#cathy watches star wars

[maulthots]

Star wars could be so good if it was good.

[thegeminisage]

STAR TREK UPDATE TIME. last night we watched ds9's "empok nor" and voy's "scorpion part i."

empok nor (ds9):

THIS ONE WAS SO GOOD.

firstly, i love when we bring up o'briens war history. SECONDLY, i love when garak has problems

i also really really love nog, but cathy was right when she said it should have been bashir with them - he would have made the perfect hostage tied to the pole while the two of them fought over him. we've never really got a taste of the o'brien bashir garak dynamic and it would have been delicious

GARAK STALKING THEM THROUGH THE SHADOWS. very scary. mwah

also, it's really funny that this station IS ds9, they just turned the lights off. i love budget genre television

and, of course, who can forget the failed government experiments frozen in a tube? this episode had EVERYTHING

i also thought o'brien and garak at the end were very chill considering. o'brien like yeah dude i really was attempting with my whole pussy to kill you and garak like yeah i wouldn't have it any other way can you tell the guy's wife that i murdered that i'm sorry and o'brien is like yeah dude no prob feel better soon see you around. like what is it about garak that encourages this kind of dynamic...he tortured odo and then they become breakfast buddies, he tries to kill o'brien and they brush it off, he did that whole thing (gestures to "the wire") with julian and julian still gives him hugs and a blankie when he has claustrophobia. you can say anything to this guy. he tells nothing but lies but won't accept hearing anything less than the absolute no-frills-attached truth

anyway, 10/10

scorpion part i (voy):

SPEAKING OF EPISODES THAT HAD EVERYTHING.

gimli as leonardo da vinci. janeway and chakotay being sweet to each other. janeway and chakotay fighting. borg. disembodied heads. tentacles oozing into orifices. cgi aliens. janeway appealing to the devil. action. drama. INCREDIBLE

three years ago i didn't even know your name today i can't imagine a day without you i'm going to HURL!!!!!!

chakotay like. hey we havent slept. we havent eaten. you need to do that. and shes like sorry can't! and then he's like we cant go through this space we will die. like i've been semi-borged i know how bad it gets i don't want anything to happen to you and she's like sorry we gotta! and he;s like i'll follow you but i can't support this path and she's like well damn i guess i am alone. AGGHGHGHG

like along with a huge dose of actually suspenseful and scary action (it is always is with the borg) AND the cool body horror (rip harry kim and his mommy issues) we also get this wonderful interpersonal drama...and like i absolutely get why she's not willing to wait in the delta quadrant for a safer way to do this to come along. because you could do that forever. i also get where HE'S coming from because with the risk of death so high maybe it's better to accept the facts...that's what he did in (draws hearts) 2.25 resolutions, and just like in that episode, she does not give up, CANNOT give up, because it means facing not only despair but failure - and in this case, failing more than just herself

shoutout also to the scorpion and the fox parable, which i'd never heard as fox but frog, because it is of course in that one show about the teenage canines

i cannot believe people had to wait months for this to have a follow-up in 1997. EVILLLL

next episode........we finally meet seven. i am Dying to see her

TONIGHT: ds9 s5's last two episodes, "in the cards" and "call to arms."

[unproduciblesmackdown]

via the summer stock show program again:

WRITER'S NOTES by Cheri Steinkellner | Book & Additional Lyrics

How do you begin to adapt a film like Summer Stock into a stage musical?

Close my eyes and remember what I loved about it when I was a little girl, watching it with my cousin Cathy on the Million Dollar Movie every night for a week and twice on the weekend so we could reenact it beat-for-beat at Sunday family dinner. Key memories include: Singing on a tractor, dancing on a newspaper, and a pink painted sky.

Open my eyes, dig out my Judy Garland boxed-set and watch the DVD.

Close my eyes and re-watch the story on an imagined stage, with a diverse cast, contemporary social values, and a fresh storyline to match.

Open my eyes and write that. Then rewrite it. Then re-re-write, until I hit my deadline and can re-re-re-rewrite no more.

About that deadline: I first got the call in October. They needed a designer draft by January, a workshop draft by March, and a rehearsal draft by June for a July opening. That's fast, even for me, and I started my career in TV where you write and produce a new episode every week. But Summer Stock is all about putting on a show in a barn—so we roll up our sleeves, get up early, stay up late, and get the work—and the play—done!

What has changed from the original and what are the challenges of updating a 1950 film for a modern audience? That feel-good feeling of the original movie is still intact, but story, songs, and characters have all changed to be here now.

STORY: When I first signed on, I was given one mandate: No tractor. Heavy farm machinery wouldn't fit on the Goodspeed stage, so there went the film's whole buy-a-tractor/wreck-a-tractor/fix-a-tractor plotline. This opened up space to answer some of my more burning questions:

Why is Falbury farm at risk?

Why can't Joe get his show to Broadway?

How does a farmgirl like Jane suddenly morph into a triple-threat superstar?

And why is she wearing nothing but a tux jacket and fedora in that pink-sky finale?

As I wrote, more questions popped up: What do you do with a wanna-be actress who doesn't wanna rehearse? Why is a Shakespearean matinee idol starring in a musical in a barn? And what happens when you make show-people wake up at sunrise to muck out the stalls? All of these questions are asked—and I hope answered—in song and dance.

SONGS: The film features nine songs. Most contemporary stage musicals have twenty or more. So building out the score was a task. Some of the film's original songs like "Howdy Neighbor" and "Dig for Your Dinner" are repositioned and repurposed to tell our story. "You Wonderful You" and "Get Happy" have gained back-stories. To fill out the rest of the score, I turned to the Public Domain, where old favorites like "The Best Things in Life are Free," "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows," "Some of These Days," "It Had to Be You," and more, could be tailored to sing in our character's voices. Production numbers like "Paper Moon," "Everybody Step," and "June Night" are newly built on tunes that are nearly a century old, but with Doug Besterman's jazzy, brassy, Woody Herman-inspired arrangements, and Donna Feore's dynamic direction and thrilling choreography, they sing and dance like never before.

CHARACTERS: Looking at 1950s characters through a contemporary lens meant making crucial changes, not only in motivation—but in the people we want to see onstage. One challenge was crafting a story to support a diverse cast of characters with intention, authenticity, and care. I found my way in through the U.S. miltary. Special Services began in WWII and was one of the few army units to be racially integrated. I could imagine an ace director/choreographer like Joe Ross working with a gifted writer like Phil Filmore, pulling together a talented troupe of marginalized soldiers, and putting on a show for the troops. But what happens after the war, when they come home and their show can't get a break on Broadway? Hit musicals in 1950—Brigadoon, Guys and Dolls, Call Me Madam—were distinctly homogenous—i.e., white. Historically, it would be nearly a decade before a Black director would helm a Broadway play (Lloyd Richards, A Raisin in the Sun). So now we know what Joe and Phil are up against, and why they need this barn in Connecticut to put on their show. The Falbury family—Jane, Gloria, and Pop—need this show—and these show people—just as much to save their beloved farm from being acquired by a rich and powerful land owner bent on creating her own family legacy. I won't give away how song-and-dance save the day—but in the end, everyone does Get Happy.

What has been your favorite part of writing this musical and what are you most excited about seeing come to life on stage? If I could spend the rest of my writing life putting old songs into new musicals, I'd be one happy writer. Summer Stock is the second musical I've crafted "with" legendary composers like Irving Berlin, Harold Arlen, and Shelton Brooks (the first was Hello! My Baby, Goodspeed 2011). Bringing in these songs my mom taught me and her mom taught her, so my kids and theirs can sing them again, is my dream job—and I can't wait to see this dream cast hit the notes, find the laughs, and take flight like I can't even begin to dream.

[thisweekingundamwing]

This Week in Gundam Wing 1 -7 January 2023

Here’s the last week’s roundup! January 1st - January 7th!

Remember to give your content creators some love! Be sure to join in on the events at the bottom! And remember to send in any new works you see or make next week!

~Mod Hel

Fanfiction/Ideas/Snippets:

@acrochetedgundam

beginning https://archiveofourown.org/works/44052550

Gen, Quatre Raberba Winner, Catherine Bloom

Teen And Up Audiences, No Archive Warnings Apply, background 3x4, their relationship is not the focus, learning to forgive, Building A Friendship, Found Family, cathy tries to be stern, but deep down she's a softy, new year's fic, no beta we die like Treize

New years can bring new beginnings. And maybe, sometimes, they can start to heal old hurts.

@bobo-is-tha-bomb

Ticket to Freedom (Ch. 29) https://archiveofourown.org/works/27688973/chapters/110768493

F/M, Heero Yuy/Reader, Duo Maxwell/Hilde Schbeiker, Trowa Barton/Middie Une, Quatre Raberba Winner/Catherine Bloom, Chang Wufei/Long Meilan, Past Heero Yuy/Relena Peacecraft

Reader, Heero Yuy, Duo Maxwell, Trowa Barton, Chang Wufei, Zechs Merquise, Relena Peacecraft, Hilde Schbeiker, Middie Une, Catherine Bloom, Long Meilan, Treize Khushrenada, Howard (Gundam Wing), Dorothy Catalonia

Mature, No Archive Warnings Apply, Romance, Alternate Universe, Band Fic, Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Drama, Fluff, Lemon, Lime, Reader Insert, Song Lyrics, Novel, Slight Relena bashing, I’m sorry she is not a likable character in this one

They were your ticket out of the sheltered and married life your parents had planned for you. And to be honest, you had always had a rebellious streak. You needed the freedom they offered, needed to taste life, live a little. But when they ask you to sing in their band, you are not so sure. How would a neatly brought up lady survive with a couple of wannabe rock stars? You’re about to find out.

Burn to a Cinder (Ch. 12) https://archiveofourown.org/works/18781273/chapters/110843250

F/M, Zechs Merquise/Reader, Treize Khushrenada/Reader

Zechs Merquise, Treize Khushrenada, Lady Une, Mariemaia Khushrenada, Relena Peacecraft, Chang Wufei, Dorothy Catalonia, OC - Character

Mature, Major Character Death, Romance, Drama, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Violence, Reader-Insert, Lemon, Lime

Your path had been laid out for you from an early age, allowing you to move into the higher circles of society and catch the attention of one of the most powerful men in the Earth Sphere.

As Treize’s mistress, you watch his rise to power and the disastrous war breaking out on Earth and in Space, putting your loyalty to the test. You are torn between your duty to His Excellency, and your unquellable lust for one of the top soldiers under his command. And when he rises to power in Outer Space, there is nothing you can do but stand back and watch them tear each other apart.

This is no game of hearts, but yours is at stake, and the consequences can be felt for years to come. Labeled as OZ’s whore, you struggle to find your way, only for things to fall apart around you again. But then there is still Zechs, and the undeniable way he makes you feel…

@miyurinq

Winter Lights https://archiveofourown.org/works/43601565

M/M, Trowa Barton/Quatre Raberba Winner

Trowa Barton, Quatre Raberba Winner, Duo Maxwell

Not Rated, Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, mentioned 1x2, Christmas, Fluff and Angst, Sex, Hurt/Comfort, 3 x 4

Christmas is just around the corner and it should be perfect for him and Trowa. But things don't go as planned and Christmas is about to fall through for Quatre.

Only a miracle can keep Quatre's heart from breaking. But do Christmas miracles still exist?

Heart (Ch. 20) https://archiveofourown.org/works/40914714/chapters/110663985

M/M, Trowa Barton/Quatre Raberba Winner

Quatre Raberba Winner, Trowa Barton, Heero Yuy, Duo Maxwell, Chang Wufei

Not Rated, No Archive Warnings Apply, Post-Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz, Minor Violence, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort

All Quatre wants is to help. Even when the war is over, so many people suffer because of the consequences. Helping rebuild is the least he can do. But he seems unlucky, things go wrong all the time and people get hurt.

Trowa hardly recognizes Quatre. He has changed and seems to have problems. He reluctantly tells him about his bad luck, but Trowa doubts that it's just "bad luck" and decides to investigate.

@the-reanimated-bhg

Snow Day https://archiveofourown.org/works/44134011

F/M, Gen, Relena Peacecraft/Heero Yuy, Relena Peacecraft & Heero Yuy

Heero Yuy, Relena Peacecraft

General Audiences, No Archive Warnings Apply, Snow, Fluff, Post-Canon, Post-Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz

Heavy snow cancels Relena's work obligations, leaving her a few stolen hours to spend with Heero.

Fandom Discourse:

@invisibleenemy

https://gwgrrl.neocities.org

I was missing the old Geocities Gundam Wing websites, so I made a site on neocities where I could promote my favorite GW fanfics, old and new. It's a labor of love for the authors who made this fandom what it was and is.

Calendar Events:

@gundamzine

Battle Scars and Kitchen Cabinets

Applicatons Open~ https://gundamzine.tumblr.com/post/705258971113619456/applications-are-open-to-apply-fill-in-the

Applications close on January 31st!

@gwcocktailfriday

Cocktail Fridays!

Post responses on Friday, during Happy Hour between 3 & 5 pm in your own timezone.

Here’s the prompt for Friday, January 13th! https://gwcocktailfriday.tumblr.com/post/705925777657610240/cocktail-friday-post-responses-on-friday-january

In need of prompts!

@thisweekingundamevents

Events Calendar https://thisweekingundamevents.tumblr.com/post/644080386309275648/events-calendar-update

If you are hosting an event currently, or are planning on one, hit us up with links and dates! We’ll add them to the Calendar and reblog your notices to get the word out!

GW Holiday Gift Exchange 2022

Rules https://thisweekingundamevents.tumblr.com/giftexchange

Posting has begun! January 8th and 14th!

[notmuchtoconceal]

Forgive me if I talk about Alain Delon’s face for a minute. In truth, it’s hard not to. Certainly, in the early years of his career, that visage was more than a face; it was an existential fact. The feline eyes, the elegant cheekbones, the mouth both delicate and full — Delon was often even prettier than his female co-stars, who themselves weren’t exactly chopped liver.

Filmmakers and audiences seemed to understand this, and that disruption — the transfer of onscreen physical beauty, and even vulnerability, to the male — created an exciting slipstream of ambiguity. In one of his first major roles, Christine (1958), Delon plays a womanizing Austrian second lieutenant who falls for Romy Schneider’s young singer, and he’s treated as a forlorn object of desire, caught between different women. When we first meet him, he’s ending a torrid love affair with a married baroness. He meets Schneider’s character when he’s asked to accompany a fellow officer on a date, and the two don’t immediately get along. Her desire, however, charms him and wins him over. (Delon’s onscreen persona, like Cary Grant’s, often had women pursuing him — not the other way around.) But it’s a doomed romance, as the baroness’s jealous husband soon enters the picture. The film plays off Delon’s fragility. He feels as if he’s perpetually on the edge of romantic disaster and even death. A reluctant Casanova; a moody, almost passive figure — it’s as though his physical appeal were somehow connected to his melancholy.

The beauty of the face creates a kind of shield. You can read into it sadness or cruelty or indifference. That’s not to say that Delon wasn’t a skilled actor. He was, but he also understood for much of his career that anything he did onscreen would be anchored to his physical beauty. In that sense, few directors used him as well as Jean-Pierre Melville, who cast Delon in three of his greatest policiers. In the now-iconic Le Samouraï (1967), he’s the pathologically quiet and patient hit man Jef Costello, who lives in monklike austerity and kills with surreal precision. The film’s story turns on a manhunt for Costello after his crime is witnessed by a nightclub piano player (Cathy Rosier). But she refuses to identify him. Not a word was exchanged between them — only a glance. In other words, she saw his face and couldn’t bear to see it harmed. This is the genius of Melville, of course, conveyed in glances and gestures: to turn the most elemental of impulses into the stuff of high drama.

Luchino Visconti, that great connoisseur of faces both male and female, also cast Delon in two of his greatest films, in two surprisingly physical parts. In Rocco and His Brothers (1960), the actor plays Rocco, the angelic working-class southern boxer who finds himself at odds with his elder bruiser brother, Simone (Renato Salvatori). The troubled and violent Simone has fallen out of favor and resents his younger sibling, who is both the better boxer and the better human. In one of this wild melodrama’s most agonizing scenes, the two men fight over the fate of the woman with whom they’re both involved. Rocco’s gentleness, his delicacy around his brother, has defined him for so much of the movie. Their fight — an extended, knock-down, drag-out affair — is brutal and cataclysmic. Watching Delon get hit, we want to yell out, “No! Not the face!” But what we really fear for is his soul. In Visconti’s world, these things are not unconnected.

In Visconti’s masterpiece, The Leopard (1963), Delon plays Tancredi, the dashing nephew of the Prince of Salina (Burt Lancaster), whose revolutionary exploits at the side of Italian independence leader Garibaldi planted the seeds of his family’s survival. Tancredi comes home a war hero, falls for the beautiful daughter (Claudia Cardinale) of a local politician, and soon becomes a solid member of the new upper-middle-class Establishment that will gradually replace the ossified Sicilian nobility. Visconti shoots Delon in the film’s first half as a force of nature, striding through the elegant, unchanging halls of his uncle’s villa; the other members of the family are usually sitting or standing still as if they’ve already been trapped by class and history. But Tancredi bounds through frames and rooms, charges with his horse through mountain passes, and drifts through the rooms of abandoned mansions. Thus Visconti represents a historical idea — the newfound social mobility that will do away with the old order — as a physical one, rooted in Delon’s freedom of movement and his cheerfully seductive glances.

Late in the film, speaking of Tancredi and his family’s past, Lancaster’s character muses, “There’s no need to tell you of the history of the house of Falconeri … My nephew’s fortune does not match the grandeur of his name. My brother-in-law was not what one calls a provident father. The sumptuousness of his life impaired my nephew’s inheritance. But Don Calogero, the result of all these troubles … is Tancredi … Perhaps it is impossible to be as distinguished, sensitive, and charming as Tancredi unless ancestors have squandered fortunes.”

It’s an interesting and moving little speech, and it speaks to the brilliance of Visconti’s casting, for so much of The Leopard turns on Tancredi’s singularity. The prince even dismisses his own daughter’s love for Tancredi; he understands that this young man is destined for greater things and that therefore he must have a more suitable wife. (Which he finds in Cardinale, another’60s avatar of divine onscreen beauty.) In Tancredi lies the survival of an entire class. Who better than Alain Delon — dashing and with a hint of growing aloofness — to represent a man of such multitudes?

Delon’s life had been an unusually harsh one before he was an actor. He had been abandoned by his parents at the age of 4, but they did, he later recalled, reappear in his life long enough to sign his papers for the French Army. As a result, he wound up fighting in Indochina in the 1950s. Before being discovered randomly at Cannes in 1956, he had been a butcher and a naval infantryman and had spent months in military jail before being dishonorably discharged. He never quite gave up his roughneck ways, even after achieving stardom. He enjoyed the company of mobsters and liked to talk about how much he enjoyed the company of mobsters. In 1969, he got entangled in a truly bizarre (and ultimately unresolved) sex-and-murder scandal regarding the extremely suspicious death of a former bodyguard. In later years, he gained a different kind of notoriety for his far-right views, which toned down the adoration some had for his earlier work; his lifetime-achievement award at the Cannes Film Festival in 2019 was met with protests. It recently emerged that before he died, the 88-year-old Delon requested that his dog be euthanized and buried with him — a crazy demand that the actor’s family wisely chose not to honor.

Still, Delon’s retrograde politics didn’t seem to stop new generations from rediscovering the sublime work he did with Melville or some of the brilliant thrillers he made with the likes of René Clément (including 1960’s Purple Noon, still the best adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley) and Jacques Deray (in particular 1969’s The Swimming Pool, which became a major repertory hit Stateside in the plague-damaged year of 2021).

Perhaps Delon welcomed the fact that all his tough-guy posturing tempered the almost-feminine quality of his image. Maybe that’s why he wasn’t particularly interested in hanging on to that image as he grew older, allowing instead the jowls and the wrinkles to settle in naturally and gracefully in later years. In the 1970s and ’80s, he seemed to even relish playing parts that allowed him to be somewhat ordinary. In José Giovanni’s Two Men in Town (1973), he plays an ex-con who is rehabilitated and mentored by a prison counselor played by Jean Gabin as he enters the real world and tries to make an honest living. “Have you seen his eyes?” a prison official asks Gabin early in the film, noting that all he sees in the Delon character’s face is “hatred and contempt.” “Yes, but there’s tenderness there as well,” Gabin responds. It’s hard not to feel as though the whole exchange symbolizes the effect of Delon’s presence, the sense that, in it, you can simultaneously read both cruelty and vulnerability — and the further sense that if both of these forces can exist in the same face, then maybe they’re not so different after all.

[georgefairbrother]

Cathy Come Home, starring Carol White and Ray Brooks, was a BBC one-off drama from their anthology series, Wednesday Play, and was first broadcast on November 16th, 1966. 

Watched by 12 million people, around one quarter of the British population at that time, it demonstrated how a young, hard working family could, through misfortune and circumstance, find themselves homeless and forcibly separated by the authorities.

According to writer Jeremy Sandford, around 4000 children per year were being taken into care due to homelessness. A crisis of urban housing availability still existed due, in part, to the legacy of World War Two bomb damage.

Although widely seen as one of the most influential programmes of all time, director Ken Loach has since downplayed the effect it had. One positive aspect was that, following the broadcast, the policy of separating families seeking emergency accommodation was relaxed, allowing fathers to stay with their wives and children.

Carol White, who played the title role of Cathy, passed away in 1991 at the age of 48.

The producer of Cathy Come Home was Tony Garnett (1936-2020), whose other credits included classic working-class and socially conscious television drama including The Price of Coal and Days of Hope, and for the cinema, Kes (1969), also directed by Ken Loach, which fellow filmmaker Michael Apted once described as the finest British film since World War Two. Both Ken Loach and Tony Garnett did not attempt to moderate regional dialect, to the point where United Artists wanted to subtitle Kes for US distribution.

Tony Garnett was also credited as story editor on Up The Junction (BBC Wednesday Play 1965), which graphically confronts the issue of what was referred to as ‘backstreet abortions’, which actually mirrored Tony Garnett’s own traumatic family experience, of which he spoke openly during interviews in his later years.

[cabezadeperro]

Since you mentioned it: codywan, 4?

hi!!!!!! thanks for asking for codywan lmao

the song was the touch by cathy davey. canon compliant, missing scene during the war, 560w.

Leave that withered hollow shell to tell of the touch / Split the sky in two for you and me / Lay the stars and the moon at our feet / Now I float through all the eternity with the touch

The air inside the tent is cold and damp. It smells of mildew and blaster discharge, of sour old sweat and blood, of bacta and burnt plasteel. 

The general’s hand is very warm and very broad where it’s wrapped around Cody’s shoulder, his calloused fingers gentle around the bruised muscle, his fingertips rough where they brush Cody’s collarbone. 

Cody can sense his breath on the back of his neck, on his spine, warm and wet on his pebbled skin. The tent shudders again, the wind rolling in and slipping inside through unseen seams and cracks, and Cody shivers, suddenly cold.

“I’m almost done,” the general says distractedly. He’s sitting behind Cody on his cot, his robe and his outer layer on his own, on the other side of the small tent. He’s barefoot despite the cold, and his feet are grimy and pale where they rest on the tarp on the ground. 

He knows what he’s doing, but Cody rolls his eyes anyway at the wall in front of him. The dermal mender is so hot it almost burns against the gash on his back, and he ignores the familiar sharp pain with the ease of practice, keeping his limbs relaxed and his back straight. 

“I could have gone to the med tent,” he reminds the general, voice bland. When the general scoffs, Cody can feel it on the back of his head, on the skin on the back of his neck. 

The general hums. He drops the mender on the bed and flaps a hand in front of Cody. “Patch, please?”

Cody rolls his eyes again and hands him a bacta bandage, still in its foil package, the material crinkling softly in the quiet. 

“Thank you, commander,” Kenobi replies. Cody closes his eyes and lets his head drop when those big, sure hands of his return to his back, touch familiar and reassuring and intoxicating. One last touch to Cody’s back, to the back of his neck, and the general leans away. His hand remains on Cody’s back. “There. Done.”

Cody blinks his eyes open. He doesn’t sigh, doesn’t reach out. He glances at his general over his shoulder, the motion pulling at the bruises on his ribs, at the new skin on his back.

Kenobi’s staring at him, a thoughtful furrow between his pale brows. In the low light of the tent, his pale eyes look darker, murky blue. He’s grimy and he looks exhausted. There’s a cut on his cheekbone, a bruise on his forehead, dark circles under his eyes, and he stinks almost as much as Cody, sour sweat and mud and other people’s blood. 

He’s not wearing his outer robes, and after a year and change the sight is familiar, but Cody finds himself following the line of his broad shoulders with his eyes, focusing on the way the shadows play in the hollow of his throat, on the way his patchy, dry lips move when he smiles, knowing himself watched in return. 

Cody blinks and swallows, and the general clears his throat, removes his hand from Cody’s back, and they finish getting ready to sleep in silence. Cody zips up his blacks, checks his comm, and if he falls asleep thinking about the weight of his general’s hand on his back, of his fingers on his collarbone, well. 

That’s between him and his nightmares.

[so-true-jestie]

don't lose ur headcanon: six for six

a collation of random HCs from my fics

lina: messy eater, won’t back down from a bet, eats green peas with sugar. once gave everyone ugly christmas socks and gave anne the ugliest pair. does movie marathons. her paella will knock your socks off.

anne: sleeps with a nightlight, in charge of paying the bills. generally hates coffee but will tolerate macchiato. tried to apply memes to daily life but gave up. loves paramore. owns a copy of the complete poems of keats.

jane: gardens in her window box, has the worst temper. makes broiled salmon. in charge of first aid. babysits the neighbourhood kids. texts paragraphs to anne.

anna: dances jazz, works at pret a manger. reads the morning papers over coffee, can keep a secret. watches star wars. dislikes looking in mirrors.

kitty: huge fan of fast & furious, prefers animals to children, works at a florist. doesn’t understand how compasses work. steals anne’s biker jacket. prefers gelato to sorbet.

cathy: obsessed with the solar system, sleeps in the latest, can lip read. will take selfies on your phone if left unsupervised. tries to understand the economy. has a flair for the overdramatic.

[maulthots]

Learned the other day that one of the requirements for becoming a Jedi master is to graduate a Padawan to knight. This means, we can gleefully retcon, that part of the reason Anakin was so keyed up in rots is that, not only did the Jedi kick out his Padawan who he was attached to (tsk tsk), but now he also has to start over with another little 14 year old, and this has seriously disrupted his vision board.

[thegeminisage]

STAR TREK UPDATE TIME. quick fast im in a hurry. last night we watched tng's "the chase" and ds9's "the storyteller"

the chase (tng):

this episode didn't commit any major crimes (aside from picard disobeying orders to go on an archaeology hunt - kirk took disobeying even trivial orders so seriously he only did so to save spock's life and was certain his would end his career over it...ANYWAY)

however it was. very. boring

wait sorry i just remembered yes it did commit a crime. aside from that other thing. we're all humanoids bc of that bald lady's alien race seeding us on every planet they could find? isn't that kind of violating the prime directive? like yes ik they didn't have that back then but to let no life develop naturally...we all got grown out of test tubes or something?

to be honest, i might not have been following the plot of that episode wholly i was playing ch*ss on my phone with catherine. cathy, if you're reading this, it's your turn.

i also maybe played a game of solitaire or two...it was REALLY boring

credit where credit is due though because i strive to be as fair as i possibly can with tng: i did out loud laugh when the romulans showed up. we got cardassians, we got klingons, then we got romulans. everyone is here! JUST like super smash bros

really lame they didnt let that girl cardassian talk to beverly though. i think beverly is seriously bicurious and as we know all cardassians are gay so maybe that lady could have fixed her and it's lesophobia that she didn't

i also notice that two-timing mf picard is back to sharing breakfasts with beverly. smh. girl i would MAKE you breakfast. i could be a better man than him. all he did was leave you high and dry with the affair baby

actually, i did feel pretty bad for picard initially when his old teacher (who picard said was "like a father that understood me") was like, if you don't drop your entire job and career right now this instant and go to me i will leave your ship early and run straight into a photon torpedo and it will be ALLL your fault. bye forever! like, what a bitch. then he did something to ruin it pretty much immediately but i don't remember what because i was looking at my phone.

the storyteller (ds9):

CHARMING. absolutely charming start to finish. i fucking loved it

here's the thing about ds9. the plot of this episode fucking sucked ass, but i don't mind in the least because the characters are all so good and actually get to do stuff and form bonds with each other! wild how that works!

like, "we have to defeat a made-up cloud with the power of positive thinking so we don't all go to war?" girl, what on earth. but it literally doesn't matter because it's just an excuse for o'brien to be longsuffering and julian bashir to be most delightfully cringefail twink that ever existed and then do whatever it is together that they do. SURPRISING chemistry from those two. i know they wind up being besties later and i CANNOT wait

like, that guy was like "who can i pick to replace me...not this stupid airhead twink, are you kidding me? bring me the irishman." real.

the b plot of this also sucked. "jake and nog harass a teenage tribe leader because nog thinks she's cute" sounds bad But Actually. i like jake and nog hanging out a lot, i've grown quite fond of them, and the girl wound up needing a little outside perspective due to inexperience/was probably perfectly capable of getting rid of them had she wanted to

plus, it was an excuse for jake to be like my dad is a GREAT dad and then to have mister great dad tell jake and nog they were gonna clean that oatmeal off the walls with a fucking toothbrush

also. as a brand new odo stan i admit i was in considerable distress when they talked about stealing his bucket. but. i also really really really wanted to see the bucket. and he caught them anyway :')

him telling them to stop dangling and then they get up and immediately sit back down when he leaves and also he smiles at them when they aren't looking :')))

i think odo would be great with kids. absolutely he wants nothing to do with kids but he'd be great with them.

anyway, wonderful episode. i cant believe letswatchstartrek gave it a 2, what's wrong with them

TONIGHT: tng's frame of mind, which i have been looking forward to for MONTHS. i know it's gonna be good. i KNOW it is!!!

[britesparc]

Weekend Top Ten #498

Top Ten Movie Cameos

The first time I think I ever noticed someone cameoing in a movie was Steven Spielberg. I was watching The Blues Brothers, and there was this guy, who I was sure was Mr. The Berg. I must have seen him in some behind-the-scenes something or the other. But he was a director, not an actor, so it couldn’t have been him, right? Then years later I was reading Empire, and sure enough, I was vindicated. It was indeed the play mountain himself. But more on that later.

So, cameos, then. What is a cameo? Now, in my opinion, I think it really has to be small. Really, it should just be one scene – or even one shot. The smaller the better. I’ve seen people online refer to Judi Dench in Shakespeare in Love or Tom Cruise in Tropic Thunder as cameos, which is very, very daft, as those are clearly supporting roles – even if they are quite small (and remember, Dench didn’t win her Oscar for “Best Cameo”, she won it for “We Meant To Give You This Last Year”, which is a very important category in the Oscars). I also think the best cameos should be unexpected; a nice surprising treat. And usually they’re funny – the incongruity of seeing that person in this film. Because that’s the other thing: for a cameo to really work, the person cameoing has to be kinda famous. For instance, some might say that Ashley Johnson in The Avengers is a cameo, but whilst she’s obviously awesome and prodigiously talented, I don’t think she’s instantly recognisable enough (which, y’know, she’s mostly famous as a voice actor); also there’s nothing inherently funny or surprising about her role, she’s a waitress who’s saved by Captain America. It doesn’t feel like it’s saying anything to have Johnson play that role, other than I guess Joss Whedon wanted her in the movie (it’s actually funnier that her brief scene is referenced in Loki, because Kate Herron had the whole of the MCU to draw from in a montage, but chose to use an unknown character who’s in one tiny bit of one film, entirely because she’s a huge fan of The Last of Us – see, that is arguably a cameo).

So my rationale for what is and isn’t a cameo might seem complex or even arbitrary, but when has that stopped me in the past? And so, with no further ado, we now get deep into the weeds of it and celebrate my favourite movie cameos of all time. Oh, and there’s no Bill Murray here; I know, I know, it’s a really famous cameo, but, er, I’ve never seen Zombieland. Sorry.

Stan Lee in Pretty Much Everything (2000-2019): I mean, who else? The absolute King of Cameos. Lee was a massive publicity hound all his life, and passed up no opportunity to get in front of the camera, so once big, proper movies were being made of his comics, he was right there, selling hot dogs in X-Men (2000), rescuing children in Spider-Man (2002), and then right through every MCU film until his sad death in 2019 (and even popping up in Teen Titans!). Hearing him tell Miles Morales “I'm going to miss him,” in Into the Spider-Verse chokes me up every time.

Carrie Fisher & George Lucas in Hook (1991): this has always been one of my favourites because unlike virtually every other entry in this list, you only know this if you’ve been told. But it’s funny and it’s sweet. When Tinkerbell takes Peter to Neverland, she flies over a bridge, where a silhouetted couple are seen canoodling. Her pixie dust falls across them, and they begin to float into the air. And apparently the unrecognisable couple are played by Princess Leia and the director of Star Wars. Which, I think you’ll agree, is pretty cool (Hook is really good for cameos).

Brad Pitt in Deadpool 2 (2018): having an invisible character offers plenty of opportunity for some good gags, especially in a Deadpool movie, but the real laugh in the film comes when the Vanisher is electrocuted and we get to see his face for a split second. And – ha – it turns out to be the hugely mega-famous Brad Pitt. It’s funny because he’s a massive star.

Martin Sheen in Hot Shots! Part Deux (1993): it’s one thing for the movie to do an Apocalypse Now gag, as Charlie Sheen’s Topper Harley sails down a river on a military boat, but hanging a lampshade on it by making it cross over with Martin Sheen’s Willard from the classic seventies Vietnam epic is another thing entirely. And then both actors notice each other – ha, funny, they’re father and son in real life – and say in unison, “I loved you in Wall Street!”. Very on-the-nose all the funnier for it.

Steven Spielberg in The Blues Brothers (1980): well, I mentioned him, and here he is, a totally nonplussed-looking administrator bloke just merrily eating a sandwich. He’s frightfully young (I’m guessing he was probably about 32 or 33) and he’s got a big brown tache instead of his usual ‘Berg Beard, he’s dressed very smartly and he’s awfully polite. His demeanour is hilariously in stark contrast to the mayhem around him, and his public persona is also hilariously in contrast to the raucous and ribald mood of the movie.

Cate Blanchett in Hot Fuzz (2007): this is one I didn’t even notice till I read about it after seeing the movie. In a very funny scene where Simon Pegg’s Nick Angel chats to his ex-girlfriend Janine, she is head-to-toe in forensic gear throughout, with a mask covering her face, so all we see are her eyes. But the gag of it is, she’s played by the phenomenally famous Cate Blanchett. You get a megastar to do one scene but make her unrecognisable. So funny it beats Peter Jackson’s evil Santa.

Don Ameche & Ralph Bellamy in Coming to America (1988): this is another one I remember finding hilarious when I was a kid. Walking down the street late at night with love interest Lisa (Shari Headley), Akeem (Eddie Murphy) nonchalantly gives a huge wad of cash to some poor homeless bums. But it turns out that they’re played by Murphy’s old Trading Places co-stars Ameche and Bellamy – and they refer to each other by their character names from that earlier film. “We’re back!” declares Ameche, referencing the end of Trading Places, when their crooked broker characters were defeated and ruined by Murphy and Dan Aykroyd. It’s a great bit of shared-universe tomfoolery, and very funny for fans of Murphy’s movies. Oh, and speaking of Aykroyd…

Dan Aykroyd in Casper (1995): in 1995 it had been six long, bitter years without a new Ghostbusters film; back then, we could still hold out hope for a proper Ghostbuster 3. Sadly that never came to pass, but it was a very pleasant surprise when Ray Stantz himself popped up in Casper, of all things, fearfully running out of Whipstaff Manor in full ghostbusting regalia and declaring, “Who ya gonna call? Someone else!”. I mean, after facing down Gozer and Vigo and who knows what else, you’d think three sarcastic arsehole ghosts would be no match for him, but maybe the ‘busters were having tough times. Maybe this will all be backstory in Ghostbusters: Afterlife. Maybe Cathy Moriarty and Eric Idle will return the favour and do cameos of their own. We can but hope.

Matt Damon, Luke Hemsworth, & Sam Neill in Thor: Ragnarok (2017): twenty years ago you could point to Goldmember as the, er, gold standard in multi-character cameo pile-ups. And while that is great – Danny DeVito giving the finger, Spielberg back-flipping – I think it’s been surpassed by this minor gaggle of stars hamming it up. Matt Damon – famouser than anyone actually billed in the movie – is An Actor Playing Loki. Dr. Alan Grant from Jurassic Park is An Actor Playing Odin (whilst Odin’s actor, Anthony Hopkins, plays Tom Hiddleston playing Loki playing Odin – do keep up), and Thor’s Real-Life Brother plays An Actor Playing Thor. It’s all delightfully meta and hilarious.

Ollie Johnston & Frank Thomas in The Incredibles (2004): this one’s really sweet, and like the Hook cameo, would very easily slip you by. At the end of the film, after the climactic battle, two old men cheer on the superheroes – “That’s old school!” “Yep, no school like the old school!” – but what’s great is that they’re voiced by – and designed to look like – Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas, the last two surviving members of the famous “Nine Old Men” group of Disney animators, who’d worked on many of the classic Disney films. This was Pixar and director Brad Bird giving a tip of the hat to the legends who came before them, and made all the sweeter by the fact that Johnston and Thomas (both sadly now deceased) were absolute best buds in real life. A cameo that educates and makes you think! How nice!

There you go. Sadly no room for any of the many great Star Wars cameos, from Daniel Craig through to George Lucas’ entire family. Oh well!

[thisweekingundamwing]

This Week in Gundam Wing (December 26, 2021 - January 1, 2022)

@incorrectgundamwingquotes still Welcome to the near year Gundam Wing family!  Here’s some good stuff for all of you!  

--Mod LAM

PS: don’t forget to send us your stuff directly!  Tumblr is as Tumblr does, which means we miss stuff in the tags. :(  We want to make sure all you awesome creators get time in the spotlight!

Fanfiction

The Life of the Immortal Jellyfish (CH. 35/35!!) by @lemontrash

Characters: 5 pilots + Relena, Hilde, Sally, Noin, Une

Pairing: Duo x Wufei

Rating: EXPLICIT

Tags / Warnings: post-canon, post-Endless Waltz, insomnia, PTSD,  developing relationships, canon-type violence, grief/mourning, UST, friends to lovers

Summary:  Is it chance that lands Duo and Wufei in the same university dorm room? They’re not stupid enough to believe that but too tired to fight it. Duo’s dragged himself back from the brink of going too far and remains teetering on the edge while Wufei’s doggedly trying to prove himself to the ‘good guys’ in the aftermath of the Eve Wars. Sleep and normalcy eludes them both. As they become increasingly aware how damaged they are, they start to edge towards friendship, or something more, but all too soon the peace seems jeopardised by a new and manipulative threat.

a living fire (to lighten the darkness) (CH.7/8) by @gemstonecircles

Characters: 5 pilots + Relena, Hilde, Howard, Sally, Mariemaia, Une, Mareen Darlian

Pairing: Heero x Relena, Duo x Hilde, Trowa x Quatre

Rating: EXPLICIT

Tags / Warnings: graphic depictions of violence, death, corpses; PTSD, trauma, survivor’s guilt, post-canon, post-Endless Waltz, angst, injuries, sexual situations, and then some

Summary: In AC 219, when Liam begins his internship at the Noventa Memorial Earth Sphere Central Libraries and Archives, he finds his supervisor, Heero Yuy, both strange and a bit frightening. He has no idea what the past 25 years have been like.

Many Happy Returns by @expewrites for @deathscythehell​

Characters: Duo, Quatre

Pairing: Duo x Quatre

Rating: Teen and Up

Tags / Warnings: fluff, drinking, new years eve, developing relationship

Summary:  In which Duo has a plan to spring Quatre from his boring New Year's Eve office party, and they share the spoils—plus a little more.

Title by Author Characters: Pairing: Rating: Tags / Warnings: Summary: 

Title by Author Characters: Pairing: Rating: Tags / Warnings: Summary: 

Title by Author Characters: Pairing: Rating: Tags / Warnings: Summary: 

Fanart

Christmas Heero and Relena by @alphaikaros

Happy Holidays from Treize and Zechs by @noromax​

New Year Heero and Relena by @noromax​

New Year Heero and Relena by @gemstonecircles

Chilly Winter Heero and Relena by @gemstonecircles

Cathy-centric comic featuring Dorothy and Quatre by @2pcbart for @a-special-unicorn

Other Fanwork

Gunpla and Cosplay

Deathscythe by @erika-mr​

Other Fun Stuff

@janaverse continues to post screencaps of their GW Sims, so be sure to check them out!

@utamonogatari continues to share some awesome screenshots from the show. Be sure to check out their tag.

@incorrectgundamwingquotes still making us giggle.  Some examples:

Relena staging an intervention

Love is Contagious

Trowa knows what buttons to push

Understanding Donald Duck (with @lemontrash)

‘babe’ but like platonically... from @gemstonecircles

GW Shitposts by @vivi-mire

Discord Bot silliness by @helmistress

Duo plays third wheel again by @a-river-of-stars

An Endless Waltz Throuple by @tennyboo

Nun’s don’t work on Sundays by @the-reanimated-bhg

Yee Olde Memes from @the-reanimated-bhg

Calendar Events

@gwcocktailfriday is welcoming the new year with this week’s prompt.  Post your responses on Friday (January 7) between 3-5PM EST!

The 2021 Holiday Gift Exchange with @thisweekingundamevents is wrapping up!  Posts will go live between January 10-16, so keep an eye out!

The so-called “Big Gundam Server” is hosting the year’s first server meet-up on January 29-30.  Be sure to watch @lifeaftermeteor​ for more info. 

[introvertguide]

The Best Years of Our Lives (1946); AFI #37

The next film on the AFI list is the epic drama, directed by William Wyler, about the men coming home to their families after WW2, The Best Years of Our Lives (1946). The timing on the films\ was perfect to help families deal with the struggles of returning war veterans. It deals with unfaithful partners, loving partners who have to learn to except injuries of their loved ones, and families who have made a life out of being without a father in the household and nobody is quite sure how to proceed. The movie was nominated for 8 Oscars and took home 7 of them including Best Picture and Best Director. Harold Russel won Best Supporting Actor as well as a special award for encouraging fellow veterans. Mr. Russel was the only actor to ever win two acting awards for the same role in the same year. There is more to be said about the actors and the story, but it seems now is a good time to go over the plot of the film. This, of course, involves...

SPOILER ALERT!!! WHAT HAPPENS IN THIS FILM IS NO BIG SURPRISE, BUT I WOULD STILL RECOMMEND WATCHING IT FIRST AND THEN COMING BACK AFTER TO READ THE REVIEW!!!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

The plot follows the lives of three veterans returning from service at the end of World War II to the fictional midwestern town of Boone City: USAAF bombardier Fred Derry (Dana Andrews), naval petty officer Homer Parrish (Harold Russel), and platoon sergeant Al Stephenson (Fredric March). Before their respective military service, Fred was a soda jerk who married Marie (Virginia Mayo) shortly before shipping out. Al was a banker living with his wife Millie (Myrna Loy), adult daughter Peggy (Teresa Wright) and teen-aged son Rob. Homer was a star high school athlete living with his parents and sister, next door to his girlfriend, Wilma (Cathy O'Donnell). Homer lost both hands during the war and returns with mechanical hook prostheses.

Each man faces challenges integrating back into post-war society. Homer deals with the adjustments he and his family and Wilma face in light of his disability. Al's penchant for alcohol and the adjustments of returning to the banking business cause tension with his family and business associates. Fred, who experiences flashbacks of his bombing raids, becomes frustrated with the wife he barely knows and an employer who fails to appreciate him, and who eventually fires him when Fred punches a man in defense of Homer. Fred and Peggy become attracted to each other which puts the married Fred and Al at odds. Fred eventually leaves his cheating wife, and with no seeming future in Boone City, he decides to catch the next plane out. At the airport, Fred visits an aircraft boneyard and has another flashback. He is roused by a work crew boss who agrees to hire Fred to help disassemble the war planes for prefabricated housing material. Now divorced, Fred serves as best man at the wedding of Homer and Wilma, where he sees Peggy and they reunite.

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I have watched this film 4 times in the last 6 weeks because I kept meaning to do the review and then something happened. I had a move out of state, my dad was sick, I got a sudden group of students...it has been interesting. It has allowed my to really digest what this film is all about. A couple things that surprised me are how the women play all the tough characters, which was very abnormal for the time. Fred plays second fiddle to a cheating wife. Al tries to get his family to go out on the town. Homer doesn't want to talk about what is bothering him while Wilma shows undying love and loyalty. All of the men's roles basically described how Old Hollywood expected women to act at the time.

Let's go into depth with the characters a little more. Fred is having some kind of PTSD issue caused by seeing a man burned in a bomber. He apparently saved a bunch of men, but his memories still haunt him. He married a gold digger that loves a man in uniform before he left and she turns out to be a dud. He falls for Peggy Stevenson, daughter of one of the men he met on the plane home. He moves in too early and gets told off by her dad but his garbage wife divorces him and he goes back for Peggy. A lot of men got married right before leaving and returned to a wife they didn't really know. This was a real and present danger at the time this film came out and it was brave of them to address it so head on.

Al was the big man around the house and made all of the money for the family and his wife and children basically served him before the war. Al went off and became a sergeant so he became used to people doing what he said. He returned to a family that had learned to get by without him and had their own life so he is at a loss of what his place is in the family so he just gets drunk to cover up the awkwardness. His wife, Millie, and his daughter, Peggy, have angelic patience with the unsure man of the family and help him find his place again. This aspect of the movie was more about the strong women of the family although Fredric March was the one who received an Oscar for his performance.

Homer is the character I think most people remember about this movie because he was missing his hands. He was afraid to see his girlfriend and family because of the hooks that replaced his hands might be frightening. It did take some getting used to, but his girl seemed to love him just the same. Homer seemed to think that she would not like him anymore because he couldn't do all of things he could before. He had a little difficulty with tone because he would go from demanding independence one minute to wallowing in self pity the next. What is so good about the film and the character is that injured veterans tend to go through the stages of grief over the loss of a limb or motor function of a limb. It is likely that he would be all over the spectrum emotionally.

There were quite a few racial slurs about the Japanese people because there were very hard feelings for the bombing of Pearl Harbor, especially from the Navy and Air Force. It is a little hard to listen to today, but it does convey they American sentiment of the time. It also makes sense that you really have to hate somebody to want to fight and kill them, so I understand why all of the these characters would feel that way about people from that country.

Some of the scenes were a little uncomfortable to watch because awkward feelings about returning home and fitting back in with their families and society is not a comfortable subject. Al was especially hard for me to watch because he tried to hide his feelings with copious amounts of drinking. His first night back when he hit on his wife thinking she was somebody else and when he made a speech at his company's "welcome home" party both stand out as especially cringy.

So does this film belong on the AFI top 100? Of course it does. It is multi award winning and gives the viewer a feel for that moment in time right after WW2 when all the military people were coming home. Would I recommend it? Yes. It is one of the few movies of the time period that weren't touting America's superiority and instead focused on the toll that going to war took on the people who fought and those waiting back home. It is quite a long film with some cringy moments, but it is well worth it and very memorable.

[bitchme-2]

The Queens Are Nerds

All the Queens have fairly nerdy things that they have come to enjoy in their new lives.

Catalina and Anna both love Game of Thrones and won’t watch an episode without the other. Catalina like the strategy, plots, and drama while Anna seems to enjoy the fantasy and violence. They share theories with each other and really bond over it. NO ONE interrupts them when they’re watching it. Anne learned that lesson the hard way.

Anne has become enthralled with video games and even streams sometimes. She plays a bit of everything from Animal Crossing to Dark Souls. Seriously, you name it, Zelda, Doom, Hollow Knight, Among Us, Portals, Mortal Combat. Her favorite so far is The Last of Us. She has a fairly large following on Twitch.

Everyone in the house saw the Star Wars movies but Jane took a particular fascination to them and even knitted a few Star Wars themed sweaters. She loves the particularly cute aliens and funny droids. She has a crush on both young Obi Wan and Padme (who might remind her a bit of Catalina).

Kat is a huge history buff and reads everything and anything not only about during the time they were dead, but also before they were alive. She has so much trivia and fun facts memorized. It’s not suprising when she becomes a huge fan of Doctor Who. (She gets Jane to knit her the 4th doctor’s scarf). She also loves Disney movies.

Cathy is a writer and avid reader. She reads any literature she can, fiction and non-fiction, whether it’s old or new, bad or good. Once, her laptop got a bug which hindered her writing and, in the process of getting it fixed, she somehow also found a love for coding. Her biggest, nerdiest obsession is D&D because of the combination of storytelling, rules, and math. Yes, she watches Critical Role. Yes, she gets the other Queens to start a campaign where she DMs.

Kat and Cathy tend to info dump about their latest obsession, and their respective girlfriends (along with other queens) are always happy to listen.

[sylvie-writes]

Are You Worthy?

Part 2 of Getting Ready

Disclaimer: Some of the events may be out of order or removed but it’s for the purpose of the story

Warnings: mentions of alcohol. any screw ups in spelling or grammar.  

I just found out that I screwed up the timeline... but this is fanfcition... so just please ignore that huge plot hole that i’ve just created. 

Loosely edited. I will fully check over it this week, my loves. 

Sorry about the end. It’s midnight and i’m too tired to write a whole ass scene. 

Enjoy!

The drive to the compound was a little over twenty minutes, the late night traffic of Brooklyn lightly flooding the roads. Sarah was in the back seat, strapped in her car seat joyously maundering about making new friends tonight. That child was a social butterfly, never really understanding the stranger-danger rule, one you and Steve often tried to implement into her impressionable mind. Steve looked into the rearview mirror, shooting the mini chatty cathy a large smile. 

Arriving at the event, ponds of cars littered the street, valet attendants frantically rushing around to the lineup of many pretentious cars. Once a valet had taken your car, Steve stepped out, first helping you from the passenger seat and then unbuckling Sarah. All three Rogers casually strolled into the multi-level tower, its height unfathomable. Heading to the back elevators, which weren’t crowded, for you all knew the compound layout better than most of the guests. Sarah’s hands held your’s and Steve’s as she was sandwiched between the two of you, yet happily swinging her parents’ hands with her own.

Sam immediately greeted you, Steve and Sarah, quickly inviting you all over for a friendly game of pool with some older gentlemen. Of course, since Sarah was only three, she couldn't play pool and instead joyously watched as the billiard balls fell into the pockets, only piquing her interest as she wondered where the pockets led to. You and Steve decided to share one cue stick, each shooting while the other held Sarah, who babbled to the parent holding her at that time. 

About halfway through the game, Steve had noticed you were shivering just a smidge. He swiftly laid the cue stick against the pool table as it wasn't his turn anyway. Taking off the leather jacket, Steve wrapped it around your shoulders, prompting you to turn your attention and body back towards the pool table and him.

“You scared me, Rogers.” You jocosely squinted at the man then handing Sarah over so you could properly wear the oversized leather jacket. The pleasant and familiar cologne wrapped around your body as if it were a warm and securing hug. By the time you had finished your mini conversation with Steve it was your turn to play pool, Sarah preciously becoming your cheerleader. 

Steve had ventured off with Sam while you and Sarah had ended up with Tony, Thor and Maria, painfully listening to Rhodey’s recollection of his time as the War Machine. 

“Well, you know the suit can take the weight. So I take the tank, fly it right up to the General’s Palace, drop it at his feet, and I’m like BOOM, you looking for this?” 

Tony and Thor just looked at Rhodey with an unamused look while Sarah giggled at the story, not really understanding but laughing at the funny voice he had used. Reiterating himself, Rhodey repeated the story in hopes of getting a better reaction from his crowd. 

“Boom. Are you looking- why do I even talk to you guys? Everywhere else that story kills.”

The disappointed man turns to face you, his hand up, expecting a high five. You just look at him before laughing and shaking your head, while Sarah glady gives Rhodey her hand in place of yours. 

“Well that's the whole story?”

Rhodey turned back to Thor with a mirthless expression.

“Yes, that’s the War Machine story.”

Thor turned to Tony, then back to Rhodey, laughing deeply and then responding with what you had assumed was sarcasm.

“Oh it’s very good then. It’s impressive!”

“Quality save.” 

Amused at Thor’s attempt, Rhodey then changed the subject, the conversation moving faster than Steve could run.

“Gentlemen, where are the ladies?” 

Maria’s simple question turned into a compliment battle between Tony and Thor. 

Sarah continued to giggle and out stretched her arms to the man beside you, a signal to hold her. Stopping your own laughter, you hand Sarah over to Rhodey who was just as giddy as the little girl in his arms.

“Go find your hubby!” Rhodey nudged you in the shoulder and you gave him and Sarah a quick hug before going your separate ways. You shot the two gloating men with a look of mock disappointment, bidding Maria a “good luck”, and then leaving at Rhodey’s wishes. 

“What happened to him?” You walked to stand beside Steve, watching as an older gentleman, drunkenly passed out, was being carried by two younger men. 

“This.” Steve brought the glass to your lips, a sour look tainting your face after just a small sip.

“My god, what is that?! It takes like fire!” A hearty chuckle left Steve as he pointed to Thor who was holding a small flask and doing shots with a group of men. 

Sarah was still with Tony, allowing you and Steve to go enjoy some time with each other. The two of you just stood on the balcony, your arms linked together as the stars brightly painted the sky. It had been a while since you and Steve had such a heartfelt conversation, both recalling old memories. Not only was the man linked beside you, your husband, but also your best friend. You and Steve have always shared everything with the other, whether it be tears or laughter. This man was literally the epitome of your everything. 

“Do you remember when you listened to a few of my vinyls for weeks just so you could learn the words?” 

Steve’s lips were on your head as he talked, leaving gentle kisses.

A chuckle left your mouth at the adorable yet embarrassing memory.

It was in the beginning of your relationship when you and Steve were just months into a relationship. Steve had always let you choose the music. He even learned how to use cd’s in a boombox, quite the change from vinyls and a record player. Well, one day, Steve had left for a mission, one you were not needed for. During the day that he was gone, you spent hours trying to figure out how to use his record player. When you finally did, that day all you listened to were the vinyls, engraving every word into your mind.  

“I couldn’t figure out how to play the vinyls.” A small pout wiggled onto your lips, one Steve kissed away then pulled from your face chuckling breathily. 

“Don’t laugh at your wife’s pain!”

“I’m not trying to! You are just so damn adorable. I see where Sarah gets it from.”

An hour later, you and Steve had parted ways and you were currently strolling over to the bar, a martini in mind, but when your daughter came bounding at you, hugging your leg, your plans for a drink changed.

“Hi, Mommy!” Unlatching the girl from your leg, you leaned down to pick her up, seeing Tony now staring at you with a look of relief. Sarah must’ve run from him at the sight of her mother. 

You waved Tony away, bidding him back to his conversation. 

“What are you doing, Mommy?” 

“I was just about to get a drink.” 

“Ohhh can I have one?”

After her request, you explained to her that some drinks were for adults. Martini long forgotten, you instead went to order a shirley temple to share with Sarah. At first she was confused since you had just explained that the drinks from the bar were for adults, but then you further told her some drinks were okay. Long story short, Sarah had just learned that she must ask you or Steve since you would both know what to order her.

Now done with the most confusing lesson you’ve ever taught Sarah, you continued your walk to the bar.

Natasha was behind the counter, currently pouring a drink for herself while she and Bruce returned some playful chatter. A few minutes passed and their conversation ended. Smirking, Nat left the flustered man with your husband, who had just shown up at the end of the counter for a beer himself.

“It’s nice.”

Bruce turned to look at Steve, genuinely confused, partly to Steve’s statement and then Natasha's flirting. 

“You and Romanoff.” 

Once all the pieces finally clicked in the clueless man’s head, he instantly denied the claims thrown his way. 

Deciding to finally join the conversation, you walked up beside Steve, who was happily surprised at your appearance, with Sarah on your hip. 

“Yeah, you both are adorable!” 

Poor Bruce was a ball of nerves not even able to form the words to repudiate your comment. 

“It’s okay, nobody’s breaking any bylaws.”

Sarah’s attention had now shifted from the mature conversation and to Thor who was a few feet away. The man was making funny faces at her, snickers ensuing. Tapping your shoulder politely, she then pointed to Thor and you set her down, watching her run away, never once peeling away your eyes until she made it into the safe hold of the man, who shot a thumbs up allowing you to return to Steve and Bruce’s conversation. 

“It’s just that she’s not the most… open person in the world, but with you she seems very relaxed.” 

“Agreed. You two are practically like Steve and I!” 

“No, Natasha, she just likes to flirt.” 

“I’ve seen her flirt. Up close. And this ain’t that.” Your husband reached for a beer, then holding his arm out for you. 

“Look, as maybe the world’s leading authority on waiting too long. Don’t. You both deserve a win.” 

Steve gave Bruce a heartening smile, waiting as you unlatched your arm from his. You placed a friendly peck on the man’s cheek before giving him some words of reassurance.

“Don’t underestimate your worth.” Bruce then gave you both a small meek smile, returning to his drink. 

“What do you mean up close!” You and Steve were already long gone yet still able to hear Bruce’s cry of befuddlement to which your husband smirked, causing you to scoldingly slap him on the chest.

“You're absolutely terrible, Grant.” 

As expected, Steve just laughed at your reprimand. Whenever you scolded him, it usually involved his middle name being crammed somewhere into your lengthy chide. Like a disciplined child, he’d listen pitifully. Most of the time you’d chastise him for his reckless nature, that scared you to death. Then he’d apologize a thousand times while planting kisses all over your face, making you giggle endlessly, certainly failing at keeping up the irritated facade.  

“Yet, you love me, doll.” Steve had somehow dragged you to the dance floor, pulling your flush to him as the song began. You brought your arms to his neck, noses touching as he proudly smiled down on you, slightly tightening his grip on your waist. The two of you swayed slowly, your lips connected softly. 

“I love you.”

“I love you too.” 

Once the song had finished it was replaced with an upbeat line dance to which you and Steve briskly rushed off the floor being met with Sarah who sat at a table with Natasha, cheering at you and Steve.

“Mommy, Daddy! That was omazing!” 

“Well, how about you and I go get some celebration cake for everyone!”

As any sane toddler, Sarah agreed to her father’s delectable plan. Steve plucked his daughter from Natasha’s lap, then taking yours and hers order. Once the two had left, you dived right into a conversation with Nat. The topic; Bruce.

Not too long after, the party ended and all Avengers then regrouped, tiredly surrounding the large coffee table covered in takeout and Thor’s hammer idly resting on the end. 

“But it’s a trickkkk.” Clint dragged out his statement to emphasize his belief, the little girl sitting beside you, smiling wider. 

“No. no. it’s much more than that.” Steve and Thor exchanged the flask as you stared at it, still revolted by its god-awful taste. 

“Ah, whosoever be he worthy shall haveth the power.” You leaned towards the table, reaching for the carton, laughing at Clint’s truthful reenactment. 

“Whatever man, it’s a trick!”

Arising a challenge, Thor pointed to Mjolnir. 

“Please, be my guest.” 

“Come on.”

“Really?” 

“Yeah.”

Clint got up from his seat on the ground, walking confidently towards the hammer as Tony let out a snarky remark.

“Clint, you’ve had a tough week, we won’t hold it against you if you can’t get it up.”

Laughter circled around as Clint came up to Thor, a promising look on his face.

“You know I’ve seen this before right?” 

With one hand, Clint attempted to pull the hammer, utilizing all his strength not an ounce unused. 

“I still don’t know how you do it.” 

“Smell the silent judgement?” Giggles escaped yours and Sarah’s lips as Steve turned to see his two best girls enjoying the amusement. 

“Please, Stark, by all means.” 

With arrogant poise, Stark raised from his seat, scooting to the table as you could picture his impending disappointment, already laughing at the mere thought. 

“Never one to shrink from an honest challenge.” 

Rolling up his sleeves, Tony placed his arm in the handle of the hammer.

“Right, so, if I lift it, I then rule Asgard?” 

“Yes, of course.” Thor calmly replied, just basking in the free entertainment from his competitive friends. You could see Steve who was beside him, trying his best to contain his laughter. Directing Sarah’s attention from Tony and to Steve, she held in her own laughter as you explained what was happening. 

“I will be reinstituting Prima Nocta.” To no surprise, the hammer didn’t budge leaving Tony quickly trying to cover his displeasure. 

Tony then returned with his suit’s hand, the hammer still resting on the table. Even Rhodey joined Tony’s unsuccessful conquest. 

“Are you even pulling?” 

“Are you on my team?”

“Just represent. Pull.” 

Next up was Bruce, who also failed, luckily not hulking out on everyone. Natasha gave him a smile while Steve and Thor tried to hide their merriment.  

After Bruce’s fruitless attempt, it soon became your husband’s turn. 

“Come on, Cap.” 

Steve then pulled on the hammer with all his brawn. You weren’t even sure if you were paying attention to the hammer anymore, too caught up on the shirt clinging to Steve. 

Your attention span was then proved when the hammer moved up. Sarah’s eyes widened as did yours. Thor had obviously noticed since you sensed some tensity from him. Steve tried once again, this time receiving the same futile result as the rest. When the hammer stopped budging you saw the now relieved man swiftly try to cover up his reaction. A nervous chuckle escaping his lips, echoing into the glass. 

“Nothing!” 

“Mrs. & lil Ms. Rogers?” Steve outstretched his hand to yours and Sarah’s, guiding you both towards the hammer. All three of you grabbed the hammer. Steve holding the handle while you and Sarah pulled at the stick. Everyone’s combined strength was enough to lift the hammer had it not been of otherworldly decent. Giving up, Sarah was just a smidge disappointed, perking back to herself at Tony’s quip.

“Even the House of Rogers failed too.” You shot Stark a faux look of vexation from the couch, to which he returned with his tongue poking out. Sarah caught this and then ran to him copying his action while you went to sit on Steve’s lap.

“And, Widow?”

Natasha sipped her beer and shook her head. 

“That’s not a question I need answered.” 

The night continued on with conspiracy theories about the hammer and playful jabs at Steve’s slip-up on his choice of words from the mission recently, Sarah enjoying every moment of the time albeit past her bedtime. 

At some point, Sarah had fallen asleep on your shoulder as you and Steve bid your fellow Avengers goodbye. 

Indeed, today has been one of the best days, all in part to your lovely family and closest friends. 

[ahouseoflies]

The Best Films of 2020

I can’t tell you anything novel or insightful about this year that has been stolen from our lives. I watched zero of these films in a theater, and I watched most of them half-asleep in moments that I stole from my children. Don’t worry, there are some jokes below.

GARBAGE

93. Capone (Josh Trank)- What is the point of this dinner theater trash? It takes place in the last year of Capone's life, when he was released from prison due to failing health and suffered a stroke in his Florida home. So it covers...none of the things that make Al Capone interesting? It's not historically accurate, which I have no problem with, but if you steer away from accuracy, then do something daring and exciting. Don't give me endless scenes of "Phonse"--as if the movie is running from the very person it's about--drawing bags of money that promise intrigue, then deliver nothing in return.

That being said, best "titular character shits himself" scene since The Judge.

92. Ammonite (Francis Lee)- I would say that this is the Antz to Portrait of a Lady on Fire's A Bug's Life, but it's actually more like the Cars 3 to Portrait of a Lady on Fire's Toy Story 1.

91. Ava (Tate Taylor)- Despite the mystery and inscrutability that usually surround assassins, what if we made a hitman movie but cared a lot about her personal life? Except neither the assassin stuff nor the family stuff is interesting?

90. Wonder Woman 1984 (Patty Jenkins)- What a miscalculation of what audiences loved about the first and wanted from the sequel. WW84 is silly and weightless in all of the ways that the first was elegant and confident. If the return of Pine is just a sort of phantom representation of Diana's desires, then why can he fly a real plane? If he is taking over another man's soul, then, uh, what ends up happening to that guy? For that matter, why is it not 1984 enough for Ronald Reagan to be president, but it is 1984 enough for the president to have so many Ronald Reagan signifiers that it's confusing? Why not just make a decision?

On paper, the me-first values of the '80s lend themselves to the monkey's paw wish logic of this plot. You could actually do something with the Star Wars program or the oil crisis. But not if the setting is played for only laughs and the screenplay explains only what it feels like.

89. Babyteeth (Shannon Murphy)- In this type of movie, there has to be a period of the Ben Mendelsohn character looking around befuddled about the new arrangement and going, "What's this now--he's going to be...living with us? The guy who tried to steal our medication? This is crazy!" But that's usually ten minutes, and in this movie it's an hour. I was so worn out by the end.

88. You Should Have Left (David Koepp)- David Koepp wrote Jurassic Park, so he's never going to hell, but how dare he start caring about his own mystery at the hour mark. There's a forty-five minute version of this movie that could get an extra star from me, and there's a three-hour version of Amanda Seyfried walking around in athleisure that would get four stars from me. What we actually get? No thanks.

87. Black Is King (Beyonce, et al.)- End your association with The Lion King, Bey. It has resulted in zero bops.

  ADMIRABLE FAILURES

86. Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (Cathy Yan)- There's nothing too dysfunctional in the storytelling or performances, but Birds of Prey also doesn't do a single thing well. I would prefer something alive and wild, even if it were flawed, to whatever tame belt-level formula this is.

85. The Turning (Floria Sigismondi)- This update of The Turn of the Screw pumps the age of Miles up to high school, which creates some horny creepiness that I liked. But the age of the character also prevents the ending of the novel from happening in favor of a truly terrible shrug. I began to think that all of the patience that the film showed earlier was just hesitance for its own awful ending.

I watched The Turning as a Mackenzie Davis Movie Star heat check, and while I'm not sure she has the magnetism I was looking for, she does have a great teacher voice, chastening but maternal.

84. Bloodshot (David Wilson)- A whole lot of Vin Diesel saying he's going to get revenge and kill a bunch of dudes; not a whole lot of Vin Diesel actually getting revenge and killing a bunch of dudes.

83. Downhill (Nat Faxon and Jim Rash)- I was an English major in college, which means I ended up locking myself into literary theories that, halfway through the writing of an essay, I realized were flawed. But rather than throw out the work that I had already proposed, I would just keep going and see if I could will the idea to success.

So let's say you have a theory that you can take Force Majeure by Ruben Ostlund, one of the best films of its year, and remake it so that its statement about familial anxiety could apply to Americans of the same age and class too...if it hadn't already. And maybe in the first paragraph you mess up by casting Will Ferrell and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, people we are conditioned to laugh at, when maybe this isn't that kind of comedy at all. Well, don't throw it away. You can quote more--fill up the pages that way--take an exact shot or scene from the original. Does that help? Maybe you can make the writing more vigorous and distinctive by adding a character. Is that going to make this baby stand out? Maybe you could make it more personal by adding a conclusion that is slightly more clever than the rest of the paper?

Or perhaps this is one you're just not going to get an A on.

82. Hillbilly Elegy (Ron Howard)- I watched this melodrama at my mother's encouragement, and, though I have been trying to pin down her taste for decades, I think her idea of a successful film just boils down to "a lot of stuff happens." So in that way, Ron Howard's loss is my gain, I guess.

There is no such thing as a "neutral Terminator."

81. Relic (Natalie Erika James)- The star of the film is Vanessa Cerne's set decoration, but the inert music and slow pace cancel out a house that seems neglected slowly over decades.

80. Buffaloed (Tanya Wexler)- Despite a breathless pace, Buffaloed can't quite congeal. In trying to split the difference between local color hijinks and Moneyballed treatise on debt collection, it doesn't commit enough to either one.

Especially since Zoey Deutch produced this one in addition to starring, I'm getting kind of worried about boo's taste. Lot of Two If by Seas; not enough While You Were Sleepings.

79. Like a Boss (Miguel Arteta)- I chuckled a few times at a game supporting cast that is doing heavy lifting. But Like a Boss is contrived from the premise itself--Yeah, what if people in their thirties fell out of friendship? Do y'all need a creative consultant?--to the escalation of most scenes--Why did they have to hide on the roof? Why do they have to jump into the pool?

The movie is lean, but that brevity hurts just as much as it helps. The screenplay knows which scenes are crucial to the development of the friendship, but all of those feel perfunctory, in a different gear from the setpieces.  

To pile on a bit: Studio comedies are so bare bones now that they look like Lifetime movies. Arteta brought Chuck & Buck to Sundance twenty years ago, and, shot on Mini-DV for $250,000, it was seen as a DIY call-to-bootstraps. I guarantee that has more setups and locations and shooting days than this.

78. Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga (David Dobkin)- Add Dan Stevens to the list of supporting players who have bodied Will Ferrell in his own movie--one that he cared enough to write himself.  

Like Downhill, Ferrell's other 2020 release, this isn't exactly bad. It's just workmanlike and, aside from the joke about Demi Lovato's "uninformed" ghost, frustratingly conventional.

77. The Traitor (Marco Bellochio)- Played with weary commitment by Pierfrancesco Favino, Tomasso Buscetta is "credited" as the first informant of La Cosa Nostra. And that sounds like an interesting subject for a "based on a true story" crime epic, right? Especially when you find out that Buscetta became a rat out of principle: He believed that the mafia to which he had pledged his life had lost its code to the point that it was a different organization altogether.  

At no point does Buscetta waver or even seem to struggle with his decision though, so what we get is less conflicted than that description might suggest. None of these Italian mob movies glorify the lifestyle, so I wasn't expecting that. But if the crime doesn't seem enticing, and snitching on the crime seems like forlorn duty, and everything is pitched with such underhanded matter-of-factness that you can't even be sure when Buscetta has flipped, then what are we left with? It was interesting seeing how Italian courts work, I guess?

76. Kajillionaire (Miranda July)- This is another movie so intent on building atmosphere and lore that it takes too long to declare what it is. When the protagonist hits a breaking point and has to act, she has only a third of a film to grow. So whispery too.

Gina Rodriguez is the one to inject life into it. As soon as her motormouth winds up, the film slips into a different gear. The atmosphere and lore that I mentioned reeks of artifice, but her character is believably specific. Beneath a basic exterior is someone who is authentically caring but still morally compromised, beholden to the world that the other characters are suspicious of.

75. Scoob! (Tony Cervone)- The first half is sometimes clever, but it hammers home the importance of friendship while separating the friends.

The second half has some positive messaging, but your kids' movie might have a problem with scale if it involves Alexander the Great unlocking the gates of the Underworld.

My daughter loved it.

74. The Lovebirds (Michael Showalter)- If I start talking too much about this perfectly fine movie, I end up in that unfair stance of reviewing the movie I wanted, not what is actually there.* As a fan of hang-out comedies, I kind of resent that any comedy being made now has to be rolled into something more "exciting," whether it's a wrongfully accused or mistaken identity thriller or some other genre. Such is the post-Game Night world. There's a purposefully anti-climactic note that I wish The Lovebirds had ended on, but of course we have another stretch of hiding behind boats and shooting guns. Nanjiani and Rae are really charming leads though.

*- As a New Orleanian, I was totally distracted by the fake aspects of the setting too. "Oh, they walked to Jefferson from downtown? Really?" You probably won't be bothered by the locations.

73. Sonic the Hedgehog (Jeff Fowler)- In some ways the storytelling is ambitious. (I'm speaking for only myself, but I'm fine with "He's a hedgehog, and he's really fast" instead of the owl mother, teleportation backstory. Not everything has to be Tolkien.) But that ambition doesn't match the lack of ambition in the comedy, which depends upon really hackneyed setups and structures. Guiding Jim Carrey to full alrighty-then mode was the best choice anyone made.

72. Malcolm & Marie (Sam Levinson)- The stars move through these long scenes with agility and charisma, but the degree of difficulty is just too high for this movie to reach what it's going for.

Levinson is trying to capture an epic fight between a couple, and he can harness the theatrical intensity of such a thing, but he sacrifices almost all of the nuance. In real life, these knock-down-drag-outs can be circular and indirect and sad in a way that this couple's manipulation rarely is. If that emotional truth is all this movie is trying to achieve, I feel okay about being harsh in my judgment of how well it does that.

71. Beanpole (Kantemir Balagov)- Elusive in how it refuses to declare itself, forthright in how punishing it is. The whole thing might be worth it for a late dinner scene, but I'm getting a bit old to put myself through this kind of misery.

70. The Burnt Orange Heresy (Giuseppe Capotondi)- Silly in good ways until it's silly in bad ways. Elizabeth Debicki remains 6'3".

69. Everybody’s Everything (Sebastian Jones and Ramez Silyan)- As a person who listened to Lil Peep's music, I can confidently say that this documentary is overstating his greatness. His death was a significant loss, as the interview subjects will all acknowledge, but the documentary is more useful as a portrait of a certain unfocused, rapacious segment of a generation that is high and online at all times.

68. The Witches (Robert Zemeckis)- Robert Zemeckis, Kenya Barris, and Guillermo Del Toro are the credited screenwriters, and in a fascinating way, you can see the imprint of each figure on the final product. Adapting a very European story to the old wives' tales of the American South is an interesting choice. Like the Nicolas Roeg try at this material, Zemeckis is not afraid to veer into the terrifying, and Octavia Spencer's pseudo witch doctor character only sells the supernatural. From a storytelling standpoint though, it seems as if the obstacles are overcome too easily, as if there's a whole leg of the film that has been excised. The framing device and the careful myth-making of the flashback make promises that the hotel half of the film, including the abrupt ending, can't live up to.

If nothing else, Anne Hathaway is a real contender for Most On-One Performance of the year.

67. Irresistible (Jon Stewart)- Despite a sort of imaginative ending, Jon Stewart's screenplay feels more like the declarative screenplay that would get you hired for a good movie, not a good screenplay itself. It's provocative enough, but it's clumsy in some basic ways and never evades the easy joke.

For example, the Topher Grace character is introduced as a sort of assistant, then is re-introduced an hour later as a polling expert, then is shown coaching the candidate on presentation a few scenes later. At some point, Stewart combined characters into one role, but nothing got smoothed out.

ENDEARING CURIOSITIES WITH BIG FLAWS

66. Yes, God, Yes (Karen Maine)- Most people who are Catholic, including me, are conflicted about it. Most people who make movies about being Catholic hate it and have an axe to grind. This film is capable of such knowing wit and nuance when it comes to the lived-in details of attending a high school retreat, but it's more concerned with taking aim at hypocrisy in the broad way that we've seen a million times. By the end, the film is surprisingly all-or-nothing when Christian teenagers actually contain multitudes.

Part of the problem is that Karen Maine's screenplay doesn't know how naive to make the Alice character. Sometimes she's reasonably naive for a high school senior in 2001; sometimes she's comically naive so that the plot can work; and sometimes she's stupid, which isn't the same as naive.

65. Bad Boys for Life (Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah)- This might be the first buddy cop movie in which the vets make peace with the tech-comm youngs who use new techniques. If that's the only novelty on display here--and it is--then maybe that's enough. I laughed maybe once. Not that the mistaken identity subplot of Bad Boys 1 is genius or anything, but this entry felt like it needed just one more layer to keep it from feeling as basic as it does. Speaking of layers though, it's almost impossible to watch any Will Smith movie now without viewing it through the meta-narrative of "What is Will Smith actually saying about his own status at this point in his career?" He's serving it up to us.

I derived an inordinate amount of pleasure from seeing the old school Simpson/Bruckheimer logo.

64. The Gentlemen (Guy Ritchie)- Look, I'm not going to be too negative on a movie whose crime slang is so byzantine that it has to be explained with subtitles. That's just me. I'm a simple man. But I can tell you that I tuned out pretty hard after seven or eight double-crosses.

The bloom is off the rose a bit for Ritchie, but he can still nail a music cue. I've been waiting for someone to hit "That's Entertainment" the way he does on the end credits.

63. Bad Hair (Justin Simien)- In Bad Hair, an African-American woman is told by her boss at a music video channel in 1989 that straightening her hair is the way to get ahead; however, her weave ends up having a murderous mind of its own. Compared to that charged, witty logline, the execution of the plot itself feels like a laborious, foregone conclusion. I'm glad that Simien, a genuinely talented writer, is making movies again though. Drop the skin-care routine, Van Der Beek!

62. Greyhound (Aaron Schneider)- "If this is the type of role that Tom Hanks writes for himself, then he understands his status as America's dad--'wise as the serpent, harmless as the dove'--even better than I thought." "America's Dad! Aye aye, sir!" "At least half of the dialogue is there for texture and authenticity, not there to be understood by the audience." "Fifty percent, Captain!" "The environment looks as fake as possible, but I eventually came around to the idea that the movie is completely devoid of subtext." "No subtext to be found, sir!"

  61. Mank (David Fincher)- About ten years ago, the Creative Screenwriting podcast spent an hour or so with James Vanderbilt, the writer of Zodiac and nothing else that comes close, as he relayed the creative paces that David Fincher pushed him through. Hundreds of drafts and years of collaborative work eventuated in the blueprint for Fincher's most exacting, personal film, which he didn't get a writing credit on only because he didn't seek one.

Something tells me that Fincher didn't ask for rewrites from his dead father. No matter what visuals and performances the director can coax from the script--and, to be clear, these are the worst visuals and performances of his career--they are limited by the muddy lightweight pages. There are plenty of pleasures, like the slippery election night montage or the shakily platonic relationship between Mank and Marion. But Fincher hadn't made a film in six years, and he came back serving someone else's master.

60. Tesla (Michael Almereyda)- "You live inside your head." "Doesn't everybody?"

As usual, Almereyda's deconstructions are invigorating. (No other moment can match the first time Eve Hewson's Anne fact-checks something with her anachronistic laptop.) But they don't add up to anything satisfying because Tesla himself is such an opaque figure. Driven by the whims of his curiosity without a clear finish line, the character gives Hawke something enigmatic to play as he reaches deep into a baritone. But he's too inward to lend himself to drama. Tesla feels of a piece with Almereyda's The Experimenter, and that's the one I would recommend.

59. Vitalina Varela (Pedro Costa)- I can't oversell how delicately beautiful this film is visually. There's a scene in which Vitalina lugs a lantern into a church, but we get several seconds of total darkness before that one light source carves through it and takes over part of the frame. Each composition is as intricate as it is overpowering, achieving a balance between stark and mannered.

That being said, most of the film is people entering or exiting doors. I felt very little of the haunting loss that I think I was supposed to.

58. The Rhythm Section (Reed Morano)- Call it the Timothy Hutton in The General's Daughter Corollary: If a name-actor isn't in the movie much but gets third billing, then, despite whom he sends the protagonist to kill, he is the Actual Bad Guy.  

Even if the movie serves up a lot of cliche, the action and sound design are visceral. I would like to see more from Morano.

57. Red, White and Blue (Steve McQueen)- Well-made and heartfelt even if it goes step-for-step where you think it will.

Here's what I want to know though: In the academy training sequence, the police cadets have to subdue a "berserker"; that is, a wildman who swings at their riot gear with a sledgehammer. Then they get him under control, and he shakes their hands, like, "Good angle you took on me there, mate." Who is that guy and where is his movie? Is this full-time work? Is he a police officer or an independent contractor? What would happen if this exercise didn't go exactly as planned?

56. Wolfwalkers (Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart)- The visuals have an unfinished quality that reminded me of The Tale of Princess Kaguya--the center of a flame is undrawn white, and fog is just negative space. There's an underlying symmetry to the film, and its color palette changes with mood.

Narratively, it's pro forma and drawn-out. Was Riley in Inside Out the last animated protagonist to get two parents? My daughter stuck with it, but she needed a lot of context for the religious atmosphere of 17th century Ireland.

55. What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael (Rob Garver)- The film does little more than one might expect; it's limited in the way that any visual medium is when trying to sum up a woman of letters. But as far as education for Kael's partnership with Warren Beatty or the idea of The New Yorker paying her for only six months out of the year, it was useful for me.  

Although Garver isn't afraid to point to the work that made Kael divisive, it would have been nice to have one or two interview subjects who questioned her greatness, rather than the crew of Paulettes who, even when they do say something like, "Sometimes I radically disagreed with her," do it without being able to point to any specifics.

54. Beastie Boys Story (Spike Jonze)- As far as this Spike Jonze completist is concerned, this is more of a Powerpoint presentation than a movie, Beastie Boys Story still warmed my heart, making me want to fire up Paul's Boutique again and take more pictures of my buddies.

53. Tenet (Christopher Nolan)- Cool and cold, tantalizing and frustrating, loud and indistinct, Tenet comes close to Nolan self-parody, right down to the brutalist architecture and multiple characters styled like him. The setpieces grabbed me, I'll admit.

Nolan's previous film, which is maybe his best, was "about" a lot and just happened to play with time; Tenet is only about playing with time.

PRETTY GOOD MOVIES

52. Shithouse (Cooper Raiff)- "Death is ass."

There's such a thing as too naturalistic. If I wanted to hear how college freshmen really talked, I would hang out with college freshmen. But you have to take the good verisimilitude with the bad, and good verisimilitude is the mother's Pod Save America t-shirt.

There are some poignant moments (and a gonzo performance from Logan Miller) in this auspicious debut from Cooper Raiff, the writer/director/editor/star. But the second party sequence kills some of the momentum, and at a crucial point, the characters spell out some motivation that should have stayed implied.

51. Totally Under Control (Alex Gibney, Ophelia Harutyunyan, Suzanne Hillinger)- As dense and informative as any other Gibney documentary with the added flex of making it during the pandemic it is investigating.

But yeah, why am I watching this right now? I don't need more reasons to be angry with Trump, whom this film calmly eviscerates. The directors analyze Trump's narcissism first through his contradictions of medical expertise in order to protect the economy that could win him re-election. Then it takes aim at his hiring based on loyalty instead of experience. But you already knew that, which is the problem with the film, at least for now.

50. Happiest Season (Clea Duvall)- I was in the perfect mood to watch something this frothy and bouncy. Every secondary character receives a moment in the sun, and Daniel Levy gets a speech that kind of saves the film at a tipping point.

I must say though: I wanted to punch Harper in her stupid face. She is a terrible romantic partner, abandoning or betraying Abby throughout the film and dissembling her entire identity to everyone else in a way that seems absurd for a grown woman in 2020. Run away, Kristen. Perhaps with Aubrey Plaza, whom you have more chemistry with. But there I go shipping and aligning myself with characters, which only proves that this is an effective romantic comedy.

49. The Way Back (Gavin O’Connor)- Patient but misshapen, The Way Back does just enough to overcome the cliches that are sort of unavoidable considering the genre. (I can't get enough of the parent character who, for no good reason, doesn't take his son's success seriously. "Scholarship? What he's gotta do is put his nose in them books! That's why I don't go to his games. [continues moving boxes while not looking at the other character] Now if you'll excuse me while I wait four scenes before showing up at a game to prove that I'm proud of him after all...")

What the movie gets really right or really wrong in the details about coaching and addiction is a total crap-shoot. But maybe I've said too much already.

48. The Whistlers (Corneliu Porumboiu)- Porumboiu is a real artist who seems to be interpreting how much surveillance we're willing to acknowledge and accept, but I won't pretend to have understood much of the plot, the chapters or which are told out of order. Sometimes the structure works--the beguiling, contextless "high-class hooker" sequence--but I often wondered if the film was impenetrable in the way that Porumboiu wanted it to be or impenetrable in the way he didn't.

To tell you the truth, the experience kind of depressed me because I know that, in my younger days, this film is the type of thing that I would re-watch, possibly with the chronology righted, knowing that it is worth understanding fully. But I have two small children, and I'm exhausted all the time, and I kind of thought I should get some credit for still trying to catch up with Romanian crime movies in the first place.

47. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (Jason Woliner)- I laughed too much to get overly critical, but the film is so episodic and contrived that it's kind of exhausting by the end--even though it's achieving most of its goals. Maybe Borat hasn't changed, but the way our citizens own their ugliness has.

46. First Cow (Kelly Reichardt)- Despite how little happens in the first forty minutes, First Cow is a thoughtful capitalism parable. Even though it takes about forty minutes to get going, the friendship between Cookie and King-Lu is natural and incisive. Like Reichardt's other work, the film's modest premise unfolds quite gracefully, except for in the first forty minutes, which are uneventful.

45. Les Miserables (Ladj Ly)- I loved parts of the film--the disorienting, claustrophobic opening or the quick look at the police officers' home lives, for example. But I'm not sure that it does anything very well. The needle the film tries to thread between realism and theater didn't gel for me. The ending, which is ambiguous in all of the wrong ways, chooses the theatrical. (If I'm being honest, my expectations were built up by Les Miserables' Jury Prize at Cannes, and it's a bit superficial to be in that company.)

If nothing else, it's always helpful to see how another country's worst case scenario in law enforcement would look pretty good over here.

44. Bad Education (Cory Finley)- The film feels too locked-down and small at the beginning, so intent on developing the protagonist neutrally that even the audience isn't aware of his secrets. So when he faces consequences for those secrets, there's a disconnect. Part of tragedy is seeing the doom coming, right?

When it opens up, however, it's empathetic and subtle, full of a dry irony that Finley is already specializing in after only one other feature. Geraldine Viswanathan and Allison Janney get across a lot of interiority that is not on the page.

43. The Trip to Greece (Michael Winterbottom)- By the fourth installment, you know whether you're on board with the franchise. If you're asking "Is this all there is?" to Coogan and Brydon's bickering and impressions as they're served exotic food in picturesque settings, then this one won't sway you. If you're asking "Is this all there is?" about life, like they are, then I don't need to convince you.  

I will say that The Trip to Spain seemed like an enervated inflection point, at which the squad could have packed it in. The Trip to Greece proves that they probably need to keep doing this until one of them dies, which has been the subtext all along.

42. Feels Good Man (Arthur Jones)- This documentary centers on innocent artist Matt Furie's helplessness as his Pepe the Frog character gets hijacked by the alt-right. It gets the hard things right. It's able to, quite comprehensively, trace a connection from 4Chan's use of Pepe the Frog to Donald Trump's near-assuming of Pepe's ironic deniability. Director Arthur Jones seems to understand the machinations of the alt-right, and he articulates them chillingly.

The easy thing, making us connect to Furie, is less successful. The film spends way too much time setting up his story, and it makes him look naive as it pits him against Alex Jones in the final third. Still, the film is a quick ninety-two minutes, and the highs are pretty high.

41. The Old Guard (Gina Prince-Bythewood)- Some of the world-building and backstory are handled quite elegantly. The relationships actually do feel centuries old through specific details, and the immortal conceit comes together for an innovative final action sequence.

Visually and musically though, the film feels flat in a way that Prince-Bythewood's other films do not. I blame Netflix specs. KiKi Layne, who tanked If Beale Street Could Talk for me, nearly ruins this too with the child-actory way that she stresses one word per line. Especially in relief with one of our more effortless actresses, Layne is distracting.

40. The Trial of the Chicago 7 (Aaron Sorkin)- Whenever Sacha Baron Cohen's Abbie Hoffman opens his mouth, the other defendants brace themselves for his dismissive vulgarity. Even when it's going to hurt him, he can't help but shoot off at the mouth. Of course, he reveals his passionate and intelligent depths as the trial goes on. The character is the one that Sorkin's screenplay seems the most endeared to: In the same way that Hoffman can't help but be Hoffman, Sorkin can't help but be Sorkin. Maybe we don't need a speech there; maybe we don't have to stretch past two hours; maybe a bon mot diffuses the tension. But we know exactly what to expect by now. The film is relevant, astute, witty, benevolent, and, of course, in love with itself. There are a handful of scenes here that are perfect, so I feel bad for qualifying so much.

A smaller point: Daniel Pemberton has done great work in the past (Motherless Brooklyn, King Arthur, The Man from U.N.C.L.E.), but the first sequence is especially marred by his sterile soft-rock approach.

  GOOD MOVIES

39. Time (Garrett Bradley)- The key to Time is that it provides very little context. Why the patriarch of this family is serving sixty years in prison is sort of besides the point philosophically. His wife and sons have to move on without him, and the tragedy baked into that fact eclipses any notion of what he "deserved." Feeling the weight of time as we switch back and forth between a kid talking about his first day of kindergarten and that same kid graduating from dentistry school is all the context we need. Time's presentation can be quite sumptuous: The drone shot of Angola makes its buildings look like crosses. Or is it X's?

At the same time, I need some context. When director Garrett Bradley withholds the reason Robert's in prison, and when she really withholds that Fox took a plea and served twelve years, you start to see the strings a bit. You could argue that knowing so little about why, all of a sudden, Robert can be on parole puts you into the same confused shoes as the family, but it feels manipulative to me. The film is preaching to the choir as far as criminal justice goes, which is fine, but I want it to have the confidence to tell its story above board.

38. Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets (Turner Ross and Bill Ross IV)- I have a barfly friend whom I see maybe once a year. When we first set up a time to meet, I kind of dread it and wonder what we'll have to talk about. Once we do get together, we trip on each other's words a bit, fumbling around with the rhythm of conversation that we mastered decades ago. He makes some kind of joke that could have been appropriate then but isn't now.

By the end of the day, hours later, we're hugging and maybe crying as we promise each other that we won't wait as long next time.

That's the exact same journey that I went on with this film.

37. Underwater (William Eubank)- Underwater is a story that you've seen before, but it's told with great confidence and economy. I looked up at twelve minutes and couldn't believe the whole table had been set. Kristen plays Ripley and projects a smart, benevolent poise.

36. The Lodge (Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala)- I prefer the grounded, manicured first half to the more fantastic second half. The craziness of the latter is only possible through the hard work of the former though. As with Fiala and Franz's previous feature, the visual rhymes and motifs get incorporated into the soup so carefully that you don't realize it until they overwhelm you in their bleak glory.

Small note: Alicia Silverstone, the male lead's first wife, and Riley Keough, his new partner, look sort of similar. I always think that's a nice note: "I could see how he would go for her."

35. Miss Americana (Lana Wilson)- I liked it when I saw it as a portrait of a person whose life is largely decided for her but is trying to carve out personal spaces within that hamster wheel. I loved it when I realized that describes most successful people in their twenties.

34. Sound of Metal (Darius Marder)- Riz Ahmed is showing up on all of the best performances of the year lists, but Sound of Metal isn't in anyone's top ten films of the year. That's about right. Ahmed's is a quiet, stubborn performance that I wish was in service of more than the straight line that we've seen before.

In two big scenes, there's this trick that Ahmed does, a piecing together of consequences with his eyes, as if he's moving through a flow chart in real time. In both cases, the character seems locked out and a little slower than he should be, which is, of course, why he's facing the consequences in the first place. To be charitable to a film that was a bit of a grind, it did make me notice a thing a guy did with his eyes.

33. Pieces of a Woman (Kornel Mundruczo)- Usually when I leave acting showcases like this, I imagine the film without the Oscar-baiting speeches, but this is a movie that specializes in speeches. Pieces of a Woman is being judged, deservedly so, by the harrowing twenty-minute take that opens the film, which is as indulgent as it is necessary. But if the unbroken take provides the "what," then the speeches provide the "why."

This is a film about reclaiming one's body when it rebels against you and when other people seek ownership of it. Without the Ellen Burstyn "lift your head" speech or the Vanessa Kirby show-stopper in the courtroom, I'm not sure any of that comes across.

I do think the film lets us off the hook a bit with the LaBoeuf character, in the sense that it gives us reasons to dislike him when it would be more compelling if he had done nothing wrong. Does his half-remembering of the White Stripes count as a speech?

32. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (George C. Wolfe)- This is such a play, not only in the locked-down location but also through nearly every storytelling convention: "Where are the two most interesting characters? Oh, running late? They'll enter separately in animated fashion?" But, to use the type of phrase that the characters might, "Don't hate the player; hate the game."

Perhaps the most theatrical note in this treatise on the commodification of expression is the way that, two or three times, the proceedings stop in their tracks for the piece to declare loudly what it's about. In one of those clear-outs, Boseman, who looks distractingly sick, delivers an unforgettable monologue that transports the audience into his character's fragile, haunted mind. He and Viola Davis are so good that the film sort of buckles under their weight, unsure of how to transition out of those spotlight moments and pretend that the story can start back up. Whatever they're doing is more interesting than what's being achieved overall.

31. Another Round (Thomas Vinterberg)- It's definitely the film that Vinterberg wanted to make, but despite what I think is a quietly shattering performance from Mikkelsen, Another Round moves in a bit too much of a straight line to grab me fully. The joyous final minutes hint at where it could have gone, as do pockets of Vinterberg's filmography, which seems newly tethered to realism in a way that I don't like. The best sequences are the wildest ones, like the uproarious trip to the grocery store for fresh cod, so I don't know why so much of it takes place in tiny hallways at magic hour. I give the inevitable American remake* permission to use these notes.

*- Just spitballing here. Martin: Will Ferrell, Nikolaj (Nick): Ben Stiller, Tommy: Owen Wilson, Peter: Craig Robinson

30. The Invisible Man (Leigh Whannell)- Exactly what I wanted. Exactly what I needed.

I think a less conclusive finale would have been better, but what a model of high-concept escalation. This is the movie people convinced me Whannell's Upgrade was.

29. On the Rocks (Sofia Coppola)- Slight until the Mexican sojourn, which expands the scope and makes the film even more psychosexual than before. At times it feels as if Coppola is actively simplifying, rather than diving into the race and privilege questions that the Murray character all but demands.

As for Murray, is the film 50% worse without him? 70%? I don't know if you can run in supporting categories if you're the whole reason the film exists.

28. Mangrove (Steve McQueen)- The first part of the film seemed repetitive and broad to me. But once it settled in as a courtroom drama, the characterization became more shaded, and the filmmaking itself seemed more fluid. I ended up being quite outraged and inspired.

27. Shirley (Josephine Decker)- Josephine Decker emerges as a real stylist here, changing her foggy, impressionistic approach not one bit with a little more budget. Period piece and established actors be damned--this is still as much of a reeling fever dream as Madeline's Madeline. Both pieces are a bit too repetitive and nasty for my taste, but I respect the technique.

Here's my mandatory "Elisabeth Moss is the best" paragraph. While watching her performance as Shirley Jackson, I thought about her most famous role as Peggy on Mad Men, whose inertia and need to prove herself tied her into confidence knots. Shirley is almost the opposite: paralyzed by her worldview, certain of her talent, rejecting any empathy. If Moss can inhabit both characters so convincingly, she can do anything.

26. An American Pickle (Brandon Trost)- An American Pickle is the rare comedy that could actually use five or ten extra minutes, but it's a surprisingly heartfelt and wholesome stretch for Rogen, who is earnest in the lead roles.

25. The King of Staten Island (Judd Apatow)- At two hours and fifteen minutes, The King of Staten Island is probably the first Judd Apatow film that feels like the exact right length. For example, the baggy date scene between a gracious Bill Burr and a faux-dowdy Marisa Tomei is essential, the sort of widening of perspective that something like Trainwreck was missing.

It's Pete Davidson's movie, however, and though he has never been my cup of tea, I think he's actually quite powerful in his quiet moments. The movie probes some rare territory--a mentally ill man's suspicion that he is unlovable, a family's strategic myth-making out of respect for the dead. And when Davidson shows up at the firehouse an hour and fifteen minutes in, it feels as if we've built to a last resort.

24. Swallow (Carlo Mirabella-Davis)- The tricky part of this film is communicating Hunter's despair, letting her isolation mount, but still keeping her opaque. It takes a lot of visual discipline to do that, and Claudio Mirabella-Davis is up to the task. This ends up being a much more sympathetic, expressive movie than the plot description might suggest.

(In the tie dispute, Hunter and Richie are both wrong. That type of silk--I couldn't tell how pebbled it was, but it's probably a barathea weave-- shouldn't be ironed directly, but it doesn't have to be steamed. On a low setting, you could iron the back of the tie and be fine.)

23. The Vast of Night (Andrew Patterson)- I wanted a bit more "there" there; The film goes exactly where I thought it would, and there isn't enough humor for my taste. (The predictability might be a feature, not a bug, since the film is positioned as an episode of a well-worn Twilight Zone-esque show.)

But from a directorial standpoint, this is quite a promising debut. Patterson knows when to lock down or use silence--he even cuts to black to force us to listen more closely to a monologue. But he also knows when to fill the silence. There's a minute or so when Everett is spooling tape, and he and Fay make small talk about their hopes for the future, developing the characters' personalities in what could have been just mechanics. It's also a refreshingly earnest film. No one is winking at the '50s setting.

I'm tempted to write, "If Andrew Patterson can make this with $1 million, just imagine what he can do with $30 million." But maybe people like Shane Carruth have taught us that Patterson is better off pinching pennies in Texas and following his own muse.

22. Martin Eden (Pietro Marcello)- At first this film, adapted from a picaresque novel by Jack London, seemed as if it was hitting the marks of the genre. "He's going from job to job and meeting dudes who are shaping his worldview now." But the film, shot in lustrous Super 16, won me over as it owned the trappings of this type of story, forming a character who is a product of his environment even as he transcends it. By the end, I really felt the weight of time.

You want to talk about something that works better in novels than films though? When a passionate, independent protagonist insists that a woman is the love of his life, despite the fact that she's whatever Italians call a wet blanket. She's rich, but Martin doesn't care about her money. He hates her family and friends, and she refuses to accept him or his life pursuits. She's pretty but not even as pretty as the waitress they discuss. Tell me what I'm missing here. There's archetype, and there's incoherence.

21. Bacurau (Kleber Mendonca Filho and Juliano Dornelles)- Certain images from this adventurous film will stick with me, but I got worn out after the hard reset halfway through. As entranced as I was by the mystery of the first half, I think this blood-soaked ensemble is better at asking questions than it is at answering them.

20. Let Them All Talk (Steven Soderbergh)- The initial appeal of this movie might be "Look at these wonderful actresses in their seventies getting a movie all to themselves." And the film is an interesting portrait of ladies taking stock of relationships that have spanned decades. But Soderbergh and Eisenberg handle the twentysomething Lucas Hedges character with the same openness and empathy. His early reasoning for going on the trip is that he wants to learn from older women, and Hedges nails the puppy-dog quality of a young man who would believe that. Especially in the scenes of aspirational romance, he's sweet and earnest as he brushes his hair out of his face.

Streep plays Alice Hughes, a serious author of literary fiction, and she crosses paths with Kelvin Kranz, a grinder of airport thrillers. In all of the right ways, Let Them All Talk toes the line between those two stances as an entertaining, jaunty experiment that also shoulders subtextual weight. If nothing else, it's easy to see why a cruise ship's counterfeit opulence, its straight lines at a lean, would be visually engaging to Soderbergh. You can't have a return to form if your form is constantly evolving.

19. Dick Johnson Is Dead (Kirsten Johnson)- Understandably, I don't find the subject as interesting as his own daughter does, and large swaths of this film are unsure of what they're trying to say. But that's sort of the point, and the active wrestling that the film engages in with death ultimately pays off in a transcendent moment. The jaw-dropping ending is something that only non-fiction film can achieve, and Johnson's whole career is about the search for that sort of serendipity.

18. Da 5 Bloods (Spike Lee)- Delroy Lindo is a live-wire, but his character is the only one of the principals who is examined with the psychological depth I was hoping for. The first half, with all of its present-tense flourishes, promises more than the gunfights of the second half can deliver. When the film is cooking though, it's chock full of surprises, provocations, and pride.

17. Never Rarely Sometimes Always (Eliza Hittmann)- Very quickly, Eliza Hittmann has established herself as an astute, empathetic director with an eye for discovering new talent. I hope that she gets to make fifty more movies in which she objectively follows laconic young people. But I wanted to like this one more than I did. The approach is so neutral that it's almost flat to me, lacking the arc and catharsis of her previous film, Beach Rats. I still appreciate her restraint though.

GREAT MOVIES

16. Young Ahmed (Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne)- I don't think the Dardennes have made a bad movie yet, and I'm glad they turned away from the slight genre dipping of The Unknown Girl, the closest to bad that they got. Young Ahmed is a lean, daring return to form.

Instead of following an average person, as they normally do, the Dardenne Brothers follow an extremist, and the objectivity that usually generates pathos now serves to present ambiguity. Ahmed says that he is changing, that he regrets his actions, but we never know how much of his stance is a put-on. I found myself wanting him to reform, more involved than I usually am in these slices of life. Part of it is that Idir Ben Addi looks like such a normal, young kid, and the Ahmed character has most of the qualities that we say we want in young people: principles, commitment, self-worth, reflection. So it's that much more destructive when those qualities are used against him and against his fellow man.

15. World of Tomorrow Episode Three: The Absent Destinations of David Prime (Don Hertzfeldt)- My dad, a man whom I love but will never understand, has dismissed modern music before by claiming that there are only so many combinations of chords. To him, it's almost impossible to do something new. Of course, this is the type of thing that an uncreative person would say--a person not only incapable of hearing the chords that combine notes but also unwilling to hear the space between the notes. (And obviously, that's the take of a person who doesn't understand that, originality be damned, some people just have to create.)

  Anyway, that attitude creeps into my own thinking more than I would like, but then I watch something as wholly original as World of Tomorrow Episode Three. The series has always been a way to pile sci-fi ideas on top of each other to prove the essential truths of being and loving. And this one, even though it achieves less of a sense of yearning than its predecessor, offers even more devices to chew on. Take, for example, the idea that Emily sends her message from the future, so David's primitive technology can barely handle it. In order to move forward with its sophistication, he has to delete any extraneous skills for the sake of computer memory. So out of trust for this person who loves him, he has to weigh whether his own breathing or walking can be uninstalled as a sacrifice for her. I thought that we might have been done describing love, but there it is, a new metaphor. Mixing futurism with stick figures to get at the most pure drive possible gave us something new. It's called art, Dad.

14. On the Record (Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering)- We don't call subjects of documentaries "stars" for obvious reasons, but Drew Dixon kind of is one. Her honesty and wisdom tell a complete story of the #MeToo movement. Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering take their time developing her background at first, not because we need to "gain sympathy" or "establish credibility" for a victim of sexual abuse, but because showing her talent and enthusiasm for hip-hop A&R makes it that much more tragic when her passion is extinguished. Hell, I just like the woman, so spending a half-hour on her rise was pleasurable in and of itself.

  This is a gut-wrenching, fearless entry in what is becoming Dick and Ziering's raison d'etre, but its greatest quality is Dixon's composed reflection. She helped to establish a pattern of Russell Simmons's behavior, but she explains what happened to her in ways I had never heard before.

13. David Byrne’s American Utopia (Spike Lee)- I'm often impressed by the achievements that puzzle me: How did they pull that off? But I know exactly how David Byrne pulled off the impish but direct precision of American Utopia: a lot of hard work.

I can't blame Spike Lee for stealing a page from Demme's Stop Making Sense: He denies us a close-up of any audience members until two-thirds of the way through, when we get someone in absolute rapture.

12. One Night in Miami... (Regina King)- We've all cringed when a person of color is put into the position of speaking on behalf of his or her entire race. But the characters in One Night in Miami... live in that condition all the time and are constantly negotiating it. As Black public figures in 1964, they know that the consequences of their actions are different, bigger, than everyone else's. The charged conversations between Malcolm X and Sam Cooke are not about whether they can live normal lives. They're way past that. The stakes are closer to Sam Cooke arguing that his life's purpose aligns with the protection and elevation of African-Americans while Malcolm X argues that those pursuits should be the same thing. Late in the movie, Cassius Clay leaves the other men, a private conversation, to talk to reporters, a public conversation. But the film argues that everything these men do is always already public. They're the most powerful African-Americans in the country, but their lives are not their own. Or not only their own.

It's true that the first act has the clunkiness and artifice of a TV movie, but once the film settles into the motel room location and lets the characters feed off one another, it's gripping. It's kind of unfair for a movie to get this many scenes of Leslie Odom Jr. singing, but I'll take it.

11. Saint Frances (Alex Thompson)- Rilke wrote, "Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us." The characters' behavior in Saint Frances--all of these fully formed characters' behavior--made me think of that quotation. When they lash out at one another, even at their nastiest, the viewer has a window into how they're expressing pain they can't verbalize. The film is uneven in its subtlety, but it's a real showcase for screenwriter and star Kelly O'Sullivan, who is unflinching and dynamic in one of the best performances of the year. Somebody give her some of the attention we gave to Zach Braff for God's sake.

10. Boys State (Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine)- This documentary is kind of a miracle from a logistical standpoint. From casting interviews beforehand, lots of editing afterwards, or sly note-taking once the conference began, McBaine and Moss happened to select the four principals who mattered the most at the convention, then found them in rooms full of dudes wearing the same tucked-in t-shirt. By the way, all of the action took place over the course of one week, and by definition, the important events are carved in half.

To call Boys State a microcosm of American politics is incorrect. These guys are forming platforms and voting in elections. What they're doing is American politics, so when they make the same compromises and mistakes that active politicians do, it produces dread and disappointment. So many of the boys are mimicking the political theater that they see on TV, and that sweaty sort of performance is going to make a Billy Mitchell out of this kid Ben Feinstein, and we'll be forced to reckon with how much we allow him to evolve as a person. This film is so precise, but what it proves is undeniably messy. Luckily, some of these seventeen-year-olds usher in hope for us all.

If nothing else, the film reveals the level to which we're all speaking in code.

9. The Nest (Sean Durkin)- In the first ten minutes or so of The Nest, the only real happy minutes, father and son are playing soccer in their quaint backyard, and the father cheats to score on a children's net before sliding on the grass to rub in his victory. An hour later, the son kicks the ball around by himself near a regulation goal on the family's massive property. The contrast is stark and obvious, as is the symbolism of the dead horse, but that doesn't mean it's not visually powerful or resonant.

Like Sean Durkin's earlier film, Martha Marcy May Marlene, the whole of The Nest is told with detail of novelistic scope and an elevation of the moment. A snippet of radio that mentions Ronald Reagan sets the time period, rather than a dateline. One kid saying "Thanks, Dad" and another kid saying, "Thanks, Rory" establishes a stepchild more elegantly than any other exposition might.

But this is also a movie that does not hide what it means. Characters usually say exactly what is on their minds, and motivations are always clear. For example, Allison smokes like a chimney, so her daughter's way of acting out is leaving butts on the window sill for her mother to find. (And mother and daughter both definitely "act out" their feelings.) On the other hand, Ben, Rory's biological son, is the character least like him, so these relationships aren't too directly parallel. Regardless, Durkin uses these trajectories to cast a pall of familial doom.

8. Sorry We Missed You (Sean Durkin)- Another precisely calibrated empathy machine from Ken Loach. The overwhelmed matriarch, Abby, is a caretaker, and she has to break up a Saturday dinner to rescue one of her clients, who wet herself because no one came to help her to the bathroom. The lady is embarrassed, and Abby calms her down by saying, "You mean more to me than you know." We know enough about Abby's circumstances to realize that it's sort of a lie, but it's a beautiful lie, told by a person who cares deeply but is not cared for.

Loach's central point is that the health of a family, something we think of as immutable and timeless, is directly dependent upon the modern industry that we use to destroy ourselves. He doesn't have to be "proven" relevant, and he didn't plan for Covid-19 to point to the fragility of the gig economy, but when you're right, you're right.

7. Lovers Rock (Steve McQueen)- swear to you I thought: "This is an impeccable depiction of a great house party. The only thing it's missing is the volatile dude who scares away all the girls." And then the volatile dude who scares away all the girls shows up.

In a year short on magic, there are two or three transcendent moments, but none of them can equal the whole crowd singing along to "Silly Games" way after the song has ended. Nothing else crystallizes the film's note of celebration: of music, of community, of safe spaces, of Black skin. I remember moments like that at house parties, and like all celebrations, they eventually make me sad.

6. Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution (Nicole Newnham and James Lebrecht)- I held off on this movie because I thought that I knew what it was. The setup was what I expected: A summer camp for the disabled in the late '60s takes on the spirit of the time and becomes a haven for people who have not felt agency, self-worth, or community anywhere else. But that's the right-place-right-time start of a story that takes these figures into the '80s as they fight for their rights.

If you're anything like my dumb ass, you know about 504 accommodations from the line on a college syllabus that promises equal treatment. If 2020 has taught us anything though, it's that rights are seized, not given, and this is the inspiring story of people who unified to demand what they deserved. Judy Heumann is a civil rights giant, but I'm ashamed to say I didn't know who she was before this film. If it were just a history lesson that wasn't taught in school, Crip Camp would still be valuable, but it's way more than that.

5. Palm Springs (Max Barbakow)- When explaining what is happening to them, Andy Samberg's Nyles twirls his hand at Cristin Milioti's Sara and says, "It's one of those infinite time-loop scenarios." Yeah, one of those. Armed with only a handful of fictional examples, she and the audience know exactly what he means, and the continually inventive screenplay by Andy Siara doesn't have to do any more explaining. In record time, the film accelerates into its premise, involves her, and sets up the conflict while avoiding the claustrophobia of even Groundhog Day. That economy is the strength that allows it to be as funny as it is. By being thrifty with the setup, the savings can go to, say, the couple crashing a plane into a fiery heap with no consequences.

In some accidental ways, this is, of course, a quarantine romance as well. Nyles and Sara frustratingly navigate the tedious wedding as if they are play-acting--which they sort of are--then they push through that sameness to grow for each other, realizing that dependency is not weakness. The best relationships are doing the same thing right now.

  Although pointedly superficial--part of the point of why the couple is such a match--and secular--I think the notion of an afterlife would come up at least once--Palm Springs earns the sincerity that it gets around to. And for a movie ironic enough to have a character beg to be impaled so that he doesn't have to sit in traffic, that's no small feat.

  4. The Assistant (Kitty Green)- A wonder of Bressonian objectivity and rich observation, The Assistant is the rare film that deals exclusively with emotional depth while not once explaining any emotions. One at a time, the scrape of the Kleenex box might not be so grating, the long hallway trek to the delivery guy might not be so tiring, but this movie gets at the details of how a job can destroy you in ways that add up until you can't even explain them.

3. Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell)- In her most incendiary and modern role, Carey Mulligan plays Cassie, which is short for Cassandra, that figure doomed to tell truths that no one else believes. The web-belted boogeyman who ruined her life is Al, short for Alexander, another Greek who is known for his conquests. The revenge story being told here--funny in its darkest moments, dark in its funniest moments--is tight on its surface levels, but it feels as if it's telling a story more archetypal and expansive than that too.

  An exciting feature debut for its writer-director Emerald Fennell, the film goes wherever it dares. Its hero has a clear purpose, and it's not surprising that the script is willing to extinguish her anger halfway through. What is surprising is the way it renews and muddies her purpose as she comes into contact with half-a-dozen brilliant one- or two-scene performances. (Do you think Alfred Molina can pull off a lawyer who hates himself so much that he can't sleep? You would be right.)

Promising Young Woman delivers as an interrogation of double standards and rape culture, but in quiet ways it's also about our outsized trust in professionals and the notion that some trauma cannot be overcome.

INSTANT CLASSICS

2. Soul (Pete Docter)- When Pete Docter's Up came out, it represented a sort of coronation for Pixar: This was the one that adults could like unabashedly. The one with wordless sequences and dead children and Ed Asner in the lead. But watching it again this week with my daughter, I was surprised by how high-concept and cloying it could be. We choose not to remember the middle part with the goofy dog stuff.

Soul is what Up was supposed to be: honest, mature, stirring. And I don't mean to imply that a family film shouldn't make any concessions to children. But Soul, down to the title, never compromises its own ambition. Besides Coco, it's probably the most credible character study that Pixar has ever made, with all of Joe's growth earned the hard way. Besides Inside Out, it's probably the wittiest comedy that Pixar has ever made, bursting with unforced energy.

There's a twitter fascination going around about Dez, the pigeon-figured barber character whose scene has people gushing, "Crush my windpipe, king" or whatever. Maybe that's what twitter does now, but no one fantasized about any characters in Up. And I count that as progress.

1. I’m Thinking of Ending Things (Charlie Kaufman)- After hearing that our name-shifting protagonist moonlights as an artist, a no-nonsense David Thewlis offers, "I hope you're not an abstract artist." He prefers "paintings that look like photographs" over non-representational mumbo-jumbo. And as Jessie Buckley squirms to try to think of a polite way to talk back, you can tell that Charlie Kaufman has been in the crosshairs of this same conversation. This morose, scary, inscrutable, expressionist rumination is not what the Netflix description says it is at all, and it's going to bother nice people looking for a fun night in. Thank God.

The story goes that Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, when constructing Raiders of the Lost Ark, sought to craft a movie that was "only the good parts" with little of the clunky setup that distracted from action. What we have here is a Charlie Kaufman movie with only the Charlie Kaufman moments, less interested than ever before at holding one's hand. The biting humor is here, sometimes aimed at philistines like the David Thewlis character above, sometimes at the niceties that we insist upon. The lonely horror of everyday life is here, in the form of missed calls from oneself or the interruption of an inner monologue. Of course, communicating the overwhelming crush of time, both unknowable and familiar, is the raison d'etre.

A new pet motif seems to be the way that we don't even own our own knowledge. The Young Woman recites "Bonedog" by Eva H.D., which she claims/thinks she wrote, only to find Jake's book open to that page, next to a Pauline Kael book that contains a Woman Under the Influence review that she seems to have internalized later. When Jake muses about Wordsworth's "Lucy Poems," it starts as a way to pass the time, then it becomes a way to lord his education over her, then it becomes a compliment because the subject resembles her, then it becomes a way to let her know that, in the grand scheme of things, she isn't that special at all. This film jerks the viewer through a similar wintry cycle and leaves him with his own thoughts. It's not a pretty picture, but it doesn't look like anything else.