If not Tupac, then NWA ... and also Tupac

I have made two "attempts" to see All Eyez on Me, the new biopic of Tupac Shakur.

I put "attempts" in quotation marks because neither really left the intention stage. About ten days ago I considered it for my second viewing after my critics screening of Transformers: The Last Knight, despite having initially lined up Rough Night for that spot (as discussed here). I was a little scared by its 2+ hour running time after the 2+ hours of Transformers, but the real thing that put the kibosh on it was getting a flat tire that day, meaning I couldn't ride my bike to the theater in time for the screening after Transformers ended. (But was in walking distance of the local arthouse theater, so saw Wilson instead.)

Then this past Wednesday, I considered an outing to my favorite old-school theater, the art deco Sun Theatre in Yarraville, and that would have been on the docket. But I was just too tired.

However, I "made up for it," of sorts, by finally seeing Straight Outta Compton on Thursday night.

It's probably a dangerous false equivalency to equate movies about Tupac Shakur and movies about NWA, as I am probably misunderstanding the finer details of the world of gangsta rap. Perhaps watching the Biggie biopic Notorious would be a more accurate equivalency, though then that would really be taking sides in the battle of East Coast vs. West Coast.

Then again, is it such a false equivalency? Both Tupac and NWA were represented by Suge Knight, and Tupac actually appears (very briefly) as a character in Straight Outta Compton (hence the subject of this post). So, I'm going with the legitimate equivalency.

Straight Outta Compton was a movie with a daunting running time of its own, clocking in at 146 minutes, which was one of the reasons I didn't watch it two years ago when it first came out. My wife had already seen it, as well, so it made the perfect movie for when she was out for drinks on Thursday night. Early start, plus I needn't save it for her.

Well, it was probably a good trade as I have not heard good things about All Eyez (38 Metascore) and I ended up really liking Straight Outta Compton. Just short of loving it, actually.

Had the second half been as strong as the first half, "love" might have been a legitimate word. But when are they ever? And I got all the detracting talking points about this movie, that the second half follows a familiar template for the "band breaking up" movie, and also that there are a lot of problematic attitudes toward women in this movie. (The problematic aspects embedded into the song lyrics were probably inescapable; the topless women being passed around like objects might have been avoided.)

But the movie really felt real to me in a lot of ways, and not just because Ice Cube's son is a dead ringer for him. I really enjoyed the performance of Jason Mitchell as Eazy E, and some of the moments of police corruption really boiled my blood.

One thing that surprised me about it, or reminded me of something I had forgotten, was that Ice Cube was really once a gangster of sorts. There's a scene of him destroying the office of a record executive trying to screw him out of money that flies in the face of the family friendly cinematic superstar we have today. Ice Cube has softened over the years; I won't call it selling out, though some would. Since I'm favorably disposed toward the guy, I'll just say he's mellowed. But yeah, he was once a borderline criminal.

It's refreshing to see some truly subversive geniuses who shaped a truly groundbreaking movement get a well made biopic like this one. F. Gary Gray is the director they deserve -- humorously enough, making a movie that references his own breakthrough film, Friday, both textually and subtextually. (O'Shea Jackson Jr. actually says "Bye Felicia" in this movie.)

I also loved seeing some others turn up in guest appearances, namely Keith Stanfield (of Get Out) as Snoop Dogg. Nice impersonation, Keith.

So I guess my eyez, all of them, will eventually see the Tupac biopic on video.

And maybe I'll watch Notorious, which I still haven't seen, as a double feature.

Audient Anime: Castle in the Sky

This is the third in a bi-monthly 2017 series devoted to catching up with the greats of anime I haven't seen, preferably with one or both of my sons.

As mentioned above, I've been working my hardest to make Audient Anime an experience I can share with at least my older son, preferably both of them. Much if not most of Studio Ghibli's fare is appropriate for them, even if the younger one is only three.

But despite their overwhelmingly positive response to My Neighbor Totoro, neither of the two I've chosen next have been a cinch to get them on board.

As you may recall from my last post, Kiki's Delivery Service would have been a complete failure had not my older son noted I was watching it by myself in the evening of the afternoon where I'd tried to show it to them. Because it fed into my own interests, I allowed him to convince me to stay up and watch it with me.

Castle in the Sky was actually a bit of an easier sell, as it turns out, but there was still a bit of arm-twisting necessary to overcome their initial reluctance. In fact, I think the older one was sold on the back cover of the BluRay, after initially being turned off by its front cover. The younger one was happy enough to go along with it, but he didn't last the whole movie -- at first he was off playing a bit, and then he fell asleep watching it. However, drawing the distinction between the two should tell you that the second one did watch the whole thing -- all two hours of it.

Castle in the Sky was the first film in the series that I had not hand-picked for us to watch. I was actually interested in a different Castle, one of the Howl's Moving variety. But when I encountered Sky at the library a couple weeks before the start of June, the proscribed month for the third bi-monthly installment of this series, I made the mental switch easily enough.

And once again Miyazaki helped in overcoming the kids' potential doubts right from the get-go. (Actually, he didn't really do that with Kiki's Delivery Service -- but that's more of a them thing than a him thing.) Castle in the Sky opens with pirates in flying machines with dragonfly wings, attacking an air ship that's carrying a girl who's in possession of a necklace they want. She climbs out among the clouds, on a thin outer railing. Nothing bad could actually happen, right? Well, it doesn't ... but you wouldn't know that from the girl losing her grip and plummeting toward the ground from several miles up in the air. (Don't worry, the amulet around her neck helps her float to the ground unharmed.)

The action set piece opening brought my older son right in, and really, kept him the whole way. He never really flagged, which I found especially impressive given the film's mammoth (and wholly unexpected) 125-minute running time. In fact, if I had known it would run longer that two hours, I might have never exposed them to it in the first place, considering it too unlikely of a proposition. Glad I did, since my son didn't actually complain. It was I who started squirming in my seat by about the 100-minute mark, when I could tell it still had a decent chunk of time left to go. In fact, a bit of a miscalculation on the running time, which started to wear me down a bit, was the only thing that kept Castle in the Sky from being in the same rarefied air, star ratings-wise, as its two five-star predecessors in this series. Still a wondrous adventure with tons of heart, Castle clocked in at four stars for me on Letterboxd.

One problem with the film, if you want to call it that, is that it has a sort of emotional climax around the 70-minute mark, in one of my favorite sequences. It's a "problem" because you shouldn't hit your emotional high point 50 minutes from the end of the movie. As luck would have it, Castle in the Sky made a good companion to The Iron Giant, which the kids had only recently watched and fallen in love with for the first time. In fact, I almost wonder if Brad Bird wasn't influenced in some way by Miyazaki, as his title character in the film that came 13 years later looks a lot like this:

This robot is one of the artifacts from Laputa, the castle of the title, which comes to life unexpectedly when in range of Sheeta's amulet. It doesn't learn to talk, and certainly not in the voice of Vin Diesel, but the robot does engage in some rather giant-like sacrifices in the interest of protecting its humans, coming under heavy artillery fire. The effect on me was pretty profound.

As I've been watching these with my kids, it's interested me what impact seeing it dubbed, rather than subtitled, would have on my own viewing. I guess we're 3-for-3 in me not caring about this nearly as much as I thought I would. One character in this movie does have a voice that unmistakably belongs to someone I know, namely, Cloris Leachman as the lead pirate, Dola. I suppose this was a "distraction" from time to time, since her voice is so distinctive, but she does a good job with the material so that mitigated some of the ways it took me out of it. One thing I wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't seen the opening credits was that the future Dawson Leery, none other than James Van Der Beek, voices the lead male character, Pazu. Of course, that's in the 1998 version, not the 1989 version that first appeared in the U.S.

I'm calling this series Audient Anime, but I might as well have been calling it Audient Miyazaki for how single-mindedly I've focused on just one director so far. In August I think I'll change that, while also using the opportunity to transition to material that's slightly more adult oriented. Can't twist my kids' arms forever, now can I? However, I'll be sure to circle back around for one final Miyazaki movie for before this is all said and done.

Asian Audient: Sansho the Bailiff

This is the halfway point of my 2017 series watching a movie per month from Asia, and my third trip to Japan.

You'd say that 1954 was a good year for Japanese cinema, except that would tend to overstate the role of Sansho the Bailiff in making it so.

Yes, I was not a huge fan of Kenji Mizoguchi's film, which reached the lofty heights of #59 in the 2012 Sight & Sound poll.

The other Japanese cinematic giant from 1954 was, of course, Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, a beloved favorite of mine that I rewatched earlier this year -- not as part of this series per se, but the night after another Kurosawa film I did watch for this series, High and Low. Samurai did beat Sansho by 42 slots in the poll, but it should have beaten it by a lot more.

As I've had a very busy blogging schedule in the nine days since I watched this movie, creating possibly my longest interim ever between watching one of these movies and writing about it, I may be a bit fuzzy on the reasons I didn't love, or even particularly like, Sansho. That will start with finding a good entry point to discussing it.

But here's as good a place as any. Sansho the Bailiff, strangely, is named after its villain, and not even a particularly charismatic villain at that. In fact, because his name was rarely spoken at the same time that he was actually on screen, I spent a considerable amount of time wondering which one Sansho actually was. I knew he was a bad guy who tortured and mistreated the people he kept to work as slaves on his estate in the film's feudal Japan setting, but I could never be sure that the guy who turned out to be him was actually Sansho, and not some low-level functionary carrying out Sansho's cruel bidding. That's a problem in itself, when the movie is named after the villain and you're not even sure which one the villain is. But even with a very charismatic villain, I still would find it weird for the movie to be named after him. Like, Star Wars would probably never have taken off if it had been called Darth Vader.

I'm sure Mizoguchi was not thinking about a franchise with action figures when he made Sansho. But I'm not entirely sure what he was thinking. This is a distressing, misanthropic film, in which even the eventual hero, Zushio (Yoshiaki Hanayagi), uses a hot iron poker to brand a poor elderly man who attempts to escape, and feels no compunction about it until much, much later. See, Zushio and his sister, Anju (Kyoko Kagawa), were overcome by bandits when they were fleeing the city where their father, a politician, was facing an uprising, endangering their lives. They were separated from their mother, who was sold by these bandits into prostitution, while they were sold to Sansho. The branding is his attempt to fit in and comply with Sansho's agenda, in order to prosper in this glorified prison camp. Nothing gets any happier from here, or at any point in this movie.

I didn't know how I was supposed to feel about this movie. The characters never connected with me, even though tragic things happen to them and Anju at least is very sympathetic. (So is their mother, but we see less of her.) The tragedies that befall these characters are perverse enough that I felt like Mizoguchi was just trying to punish us. I'm not averse to films with tragic outcomes, and I really don't think that even requires clarification. But the tragedy has to speak to a higher purpose and reveal what I consider to be profound truths about the human condition, and for me, Sansho did not.

Part of the strangeness of this film comes down to what they do with the character of Zushio. We understand that he has sold his soul in order to avoid more grave threats to his person -- that he has made the kind of adaptation people make in order not to get raped repeatedly in prison, for example. Call me old-fashioned, but I like my heroes to have a little more moral fiber than that. His sister is the one with the moral fiber, and she only belatedly convinces him to seek to improve their circumstances by attempting to escape and plead their cause to the ruler of a local prefecture, who may be able to improve their condition. Indeed he does do this, and when his powerful parentage is revealed to this local leader, the leader puts Zushio into a position of power where he has direct influence over Sansho and his abusive regime. Zushio doesn't feel like he's earned this, and the gestures the film has him make toward profound self-examination feel empty. As he has no trouble escaping, Zushio doesn't risk anything, not really. And his sister, the morally pure of the two, comes to far worse ends.

At least part of Mizoguchi's purpose in making this film seems to be illustrate the colossal unfairness of life. The better person you are, the worse it is for you. I get it, but I don't see why this film constitutes a particularly useful examination of that idea. Particularly since the fate of the film's two primary female characters is basically unspeakably horrible. Gender politics were quite different both at the time it was made and particularly during the period it was depicting, but there almost seems something sadistic in Mizoguchi's approach to these women.

Some of my problems with the story would be mitigated by interesting technique, had their been some, but I don't recall finding anything memorable in Mizoguchi's methods. It looks reasonably lush for its time, I suppose, but there was nothing in particular I felt inclined to point to afterward. With this film being as praised as it is, it seems there should be something either technically groundbreaking or transcendent in the story or themes. I found neither.

And yet even though I've spent the lion's share of this post telling you how I did not particularly like this movie -- singling out nary a thing I found distinctive about it -- I still gave Sansho the Bailiff three stars on Letterboxd.

Why?

Because I'm a pussy.

I suppose that's not a great word to use in a piece where I'm criticizing someone else's portrayal of gender politics. But I need a strong, weighted word to rake myself over the coals for my lack of conviction in my own perspective. When the merits of a classic film elude me, I've got a bad tendency to assume it must be a "me problem." So many other people can't be wrong, can they? So in deference to its classic status, I often find I can give a film no worse than three stars. And so three stars is what Sansho received.

What will July's movie receive? Remains to be seen. Also remains to be seen where we go. Been having a very hard time getting my hands on movies that were not made in either Japan or greater China, but am going to really try for Thailand or Indonesia in July. Wish me luck.

Embracing the hard T

Yes, you counted correctly -- this is my fourth post about Wonder Woman in the month of June.

But at least this one is about Wonder Woman and not Wonder Woman.

Gal Gadot's name throws smart people for a loop. For the purposes of this argument, I credit myself as being one of those people.

We have a default way we imagine saying the name, which owes much to our understanding of French and the work of Samuel Beckett. But Gal Gadot is not French and she may never have read Waiting for Godot.

The first time I heard the correct pronunciation of her name, it was by my editor and co-podcaster, when he mentioned her in passing on our Alien: Covenant podcast. I just thought he was simple, poor guy.

The second time I heard the correct pronunciation of her name, it was by another podcaster, this one a bit more famous: Stephen Metcalf, one of three hosts of The Slate Culture Gabfest, whose podcast I saw recorded live here in Melbourne. I thought "Oh, what a shame, Stephen Metcalf has embarrassed himself in front of the world by saying her name wrong."

The third time I heard the correct pronunciation of her name, it was the same speaker as the first time, this time during our Wonder Woman podcast. This time, I called him on it. "Are you sure you're saying that right?" I said, a smart allecky condescension dripping from my voice.

"Yes, I am. I googled it," he responded. "It was a YouTube video which just had her name spoken over and over again for about 50 seconds, by different reporters and herself."

Pretty definitive proof.

Yes indeed, you say the T. It rhymes with "vote," though how much it rhymes depends on exactly how much you are trying to approximate an Israeli accent.

Part of the reason we gravitated toward "Gadot," rhymes with "snow," was because the only other alternative our dumb American (or possibly dumb Australian) brains could imagine was to say it as "Gadot," rhymes with "hot." But because our dumb American brains are trying as hard as possible not to sound like dumb American brains, we recoil at anything that makes us sound uncouth, and "Guh-DOTT" definitely would do that. "Guh-DOH" saved us from that problem.

But, it's wrong.

The thing is, Gal Gadot is going to have to become a lot more of a household name before anyone will really believe it's wrong, in any widespread way. Our ingrained European snobbery will still make us want to say it with the French silent T, if only because it sounds right, and we want to avoid having to explain ourselves in sophisticated company, who won't yet have been confronted with its correct pronunciation and will assume we're saying it wrong. Either that or we will need to double down on the kind of wanky over-pronunciation of the Israeli accent, like people who try too hard to correctly say Spanish names and geographical locations, which, while wanky, will also make it clear we're not just saying it wrong because we're yokels.

At least puckering up your lips and saying it in the Israeli way, which sounds a bit like the sound a drop of water makes when it drips from the tap, will sound fancy.

Maybe we can just call her Gal, like Cher.

Be careful what you ask for

I recently told my fellow podcaster and the editor of my site that he was going to lose his love of cinema if he only reviewed the most bloated summer (winter) blockbusters and nothing else.

Because those ones tend to make themselves available via critics screenings more often than the little independent films, he's been going to most of those, while leaving me to sweep up all the smarter, better fare, when I have to schedule the screening myself. Something I certainly don't mind doing, especially since it's free to me in both cases.

But I also don't want this guy to totally burn out on movies he's ranking 3 and 4 out of 10, so the other night, after we recorded our Wonder Woman podcast, I advised him to let me attend the next in-your-face spectacle while he took a much-deserved trip to the arthouse.

My timing couldn't have been worse. The next in-your-face spectacle was Transformers: The Last Knight.

He told me it would be, but I didn't necessarily think that actually meant I would be the one to review it. But a few days later he texted me asking me if I could go to that screening. He did say in the text that he couldn't make it, but given that we'd just had this conversation, I wonder how true that was.

Well, to soften the blow, it would mean my first IMAX movie since Rogue One, and my first non-Star Wars IMAX since Mad Max: Fury Road. See, I don't get IMAX for free through my critics card, so why pay a $5 to $10 markup on a film I can otherwise see for absolutely free? As a result, that format has basically become a stranger to me.

In a bit of an unusual movie, this critics screening was being held at the IMAX theater affixed to our museum, which proclaims itself to be the third-largest such screen in the world. There was a limosine colored like Bumblebee out the front and everything.

If I'm going to see Transformers bludgeoning each hour for well over two hours, at least they can be big.

But the movie was even worse than I imagined it would be, even worse than I remembered the third movie -- the last one I'd deigned to watch -- being. I considered momentarily watching the fourth one, in order to better prepare myself to review this one. But my God, that movie is two hours and 45 minutes long. No thanks.

I won't go on any further tearing this movie down in the body of this post, because you can read my full smackdown here.

Just know that IMAX did not make it better, just as the lame attempts at humor did not make it funny, and the bizarre choice to involve the Middle Ages did not even make it WTF enough to be good trash.

Next time I try to help save the cinematic soul of a fellow critic, remind me not to.

Planes for one kid, Cars for the other

A lot of my contemporaries might proudly talk about how their child's first movie in the theater was a Pixar movie.

I can only sort of do that, and it's not like these movies were Inside Out or Up or Toy Story 3.

Nope, our kids' first "Pixar" movies were a no-Pixar spinoff of what is popularly considered to be Pixar's worst franchise ... and the third movie in that franchise.

However, we couldn't have planned it with any more thematic symmetry if we tried.

In 2013, when he was just a month past his third birthday, we took my older son to the Sun Theatre in Yarraville, where we saw the Cars spinoff Planes. It's clearly from the world of Cars, but it's Pixar adjacent at best, emanating from the dubiously named DinseyToon Studios. You may recall it being discussed in this post. (Or not -- that was four years ago. And if you do recall it, what are you, stalking me?)

On Saturday, about five-and-a-half months after his third birthday, we took my younger son to see Cars 3 as part of an admit four advanced screening at the Village Cinemas in the Jam Factory in South Yarra. (Both towns even have a "Yarra" in them.) His attention span is not great, but the tickets were free, making it a lot more of an inviting prospect. I'm reviewing the movie, you see.

Another common factor: My wife played the role of running interference on both occasions.

The first time, when she had to chase the older one around the theater and out into the lobby for a total of maybe 15 minutes, she graciously deferred to my nearly fanatical need not to miss a significant chunk of the movies I see. (Something having to do with how much of a movie I can miss before it "counts" for my lists.) This time, I had firmer ground on which to stand. We wouldn't have been there at all if I weren't reviewing the movie, and it's my duty to my reading public not to render judgment unless I've seen every last minute. She probably missed about the same amount of time this time around.

As it turns out, both movies were tedious enough that I wouldn't have minded chasing around the kids.

Although I have a soft spot for the Cars movies -- I kind of love the first one and I appreciate the second -- I found this one a real grind. It's out of the spy game and back to the race track, with mostly boring results. I mean, do we really need another Pixar character who is fearing his own obsolescence?

But the big misstep this movie makes is to sideline Mater entirely. Yeah, Cars 2 was too much about Mater, but he was the Jar Jar Binks in Attack of the Clones of this movie -- in it for continuity reasons, but without much dialogue. I never could have guessed how much I'd miss him. But now I'm repeating my review, which should probably be available on a link to the side of the as you read this, or will be soon enough.

The kids really liked the movie, and not only, I think, because of the free popcorn (which would only appeal to the older one) and the free mini Cars toy they got at the gate. Them liking the movie is a lot more important to me than me liking it, since I'm trying to convince the younger one that going to the movies is good, and the older one that going to movies that he considers too babyish is good. (The older one, who whined about having to come at all, later on asked us if we could watch Cars 3 on Netflix. Yeah, that's not how it works, kid. But thanks for the vote of confidence and for providing a perfect example of your own short-sightedness.) I'll worry later about the fact that he thought the villain, Jackson Storm, was the best character.

But I couldn't blame them if just seeing it up on a big screen was impressive enough to win them over. Predictably, it does look great. Funnily enough, considering that this is a series I appreciate, this was my first Cars movie in the theater. I had to have little enough faith in the first two -- the second even after liking the first -- to have waited to watch them on video, and in the case of Cars 2, more than two years after it came out. When I finally get around to seeing one on the big screen, it's the worst one. (Some of you will like it better than Cars 2, or possibly even Cars. Good on you.)

If I'm taking the long view, and the snobbish view, neither kid will have a great answer when someone one day asks them their first movie in the theater. I mean, it can never compare to my own answer: Star Wars.

But who even knows what you would consider the 2017 version of that answer. It could be a Star Wars movie, of course. But in 20 years when they're answering that question, there'll be 15 more Star Wars movies and it won't seem all that special.

Planes and Cars 3 may not be special, and they may only be lesser Pixar and Pixar adjacent ... but they're not bad movies. At least they're good adjacent, and that's good enough for me.

Reacquainting myself with The Iron Giant

My kids' favorite movie these days is The Iron Giant.

What a marvelous turn of events.

I say that as though I had no role in it, which of course I did. Remembering the success we had with Tarzan (read about that here), I decided to try a "garage movie" with my kids this past Monday, which was a holiday. My wife had some work to do so I was left with the task of distracting them and keeping them out of her hair. I mean, I took them out until the mid-afternoon, but you can't stay out with the kids all day. What do you expect from me, exactly?

They enjoyed the movie, which I'd rented from the library, and I felt a satisfaction akin to "we got through that without any major disruptions to the movie or to my wife." I didn't have any idea it would linger in their consciousness beyond that day.

But boy has it.

My youngest, who is nearly three-and-a-half, has seen the movie approximately four times in the week since then. His six-year-old brother is only one viewing behind him. And in a telltale sign of how much they like it, beyond having watched it multiple times, they can often be heard zooming around the house as the Iron Giant himself after a viewing.

But what's been the most fun for me is how funny they think it is. For all my kids have enjoyed various movies in the past, even watching them on repeat, rarely have they ever isolated lines they thought were funny, and proceeded to quote them unprompted.

They quote two parts of the movie in particular, and they both involve Dean.

Dean. Hot damn. What a great character.

And to think there was a time in my history when I actively disliked Harry Connick Jr.

Here's Dean:

But wait, that's the second part they like. Let's do the first one first.

The first one is when we meet Dean, the beatnik -- probably the only beatnik in this small Maine town -- in the diner. It's a great character introduction, as Hogarth discovers him unresponsive behind his newspaper -- because he's sleeping. We aren't told why Dean is sleeping in the middle of the afternoon at a diner, what aspect of his beatnik lifestyle left him in this shape. I prefer just to wonder.

Anyway, the first thing we learn about Dean is that he's a co-conspirator. He takes an immediate shine to Hogarth, and perhaps because he'd never narc anyone out, he doesn't let on in a way that might get Hogarth in trouble with his mother (Jennifer Aniston), a waitress at the diner.

Let on about what? 

Oh, about the squirrel running up his pant leg. Hogarth's squirrel. Hogarth's squirrel his mother just expressly forebade him from bringing into the diner. 

When the squirrel digs its little claws into his leg to make the ascent, Hogart's mom is already at the table, so he can't give away the game. Instead he gets this crazed look on his face ... exactly the look you'd get if you were trying to conceal that a squirrel was clambering up toward your groin.

"Call me Dean," he says, through clenched teeth, eyes twitching. They quote that line regularly.

The second part is perhaps the indisputable comedic peak of the movie, when the monkey see, monkey do giant follows Hogarth's lead by doing a cannonball into the lake. Dean is sitting as pictured above, reading the paper in a director's chair, chewing on a toothpick.

Now, the water displacement of a giant metal robot doing a cannonball into a lake -- after a running start, mind you -- is massive. A tidal wave ensues. We don't immediately see what happens to Hogarth, though that's also a great punchline -- he's clinging to the top of a pine tree, cheering. We do see Dean observing the approaching wall of water with stunned horror, and then, not able to think of anything better to do, he hides behind the newspaper. Not for protection, really, but just so he doesn't have to see himself get hit in the face with a tidal wave.

When the water rushes through, and we see various forms of Maine forest life swimming through it, we also see Dean swirl around, still sitting in his chair, as though they were a single fused object. He lands softly in upright position out on a neighboring road. 

When the water clears, an old codger in a pickup truck drives upside the dazed hipster and sticks his head out the window. 

"Hey!" he says.

"Yeah?" says Dean from behind his crooked glasses, not turning.

"You're in the middle of the road!" says the codger.

"YEAH?" says Dean. I mean, what else do you say?

That exchange is great, and I can get them giggling every time I reenact it. Of course, then they want to reenact it themselves, and reproduce it spontaneously at a moment of their choosing.

I should say there's one other thing they quote that doesn't involve Dean. It's the line Hogarth says to the giant after he's first made his acquaintance, once he realizes the giant intends to follow him home like a lost puppy. 

"You stay. I go. No following!"

What I like about that is that moment is repeated back with the roles reversed in the film's emotional climax, which I won't reveal until after this SPOILER ALERT if you somehow still have not seen this movie.

When the nuke is headed toward the town and there's no reasonable hope for any of the people present to escape, the giant makes the decision to sacrifice himself by flying up into the stratosphere and intercepting it out of harm's way. And this line is his way of saying goodbye to his young friend.

Sniff. 

Yeah, The Iron Giant turned me into jelly again at its climax, even ten years since I last saw it, and for probably the fifth time overall. My older son asked one of those simple questions that shows a true engagement with the material, that he's finally starting to process adult themes, and understanding the meaning of grand concepts like nobility and sacrifice. 

"Why is he going to fly after the missile, Daddy?"

"Because he wants to save the people," I choked out, somehow preventing my voice from succumbing to all-out blubbering. 

The reason it's great that my kids love The Iron Giant is not just because it's funny, or just because it's cool (they love it when the giant turns into a gun), or not just because they are again showing genuine appreciation of a film from another century. (What was it with 1999? That's when Tarzan came out too.)

No, it's because I know part of why this movie has resonated with them is because it has a wonderful message that they might not even know they wanted. But it's experiences like this that can give birth to a lifelong love of cinema.

Sometimes I don't like it when my kids start to regularly watch a movie I hold sacred. I don't mind catching snippets of lesser classics every time I walk through the living room, but there are some that should be special, whose shine might wear out with repeated exposure. For this very reason I've been very careful about dolling out access to recent favorites like Zootopia, Inside Out and Tangled.

But it's been a joy to walk through various parts of The Iron Giant, ranked above any of those movies on my Flickchart at #26. Instead of wearing out, it tickles me anew every time I walk by, and if I'm not careful, I might even feel myself getting emotional.

And every time that cannonball scene is on, I make sure to stop and watch. 

My first 100 reviews, and then some

Not of all time, mind you. I'm close to 1,400 if you include all the reviews I've ever written for one publication or another.

But this "milestone post" celebrates my one hundredth review for ReelGood, the Australian website that has engaged me as a freelancer since December of 2014.

My Cousin Rachel ignominiously claims the honor, or "honour" if I want to be Australian about it. "Ignominiously" not because the movie is bad, but because I've already forgotten about it five days after seeing it. (Not true, but I thought it was rather average -- meaning I still awarded it a 7/10. See other posts for my ongoing struggle with my personal ratings system.)

On the occasion of this milestone, instead of giving you a ponderous think piece about what it means to be a critic in our current world or what criticism means to me, I thought I'd do a "service" to potential future readers. (Hello, potential future readers! How has the future been treating you?)

That "service" will be to create a repository for all of these 100 reviews ... though unless you read this post within the next few days, there will be more than 100 in the list.

That's right, I'm going to create links to all of my ReelGood reviews, and add a new link every time a new one posts.

The purpose of this -- since I'm sure you're asking yourself that right now -- is to create a single location to point people who have asked to see some of what I've written. They can then choose from the whole list, in order to read a review that's germane to their own experience. I mean, if you want to see if I have valid film opinions and can argue them successfully, wouldn't you rather read a review of a film you've already seen, on which you already have your own perspective? With this post, you'll now have a chance to choose between all of them.

The way I used to handle this when it came up, which was maybe every other year, was to send them a flat list of all the reviews I'd written for AllMovie, the site that employed me from 2000 to 2011. By the end of my run there, it was more than 1,200 movies long. They'd then have to go to that site and search the title, if my disproportionate response to their innocent query didn't already shut them off to the whole idea of reading my reviews in the first place.

Now, technology is my friend and I can do this in a much easier way. Though to be honest, it's been more than a couple years since anyone's actually asked me this.

Never mind that it's now possible to search my reviews on ReelGood by clicking the hyperlink that appears on my name, something that wasn't possible until the site was redesigned about a year ago. So yeah, I'm about to commit to a fairly arduous undertaking that will also be essentially redundant.

But, I can't speak to how future redesigns may handle this functionality, so might as well.

Oh, and don't worry. I'll still keep updating my most recent three on the right side of this page. (I know you were worried.)

Reconsidering this list has allowed me to notice some funny things, like the fact that I reviewed The Assassin and Creed consecutively, and that five movies before that, I reviewed Justin Kurzel's Macbeth. A year after this, Justin Kurzel would direct Assassin's Creed ... which I did not review, nor see.

Okay. Probably don't need to bore you with any more preamble, although whether you'll continue "reading" at all after this is up to you. "Glancing" might be the better word.

Here we go, in chronological order:

1. Birdman or (the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu)
2. Foxcatcher (2014, Bennett Miller)
3. The Interview (2014, Evan Goldberg & Seth Rogen)
4. St. Vincent (2014, Theodore Melfi)
5. The Wedding Ringer (2015, Jeremy Garelick)
6. Love is Strange (2014, Ira Sachs)
7. The Gambler (2014, Rupert Wyatt)
8. The Last Five Years (2015, Richard LaGravenese)
9. Shaun the Sheep Movie (2015, Mark Burton & Richard Starzak)
10. The Age of Adaline (2015, Lee Toland Krieger)
11. Clouds of Sils Maria (2015, Olivier Assayas)
12. While We're Young (2015, Noah Baumbach)
13. Gemma Bovery (2015, Anne Fontaine)
14. Woman in Gold (2015, Simon Curtis)
15. Spy (2015, Paul Feig)
16. Inside Out (2015, Pete Docter)
17. The Emperor's New Clothes (2015, Michael Winterbottom)
18. Freedom Stories (2015, Steve Thomas)
19. Love & Mercy (2015, Bill Pohlad)
20. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (2015, Alfonso Gomez-Rejon)
21. The Gift (2015, Joel Edgerton)
22. Irrational Man (2015, Woody Allen)
23. Everest (2015, Baltasar Kormakur)
24. The Diary of a Teenage Girl (2015, Marielle Heller)
25. Tangerine (2015, Sean Baker)
26. Sicario (2015, Denis Villeneuve)
27. Pan (2015, Joe Wright)
28. Macbeth (2015, Justin Kurzel)
29. The Walk (2015, Robert Zemeckis)
30. Mistress America (2015, Noah Baumbach)
31. Sleeping With Other People (2015, Leslye Headland)
32. Knight of Cups (2015, Terrence Malick)
33. The Assassin (2015, Hsiao-Hsien Hou)
34. Creed (2015, Ryan Coogler)
35. 99 Homes (2015, Ramin Bahrani)
36. Hotel Tansylvania 2 (2015, Genndy Tartakovsky)
37. The Night Before (2015, Jonathan Levine)
38. Truth (2015, James Vanderbilt)
39. Room (2015, Lenny Abrahamson)
40. Mississipi Grind (2015, Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck)
41. The Good Dinosaur (2015, Peter Sohn)
42. Suffragette (2015, Sarah Gavron)
43. Carol (2015, Todd Haynes)
44. The Big Short (2015, Adam McKay)
45. 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi (2016, Michael Bay)
46. How to be Single (2016, Christian Ditter)
47. Zootopia (2016, Byron Howard & Rich Moore)
48. Rams (2016, Grimur Hakonarson)
49. Midnight Special (2016, Jeff Nichols)
50. Eddie the Eagle (2016, Dexter Fletcher)
51. Green Room (2016, Jeremy Saulnier)
52. The Meddler (2016, Lorene Scafaria)
53. Money Monster (2016, Jodie Foster)
54. Hello, My Name is Doris (2016, Michael Showalter)
55. Miles Ahead (2016, Don Cheadle)
56. The BFG (2016, Steven Spielberg)
57. Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates (2016, Jake Szymanski)
58. Swiss Army Man (2016, Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert)
59. Star Trek Beyond (2016, Justin Lin)
60. The Salesman (2016, Asghar Farhadi)
61. Certain Women (2016, Kelly Reichardt)
62. Toni Erdmann (2016, Maren Ade)
63. The Lure (2016, Agnieszka Smoczynska)
64. Christine (2016, Antonio Campos)
65. Seoul Station (2016, Sang-ho Yeon)
66. Paterson (2016, Jim Jarmusch)
67. The Shallows (2016, Jaume Collet-Serra)
68. Don't Breathe (2016, Fede Alvarez)
69. Snowden (2016, Oliver Stone)
70. Pete's Dragon (2016, David Lowery)
71. Yoga Hosers (2016, Kevin Smith)
72. The Red Turtle (2016, Michael Dudok de Wit)
73. Deepwater Horizon (2016, Peter Berg)
74. Cafe Society (2016, Woody Allen)
75. Under the Shadow (2016, Babak Anvari)
76. Hell or High Water (2016, David Mackenzie)
77. American Honey (2016, Andrea Arnold)
78. Arrival (2016, Denis Villeneuve)
79. Morgan (2016, Luke Scott)
80. The Family Fang (2016, Jason Bateman)
81. Office Christmas Party (2016, Josh Gordon & Will Speck)
82. Little Men (2016, Ira Sachs)
83. Bad Santa 2 (2016, Mark Waters)
84. Hidden Figures (2016, Theodore Melfi)
85. Manchester by the Sea (2016, Kenneth Lonergan)
86. Lion (2016, Garth Davis)
87. The Birth of a Nation (2016, Nate Parker)
88. Fences (2016, Denzel Washington)
89. Loving (2016, Jeff Nichols)
90. A Cure for Wellness (2017, Gore Verbinski)
91. Life (2017, Daniel Espinosa)
92. The Lego Batman Movie (2017, Chris McKay)
93. The Fate of the Furious (2017, F. Gary Gray)
94. Raw (2016, Julia Ducournau)
95. Colossal (2017, Nacho Vigalondo)
96. Free Fire (2016, Ben Wheatley)
97. John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017, Chad Stahelski)
98. 20th Century Women (2016, Mike Mills)
99. Hounds of Love (2017, Ben Young)
100. My Cousin Rachel (2017, Roger Michell)
101. Cars 3 (2017, Brian Fee)
102. Transformers: The Last Knight (2017, Michael Bay)
103. Una (2017, Benedict Andrews)
104. Lady Macbeth (2017, William Oldroyd)
105. A Monster Calls (2016, J.A. Bayona)
106. American Made (2017, Doug Liman)
107. The Lovers (2017, Azazel Jacobs)
108. Girls Trip (2017, Malcolm D. Lee)
109. The Lego Ninjago Movie (2017, Charlie Bean)
110. Song to Song (2017, Terrence Malick)
111. Battle of the Sexes (2017, Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris)
112. Ingrid Goes West (2017, Matt Spicer)
113. Geostorm (2017, Dean Devlin)
114. Brigsby Bear (2017, Dave McCary)
115. Loving Vincent (2017, Dorota Kobiela & Thomas Welchman)
116. The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017, Yorgos Lanthimos)
117. Jigsaw (2017, Peter & Michael Spierig)
118. Lucky (2017, John Carroll Lynch)
119. In This Corner of the World (2016, Sunao Katabuchi)
120. Only the Brave (2017, Joseph Kosinski)
121. Wonder Wheel (2017, Woody Allen)
122. The Florida Project (2017, Sean Baker)
123. Call Me by Your Name (2017, Luca Guadagnino)
124. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017, Jake Kasdan)
125. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017, Martin McDonagh)
126. Coco (2017, Lee Unkrich & Adrian Molina)
127. The Shape of Water (2017, Guillermo del Toro)
128. Sweet Country (2017, Warwick Thornton)
129. Winchester (2018, Peter & Michael Spierig)
130. Annihilation (2018, Alex Garland)
131. Peter Rabbit (2018, Will Gluck)
132. Mary Magdalene (2018, Garth Davis)
133. Unsane (2018, Steven Soderbergh)
134. Super Troopers 2 (2018, Jay Chandrasekhar)
135. Tully (2018, Jason Reitman)
136. Chappaquiddick (2018, John Curran)
137. Deadpool 2 (2018, David Leitch)
138. The Bookshop (2017, Isabel Coixet)
139. Gringo (2018, Nash Edgerton)
140. Hereditary (2018, Ari Aster)
141. Ocean's Eight (2018, Gary Ross)
142. The Incredibles 2 (2018, Brad Bird)
143. Disobedience (2017, Sebastian Lelio)
144. Two is a Family (2016, Hugo Gelin)
145. Sicario: Day of the Soldado (2018, Stefano Sollima)
146. Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018, Peyton Reed)
147. Hotel Transylvania 3: A Monster Vacation (2018, Genndy Tartakovsky)
148. The Gospel According to Andre (2018, Kate Novack)
149. BlacKkKlansman (2018, Spike Lee)
150. RBG (2018, Betsy West & Julie Cohen)
151. Mandy (2018, Panos Cosmatos)
152. Wildlife (2018, Paul Dano)
153. Climax (2018, Gaspar Noe)
154. Shoplifters (2018, Hirokazu Kore-eda)
155. Cold War (2018, Pawel Pawlikowski)
156. Everybody Knows (2018, Asghar Farhadi)
157. The Happytime Murders (2018, Brian Henson)
158. The Miseducation of Cameron Post (2018, Desiree Akhavan)
159. Three Identical Strangers (2018, Tim Wardle)
160. Hearts Beat Loud (2018, Brett Haley)
161. A Simple Favor (2018, Paul Feig)
162. The House With the Clock in its Walls (2018, Eli Roth)
163. Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot (2018, Gus Van Sant)
164. Custody (2018, Xavier Legrand)
165. Bad Times at the El Royale (2018, Drew Goddard)
166. A Star is Born (2018, Bradley Cooper)
167. The Old Man & the Gun (2018, David Lowery)
168. Suspiria (2018, Luca Guadagnino)
169. Bohemian Rhapsody (2018, Bryan Singer)
170. The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (2018, Lasse Halstrom & Joe Johnston)
171. Creed II (2018, Steven Caple Jr.)
172. The Children Act (2017, Richard Eyre)
173. Sorry to Bother You (2018, Boots Riley)
174. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018, Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey & Rodney Rothman)
175. Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018, Marielle Heller)
176. Eighth Grade (2018, Bo Burnham)
177. Vice (2018, Adam McKay)
178. Holmes & Watson (2018, Etan Cohen)
179. The Favourite (2018, Yorgos Lanthimos)
180. Mary Poppins Returns (2018, Rob Marshall)
181. Green Book (2018, Peter Farrelly)
182. Capharnaum (2018, Nadine Labaki)
183. Escape Room (2019, Adam Robitel)
184. If Beale Street Could Talk (2018, Barry Jenkins)
185. What Men Want (2019, Adam Shankman)
186. The House That Jack Built (2018, Lars von Trier)
187. Paddleton (2019, Alex Lehmann)
188. Hotel Mumbai (2019, Anthony Maras)
189. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part (2019, Mike Mitchell)
190. Fighting With My Family (2019, Stephen Merchant)
191. The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2018, Terry Gilliam)
192. Mid90s (2018, Jonah Hill)
193. Avengers: Endgame (2019, Joe & Anthony Russo)
194. Long Shot (2019, Jonathan Levine)
195. Pokemon: Detective Pikachu (2019, Rob Letterman)
196. All is True (2019, Kenneth Branagh)
197. Brightburn (2019, David Yarovesky)
198. High Life (2018, Claire Denis)
199. Tolkien (2019, Dome Karukoski)
200. Toy Story 4 (2019, Josh Cooley)
201. Men in Black: International (2019, F. Gary Gray)
202. Child's Play (2019, Lars Klevberg)
203. Parasite (2019, Bong Joon-ho)
204. Never Look Away (2018, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck)
205. Mystify: Michael Hutchence (2019, Richard Lowenstein)
206. Hail Satan? (2019, Penny Lane)
207. Booksmart (2019, Olivia Wilde)
208. Crawl (2019, Alexandre Aja)
209. The Australian Dream (2019, Daniel Gordon)
210. Ophelia (2018, Claire McCarthy)
211. Brittany Runs a Marathon (2019, Paul Downs Colaizzo)
212. The Day Shall Come (2019, Chris Morris)
213. Extra Ordinary (2019, Enda Loughman & Mike Ahern)
214. The Lodge (2019, Veronika Franz & Severin Fiala)
215. Downton Abbey (2019, Michael Engler)
216. Abominable (2019, Jill Culton)
217. The Dead Don't Die (2019, Jim Jarmusch)
218. Birds of Passage (2018, Ciro Guerra & Cristina Gallego)
219. Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (2019, Joachim Ronner)
220. Hustlers (2019, Lorene Scafaria)
221. El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie (2019, Vince Gilligan)
222. The Laundromat (2019, Steven Soderbergh)
223. Doctor Sleep (2019, Mike Flanagan)
224. Last Christmas (2019, Paul Feig)
225. Terminator: Dark Fate (2019, Tim Miller)
226. Knives Out (2019, Rian Johnson)
227. Ford v. Ferrari (2019, James Mangold)
228. The Good Liar (2019, Bill Condon)
229. Jojo Rabbit (2019, Taika Waititi)
230. Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019, Celine Sciamma)
231. Jumanji: The Next Level (2019, Jake Kasdan)
232. Little Women (2019, Greta Gerwig)
233. Dolittle (2020, Stephen Gaghan)
234. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019, Marielle Heller)
235. Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020, Cathy Yan)
236. Color Out of Space (2020, Richard Stanley)
237. Emma (2020, Autumn de Wilde)
238. The Invisible Man (2020, Leigh Whannell)
239. Downhill (2020, Nat Faxon & Jim Rash)
240. The Platform (2019, Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia)
241. Uncorked (2020, Prentice Penny)
242. Coffee & Kareem (2020, Michael Dowse)
243. Onward (2020, Dan Scanlon)
244. Love Wedding Repeat (2020, Dean Craig)
245. Tigertail (2020, Alan Yang)
246. Circus of Books (2020, Rachel Mason)
247. Extraction (2020, Sam Hargrave)
248. The Willoughbys (2020, Kris Pearn)
249. All Day and a Night (2020, Joe Robert Cole)
250. Becoming (2020, Nadia Hallgren)
251. Have a Good Trip: Adventures in Psychedelics (2020, Donick Cary)
252. The Wrong Missy (2020, Tyler Spindel)
253. The Assistant (2020, Kitty Green)
254. The Lovebirds (2020, Michael Showalter)
255. The Trip to Greece (2020, Michael Winterbottom)
256. Endings, Beginnings (2020, Drake Doremus)
257. The Last Days of American Crime (2020, Olivier Megaton)
258. Burden (2020, Andrew Heckler)
259. Da 5 Bloods (2020, Spike Lee)
260. Disclosure (2020, Sam Feder)
261. Resistance (2020, Jonathan Jakubowicz)
262. Wasp Network (2020, Olivier Assayas)
263. Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga (2020, David Dobkin)
264. Dogs Don't Wear Pants (2019, J-P Valkeapaa)
265. The Personal History of David Copperfield (2020, Armando Iannucci)
266. Desperados (2020, LP)
267. Waves (2019, Trey Edward Shults)
268. The Old Guard (2020, Gina Prince-Bythewood)
269. Fatal Affair (2020, Peter Sullivan)
270. The King of Staten Island (2020, Judd Apatow)
271. The Kissing Booth 2 (2020, Vince Marcello)
272. 23 Walks (2020, Paul Morrison)
273. The Hater (2020, Jan Komasa)
274. Deerskin (2019, Quentin Dupieux)
275. First Cow (2020, Kelly Reichardt)
276. Marona's Fantastic Tale (2020, Anca Damian)
277. Shiva Baby (2020, Emma Seligman)
278. The Killing of Two Lovers (2020, Robert Machoian)
279. Just 6.5 (2019, Saeed Roustayi)
280. La Llorona (2020, Jayro Bustamante)
281. Les Miserables (2019, Ladj Ly)
282. All Together Now (2020, Brett Haley)

283. Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020, Dean Parisot)

284. Buffaloed (2020, Tanya Wexler)

285. I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020, Charlie Kaufman)

286. The Social Dilemma (2020, Jeff Orlowski)

287. The Secrets We Keep (2020, Yuval Adler)

288. The Devil All the Time (2020, Antonio Campos)

289. Cuties (2020, Maimouna Doucoure)

290. Enola Holmes (2020, Harry Bradbeer)

291. On the Rocks (2020, Sofia Coppola)

292. Miss Juneteenth (2020, Channing Godfrey Peoples)

293. Spree (2020, Eugene Kotlyarenko)

294. Hubie Halloween (2020, Steve Brill)

295. Black Box (2020, Emmanuel Osei-Kuffour)

296. The Lie (2020, Veena Sud)

297. Evil Eye (2020, Elan & Rajeev Dassani)

298. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (2020, Jason Woliner)

299. Feels Good Man (2020, Arthur Jones)

300. Nocturne (2020, Zu Quirke)

301. Rebecca (2020, Ben Wheatley)

302. Love in Dangerous Times (2020, Jon Garcia)

303. Kajillionaire (2020, Miranda July)

304. My Summer as a Goth (2020, Tara Johnson-Medinger)

305. Rams (2020, Jeremy Sims)

306. A New York Christmas Wedding (2020, Otoja Abit)

307. Hillbilly Elegy (2020, Ron Howard)

308. Uncle Frank (2020, Alan Ball)

309. Possessor (2020, Brandon Cronenberg)

310. A Christmas Gift from Bob (2020, Charles Martin Smith)

311. The Trouble With Being Born (2020, Sandra Wollner)

312. Roald Dahl's The Witches (2020, Robert Zemeckis)

313. Wolfwalkers (2020, Tomm Moore & Ross Stewart

314. The Furnace (2020, Roderick MacKay)

315. Superintelligence (2020, Ben Falcone)

316. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (2020, George C. Wolfe)

317. Nomadland (2020, Chloe Zhao)

318. Soul (2020, Pete Docter)

319. Wonder Woman 1984 (2020, Patty Jenkins)

320. Dreambuilders (2020, Kim Hagen Jensen)

321. Promising Young Woman (2020, Emerald Fennell)

322. Shadow in the Cloud (2021, Roseanne Liang)

323. Music (2021, Sia)

324. Penguin Bloom (2021, Glendyn Ivin)

325. The White Tiger (2021, Ramin Bahrani)

326. The Dig (2021, Simon Stone)

327. The Food Club (2020, Barbara Topsoe-Rothenborg)

328. Malcolm & Marie (2021, Sam Levinson)

329. Earwig and the Witch (2020, Goro Miyazaki)

330. Another Round (2020, Thomas Vinterberg)

331. Long Story Short (2021, Josh Lawson)

332. Synchronic (2020, Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead)

333. Rage (2021, John Balazs)

334. I Care a Lot (2021, J Blakeson)

335. Moxie (2021, Amy Poehler)

336. Chaos Walking (2021, Doug Liman)

337. Raya and the Last Dragon (2021, Don Hall & Carlos Lopez Estrada)

338. Coming 2 America (2021, Craig Brewer)

339. Then Came You (2020, Adriana Trigiani)

340. Cherry (2021, Joe & Anthony Russo)

341. Godzilla vs. Kong (2021, Adam Wingard)

342. Bad Trip (2021, Kitao Sakurai)

343. The Father (2021, Florian Zeller)

344. Thunder Force (2021, Ben Falcone)

345. Stowaway (2021, Joe Penna)

346. Things Heard & Seen (2021, Shari Springer Berman & Robert Pulcini)

347. Tom Clancy's Without Remorse (2021, Stefano Sollima)

348. Those Who Wish Me Dead (2021, Taylor Sheridan)

349. Oxygen (2021, Alexandre Aja)

350. The Godmother (2020, Jean-Paul Salome)

351. The Woman in the Window (2021, Joe Wright)

352. Cruella (2021, Craig Gillespie)

353. Percy vs. Goliath (2021, Clark Johnson)

354. Awake (2021, Mark Raso)

355. Fatherhood (2021, Paul Weitz)

356. Fast & Furious 9 (2021, Justin Lin)

357. Three Summers (2019, Sandra Kogut)

358. Luca (2021, Enrico Casarosa)

359. Dating Amber (2020, David Freyne)

360. Little Joe (2020, Julia Hausner)

361. The Tomorrow War (2021, Chris McKay)

362. Space Jam: A New Legacy (2021, Malcolm D. Lee)

363. Black Widow (2021, Cate Shortland)

364. Gunpowder Milkshake (2021, Navot Papushado)

365. Fear Street Trilogy (2021, Leigh Janiak)

366. Good on Paper (2021, Kimmy Gatewood)

367. Blood Red Sky (2021, Peter Thorwarth)

368. Old (2021, M. Night Shyamalan)

369. Jungle Cruise (2021, Jaume Collet-Serra)

370. Shithouse (2020, Cooper Raiff)

371. Ballad of a White Cow (2021, Maryam Moghadam & Behtash Sanaeeha)

372. La Veronica (2021, Leonardo Medel)

373. The Nowhere Inn (2021, Bill Benz)

374. Riders of Justice (2020, Anders Thomas Jensen)

375. Vivo (2021, Kirk DeMicco)

376. Beckett (2021, Ferdinando Cito Filomarino)

377. He's All That (2021, Mark Waters)

378. Cinderella (2021, Kay Cannon)

379. Streamline (2021, Tyson Wade Johnston)

380. Afterlife of the Party (2021, Stephen Herek)

381. Royal Jelly (2021, Sean Riley)

382. Coming Home in the Dark (2021, James Ashcroft)

383. The Voyeurs (2021, Michael Mohan)

384. Everybody's Talking About Jamie (2021, Jonathan Butterell)

385. The Starling (2021, Theodore Melfi)

386. The Guilty (2021, Antoine Fuqua)

387. There's Someone Inside Your House (2021, Patrick Brice)

388. Free Guy (2021, Shawn Levy)

389. Black as Night (2021, Maritte Lee Go)

390. Night Teeth (2021, Adam Randall)

391. The Manor (2021, Axelle Carolyn)

392. Bingo Hell (2021, Gigi Saul Guerrero)

393. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021, Destin Daniel Cretton)

394. The Many Saints of Newark (2021, Alan Taylor)

395. Finch (2021, Miguel Sapochnik)

396. Red Notice (2021, Rawson Marshall Thurber)

397. No Time to Die (2021, Cary Joji Fukunaga)

398. Last Night in Soho (2021, Edgar Wright)

399. Titane (2021, Julia Ducournau)

400. Best Sellers (2021, Lina Roessler)

401. The Power of the Dog (2021, Jane Campion)

402. The Card Counter (2021, Paul Schrader)

403. The French Dispatch (2021, Wes Anderson)

404. Dear Evan Hansen (2021, Stephen Chbosky)

405. Swan Song (2021, Benjamin Cleary)

406. Being the Ricardos (2021, Aaron Sorkin)

407. Swan Song (2021, Todd Stephens)

408. Don't Look Up (2021, Adam McKay)

409. The Matrix Resurrections (2021, Lana Wachowski)

410. One Second (2020, Zhang Yimou)

411. Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021, Jason Reitman)

412. Red Rocket (2021, Sean Baker)

413. Licorice Pizza (2021, Paul Thomas Anderson)

414. House of Gucci (2021, Ridley Scott)

415. King Richard (2021, Reinaldo Marcus Green)

416. Spencer (2021, Pablo Larrain)

417. Hotel Transylvania: Transformania (2022, Derek Drymon & Jennifer Kluska)

418. The Eyes of Tammy Faye (2021, Michael Showalter)

419. Home Team (2022, Charles & Daniel Kinnane)

420. Belfast (2021, Kenneth Branagh)

421. Gold (2022, Anthony Hayes)

422. Drive My Car (2021, Ryusuke Hamaguchi)

423. Death on the Nile (2022, Kenneth Branagh)

424. The Sky is Everywhere (2022, Josephine Decker)

425. Uncharted (2022, Ruben Fleischer)

426. Bigbug (2022, Jean-Pierre Jeunet)

427. A Madea Homecoming (2022, Tyler Perry)

428. Studio 666 (2022, B.J. McDonnell)

429. The Weekend Away (2022, Kim Farrant)

430. The Batman (2022, Matt Reeves)
431. The Adam Project (2022, Shawn Levy)

432. Turning Red (2022, Domee Shi)

433. Deep Water (2022, Adrian Lyne)

434. Master (2022, Mariama Diallo)

435. The Bad Guys (2022, Pierre Perifel)

436. The Bubble (2022, Judd Apatow)

437. Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood (2022, Richard Linklater)

438. Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022, Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert)

439. The Lost City (2022, Adam & Aaron Nee)

440. Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (2021, Ryusuke Hamaguchi)

441. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022, Sam Raimi)

442. Petite Maman (2021, Celine Sciamma)

443. Senior Year (2022, Alex Hardcastle)

444. Hatching (2022, Hanna Bergholm)

445. A Hero (2021, Asghar Farhadi)

446. Jurassic World: Dominion (2022, Colin Trevorrow)

447. Hustle (2022, Jeremiah Zagar)

448. Lightyear (2022, Angus MacLane)

449. Elvis (2022, Baz Luhrmann)

450. The Man from Toronto (2022, Patrick Hughes)

451. Thor: Love and Thunder (2022, Taika Waititi)

452. Persuasion (2022, Carrie Cracknell)

453. Where the Crawdads Sing (2022, Olivia Newman)

454. Nope (2022, Jordan Peele)

455. Hit the Road (2021, Panah Panahi)

456. Samaritan (2022, Julius Avery)

457. Beast (2022, Baltasar Kormakur)

458. Three Thousand Years of Longing (2022, George Miller)

459. Pinocchio (2022, Robert Zemeckis)

460. Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022, Halina Reijn)

461. Flux Gourmet (2022, Peter Strickland)

462. Ticket to Paradise (2022, Ol Parker)

463. Lou (2022, Anna Foerster)

464. Fall (2022, Scott Mann)

465. Don't Worry Darling (2022, Olivia Wilde)
466. Muru (2022, Tearepa Kahi)

467. Amsterdam (2022, David O. Russell)

468. Everything in Between (2022, Nadi Sha)

469. Decision to Leave (2022, Park Chan-wook)
470. Raymond & Ray (2022, Rodrigo Garcia)

471. Bros (2022, Nicholas Stoller)

472. Sissy (2022, Hannah Barlow & Kane Senes)

473. Enola Holmes 2 (2022, Harry Bradbeer)

474. Causeway (2022, Lila Neugebauer)

475. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022, Ryan Coogler)

476. Stutz (2022, Jonah Hill)

477. The Wonder (2022, Sebastian Lelio)

478. She Said (2022, Maria Schrader)

479. Strange World (2022, Don Hall & Qui Nguyen)

480. Poker Face (2022, Russell Crowe)

481. Violent Night (2022, Tommy Wirkola)

482. Troll (2022, Roar Uthaug)

483. Stars at Noon (2022, Claire Denis)

484. Emancipation (2022, Antoine Fuqua)

485. Avatar: The Way of Water (2022, James Cameron)

486. The Lost King (2022, Stephen Frears)

487. Spirited (2022, Sean Anders)

488. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022, Rian Johnson)

489. Triangle of Sadness (2022, Ruben Ostlund)

490. White Noise (2022, Noah Baumbach)

491. The Banshees of Inisherin (2022, Martin McDonagh)

492. The Fabelmans (2022, Steven Spielberg)

493. Babylon (2022, Damien Chazelle)

494. Tar (2022, Todd Field)

495. You People (2023, Kenya Barris)

496. The Whale (2022, Darren Aronofsky)

497. Shotgun Wedding (2023, Jason Moore)

498. Knock at the Cabin (2023, M. Night Shyamalan)

499. Magic Mike's Last Dance (2023, Steven Soderbergh)

500. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023, Peyton Reed)

501. We Have a Ghost (2023, Christopher Landon)

502. Cocaine Bear (2023, Elizabeth Banks)

503. Creed III (2023, Michael B. Jordan)

504. 65 (2023, Scott Beck & Bryan Woods)

505. Shazam! Fury of the Gods (2023, David F. Sandberg)

506. Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves (2023, John Francis Daley & Jonathan Goldstein)

507. Tetris (2023, Jon S. Baird)

508. Beau is Afraid (2023, Ari Aster)

509. 80 for Brady (2023, Kyle Marvin)

510. Ghosted (2023, Dexter Fletcher)

511. Peter Pan & Wendy (2023, David Lowery)

512. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023, James Gunn)

513. The Mother (2023, Niki Caro)

514. Hypnotic (2023, Robert Rodriguez)

515. Still (2023, Davis Guggenheim)

516. Blood & Gold (2023, Peter Thorwarth)

517. Renfield (2023, Chris McKay)

518. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023, Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers & Justin K. Thompson)

519. Extraction 2 (2023, Sam Hargrave)

520. Elemental (2023, Peter Sohn)

521. The Flash (2023, Andy Muschietti)

522. You Hurt My Feelings (2023, Nicole Holofcener)

523. No Hard Feelings (2023, Gene Stupnisky)

524. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Desinty (2023, James Mangold)

525. The Out-Laws (2023, Tyler Spindel)

526. Run Rabbit Run (2023, Daina Reid)

527. Past Lives (2023, Celine Song)

528. Asteroid City (2023, Wes Anderson)

529. Anselm (2023, Wim Wenders)

530. The Face of the Jellyfish (2023, Melisa Liebenthal)

531. You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah (2023, Sammi Cohen)

532. Theater Camp (2023, Molly Gordon & Nick Lieberman)

533. A Haunting in Venice (2023, Kenneth Branagh)

534. The Creator (2023, Gareth Edwards)

535. Flora and Son (2023, John Carney)

536. The Conference (2023, Patrik Eklund)

537. Mercy Road (2023, John Curran)

538. The Killer (2023, David Fincher)

539. Pain Hustlers (2023, David Yates)

540. Fingernails (2023, Christos Nikou)

541. Foe (2023, Garth Davis)

542. The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes (2023, Francis Lawrence)

543. The Royal Hotel (2023, Kitty Green)

544. Napoleon (2023, Ridley Scott)

545. The Old Oak (2023, Ken Loach)

546. Bottoms (2023, Emma Seligman)

547. Genie (2023, Sam Boyd)

548. Master Gardener (2023, Paul Schrader)

549. Leave the World Behind (2023, Sam Esmail)

550. Candy Cane Lane (2023, Reginald Hudlin)
551. Wonka (2023, Paul King)

552. Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire (2023, Zack Snyder)

553. Maestro (2023, Bradley Cooper)

554. Poor Things (2023, Yorgos Lanthimos)

555. Ferrari (2023, Michael Mann)

556. Next Goal Wins (2023, Taika Waititi)

557. Society of the Snow (2023, J.A. Bayona)

558. Dream Scenario (2023, Kristoffer Borgli)

559. Night Swim (2024, Bryce McGuire)

560. The Holdovers (2023, Alexander Payne)

561. Priscilla (2023, Sofia Coppola)

562. The Iron Claw (2023, Sean Durkin)

563. Anatomy of a Fall (2023, Justine Triet)

564. May December (2023, Todd Haynes)

565. Orion and the Dark (2024, Sean Charmatz)

566. The Greatest Night in Pop (2024, Bao Nguyen)

567. Force of Nature: The Dry 2 (2024, Robert Connolly)

568. Upgraded (2024, Carlson Young)

569. Madame Web (2024, S.J. Clarkson)

570. The Zone of Interest (2023, Jonathan Glazer)

571. Drive-Away Dolls (2024, Ethan Coen)

572. Dune: Part Two (2024, Denis Villeneuve)

573. American Fiction (2023, Cord Jefferson)

574. How to Have Sex (2024, Molly Manning Walker)

575. Spaceman (2024, Johan Renck)

576. Damsel (2024, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo)

577. Love Lies Bleeding (2024, Rose Glass)

578. Irish Wish (2024, Janeen Damian)

579. Immaculate (2024, Michael Mohan)

580. Road House (2024, Doug Liman)

581. Io Capitano (2023, Matteo Garrone)

582. The Wages of Fear (2024, Julien Leclercq)

583. Civil War (2024, Alex Garland)

584. Rebel Moon - Part Two: The Scargiver (2024, Zack Snyder)

585. Challengers (2024, Luca Guadagnino)

586. The Fall Guy (2024, David Leitch)

587. The Idea of You (2024, Michael Showalter)

588. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024, Wes Ball)

589. IF (2024, John Krasinski)

590. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024, George Miller)

591. The Watchers (2024, Ishana Night Shyamalan)

592. Hit Man (2024, Richard Linklater)

593. Ultraman: Rising (2024, Shannon Tindle)

594. A Quiet Place: Day One (2024, Michael Sarnoski)

595. Space Cadet (2024, Liz W. Garcia) 

596. Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F (2024, Mark Molloy)

597. The Bikeriders (2024, Jeff Nichols)

598. Fly Me to the Moon (2024, Greg Berlanti)

599. Twisters (2024, Lee Isaac Chung)

600. MaXXXine (2024, Ti West)

601. Longlegs (2024, Oz Perkins)

602. Deadpool & Wolverine (2024, Shawn Levy)

603. Grand Theft Hamlet (2024, Sam Crane & Pinny Grylls)

604. It Ends With Us (2024, Justin Baldoni)

605. La Cocina (2024, Alonso Ruizpalacios)

606. My Old Ass (2024, Megan Park)

607. Blink Twice (2024, Zoe Kravitz)

608. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024, Tim Burton)

609. Harold and the Purple Crayon (2024, Carlos Saldanha)

610. Uglies (2024, McG)

611. The Substance (2024, Coralie Fargeat)

612. His Three Daughters (2024, Azazel Jacobs)

613. Megalopolis (2024, Francis Ford Coppola)

614. The Platform 2 (2024, Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia)

615. It's What's Inside (2024, Greg Jardin)

616. Wolfs (2024, Jon Watts)

617. Woman of the Hour (2024, Anna Kendrick)

618. Here (2024, Robert Zemeckis)

619. Saturday Night (2024, Jason Reitman)

620. Gladiator II (2024, Ridley Scott)

621. Goodrich (2024, Hallie Meyers-Shyer)

622. Wicked (2024, Jon M. Chu)

623. The Piano Lesson (2024, Malcolm Washington)

624. The People's Joker (2024, Vera Drew)

625. Blitz (2024, Steve McQueen)

626. The Dead Don't Hurt (2024, Viggo Mortensen)

627. Carry-On (2024, Jaume Collet-Sera)

If you've kept reading, congratulations! You get some stats, which will be written in June of 2017 and never updated.

In my first three calendar years writing for ReelGood, I reviewed my #1 movie each year: Birdman, Inside Out and Toni Erdmann, though since Birdman was my very first review for the site, I didn't feel comfortable giving it a full 10/10. So I opted for the 9/10 ... and in two-and-a-half years of hindsight, that's probably the appropriate rating for it anyway. (Is a person more likely to make a movie his #1 if he has written about it rapturously? Discuss.)

I have not reviewed three films by any one director among these first hundred, but I've reviewed two each by the following: Theodore Melfi (St. Vincent and Hidden Figures), Denis Villeneuve (Sicario and Arrival), Ira Sachs (Love is Strange and Little Men), Jeff Nichols (Midnight Special and Loving), Noah Baumbach (While We're Young and Mistress America) and Woody Allen (Irrational Man and Cafe Society). Come on guys (because you're all guys), leave some reviews for somebody else!

I have given 10/10 four times (Inside Out, Creed, Toni Erdmann and The Red Turtle) but 1/10 only once (Yoga Hosers). I've never given 0/10, though my editor did give Jupiter Ascending a poop emoticon as its rating, so I know less than 1/10 is possible.

Alright, you're free to go.