Watched 25 May 2026

For a so-bad-it's-good cult movie, this is one of the greats in my book. It's full of big budget (for the 90s) spectacle and insane creative decisions, the result of too many cooks in the kitchen that's on an airborne plane without wings. Not as tedious as Manos, not as trope-filled as Waterworld, decently paced, full of practical & digital effects, and a time capsule of post-TMNT studio trash. Despite trying to make some serious sense of Mario lore, it's barely recognizable as that IP. Bonkers.

Watched 19 May 2026

I like the concept & animation, but it's hardly enough to sustain a feature-length film. Even as someone who loves visual storytelling without dialogue and is on board with Bill Plympton's signature sense of humor and characterization, I found this pretty weak. The plot's thin, the people are stereotypes, and despite a 5-man animation team that's 60% women, it plays into sexist tropes from start to finish. Unfortunately, this belongs back in the 1980s when machismo satire got by without nuance.

Watched 19 May 2026

I saw the unedited version of this with spilling guts & jugular sprays a-plenty, and it lives up to its grisly reputation. I suppose the extreme juxtaposition between the over-the-top violence and one character's underdeveloped, pathetic nature is a unique one, but I don't get much from it other than humor. Every person is despicable here. There's not even an antihero to connect with. It's better as a genre film then, and I winced while watching it, for sure. It's fine as pulpy grindhouse fare.

Watched 19 May 2026

Quaint as this animation is, I'd like to see it on a big screen. It has a kind of pastoral quality to it despite its depressing premise. Out of the frying pan, into the fire. A couple of plot points require some suspension of disbelief, but otherwise, this holds a scarring, bleak reality within its fantasy-folk style. It's a little dry and long at points; it could probably have been a short film. For a naturalist animal fable about human progress and human evils, it's dour in the right ways.

Watched 11 May 2026

If the charisma of this movie was in Nolan's Interstellar, we could have really had something. Gosling is great, of course, and the creative leads have extensive work in comedy and genre fiction. It's an ideal pairing for a studio hit, but personally, I found the compromises made in the science, plot, tone, dialogue, etc. detracted from the gravitas its source material seems to have had. Intellectually stimulating at times, eye-rolling popcorn fare at others. It's good, though. Worth the watch.