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Notes -
So, what is everyone watching (films, shows, even YouTube if you think it counts)?
I've seen two movies recently:
The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017): This is the second Lanthimos film I've seen after Bugonia and Dogtooth, the former of which I loved and the latter of which was meh. KSD felt like it was awkwardly edgy and vague, but I very well may have missed the point. The actors did an excellent job of making me feel uncomfortable throughout. 4.2/10 enjoyment, give me those hours of my life back.
Train Dreams (2025): I've always enjoyed movies about everyday, simple lives (I don't have any others off the top of my head, but I know they exist). This one resonated with me because of a forest in my life, one that I half-seriously say I grew up in through mountain biking, trail running, airsoft battles, exploring, fort-building, and general elementary and teenage debauchery. 8.1/10 enjoyment, give me those years of my life back. I was a bit surprised everyone else's ratings were so high, though.
I watched Lanthimos's Poor Things in the cinema. I kind of liked it, but watching Emma Stone fuck assorted men for forty-five minutes isn't exactly my idea of a good time. I don't really understand the hype around Barry Keoghan (he was dreadful in The Banshees of Inisherin, the only thing I've seen him in), though I'd heard he was good in KSD.
Last night I watched Martha Marcy May Marlene with the girlfriend, which I saw exactly once in the cinema ~13 years ago. It's remarkable what a big impression it made on me: there were specific shots and line-readings in it that I remembered so clearly, as if I'd only seen the film the day before. Along with Kill List, probably the best film about a cult I've ever seen,* highly recommended.
The night before we watched Casino, which she'd seen before and I hadn't. Comparisons to Goodfellas are unavoidable (the two films' style, grammar and use of licensed songs are nigh-identical, and Joe Pesci might as well be playing the same character), but in some ways it's the superior film. When Henry and Karen got into ferocious arguments in Goodfellas, there was always this blackly comic undercurrent to it, a sense that you shouldn't take it too seriously. By contrast, I found it genuinely upsetting watching Sam and Ginger scream at each other in Casino, even though Ginger is arguably a more despicable character than Karen. This is primarily down to Sharon Stone's performance, which is committed and forceful: she's entirely believable as a booze- and coke-addled BPD nutcase, and in a way that somehow manages to come off as sympathetic rather than caricatured. Afterwards, I remarked that being exceptionally attractive as an actress can be something of a double-edged sword: on the one hand it does make it easier to secure roles, but it's easy to wind up pigeon-holed as just a pretty face, and in both of the previous Stone films I've seen (Total Recall and Basic Instinct; love the former, the latter is meh) she was essentially playing a one-dimensional femme fatale. But in Casino, she really demonstrated her acting chops.
*Yes, I'm including the original The Wicker Man.
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