Kingfish calls this "painting the feet" -- "When you paint the little pilot's feet, and then glue closed the cockpit of the model airplane, and only you know, for all time, that his little feets are painted."
Tenet: I remember that sinking feeling when they finally found the MacGuffin. "Fuck, that means it's only half over??" You know how they say Trump is a poor person's idea of a rich person? This movie is a stupid person's idea of clever. Much like Inception. I mean, Bill and Ted 3 had better use of its cosmology. The camera tricks with the backwards fights weren't even any good, or even comprehensible. And a backwards person sitting in a forwards car makes it backward? The stupid, it burns like inexplicable frostbite.
This movie was better when it was the Sugar Water video by Cibo Matto, which was mercifully only 4 minutes long. And had better physics.
The Flight Attendant: She wakes up in a hotel in a foreign country with a corpse in her bed and isn't sure if she murdered him, like you do. It started off much stronger than it finished, but it was ok.
Mad Max Fury Road, Black & Chrome Edit: In memoriam of the passing of Toecutter, I watched the black and white version, which I hadn't seen before. It's brilliant. Interestingly, not entirely black and white, but sometimes graded in blues instead. I think it also would have worked really well as a silent movie (well, not silent -- but not a "talkie". Score and effects, but title cards instead of dialog!)
J. R. "Bob" Dobbs and the Church of the Subgenius: This was fun a fun documentary about a cult that was very important to me in my formative years.
The Queen's Gambit: Poorly socialized addict plays chess, pouts. I loved this.
Superintelligence: An AI trying to decide whether to wipe out humanity uses Melissa McCarthy as a guinea pig, and then the plot kind of just gives up on all that and the AI tries to set her up on a date instead, while the DOD and NSA peek in the window like the ineffectual chaperone from an 80s movie? It's fluff, but I enjoy her style of comedy and this is more of that.
Planes, Trains and Automobiles: I watched an actual Thanksgiving movie, near Thanksgiving. I forgot how funny this was! I was still chuckling about it the next day.
Lego Star Wars Holiday Special: I've never watched any of the other Lego movies, but this was one of the worst, least-funny things I've ever seen. I didn't last 15 minutes. I was expecting Robot Chicken. It is not that.
The Stand-In: Drew Barrymore chews the scenery as two different shitheads. It's predictable but kinda funny.
Archenemy: Hobo Superman helps some kids beat up some drug dealers. It's ok.
Radium Girls: It's depressing, and then their faces fall off. Capitalism!
Castle Freak (2020): Breaking my rule about remakes, this was a pretty entertaining horror movie. It went Lovecraft, whereas the original didn't (even though Stuart Gordon, director of the original, made all the Lovecraft movies.)
Castle Freak (1995): I couldn't remember if I had ever seen the original. It is complete garbage, probably Gordon's worse. And... that's something.
Wonder Woman 84: Oh mah gawd this was soooo bad. Let us never speak of it again.
Parallel: Tech shitheads find a magic mirror to parallel universes and act like shitheads about it, taking advantage in the most shitheaddy ways they can imagine. Pass.
Soul: It's really good.
Tesla (2020): This was fantastic. It had a fourth-wall-breaking ahistorical aspect to it, like the I, Tonya of alternating current. (There's even skating.)
