This is my favorite Wes Anderson film (along with Rushmore, for different reasons)

I'm a sucker for Scheherazade/Matryoshka Doll-style story within story executions, provided they are executed well. And this one delivers on that in spades.

Ralph Fiennes delivers one of my favorite performances ever with just the right mix of panache and humor, and the overall themes of nostalgia and changing times hits all the right nerves.

S-tier cast, S-tier whimsy, and my god some of those punctuations of humor...

literally the saddest movie i have ever seen

one of the prerequisites for whoever i marry is that she and i do a princess mononoke wolves or ashitaka costume together for Halloween

I think this is literally my favorite movie ever? It's the one that kickstarted my love of movies for sure.

Easily one of my favorite movies of all time.

Instant nostalgic movie that takes me back to the first time I saw it as a kid in theaters in Houston.

Pacing is great, premise is hilarious. Just tight, fun. Jack Black is perfectly cast.

Miranda Cosgrove was my childhood crush in part because of this movie

S-tier movie that I rewatch every year.

Hans Landa may just be the greatest villain performance in cinematic history, and only Christoph Waltz could have pulled it off.

This more than any movie I've ever seen knows how to build tension and just pull and pull and pull and pull and pull on that tension beyond what audiences typically expected.

It's really these genius-level exposition and build-up of tension in scenes, plus Hans Landa, that make this my favorite Tarantino film.

the camerawork. that is all.

S-Tier pantheon movie.

Sad to think that a movie like this hasn't come along in the past 50 years.

I rewatch this movie every year.

It's so... beautiful... and hot/erotic... but has enough of a complex/nuanced storyline with twists and turns.

Also, im sure some modern-day version of this storyline (empowered hot chicks scamming horny dudes) happens every weekend in the hotel lobbies and rooms of Vegas

Cinematography and color are S-tier,

easily a Top 2 박찬욱 movie with an uplifting ending

The Epilogue soundtrack. That chemistry between Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling. ughhh....

This is a rewatch-every-year-5-out-of-5 film.

- The dialogue/script is Fincher at his absolute peak- The soundtrack (Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross) is a 5 out of 5 S-tier soundtrack

Shoutout to the PEA easter egg tshirt Zuck is rocking at times in the movie

This movie will always hold a special place in my heart because of its underdog backstory; how it kicked off Matt Damon and Ben Affleck's careers.

To think that a couple of young twenty-something kids wrote this screenplay... wild. Acting from Robin Williams and Matt Damon are both wonderful, and after 2010, movie took on even more special significance for me as I can't help but recall my uni experiences whenever I rewatch this one.

Saw this a few months before the actual wider theatrical release because I knew someone who worked on the english subtitle translations for the team and was kind enough to send me the vimeo pre-release version lol.

First watch was so good I think I watched it 4 more times before wider release. Everything about the movie is so brilliantly executed - the storyline, the comedy, and the twists.

This movie remains, to this day, the only movie I've ever bet reasonably big on when the Oscar odds came out. Historically, data had showed that Best Director is the prize given as a consolidation from voters if a movie is a circuit darling but can't win Best Picture. I saw 5:1 odds for both Best Director and Best Picture and I thought the correlation was mispriced. If I bet on both, surely I'd hit on at least one of them at those odds, guaranteeing a payout?

Ended up hitting on both :')

I try to keep my list of 5 star movies within 20 and Boogie Nights will never not be in this tier.

Everything about it is perfect - the pacing, the energy, the incredible cast (Philip Seymour-Hoffman as a scene-stealing minor character!)

Marky Mark is perfectly cast as a young 70s porn star. The entire subject matter and setting itself is just so perfect for a movie.

Julianne Moore and Heather Graham are both insanely hot.

I watch this every year and it never gets old.

One of my most frequently rewatched movies and favorite romance movies, which probably says a lot about me.

Maybe it's that I relate to Gil's obsession with the past and nostalgia (guilty as charged). Maybe it's that Woody's script is, as Woody's scripts often are, hilarious.

Maybe it's that I love the city of Paris and Shakespeare & Co. is one of my favorite bookstores in the world to just visit.

It's absolutely delightful and everything I want in a fun, whimsical romance comedy movie.

One of my favorite coming of age movies, wrapped in a nostalgic bygone rock era that I sometimes trick myself into thinking I was once a part of (even thought I was born after that era).

Kate is the ultimate muse and her acting is incredible. Also Frances McDormand hasn't aged one bit.

This is a movie I rewatch every year

Someone described this movie better than I ever could this way:

It's like if someone decided up to now we've only been making movies where animals have their human-like features turned all the way up to 10, or turned down to zero, with no in-between.

Flow takes this spectrum and moves it to somewhere around a 5, with magical results.

Also, I can't believe this was entirely made using Blender. Kind of inspires me to... have a go... someday

I consider this a pantheon 5 star movie because it is my go to "nostalgia for high school" movie, despite not having grown up in the 80's, and not having gone to public school in Texas in the 80s.

That's how well Linklater captures that Universal high school spirit in a bottle.

Cast is jam-packed with future stars getting their first big break as teens here (Ben Affleck, Matt McConaughey being just two examples).

I rewatch this movie once a year, and between the Before Trilogy, School of Rock, and recently Hitman, underscores Linklater as one of my favorite movie directors.

I'm loving Sean Baker's progression and subject matter's choice.

Mikey is an incredible talent, and it's also one of the funniest movies I've ever seen.

Come to think of it, this has to rank in the top few movies that dials up funny and sad together up at the same time and makes it work.

Are the distinctive chapters of the movie jarring? Sure. Could it be shorter? probably. but bravo

Plastic bag floating + filming + soundtrack is one of my favorite clips in movie history.

Kevin Spacey does his usual Kevin Spacey thing (delivering an incredible performance).

best spiderman movie no question. no movie has ever hit so hard after leaving the theaters in terms of freshness/creativity of animation style since... Shrek?

2nd favorite Nolan movie after Interstellar, and I like them for very different reasons.

The structure of Dunkirk, with 3 story lines and 3 time frames, is one of the most delightfully and masterfully executed Matryoshka doll-esque concepts I've seen.

Apparently if you actually time the length of the scenes in the film, they actually have (down the the second) actual significance relative to the relative time frame/scale.

I think with Tenet he kind of got a bit self-masturbatory with that ish but for Dunkirk it worked perfectly.

Music score is taught & tight; the storylines are excellent; Hardy is a badass, Harry Styles is kind of annoying but we'll let it pass.

Nolan's gonna Nolan, and this is Nolan Nolaning at his best.

I had the fortune of seeing a screening for this where 박찬욱 came up afterwards for a Q&A session.

He pretty much said not only did he write the part for Tang Wei, the entire movie was conceived:

1. as he listened to that haunting song in the soundtrack while shacked up during the pandemic in a London hotel room where he was working on the Drummer Boy2. he had been trying to find a way to work with Tang Wei for nearly a decade.

Sounds about right, as this is one of my favorite performances from one of my favorite actresses. Glad yall were able to collab!

Reminds me of Whiplash and Black Swan in both trope/subject matter (pursuit of perfection/artists)

My favorite Cate Blanchett performance.

What a perfectly delightful movie that captures the rage, sweltering heat, and racial tensions of America, and specifically Brooklyn in that era.

This is The Definitive Spike Lee Joint I think of when I think of Spike.

Never gets old with any rewatch.

its honestly shocking how will ferrell is able to play some of the roles he does without losing it. truly the most absurd, hilarious character. one of his best

Watched on Saturday March 1, 1997.

The OG Squid Games

PTA does not miss... or maybe he does but this isn't one of them. Every character is incredibly well created and has such exposed flaws. The story unfolds like blooming flower petals and reminded me that Tom Cruise, a long time ago, actually had acting range.

I love Istanbul and I love cats. what more is there to say

lot of lost, very little caution

Watched this to prep myself for the latest Nosferatu remake with Lily Rose Depp and wasn't disappointed. Herzog is a master and does not miss.

pretty fucked up NGL

this is a movie you pretty much need to watch at least 3 times to see all the details after the twists and reveals you now know from the first viewing.

so bad it's good

Ted Chiang's OG story is better but Denis is a god and has done incredible work adapting it into this incredible movie

Daniel Day Lewis masterclass in acting as always, this time as an OCD fashion designer. I loved how tightly filmed it was.

PTA executed well by focusing on 2 things, and 2 things only: 1. The tight cinematography and depictions of couturiering? couturing? e.g. how to make a film that depicts sewing and needles in a way that's engaging?2. The complex, toxic, fragile, and increasingly twisted relationship between a OCD genius/talent and his muse.

I could imagine a Picasso movie looking something like this too...

Watched on Wednesday November 19, 2025.

I dont know how but they made a movie about the CIA boring

When the ending credits rolled, so did the audio recordings of the childrens' interviews gathered by the radio journalist character played by Joaquin Phoenix, and so I sat there for a few minutes, unsure whether to leave, or to sit through and listen. I guess in some ways, I recognized that that was one of the points of the movie - about simply listening, especially to children, but tellingly after a few minutes, I stood up and left with my friend Cristobal. I bring him up because a few minutes later, as we walked back to our homes in the winter cold, he punctuated the silence of our contemplation of the film in a way only he can, leading with "that was a beautiful movie about children and white parenting." We both broke out in laughter - Cristobal, a born and raised Mexican transplanted into Williamsburg, and me, a Korean-American now also calling Brooklyn home.

The movie is beautifully shot and clearly not lacking in artistry: the black and silver cinematography reminiscent of Cuaron's Roma; the tender contemplative shots of Los Angeles and New York cityscapes; the interspersed cuts of Phoenix's characters interviews with children articulating their hopes and dreams in a plain, minimal way absent the typical cheesy contrivities (is that even a word?) like emotional background music).

But looking back at the previous sentence, it's these same strengths that also warrant further scrutiny. Are the interspersed shots of cityscapes necessary, or does it border a bit on masturbatory self-indulgence? And is the dialogue communicated with impressive polish by the trained child-age actors the authentic concepts and mannerisms that 9 year olds would convey, or the equivalent of some Beethoven opera that requires children in the choir - which is to say, that the children's diminutive physical and vocal characteristics merely make them vessels with which to deliver decidedly adult-generated dialogue and concepts in the name of choreographed art?

To put my criticisms of the film more succinctly, 1. between the indulgent cityscape shots, the plot concept of a radio journalist going around interviewing children, and then the main storyline of the dynamics between nephew and uncle, the film tried to be too much, and as a result it felt like it was packing too many artistic concepts into one project (yes, that's the way to describe it, the film felt like a project, and not a film), and 2. I didn't find the dialogue of the children credible.

Perhaps my reaction is a bit too cynical. Paradoxically, perhaps it is so because I'm guilty of the very thing the film implores us to do - to listen to children. But I don't know, something just felt off about the believability of the dialogue. It felt too slick.. too polished.. the child protagonist way too smart for his age.. the interviews with the other children, all speaking into the mic with ramrod straight backs, no stuttering or wandering attention spans. I thought of how I was at the age of 9. Perhaps if my parents had listened the way these parents did, and treated me more like an adult then, perhaps I too would have been more like these children, instead of making fart jokes and saying "I don't know" a lot more than these kids.

Cristobal agreed with me. With a laugh, he mused that if he had acted up the way the kid did, he would have been smacked upside the head. White Parenting, we both laughed. Maybe more like Brooklyn Parenting.

But it did leave me with an interesting thought - after all, one of the takeaways seems to be the emotional consequences of listening to children more. Why not? Perhaps my limitations to empathize with the movie are a function of my own limitations based on my less egalitarian upbringing with Korean parents. Perhaps I never had a chance to explore the depths of my thoughts and feelings and hopes and desires as a child simply because of this arrangement. How different could the world be if we did?

The acting was superb, the photography gorgeous, and in my acknowledgment that this movie got me thinking - despite the incredibility of children's dialogue - I have to give it some credit.

To go one step further as I think about a potential career in films or in writing, the question I ask myself is - how should one be portraying children - as vessels and metaphors, or as themselves?

tried to do a bit too much

Korean men from the perspective of the hopeless romantic female gaze lol...

honey aint no way a korean korean dude gonna simp like that