weekly digest: I really am trying to get back to this...
everything that happened at Flick Filosopher from Monday, Feb 10, to Sunday, Feb 16 (and a few older stragglers)
In my last “weekly” digest — six embarrassingly long weeks — I mentioned being on standby for my knee-replacement surgery. The surgery didn’t happen — I got stood down — so I can’t even blame recovery time for my near absence since then. It’s simply been the same old roller coaster of depression and anxiety and far too few moments of “feeling weirdly optimistic” that I also mentioned last time.
I hate these doldrums that I’ve been in. I haven’t felt like myself for… oh, years now.
I am so grateful for your patience with me. I hope to have some more reviews this week.
—MaryAnn
PS: The knee-replacement that I am clinging to as the thing that’s gonna lift my spirits, physically and mentally, is now scheduled for just under a month from now. So hopefully the end of my long doldrums is in sight!
new at flick filosopher, Feb 10–16
OFCS 2024 awards winners announced
Anora and The Substance are the big winners… [read more]
The Apprentice movie review: Donald Trump’s origin story as a loser and a user
A portrait of a weak man, humorless and friendless, desperate to be liked, desperate to be seen as someone who matters. Sebastian Stan’s brilliantly disgusting Trump is horrifically riveting. [read the review | VOD+DVD US/UK]
Paddington in Peru movie review: bad things happen when you leave the city [pictured]
Colorful but flattened and flimsy, which really grates next to how abundantly, uniquely original the first two movies are. Suffers greatly from the lack of their deft whimsy. It’s, well, bearly there. [read the review | cinemas US/VOD+DVD UK]
The Brutalist movie review: red, white, and brutal
Stark and unsentimental, as stubborn and as challenging as its protagonist, and as monumental as his works. Adrien Brody’s performance is extraordinary, full of flinty anger and palpable melancholy. [read the review | cinemas US/UK]
AWFJ 2024 EDA Awards winners announced
The Brutalist, Conclave, and The Substance are the big winners… [read more]
what I’m watching and bingeing
Veep (Max, Prime, Apple TV US; Now, Prime, Apple TV UK): I can’t believe I’ve never seen this show before, especially since I love Armando Iannucci’s The Thick of It; incredible writing in this anti–West Wing, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus is a comedy all-timer in the role; I’ve only just started and still have lots to go, yay!
Curfew (Paramount+ [via Prime] UK; not available US): this six-episode limited series is a murder mystery set in near-future Britain where men are under strict curfew from 7pm to 7am, in an attempt to protect women; the mystery is middling and the worldbuilding leaves a lot of questions maddeningly unanswered; intriguing idea but a feminist fail
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (Paramount+ [via Prime] US, Netflix and Paramount+ [via Prime] UK): I’m well into S02, and I’ve to hit the delicious point where the writers were starting to figure out the banger of a concept they had on their hands and the actors were getting to sink their teeth into ever-meatier characters…
Station Eleven (Max [via Prime] US, Prime UK): finished my rewatch of this stunningly good series, about life going on after a civilization-ending global flu pandemic; its optimism is almost too much to bear right now…
coming up at Flick Filosopher…
science fiction drama Companion
writer-director Edward Burns’s latest, Millers in Marriage
the Oscar-nominated short films
journalism drama September 5
action thriller Cleaner, starring Daisy Ridley and Clive Owen
Pamela Anderson in The Last Showgirl
the anime take on Tolkien that is The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim
Timothée Chalamet — he sings! — as Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown
Gladiator II: Electric Boogaloo
Andrea Arnold’s Bird
Cillian Murphy in Small Things Like These, a Movie for the Resistance
Ralph Fiennes and Stanley Tucci in papal procedural Conclave
Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton in Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door
Sebastian Stan in A Different Man
body horror The Substance, starring Demi Moore
Jesse Eisenberg’s dramedy A Real Pain
based-on-a-videogame Borderlands
political documentary War Game
folk horror Starve Acre
M. Night Shyamalan’s latest, Trap
return of the facehuggers in Alien: Romulus
and a lot more.
I have not forgotten about all the other reviews I’ve been promising here, but I’m gonna keep the list elsewhere for now so I stop torturing you…
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