Revisiting Taxi Driver for the first time in an awfully long time and instead of taking Betsy to the dirty Swedish movie (at the Lyric Theatre, which now houses the Harry Potter play), Travis, had he been smart, could have taken her across the street to Clint’s The Eiger Sanction

A long time ago I swore I saw Tom Noonan in the East Village but I wasn’t sure it was him. A friend said, “If you think you saw Tom Noonan, you saw Tom Noonan.” RIP

Frederick Wiseman spent 1967 on, some six decades, wandering America and the world filming how it works (and, often, doesn’t), retreating to an editing room, then going back out and doing it all over again. What a life! RIP to one of the actual greatest

Phil Collins solo albums are wild because they’ll have a minimalist, menacing, anguished masterpiece followed immediately by the lamest, most vanilla track ever recorded. I’m especially thinking of “Do You Know, Do You Care?” into “You Can’t Hurry Love” off Hello, I Must Be Going

Someone do a rep series of W. Somerset Maugham film adaptations and call it Mars Needs Maughams

An absurdly mixed bag year! Emergency spinal surgery over the summer made it an ordeal, but I still managed to watch new movies and cross off plenty of oldies off my to-see-list. Thanks to all who helped me get through 2025 and may 2026 be considerably less garbage

TIL: We could have gotten David Lynch’s American Beauty

Revisited Broadcast News and the part where the news head jokes to Nicholson that the layoffs would be less brutal if he shaved a million or so off his salary, then spends a solid 30 seconds apologizing to him and swearing he was just kidding, is my new favorite part

Belatedly made Metropolitan a staple of my holiday movie repertoire starting in 2022 and it’s become one of my favorite Yuletide traditions

Once I interviewed Rob Reiner and asked about his incredible work in Wolf of Wall Street. He said, "I don't know what was more unbelievable: that I was DiCaprio's father or that DiCaprio was a Jew." An incredibly lovely and funny man. This news is beyond awful

This is arguably the wildest aspect of David Lynch’s Dune

Because of their Marty Supreme getup in the big window of AMC Lincoln Square 13, New York finally has the giant head of Abel Ferrara looking down upon it

Ella McCay: I enjoyed this kooky movie and its plethora of faults and its far more plentiful pleasures. Very nice seeing a comedy in the year 2025 that repeatedly pauses so characters can cry while sad music plays. That Soike Fearn guy is intense

Is “chicken bake” even a thing or a CostCo invention? Also never been here before and was horrified/impressed by five pounds of Hershey’s and 50 pounds of powdered sugar

Would watch a sitcom about Roberto Rossellini bringing a kangaroo home to Ingrid and the kids

Was heartened at my UWS screening of Sentimental Value when a little jokette about Gaspae Noé’s 23-year-old Irreversible got the film’s biggest laugh

Stoked to never have to think about Andrew Cuomo again for the rest of my days

Caught up with Pret-à-Porter before it skedaddled from Criterion Channel and this crash zoom into Stephen Rea doing a face is among the wackiest shots in the Altman canon

Every other cyclist in the world after I finally have a bicycle stolen

Caught up with John Badham’s Dracula, which is merely fine but which does sport Frank Langella as the only version of the Count I know of with a Mid-Atlantic accent

Easily my favorite celebrity encounter ever. RIP to a queen

Shout-out to the apparent relatives of Jo Ann Harris who rolled out for Don Siegel's The Beguiled last night at Metrograph, who hooted when her name came up, and also to the dude who then shouted "Your grandma's hot!"

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You: I don’t like weighing in on movies in terms of topicality or personal shit, but I and a number of people I know and love have been going through some shit from several angles at once, so this kind of got to me. I also laughed my ass off

Fond memories of watching Ken Jacob’s’ Star Spangled to Death over a winter break, watching it in fits when I could, lugging the discs around like Charlie Brown in that special where has to read War and Peace. RIP to one of the masters

Watching The Great Waldo Pepper, which isn’t great though it’s much better than its non-reputation, but it has *genuinely* jaw-dropping aerial footage with Redford and Bo Svenson cruising around in vintage aircraft while endangering their lives to entertain. Impressive!

How did I not know that there’s a 1985 TV movie called John & Yoko in which Peter Capaldi plays George Harrison

Watching The Way We Were for the first time and Young James Woods as a Marxist student protester who gets cucked at a university dance by Redford is simply beautiful stuff

I met Robert Redford twice. Once I was thrown into a room with him and Cate Blanchett, and when they both turned to look at me for my first question I somehow managed to speak. I have nothing original to say about him except he was incredibly kind and lovely and rest in peace man

From Hyde and Go Tweet, in which the usually more conservative Friz Freleng briefly leans into Tex Avery/Bob Clampett territory

Things funnier than the “Surrender Dorothy” story from Martin Scorsese and Joseph Minion’s After Hours:

I had one of my shittest ever summers — underwent emergency spinal surgery, doctors forbade me from cycling and even fucking swimming, was in lots of orthopedic pain, foot and leg torn up by an uncomfortable brace — but it did end with me seeing Oasis, and goddamn

Still trying to score cheapish Oasis tickets for this weekend. In the meantime enjoying this presumably complete list of songs of theirs that feature “sun,” “shine," "shining," and/or "soul" www.tumblr.com/playmixt/978...

One of the tightest sections of my bookshelves, all heaters

Per J. Hoberman’s Everything is Now, I’ve learned that city activist Jane Jacobs wrote this song with Bob Dylan to protest Robert Moses’ thankfully aborted highway that would have destroyed the Village — a detail not included in The Power Broker m.youtube.com/watch?v=9c09...

I almost cried when after an hour of digital Highest 2 Lowest abruptly switched to 16

Been informed that I’m not allowed to get on my beloved bicycle till at least the end of August because of my Emergency Spinal Surgery from earlier this summer, but when I finally do, after two maddening months, I’ll look like this

An excellent frame from Naked Gun 2 1/2

Finally some good news: I wrote an essay about Neil Jordan for his once-hated, actually interesting escaped con priest movie We’re No Angels for its new blu-ray release by Cinématographe

Crossing off my biggest unseen Hitch. Hitch and most everyone had a miserable time making it, Gregory Peck said it was the only picture he made that he’d like to have seen burned, its rep has long been that it’s the rare boring Hitchcock. How bad could it be?

After my spinal surgery I was given a bland hospital cane, and I need to upgrade. Suggestions are welcome, but for now here is my fancy cane mood board

Me with my post-emergency spinal surgery cane

Beyond relieved someone who wasn’t me in the post-surgery recovery room* asked one of the hospital staff if they enjoyed The Pitt. (They did) * I’m fine, mostly

Listen to me from a few years back revealing my horrible secret that I know way too much about Michael Winner (and some about Charles Bronson)

This is almost certainly wrong

If anyone has tips on how to deal with foot drop, lemme know because I have it partially and I am not a fan. This is me now m.youtube.com/watch?v=XNg6...

What the hell is happening

One of the best lesser-knowns from Brian Wilson’s CV. RIP m.youtube.com/watch?v=pv6Z...

The most mind-blowing thing I learned this week is that William F. Buckley Jr. did not have a Mid-Atlantic accent. His upbringing was less patrician than peripatetic, producing the multi-ethnic blob that is one of the 20th century’s most euphonious sounds

Revisited Hunt for Red October for the first time since either the Clinton or maybe even the Bush I era, and imagining an alternate timeline in which Jan de Bont never became a director, never even did Speed, and just kept making movies look rad. Goddamn this movie is a beaut