Nomadland (2020)
“I’m not homeless. I’m just house-less.”
A luminous psalm of resilience, reframing desolation not as punishment but eudaimonic poetry through Fern, a woman anchored by transience. Barren landscapes tenderly beckon against sterile parking lots; sunsets gild trailer windows and parched sand like sacramental gold. Here, in rootless soil, communal kindness blooms with startling generosity. An elegy etched in mundanity, transforming hardship into quietly effulgent transcendence.
Babylon (2022)
Kafkaesque spectacle rolling from chaotic bacchanal speciousness into biting bitterness, then abrupt, saccharine collapse. A relentless three hour Hollywood love letter but the celluloid fever dream never numbs, referential filmic brio accentuates its core passion and the soundtrack defies torpor. La La Land’s darker, inconsistent, messier twin but still an ode to the silver screen and its excess.
The Legend of the Condor Heroes: The Gallant (2025)
A panoramic wuxia epic thrusts us mid-saga, directly into a war between the Mongols and the Jin Dynasty while the main character hails from the Song Dynasty. Required heavy exposition occasionally hinders momentum and the brotherhood theme feels rote, yet Mongolian steppes and cultures rendered with breathtaking grandeur and surprising reverence dazzles and awes. A flawed but vibrant cultural tapestry of nomadic spirit.
Lebanon (2009)
War’s vitriolic truth funnelled through a tank’s targeting eye; its initial claustrophobic focus curdles into sclerotic fatigue. In a welcome allegory, the turret basket pools with oil, urine, and shell casings like bodily fluids in a wounded soldier. As the Sho’t tank grinds brokenly onwards, the film’s power too stalls. Unflinchingly authentic but ultimately mired.
Jurassic World: Rebirth (2025)
A fossilized facsimile of Jurassic Park’s greatest hits, desultorily exhuming island form and nostalgic scenes without their primal soul. Human characters swarm like overabundant comp(y)sognathus carcasses; Xavier’s egregious presence hemorrhages goodwill like a sauropod’s arterial spray. Exhausted Velociraptors still outpace their Mutadon replacements and the mutant dinosaur finale is pure abomination, all ugly teeth and cheap shock fills its cranium. Dinosaurs remain theropod-terrible joys, yet this taxonomic travesty lets human bloat titanosaur over Mesozoic spectacle. Franchise ossified in amber; life fails to find a way.
Automod and pinning failure made me miss this weekly thread initially.
I knew I should have watched 28 Years Later instead but I got outvoted. I’ll try for this weekend.
Nomadland (2020)
“I’m not homeless. I’m just house-less.”
A luminous psalm of resilience, reframing desolation not as punishment but eudaimonic poetry through Fern, a woman anchored by transience. Barren landscapes tenderly beckon against sterile parking lots; sunsets gild trailer windows and parched sand like sacramental gold. Here, in rootless soil, communal kindness blooms with startling generosity. An elegy etched in mundanity, transforming hardship into quietly effulgent transcendence.
Babylon (2022)
Kafkaesque spectacle rolling from chaotic bacchanal speciousness into biting bitterness, then abrupt, saccharine collapse. A relentless three hour Hollywood love letter but the celluloid fever dream never numbs, referential filmic brio accentuates its core passion and the soundtrack defies torpor. La La Land’s darker, inconsistent, messier twin but still an ode to the silver screen and its excess.
The Legend of the Condor Heroes: The Gallant (2025)
A panoramic wuxia epic thrusts us mid-saga, directly into a war between the Mongols and the Jin Dynasty while the main character hails from the Song Dynasty. Required heavy exposition occasionally hinders momentum and the brotherhood theme feels rote, yet Mongolian steppes and cultures rendered with breathtaking grandeur and surprising reverence dazzles and awes. A flawed but vibrant cultural tapestry of nomadic spirit.
Lebanon (2009)
War’s vitriolic truth funnelled through a tank’s targeting eye; its initial claustrophobic focus curdles into sclerotic fatigue. In a welcome allegory, the turret basket pools with oil, urine, and shell casings like bodily fluids in a wounded soldier. As the Sho’t tank grinds brokenly onwards, the film’s power too stalls. Unflinchingly authentic but ultimately mired.
Jurassic World: Rebirth (2025)
A fossilized facsimile of Jurassic Park’s greatest hits, desultorily exhuming island form and nostalgic scenes without their primal soul. Human characters swarm like overabundant comp(y)sognathus carcasses; Xavier’s egregious presence hemorrhages goodwill like a sauropod’s arterial spray. Exhausted Velociraptors still outpace their Mutadon replacements and the mutant dinosaur finale is pure abomination, all ugly teeth and cheap shock fills its cranium. Dinosaurs remain theropod-terrible joys, yet this taxonomic travesty lets human bloat titanosaur over Mesozoic spectacle. Franchise ossified in amber; life fails to find a way.
Automod and pinning failure made me miss this weekly thread initially.
I knew I should have watched 28 Years Later instead but I got outvoted. I’ll try for this weekend.