Robert Wagner is the worst date ever in a film that could easily be American Psycho Minus One. Both Joanne Woodward and Virginia Leith should be way smarter - but come on - it’s the original Number 2!

So glad that Baylon from Gilda made it out west and into copper mining. By the mid 1950s a former German err…industrialist would fit right into the center of the new prosperity - and the pathos of the mid-century. 

And while I’d like to think that modern tech makes this sort of insane story completely unrealistic in 2026, I’ve also seen the 8am hour of GMA a few times as well. 

Great and twisted stuff. No wonder Lynch mined this material so closely.

Ernest Borgnine as an Amish action hero is just one of the bonkers twists and turns in this Western/Bourgeois bedroom/social melodrama. CinemaScope is somehow never better than when it transitions from a hushed discussion of an affair into a gun fight. This has several of both and in a glorious Arizona setting.

After seeing Eva walking in the moonlight, I might’ve killed and died for her too. Armed to the teeth indeed!

The American dream and nightmare have always been blurred beyond recognition.

My home and the subdivision it sits in was built in 1957 - the same year that Sunrise Hills saw so much drama on the other side of the country. 70 odd years later, with the post-war prosperity spent, and Americans no longer willing to build and develop, the idea that we were somehow “greater” or had more material satisfaction in this era is completely obliterated by No Money Down.

We are quite literally the children and grandchildren of these strivers and engineers and veterans. No different, save for the humanity sacrificed to the algorithm and digital spaces. But underneath the same basic animals cowering in fear and resentment and greed.

Joanne Woodward and Tony Randall in particular deliver powerful performances, but the entire cast inhabits the neuroses and insecurities of our supposedly most stable generation.

Tony Randall’s Jerry would obviously have multiple Kalshi/Robinhood and Coinbase accounts and five internet/AI businesses.

No surprise that Pat Hingle, who so convincingly played Commissioner Gordon in Batman (1989) is the most noble man in the whole film.

So when did the Palmer family move into this house? 

Horrific exploration of addiction and psychosis - by extrapolating every terrible “Dad” tendency into a torture chamber for James Mason’s family.

The patina of order and masculine virtue that define the 1950s in our collective memory is so thoroughly undercut by the era’s cinema. 

Nicholas Ray just absolutely dismantles the idea that “father knows best”, addicted to “cortisone” or no.

Figuring whether Orson Welles is brilliant or terrible in this film would take at least 5 more viewings. What is clear is that these 1950s melodramas (particularly the Southern fried versions) were more honest about sex, wounded masculine pride, repressed female desire and how ridiculous situations are taken seriously by whole societies than most films today.

Paul Newman and Orson Welles chewing scenery are the highlights - but the chemistry between Newman and Woodward is electric.

We need way more melodramas told today with this level of craft and widescreen vistas. And more honesty too.

At times it’s a highly cinematic Hallmark romance, but then it transcends its inherently tacky premise to become something much greater. 

Best of all it shows that the movies are the best because of their happy endings. Johnny To believes they can heal the deepest wounds. And maybe they can.

Even something good and beautiful can produce disease and rot. This is almost a retelling of the story of Job. A good man does lose everything despite his continued faith.

But the film is called HUD for a reason. And as the old man says, when we hold up evil as something admirable, our souls may already be lost.

Raw performances that drive home the depths of despair and desire for sin and redemption that lives in all men.

“Who’d say that proud Salieri has ever been
A despicable envier,
A snake trampled by people, alive,
Powerlessly biting sand and dust?
None!.. But now – I say it myself – I’m now
An envier. I envy; deeply,
Painfully envy. – O heaven!
Where is justice when the sacred gift,
When the immortal genius – not as a reward
For ardent love, selflessness,
Toil, diligence, prayers – was sent –
But illuminates the head of a madman,
An idle reveler?.. O Mozart, Mozart!”—Emil S. translation of Pushkin’s “little tragedy”, Mozart and Salieri

If there were a manifestation portal open in the vast cosmos of our fine and deteriorating universe for me to humbly submit a wanting, then let my siren song be heard. If by some strange yet dreamworthy chance I were ever inclined to give interview with the stealthish and somewhat elusive Letterboxd socials team, I have my first film selection offering to prelude their viral “top 4” questionnaire.

This is a film that lived inside the mouth of my parent’s Sanyo television set, above a treasure trove of well-loved boxes that contained every analog VHS daydream necessary to coax my precociously distractible mind. Tapes of Shirley Temple, Mario Lanza, Jacqueline Du Prè, and Van Cliburn became the soundtrack to my infant years, accompanied by a lingering yet spontaneous waft of Shikumen syle braised spareribs with bamboo or my Nonna’s Sunday Ragù Napoletano. This is a film that eventually suffered an untimely demise, due to my incessant rewinding and constant replay. There was never an eject button pressed that was not followed by an immediate and ungraceful tape load.

But enough muffaletta memories.

The picture I’ve chosen to fuss over, is Amadeus.

Amadeus (1984), the forty-time award winning classical composer biopic-adjacent film by mythical Czechoslovakian auteur, Miloš Forman, has been said to have drawn initial inspiration and satirical substance from Russian Romantic poet and playwright Alexander Pushkin’s poem, Mozart and Salieri.

Aleksandr Pushkin (born May 26 [June 6, New Style], 1799, Moscow, Russia—died January 29 [February 10], 1837, St. Petersburg) was a Russian poet, novelist, dramatist, and short-story writer; he has often been considered his country’s greatest poet and the founder of modern Russian literature…

After returning from exile, Pushkin found himself in an awkward and invidious position. The tsar’s censorship proved to be even more exacting than that of the official censors, and his personal freedom was curtailed. Not only was he put under secret observation by the police but he was openly supervised by its chief, Count Benckendorf. Moreover, his works of this period met with little comprehension from the critics, and even some of his friends accused him of apostasy, forcing him to justify his political position in the poem “Druzyam” (1828; “To My Friends”)…

Yet it was during this period that Pushkin’s genius came to its fullest flowering. His art acquired new dimensions, and almost every one of the works written between 1829 and 1836 opened a new chapter in the history of Russian literature. He spent the autumn of 1830 at his family’s Nizhny Novgorod estate, Boldino, and these months are the most remarkable in the whole of his artistic career.

During them he wrote the four so-called “little tragedies”—Skupoy rytsar (1836; The Covetous Knight), Motsart i Salyeri(1831; Mozart and Salieri), Kamenny gost (1839; The Stone Guest), and Pir vo vremya chumy(1832; Feast in Time of the Plague)—the five short prose tales collected as Povesti pokoynogo Ivana Petrovicha Belkina (1831; Tales of the Late Ivan Petrovich Belkin); the comic poem of everyday lower-class life Domik v Kolomne (1833; “A Small House in Kolomna”); and many lyrics in widely differing styles, as well as several critical and polemical articles, rough drafts, and sketches.—Encyclopedia Britannica

It would seem that Pushkin grappled with the literary and allegorical device of cardinal sin, much like many of his other Russian Romantic contemporaries. Goncharov’s Oblomov is a 500 page meditation on sloth, Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment explores Raskolnikov’s pride and hubris, and Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina is basically an unrelenting foghorn warning—shouting at all not to commit adultery or emphasize lust as the reliable companion to sound decision making.

Amadeus could be seen as an exploration of envy. A nuanced yet universal envy; only of immediate visibility to the two inflicted in toxic lockstep. Miloš Forman is not the only artist to draw from the Russian Romantic set and their philosophically sticky œuvre of divine justice, sublime intervention and mortal sin. Pushkin’s foundational source material became a Mary Poppins-esque bag of neverending inspirational depth, filled with Russian nationalist composers’ and their artistic contributions. Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov, Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, even an opera with a verbatim libretto, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Mozart and Salieri.

But for more on Forman’s Amadeus—seeing as it is arguably the most accessible and easiest to finagle an opinion into—we must address Peter Shaffer’s 1979 play by the same name. Shaffer’s play ran over 2000 performances between Broadway and London’s theatre districts. When asked by The Guardian in 2013, Shaffer said on his inspiration for writing Amadeus:

When Forman began the adaption to film, he worked closely with legendary conductor and violinist, Sir Neville Marriner CBE, also affectionately known as one of the greatest conductors to have ever lived. Forman chose pieces with Marriner according to rhythmic structure, emotional tone, and often times, with a stiff upper lip sense of irony. A few examples include:

The Serenade for Winds (Gran Partita) — We are introduced to a decrepit, quasi undead Salieri in the sanitorium post attempt. As we’ve leered into his inner mind and introductory self, the room ominously darkens as he describes Mozart. Wolfgang, Amadeus, Mozart. He proclaims of this piece, as his first impression of the young Salzburgian, “The beginning simple, almost comic. Just a pulse – bassoons and basset horns ~like a rusty squeezebox~. And then suddenly, hiiiiiigh above it, an oboe, a single note! Hanging there! Unwavering… until a clarinet took it over. Sweetened it into a phrase of such delight! This was a music I’d never heard. Filled with such longing, such unfulfillable longing. It seemed to me that I was hearing the voice of God.”

And with any other composer of that period, still lamenting Lully and showing utmost reverence to the Esterhazy-court beloved Haydn, they would have predictably set this ensemble to string. But Mozart? Our little genius of a strudel set his Gran Partita to winds only. A multitude of sustained, crystalline, otherworldly woodwind melodies in perfect tandem and harmony. Sounds that lift even the darkest depths of one’s weary soul. The entry of the oboe instills a welcomed and uncontrollable frisson.

The Abduction from the Seraglio — Forman ambitiously tackles the iconic catalogue of Mozart’s operatic compositions and libretti. He included a lesser known opera to deliberately match the script’s subject. Though, from a more analytical lense, this could be the beginning of criticism toward Salieri’s depravity.

We see him piously beg in previous to be rid of his lust, his pride, and his desires. He pleads with Christ, for salvation in return for his utmost chastity and deliverance from sin. Yet, here we witness him accompanying a student he only sees, to satiate his overwhelming flesh-based desires. He is deeply enamored and obsessed with Katerina, the soprano donning all Turkish themed attire, for fear of not observing her trendy hairstylist’s advice. Through flirtatious asides and presumably silly shenanigans involving genitalia, Mozart eventually gets his quill into Katerina. He writes her a primadonna part, officially cementing her as the chanteusse du jour and now, Salieri as his direct opponent. I believe we can see how envy plays a natural, undeniable role in Salieri’s behavior and public being. Try as he desperately might, jealousy slips through the corners of his lips, promptly poisoning his promise to Christ. When the illiterate albeit lovable Emperor values Mozart’s opera at “too many notes”, we are immediately fed an unappetizing dish of unfiltered, realistic truth through the timeless human experience of disappointment. The message that genius, does not supersede mediocrity. Being liked however, does.

But, having mediocrity, affability, and power? Meet Antonio Salieri.

We are shown a deliberate juxtaposition from Mozart’s opera to Salieri’s posterior-kissing pomp and circumstance, (Axur, re d’Ormus, “Axur, King of Ormus”), the Emperor titillating. As a musician, one is usually opposed to pitting composers against one another, especially when such salacious rivalry never existed in reality. Pushkin’s Salieri character is unfortunately just that—a character. In history, Antonio Salieri was an incredibly nuanced and well-respected operatic composer, completing almost 652 musical works in his life. Operas and stage works alone surpassed 40 pieces, without the inclusion of his orchestral masses, requiem, oratorios and offertories.

Whether or not his work had artistic merit isn’t necessarily the usual, proposed question. In the context of Amadeus however, one is inclined to turn their nose upward— out of principal.

Ma certo, how can we not speak on Act III?

The Requiem — The doom-impending, foreshadowing piece summoned by a masked stranger, wearing what can only be assumed is a facial covering modeled after those in vogue during the Black Plague. In a quasi-meta, life imitates art but with a tinge of psychosis and schizophrenia shift towards the third act, we begin our descent into Mozart’s Requiem.

As Salieri plots to single-white-female Mozart, connivingly usurping unearned historical glory, we see that though an unfathomably impossible genius, reality is still a sobering reflection. Mozart has gone hungry. Gaunt, sickly, and frail with pneumonia; a disappearing Mozart gambles and drinks away his brief glimmer of fame and prosperity. The masked taunter pays Mozart to swiftly finish a requiem, a mass for the dead. As he works tirelessly—when not drunkenly frolicking amidst forest fueled sex parties—the composition process deteriorates his spirit. And eventually, ushers in iconic, premature death.

Latin:
Confutatis maledictis,
Flammis acribus addictis,
Voca me cum benedictis.

Oro supplex et acclinis,
Cor contritum quasi cinis,
Gere curam mei finis.

English translation:
When the accursed have been confounded,
consigned to the fierce flames,
call me among the blessed.

I pray, suppliant and kneeling,
a heart contrite as ashes,
take Thou my ending into Thy care.

“Confutatis Maledictis” is a Latin Catholic traditional text, from the Dies Irae sequence, dating back to the 13th century. It is a liturgical text in the public domain. Mozart’s use of male vocalists as an audible suggestion of flames and fury, in contrast and accompanied with female choir voices begging for salvation, is an example of his multi-dimensional and perfect compositional prowess. A genius, with a God given message.

As the reverie of hair-raising, sonically superior storytelling comes to an end, and our titular hero of God-like talent is thrown into the earth’s crust without even so much as an epitaph of remembrance; the viewer is confounded with a moral apprehension. A queasiness of uncertainty, pangs of uncomfortable truth. We are forced to confront the message of merit, and all of it’s unpromised promises. We are shown that genius is a gift, and earthly pleasures can never measure. We are shown that deterioration through sin is possible, and the only sure way to let most mediocrity win.

Perhaps we are meant to see such, and pivot.

Be childish in your curiosity like Mozart, inquisitive and hilarious like Mozart. With the cunning awareness, superficial superficiality, and clear-headed calculation of a seasoned reptile, like Salieri. Live well like Salieri. Be successful and learn what works, like Salieri. Keep the talent, save the hope. Show the strength, soft like water. Create constantly, showcase strategically.

Or, live and create as though every day were your last, because with Pushkin, it very well may be.

[insert iconic maniacal cackling synonymous with Amadeus.]

A much more romantic, polished version of this story, and one that suffers for its lack of transgression. The moment the film tells you the “slaves left” and leaves out the incest plot line and  Corporal’s kiss with Amy - you know the film is going to be far different than the Eastwood/Seigel version.

But the film really suffers from this overt lack of sin. The grime and dirt and decadence and resentment that pervades the earlier film is missing entirely here.

I’m not sure that it serves the “female perspective” either, nor the film’s verisimilitude. When the original
Beguiled was made - the Civil War was just over 100 years old. The people who made it knew people who knew people who fought there. It was present in a way we cannot conceive.

And that - more than a male or female POV is the major difference between the two films. 

A noble failure.

Die Walkure retold as a magical Japanese fish story with Wotan recast as a Richard Wagner-esque sea wizard? Voiced by Liam Nesson? With a soundtrack that alludes to both The Ride of the Valkyries and the soundtrack to Super Mario 64?

What an absolute masterpiece.

This might've surpassed Porco Rosso as my favorite Ghibli film. The layers and artistic allusions and retelling of ancient and not-so-ancient myths was deeply moving.

Beautiful.

It’s amazing how closely the aesthetic of Clockwatchers tracks The Backrooms. And why not? The Gen Z fascination with soulless liminal spaces from the 90’s is wrapped up with the broader questioning of materialism and the capitalist grind. 

But if you temped back in the 90’s-early 2000’s this film also feels incredibly true to life. The floating through a company where no one knows you save the temp wrangler. The trauma bonding with others in your “class”. The constant menial pointless tasks, and no internet or smartphone to distract. 

If AI does come for the office job, this film is a strong counterpoint to the nostalgia that’s already arising for this era of “work”.

Like the old coal mines and auto plants and garment factories that have been similarly automated - “the office” might not be worth mourning.

The most messed up women’s prison/Civil War/Clint Eastwood Western ever filmed.

Once upon a time, American kids could let it all hang out without much fear of consequence beyond a little emotional scarring. Sixteen Candles has such affection for its highly imperfect characters without leaning into much sentiment.

Some of the best needle drops of any Hughes film.

Clearly perfected this formula in Christmas Vacation, but this (somewhat) rawer portrayal of America in the 80’s still hits.

The shifting mores of American society are on full display in this CinemaScope melodramatic Western. The “real men” in this film end up as posturing cowards when confronted with the consequences of their actions.

Those who have borne the scars of their indifference are the heroes of this film, despite their nominal low status (the bastard son, an unwanted pregnancy, a frigid wife) and given real agency and emotional depth.

Would love to see more melodramas shot today with this level of craftsmanship and mise en scene.

The form and aesthetic of Minnelli’s direction completely serves the film’s function.

Eminently watchable!

No matter the travels one takes or the travails one faces, we remain the same soul - timeless and eternal - moving across eras and lifetimes.

David Golder’s spiritual journey begins with the loss of material things and his health, and yet we see him emerge as something far greater.

An incredible first sound picture from Julien Duvivier. I can see why Renoir worshipped him. He has real poetry in his camera movements and dialogue. 

An early triumph of form and function at the cinema

How much pain and suffering in America would be avoided if wounded, humiliated men sought love rather than restored pride? There are layers upon layers upon layers in this Tennessee Williams penned script - but it’s clear where its sympathies lie.

The crumbling, haunted house. The hollowed out, poorly cared for business. The sense that foreigners, or immigrants are stealing from you, are the fears that define modern day America as much as it did the mid-century South.

Sadly it seems that restored pride remains the organizing principle of our polity. And our fate appears to be no different than that of Archie Lee and Baby Doll

Shocking that a Spider-Man/X-Men/ Punisher/Hulk crossover that actually looks like a real movie - shot in camera with practical effects, with a competent script and real emotional stakes - is the biggest hit of the year.

Seeing this for the second time really puts in relief how many C and D level Marvel heroes feature in the Doomsday trailer. We really are back 20 years ago, when the only superheroes that actually matter are the ones who actually matter.

Marvel better get these characters back on screen soon - because the also-ran Avengers (including the Russo Brothers), the Fantastically lacking charisma Four, and the retirement home X-Men taking on Dr. Doom are not exactly inspiring a ton of confidence.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Spidey! This is my favorite of the MCU Spider-Man films, and the first to actually feel like an Amazing Spider-Man comic. Sure it has all the overstuffed IP trappings and need to set up future installments and characters - but for me the cameos worked.

These are characters that would team up with Spidey in the comics and in this sort of an adventure. 

There’s no question that Daniel Destin Cretton is the best and most dynamic director in the MCU. This one had heart, soul and lots of entertaining action - even if totally ripped off from the video game.

An enjoyable super hero movie. Well acted and emotional even! Is this so hard?!?!?

Humanity’s worst impulses made tangible - Soylent Green is a tidy and compact noir about a Holocaust. Far more disturbing than I had anticipated and well acted 

Feel like this film’s influence on movies as diverse as 13 Monkeys and Batman (1989) - to say nothing of political discourse and worse case fears of climate change is vastly underrated.

Love the noir royalty like Joseph Cotton and Edward G are given great character roles (and reunites Moses and Dathan).

So much more than the famous SNL skit - but of course also that skit also nails this film completely.