Randolph Scott was born on this day in 1898, so here's a little something I wrote for @crooked-marquee.bsky.social about his justly celebrated collaborations with Budd Boetticher.

Today at The Reveal: You can read my review of the dreadful new MERCY and @scotttobias.bsky.social's review of the seemingly considerably less dreadful H IS FOR HAWK:

I respected the Trylon's decision to stay open Friday and donate proceeds, but I also respect their change in plans to close in solidarity. Go support em' when you can!

GoodFellas is a genre. Many films besides GoodFellas are GoodFellas. Boogie Nights is a GoodFella. Summer of Sam is a GoodFella. Casino, The Wolf of Wall Street, The Irishman: all GoodFellas, obvs. I think you can argue Uncut Gems is a GoodFella. Anora feels like a GoodFella to me.

Well this is beautiful

No cool whales

CRASHOUT FOR THE AGES

Today in The Reveal, I add Bertrand Bonello's HOUSE OF TOLERANCE (a.k.a. HOUSE OF PLEASURES) to the New Cult Canon. A bold, enveloping, heartbreaking film about the oldest profession. Still my favorite of his: thereveal.film/the-new-cult...

ANTHONY JESELNIK‘s book club selection for January is THE GETAWAY by JIM THOMPSON anthonyjeselnik.com/the-jeselnik...

Here are the best crime comics of 2025 according to me :) Lots of good books here What were your favorite crime comics last year? buttondown.com/crimecomics/...

So excited to see @swierczy.bsky.social will be doing a @watchwithjen.bsky.social episode on Elmore Leonard Crime Flicks... After westerns and then crime, I think maybe an Elmore Leonard TV movies episode is in order

NEW COCKTAILS & CRIME. Everything I watched and read in 2025, and why I'm not talking about it. vincekeenan.substack.com/p/c-and-c-89...

Our Sight and Sound 100 project at The Reveal brings us to WANDA, a film that shot up to #49 on the poll without having made an appearance previously. @kphipps3000.bsky.social and I had never seen it. We were suitably impressed: thereveal.film/50-tie-wanda...

THE 25 BEST FILMS OF 2025 A Video Countdown vimeo.com/1156345183

Burt Lancaster and Janice Rule, who appeared in THE SWIMMER together, next to each other at the Formosa.

You don't deserve us at our "Ope" If you can't handle us at our "Uffda"

I really wish these gratuitous plot reminders were a supplemental thing you could turn on or off, like captions or audio description. Why do I have to suffer because phone zombies can't brain anymore? variety.com/2026/film/ne...

“Good and evil. There is never one without the other.” Happy 93rd birthday to John Boorman.

Who wore it better? Not only do I love the 1978 Australian heist film, MONEY MOVERS, but I once had the same Hawaiian shirt that Bryan Brown sports in this scene. I rocked it almost as much as he does (me on the right at Angkor Wat, Cambodia, 1992).

This explains a lot about how the movie turned out. On the other hand, it explains a lot about how the movie turned out. It also explains a lot about how the movie turned out.

lol

As wild as things are here in Minneapolis, I'm still watching and writing about movies. I had relatively high hopes for Carnahan's latest, THE RIP, but found it fairly middling in the end. Check it out: kino-ventura.blogspot.com/2026/01/the-...

I wrote a couple of reviews this week, but this is the one I'd especially recommend checking out. MALDOROR is dark, potent genre work from Fabrice du Welz.

How cool is this - got Dreiser, Cather, Dickens, Austen, Hardy, Frank Norris, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Dos Passos, Conan Doyle - just an insane resource standardebooks.org

Looks like Head Cleaner is popping off on the socials today. Woke up to a bunch of these. Do they coordinate these things like flash mobs?

pretty sure he meant the other thing, grok, but very cool that those are your two things

Another police drama, but one I found much more relevant and engaging is Fabrice du Welz's MALDOROR. A dark police thriller interrogating one of Belgium's most notorious true crime cases: kino-ventura.blogspot.com/2026/01/mald...

The demise of the mass market paperback, which I loved and will always love. New on my site: keithroysdon.com/2026/01/14/i...

Inspired by the new Criterion disc of PEE-WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE, @scotttobias.bsky.social surveyed Paul Reubens' eccentric, inclusive vision of America:

20 yr old reading THEY SHOOT HORSES DON'T THEY? when I left for work this evening. A re-read for him - when he was in middle school he didn't like any of the books on the official list for a reading assignment - so I handed him TSHDT? and he read it because it's such a slim book. Made an impression

Catch this tonight if you can. Wonderful movie.

A few years ago I published a book about Nicolas Cage movies called AGE OF CAGE that included capsule reviews of each of Cage's films. I've used The Reveal to keep the Cageography up to date. Here's my take on what Cage has been up to in the past two years:

Like this post by Anthony Neil Smith. It helped me zero in on my reading issue. anthonyneilsmith.substack.com/p/a-collecto...

Listen to The Arc Party! And pre-order mah book. www.thearcparty.com/p/david-jame...

Industry premiere

@maybejed.bsky.social 's time has come

To see the love of western violence in DEAD MAN and the genuine invention in gun violence depiction JARMUSCH pulls off there and in GHOST DOG as well and then see how cheap and cast-off the zombie shit is in DEAD DON’T DIE - guess it’s more a problem of managing expectations but it was disappointing

holy fuck it’s real

If you are anxious and sad about the state of the world, that's fine, and there are plenty of strategies for dealing with that. But I think you already know that drive-by online dooming isn't a strategy. It's selfish and adolescent. It's a contagion that only spreads the worst of you, not the best.

New review is up for Adam Seidel's Anywhere (2025). Cool indie rural noir that threw some twists at me that had my jaw on the floor. Check it out: kino-ventura.blogspot.com/2026/01/anyw...

Our series FELLINI IN BLACK AND WHITE continues this Sunday with the wonderful I VITELLONI in 35mm. www.trylon.org/film/i-vitel...

Today at The Reveal: reviews of two new hostage dramas. One involves a chimp, the other a Skarsgard. @scotttobias.bsky.social reviews DEAD MAN’S WIRE and I weigh in on PRIMATE.

"We must find another word for what happens to us during the films of Béla Tarr. We don’t observe them without them observing us right back,” writes @honorszombie.bsky.social in his tribute to the late Hungarian filmmaker:

For @brightwalldarkroom.com’s Best of 2025 staff lists, I cheated and made a list of my 25 Favorite Films Of The 21st Century. Sorry to be so insufferable. www.brightwalldarkroom.com/2026/01/07/b...

Jacob Frey: "To ICE -- get the fuck out of Minneapolis"

Ben Krueger designed this poster for our upcoming series, Giorgio Moroder, Mood Engineer - including a night of music dedicated to the disco god at @berlinmpls Tickets at www.trylon.org/film-series/... for movies. Tickets at www.berlinmpls.com/calendar/gio... for music

Bad year for years. Great year for movies. Here's my big year-end piece, with my Top 15 and other big-picture thoughts. It's free for everyone, but please consider supporting The Reveal in 2026. We'll make it worth your while. thereveal.film/the-best-fil...

2025 FAVORITE MOVIES boxd.it/R3cWq

yeah, it would. @nerdofnoir.bsky.social wrote a nice CrimesMas piece about THE PROPOSITION for Hardboiled Wonderland a few years back web.archive.org/web/20231123...

Since Anthony Jeselnik’s got folks reading THE GETAWAY for his book club, here’s a short essay I wrote about it for a Reader’s Companion to the works of Jim Thompson published by Rivages in France. crimereads.com/william-boyl...