"https://boxd.it/8Sp963","filmTitle":"Emilia Pérez","filmYear":2024,"rating":1,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-02-17","reviewText":"Emilia Perez is as bizarre and discordant as it is contrived and predictable. It’s astounding how it was ever positively received even before the Karla Gascon drama. \r\n\r\nBesides its only bit originality of being a “genre-bending” musical thriller (honestly even this is a stretch), there is not a single thing this film does well. The story is messy and unfocused. The characters are flat and poorly developed, the relationships between them abrupt and  stunted. The musical numbers are barely even songs. \r\n\r\nWith the titular being trans, you’d expect the movie to touch a little bit on cultural issues related to being trans. But it does not. Emilia’s problems are entirely results of her completely illogical actions, not her trans identity. If you switch the gender reassignment operation with an elaborate plastic surgery, the plot might even work better. \r\n\r\nI feel bad for the cast (except Karla for obvious reasons). They really tried to make this movie work with what they were given but you can’t give a compelling performance with the material has no substance. \r\n\r\nGood candidate for a hate-watch party, which is how I consumed this movie."},{"type":"review","title":"Paddington in Peru (2024)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/paddington-in-peru-2024/","sourceUrl":"https://boxd.it/8Q6jQz","filmTitle":"Paddington in Peru","filmYear":2024,"rating":2,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-02-14","reviewText":"Paddington in Peru is occasionally entertaining, but altogether too bland to be engaging for most of its runtime. While in the world with talking bears, absurdist elements are inevitable and expected, their applications are still so poorly thought out that they feel jarring and contrived. \r\n\r\nThe ending of the movie seems to hint at some sort of identity reconciliation for Paddington, but then you realize that the whole idea came out of nowhere and therefore has no nuance. All the character B plots are even less compelling. \r\n\r\nThe brightest spots of the movie was Olivia Colman’s performance, which was consistently delightful. Every scene with her in it was funny and engaging. I’m reminded of how staggering the comedic talent of this woman is. Hope to see more of her in year."},{"type":"review","title":"A Real Pain (2024)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/a-real-pain-2024/","sourceUrl":"https://boxd.it/8NakKX","filmTitle":"A Real Pain","filmYear":2024,"rating":3.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-02-09","reviewText":"Everyone carries pain, but when it is acceptable allow it to come to the surface? If the fear of burdening others with your pain is what makes you feel like you must bottle it inside of you, but everyone else also feels the same way, then what are we doing?  \r\n\r\ni think this movie is generally pro-crashing out. it also comes with a gentle reminder that even when you do let yourself feel real pain, do not expect that to make the pain go away. real pain stays with you no matter how much you process it, but it’s worth feeling anyway."},{"type":"review","title":"Bubble & Squeak (2025)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/bubble-squeak-2025/","sourceUrl":"https://boxd.it/8HIAnz","filmTitle":"Bubble & Squeak","filmYear":2025,"rating":2.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-02-01","reviewText":"they had a bit. they stuck to it. it only worked maybe 20% of the time. but they were bold and they were committed and that does make this movie kind of compelling especially if you watch it other people. i liked the middlebury joke. also dave franco in a bear suit (and in fig leaves) is visually pleasant. \r\n\r\ni would maybe avoid watching this movie solo because i feel like the cabbage joke would have gotten stale 10 mins in."},{"type":"review","title":"Presence (2024)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/presence-2024/","sourceUrl":"https://boxd.it/8DpYJZ","filmTitle":"Presence","filmYear":2024,"rating":2.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-01-26","reviewText":"the film is a little bit of supernatural stuff, mostly family drama. using the camera as the viewpoint of a character isn’t exactly new, but its use feels apt and fun when the character is a ghost. and lucy liu is always a joy to watch. \r\n\r\noverall it’s a fun movie but its exploration of relevant themes are shallow and is by no means a must-see."},{"type":"review","title":"The Brutalist (2024)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/the-brutalist-2024/","sourceUrl":"https://boxd.it/8BDtCD","filmTitle":"The Brutalist","filmYear":2024,"rating":4,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-01-25","reviewText":"when the intermission screen showed up i thought it couldn’t have been more than a little more than an hour, but two actual hours had actually lapsed. the 3h35m runtime did not make the movie feel drawn out at all, though i would not recommend watching this at home because you will probably feel incredibly bored even if you become a little bit distracted. \r\n\r\nit’s a story about powerlessness, about pride being the only thing keeping you going and the length you’d go to to protect it even when it hurts you. it’s also a heartbreaking story of an immigrant navigating both state and cultural violence, both at home and in a strange land. the scene where laszlo says “they do not want us here” had my eyes swelling up. that felt visceral. \r\n\r\non the other hand, the sex scenes did give me pause. they make me wonder: if i had not seen the love of my life for five years during which i lived in horrendous torture resulting in my permanent disability, would i also cry to him about how much i thought of him during those years when i was actually dying of malnourishment both physically and on a soul level, all whilst trying to give him the hand job of his life out shame as he resists being intimidate with me, also out of shame? these are the questions i’ll need to wrestle with this weekend"},{"type":"review","title":"Conclave (2024)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/conclave-2024/","sourceUrl":"https://boxd.it/8Cupw3","filmTitle":"Conclave","filmYear":2024,"rating":3,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-01-25","reviewText":"the religious hypocrisy, tribalism, and the ubiquity of politicking and gossip came through, but i did not feel the soul stirring struggle of reconciling what’s loyal to faith with what’s practical. i definitely feel like i would have enjoyed this movie a lot more if i was religious.\r\n\r\nthe conclusion is that perhaps the only priest i’d enjoy watching is andrew scott."},{"type":"review","title":"Her Story (2024)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/her-story-2024/","sourceUrl":"https://boxd.it/8yEKA5","filmTitle":"Her Story","filmYear":2024,"rating":5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-01-20","reviewText":"这周末发现好东西网上可以看了之后给所有人又安利了一波，然后自己也二刷了一次。\r\n\r\n我觉得邵艺辉真的是一个好勇敢的人啊。我想是不是也和王铁梅一样，其实有她更想做的东西，更想写的故事，无奈她没有办法，有些事情不是她能够改变的，但是她还是坚强倔强的做好东西。\r\n\r\n还有就是第一次看的时候光记得被导演的勇气感动了，也是自己太久没有看到过优质的简中幽默，有些事情没仔细想。我一开始一直不知道小叶为什么最后不接受胡医生了，还想着是因为她一直快乐倒贴，也只知道倒贴，所以一遇到愿意回应自己的人她反而爱不了了，还觉得如果是这样的话，那这个角色也太没有成长性了。\r\n\r\n二刷之后发现答案其实很明显，小叶是察觉到了胡医生对她的态度和她本人的性格行为完全无关。他只是因为发现了小叶对他好像真的很死心塌地，都可以为了他抛弃女友，撒弥天大谎，甚至自杀。他发现自己自己可以毫无风险的拿捏小叶，才突然改变态度。小叶也意识到了面前的这个人只会一再取舍，虽然好像改变了态度，但是就算在一起，胡医生也不会像王茉莉王铁梅一样不顾风险，不顾回报地爱她。\r\n\r\n零风险的情感投入是不性感的，在确认能完全拿捏对方以后才付出的爱不是爱。胡医生是眼科医生，日常也总是让人照顾眼睛，但却是整部电影唯一一个戴眼镜的角色。就像电影里的所有角色都懂得爱，只有他不懂。\r\n\r\n珍爱生命，爱护眼睛，远离胡医生。"},{"type":"review","title":"Sing Sing (2023)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/sing-sing-2023/","sourceUrl":"https://boxd.it/8yiLd3","filmTitle":"Sing Sing","filmYear":2023,"rating":4.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-01-20","reviewText":"For dealing with a subject as heavy as this, this film is so gentle. So much humanity and heart in every scene. An ode to the healing and liberating power of art. It almost feels like a spoiler to talk about the credits, because they really do pack a punch!"},{"type":"review","title":"Nosferatu (2024)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/nosferatu-2024/","sourceUrl":"https://boxd.it/8llcbl","filmTitle":"Nosferatu","filmYear":2024,"rating":3.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2025-01-05","reviewText":"first movie of 2025! watching this movie feels like somewhat of a religious experience. everything from the story to the characters to the cinematography kept me in a trance. \r\n\r\ni kept thinking about what it feels like to be so unbelievably depressed/repressed/horny that you summon a demon that brings about a blood plague to a whole city. i was also not expecting the hundred-year-old vampire dick. that was also a surprise. \r\n\r\nanyway, i’m not sure what this movie made me feel, except that it’s bizarre/twisted/dark and i felt drawn to it. maybe that’s how ellen feels too."},{"type":"review","title":"Babygirl (2024)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/babygirl-2024/","sourceUrl":"https://boxd.it/8aztw5","filmTitle":"Babygirl","filmYear":2024,"rating":3.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2024-12-25","reviewText":"bold, provocative, and layered. the suspension of disbelief required here is high - you do need to check everything you know about how to interact with people at work (or in general really) at the door to be able to enjoy this movie. for the first 20 mins of the movie i was unprepared and watching it was so cringey felt like torture \r\n\r\nbdsm is front and center in this movie, but it goes much deeper than that. it really tries to explore the power dynamics of almost every relationship you can think of: boss and intern, boss and direct reports, husband and wife, man and woman in romantic relationships, man and woman in professional relationships, and of course s & m. layer all of this together and you have some really riveting drama that’s also thought- provoking. \r\n\r\ndid i mention it is also unexpectedly funny? anyway, i would recommend a watch. you may not like it, especially if you cannot manage the suspension of disbelief i mentioned earlier, but it will make for an unforgettable viewing experience nonetheless."},{"type":"review","title":"Carol (2015)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/carol-2015/","sourceUrl":"https://boxd.it/87rFll","filmTitle":"Carol","filmYear":2015,"rating":4,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2024-12-21","reviewText":"you may be tempted to put on this movie on a tuesday night at home because you heard good things and it’s been on your list but then end up scrolling on your film throughout the movie. don’t. \r\n\r\nfind a small art house theater near you and watch it with a room packed full of lesbians during the holiday season like the way it’s meant to be enjoyed. \r\n\r\nso much of this movie was lost on me when i watched it on a laptop in my college dorm, like the street lights that always light up therese’s path and deliver her in carol’s direction. and luckily for her there is nothing that can make someone lost and adrift feel more grounded than cate blanchette smiling at you across the room (or asking you to move in with her"},{"type":"review","title":"Her Story (2024)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/her-story-2024-2/","sourceUrl":"https://boxd.it/84enFT","filmTitle":"Her Story","filmYear":2024,"rating":5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2024-12-15","reviewText":"loved, loved, loved this movie. It's delicate, daring, delightfully poignant, and hysterically hilarious. i spent much of the runtime in tears both from laughing and sobbing. i genuinely don't remember the last time i was laughing this hard during a movie at things that make my heart feel so full at the same time.\n\nsimply in terms of ideas, nothing here is particularly new or revolutionary, but the director's indefatigable wit makes everything go down so much more smoothly. everyone in my theater died at \"how many Chizuko Ueno books have you read\"?\n\nbeing a single mom is hard. not being able to write about vacations abroad when everyone in your class does is hard. living in censorship when your dream is to be an investigative journalist is hard. falling in love with someone who won't love you back is hard. everyone stumbles and grow in this story. life is not what they want it to be, but they manage to reconcile without losing who they are or giving up things that bring them joy.\n\ndo you stop being a child when you realize not all your dreams will come true, no matter how hard you try? if so, can you ever rediscover that childlike wonder again? shao yihui does not tell you to be optimistic, but she wants you to be brave. at the end of the day that's the best anyone can do."},{"type":"review","title":"Gladiator II (2024)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/gladiator-ii-2024/","sourceUrl":"https://boxd.it/83pCKR","filmTitle":"Gladiator II","filmYear":2024,"rating":2,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2024-12-14","reviewText":"paul mescal's character changes his entire personality after every fight. no character really stood out to me in this movie at all and the plot is so flat. i don't really know why this movie needed to exist. paul mescal is hot yeah, but all you get to see is his arm and chest. i feel like there should at least be some ass. anyway, cannot say i enjoyed this viewing experience. also it was way too long."},{"type":"review","title":"Queer (2024)","url":"https://lennyc.me/reviews/queer-2024/","sourceUrl":"https://boxd.it/83zoFj","filmTitle":"Queer","filmYear":2024,"rating":2.5,"ratingScale":{"min":0.5,"max":5},"watchedDate":"2024-12-14","reviewText":"i'm a little disappointed for not really being able to enjoy this movie. a central theme here is a longing for connection and love, which i think is a feeling i empathize with deeply. but the personification of this idea in william is so tortured that it felt suffocating. the movie really goes off the rails in the third act in, honestly not a good way? i was not even sure if gene was a real person towards the end\nalso hilarious that i had just complained about the lack of ass in gladiator 2, and was subsequently shown an exorbitant amount of it in queer"}]}