Movies that hate their Black characters

Earlier this month I posted that I didn't have a formalized plan, in terms of scheduled viewings, for honoring Black History Month on my blog. Never have. Too close to the end of my ranking year to start up another big project that involves multiple viewings in the very first month after I'm free from that previous commitment. 

However, I do seem interested in digging into issues related to Black representation on film this month, as evidenced by that post and now this one. The unspeakably awful decision by Trump to post the racist video of the Obamas was just the cherry on top -- and should be the cherry on top of his disqualification as president, but we know it will just be on to the next scandal, soon forgotten. 

The thing that triggered the current post was Gaspar Noe's Climax, though I'm using the poster for another movie because I just used Climax on a different post two days ago. 

First off let me say that the representation of Black characters in film is very complicated. I don't need to go into the whole history here, which I did as recently as three years ago. So yeah, this isn't the first time I've written about issues like this on the blog. But we've gone from representing them carelessly, leaning into pernicious stereotypes, to representing them way too angelically, such that a Black character in certain movies can't even be guilty of an impure thought, let alone an impure action.

The good news about maybe the last ten to 15 years is that we've landed somewhere in the middle, where we recognize the disservice we're doing with either extreme, and actively seek to find a middle ground. In other words, to make these characters real human beings.

But there's that part of us that's still in there, that worries when a film seems to be making them too human. 

Take Climax, for example. 

I don't think you can say that Noe is racist, or if he is, he's hidden it so well that he's been able to use Black actors to compose a third or more of his primary cast of about 20 in Climax. Or really, Black dancers, I should say, because the cast are dancers first, actors second. 

But let's consider what some of these Black characters do in this narrative, and again in this post we have CLIMAX SPOILERS. 

The character Dom repeatedly kicks and knees a woman in the stomach, even after the woman has just said she's pregnant. Dom believes this woman has spiked their punch with acid -- she didn't drink any due to the pregnancy -- but it's a pretty big and callous gamble on the idea that the woman is lying about her pregnancy. Dom also participates in an effort to eject a man out of the building and into the snow. That man later dies. 

The character Taylor is obsessed with the romantic life of his sister, five years younger, and as the evening goes on, we learn that this obsession goes beyond that of the standard overprotective brother. He's actually got a sexual interest in his sister that he acts on under the influence of the acid, in addition to telling her that he loves her -- which we take to mean that he's in love with her. He's also just led the lynching party of the man who was ejected from the building with the accusation that he spiked the punch, simply because this man has been dating (and having sex with) his sister.

The characters Kyrra and Cyborg, in the early stages of the evening, have a conversation in which they talk humorously about their sexual prowess and what they would do to various women there. It's humorous to them anyway, and seems harmless at the time despite the graphic content -- it could just be "locker room talk." But later, we see them carrying out these desires -- not necessarily without consent, but with dangerous abandon, and in the middle of the dance floor. These two are also part of the lynch mob of the man they expel from the building, Omar.

To be clear, the remaining characters in this movie are also pretty rotten in their own ways. There are only a few characters who are actually harmless, actually possibly good people either under the influence of LSD or not. And the character who actually spiked the punch is not one of the Black chraracters. 

But assaulting someone with the possible outcome of causing them to abort their fetus, whether you believe the prgenancy is real or not? Framing your sister's boyfriend so you can have sex with her? Talking about violating women and then proceeding to actually do it, whether it's consensual or not?

Yes, these are not good looks for these four characters.

I should say that there are at least three other Black characters who aren't guilty of any shocking behavior, and then there are a number of others who are mixed race. But the four characters above are quite clearly of African descent, on both sides of their heritage.

There is certainly a fair amount of conversation about this on the web. People pointed this out in their reviews at the time. For me, I was so caught up in the other crazy things this movie was doing to really focus in on these unfortunate characterizations. 

But it brings us back to our original idea about how to find the middle ground between portraying Black characters as barbarians and as saints. Surely it would be okay for one or two of these characters to behave abominably. But when Noe has negative behaviors he wants to dole out between multiple characters, and he has nearly 20 to choose from, couldn't he have given some of these plotlines to white characters?

I'm not sure how seriously this cuts into my feelings about the movie, but it cuts into them enough to go public with my thoughts about it.

The reason I've chosen The Ballad of Wallis Island as the poster for this post is that there is a different sort of uncharitable characterization of this film's only Black character, one that gave me enough pause that it ate away at me a bit, and made me wonder whether the movie truly belonged in my top ten of 2025.

Just to briefly summarize the relevant plot points, the characters Herb McGwyer and Nell Mortimer, both white, were once part of a successful folk duo, and were in a romantic relationship as well. That was maybe a decade ago, but they've been summoned to the same small island off the British coast to play together once more -- and maybe, at least McGwyer hopes, to rekindle the romantic relationship. 

The only trouble is, Motimer already has a husband: Michael, who is a Black American. He doesn't represent unfortunate stereotypes in the way the Climax characters do; he's an intellectual who favors bird watching. 

But as the story goes on, we also realize that he's bitter and mean. He has one vindictive speech where he dresses McGwyer down for being a has-been, or a never was, and he does it with cruel relish. In a movie with essentially five main characters -- including two who live on the island -- he's the only bad guy. 

The fact that these two movies leave a bad taste in my mouth for two very different characterizations of Black characters gives some idea just how deeply complicated this issue is. I don't want Black characters to be shown as violent and aggresive with insufficient empathy, but I also don't want Black characters to be effete and intelligent ... with insufficient empathy.

So empathy is the crux of the issue here, isn't it? What these five characters have in common is that they engage in cruel behavior thoughtlessly. They are being mean for its own sake, I would say, whether that meanness is actually of a criminal nature, or just emotionally toxic.

Clearly there is a greater risk of Noe being a racist -- the web has other examples of his perceived deficiences in this area -- than the director (James Griffiths) and writers (stars Tom Basden and Tim Key) of The Ballad of Wallis Island. The latter are making a more genteel sort of film to begin with, and they respond to a commendable desire to add some diversity to a cast that might have just as easily been all white. The only problem is, the role they had available for this diversity was the one functioning as the antagonist within the context of the film, and not just an antagonist because he's providing a narrative impediment to the protagonist's goals. He's providing actual malice, some would say unwarranted malice, toward the protagonist.

But then we're back to our original question. Should these characters be saints? Can Black characters never be villains or bad actors?

I think it is a "know it when you see it" sort of thing. If a film leaves you with a bad taste in your mouth, maybe that's reason enough to suspect that there's been an insufficient amount of nuance applied to the representation.

If you don't get the bad taste until your fourth viewing -- or you still name the film as part of your top ten, even with the bad taste -- then I guess that tells you how much work on this we all still have to do.

But it also recognizes the inherent complexity I've touched on multiple times. Artists should have the presumption of innocence until proven guilty, and maybe, in trying to make this a more diverse world as represented on film, they just haven't done it as delicate a job as they might have. 

Will Arnett profiles as Jake Weber

When I first got a glimpse of the poster for Bradley Cooper's Is This Thing On?, I thought "Huh. Bradley Cooper has decided to resuscitate the career of Jake Weber."

Imagine my surprise, then, when my critic at ReelGood reviewed it this week, and the star is Will Arnett.

Could have fooled me.

The reason for my conclusion?

Well, just look at that poster. Isn't that Jake Weber?

It's obviously Laura Dern -- no mistaking that -- but I really did think the other guy was Weber.

Who's Jake Weber, you ask?

Well it's this guy of course:

Now do you see it?

He's been in a bunch of things, many of which don't come to mind at the moment. One of them is my beloved The Cell, though that's a pretty small role. Then again, he's a character actor, albeit one with a leading man's good looks. 

Since we're going to the trouble of mentioning him anyway, let's throw in another couple titles I like that feature Jake Weber: Those Who Wish Me Dead and Dawn of the Dead. You have to have "Dead" in the title for Jake Weber to be in your movie. 

I don't think you need me to tell you what Will Arnett is in. Though, we haven't seen a lot of him lately either. 

I was googling as much as I could to get an actual picture of Jake Weber in profile. But when you google "Jake Weber in profile," you get actual profiles -- as in, magazine or internet puff pieces -- not pictures of him from the side. 

Which sort of makes me wonder how many other actors look like someone else when you get a rare glimpse of them in profile. 

Confirmed fourth viewings, and then some

The first time you see a movie, it's out of omniverousness. You want to see anything and everything. Usually you've heard something good about the movie, or you like the director or cast. Sometimes you've heard something bad, and you want to see how bad. Sometimes it's just a Tuesday night and it's sitting there on a streamer.

The second time you see a movie, it's either an endorsement of the first viewing, or an attempt to see what you missed on the first viewing. 

The third time you see a movie, this is probably a movie you really like, maybe even love -- or you could still be feeling around with it, making one more attempt to see what you missed on the first and second viewings.

The fourth time you see a movie? Well, that's the moment it becomes yours. You've stopped trying to make films happen that aren't going to happen. That's the confirmation that it is in your regular rotation, and you probably plan to see it every five years until you die. 

I saw Gapsar Noe's Climax last night for the fourth time, and if you read to the end of this post, you will get a massive spoiler section on why I watched it last night. But there's plenty of good content before then, so don't turn away too early. 

It's the fourth time in less than eight years, which means yeah, I pretty much love this movie. My first viewing was in August of 2018, and then I watched it again in 2019 (to consider it as part of my best of the decade, though it didn't make the cut) and 2021 (just for fun, or "fun," because there are parts of this movie that are an endurance test). In fact, I watched this movie so frequently early in its existence that you could say my fourth viewing broke something of a Climax drought, as it took another four-and-a-half years -- a lot closer to that "every five years" timeframe I mentioned a moment ago.

This is only a way in to what I really want to talk about today.

When I rewatch a movie, I add it to a Letterboxd list I have. I should say, I add it only if it's not already on the list. If it is already on the list, I change the order so it appears at the top, as the most recent. In the notes, I list the other dates I've rewatched this movie, as well as the original date I watched it, if it's available.

This has grown out of a list I keep in a Microsoft Word document, and that list turns 20 this year.

That's right, it was the year 2006 when I decided I should keep track of when I rewatched movies. The first rewatch I ever recorded was in June of 2006, when I saw it fit to make note of the fact that I had rewatched Ghostbusters. I can't tell you the exact day in June of 2006 that I rewatched Ghostbusters, because for the first year-and-a-half I was doing this, I just listed the month and the year. But then with my Christmas 2007 viewing of The Empire Strikes Back, I started adding the exact date and have been doing so ever since.

What this 20-year period does is it allows me to have an exact viewing count of certain favorite movies -- exact for the ones that have come into existence since 2006 or that I've watched for the first time since 2006, I should say. For others, it is only a "confirmed viewing count."

This is what I'm looking at today.

Now, this post is going to give no love to some of my favorite movies of all time. In fact, it's going to give no love to four of my top five movies on Flickchart, and most of my top ten. Let's stick with four of those top five so we don't get too bogged down on this point. Back to the Future (#2), Pulp Fiction (#3), Raiders of the Lost Ark (#4) and Citizen Kane (#5) are all, obviously, movies I love dearly and have seen many times. However, I happen to have seen each of them only a couple times in the past 20 years, for different reasons in each case, that I don't need to get into right now. For these movies, I have a fairly low "confirmed viewing count."

The extreme example of this is probably National Lampoon's Animal House, which might be the movie I've seen the most simply because we watched it about once a week in my freshman year of college, though perhaps I came in and out on some of those and it may not have been a complete start-to-finish viewing each time. Since 2006? Just a single viewing on February 6, 2009. Probably worth a revisit.

So what I'm looking at today are movies where I can confirm at least four viewings. That means I've rewatched them at least three times in the past 20 years. 

And I think it won't surprise you to know that there are a lot of these -- so many in the case of four viewings that I will just give a big list without delving in any further on them. 

The ones higher than that will get a little more time, because they truly rise to a special level. 

Before I give you the info, I want to start out saying I am embarrassed to confess that only a single film from before I was born appears here , and it was only a few months before I was born. While that is disappointing in some respects, it does reflect a genuine preference in me as a cinephile for films that came out when I was capable of seeing them in the theater for the first time. At the very least I am more likely to revisit those films. I'm not going to analyze that tendency today, just report it as fact. 

There's one other little detail I'd like to make you aware of. I started recording inital watches in 2002, and there are a number of movies I saw for the first time after 2002 that I definitely rewatched in those four years before I started recording my rewatches in 2006. Some of those have also gotten a +1 on their confirmed viewing count because I know the post-2006 rewatches were not my first rewatches of those movies. However, I have given them only one additional confirmed viewing, not multiple like some of them may deserve. 

Let's go in reverse order, with the highest first. There are some lists where it's worth working your way up to the highest, but I don't think this is one of them.

9 confirmed viewings
Films: Tangled (2010, Nathan Greno & Byron Howard)
Comment: Everyone who reads this blog knows how much I love Tangled. In fact, this is the 15th time Tangled is getting tagged on my blog, if we are talking accumulated stats. That's nine viewings in just more than 15 years, so I see it more often than every two years. The first five of those were in the first five years of its existence, and I've pumped the brakes a bit in the past ten years. In fact, after last year's ninth viewing disappointed me just a little bit, I am vowing to take a bit of a Tangled break, so I don't know how soon it will get to double digits. However, coincidentally, I only just yesterday was talking about it because I learned of the first casting news regarding the live action version of the movie, with two actors I didn't know in the lead roles and Kathryn Hahn as Mother Gothel. I think this is barely in preproduction, so at this point it doesn't seem likely we'd see it any sooner than 2028. So maybe that'll be a good time to finally make Tangled my first movie to reach a confirmed double digits in viewings. 

8 confirmed viewings
Films: None! 
Comment: We can skip right over this one. Just another indication of how Tangled has dominated my affections during these two decades.

7 confirmed viewings
Films: Children of Men (2006, Alfonso Cuaron), Galaxy Quest (1999, Dean Parisot), Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006, Tom Tykwer)
Comment: I have to tell you that I am cheating just a little bit with this viewing count for Galaxy Quest, for reasons I cannot entirely explain, though I'll try. I've only rewatched Galaxy Quest five times during this 20-year span, which should mean, by the rules I've laid out, that I can only confirm six viewings. Except a memorable feature of my initial Galaxy Quest viewing back in 1999 was that I saw it in the theater on two consecutive nights, that's just how much I loved it. Because this second viewing in 1999 functions effectively as a confirmed viewing, and doesn't require any fuzzy logic like "I'm sure I've seen this three or more other times in the intervening years," I'm going to give it a seventh confirmed viewing. I've probably seen it two other times, in reality, which would equal Tangled, but then would be behind others with a bunch of unconfirmed viewings, which I've already mentioned. 

The two 2006 films finished in my top ten of that decade, with COM all the way up at #2, and they are films I look forward to revisiting as often as I can. Interestingly, both could be higher but the last time I watched either of them was when I watched Children in February of 2022. I last watched Perfume in 2020. 

6 confirmed viewings
Films: Adaptation (2002, Spike Jonze), The Cell (2000, Tarsem Singh), Donnie Darko (2001, Richard Kelly), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004, Michel Gondry), Raising Arizona (1987, Joel Coen), Spring Breakers (2013, Harmony Korine), Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015, J.J. Abrams), Step Brothers (2008, Adam McKay), Vanilla Sky (2001, Cameron Crowe)
Comment: Donnie Darko is worth singling out here because it's one of the ones I mentioned earlier, which got credit for a single unknown rewatch in the years between when I first saw it (early 2003) to when I started recording rewatches in 2006. I may have actually watched Darko as many as three times during these three years, since I was pretty obsessed with it in those first years after watching it, ultimately still fond enough of it seven years later to name it my #1 of the decade. Subsequent viewings have been fewer, but I still do catch up with it every four or five years.

Raising Arizona is, of course, my #1 on Flickchart, but I specifically draw out viewings of this to about every four years just so I can savor it on each viewing and never get tired of it. (See: Tangled.) The only other one from this group that I'll spend an additional comment on is Spring Breakers, which was on a viewing pace similar to Tangled in the first x number of years after it came into existence. But after watching it as the final movie I was vetting for my best of the 2010s -- it came in second to Tangled for the entire decade -- I haven't seen it again since. That was December 30, 2019. I haven't lost any love for Spring Breakers, it's just not come up again for an organic viewing since then -- but that indicates how much higher it could be if I'd kept up anything like my original pace.

5 confirmed viewings
Films: Elf (2003, Jon Favreau), Fantastic Planet (1973, Rene Laloux), First Reformed (2018, Paul Schrader), Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008, Nicholas Stoller), Henry Poole is Here (2008, Mark Pellington), Inside Out (2015, Pete Docter), Kissing Jessica Stein (2002, Charles Herman-Wurmfeld), Lost in Translation (2003, Sofia Coppola), Major League (1989, David S. Ward), Moon (2009, Duncan Jones), mother! (2017, Darren Aronofsky), Ruby Sparks (2012, Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris), Run Lola Run (1998, Tom Tykwer) This is Spinal Tap (1984, Rob Reiner), Titanic (1997, James Cameron)
Comment: Getting a lot more titles now, unsurprisingly. This is Spinal Tap just made it into this group a few weeks ago, though of course there are lots of repeat viewings of this top ten movie on Flickchart littered throughout the pre-2006 days. First Reformed and mother! are notable for getting to five viewings in only a brief nine years of existence -- even though I listed the release year of First Reformed as 2018, it's usually listed as 2017 because that's when it appeared at festivals. It was my #1 in 2018. (I'm hugely inconsistent on how I handle this, for some reason. Run Lola Run, which also appears here and is in my top 20 on Flickchart along with being what I anointed my #1 out of all my movies that I've ranked #1 for a given year, was actually my #1 of 1999, but I've listed its 1998 German release year here. Who can understand how my brain works, though I think the distinction is between whether it's a foreign film or a domestic film.) Henry Poole is probably the most surprising inclusion here, as I loved this movie enough that I overloaded on viewings of it soon after I first saw it -- though have not now seen it in ten years. 

4 confirmed viewings
Films: Agora (2009, Alejandro Amenabar), Beyond the Hills (2012, Cristian Mungiu), Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu), Bound (1996, Lana & Lily Watchowski), The Cable Guy (1996, Ben Stiller), Climax (2018, Gaspar Noe), Creed (2015, Ryan Coogler), The Empire Strikes Back (1980, Irvin Kershner), Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994, Mike Newell), A Ghost Story (2017, David Lowery), The Guru (2003, Daisy von Scherler Mayer), Idiocracy (2006, Mike Judge), Inside Llewyn Davis (2013, Joel & Ethan Coen), The Iron Giant (1999, Brad Bird), Monty Pyton and the Holy Grail (1975, Terry Gilliam & Terry Jones), 127 Hours (2010, Danny Boyle), Parasite (2019, Bong Joon-ho), A Separation (2011, Asgar Farhadi), Sideways (2004, Alexander Payne), The Skeleton Twins (2014, Craig Johnson), The Social Network (2010, David Fincher), Starship Troopers (1997, Paul Verhoeven), The Story of Us (2010, Rob Reiner), Tanna (2015, Martin Butler & Bentley Dean), There Will Be Blood (2007, Paul Thomas Anderson), Time Bandits (1981, Terry Gilliam), Under the Skin (2014, Jonathan Glazer), Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007, Jake Kasdan), War of the Worlds (2005, Steven Spielberg), Watchmen (2009, Zack Snyder), What We Do in the Shadows (2014, Taika Waititi)
Comment: Was it even worth listing all those out? Well, I've just done so, no taking it back now. 

I'm a little self-conscious about having done this exercise, because part of me is worried that knowing the number of times I've watched a movie -- bringing it to the forefront of my thoughts, as an exercise like this does -- makes me less likely to commit further rewatches on a purely organic basis. Like "Wow I can't believe it's been seven years since I watched Spring Breakers, I really need to change that." The beauty of not knowing is that the rewatches represent only a true desire to see that movie in that moment you choose to rewatch it. If I'm conscious of the horse race aspect of it, something pure is lost.

But what can I say. I'm a stats guy. I always will be. I'm maybe even more of a stats guy than I am a movie guy, but shhh, don't tell anybody. 

Okay, now it's finally time for the SPOILER section I mentioned earlier.

This SPOILER section relates to both Climax and to the other movie I saw yesterday, Sirat, so if you haven't seen either of these movies, DO NOT GO ANY FURTHER.

I'm serious. This is your last warning. Though I'll also give a new heading in case you'd like a more definitive line of demarcation.

The thing that made me rewatch Climax after watching Sirat

So both of these movies can be described as "a movie about dance music where the kid dies."

Look I told you to stop reading.

So in Climax, this big group of professional dancers -- like almost 20 -- are housed together in what I understand is a school, in the middle of a blizzard. They're practicing this incredible number for an upcoming dance competition, and if you think I use the word "incredible" lightly, watch the first ten minutes of Climax and you will see that I do not exaggerate. While none of the dancers offers an exact duplicate of what another offers, they all have an astonishing ability to contort their bodies and to bounce with the beat. Not only is there this great opening, set to "Supernature" by Cerrone, but there's another sequence at about the film's midpoint -- just before things go off the rails -- that captures their dance moves from the God's eye view of directly above where they're dancing.

Then someone spikes the sangria with acid, and everything goes to shit.

This particular post does not require us to delve into all the ways the things go to shit, but they are impressive. It does require us to talk about what happens to the only kid present, who appears to be about six years old -- maybe as young as four -- and is the son of a woman who is not dancing, but was once part of this group. 

When she realizes she is unexpectedly high on acid, has never had it before, is super freaked out and does not know the best way to handle it -- and that her son also drank some of the punch -- she takes the little boy and locks him into an electrical closet, so no one can do anything to him and so he can't do anything to himself. (The flaw in the logic of that last assumption is going to soon become tragically clear.) Terrifyingly, we hear his screams to be let out echoing throughout the space, just one of the features of the descent into hell that Climax becomes. 

She's told him to stay clear of that box against the wall because it could kill him. So it's not like she's taken no precautions. But she's also lost the key she used to lock him in, and because everything is so chaotic and because there's a saboteur in their midst, it isn't clear whether she's going to find it in order to finally let him out.

At some point a few minutes after we've last checked in with this plot, the electricity shorts out -- and there's only one conclusion of what happened. One of the other dancers -- who, even before they were dosed, were pretty short on empathy -- shouts out "Tito got fried!" And indeed, that's what happened.

Grim.

Though maybe not as grim as what happens in Sirat, which is why it's dividing critics between those who have decided it's among the best of 2025 and those who are decidedly mixed, perhaps even negative, on it.

There are some big surprises in Sirat that I don't need to spoil, but I do need to spoil this one, and you can't say you haven't been warned -- though I did already give it away. 

A father and his early teenage son are trying to track down their daughter/sister at a desert rave in Morocco. They don't find her at this rave, nor do they even find anyone who knows her, but given her movements in such circles, they think there's a good chance they may find her at the next scheduled desert rave, closer to the border of Mauritania. Which is going to be difficult to get to, given the terrain.

Against their better judgment, a group of five other ravers across two large vehicles, a bus and a truck, allow the man and the boy to follow them in their small and ancient vehicle that's not cut out for this sort of environment. The man's inadequate vehicle comes into play in what happens to his son, but not in the way they expect. 

While the adults are all working to push one of the trucks out of the place that it's been caught in a dip in the road, finally succeeding, the boy -- and his dog, we should point out, who has already had a bad trip himself from eating some human shit containing LSD -- are waiting in their vehicle. For reasons that are not entirely clear except for "shit happens," the vehicle starts to slide backward on the incline. The boy is not old enough to think on his feet and does not pull the handbrake. The car pitches over the side of an embankment and down, down, down, hundreds of rocky and sandy feet below to its ultimate demise, and the demise of the kid and the dog inside.

Grim. Fucking grim.

I think it hits harder in Sirat because the movie is not already set up as a black comedy with a wicked sense of humor, as Climax is. And it's laced with bitter irony because the man is desperately trying to find his daughter, missing five months now, and in the process loses his sweet and earnest younger son as a result of taking imprudent risks. Not to mention the dog.

Both movies are a voyage to hell fueled by drugs and music in their own way, and they made an interesting double feature -- though maybe not to people who love kids and/or dogs. I guess that makes me the sick pervert who doesn't love either? 

First give me the chance to not turn my phone off

I am usually the one who holds other fellow audients to a higher standard at the movies. Whether I actually enforce it or not, I'm not above glowering in the direction of someone being rude at the movies, or delivering an extra perturbed "SHHHHHH!" if the movie has started and some people near me just won't shut up.

So it certainly puts my hackles up when someone tries to police movie behavior on me.

I was at the advanced screening of Sirat on Thursday night, which isn't actually due out in Australia for another three weeks. You may remember this was my #1 regret that I had to exclude from my 2025 rankings, so I was pretty eager to see it, even though in some respects it is "too soon" to start watching movies from 2025 again.

The expected start time for the movie had passed and they hadn't gotten it started yet, so I decided I'd play a game from the Connections archive. You know, it's the New York Times game where you have to assemble 16 words into four groups of related words. It's just the right level of difficulty, in that I get it most of the time but it beats me maybe one out of every six. I don't need to have the 99%+ success rate that I have at my other NYT game addiction, Wordle. And since I've only really started playing Connections in the past two months, I have plenty of archives to tackle -- all the way back to 2023. 

Anyway, I'd only gotten one of the four groups and made one wrong guess when the movie got started. Not the movie proper, mind you, but the few little theater-specific graphics that tell you to silence your phone and whatnot.

Which is just what I was about to do when a woman in the row behind me said, in a shrill voice:

"Can you turn off your phone? It's really bright."

I'm not sure if that was the exact wording, but whatever the wording was, don't believe for a second that there was anything polite about the way she said it. In fact, the way she said it was as though she had waited as long as she possibly could and finally had to shut down the menace in the row in front of her.

I felt like saying something back. I didn't. I just turned off the phone. Which is what I was about to do anyway. 

Actually, I did keep it on a moment longer, because right as I was motioning to turn it off, I remembered the thing that sometimes gets me on these Thursday evening screenings. I have an alarm that goes off at 6:45 each Thursday night to remind me to take out the garbage cans for the next morning, and the alarm is instructed to actually power on the phone in order to deliver me this reminder. And then I really am the asshole.

So it took me another ten to 15 seconds to get to the right spot to pre-silence this alarm, during which I imagined this woman really stewing in her juices as she interpreted my ensuing actions as disobedience of her request.

Look I would feel the same way as this woman if I actually had my phone on during the movie. But aren't we all sort of in agreement that before the movie proper starts, talking, getting up and down out of your seat, laughing, chucking popcorn at your friends, and yes, checking your phone, are all fair play?

You need to give me the chance to actually violate our social contract before you cut me down to size for doing so.

As for the movie ... well, it's wild. Sorry, I'm not going to tell you anything more about it right now, because I suspect most of you out there haven't seen it yet. But it's definitely worth a watch.

Black is beautiful

There, how's that for a subject line that will get your attention?

I don't do anything on my blog to acknowledge Black History Month, which is a bit of a shame. I certainly could. I mean, it's only February 3rd, so I could even do it this year. If we are looking for precedent with other themed months, look no further than Pride Month in June, when I watch one pride-themed movie each week.

Why don't I do this in February to celebrate Black creatives and films with Black subject matter? I mean, this is certainly something in my thoughts, at least as much as issues related to pride. 

I think part of it is that I've just recovered from my big end-of-year push, and I don't really want to be getting myself back into a big month-long project -- even just one viewing per week -- right after I've freed myself from watching the films from the previous year. I want February to be a bit loosey goosey, where I watch whatever I want, whenever I want, both new (to me) movies and rewatches. Heck I'll watch a few actual new movies as well. Gotta start 2026 sometime.

But I thought the least I could do was use a spot at the beginning of February to address the latest controversy regarding race-related casting, sparked this time by that douche-nozzle Elon Musk.

I'm only going off a headline here because I don't want to dignify Musk's comments by actually reading the article. But apparently the thing is that Musk thinks Christopher Nolan has "lost his integrity" by casting a Black woman -- Lupita N'yongo, to be specific -- as Helen of Troy in July's The Odyssey.

Please.

What he thinks he's saying, or at least wants us to think he thinks he's saying, is that Helen of Troy was blonde and that any representation of her should acknowledge that.

What he's really saying is much more sinister:

A woman known as essentially the most beautiful woman of all time could not possibly be Black.

Please.

I don't know why these people want to keep coming out against any form of "woke" casting. It's the same people who said that Ariel in The Little Mermaid couldn't be Black and that there was no such thing as a Black Targeryan in the Game of Thrones spinoff.

Can't we just, like, stop?

And when I say "we," I certainly don't include myself in that group.

I'm not going to dignify Musk's comments any further by actually offering him an explanation about why Helen could have dark skin. I understand some people have dignified him in this way. 

It's not even worth it to do that, even if you have a "good" argument. The argument doesn't need to be "good." The only argument needed for race-blind casting is that people in any audience want the opportunity to see themselves in characters they see on screen. We got over a long time ago the idea that there might be Black people in the upper crust society of a show like Bridgerton, when of course we know that is not historically accurate, and to keep having this argument about any new character who comes up for cinematic representation, maybe for the first time in our modern era, just sullies us all. 

There are only a few characters I think it does not make sense to have played by a Black woman, or not without the very casting being part of whatever your confrontational, satirical aims are with the film. Just a few off the top of my head:

1) A slave owner! Probably not a good idea to have a Black character owning Black slaves. 

2) Eva Braun! We don't have to pretend there's a world where Hitler would have been married to a Black woman.

End of list.

As if we needed any more reasons to talk about what a complete and utter piece of shit Musk is. 

R.I.P. to one of the funniest comedic actresses of her generation

What? Catherine O'Hara?

No.

Never would it have occurred to me that the 71-year-old actress, most recently seen by me in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and the TV show The Studio, would be at death's door. But here I am, having to memorialize a wonderful presence in our comedy lives gone way before her time. 

I guess she wasn't at death's door, really, as she succumbed to what Wikipedia is calling a brief illness. Those kinds of illness are worrisome as they can get any of us, even those who looked like they were still going to keep making us laugh for years into the future.

It's another blow to the Christopher Guest mockumentary cinematic universe after the loss of Rob Reiner. After Reiner stopped making movies like that but Guest continued, Guest cast O'Hara in Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, A Mighty Wind and (unfortunately in this last case) For Your Consideration. She was great in all but one of those, and along with collaborators like Eugene Levy -- later her collaborator on the wonderful series Schitt's Creek -- and Fred Willard, she became synonymous with Guest's engaging brand of improvisational comedy.

Of course, to more mainstream comedy fans, she took the scene by storm with her roles in Beetlejuice and Home Alone. Neither of those are personal favorites, though I do like both quite a bit. O'Hara was adept at pleasing both comedy nerds and a broader audience, always making particular choices with her character work, and always being very, very funny. 

I always associated O'Hara in my mind with Madeline Kahn, as if a baton had been handed off by Kahn and O'Hara picked it up and ran with it. There are a dearth of actresses whose primary mode is comedy who get to have such long careers, which is a shame. (Just looking it up now, I realize we lost Kahn at only age 57, to cancer.)

In looking back at a career that goes all the way back to 1980 -- yes that's a 45-year career, unheard of for most actresses -- I'm seeing I've already listed the films and TV shows that I think are the major touchpoints for most of us. But O'Hara made anything she was in better, often showing up in key supporting roles as comic relief rather than needing to operate as the lead. Maybe that was a key to her longevity, that she needn't be the thing the movie was selling you on. She was the thing that always put a big smile on your face when she appeared.

And certainly she wasn't limited to this sort of role, but she was so good at playing a character with a quick wit and perhaps slightly questionable priorities, but someone you always ended up rooting for, even if it was only because it was O'Hara playing her. 

It's a huge loss at a time when we've had too many of them. 

Rest in peace.

Considering 30 years of #1 movies

I may be done reflecting on the movies of 2025 on this blog, but I'm not done reflecting on my #1s throughout history.

That's because Together just became the 30th #1 I've ever given out.

That's right, I started out with Al Pacino's Looking for Richard way back in 1996, and that brings us a full three decades later to my #1 of 2025. 

I already did a celebration of this milestone with this gargantuan project undertaken last year. I said in that post that I maybe should have waited until around now to do this, but that the idea had lit a fire under me and I couldn't wait.

I got this current idea a few months later, and I did wait until now on this one, because I needed that 30th to make it work. 

So the idea here is to reflect on the choices I've made with past #1s, and see what the world has thought of those choices with the benefit of hindsight.

When you are selecting a #1 movie, you only know what people think of it in that exact moment, the first year of its existence as a piece of art. And in some cases, you choose something obscure, so you don't even really know what most people think of it because they haven't seen it yet -- and without your recommendation, may never see it.

But it occurred to me that any time any person chooses a #1 movie, you can later look back on it as one of the following three things:

1) A stone-cold classic that everyone thinks is one of the greats of its era;

2) A weird personal favorite that may not be for everybody but that you still staunchly defend, or

3) A movie that you may still like well enough, but that has not aged particularly well in the sphere of public opinion.

After 30 years of doing this, I decided that I'm going to trisect my past #1s so that I have ten from each category.

Obviously this will be imperfect. There are some movies that will be between two categories. I may feel like I have 17 or 18 stone-cold classics in my past #1s, but there's only room for ten. (I don't; this is just hypothetical.) A movie I classify as "weird" may not be weird in any traditional sense of its narrative or execution.

But I do think these three categories more or less encapsulate the range of potential outcomes for a movie to settle in over time, assuming you don't turn on a previous #1 so much that you actually dislike it. They can all be abbreviated to a three-word phrase: "stone-cold classics," "weird defensible favorites" and "haven't aged well." When I was jotting them down on the back of a piece of paper on the train, I listed these as SCC, WDF and HAW. 

This is a necessarily reductive exercise, but let me state a few more caveats just to address a few other considerations:

1) Some of these movies haven't had a chance to age at all, especially the one I crowned my favorite only a week ago. So in some cases I will have to be projecting their eventual reputation based on what I believe it is now.

2) This is not listed in order of my own favorites. I already did that a few years ago in this post. This is an imagined order based on the opinion of a disinterested outsider, who is only analyzing the films on their reputation and not on their own personal opinions. 

3) I'm going to list them in an order that reflects the extent to which they conform to the tier they are in, and how close they are to the tier above or below them. So my top-ranked "stone-cold classic" will be the one that the most people think is the stoniest, coldest classic. And so on. 

Hey, and unlike some of my other posts where I wax poetic about these movies for hundreds of words, I'm going to keep it brief on each. You've got stuff to do today. 

Also there are a few films whose release year is ambiguous -- released in its country of origin a different year from when it was my #1 -- but to keep things less confusing here, I'm list the year it was my #1. 

Let's not waste any more time on rules. I think you understand what this post is. So let's get into it.

The "stone-cold classic" tier

1) There Will Be Blood (2007, Paul Thomas Anderson) - We may have near universal consensus that Anderson's One Battle After Another is the best film of 2025, but TWBB is usually considered one of the best movies, if not the best movie, of the entire 21st century. It's hard to compete with that.

2) Parasite (2019, Bong Joon-ho) - If you wanted a consensus runner-up for that same time period, you'd have a hard time beating Parasite, which also unifies cinephiles in their affection -- and, like One Battle After Another, is also incredibly fun. 

3) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004, Michel Gondry) - Even if my own last viewing of this underwhelmed me just a little bit, this is consistently a crazy performer in all the "best of the century" lists, and basically you never hear anybody who says it didn't work for them.

4) Children of Men (2006, Alfonso Cuaron) - I felt a bit out on the limb in my affection for this at the time, but everyone -- and I mean everyone -- has since joined me on that limb, such that we had to convert it from a limb, which was breaking under our collective weight, into a steel fortress.

5) Lost in Translation (2003, Sofia Coppola) - Most people acknowledge that Coppola tapped into a magical vibe of unsurpassed staying power in this movie about two jet-lagged strangers connecting in Tokyo, proving that romance was not dead and did not have to be sappy either. 

6) Inside Out (2015, Pete Docter) - Consistently appears at or near the top of Pixar's best lists, although it usually has to fight films I like a lot less, like Wall-E and Ratatouille. 

7) A Separation (2011, Asgar Farhadi) - It may not be a huge performer in the zeitgeist, because your average cinephile doesn't always see Iranian films, but the film's impeccable critical reputation easily earns it a spot in this tier. 

8) Run Lola Run (1999, Tom Tykwer) - Again, maybe a German-language film isn't getting constantly rewatched, but the general respect for this film is quite high. (Plus I actually listed as my #1 when I ranked all 26 a few years ago, though I'm not sure if I would still do that today.)

9) Adaptation (2002, Spike Jonze) - I know there is a contingent out there who isn't as sold on this film, but its sheer structural complexity and the breadth of its ambition easily earn it a spot in the top tier -- or maybe not easily since it's only #9. 

10) Toni Erdmann (2016, Maren Ade) - Probably the least seen film in the top tier, in part because of its great length, Erdmann has huge respect in cinephile circles and was also included at #59 in the recent New York Times list that circulated about the best 100 movies of the 21st century.

The "weird defensible favorites" tier

11) First Reformed (2018, Paul Schrader) - This film has some detractors, but those who love it really love it, such that it has nearly graduated to the "stone-cold classic" tier. I've also seen it four times in the only 7+ years of its existence, which isn't actually relevant to this discussion. 

12) The Substance (2024, Coralie Fargeat) - This ranking is based on the fact that I can see this movie aging into a classic. I think The Substance, already liked quite a bit by some, will gain in popularity -- at least as a cult film if nothing more -- when some people give it a second viewing.

13) A Ghost Story (2017, David Lowery) - I don't know if Lowery's film has really seen its profile rise since it first came out, but the movie continues to earn points, and I would assume ardent fans, based on its truly individual concept seen out to unexpectedly poignant ends.

14) Beyond the Hills (2013, Cristian Mungiu) - Probably among the least seen in this whole list, Beyond the Hills is certainly beloved by those who have seen it -- but its low profile will always keep it out of the top tier. 

15) 127 Hours (2010, Danny Boyle) - If some of the shine has been lost from this, it's because James Franco is the star, not because it's anything less than unimpeachable as a movie, that shows off all of Boyle's strengths and none of his weaknesses. 

16) Moon (2009, Duncan Jones) - Again another film that does not necessarily come up a lot in cinephile discussions, but one that remains an engaging noodle fryer, even after there were a lot more movies that came out and tried to do what Moon does so effortlessly. 

17) The Wrestler (2008, Darren Aronofsky) - Is it just me or is there a bit of Aronofsky backlash out there? If so, I suspect this one gets caught up in it, a movie that people might only remember so much now because of Mickey Rourke's great comeback performance. But I can still strongly defend this one, so it goes in the middle of this tier.

18) Happiness (1998, Todd Solondz) - This one might divide people by the ick factor of, well, several things about it, but this used to be a really highly thought of film in a different era of independent cinema, and seems easily to be Solondz' best. Can't drop down to the low tier because of that lingering respect.

19) I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020, Charlie Kaufman) - The dislike for this one is strong in some quarters, and in other quarters it is the recipient of very high praise. That puts it near the bottom of this tier, but still a movie that I think is doing incredibly thoughtful and provocative things. In any case, you're never going to be embarrassed to say you love it.

20) Our Friend (2021, Gabriela Cowperthwaite) - The critical community is never going to come together to embrace, or even see, this little-seen and unassuming movie about a family going through cancer and their friend who helps get them through it. And I'm never going to not cry during it, so it will remain always at the end of this tier in my heart.

The "hasn't aged well" tier

21) Titanic (1997, James Cameron) - I like Titanic better than several of the films in each of the above two groups, as it remains one of my top ten #1 movies overall. But I understand this is not a serious critical opinion, and the most common way to think of this movie, critically, is to be embarrassed that we showered such praise on it. So it is, regrettably, in this tier, but at least it is the captain of the tier. (I may have also kept it out of the "weird favorite" tier because it seems funny to call Titanic "weird." The only other option is a stone-cold classic, and though I may see it that way, I don't think others do.)

22) Skinamarink (2023, Kyle Edward Ball) - Although this would certainly qualify as a "weird favorite," it's landing just outside that tier due to the fact that some people are so bored that they can't even get through it when they try to watch it. They just didn't watch it long enough to discover it's one of the most chilling movies they've seen this century. 

23) Hamlet (2000, Michael Almereyda) - For the first of two films involving Shakespeare in this tier, I don't think anyone who has seen this adaptation thinks ill of it, unless they object to the cheekiness of the Blockbuster video "to be or not to be" speech. But when I most recently rewatched it, I definitely did not feel the original draw at the same strength.

24) Together (2025, Michael Shanks) - I wanted to rank this a little closer to the next tier, but based only on the reactions I got to this being my #1 of 2025 -- almost no one even gave it mid-level praise -- I suspect that I am going to stay out on the limb on this one far into the future. 

25) Hustle & Flow (2005, Craig Brewer) - This was a very cool pick in 2005, but it has lost a lot of its luster since then. It's not just that subsequent viewings haven't been as good for me, it's that they've revealed there are some actually bad moments of acting in the film -- and also that people aren't really talking about this movie anymore. 

26) Ruby Sparks (2012, Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris) - I remember how much my head was spun by this the first two times I saw it, and how surprised everyone was that I had selected it as my #1. My opinion gradually started to gravitate toward theirs, but this is still a movie I will enjoy quite a lot if I am in the right mood for it. 

27) Gosford Park (2001, Robert Altman) - This is a very solid predecessor to Downton Abbey and an engaging whodunnit, and it was a best picture nominee, but I just don't think it stands out within Altman's career, and I did actually rank this last when I ranked them all a few years back. 

28) Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu) - That this beat out Boyhood for best picture has become a conversation piece among cinephiles, who all too easily roll their eyes at the one shot gimmick and other of the film's indulgences. I still like it, but I feel fairly lonely in that opinion. 

29) Looking for Richard (1996, Al Pacino) - My very long-delayed second viewing of this convinced me that it might not be a whole lot more than an above-average documentary, but I still have fond feelings toward it -- especially as my first #1 ever.

30) The Whale (2022, Darren Aronofsky) - I have blubbering uncontrollably to blame for this #1 ranking, which I do still stand by. I've tried to argue that this movie is so much more than what some perceive as fatphobia, but I'm afraid that the perceived fatphobia is the only thing that really lingers in the court of public opinion. (But don't forget, Brendan Fraser actually won the Oscar, so I wasn't totally crazy.)

Do these tiers have the ring of truth to them?

On to the next 30. 

Audient One-Timers: Smoke Signals

Welcome to the first in my 2026 monthly series in which I am rewatching my 12 favorite films, according to Flickchart, that I have seen only once.

So we start out this series with a very unassuming film to be among my 12 favorite movies of any kind, though I suppose the standard is a bit lower for what I'm calling "one-timers" -- films I've seen only once.

To call a film a "one-timer" implies that it is very difficult to sit through a second time, either for length (such as The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King) or for subject matter (such as Requiem for a Dream, which I have actually seen at least four times.) That's not the way I'm using it here. There's no judgment, it's just a literal fact: the 12 films in this series are the highest ranked on my Flickchart that I have seen only once. Yes some of them will be long and some will have difficult subject matter, but those are merely secondary factors in their inclusion in this series. (Though they may be primary factors in why I've seen the film only once.) 

And that 12th favorite, with a current ranking of #175, is Chris Eyre's Smoke Signals, which I watched for the first time just about 13 years ago, give or take a few weeks. 

The film was significant for me in that year of 2013, which ended up being the year I moved to Australia, though I didn't know it at the time I watched Smoke Signals. Eyre's film was the first in a weekly series I wrote for the Flickchart blog called Flickchart Road Trip, which involved me watching a movie set in each of the 50 states, driving along an imaginary path that started from where I lived in Los Angeles at the time. I'd then "duel" that movie, just in the blog post, against five other movies from that state that were already in my Flickchart, seeing where it landed among them. 

It was a very harrowing commitment because I'm the guy who refuses to miss posting deadlines on a project like this, even if real-world reasons gave me a good excuse to do so. Such as moving to a new country and not having internet at my house for a few weeks, meaning I'd have to go to the library or a nearby hospital to do everything I needed for each post, as well as continuing to source one new movie per week to watch from each new state -- which was far less easy back in those largely pre-streaming days. I got to the end of the year with a sigh of relief and a vow to never do anything like that again.

The first stop on the road trip, geographically after California, was Arizona, where the second half of Smoke Signals is set. So that's the film I chose. (I had already decided that I wasn't going to start with California, but save it for #50 -- though I can't remember now if I "flew" to Alaska and Hawaii before or after California, so it might have been #48.) 

And I was floored by Eyre's movie. In fact, it kicked off two straight five-star movies to begin the series, as Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole would be up next in New Mexico. That movie might also be in this series because it's ranked high enough, but I've already seen that one a second time. After those two movies, the series never got close to reaching those heights again, but it was helpful in providing an immediate endorsement of this project I'd taken on. 

The thing I remembered most from the first viewing was how the ending absolutely socked me, leaving me in tears. You always remember the tears.

When I got to the ending this time, after the movie flew by (it's only 90 minutes), I could see the part that had made me cry, and I could feel some facisimile of the same emotions welling up maybe as a sense memory. But the ending of the movie is not really constructed as a big make-you-cry moment, so I feel like the tears may have been the result of an accumulation of subtle moments in the study of its two main characters. That speaks very well of the movie, its construction and its perfromances, but perhaps it made me a little less likely to cry this time around, and indeed I did not. 

Jeez, I haven't even really told you anything about the movie while already talking about its ending.

It's the story of two teenagers on an Idaho reservation, who are siblings by adoption and who we see at multiple ages through flashbacks. I'll list the actors who play them as the teenage versions, who are Adam Beach as Victor, the biological son of Arnold (Gary Farmer), and Evan Adams as Thomas, the adoptive son of Arnold after Arnold saved the baby from a house fire that killed Thomas' parents. Thomas naturally views his adoptive father as a hero, but there's more to this story and Arnold is a complicated man living with demons. He eventually leaves the reservation, abandoning the boys' mother Arlene (Tantoo Cardinal) to relocate to Phoenix, which happens before the start of the narrative. In fact, the narrative starts with a report of Gary's death in the lonely spot outside Phoenix where he was living in trailer and seems to have struck up a friendship with one younger woman, Suzy (Irene Bedard), but was otherwise living alone with those demons. Victor and Thomas need to road trip to Phoenix to take care of Gary's affairs, such as they are, and make peace with the memory of this absent father, whom they each see differently.

There isn't much more to the story on a plot level, but there's much more on the level of character and emotion. Still, watching the movie, you are struck by the intentional smallness of its scale. I should say, I was struck by it on this viewing, especially since I knew how highly I regarded the film. 

The relationship between Thomas and Victor is fertile. Thomas is a bit of a dork, a bespectacled kid who is given to great storytelling skills but is not cool in any respect that would be rewarded socially. Victor much more fits that profile as he's more traditionally handsome and is the star of the basketball team. However it's Thomas who is more at peace with his place in the world and it appears that Victor may be wrestling with the start of some of his father's demons. 

If I were to forcibly re-rank Smoke Signals on Flickchart -- which I am not going to do, even though that might be a logical accompanying action for this blog series -- it might fall a little bit. It would certainly end up outside my top 200. Instead, it will only slowly drop over time as it loses duels to certain films that are currently ranked in the next 100 spots behind it.

But that's not the same as saying I regret the ranking. The effect the movie had on me this time might only be 80% of what it was the first time, but it reminded me specifically of the value of a movie like this, which underplays most of its emotions in getting you to a very emotional spot by the end. I also really loved the look inside an American community that we don't see enough of on film. This week in particular, watching the film made it a good companion with the film I watched on Monday for Australia Day, Bran Nue Dae, since there's obviously a lot of overlap between the experience of indigenous Australians and indigenous Americans, particularly in terms of things like the way alcohol impacts their communities.

And to think, the first time I saw Smoke Signals, I wouldn't have even made that connection as I was still seven months away from moving to Australia. 

Remembering Rob Reiner: The Magic of Belle Isle

This is the first in intertwining 2026 bi-monthly series with the same name but slightly different focuses. Starting bi-monthly in January, I'll be watching the six Rob Reiner films I haven't previously seen. The other bi-monthly slot, starting in February, will focus on revisiting six of my Reiner favorites.

Focusing on previously unseen films by Rob Reiner that he directed entirely after 2012 always promised to be rough at times. But at least we've started off with a film that is merely innocuous.

From what I remember of Flipped, The Magic of Belle Isle is probably most similar in Reiner's filmography to that 2010 film, in that both films feature a young girl as their protagonist, and both are set in a summery setting that prompts a nostalgia in viewers for simpler times, even if they never actually experienced that setting or those simpler times in their own lives. Both films also feature the young actress Madeline Carroll -- or, she was young then -- even though in only two years she's aged out of being the protagonist to being the protagonist's older sister. 

Knowing what I now know about Reiner's family, I wonder if these movies weren't both made as love letters to his (biological) daughter Romy, who would have been 13 and 15 at the time those two movies were released. 

The protagonist, Finnegan, is played by newcomer Emma Fuhrmann, and I list her as a newcomer because the film gives her the "and introducing" credit at the beginning. She didn't ultimately stick, not having a credit on IMDB in the last five years, but she did appear in the Adam Sandler movie Blended and in Avengers: Endgame, so there was a little juice there for a while -- and she gives a really good performance here.

But don't get side-tracked, Vance, because this is the plot synopsis portion of this post. 

I'd say she's really the co-protagonist, because the movie's biggest name is Morgan Freeman, who plays Finnegan's cantankerous neighbor in the titular lakeside town in some unspecified location of what I would guess is the Atlantic coast. (The interwebs tell me it was filmed in Greenwood Lake, New York. But I here I am getting sidetracked again.) He's only temporarily housesitting for a rock musician on tour, looking after the dog and trying to drink his way into an early grave. He's in a wheelchair and is a writer who no longer writes due to sorrow over the loss of his wife, some six years in the past. 

Like many cantankerous neighbors in the movies, Freeman's Monte Wildhorn has something to teach young Finnegan, who wants to become a writer, and she has something to teach him about not giving up on life. The lesson sharing is also going to hit Finnegan's mother, played by Viriginia Madsen, who is currently divorcing Finnegan's absentee dad, and who gives Monte a figure on whom to have a chaste crush that is chastely reciprocated. (In other words, this movie is not actually going to give Morgan Freeman and Viriginia Madsen a romantic relationship, not a huge shock since they're separated in age by nearly a quarter century. Interestingly, though, I'm currently looking at a British poster for the movie in which it is called Once More, and the poster certainly seems to suggest more of a relationship movie than the American poster above. Sidetrack much?)

Just from this basic setup, you can probably tell that this is a pretty mid concept for a movie and that you've seen a hundred such "heartwarming" tales if you've seen one. The fact that it was made by Reiner means that it is competent and likeable enough, even if it is entirely lacking in what you would call originality. 

Indeed, it's possible to map out every single step of this script, a collaboration between Reiner, Guy Thomas and Andrew Scheinman. You know the early scenes where Freeman is in full-on cantankerous mode are going to be played for comedy, though Freeman's nephew, played by Kenan Thompson, is actually the straight man here, at least in the scenes where Monte is moving into the house. After Thompson goes back from whence he came, then the comedy comes in the form of interactions with the neighbors and the dog, all of which are grumpy, but in that superficial movie way that is obviously going to melt away the moment Monte is required to do the right thing.

Because the movie is so basic from a screenplay level and in terms of any compelling reason for its existence, I don't think I need to go on at length about it. Then again, there are a lot of movies that we find pass the time well enough even though they do not need to exist, and for me, The Magic of Belle Isle was one of those. It was the perfect sort of movie to watch in the morning, which I did this past weekend on Sunday. 

If I'm looking for hallmarks of the Reiner signature, which I probably should be doing in a series like this, I'm not finding them in terms of the movie being funny, unfortunately. It's pleasant, and Freeman has and delivers some good lines of dialogue, but actually funny in the way Reiner's earlier films are funny? Not really, though I suspect that wasn't at the forefront of his thoughts considering that he was seeing his daughter earnestly in the role played by Fuhrmann. When that kind of thing is close to your heart, you aren't thinking about great comedy set pieces.

Still, the supporting cast is a really nice group with which to spend this time, as it also includes our dearly departed treasure Fred Willard, and Kevin Pollack in one scene. 

The movie is trying to bite off a little more than it can chew, as it's not enough for Monte to have a special relationship with Finnegan. He's also got to have a special relationship with the mentally challenged son of another neighbor, that neighbor being played by Jessica Hecht of Friends fame. Because Monte's primary energies are directed on Finnegan, that plot ends up feeling just about as superfluous as it certainly is from a narrative perspective. It's almost as though Reiner just wanted to make sure there was no chance we'd see Monte as an actual misanthrope.

If looking for Reiner connections, we should also note that Freeman had worked with him previously on The Bucket List. 

If I'm going chronologically, which at this point I will assume I am, next up in March will be probably the most difficult to watch of these previously unseen films, the 2015 film Being Charlie, which Reiner wrote with the son who went on to murder him. 

Sorry to end on such a cheery note. 

The realities of modern movie consumption

I probably don't need to write a lot about the screen shot I took when I was on our Australian streaming service Stan on Monday night, because it's pretty self-eplanatory. I was looking for something that -- yes -- did not require very much of my proactive mental engagement or my stamina, considering that it was actually my fourth movie of the day and I was starting it after 10 p.m. (Don't worry, I also got to the beach and went into the pool with my son, as well as made a mix and wrote a blog post. So it was a very productive day despite also featuring four movies.) And even though I selected only the 82-minute New Zealand film The Breaker Upperers, which I'd already seen and really liked, I did not make it through and still needed to finish it yesterday. 

But I didn't go specifically looking for such movies. This category presented itself to me within Stan's comedy section without me having to do anything.

It did make me wonder which movies they saw it fit not to include in this category. I'd like to know what their idea is of a sophisticated, requires-all-your-mental-acuity comedy. I suppose if Stan carried the Knives Out movies, and classified them as comedies, they might qualify.

As it was, the movies I saw while scanning were very similar to those in the categories "classic comedies," "frat pack comedies" and the humorously broad "funny films" -- which you'd hope would encompass any film in the comedy section. They did have a number of more useful categories like "indie comedies," "dark comedies," "rom-coms" and "bloody funny," that last being horror comedies. 

Even though I am, of course, disdainful of the idea of a movie you can watch while being on your phone throughout, I have to admit that I am not always avoiding the temptation to be on my phone during all the movies I watch. One movie I watched on Monday, I watched during the morning time slot, and I think being on my phone for part of it was an indication of my guilt and my sense that I should be doing something else at that time of the day. 

A brand new kind of Australia Day movie

This was the first Australia Day where I had to go digging for a title that was not already on my radar. 

Does that mean I've exhausted the available documents of European Australian settlers treating indigenous Australians horribly?

Surely not, but the movies I watched on January 26th the past four years -- Walkabout, High Ground, Charlie's Country and The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith -- did represent the four movies I already had in my mind that profiled this way, that I had not already seen.

I don't watch Australian movies about those European settlers on Australia Day. Some Australians, or people who live in Australia anyway, surely would. But not me.

Ever since I started to really understand that many indigenous Australians think of this as Invasion Day, and call it that publicly, I relegated the mid-summer holiday to that place in mind of "it's quite problematic, but I do get a day off work at least." In fact, it's so problematic that you don't have to take that day off if you don't want to. The government has made it so you can work it and take a different day off in its place. 

My own contribution to pushing back against a certain subsection of gross white Australians, with whom I don't want to be associated, is to watch a movie on January 26th, for the fifth year in a row now, that considers the troubled plight of indigenous people in modern Australian history. 

Or, sometimes, not quite so troubled.

Oh, there's still an undercurrent of racism in Bran Nue Dae, Rachel Perkins' 2009 film that I knew, from the poster on Stan, was not going to sink me into a pit of despair, as some of those other films have. How could there not be. To depict the indigenous experience on film is to depict the experience of racism.

But it's also an extremely fun and silly road trip movie, and it's a musical!

When I say Bran Nue Dae was not on my radar, I should clarify that. I had heard the title, had probably seen it on my streamers -- particularly Stan, the Australian one -- multiple times before. But I spared it no more than a passing thought any time I'd seen it, and could not even have told you, for sure, that it was about indigenous Australians. Without having really analyzed whatever faces were on the poster, I might have thought it was African, since that creative spelling of "Brand New Day" is just as likely to be from there or somewhere else as from here. (Of course, if I'd analyzed it a little more closely and seen Geoffrey Rush on the poster, that would have cleared up any doubts.)

I've subsequently learned that the concept originated on stage in 1990, before being adapted to film two decades later. The songs are not particularly memorable, but some do get your toe tapping, and they more than exceed the minimum necessary for this to be a really fun experience.

The story is about an indigenous boy of about 16 (Willie, played by Rocky McKenzie) who lives in Broome, in the northwest part of the country, in 1969. Rocky has eyes for Rosie, played by Australian pop singer and national treasure Jessica Mauboy. However, she's being courted by a white Australian, Lester (Dan Sultan), who appeals to Rosie primarily because he can give her her big break to sing and potentially get noticed at the local roadhouse.

Willie is torn away from the potential romance when his mother sends him off to a Catholic mission in Perth, in the southwest of the country, where he's going to study to become a priest. That mission is overseen by the aforementioned Geoffrey Rush. A couple of the boys break into the refrigerator to steal Cokes and Cherry Ripes -- a local delicacy in the confection aisle at the supermarket -- and Willie is the only one who comes forward to admit he was part of the group, to save an innocent boy from being punished. When Rush punishes him severely and begins to insult him -- "I should have known one your Aborigine kind would be worth nothing," he says -- Willie escapes on foot and starts to make his way back home, on an adventure that will have lots of twists and turns and feature lots of compelling characters.

Among these are a drunken Aboriginal elder, "Uncle Tadpole" (Ernie Dingo), who originally just wants Willie's money to buy drink before softening and trying to get him back to Broome. Then there's the pair of hippies in their VW van, whom Uncle Tadpole pretends to have been hit by in order to guilt them into driving the pair to Broome. Just when you think it's the sort of story where Willie will just get passed from one pair of hands to the next -- some of them more well meaning than others -- the same group of characters are hard to fully get rid of, as they continue together on this road trip, accumulating a character played by another Australian acting treasure, Deborah Mailman, along the way. The whole time, Rush's priest is in hot pursuit, following just a few hours behind them at all their stops.

It's hard to describe how much fun and joy Bran Nue Dae packs into scarcely 85 minutes -- really only around 78 when the credits start rolling. This is also, remember, a musical, and though few of the songs are longer than about 90 seconds, it's not easy to fit all that in without shortchanging us somewhere. But no, this is just an economic package of good vibes, silliness, and yes, a few moments of more profound contemplation about the treatment of indigenous people in this society. 

Bran Nue Dae does not need to dwell on this last, though. Even with giving Rush the above line of reprehensible dialogue, the film is not all that eager to make him a one-dimensional villain, and it ends in quite a nice place for his character. 

But these things are still clearly on the film's mind. The cheeky song that follows that line of dialogue by Rush contains the lyric

"There's nothing I would rather be
Than to be an Aborigine
And watch you take my precious land away."

It's said with a song and a dance and a smile on everybody's face, maybe so that white Australians in the audience won't feel too bad about being complicit with that. But it needles them nonetheless. It's a little bit of secret protest thrown in within the context of a cheery musical, which maybe just makes it all the more subversive.

Nor does the film shy away from the sad realities of the indigenous Australian experience, even if their bite is lessened by coming within the context of a comedy. The two significant indigenous elders who appear in this film -- those played by Dingo and Mailman -- are both portrayed as alcoholics. Alcohol has ravaged the Australian indigenous communities, such that some heavily indigenous areas are entirely dry as an attempt to lessen the deleterious effects of the drug. 

One thing personally that I really enjoyed about watching this movie was that it contains a scene set in the same iconic movie theater that I visited when I was in Broome in 2023. You may recall from this post that my younger son, my sister-in-law and I attended Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem when we were there on vacation. I was enthralled by this open-air theater, and seeing it in Bran Nue Dae really brought up positive memories of that trip. The movie the characters are watching in "the world's oldest picture gardens" is interrupted by a torrential rain, which is a very real risk you don't get in a lot of other cinemas, and part of the charm I found in the place. 

Bran Nue Dae ends on a very silly note that relies on highly coincidental connections between a bunch of characters who had just met each other randomly, which is a moment that places the film squarely within the realm of fantasy. Though it's an optimistic sort of fantasy that speaks volumes about the filmmakers' hope that this can, one day, really just be one happy country, where people recognize, acknowledge and embrace the ways that they are more similar than they are different. 

That the film is set in 1969, and that we haven't nearly gotten there yet, is a bit more sobering. 

The spoiler that made Together my first Australian #1

Here we are on my final post that puts a bow on 2025 by taking a deeper dive into my #1 and how it came to reach that height. Some years my #1 inspires me to write about a larger, related topic that delves into my ranking history, but this year, the movie itself contains a ton of things I still want to write about. So I'll use this space to do so.

Up front, though: Because I mentioned spoilers in the subject of this post, I should tell you that I won't be properly spoiling Together until the fourth of these four segments. Things get progressively more spoiler-y through the segments, so if you haven't seen the movie and you sense yourself starting to get exposed to things you don't want to be exposed to, you can bow out then. 

My first Australian #1

Usually when I get the email that contains the nominees for this year's Australian Film Critics Association awards, which mostly focus on films with a strong Australian connection (they do have one "international" category so they can include something like One Battle After Another), it's a bunch of fringe nominees indeed. Yes an Elvis sometimes sneaks its way in there, but this list is usually comprised of films made by, but also only seen by, Australians. I've heard of these movies because I live in Australia, but most outside Australia won't know them from a hole in the ground.

That email has not yet come out this year, but it when it does, I suspect it will include my #1 movie of the year. 

You wouldn't know Michael Shanks' Together was Australian on the surface of it. The stars, Alison Brie and Dave Franco, are both American, and though the film never specifies its location, everyone else in the movie speaks with an American accent. The only real settings are an urban area (for a very short time at the beginning) and a rural area (for the rest of the movie).

But the keen observer will note Australian actor Damon Herriman as essentially the only other prominent actor in the cast. While him being Australian does not, of course, limit him to appearing in Australian movies -- Herriman was also Charles Manson in Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood -- it does make you wonder if, indeed, it might have been shot in his home country.

Well Shanks is also Australian, and I would assume most of the crew are as well, because it doesn't make sense to import Americans to do jobs Australians can do perfectly well. So it's also shot here, and I discovered recently that one of the producers is a neighbor of mine in the town where I live, and also friends on Facebook with some of my friends. (Hi Mike Cowap, if you're reading this. I don't know you but I hope to meet you sometime soon.)

Needless to say, I've never had an Australian #1 before. While this movie is not "Australian" in the sense of being set in Australia within its own world, it's a full-on Australian production, and that definintely counts. 

Because I've got a lot of other things to write about here, I won't go through and figure out how high an Australian movie has gotten previously in my rankings, but another one that was produced here but set in America -- the aforementioned Elvis -- did make my top ten a few years ago. In terms of movies actually set in Australia, Sweet Country was a top 20 movie for me in 2017. 

Does this mean I'm finally embracing the country that has been my home for going on 13 years now? That wouldn't really be an accurate conclusion. I mean, the fact that this movie hails from Australia is very much extra-textual to the movie. But I do appreciate the symbolic value of it, and hopefully my next Australian #1 will even take place here. 

Dave Franco equals his big brother

James Franco has fallen on hard times, to put it mildly, but he'll always have a place in my personal cinematic history in that he was the star of one of my past #1 movies, 2010's 127 Hours. That means I've got his name in a spreadsheet where I track people to see if they might eventually appear in more than one. 

Fifteen years later, Dave Franco has now achieved the same thing. Barring a big comeback from James that might only result from a very sincere apology tour, Dave seems like the only one who will have the chance to ever appear in another.

I don't specifically have a lot to say about this, but I did think it was worth making a quick mention in a post where I am touting Together's feats.

Body dysmorphia goes back-to-back

I don't know if you remember when I wrote this post last year after naming The Substance my #1 of 2024, but the premise of that post was that a horror movie had gone back-to-back with my #1 of 2023, Skinamarink, which was quite a surprise since I had never previously named a horror movie as my #1. I then went on to try to explore if The Substance was "really" a horror movie or if it was just body horror. Yes I considered that distinction pretty carefully. 

Well now, in the space of just a little more than two years, if you count January of 2024 and January of 2026 as bracketing that period, horror has gone from a #1 underdog to a #1 favorite. This is the third straight year you could describe my #1 as horror. I mean, Together is more definitely a horror than The Substance.

But even more so, it is a body horror, and even more so, it is a body horror in which body dysmorphia is a prominent theme. 

Some of the discussions of the body dysmorphia get into my next section where the real spoilers start, so let me get into the other similarities I noticed with The Substance that suggest I am definitely predisposed to this sort of movie:

1) Both movies have essentially three actors, with all other parts barely even being speaking roles.

2) In both movies, there is a central dynamic between two characters, and a third supporting character who acts on them as a catalyst. 

3) In both movies, those two characters are concerned about things that are happening physically to their bodies. 

4) Both movies feature some sort of physical monstrosity, but that's all I'll say about that at the moment. 

Let's stop dancing around it and go on to the next and final section ...

The final shot of Together that blew my mind

SPOILER ALERT.

So when anyone asks me why this seemingly ordinary horror movie became my #1 of the year, and they don't care about having it spoiled, the experience I'm about to recount with the movie is what I'll point them to. Hello, you, if you are reading now and this describes you. 

So just to clearly establish where we are in the story ... 

Millie (Brie) and Tim (Franco), who have been dating for years and living in the city, move to the country so she can take up a teaching job. His attempts to succeed as a musician have basically failed, and he's belatedly accepted her proposal, made in front of all their friends, to live together? get married? it's not entirely clear. What's clear is he did initially botch the acceptance of the proposal, leading to considerable awkwardness in the moment. Obviously there's something about taking his relationship with Millie any further that is scaring him. 

After moving to the country, Tim and Millie are on a hike and they fall into a hole in the ground where they come into contact with a mysterious force that causes their bodies to start to fuse together. We already know this force is pretty dangerous as we see what happened to two dogs who drank the same water that Tim and Millie drank. We also know there are some other hikers who were reported missing in this area. We'll meet them later.

Tim has shown commitment jitters the whole time, and won't have sex with Millie, which makes her somewhat more receptive to the friendliness/flitrations of a senior teacher at the school, Jamie (Herriman), who we later learn is gay so Tim actually didn't have anything to worry about. But Tim gets jealous anyway. 

The worse problem, though, is the steady attempts of their biology to fuse together, which once happens while they're having sex, and other times when they're sleeping. It gets so bad that their bodies are literally pulled together as if by unseen forces. The force is so powerful that it sends them into a bit of a trance, leading to a memorable scene of Tim in the shower and Millie against a frosted glass door. 

Eventually it seems like one of them will have to sacrifice themselves to save the other. They both try to do it, which is a touching indication of how much they actually do love each other. But then, to prevent Millie from dying of what should be a fatal knife wound, Tim decides to just let their bodies merge. This is accompanied by the great needle drop of "2 Become 1" by the Spice Girls, which we earlier learned was Millie's favorite band. Yes, this movie has a sense of humor, and we start to see the bodies fuse beyond the point of no return. We already saw this happen earlier with the hikers, so we know it doesn't end well. 

What seems like it will just be a button is Millie's parents later arriving at the house for a Sunday lunch, one she's mentioned twice previously in the narrative. I think we're meant to assume it's the first time they've been to the couple's new country home. After they've rung the bell, we're bracing ourselves for what deformed freak is going to answer the door. After all, we saw both the dogs and the hikers that previously fused together into an unspeakable monstrosity.

The person who answers the door is:

A non-binary person, who says to their parents, casually, "Hey."

Roll credits. 

This is not Alison Brie. This is not Dave Franco. This is a different actor, and a different person entirely. 

Suddenly I realized that this movie was operating as an allegory for coming out as a trans person. 

And then I started to backtrack.

If I rewound 30 seconds -- in my mind only, since I saw this in the theater -- I realized that when Millie's parents got out of the car, they looked a little nervous but cautiously optimistic. It was not a look they'd have on their faces just from visiting their daughter's new home for the first time. It might be a look they'd have if they had been quarreling with her and this was an olive branch by both parties, but that's not something that was mentoned in the narrative. 

No, this is a look the parents would have if they were meeting their daughter for the first time after the daughter had come out either as non-binary or as a trans man. 

And this is what probably got me about that: One of my big emotional triggers is when a parent accepts their gay, trans or non-binary child. I can't explain exactly why this is an emotional trigger for me, because I don't have anyone in my family who can be described that way. But maybe it's just that as a parent, I hope I would do the same thing in their position, even if I were scared and even if I didn't fully understand. I would hope I would just love them unconditionally.

And it's unconditional love we see on the faces of Millie's parents, mixed in with their nervousness and cautious optimism.

So then I rewound a little further and remembered a line of dialogue earlier that told us what we were supposed to think about this visit by Millie's parents. It's the second time she mentioned it. In an argument with Tim, she said, "My parents are coming for lunch this weekend, and I don't think you should be here for that."

In other words, this alternate version of her should not be there. She was doubting she was ready to come out to them yet. 

We know she did eventually change her mind, and maybe "she" became a "they" when "two became one." Otherwise, Millie's parents would not have that look of nervousness and cautious optimism on their faces as they approached the house, ready to meet their daughter as a trans man or a non-binary person for the first time. 

On my second viewing, I couldn't map out everything perfectly. There's a subplot about Tim's recently deceased parents that seems like a red herring in terms of this interpretation of the movie. Unless ... unless you see this as a projection of the fact that Millie's parents might be "dead to her," in a sense, if they do not accept her new publicly presented identity. 

But I think that's because Together doesn't want this to be the only interpretation of the movie. On Filmspotting when talking about Weapons, Josh Larsen recently said that a school shooting metaphor was an "available" interpretation of the movie. I think Shanks and company also wanted the trans allegory to be an "available" interpretation of their movie, not the only one -- but with plenty of Easter eggs for those wanting to follow that interpretation to its logical ends. Such as:

1) There's a scene earlier in the film when a slightly possessed Tim, who is basically becoming sickened by his compulsion to be near Millie, arrives at her school to finally have sex with her. They run into a nearby available bathroom to do this, but of course, this is a school bathroom used by students, and we see a pair of young feet appear outside the cubicle, wondering what's going on inside there. When Millie emerges by herself, leaving Tim to remain hiding, we realize that this is a boys bathroom, and the senior teacher, Jamie, says to her, trying to put her transgression in context, "Miss Wilson, this is a bathroom for little boys." On the surface, yes, this is a problem because it suggests an inappropriate relationship between an adult and a child. But if you are already looking at this as a trans allegory, it's a moment of shame for Millie because she is trying to use a different bathroom from her biological gender assignment. 

2) Then there's Jamie. Is it a coincidence that Jamie has a name that could belong equally well to a man or a woman? I think it isn't. Part of the character's function in the story can be interpreted as trying to draw Millie out and show her it's okay to come out as trans. We are very much meant to believe this is a journey Jamie already went through, which is hidden within a plot about the cult that used to operate out of the cave where Tim and Millie drank that poisonous water.

3) In this allegory, Millie is the "real" character and Tim is an embodiment of the potential future version of herself. She's trying to get Tim to "commit" to being the forward-facing personality, and Tim's refusal to do so is the thing that saddens her so much. But it's really Millie who can't commit, and Tim is just the symbol of her struggle. Although Tim is not portrayed effeminately in any clear way -- remember, this is a Trojan horse interpretation built into this otherwise mainstream movie -- some of his costume choices and hairstyle choices read as androgynous, if you are looking for this. 

4) When both Tim and Millie try to save each other at the end, it could be interpreted as the character's flirtation with suicide. We know that a person with this sort of body dysmorphia, who does not believe they can come out as another gender becaue of how their loved ones will react, often considers suicide. So the decision to finally come out is akin to the choice not to go through with the suicide. So in a way, the new half of the personality has saved the original one from extinction. The character's journey is to realize that selecting to present yourself as a different gender, or no gender at all, does not mean that the world will view you as an unspeakable monstrosity. 

I could go on, but you get the idea. 

If you've seen the movie, and you either didn't see this, or saw it but didn't think it worked, or saw it and thought it worked within the context of the movie but you don't care about this as a mission for a movie, that's fine. You do you. I'll just say that for me, this was a revelatory way of sneaking in a hidden intepretation of a movie that doesn't demand to be dealt with, but is "available" if you want it.

It doesn't even matter that the hidden interpretation was about a trans person considering coming out. I know that could make it divisive to some viewers. What matters, to me, is that it's got a hidden interpretation at all. The fact that this hidden interpretation also has a socially forward function that I embrace, and that this can therefore be seen as an extremely happy ending, just makes it all the better in terms of my appreciation. 

And you know what? Maybe it isn't even the only hidden interpretation in Together. It's just the only one I happened to excavate. 

Movies that operate on multiple levels, with multiple available interpretations to different viewers, are always the best uses of the unique tool that is cinema. 

The fact that I didn't even realize it was doing it until the very final shot?

Well for me, that's something worth celebrating by making it my #1 of the year.