#NowWatching “Wicked: For Good”

"You think he’s going to beat Jackson? Doc, please. Do something about it." Watching "Nuremberg" and appreciating it as "the kind of three-star historical procedural they don't make any more", but am a little weirded out by the third act that plays the Nuremberg Trials like a sports movie.

Perform empathy. Please. Perform the fuck out of it. It's so good to act with kindness. I hope it penetrates to a place where you feel it, too, but if you must act some way, act the right way. I'm not here to judge your authenticity, I just want you to be kind, thoughtful, and mortified by meanness.

This is my favourite kind of reply to people who get angry about me just posting basic facts about franchises like "Star Trek." "This argument is complete nonsense!" "Actually, he's citing production documentation that is publicly available." "... well, still, I don't like it."

Thrilled to be one of several filmgoers to talk to @empiremagazine.bsky.social about making a cross-border pilgrimage to see "One Battle After Another" on IMAX 70mm at the the BFI IMAX. www.empireonline.com/movies/featu...

It's that time of the year. Time to count down our ten most popular episodes of a truncated season. Our tenth most popular episode was Mark Webb's "Snow White", with @mistercinecal.bsky.social and @ciaramoloney.bsky.social. Rachel Zegler, CGI dwarves and more! soundcloud.com/the250/421-s...

Admittedly a blindingly obvious thought, but it occurs to me that one of the bigger issues with modern "Star Trek" is the lesson it has taken from the "golden age" of nineties "Star Trek." It's not actually utopian. It's just nostalgic for Clinton era liberalism and hegemony.

Quite enjoyed "The War Between the Land and the Sea." It lacks the grim commitment to its premise that made "Children of Earth" a masterpiece, but it's pretty good example of Davies in his populist science-fiction mode. I was quite moved by that final episode.

Ah, so we're doing "The Silurians" as modern television. Very clever. #TheWarBetween

Here are the US reciprocal tariffs against all the territories mentioned in Enya’s Orinoco Flow

We said for years: don't normalise having these "debates" about trans people and immigrants. Everyone thought they knew better. And now it's absolutely normal to say trans people are deviants and immigrants are subhuman, and we're having debates about whether women can vote.

Reading and quite enjoying Emily Wilson's translation of "The Odyssey." It's my first time reading the poem since secondary school, and really appreciating Wilson's historical commentary and context. It makes all of the "historical accuracy" nonsense on here even funnier.

Part of the beauty of the “Avatar” films is that they are the cleanest straightest-down-the-middle blockbuster filmmaking that you could ask for, but are also about how maybe the human race should go extinct.

There is a moment in “Fire and Ash” where a sweet, innocent child who spent the past two movies trying to commune with the planet finally connects to nature. It’s beautiful. Bliss. She opens her eyes. “Kill them,” she commands. “Kill them all.” Don’t ever change, Big Jim.

😎

I think that one of the reasons nerds hate Avatar so much is that it exists and is wildly successful pretty much entirely outside of The Discourse, and so is proof that the Age Of The Geek is not the dominant and enduring cultural epoch they want and believe it to be.

Rewatching "X-Men '97", and fascinated by the show's relationship to nostalgia. It's in conversation with so much "X-Men" history outside that '90s corridor - both forward and backward. Really interesting how the team ends up wearing their '70s/'80s costumes by the finale.

It incredible to watch "Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair" in cinemas. At once Tarantino's most postmodern movie and his most personal, the story of a character's long odyssey from the world of exploitation cinema to a more grounded domestic reality. Beautiful stuff.

Between Jeremy Strong in "Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere", Adam Sandler in "Jay Kelly" and Pierce Brosnan in "Giant", it's been a big year for managers in movies.

Just out of the cinema. During the teaser for “Avengers: Doomsday”, three patrons produced and set off fire works while several more started throwing wads of cash at the screen. Five film critics were beaten to death in the theatre, their bodies dowsed in green Mountain Dew.

“Marty Supreme” accurately captures what it feels like trying to secure an invitation to the evening press screening of “Rental Family” before awards voting closes

“Kill Bill, Vol. 1” is a film about how she who seeks revenge should dig two graves. One for her enemy. And another in case her enemy has some buddies.

#NowWatching “Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair”

Been a week since I saw “Giant”, but the shot pushing in on Toby Stephens sitting in his country manor, lit by the flicker of a fireplace, monologuing about the shift in British pop culture into the 90s, as that Beethoven piece from “The King’s Speech” plays in my head on loop.

“Heat” turned thirty this week. So, I wrote at @SecondWindGroup.com about how the film is not so secretly a western. A story of bank robbers running out of west on the edge of the Pacific, as the world crosses over the digital frontier. READ: www.patreon.com/posts/column...

At its core, “Avatar: Fire and Ash” is a movie about co-parenting with the worst dude you know.

The Dublin Film Critics' Circle's top ten films of 2025. 1.) Sinners 2.) One Battle After Another 3.) Train Dreams 4.) The Brutalist 5.) It Was Just an Accident 6.) Sentimental Value 7.) Flow 8.) I Swear 9.) Weapons 10.) Vermiglio We made a pretty good list, I think.

I will say, as wonderful as “One Battle After Another” is in 70mm IMAX, it’s not as transformed by the format as “Oppenheimer” was. Nolan’s use of close-ups in IMAX, coupled with Cillian Murphy’s expressive eyes remains one of the best theatrical experiences I’ve ever had.

“One Battle After Another” in 70mm IMAX? Pretty darn good.

#NowWatching (six minutes of) “The Odyssey.”

Visiting the BFI. Which, as I understand it, stands for “big freakin’ IMAX.”

In about an hour: Marty, @darrenmooney.bsky.social, and I will be talking movies... well we'll be talking about the hellscape that is movie production, licensing, and distribution (hard sigh) Then old Christmas Movies (YAAA!!) and French Avant-garde Horror movies (BOOOO!) Watch/Listen Here:

Latest episode of The Backdrop is online at @SecondWindGroup.com, as I talk about what it means for Netflix to buy Warners, what is being lost, and how everybody loses. WATCH: youtu.be/tCcTEIHeDdA?...

This week on The Backdrop, @darrenmooney.bsky.social explores what happens when Netflix buys Warner Bros. A eulogy of sorts.

Just like you could tell coming out of “Drive Away Dolls” which Coen was responsible for the sex chair in “Burn After Reading”, three minutes into “Marty Supreme”, you know exactly which Safdie decided to open “Uncut Gems” in Adam Sandler’s colon.

“Made in America.” Really loved #MartySupreme, arriving in under the finish line as one of the best movies of the year. A movie about the American Jewish experience, the end of American exceptionalism, passion under late capitalism, and chickens (or pigs) coming home to roost.

#NowWatching #MartySupreme

It’s been a real “two-/three-star” autumn/winter season.

Some busride home thoughts on “Giant”, the new boxing biopic of Prince Naseem Hamed. boxd.it/c451bB

#NowWatching #Giant

Oh, I hear “Madame Web” is on Netflix at the moment. I had a lovely conversation exploring how it connected us all with the great @nemesis4909.bsky.social and Chris on @kneelbeforeblog.co.uk. A good listen, I think! www.podbean.com/ep/pb-ppwp9-...

At what point does an “Avatar” movie become “just another Avatar movie?” #AvatarFireAndAsh is a functional-if-messy blockbuster, with Cameron’s clean storytelling instincts and filmmaking strained to their limit by franchise concerns and his trademark weird sensibilities. A good enough time.

#NowWatching #AvatarFireAndAsh

The success and narrative straightforwardness of “Avatar” tends to obscure the more insane choices Cameron makes. Like having seventy-something Sigourney Weaver play a teenager. People wonder what distinguished these films from generic blockbusters. It’s choices like that.

Great film.

I believe the kids call this “foreshadowing.” (A.X.E.: X-Men #1.)

Currently trying to figure out if I can swing Mooney Family Christmas Movie “One Battle After Another” *and* Mooney Family Christmas Cinema Trip “Marty Supreme”, or if that’s just too ambitious.

Netflix’s “Jay Kelly” - a love letter to movie stars, set as someone pointed out in a universe where modern cinema was defined by Clooney-directed movies, collaborations with the Coens and the early films of DreamWorks - has big “serial killer eulogizing their victims” energy.

#NowWatching #SentimentalValue

Oh, new project from @SecondWindGroup.com, looking at the origins of the "Guild Wars" franchise. Here's the announcement! www.youtube.com/watch?si=tsM...