Category: Movies

Vampire’s Kiss

This actually happened to a buddy of mine. 

Anyway, this is a one or two star movie with a five star Nic Cage performance in it. 

Every so often I try to make it through a series of Nic Cage films just because the completionist in me can’t help it and because you never know when the next Pig or Joe could be lurking in the shadows. 

This viewing of Last Kiss was prompted by the latest wild interview Cage gave to The New York Times. 

I don’t want to give anything away but there is a reason I think he’s one of our finest actors and perhaps one of the greatest bullshit artists of all time. 

I don’t think he’s lying to us or the interviewers or the world at large. I think he’s lying to himself because he has to in order to justify himself. He has to convince himself that he’s doing art and not just cashing a check even when he is starring in what most of us would recognize as 0 star dreck. 

There was an interview with Bill Murray where he said he took the Garfield movie because he thought the Coen Brothers were doing it. Then when he realized that he got the names wrong and what he had signed up for it was too late. 

But instead of backing out he read the script and said to himself, “I can fix it.”

Maybe all actors do that or maybe just the guys and girls who need a check. 

I dunno. 

But I believe in Nic Cage.

So the one thing that I want to draw your attention to is that amazing accent Cage is living with in this film. That accent is from outer space. But it’s clear that it’s what the character things a wealthy successful young New Yorker should sound like.

So it isn’t Nic Cage acting it’s Cage’s character doing a something with more and less emphasis depending on who he’s with at the time.

Cage is a big comic book guy so maybe he will enjoy this reference. You know when he reads a blog as he is want to do.

Issue 14 of Nth Man: Beyond World War III has statement on it’s cover that has never left me since I saw it in 1990. The comic was written by Larry Hama and drawn by Ron Wagner.

Galactus the giant world eating Jack Kirby and Stan Lee creation is being bullied by a demonic creature that is bigger than him and another person towers over them all.

And the demon says, “There are worlds within worlds little man!”

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Lord of war

Two good Nic Cage movies in a row. I feel like I hit … snake eyes 🐍. 

Anyway deadly funny and a decent amount of tension. It falls apart when it’s about anything (marriage problems, addiction) other than gun running. 

But it is very very good when it gives you that inside look at the criminal enterprise and personalities involved.

Predictable in parts — I literally said, “car bomb” before it happens in the flick — but not so predictable that you can call it all.

Cage’s final speech to his law dog adversary (Hello Ethan Hawke) is not quite up there with the final comments in Casino, Goodfellas, Fight Club and the utterly perfect Killing Them Softly. 

But it is a sneaky rage filled little diatribe. There is solid work here all around. Precious few explosions but the speechifying mostly makes up for it.

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Spider-Noir

It’s good. I’m enjoying it. I’m only a couple of episodes in so a full review is not something I want to do.

Cage doing Bogart with some super hero hijinks thrown in. And Brendan Gleason as the heavy! Just excellent work.

I should probably watch it in Black and White like Cage wants. But I’m a heathen.

The color pops though.

Despite all the effort, dollars spent, words written and time wasted there have only been two good Hannibal Lecter movies. 

This and Silence of the Lambs. 

Director Jonathan Demme brought the Thomas Harris book to life in Silence of the Lambs. And Michael Mann took a Harris book and turned it into a Michael Mann movie. 

Harris and Mann were so early to serial killers and profilers in popular fiction that they are basically inventing the formula here. 

The next four or five decades of television and film are filled with variations of cops hunting serial killers and serial killers hunting each other and diminishing returns of Hannibal Lecter sequels and prequels. 

I have never seen the show but the fact that there is a show is a particular kind of failure no matter how good the episodes might be. 

Anyway, this is visually stunning, cause of course it is, the synth score speaks to me and if the whole enterprise doesn’t quite hit a high note for me it’s just because, once again, Mann is forever more interested in visuals than he is with dialogue. 

William Peterson really rocks here and if you have seen this and To Live and Die in LA you have to wonder how he never managed to really break through or break out. CSI was a hit, of course, but this guy was magic when you handed him the ball on the big screen. 

To be fair, no one, except maybe Harris knew what they had in a character as intriguing as Hannibal Lector so you shouldn’t fault Mann for limiting his screen time in a story that doesn’t really have much to do with him. 

But I’m a catty old man and I do fault him. Mann literally told people he thought he should limit Lector’s presence in the movie. What an incredible mistake. 

Ah well, you must give credit where it is due and if this is only the second best Lector movie that’s still quite the achievement. They’ve come at it one way or another for four decades and most of them still haven’t topped it. 

I would not call myself a fan of the genre but in the world of film there’s only like what 4 or five really great serial killer flicks? 

This, Silence of the Lambs, Seven and Zodiac. 

Funny thought, but we really should hand Lecter down generation after generation like Hamlet. 

So I say it’s time for a remake. Get Tom Hardy to play Lecter and Timothy Chalamet to be Will Graham. Jenna Ortega can cameo as Clarice at the end. 

Hardy would be great even if none of us will understand a damn word he says. 

It’s the last day of middle school and she broke up with you again. 

You don’t know why because you don’t understand these things at all. Summer is almost here though and it promises an endless series of sunny days in a quiet neighborhood. There will be movies and pool parties and other girls that you also can’t quite talk to or understand. 

As you move from class to class you hear snippets of conversations about other lives and vacations to far away places and people who are doing better than you or worse or the same depending on how you judge these things. 

After lunch, when everyone’s really given up on teaching and learning your favorite teacher puts in a movie. 

It’s really good, but he is the coolest teacher in the school. There’s something about the sun dying, and Ryan Gosling plays the smartest scientist on earth and he solves all the science problems and then he’s in space. 

If those problems he’s solving are complicated you don’t notice cause everything flies by really fast and then, boom, a funny alien shows up. 

His name is Rocky and he’s great. You like that he takes everything literally. It will be years before you notice how often aliens have that problem and how its used for laughs. 

The movie ends, other kids almost clap, the girl who didn’t say anything to you all year writes, “stay cool” in your yearbook. 

You walk out into the sun. It’s warm and you smile and you feel free. 

———

Anyway, Project Hail Mary is by the same novelist who gave us The Martian. And it has that Goodfellas to Casino thing going on where it is not a sequel but it very much feels like a sequel. A spiritual sequel. 

Maybe the most spiritual sequel of all time given that a man names Grace rides a spaceship called the Hail Mary so that he can die for everyone on the planet. 

Well he has to play some hero ball first, and crack wise with his new alien pal. But yeah, death is coming for our man Grace even if he completes his mission and saves every one of us. 

It’s a bum wrap. Or a calling. Or a fine chance for Ryan Gosling to show us why he’s the man. 

Visually stunning, strong character work from Gosling and Sandra Huller and all that pesky science, which truly drove me nuts when I was listening to the audiobook, is kept to the barest of minimums. 

When I was listening to the book, knowing the movie was coming I kept wondering how they would handle the deep dives into archane science and explanations. 

Silly me, they just ignored nearly every bit of that. The book did move me though, when it spent time with either Rocky or Huller’s character. And screenwriter Drew Goddard knows where his bread is buttered. 

This movie was the longest of long shots and they sailed it through the uprights. Thumbs up. I Watched it on 70 millimeter.

If you haven’t seen it yet and you enjoy movie stars, big science fiction things and visually interesting films then you should go forth and watch this on the biggest screen you can find.

Nobody’s Fool was one of those movies that was always on television when I was coming up. 

Either on HBO, or basic cable, I would catch bits and pieces of it. I’m sure it was years, and probably didn’t happen till the rise of Netflix, that I ever saw it all the way through. 

Even now, watching it again for the first time in at least a decade or two, there is an opening I didn’t remember. 

Anyway, watching it I had nostalgia for the days when you would discover a movie this way. One scene at a time, if you got bored you flipped the channel, and if it was good you watched it and then tried to find it again from the start. 

I think nearly every time this popped up I watched it all the way through. 

This flick has a murderer’s row of acting talent. Paul Newman is the lead and Bruce Willis is his frenemy and sometime boss. It’s delightful how much the two men like crossing swords with each other even if the stakes mostly stay very low. 

Willis commits to being a jerk all the way to the end of the movie. No redemption arc for him. Wonder how many big action stars would let themselves do that today?

Jessica Tandy, Beloved Character Actress Margo Martindale, young Philip Seymour Hoffman, Dylan Walsh and Pruitt Taylor Vince all create characters that feel lived in and real. 

Newman’s plays Sully, a rascal who abandoned his family and suddenly at 60 finds he has a second chance with both his son and a grandson. Most every scene is just a bit of light comedy and drama. The movie is happy to just meander through Sully’s life and his small challenges. 

A lot of movies suggest how great life is in a small town but this one shows you a version of it that feels real and mostly believable. It’s not sugar coated and it’s not Hallmark. But the movie excels at showing Sully as human who would let you down most of the time but would also be the first guy you would call if your ailing mother went wandering down the street.

He’s not heroic, and he knows it, but sometimes he’s decent.

If nothing else Newman is clearly having a great time. He knows what a magnificent character he’s got here and he’s hitting each little moment with sly charm and the right amount of melancholy. 

Newman made a ton of great movies and if you are just getting started there is plenty see before you get to this one. But, make sure it’s on your list.

As we go through this a couple of thoughts. 

First, I did order this list as the year went on so I suppose, especially, in the top 10 that you should consider that numbered from the movie I liked best on down. 

But also, the order does not actually mean all that much. Either on my list or anyone else’s list. Some of these movies are five star, perfect movies and I will never watch them again. They are brilliant and brilliantly executed and I doubt I will want to live through those emotions anymore. Hamnet is one of the great movies of 2025 and I think it’s beautiful and tragic and everything some movies should aspire to become. 

But that was a one time date for me. I doubt I will feel the need to cry for two hours again anytime soon. 

Avatar: Fire and Ash is not even on this list, but there is a decent chance I’m going to catch it two or three or four more times over the next few years. I think I will be rewarded on the rewatches. 

Also, if you know me you know I’m constantly pointing out that Big Jim films always feel lacking to me in the dialogue department. 

But I’m betting for the next few years I’m going to randomly yell, “You can’t live like this, baby, in hate!” 

For me, it’s the new, “You were the chosen one!”

Movies, books, comics, music, these are the things that make life worth living. The things that those money people, those masters of politics, the ones who think they hold the strings of our lives will never understand. 

Great art changes minds, soothes the soul and, in more than one case, ignites revolutions. 

I will admit that’s a high minded sentence for a guy who picked these particular films out of the 2025 barrel. But it’s what I believe and it’s why I love the movies. 

Sinners

Simply the best movie of the year. 

There are few things in life better than watching a confident filmmaker do his or her thing. 

When I got to the song that took us to the past and the future of music I was struck by joy. There wasn’t anything more daring than that this year. 

One Battle After Another

Paul Thomas Anderson has one of the best if not the best bodies of work of any director. So I judged this not by how good it was but how good it was compared to Anderson’s filmography. And while it’s not the best film he’s ever made (either There Will Be Blood or Phantom Thread) it’s in the conversation. 

Superman

I was a bundle of nerves walking into this. I am unapologetically a comic book guy and Hollywood hasn’t gotten Superman right since Superman: The Movie. And that’s the last time they got it right. 

Go see the Richard Donner Cut of 1 and 2 and realize how great those films are and how much better the second one could have been. 

Anyway,  I walked out of this and said, “Oh Thank God.” Or if you prefer, “Oh thank Rao.” 

If you didn’t cry when Superman tells Lois why he’s going to turn himself in then you don’t understand how great a real Superman story can be. 

Marty Supreme

This had the best opening and closing scenes of any movie this year. And when Odessa A’zion starts cooking this whole enterprise climbs to another level. 

28 Years Later

I was completely done with zombies as a genre. But, a coming of age zombie movie? Directed by Danny Boyle and written by Alex Garland? Oh my. This was the stuff. 

Weapons

Small spoiler here. I always say I don’t like horror. But that’s not exactly true. What I don’t like is when evil wins. I want the evil person, creature, or thought defeated in the end. And I was so completely satisfied with the end of this. The best comeuppance of the year.

Black Bag

A slinky smooth spy movie. And a spy movie for adults who like spy movies. 

Train Dreams

There were a lot of movies about trauma this year. And this was the best one. 

Hamnet

The best movie about grief this year. Maybe the best movie about grief this decade. If you need to cry for two hours this is the one. 

Highest to Lowest

Spike Lee keeps the first half of this movie in a low boil. Then he plays his ace. A kinetic sequence involving a street festival, a money drop, and genuine hatred of the Boston Red Sox. I hate the Yankees and I still loved this. 

Eephus

“Is there anything more beautiful than the sun setting on a fat man stealing second base.” 

I have seen baseball movies about winning it all, and baseball movies about childhood, and baseball movies about noble knights fighting corruption and more than a few about a buncha losers who keep on playing just cause they love the game. 

This is the first one I’ve seen that was explicitly about death. 

Nevermind, turn on the headlights and keep playing till the end comes.

Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair

If you count this as a 2025 film then it’s actually number 1. I don’t see it that way. But I do think this is the superior way to see this now four-hour motion picture. 

Here’s 10 more I really liked

Americana

It Was Just an Accident

Wake Up Dead Man 

Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere

The Phoenician Scheme

Fantastic Four: First Steps 

Sorry Baby

On Becoming a Guinea Fowl

Roofman

By the time the ball drops on New Years Eve I will have watched close to 160 films for the first time. 

Of those about 75 of them were released in 2025. I also rewatched about 30 movies, so we’re close to 200 films watched in 2025. 

This does not fill me with a sense of accomplishment. It makes me think I should work on my emotional problems. 

You know the old joke: A man will watch 200 movies rather than go to therapy. 

To understand how this happened, we need to talk a little about my life. 

First, I don’t drink and I don’t go to bars. 

So, every other Friday, I would take a night off from my responsibilities as a husband and father. Our children are autistic and can’t be left with a babysitter. So my wife and I have lunch dates when the kids are in school but have no way to go out on a weekend date. 

My wife is in plays and when she is in one she goes to rehearsals and gets to get away several nights a week. And I watch the kids at other times on weekends so she can recharge. 

On my Friday nights off I would head to Indianapolis, about an hour away from where we live and go to the comic book store and then to a movie; preferably something in IMAX. Sometimes this year I went to a second movie in town late on Saturday or Sunday nights. The kinds of movies that weren’t playing in IMAX anyway. 

My kids generally control the tv but I have an iPad and AirPods so if we weren’t going anywhere I might watch something on a streaming service while Finding Nemo, Encanto or Sesame Street played on the big screen. 

I certainly watch television shows, and some sports. This movie watching thing is not a new phenomenon I have always watch a ton of movies, tv and read a bunch of comics and a few books each year. 

Letterboxd changed my habits and made me more driven, I think, to see more new movies. I suspect that in past years I saw far fewer movies that were brand new. I have a sense that I saw whatever I was generally interested in and then the next year I tried to watch whatever got nominated for best picture at the Oscars. 

In the past two or three years, because of Letterboxd and this blog I think I have tried to watch stuff I was interested in as it came out. Also, social media is going to give away huge parts of most movies within hours of release. Sometimes I’m just trying to stay ahead of that. 

I generally say something about every movie I watch on Letterboxd. If I have a lot to say, I put it on here. The quality of the movie does not necessarily reflect whether or not I’ve got anything to say about it. 

I think of all the movies I saw about trauma this year (and there were too many of them) that Train Dreams was the very best one. It’s in my top 10. And I don’t have a review for it and don’t think I will. It’s very good though, you should see it if you haven’t already. 

Couple of other notes. I am not a professional critic. I can hear some of you now: “We’ve read your reviews. We know.” 

Shut up. 

Anyway, because I’m not a professional I don’t get screeners. I also don’t illegally download movies. So if something is not playing in Indianapolis between Jan 1 and Dec 31 or could be found on a streamer or rented digitally I had no way to watch it. 

In November I made a list of movies that came out in 2025 that I wanted to see. This strategy was actually very successful. I like lists, and it helped me focus on the titles that I was still interested in. I started with somewhere like 45 movies and in the last week of the year I’m down to 10 or so movies that are really 2025 movies.

Some movies are only 2025 movies if you live in New York or Los Angelos. They will go nationwide during Oscar season in 2026 in hopes of making money in middle America. 

Here are the ones on my list that haven’t played in town yet. 

The Testament of Ann Lee, Sound of Falling, Resurrection and No Other Choice. 

I am very interested in Park Chan Wok’s No Other Choice because I’ve found every movie of his that I have seen so far (Oldboy, Decision to Leave) to be extraordinary. I heard good things about Testament and will certainly check it out at some point. Sound of Falling and Resurrection don’t look like the kinds of movies I usually enjoy but you never know. (It’s that kind of thinking BTW that got me to 200 movies this year.) 

Here are the ones I could have seen and in some cases could still see but it’s looking increasingly unlikely. 

Good Fortune, Black Phone 2, Lone Samurai, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, Nuremberg, The Running Man, Blue Moon, Ella McCay and Hamnet. 

All of these can be watched right now. Currently, my plan is to see Hamnet on the 31st. 

The others? Guess we will see. In some cases they are in that early rental period where they cost $20 to rent. I’m probably not doing that. In some cases my interest is not so strong that I can’t just wait for them to show up on a streaming service. 

And there were certainly some of these where the reviews were so bad they dampened my interest. Hello, Ella McCay. 

I was set to go to the Running Man this year and after the reviews came out I went to Sentimental Value instead. That was probably a mistake. Sentimental Value is very good for what it is. But what it is is another exploration of trauma and 2025 was full of those and most of them left me cold. 

I think I would have had a better time watching Glen Powell crack one liners and kill bad guys. 

In January, I will, of course, have a list of the best movies I watched in 2025. 

This column was a way to clear the decks and clear my throat and explain why some movies won’t be on my list that might be on some others. 

And the year is almost over and we’re still here.

Harlan Ellison was objectively one of the very best authors of the 20th century. 

He was also, well, he was a lot. I once witnessed him throw a guy out of an autograph line because he wanted Harlan to sign a Babylon 5 poster. Harlan, a creative consultant on the television show, was incensed. 

“Have you read any of my books?” He yelled. The guy didn’t say anything but the battle was already over. 

“I’m not signing that,” Harlan shouted. 

And that was that. Next up was me. I can assure you I told him how much his work meant to me. 

There are a million stories like that. Harlan was rough to people he thought deserved it and he was fiercely loyal to his friends. 

One of those friends, Robert Bloch, the author of Psycho, described Harlan this way: “the only living organism I know whose natural habitat is hot water.” 

Well, in the movies at least, we have found a second organism who naturally lives in hot water. 

Timothee Chalemet’s Marty Mauser, is constantly finding trouble, and when he’s in the midst of the chaos brought on by the first set of problems he’s somehow still looking for more trouble. 

The movie opens with Marty and his girl succeeding in the kind of thing young couples succeed at all the time. Whether they want to or not. 

The movie then, in one of several cheeky moments, lets the audience graphically know that Marty was in fact supreme in that moment.

And from then on Director Josh Safdie along with co-writer Ronald Bronstein put their foot on the pedal and never let the movie run out of gas. 

Safdie directed two features with his brother, Good Time and Uncut Gems before directing this on his own. Their style is this: What if the whole movie was the rapid, paranoid, cocaine fueled final 20 minutes of Goodfellas. 

Good Time is a good movie but it’s too much. Uncut Gems is great but it’s also much closer to a heart attack than it is a dramatic presentation. 

Marty Supreme finds a nice balance, or maybe I had just steeled myself to the Safdie style. 

I’ll tell you what I really loved here. Marty has a girl in his life, actually he has two girls and both of them are married to other guys. He has a type. 

Rachel is brilliantly played by Odessa A’zion. And at one point you realize that Rachel is Marty’s fast talking, scheming equal. She’s his match in all the ways that matter. 

And when that happened I felt safe in this hectic, dangerous movie. My dad once told me he felt better about me once I got married. And it was the same thing for me watching this. Will Marty ever get his life together? Well, he will have to won’t he? Because that girl needs him, and while he won’t admit it he needs her too. 

The rest of this, and there are whole worlds in here, I will leave for you to discover. 

I don’t know if this is the best movie of 2025. But it’s a contender. And it has the best opening and closing scenes in any movie I saw all year. 

“If you stop this fight I’ll kill ya.”

Rocky is one of the greatest films ever made. 

Every time I watch Rocky I am struck by how awful everything is and how cheerful and friendly Rocky remains. 

If you look at Rocky Balboa’s life logically you would have to conclude that the best thing he could do for himself is blow his brains out. 

He lives in a city that looks like a 20 mile wide crack den. 

Financially, he’s done. He’s fighting guys who are, like him, just this side of homeless. And he’s doing it for $40 bucks a throw twice a month in dank, half filled pool halls. 

His only other job is as a leg breaker for a bookie but he doesn’t seem to have the heart for it. 

He gets scolded because he doesn’t break some poor bastard’s thumb when the guy gives him $130 instead of the $200 he owes. 

He likes a girl but she’s so damaged and shy she barely speaks to him. 

He’s got one friend and he’s a dangerous drunk who hates the world and the world seems only too happy to return the favor. 

And Mickey, the guy who runs the local gym, wants Rocky to quit boxing and give his locker to a younger fighter who still might have a career. 

When Rocky asks why Mick is always insulting him Mickey delivers the first of what will be two truthful conversations between the old mentor and the younger man.

“You had the talent to be a good fighter but instead of that, you become a legbreaker to some cheap, second rate loanshark!”

“It’s a living,”

“It’s a waste of life.”

The second conversation comes when Rocky gets a magical, once in a lifetime opportunity to face the Apollo Creed for the heavyweight championship of the world. The movie is a sports fairytale and this part of it is somewhat ridiculous (though not impossible). But what isn’t ridiculous is how everyone in Rocky’s world reacts when he becomes famous overnight. 

Paulie wants a job. Mickey does too, saying that he could be his manager and will look out for him. 

Rocky, for perhaps the only time in a movie that’s forever beating him down, lashes out. 

“Remember I needed your help about 10 years ago …” he starts. And wooo boy. He has some things to say. 

Still, when the screaming is over Rocky runs out of his house and grabs Mickey and pulls him in. So Mickey becomes his trainer and manager. And he lets Paulie trade on his now, famous name. That includes wearing an advertisement on his robe to the big fight. 

Mickey upon seeing the robe: “Well, what do you get out of it.”

Rocky: “Paulie gets three grand. I get the robe.”

Mickey: “Shrewd!” 

And Rocky woos and wins that girl he loves and they start to build a relationship and a life together. 

All this happens before the fight. 

In life Rocky is a loser, a bum, but as a person, he’s got a heart of gold. And when things go his way you can’t help but cheer for him. 

Every scene in Rocky is either funny or heartbreaking and a lot of the time it’s both. 

Let’s talk about one more scene just for the fun of it. Rocky ends up on the evening news for his unusual training method which is to go into a commercial freezer and beat giant racks of hanging meat until he breaks their ribs and ends up bloody. 

Then we see “Duke” Apollo’s trainer watching this with growing alarm. This guy is punching the hell out of anything in his way in a freezer, meanwhile, Duke’s fighter is wearing expensive suits and doing business deals and assumes that the fighting will take care of itself. 

He tries to warn him but Apollo won’t listen. 

Later, during the fight, when Apollo has realized his painful mistake Duke says this: “He doesn’t know it’s a show. He thinks it’s a damn fight.” 

Famously, Rocky does not win the fight in Rocky. The night before he tells Adrian that he knows he can’t win but that no one had ever gone to the end of a fight with Apollo without getting knocked out and if he could just do that … if he could just go the distance. 

Well, the fight is spectacular and the ending is what you would expect. 

But that’s not what makes me cry every time I watch it. What makes me cry is that Rocky was a winner before he ever stepped in the ring. 

He was good to his friends, he was true to himself and he relentlessly worked for his dreams. And it didn’t matter that the world thought he was a failure because he never gave up, never gave in and never gave an inch. 

If he got knocked out in the first round he would still be a winner. He would still be the kind of man you would be proud to call your friend. 

I don’t know how your life is going. I hope you are one of those who seem to be living like kings and sleeping on cushions filled with good times and money. 

But if you’re like me sometimes it can be a struggle to just go get through your day then Rocky may be your patron saint. 

After this Sylvester Stallone became a major star and they made a bunch of sequels. I love them all. And I mean that. I love all of them. I love the Creed spinoffs too. 

I think they’re magic. But mostly, I believe in the lesson. 

Stallone laid it out fully in a movie called Rocky Balboa. In the scene he’s trying to explain the world to his son who is distant and has had a tough time living in the shadow of a famous father. 

The speech always hits me as hard as any punch in the series. 

“Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place, and I don’t care how tough you are, it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done.” 

There is no opponent as tough as just living in the world.

The diagnosis doesn’t go your way. Someone you love betrays you. 

The career you thought you were going to build just never materializes. 

But the world doesn’t get the final say about your life and how you lived it. Only you can make the choices that will define you. 

So I watch Rocky and I cry and I move forward in hope. 

I hope that I am good to my family, my friends, and the people around me. 

God knows I’m trying. 

In Unstoppable Denzel Washington is saddled with handsome rookie Chris Pine and the two of them must stop a runaway train before it comes off the tracks and destroys a small town. 

Each scene builds new complications — a train full of school children might get hit, the runaway train is carrying chemical agents that will kill everybody if it comes off the tracks, the people in charge are more concerned with money than they are with people’s lives. Etc. etc.

At every step of the way experts come up with plans to stop this train and and at every moment the experts are wrong. Accidents and explosions and high speed hijinks ensue. 

It’s just one of those movies. Nonsense, but fun nonsense. And Director Tony Scott is so very good at this type of thing. Just watch those fast moving shots of the helicopter perilously close to the train. Scott is a master at inserting tension and movement in everything. 

I dismissed it when it came out and only watched it now because Quentin Tarantino had it on his list of top 20 movies of this century. 

And while I liked it a bunch I don’t think it would make my list. It helps that I think these lists are fun but pointless. 

I guess what I’m trying to say is that a runaway train movie probably shouldn’t be this good. But it absolutely is the real deal.

Cinema is the only art that kills what it is trying to preserve. — Francis Ford Coppola 

This documentary is so good it made me retroactively give Megalopolis more stars. 

Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis is a work of genius that fails as a compelling story and was meant for an audience of one person — Coppola himself. Of course, that’s just my opinion.

Megadoc Director Mike Figgis, has an opinion on the film too because a documentary is just a fiction giving you someone’s opinion. 

His opinion is that If Megalopolis has problems it’s the result of hardheaded actor Shia LeBeouf. The doc delights in showing us Coppola and LeBeouf at odds. 

But watching it I just wondered if LeBeouf was the only one with enough riding on the film that he was willing to point out that the emperor had no clothes. 

Also, maybe you can fix Godfather III by handing Robert Duvall the money he wants to come back as Tom Hagen but there is no acting change that’s going to “fix” Megalopolis.

Hearing Coppola himself describe his opus gives you every reason why it failed: This movie will heal the world.

I love movies, folks, and I love dreamers, but I don’t think that particular goal is within the grasp of any filmmaker. 

Famously, Coppola, then in his 80s, took 150 million of his own fortune and funded his vision. This movie did not make its money back. 

I doubt Coppola will die in the poor house but this was a spectacular gamble that did not financially pay off. 

The documentary makes it clear that Coppola wouldn’t have it any other way. This is a man who has been to the mountaintop and blown it all up more than once. 

Coppola’s peers include some of the greatest filmmakers who ever lived and none of them have a similar hit to disaster ratio. George Lucas is the only one who does an interview and he rightly points out that, you know, he figured out a way to make movies for a long time and also become a billionaire. 

He never (at least after the 70s) made anything as wild or as artful as Coppola though. Make of that what you will. 

Figgis doesn’t completely let Coppola off the hook. Keying in on more than one moment of self reflection. 

“My opinion on this movie we always have too may people, too much stuff, to many equipment, to many everything. Everything becomes hard. This is simple.”

In another telling moment Coppola says this: I’m a second rate director. But I’m a first rate second rate director. 

Honestly, he’s far too harsh on himself he’s a first rate first rate director but he also probably needs someone he trusts to tell him when he’s driving the corvette off the cliff. 

And yet … no one else ever made anything like Megalopolis and I doubt anyone ever will. 

“You look at it and you are like, ‘I don’t know how that’s going to work.’ Well he doesn’t know how it’s going to work either. But he’s brave enough to risk it,” Laurence Fishburne says. 

If I ran a studio this is what I would do. I’d go to Francis and I’d say, here’s $20 million, go find an actor, an actress and get a gun from the prop department. Then make whatever you want. 

I doubt he’d take me up on it. But if he did you can bet he would make something brilliant that you have never seen before.