babsvan.bsky.social
Poor, obscure, plain, and little. Writer, critic, comms & events at The Sidney Poitier New American Film School. Former books editor with too many bylines at USA TODAY and The Arizona Republic.
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2025 watch #81: The Final Destination. Abysmal, unwatchable, even before you factor in how weirdly racist it is? Congrats, you found a way to suck the fun out of death's Rube Goldberg machines.
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2025 watch #80: The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. Wes Anderson has made better, more ambitious, more consistent films since, but this will always be a favorite about the moment you stop running from your own sadness and embrace the grief through which life gets is meaning.
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2025 watch #79: How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World. Just a rock-solid trio of films that never get goofy or succumb to Minionification as with so many other animated franchises.
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Unironically every one of these people watch Marvel movies, Star Wars, and Indiana Jones and know who to root for, what isn’t translating??
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Christ it makes me insane HOW DO YOU NOT SEE
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Ooo a banger
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2025 watch #78: The Phoenician Scheme (rewatch). Seized the opportunity to see this a 2nd time with some friends. A new Wes Anderson film seems an antidote to so much that's wrong right now, handmade attention to detail a spiritual corrective to sludgy CGI and AI slop.
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2025 watch #77: The Phoenician Scheme. Shades of The Life Aquatic in a minor key, packed as ever with bespoke pleasures. My favorite detail is there's a person in the credits listed as "pinochle advisor," may Wes Anderson forever be on his bullshit.
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King: ok wait what were his exact words
Lyonne: he said "natasha, this is a pencil." Everyone has access to a pencil and likewise everyone with a phone will be using AI. "It's how you use the pencil, see?"
King:
King: wait why isn't the whole thing in quotation marks
Lyonne:
Lyonne: [sweats]
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Also, people could just... watch the film! It's all right there!
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2025 watch #76: Final Destination 3. The best of these films so far, now we're cooking (literally and metaphorically). We've got some kids who can actually act and even more creatively cruel deaths that forever ruin certain recreational activities.
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I guess they closed James Frey's MFA sweatshop and he needed a new grift nymag.com/arts/books/f...
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2025 watch #75: The Last Showgirl. It's The Wrestler with more rhinestones and far less character development. If it were 30 years ago, Gia Coppola could be a decent music video director, because all this really has to offer is a neon-drenched desert dirtbag vibe. Pam wringing blood from a stone.
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We used to make movies!!
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2025 watch #74: Mickey 17. Quite like the darkly funny first third that's just Pattinson dying repeatedly, but this goes off the rails with a vengeance - two parts Snowpiercer to one part Okja without the wit or heart of either. Mark Ruffalo needs to sit in a dark room and think about what he's done
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2025 watch #73: Bring Her Back. Had the same story issues as the filmmakers' previous film Talk to Me (intriguing horror premise unravels in the third act in a way that could have been fixed with one more pass at the script), but the body horror was primo, had me squirming in my seat.
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2025 watch #72: Lilo & Stitch (2002 animated, not the live-action abomination). Why do I need a soulless, cynical, dead-eyed corporate double-dip when this perfect movie already exists? "This is my family. I found it, all on my own. It's little, and broken, but still good."
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Congrats, here is your Michael Clayton meme starter pack