I don’t know... the image Netflix used is almost certainly an actual still from the movie, because there’s no way Netflix flew the child actors out for a photo shoot for this obscure French film. Netflix didn’t put them in those outfits+poses, the director did.

Plus they’re banking on families to pay the $30 price tag, because that price is only reasonable if you’ve got 3+ people watching. But from what I can tell, they’ve taken out all the family-friendly elements of the original. It looks far too serious and dark for young kids.

The good news is I don’t think Trump has anywhere near the level of support from the military he’d need to successfully pull off a coup. They openly spoke out against his threat to deploy them during the protests, I can’t imagine they’d go along with blatantly ignoring the constitution to keep him in power.

It’s interesting that the Hunger Games also had a surprise-hit soundtrack with old-timey folk/country/americana music. Clearly there’s an audience for it that’s not finding it other ways.

I had the same trouble with WATW,WABW. The songs themselves are good, but they never manage to cohere into a proper album. I do think the ending one-two punch of 12/17/12 into A Beginning Song is brilliant, though.

Rather than arguing with the list, I’m going to take the opportunity here to give some love to my favorite Decemberists deep cut, the charming “Everything I Try to Do, Nothing Seems to Turn Out Right.”

It’s a bit on the nose, but I’ve always loved “The start / is the hardest part” from the Lucksmith’s Warmer Corners. No instrumental buildup, just the singers voice at its most warm and compassionate. This whole album is like listening to a hug from your best friend.

The plot synopsis here makes it sound like an unintentional satire of eat-pray-love style travel films. A tortured artist travels to an exotic land to escape her life and find herself, and there she finds .... other Americans.

I’m curious about the budget on this. Animal CGI has gotten very good of late, but it’s still not cheap. A huge part of the appeal of the books is the fantasy of turning into different animals, and if they try to cheap out on that it’s not going to work at all.

It’s an odd film, because on the surface it’s about AI, but the actual AI plot is both silly (man falls in love with his operating system!) and cliche (the singularity!). As a film about AI, it’s not great.

I haven’t seen this movie and it doesn’t look great, but I read the book it’s based on as a teenager and loved it. Highly recommended for any middle/high schoolers.

It’s not a very flattering picture. The haircut isn’t helping either.

I know you’re joking, but I think “To All The Boys I Love Now” would be a pretty fitting title for this film given she’s caught between her feelings for two guys. And “To All The Boys I Will Love In The Future” would be kind of a touching title for the last one, if they went with a La-La-Land style ending where they…

I have a pet theory that a poor title can sink a film, and this film seems to be bearing that out. Even after I’d seen the trailer, I saw the title “The Rhythm Section” on my theater’s list of showtimes and thought “What’s that? Must be some Oscar bait that got zero buzz.”

If my math is right, she published her first novel at age 41. It’s nice to remember sometimes that you don’t always need to have your career all figured out in your 20s.

Also it’s frustrating how many critics I’ve seen complain that the main characters don’t have enough depth. There’s tons of character development if you’re paying attention:

For me, Kylo getting “redeemed” felt inevitable from the first film, so it’s interesting that this script made that a theme but kept him evil.

No, of course not. That’s just as simplistic as the original take I was criticizing. I’m just saying it’s not the kind of film where you’re rooting for the heroic Good Guys to defeat the evil Bad Guys. 

There’s a reason the movies that come out in January are usually terrible, it’s not just people making assumptions or seeing patterns in nothing. If a movie’s good, there’s a strong incentive for the studio to get it out in December. For “highbrow” films, you want to make sure it’s eligible for the Oscars. And for…

The description for Parasite implies a very different reading than what I took away from the film. I don’t think it’s so straightforward who is the exploiter and who is the exploited in that film. It’s called “Parasite” after all...