Re-upping late-night tweet … I reviewed HEARTS OF DARKNESS

on my site, I also posted a review I finished after half-writing some months ago when I saw HEARTS OF DARKNESS. It's very good. vjmorton.wordpress.com/2025/12/02/h...

Re-upping for the day crowd … my very belated review of THE CONNECTION. Another review in this genre of “filling out months-ago rough draft” will drop this evening.

From the archives ... I saw THE CONNECTION this summer and wrote almost all of this but never got around to the final apple polishing. But here it is ... a Shirley Clarke film I wanted to be "less" cinematic. vjmorton.wordpress.com/2025/12/01/t...

Re-upping for the Day Crowd™️ … my 4/10 review of HAMNET

I donated to this and I’m sure most of y’all who follow me here have. But if not … Nathan Rabin needs the help of those who’ve read him for years or more gofund.me/0971dbc48

I had a schtick to my thoughts at HAMNET that I didn’t think would work at tweets length. So … full-length review on my site. vjmorton.wordpress.com/2025/11/30/h...

Focusing on current films today, once the human cockfighting was done. At the Angelika on Fairfax with Chloe Zhao followed by Rian Johnson. Nearly 3/4 hour to kill … AMA

DOG DAY AFTERNOON (Lumet, USA, 1975, 9, was 8) Surprised by how much this is basically a comedy. A black comedy, a comedy of pressure, a comedy of errors, and with higher stakes than most … because … y’know … bank robbery. But a comedy.

PETER HUJAR’S DAY (Sachs, USA, 2025, 3) Just a misguided project that had no chance of success. Zavattini said the ideal movie would be a day’s events in an ordinary man’s life. The best movies from his scripts actually belied that point … BICYCLE THIEF >>>> THE ROOF BUT…

ALL ABOUT EVE (Mankiewicz, USA, 1950, 10, was 9, R) Unfortunately, Gibson’s wasn’t available. But fasten your seatbelts anyway

Day planned out at AFISilver … two classics I’ve never seen in a theater, sandwiched around the new Ira Sachs. Two hours before ALL ABOUT EVE, so AMA

May the meal let you live deliciously

Friends, Romans, Countrymen... anyone know yet whether Loznitsa's TWO PROSECUTORS is a 2025 or a 2026 film, for awards purposes?

REFLECTION IN A DEAD DIAMOND (Cattet and Forzani, Belgium, 2025, 9) My jaw was agape from pretty much start to finish. There is not a merely functional shot in this film. And if you can’t or don’t want to make a coherent three-act narrative … do nothing but metamessing rug pulls instead

So the file sent to Alamo for BRANDED TO KILL had no subtitles. What I saw looked gorgeous in BW widescreen and pillow-shot edited shootouts and clearly iconographic acting, but … I’ve have tried this before in languages I understand much better than Japanese. No can do.

This is actually a legitimate promo poster, not a mere nostalgia bit, at the Alamo Drafthouse in Raleigh

RENTAL FAMILY (Hikari, USA/Japan, 2025, 6) If you go in expecring a bad movie, it’s more than watchable and avoids the worst saccharinity, though I wished it had left some of the threads less neatly tied up. Also missing the MOST central scene, the mother telling the girl her “father” is kayfabe.

At the Alamo Drafthouse in Raleigh (that’s in North Carolina, for those of you in Rio Linda*) for a day-long triple feature — Cattet and Forzani’s REFLECTION IN A DEAD DIAMOND; Suzuki’s BRANDED TO KILL and the current RENTAL FAMILY. * that’s in California, for those of you in Rio Linda

Right now, “Two of Hearts” is on my iTunes and it was just a few days ago I saw parts of the FACTS OF LIFE episode where Stacey Q played (basically) herself. My mind wandered to other 80s sitcom episodes where pop stars inexplicably played themselves … 🧵invitation

A movie that takesnplace where you’re from

apropos nothing in particular, Carl-Theodor Dreyer sucks and Lars Von Trier is a hack

People who know me will know how happy I am that the vagaries of exact titling conspired to put Judy Collins’ recording of “Send in the Clowns” on the same page as Mozart’s “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.”

with Scotland’s loss in Athens, I’m now madly refreshing UEFA site on the Denmark-Belarus game. This player caught my eye … (and this is how the game ended)

Had to cancel plans to attend the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, but at AFISilver … for a collection of silent shorts. “Breaking Plates and Smashing Patriarchy” 🙄 … is 10 shorts from 1903 to 1913 about rebellious women preceded by a contemporary 20-minute docudrama.

I saw this film for the first time quite recently, and … yeah, all this. VIDEODROME is a film about mediated reality, esp. forms that didn’t even exist in 1983.

Four pretty solid “normie” choices … at best one is explicitly religious, though all are about moral dilemmas. Two are rather dark though all four have dark moments. x.com/variety/stat...

Reupping from yeaterday …

Turning back to a film that hadn’t been on my radar, but was warmly recommended by two friends and I quietly saw Friday. TRAIN DREAMS is getting Netflix’s usual token theater run, but it deserves to be seen in the theater. vjmorton.wordpress.com/2025/11/09/t...

re-upping the reviews I wrote last night of two C;ara Bow pictures. First: KICK IN, which is interesting but neither essential nor a typical "Clara Bow film" (6) vjmorton.wordpress.com/2025/11/08/k...

The second of two reviews of the Clara Bow films I saw today … THE PLASTIC AGE (7) vjmorton.wordpress.com/2025/11/08/t...

The first of two reviews of the Clara Bow films I saw today … KICK IN (6) vjmorton.wordpress.com/2025/11/08/k...

And re-upping the piece I finished last night about DIE MY LOVE vjmorton.wordpress.com/2025/11/07/w...

At AFI Silver for a Clara Bow double feature … first her 1931 talkie KICK IN (her last Paramount film) and then THE PLASTIC AGE, the 1925 film that made her a top star

I was not a fan of the latest film by the stars of THE HUNGER GAMES and TWILIGHT, directed by the autrix of WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN vjmorton.wordpress.com/2025/11/07/w...

I really wanted to support an AMC or Regal multiplex for playing the new Lynne Ramsay movie (stars J-Law and Pattison), but the way my scheduling worked out, one of my familiar art house haunts worked best

TIL … Lynne Ramsay’s RATCATCHER (which I’ve never seen) is set in one of the defining memories of my boyhood … the 1974 Glasgow garbagemen strike.

I know that Cattet and Forzani’s latest film, REFLECTION IN A DEAD DIAMOND, is being released in the US on Nov 21 (streams Dec 5). Does anyone within my Skyshot know more than this about the theatrical release?

A film that you’ve seen more than seven times in a GIF (30 here)

At @alamodrafthouse.bsky.social perhaps the most shocking “you’ve not seen THAT one???” film for a decades-long cinephile born in 1966 — BACK TO THE FUTURE.

Giving a second look to the most disappointing film of the year

TALE OF SILYAN (Tamara Kotevska, North Macedonia, 2025, 7) It's a bit of a mess stucturally, melding several threads ... a stork population and the decline thereof; a Macedonian folk tale about a father and son that involves storks; and a family-farm and immigration drama

THE ZODIAC KILLER PROJECT (Shackleton, USA, 2025, 7) A one-joke movie, sure, but it's an great joke that Shackleton sustains and shades for 92 minutes. He loses rights to a (marginal, I think) Zodiac-theory book by CHiP Lyndon Lafferty but makes lemonade by ...

NOUVELLE VAGUE (Linklater, USA, 2025, 8) If you gonna do biopics, this is how ... confined and well-defined period centering on a specific quest (Godard making BREATHLESS, for those of you in Rio Linda). It's cinephile catnip and didn't tell ME anything I didn't know, sure, BUT

MIRRORS #3 (Petzold, Germany, 2025, 6) Maybe the festival's most crushing disappointment, as this slow-burn riff on VERTIGO played like gangbusters for its first two acts ... person falls into the company of a family just a bit too well and you're waiting for a PHOENIX ending.

Day 4 of @vafilmfestival.bsky.social about to get under way with Petzold’s MIRRORS #3, followed by Linklater’s NOUVELLE VAGUE, then the doc THE ZODIAC KILLER PROJECT and finally the North Macedonian TALE OF SILYAN

IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT (Panahi, Iran, 2025, 8) Structurally brilliant (can’t really say why without spoliers), never less-than-gripping, and doesn’t duck the hardest of questions about virtue (also can’t elaborate except to say the last shot is perfect).

GHOST ELEPHANTS (Herzog, USA, 2025, 8) FYC Best Supporting Actor, Werner Herzog. This would be just a moderately engaging bit of edumacational anthropology / elephant “hunt” (tho with some surprisingly pre-PC scenes among Namibian bushmen) were it not for Herzog’s narration.

TWO PROSECUTORS (Loznitsa, France/Russia, 2025, 9) The only negative thing I’ve read about this movie that I find remotely convincing is that the end is predictable / foreordained. Well … yeah, I guess. Quit watching historical movies. But the fun (seldom is a noun correct but so wrong) is the how.

SENTIMENTAL VALUE (Trier, Norway, 2025, 6) Reading rapturous reviews of this film and wondering what the hell I missed. It’s clearly superbly acted esp. by Stellan Skarsgard and Renate Reinsve but I felt no emotional reaction whatever to this story, except “Bergman did this better.”