The world is falling apart.Watch a movie.

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Here it is March second and I haven't posted February's movies yet. And I am the rare person who knows exactly how many days in every month. I know the days in the month better than I know my left and my right.

But that's, ah, not really saying anything....

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Prime Video

After Life (1998)

I remember reading about this film—I think first at BYU when it was at International Cinema—bust mostly when Like Father, Like Son came out. Everyone wanted to talk about After Life in their reviews of that (then) new film. (You can read about both Like Father, Like Son and his even newer film, Shoplifter, here.) So I've been thinking about this film for a long time. It's good to finally see it.

It's in a genre with Defending Your Life and Eternity in that it's the early days of the afterlife and you have to deal with a bureaucracy. In this case, you have to choose the single memory from your life that you wish to carry with you as you go forward. It's high-concept stuff and I've spent the last twenty years pondering the question without quite arriving at an answer.

The thing that surprised me most is how documentary-like it is. Lady Steed was just reading about it and apparently the interviews with the newly dead are actual interviews with real people recounting their real memories. Or at least some of them? I'm happy to learn this and I don't need more details.

The story isn't really about what I thought it would be. I expected it to be from the perspective of the newly dead (as with >Defending Your Life and Eternity) but in fact it's more interested in the deadland bureaucrats. But it keeps changing what it's about in the final act, so no promises that I'm clearing things up for you.

It's a thought-provoking film. It definitely feels no shorter than it's one hour and fifty-nine minutes. But I think, having seen it, I now will only think about it more.

Addendum: There's one more film in this genre I'm eager to see, A Matter of Life and Death. However, while trying to recover the title of that movie I found a couple others that I think won't quiiiite be of the same cloth but still seem worth watching: Between Two Worlds and Heaven Can Wait.

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our dvd

Wag the Dog (1997)

Due to a weird schedule thing, it was just me and five seniors for over two so I let them choose between this and Groundhog Day. I think my suggestion that this was Epstein adjacent won the day.

Anyway, it's great. On this viewing it felt a little long to me (mostly because I think of the Kirsten Dunst scene as the main part of the movie and it's not main and it is early), but it's sharp and funny and so, so cynical, and the Class of '26 appreciated that.

There's some fun camera play here—I wanted to share my favorite quick zoom then jumpcut matching Dustin Hoffman's words outside a limosine, but, alas, can't find the clip on YouTube.

If you're looking for a comedy with modern relevance, here you go!

(NOTE: One student, on her way out, thanked me, said she enjoyed it, and wondered how many years it had been since she'd last seen a movie.)

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Peacock

Long Shots: U.S. Biathlon’s Underdog Story (2026)

This is a great little documentary of the sort we expect come Olympics time. This one's about the American quest to finally medal in biathalon. The film got me pumped up that this might be the Olympics we pick up the last first medal!...until the last, like, three minutes when I was forced to admit that we're not beating the Europeans any time soon. Impossible? No. But far from likely. I mean, guns or not, this is Europe's second most popular sport. We are so far behind.

But I think they convinced me to spend some of my month-of-Peacock watching biathalon. So mission accomplished!

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Cruella (2021)

Second watch.

The CGI is glaringly obvious (shocked to see in the credits that any dalmations were involved in the making of this film) but plot details and character work are at least as good second time 'round. Holds up to rewatch. Music still terrific if perhaps A LOT of tracks. Daughter really wanted to show it to her mom, which is how we find ourselves here. She also wants a sleepover with a friend to show her.

We may be running a real risk of this becoming...a personality.

THEATER
Grand Lake Theatre

Sinners (2025)

When the Oscar noms dropped, Lady Steed felt she had to see Sinners. Happily, the Grand Lake was playing it on their biggest screen on 70mm. So...perfect scenario, really. The sound was a bit fuzzy which made some of the dialogue hard to understand, but otherwise, pretty much ideal viewing circumstances.

Sinners is now added to my seen-in-theaters-more-than-once list. And what did Lady Steed think? We discussed the four BIG prestige pictures we've watched recently and she ranks them Ann Lee, Hamnet, Sinners, One Battle, but with Ann Lee waaaay out in front, although all four, she insists, are great. Just Ann Lee—untouchable.

(Incidentally, this is a funny joke.)

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Kanopy

Donkey Skin (1970)

On the one hand, a lovely charming child-friendly whimsical confectionary delight, a fairy tale like Disney specializes in.

On the two hand, a disturbing strange grotesque whose plot engine is the possibility incest.

On the three hand, some people are blue and some people are red and some people are people-colored and some horses are blue and some horses are red and some horses are horse colored.

On the four hand, a woman v****s frogs and a donkey s***s jewels.

On the five hand, the fairy godmother has a telephone.

I loved this film and was disturbed by this film and really have no idea who to recommend it to.

Only comparison I can come up with is La belle et la bête.

THEATER
Century Cinemark Hilltop 16

Wuthering Heights (2026)

First, this is deliciously weird and perverse, which I think is a requirement for anything Wuthering Heights.

Also, this is the second movie in a row I've watched that makes very clear and deliberate references to La belle et la bête, this time with the wallhands holding candles. But that's not half so weird as the skin wall pillows.

It's been almost twenty years since I read Wuthering Heights so don't come to me for opinions on it's "accuracy," but I felt like it captured the mad vibes of the novel well, moving much of the subtext (eg, sex) to text. Plus, the moors look great. Love the moors.

Like most movies (apparently), it ignores the second generation and Cathy's ghost which honestly I kinda missed, but in two hours, maybe all you can really do is Catherine and Heathcliff as kids and their disastrous romantic adventures.

Anyway, the production design and cinematography and leads are beautiful and moody and everything turns to crap, so what else can you ask for, really?

THEATER
Century Cinemark Hilltop 16

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die (2026)

===SPOILERS GALORE===

What if you didn't have to die to have an afterlife? And what if your afterlife was determined entirely by the whims of a Trumplike deity who revels in his pettiness as he assigns your fate?

Look: for anyone who reads the ending as happy, mother and son off on a quest to save the world, I'm glad for you, but that rat opened its eyes. They've been in the simulation all along. It's like Neo took the red pill only to wake up in a Matrix sidequest.

It's great to have Gore Verbinski back. I haven't seen one of his movies since the ending of Pirates 2 pissed me off, but prior to that, I considered him one of our greatest filmmakers.

(Actually, I guess that's not true. I've seen Rango more than once and love it), but I didn't see the third Pirates movie or The Lone Ranger or The Cure for Wellness (even though it looked terrific) and largely because I was so mad after Pirates 2 my love for Pirates 1, The Mexican, and The Ring wasn't enough to overcome bad reviews.

Anyway, this one's great. It well written, visually witty, and it doesn't force us to recognize that this is hell until the very end. Even then, you could just brush it off and just be happy in the adventure.

The big questions I have left are:

1) How many people are real, living in pods, experiencing this stuff? It has to be more than one, right? But certainly not everyeone. So is everyone slowly getting segregated into separate realities? Finally, will everyone end up in their own reality? And what is the AI's motivation? Simply to be worshiped?

2) How petty is the AI ultimately? It seems like Ingrid gets put into hell, but The Man seems trapped in a perverse hell that gives him purpose and pleasure, as awful as it may be. And in the end, Ingrid is with him, up for it. Is that her? Was it ever her? Has it always been her? And always will be?

3) How do teenagers feel about this movie. Much of its satire punches down, aimed squarely at the Gen Z / Gen α border—sort of like the easy anti-Millennial humor of, what 2010? Do teenagers laugh to see this and say its so true? Do they latch on to the take down of their parents' generation? Are they offended and rather pissed off at the unfairness? I'd love to know.

This seems like the perfect movie for this moment. I hope people watch it. I hope it gets us talking. I don't know if that'll make any difference.

Oh: One last thing. You can tell the time-loop genre has reached full maturity because now you can make a time-loop movie with only one loop.

THEATER
Elmood Cinemas Rialto

A Private Life (2026)

This has a couple over-obvious zooms and some cuts that project too much and some plot elements that seem like they belong to a different movie and one very silly music cue, but there are a couple things that keep it from being just elevated television.

The biggest one is Jodie Foster, who is great. She raises the level of the entire movie. It takes real actorly skill to make some of this character development believable.

Bu this is also one of the film's biggest disappointments. There's vanishingly little in the film that requires this character to be an American. You could have Jodie Foster and Irène Jacob switch roles and it really wouldn't matter. What a wasted opportunity. Related, there's not much funny in this movie but Jodie Foster kills those bits. Someone put her as an American-expat-in-Paris straight-up comedy. (It's what the people who paid to see this movie will pay more money to see!)

Another thing that was great was the relationship between her protagonist and her ex-husband. That was lovely to watch.

Anyway, spoilers from here on out.

What really made the movie work though was that it wasn't what it seemed to be. It wasn't, in fact, a murder-mystery thriller. And it wasn't an expose on how psychoanalysis is a scam. Instead, it was a story of one woman's collapse and rebuild, and, thus, the lack of actual murder and the nondebunking of psychoanalysis / nonboosting of hypnotism are all fine. These were steps on the path, not the destination.

So in the end I quite liked it. But the Elmwood is waaay too expensive.

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YouTube

Go Theodore (2026)

I love it when students make movies. The ambition and dedication required to see a film all the way from conception to completion is incredible and for a high-school student to pull that off is amazing.

This one seems like a nice warning against internet face, growing up to be a boy, and the development of modern American gambling culture.

All very timely.

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Peacock

My Cousin Vinny (1992)

Thanks to the Olympics, we have a month of Peacock and when I saw My Cousin Vinny on offer, I knew I had to show it to the son that just got into cars. I have to imagine, if you're into cars, Marisa Tomei is the best thing going.

She's definitely the best thing about the film. Sure, Peschi's great, Gwynn and Macchio are great, but it's Tomei who lifts the film above what is, in most respects, a pretty pedestrian movie. The dutch angles are predictable. Most of the cuts are just doing the job of cuts. Very few jokes occur with the camera or the blocking. Don't get me wrong—it's a good movie—but Marisa Tomei singlehandedly raises it into greatness. She deserved that Oscar.

But she couldn't have done it without a script that has plenty moments of brilliance and only a couple moments of miss. Teamwork!

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Peacock

American Fiction (2023)

Just spent a long time scrolling up and down IMDb trying to figure out when I first became a devout Jeffrey Wright fan but I genuinely have no idea. Perhaps it's an eternal feeling.

Anyway, this is one of those movies I was desperate to see and then it took a couple years. You know the type.

But I'm kind of glad to watch it after reading James and The Sellout

I was thinking about American Fiction the entire time I was reading The Sellout, actually. It seemed to be playing the same game—a well educated and bleeding brilliant Black man put into conflict with the Black stereotypes that overrun our media. In The Sellout our protag is separate from while completely ensconced within that world and things get out of control—I mean, he ends up owning a slave. Here, our protag writes a work of parody he never expects to get published that becomes "THE RUNAWAY BESTSELLER BY THE RUNAWAY FUGITIVE." And in its (spoilers in the rest of this sentence) Clue-like multiple endings, capitalism wins out.

Anyway, the Black cast is amazing here and the white cast is, shall we say, appropriate. And Jeffrey Wright can do no wrong.

BATTLE OF THE PUCKERDOODLESThe L.A. Times stole my recipe, but we'll let you decide.

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Fifteen years ago, I invented the puckerdoodle, a variation on the snickerdoodle that has a fun sour coating rather than a cinnamon one. Bit hit. Very popular. Much beloved.

I just discovered that five years ago, the L.A. Times presented puckerdoodles to the world themselves. Is it possibly they were invented on their own rather than ripping me off? Sure. It’s possible. It’s also possible they did not. Let’s compare.

First, I make no special claims for the cookie itself. I just picked what seemed to be the internet’s favorite snickerdoodle dough back in 2010 and used it. That’s all. The Times’s recipe is intriguing. I don’t love the sound of “white chocolate morsels” but masa harina seems worth trying!

In other words, I don’t care what dough you use. The thing that makes a puckerdoodle a puckerdoodle is what you roll the balls in. So that’s the real thing at issue here.

I genuinely hope that some of you will take up this challenge then return and report. Me and Rose Wilde, of course, have our biases.

Make your prefered cookie dough, roll in to balls, refridgerate, then, when ready to bake, roll in one of these:

THERIC’s WOOWOO PUCKERDOODLE HERBS AND SPICES

Combine two or three tablespoons of sugar with two or three teaspoons of amchoor powder and one teaspoon of sour salt (aka crystallized citric acid). Fiddle with proportions to match your palate.

Fiddle with the proportions to taste. For every 2 or 3 teaspoons of amchoor, add in one more t. And every 3 or 3Ts of sugar, throw in a t of sour salt (crystallized citric acid).

ROSE’s SCIENTIFIC PUCKERDOODLE HERBS AND SPICES

Mix one cup sugar with three tablespoons sumac.

Now roll those doughs and bake them up and let us know.

Perhaps the Times will be brave enough to publish your results.

stealing the times’s photo because they owe me and because silvia razgova takes better pictures than me

"Science Fiction & Fantasy in the Latter-day Saint Tradition"

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Back when I reviewed the fiction in new issues of Irreantum (here are several examples of my reviews) occasionally editor Angela Hallstrom would send me a note thanking me. Because, and this is true (I now speak from experience), y’generally don’t get much feedback. Maybe if people are angry? No one’s gotten angry enough to write me yet, so maybe not.

Anyway, there’s a new rag on the scene and, like Irreantum in olden times, IT’S AVAILABLE ON PAPER. Incredible.

I got my copies yesterday (one for subscribing, one for contributing) and because I had a cold and my mask was making me sneeze, I sat out on the front steps and read the whole (ish) thing. It was great to just sit and read a fabulous new collection of work, to just enjoy it, and by turning pages no less. Fabulous.

So back to my old ways and let’s review the first issue of Further Light.

Although, before we do, I’d like to point out one smart decision Further Light has made, viz, an utter willingness to reprint stories. So much of the literary scene publishes a story then abandons it, never to be seen again. Good stories can and should be published more than once. That’s been my policy at Irreantum and I’m glad to see Further Light agrees with me. I’ve marked work appearing again rather than anew with a * so you can see what I mean.

“A Center of Gravity for the Realistic” by Liz Busby

Liz’s opening editorial is a rousing call to arms, a bold statement of purpose, and enough to hope this project lasts a decade or more. Who knows, maybe it will outlive us all. It’s dangerous waters, this magazine business, but certainly this one deserves to thrive. (Have you subscribed yet?)

It’s worth mentioning that Liz is the right person at the right moment to take this one—and that she’s collecting a stellar team to make it happen. I wish them luck (because they’ll need it) but I don’t worry (because they’re prepared for the task).

“Opera of the Abyss, Part 1: Murder and the Rue Morgue” by Lee Allred

I’ll admit I skipped this although it might be the piece I was (and remain) most excited to read. I think I might wait for another issue to arrive before I dive into something serialized. But Lee’s great and I have high expectations for this. And the illustrations by Kevin Wasden are excellent.)

“Harmony and the Problem of Evil” by DC Wynters

I also skipped this bit of criticism. I don’t know Brandon Sanderson’s work well and have read very little of it. Given that, I’ve probably already read more criticism on him than I really need to.

“Ivy” by Sadie Marie Hutchings

Love this poem about atonement resolving a fairy-tale problem. It’s very much of the sort of fantasy I’ve come to associate with the Mormon Lit Blitz. (A compliment.)

“Commitment” by Brian K. Lowe*

This story reminded me of a series of stories by Luisa Perkins. Man meets angel on park bench. But here, instead of trying to save the world, this angel has come to end it. Although there is ambiguity in just what “ending” the world might entail. Or haw bad it actually would be. I would have liked to it push past the final ambiguity.

“The Double-Snatcher” by WO Hemsath*

This story’s been making the rounds since first appearing in the Liz-and-Will-edited issue of Irreantum a couple years ago. I didn’t reread it just now, but this is what I said then:

“W. O. Hemsath's story couples the talking woodland creatures I loved in Thornton Burgess stories with the sense of danger we know from Watership Down and a heavy sense of divine threat humming in the background.“

In other words: it’s good.

And because it’s been published three or four times, now maybe you’ll read it?

“The Man Who Came Back from the Lunar Colony” by Orson Scott Card*

The two OSC poems are rather similar to each other, using the language of science fiction to describe particularly Mormon cosmological problems. If you like one, you’ll like the other.

“A Latter-day Saint Reading of CS Lewis’s Perelandra” by Cameron Price

I chose to skip this one too as it’s been so long since I read (started) Perelandra and I own the trilogy and intend to read it one of these days, so…. Why read more about Lewis before it’s necessary?

“The Fallen” by DA Cooper

Two missionaries visit hell and make contact with one of the original fallen. A companion piece to Cooper’s masterful “Talking to Dante in the Spirit World.“

This one’s in irregular rhymed couplets and makes the demon the lead character. Getting inside demons is an act of charity Cooper has pushed on us before and I’ve never forgotten it. It’s possible, if this is your first, it’ll be the one you don’t forget.

“Charity Never Faileth” by Jaleta Clegg*

Very proud to have been the first publisher of this story and its third. I didn’t reread it tonight, but I still dig it, guaranteed.

Jell-O comes in for the kill. What else do you need to know?

“Journey Before Destination, Faith Before Certainty: Experiencing Belief in Wind and Truth” by Liz Busby

So…I can see why they’re actively requesting more submissions of non–Brandon Sanderson criticism.

“Young Hagoth Plays It Safe” by Theric Jepson

I often enjoy reading my own stuff, but by this time I had momentum and wanted to see how far I could get. But this is good, promise.

You’ll note that its title plays off Douglas Adams and that should give you a sense of my aims. If I get around to it, part two is titled (spolier alert) “Young Hagoth Builds a Better Breastplate.”

Illustrated by Maddie Baker:

“Rented Room” by JS Absher*

A great example of what Stan’s good at and how poetry is naturally fantastic.

“Music of the Spirit” by Annaliese Lemmon*

Annaliese always impresses me. She has so many modes. This reminded me of a great story I recently read of another peculiar gift of the Spirit in…The Path and the Gate, maybe? I can’t remember. Anyway, this gift of the Spirit is peculiar and Annaliese puts it to good use asking questions.

Also, watch for Annaliese (rhymes with pizza) in the next issue of Irreantum.

“Why Andor’s Grown-Up Heroes Matter to Faithful Adults” by Alan Hurst*

This essay is brilliant. I hadn’t considered most of what the article is arguing, but Hurst makes a strong argument not only that Andor is good (me, I consider it top tier Star Wars alongside the original trilogy and The Last Jedi), but that it’s engaging with adult themes in ways very little entertainment does these days. Or even imagines it can while remaining “celestial.”

“A Letter from Captain Robert Walton to Joseph Smith” by R. de la Lanza

I was startled by how this reimagining of Frankenstein was interested in completing some of the novel’s loose ends, much as Guillermo del Toro’s recent film did. Fascinating to watch two Mexican artists using Frankenstein to such similar ends simultaneously. Does this mean something??

“From a Spirit to the One Possessed” by Orson Scott Card

Personally, I like the first OSC poem better just because I find possession a dull topic.

Voices from the Dust” by Jeanna Mason Stay

Shoot. Okay. That strange-gifts-of-the-Spirit story I was mentioning above? This one’s even more like it. Maybe I read it in Dialogue…? Germph. I dunno. Anyone, this is light and charming and hopeful, but never silly.

“Grandmother’s Rocking Chair” by Nephi Anderson, with introduction by Kent Larson*

Kent’s been teasing the existence of this story for years. I’m glad to finally read it. Based on his intro, I think I liked it more than Kent did, but I agree that it’s not Nephi’s finest work. (More opinions on Nephi Anderson here. A work of fiction I wrote starring Nephi here.) But it is a time-travel story of the type we know from the late 1800s and Nephi’s is honestly as good as most of them I’ve read. With the added benefit of being shorter. I’m superglad to have my own copy.

“Aslan or Qslan? Insights into Latter-day Saint Cosmology from the Sci-fi/Fantasy Divide” by Jeffrey Thayne and Jacob Ross

I did not expect my favorite piece in Further Light to be nonfiction—and certainly not nonfiction that’s about Star Trek! (Or Narnia, for that matter; I’m a little tired of talking about C.S. Lewis as you may have picked up on above.)

But this isn’t just good literary analysis, it’s powerful theology and explained some of my opinions to myself that I’ve had a hard time understanding. I wish I’d had access to this language when I was teaching seminary. We need to talk about this on Face in Hat…..

It’s worth the subscription just to access this essay when it appears online later in the year.

Subscribe already!

“Death” by Carol Lynn Pearson*

The is the second-oldest reprint, originally appeared in Dialogue back in 1966. I really think early CLP is the most vital CLP, and this interaction with Death is a good example of what she can do.

“The Mothers” by Chanel Earl

This is the sort of poetic prose that Chanel excels at. Whenever I see her name I know I’m about to get something on a different highway than other writers travel on. This one uses the first-person plural (great when used well) and explores motherhood while exploding dimensions. Worth a look. And at three pages, easy to fit into your day.

“The Enemy Has a Body: A Confidential Memo” by Jordan Lake

Look. Liz loves CS Lewis. I get it. And I don’t mind a new take on Screwtape. I really don’t. But the amount of Sanderson and Lewis in this volume proves that they need allyall to submit your brilliant criticism. The next deadline’s the end of this month! Get on it! Send them stuff!

New magazines need not only subbscribers to thrive. They need submitters. So dust off some old poems and fiction or craft some new, and then get it to them. Let’s keep them alive so they can enrich our lives. Takes teamwork. So go fight win.

Overdue Top Ten of 2025

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The main reason this article (which, incidentally, I feel no obligation to complete and do not do every year) is late is because The Testament of Ann Lee shook our world (Lady Steed and I are still consumed by it—I was just relistening to the soundtrack [again] yesterday) but, even though Letterboxd calls it a 2025 movie, we had no opportunity to watch it last year. So does it even belong on a 2025 list? I mean—Sketch is going on my 2025 list even though Letterboxd calls it a 2024 film. And I just saw OBEX in theaters even though it’s a “2025” movie. Eephus I saw in January although it’s a 2024 film I first could have seen in 2025. So what year should I count it as?

In the end, I decided feature films (acording to my indiosyncratic definition of over-thirty-minutes-long) that a) I have seen as of this writing that b) I could have first seen in 2025 given a nominal amount of effort will qualify. I’ll pull my top ten from the resulting list of twenty-eight. Which means I’m leaving off some films I liked quite a lot or that I want to give attention to.

For instance, the practical effects of The Legend of Ochi, the goofy existentialism of Mickey 17, the glorious visuals of Tron: Eros, the fine theatrical ride of Zootopia 2, the excellently executed biopic of a personal hero of mine that was Truth & Treason (Oscar-shortlisted score!)—these are movies I didn’t like enough to seriously consider putting on my top ten, but they had something worth experiencing on offer.

And then there are movies that were hard to leave off the list, like the emotional conclusiveness of Eephus, the mad horror of Weapons, the fine superheroics of Superman, the absolutely wonderful Presence which only didn’t make the list because I fear it might be gimmicky on a second watch, and Materialists which didn’t make the list simply because I had to cut one more to get to ten.

So without further ado, alphabetically, my Top Ten of 2025:

Black Bag: A movie that, were our movie-watching habits as they were circa 2024 and our stage of life exactly where it is now in 2026, would be a regular rewatch for Lady Steed and me. I hope, someday, when there are fewer kids cramping outstyle, it turns into an old favorite. It’s like Ocean’s Eleven for the happily married.

Eternity: I really liked this movie and I’m happy if a little surprised it made the top ten. I think it beat out its closer competitors because Lady Steed liked it so much. It’s probably the movie (outside Ann Lee) she’s invited into conversations with me and friends and aquiantences more than any that we’ve seen in the last couple years.

Frankenstein: This movie’s lucky I decided not to count Ann Lee because that makes it my favorite film of 2025. I could come up with a lot of ways to rank Frankenstein adaptations and in some reasonable rankings, this film doesn’t have a prayer. But it might be my favorite and it is excellent by every metric that matters except strict fidelity. A film that is both a good Frankenstein and true to the book may not be possible (is it for any book?) but this one is not only an excellent film on its own merits but it is also an excellent entry in the conversation between previous creators, most notably Mary Shelley and James Whale—and that matters when you’re engaging with one of the most adapted texts of all time. Plus, and I know I’ve said this, but it’s such a dang good movie. The production design, the camerawork, the acting, the editing—it’s all great. It may not win a single Oscar this year but it my heart it is the true winner.

Hamnet: Another thing about delaying my writing of this list is not only did I see Hamnet, but I also had enought time to mull it over such that it rose in my estimation. I liked it, sure, I thought it was beautiful and well acted, but I wasn’t sure what I felt about it as a whole. As it has settled into memory and become an experience past, I have come to believe more fully in the Hamlet portion of the film and that’s what was necessary to accept the film as a whole into my heart.

A Minecraft Movie: This is the best IP-based film of the year, imo. I did have a disagreement with one of my favorite film writers earlier this year after he dismissed this film as “one of [his] least favorite” and he was willing to admit that perhaps he hadn’t “given this a fair shake as an auteurist work” which is, I think an important way to think about it. Certainly, my experience at the theater was one of constantly laughing like I was seeing Napoleon Dynamite for the first time. First and foremost, someone, the suits allowed Jared Hess to make a Jared Hess movie. I’ve never played Minecraft and am unlikely to start but I do read Hess films and this one’s a keeper. Long live the Hess.

One Battle After Another: I am anxious to see this again and am sad I missed the rerelease. I’m certain it will improve on second viewing and I’m just as certain a second viewing will help me figure out exactly what kind(s) of movie it is. But it’s not often a movie, after only one viewing, becomes one I feel like quoting so let me just say, “Thank you, Sensei! Thank you!” and “Viva la Revolución!”

The Phoenician Scheme: I don’t get why this got so little love. Maybe critics, after the formal creativity of Wes Anderson’s last two films were a little disappointed that this one was more straightforward? Or maybe audiences still found it too weird? Some people thought it overly stylized and emotionally hollow, but that always happens to Wes. And that’s never how I feel. I thought this was a beautiful meditation on family and priorities and a brutal (though kindly delivered) attack on capitalism etc etc. Anyway. It was great. Write it down.

Sinners: After it broke the record for most nominations, Lady Steed overcame the terror the trailer inspired in her and decided to see the movie. Which was great because not only was did it come back to theaters, but it was gonna play in Grand Lake indefinitely because Grand Lake supports its Oakland filmmakers. It was a great rewatch as well. The speakers were a little buzzy so some of the dialogue was hard to hear, but even so I picked up lots of auditory and visual details, connections in the beginning to the end, lotsa stuff that was worth a revisit. A true crowdpleaser and filmically inventive. If it ends up taking all the awards, okay.

Sketch: This is arguably the best family movie to come out in years. Yes, including animated films. Your mileage may very but no question you will be glad you watched it. Which reminds me—you can hear me talking about it here.

Wake Up Dead Man: Given the chance to rewatch, this might have been my top film of 2025. Glass Onion was in 2022, after all. One of the smartest (intellectually and emotionally) explorations of things cynical and hopeful, secular and religious, confused and confusing, near and far, light and dark. It’s so good. And once again I end the year pissed off at Netflix. Release your freaking movies on dvd you jerks.

Twenty-eight 2025 movies really isn’t all that many. Obviously I missed many excellent ones. My she’s-in-the-Academy neighbor liked The Secret Agent best (and didn’t like Ann Lee!) which I still hope to see, but I do hope you’ll tell me what you’re most sad (for me) I missed. What were your winners?

Emotion-of-your-choice Valentine's Day!

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Just realized this is a perfect Valentine's Day collection: Youth, Having Babies, Disenchantment.

Enjoy! 

☞

006) Midville High: Comic Caper Collection by Matt Blair, finished February 5

Apparently Mr Blair started making these comics about high school when he was in high school and continues to make them now as a teacher himself. (The characters stay in the 1990s.)

This near-300pp collection has plenty of hijinks with bits of satire and parody. He's publishing them himself so some things like line-darkness aren't what you'd expect if, say, Fantagraphics had done the release, but the reading is fun and what more do you want? At times, it's excellent. There are moments where I was surprised he didn't get picked up by a syndicate or something. And he has the skill to produce a more high-schooly version of, like, Big Nate or something. I imagine he prefers control and is satisfied with the indie life but he has the chops to go big were that the goal.

But I don't know that a contract with Random House or something would be an improvement. Sure, the blacks would be blacker and a good editor could push him to higher states of excellence but there's a lot of pleasure in this handmade labor of love, and the purity might be lost in a shinier version. 

saturday and thursday 

☞

007) Guarding the Moon: A Mother's First Year by Francesca Lia Block, finished February 10

It's funny it took me so long to read such a slight and readable book. I felt like I was devouring it at great speed—but then something would interrupt and it would end up under a pile and weeks would pass....

But I loved the book. Block's beautifully fluffy way to warping time and relationship on the page to match the feelingof loving another person was never better suited than to the true story of loving her first baby. Everything is fluid and nothing is stable and we are tired and mad and deeply in love and yes this is exactly what it is like to have a child,

It's terrific. 

eight months 

☞

008) The Sellout by Paul Beatty, finished February 13

This is gonna be a multiparter, not all of which are about the contents of the book. Buckle up.

Memory is a fallible thing: I have a very clear memory of my first AP Lit training in room in downtown San Francisco, the summer of 2008. On the last day, there were a bunch of books on the back table. Of course I took some. Among them were at least a dozen copies of The Sellout, its flourescent-pink accents attracting the eye. They were there because CollegeBoard wanted to pressure us to teach more books like this—humorous, as I understood it.

Years pass. I have most of my copies in a drawer at school, waiting for me to read the one I have at home. The one I have at home is on a shelf beside the front door. The visible pink on spine fades out to a barely-there orange you can only see if you put your eyes right next to the paper.

I am embarrassed it is taking me so long. This was a NYTBR 10 Best! This got an award from th National Book Critics Circle Award! NPR called it a masterpiece! It won the Man Booker! It's slathered in exorbitant praise, mostly about how funny it is!

Anyway, I finally pick it up because this is the year I'm only reading books I actually own and it's actually working and one of the first things I notice is the copyright date: 2015.

Huh.

So....

I think my memory is correct. Except I think it's two memories combined.

I also suspect that contrary to what were told, it was less CollegeBoard suggesting we teach The Sellout and more Picador a subsidiary of Macmillan itself a subsidiary of the Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. Regardless, I would never.

Culturally responsive pedagogy—possible? I've been teaching long enough that I can note when things suddenly change. My two best examples are as follows:

I frequently teach Frankenstein to AP Lit and, when I do, we often watch a movie after the test. Most commonly voted for is the Boris Karloff–starring masterpiece, but occasionally something else gets chosen (especially when I'm teaching multiple classes and don't want to watch the same movie more than once in a day), for instance Young Frankenstein. Which is a great movie although there's a played-for-laffs rape scene that I've always hated. But other people find it funny so hey, maybe I'm a prude for not playing rapes for laffs myself.

Anyway, kids did laugh at that scene, same as their elders. And then, one year, like flipping a switch, they did not. They were deathly quiet and uncomfortable. And so it's been ever since. Which is simpler because it's easier to talk about it when we start on the same page.

The other big example, also from AP Lit, is August Wilson's brilliant Fences. Love that play.

When I started teaching it, I heard scuttlebutt from the online student-services center, that my Black students were grateful that we were reading it and for the way I was handling the plays language.

Then, one year, the scuttlebutt changed. I was getting forwarded complaints. That reading Fences was leaving my black students deeply uncomfortable and angry, that they felt by bringing its language and characters into the classroom was feeding racism among their peers and telling lies about what it means to be Black.

For a few years, I tried changing how we discussed the play, but the complaints intensified. Finally, I dropped it. I now have not taught it for several years. I miss it.

In fact, as time goes on, to keep students happy, I try to avoid teaching anything "culturally responsive." I teach almost entirely dead white Americans and Brits. This quarter, for instance, our primary texts are Steinbeck, Vonnegut, and Shakespeare. And, if everyone is not happy, at least they are not complaining.

I'm not exactly sure what's gone wrong, but I suspect part of it is depth. Fences might be more acceptible if I were also teaching The Emperor of Ocean Park and The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms to balance out the historical-fiction-where-racism genre. The problem of course is I should really also be teaching at least three novels exploring Tibetan-American culture and at least three novels exploring Mexican-American Culture and  at least three novels exploring Japanese-American culture and at least three novels exploring Pakistani-American culture and at least three novels exploring Chinese-American culture and etc etc etc and you see quickly that the semester is not long enough. I hate this.

(I do have a few ways to mitigate the lilywhiteness of our major texts but the fact remains that the average actual single-author book we read and discuss as a class is more Jane Austen than August Wilson.)

Relevancy to the book: Oo boy.

So this is a book decidedly about racism. Racism here in 21st-century American. And it's not just "about" racism. It enacts racism in just about every imaginable way. It insists on placing racism literally front and literally center. Our main character, a Black Angeleno, finds himself owning a slave and instituting segregation.

See, his town has been taken off the map and segregation is part of the trick to bring it back. And not only does it, but the kids believing their school has been segregated leads them to instantly begin to excel. They're on their way to being the third-highest-achieving school in the state.

And of course I hate that but as I look back at what I've already written and am I inadvertently arguing the exact same argument?

The first half of the book I was mostly annoyed. I'm not pretending that post-racial America was achieved or anything, but it's so reactionary and angry I had a hard time finding my way in. And I wasn't sure I was welcomed in, regardless. I did laugh at a couple of the jokes, but most of them—I recognized that they were humor-shaped but I wasn't at all certain they would actually be funny to any slice of America.

The book starts at the end with the opening moments of our protagonist before the Supreme Court with normally taciturn Clarence Thomas losing his mind, cursing out our protag, calling him awful things, and finally collapsing into his seat with.... Well, this isn't the sort of blog that quotes what Clarence Thomas says.

And he's not the only real person to make a show here. Bill Cosby, Colin Powell, and Condoleeza Rice get raked over the coals but they also learn to Crip Walk. Barack Obama is weirdly a source of hope and pleasure but also no better than those other three. But time is weird here because we're both in his presidency and years before simultaneously. But Beatty isn't superconcerned with accuracy.

Or...sometimes he is. Some of what he says about geography or farming or surfing is so exquisitely detailed it's impossible to believe it's not true. But then our protag will plant an apple tree which'll die two days later but have apples on it. To which I express doubt.

I would argue back at myself that this isn't the kind of book to which accuracy matters except then why spend so much time getting us to believe it is accurate? And learning from this book that Stalin executed soldiers photographed with Americans when the two armies met on the Elbe for "fraternizing with the enemy" while I'm teaching Slaughterhouse-Five makes me want to share that tidbit but...given some (granted, casual) googling, I'm not so sure that's true.

This is a book which makes big claims on telling the truth and pumps itself full of realistic details. But this is also a book which proudly declares it couldn't care less about what's true as the fact is the facts matter so much less than the truth of things. As in "How to Tell a True War Story."

Which makes sense. One thing The Sellout makes clear is racism is war. Even if most people won't admit their in the fight.

So you hated it. No. No, I did not. It wasn't really to my taste and I wasn't sure the book wanted me reading it and for much of it I wasn't really enjoying myself and when the satire left the locals and went national I found it more silly than provocative, but—as it wrapped up, I found myself deeply moved.

The final pages with the restoration of his hometown and his memory of a standup comic took all the ugly and the chaos and the nonsense and wrapped it up with a humanist bow. The protagonist, whom I'd always found interesting, compelling, and genuinely human, ceased satirizing himself and his certainty, and opened up to show that, even he who weilds racism confidently as a both scalpel and chainsaw, doesn't know what's going on or what it all means.

I do sometimes wonder if we could all embrace our ignorances publicly and humbly we mightn't be a bit better off.

I don't know if that's true.

But as long as we all know what's going on, we never will. 

about three weeks 

 

☞

Previous books of 2025
(and years more distant)

  

 

The first five books of 2026

001) Red Harvest by Dachielle Hammett, finished January 3
002) Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, finished January 14
003) Snoopy's Guide to the Writing Life edited by Barnaby Conrad and Monte Schulz, finished January 16
004) You Are Too Much, Charlie Brown by Charles M. Schulz, finished January 19
005) Ice by Anna Kavan, finished January 24

PRIOR YEARS OF BOOKS

2007 = 2008 = 2009 = 2010 = 2011 = 2012 = 2013 = 2014 = 2015
2016 = 2017 = 2018 = 2019 = 2020 = 2021 = 2022 = 2023 = 2024 = 2025

 

 

Starting the year off right with zero movies literally about Columbian hippos but, metaphorically, maybe ALL of them are?

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Hard to believe this is all one month. Back at the beginning of January the whole family was home and some movies got watched that probably wouldn't've without the influence of the oldest. Then The Testament of Ann Lee proved a fulcrum of some point. Since seeing it, I've listened to the soundtrack who knows how many times. It has infiltrated every hour my mind is awake. (I cannot speak with confidence of the sleeping hours.)

I've also spent the month writing (mostly in my head) a best-of-2025 post. But now January is over and I still have not done so. Is it to late?

Anyway, you can tell the month's end caught me offguard as I've already posted something today.

Watch out for January, friends. It's got the tricks.

.

HOME
something college
students know

Help! (1965)

Our dvd problems continue. This time, the Help! dvd (and apparently onlythe Help! dvd) caused VLC to utterly freeze up. I've never seen something so peculiar.

Anyway, so we pirated it. (Is it pirating if you own the dvd? We've watched it many times but it's still in perfect condition

Not a lot of intact comic groups anymore. Laurel and Hardy, the Marx Brothers—all long, long ago. The Beatles (the greatest rock group in the history of the world, but as if that weren’t distinction enough, the Beatles were the greatest comedians in the history of rock) and Monty Python are also long ago, now. There've been a few nearlies over the years, but I wonder if the Beatles are the proper model. A Barenaked Ladies movie circa 2000 might have worked?

I think a group that could pull this off is rarer than rare, but it might have a better chance of working than anything else. Is anyone looking?

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Prime Video

The Naked Gun (2025)

No doubt this would reward rewatching. I caught at most half of the background jokes? at most three-quarters of the in-credits jokes?

Anyway, it was funny but no doubt would have been waaaaaay funnier in a packed theater.

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Prime Video

Eephus (2024)

This is . . . like if Terrence Malick made a baseball movie. Only with better jokes and also it's sometimes a horror movie and the monster is middle-age.

It was very good but I don't know just what it will become as it settles into memory.

The Big O—the only person who watched it with me—says he won't know until we watch it again next year.

But he enjoyed it. Sometimes twenty-two is old enough to feel the malaise of age.

ELSEWHERE
Tubi

In Search of the Last Action Heroes (2019)

Don't know if the book I read big pieces of at the library once is related (they're quite different, for all their similarities), but that's what got me to click on it. ||| UPDATE: the final

The movie's about the sort of action movie that came out of the '80s (think Stallone, Schwarzenegger) and has interviews with writers, composers, actors, etc. It takes them from the appearance of the genre, through theaters and video shelves, until movies like Last Action Hero showed the time was coming to an end and movies like Speed (actors taking over for overbuilt monsters), Jurassic Park (effects taking over in-camera), The Bourne Identity (shakycam taking over visibility) gradually ending the era.

It's long but easy to watch in parts while doing other things. Even though I haven't seen most of thost movies, I liked it!

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dunno

A Town Called Panic (2009)

Lady Steed and I got back just as the kids had ten minutes left in this movie but I wanted to count it anyway just so I could tell you, in case no one ever has before, how delightfully mad this movie is. You could compare it to Looney Tunes or the Marx Bros. but honestly, A Town Called Panic genuinely might outdo them both. It's as mad as Wonderland but so much funnier.

Anyway, it's brilliant and I love it and I bet you would too.

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our dvd

Guys and Dolls (1955)

Okay. I'm about to come off a big square.

Yes, the end of this movie pastes on a nice all-god's-critters-got-a-place-in-the-choir moral—and I'm all for that moral—but that ending's a lie, a cheap facade, because the entire rest of the runtime celebrates misogyny and ugliness. It's a pure embrace of sin (by which I mean both evil and foolishness) and all the fun bits and entertaining spots don't hide the fact that, in the end, no one in this movie is treated well by the story's creators. The women in particular are straightout abused and turned into nothing more than coin. The moments that are supposed to show otherwise do not. And then men aren't much better though instead of being abused by others they are abused by their fallen state and shallow writing.

They says women deserve respect and they have inner lives. But all they do is display breasts and hip/waist ratio in endless variety. They claim men may be saved. But they make gambling the only time they dance—and only the silly fat man puts on the red uniform. The show the most noble of the men as noble simply because he doesn't take advantage ("") of the woman he already got drunk. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

It's been a while since I was so appalled by such a well made movie.

I guess now I've opened myself up for everyone who loves it to explain to me why I'm wrong.

Bring it on.

THEATER
Century Cinemark Hilltop 16

The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants (2025)

I've now seen three of the four SpongeBob theatrical movies. While I laughed a good amount, this was easily the least of the three.* Honestly, I was kinda bored through most of it. And whatever the lesson was supposed to be, I doubt I learned it.

* Or so I thought. But I went back and read the extant reviews and it appears maybe I had a similar reaction to one and two as well.

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library dvd

The Holdovers (2023)

Watched with wife and sontwo, both of whom liked it much more than me. I kinda thought it was typical holiday heartwarming stuff. Not too cliche or anything, but not really remarkable either.

Perhaps this is a commentary on me.

I won't be surprised if, now that we've finally see it, there's a desire to return to it on a following Christmas. Will I come around??

Incidentally, recognizably Mormon character and a carol by the Salt Lake Children's Choir directed by Kurt Bestor. Clearly this is a Mormon film.

THEATER
AMC Bay Street 16

The Testament of Ann Lee, or, The Woman Clothed by the Sun (2025)

It's 11:33 and I don't have to get copy to my editor to make the morning paper, so let's just admit I'm going to let this one sit.

Perhaps ironic to go see this the day it didn't get any Oscar nominations, but the heck. Sound deserved attention. The music. The acting. The camera work is terrific. All I can say is F1 had better be the greatest car movie ever made to get a Best Picture nod over Ann Lee.

A lot has been made of Amanda Seyfried's performance and rightly so. I think part of what impresses people is how she's very willing to appear human. She looks her age, for instance. It's not a glamour role. The bits of nudity are not Hollywoodized. But I'd also like to shoutout Thomasin McKenzie who, did she not have a recognizable voice and had I not knows she was in it, may have been unrecognizable. I'm used to her always appearing like a cute ninetten, yet here she looks like a person who's been through and going through it. Even when her character was young, she was plain and ordinary.

But the ordinariness of these people helps make their spiritual prowess the stuff of real life. I don't particularly want to be a Shaker after seeing this, but I'm filled with respect for Ann Lee, her accomplishments, and her people. Next time D&C rolls around, the jokey way Ann Lee often gets discussed WILL NOT STAND.

But speaking of random Mormon connections, Alan Sparhawk's one of the credited singers and, I must tell you, after I post this to Letterboxd, I'm going shopping for the soundtrack/score.

Anyway, it's an incredible movie. It felt a bit long in the watching but I will never question the worthiness of having spent all that time in this world.

THEATER
The Roxie

OBEX (2025)

I like Albert Birney. Watched Sylvio thanks to a single-paragraph review I read somewhere; loved it; haveprobably shown it to 300 high schoolers over the years. Strawberry Mansion sounded cool and was the same team so I made it an option for the dystopian unit; one class chose it; we had incredible conversation.

OBEX may be the weirdest of the three and I don't see how it could tie into anything class-related, but it's one heck of an experience and—bonus—the first seen in theaters! But even the Roxie's audience was perplexed. I wish you could have been there with us as we, as a group, negotiated whether or not we were going to clap for this thing.

I like the Eraserhead-meets-Zelda description IndieWire put out (what first captured my attention, before I knew who made it), but I think a better comparison might be the very different Hundreds of Beavers. Although that's an uproarious comedy (OBEX is merely funny), Beavers isn't just another videogame-influenced b&w film—it too is filled with existential dread and inhuman forces looking to destroy.

I guess b&w existential comedies with videogame trappings and sweet/cheap effects are having a moment.

I'm for it.

THEATER
Century Cinemark Hilltop 16

Hamnet (2025)

Holy smokes but are kid actors great these days!

Talk about the book led me to think I would find it an insufferable mess of manipulative, historically sketchy melodrama.

Talk about the movie led me to think that it was pretty good but got manipulative toward the end and you'll be crying the last half nonstop whether you're willing or not.

My actual experience included the following:

1) The film is beautiful.

2) While I dug the romantic relationship once it was established, I found its genesis perplexing.

3) The acting was excellent, up and down.

4) While I found the historical explanations of Shakespeare's career to be unlikely, hey, it's a movie, I got over it.

5) The play-within-the-play at the end fascinates me. It seems to demand some knowledge of Hamlet but also either to have forgotten some (or perhaps to have that knowledge based entirely on Mel Gibson's version?) or willing to forget some. I did love how it worked and so, again, I got over it.

6) This is quite the year for realism in birth scenes!

Anyway, I liked it quite a lot. It didn't make me want to read the novel, but it did make me want to read Stepehn Greenblatt's initiating essay.

And it made me want to know more about Jessie Buckley. Who is she and what's she been up to?

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library dvd

Born Yesterday (1950)

I decided I had to watch this movie when it appeared on Variety's top-100-comedies-of-all-time list, last year. I don't know about that but it was utterly charming and shockingly patriotic. It's a real movie for 2026 and I'm all for everyone giving a shot, whatever brings them to it.

William Holden sometimes looks surprisingly like Tom Hanks, but it's Judy Holliday I got the questions about.

But first, she created this role on Broadway and got rave reviews, but the studio head said no because she wasn't in movies. The director got her into Adam's Rib and etc etc she finally got the role and she was great, winning the first ever Golden Globe Award for Best Actress (musical/comedy), and then, wing the Oscar over—get this—Gloria Swanson (Sunset Boulevard) and both Bette Davis and Anne Baxter (All About Eve). Maybe it was a matter of great roles cancelling each other out, but that is one of the most stacked years of all time. Incredible.

Anyway, she plays sort of a gangster's-moll character, a former chorus girl, ignorant and unworried about her. Her fiance takes her to D.C. where he's trying to get some shady legislation passed. Her dumbness embarrasses him so he hires a guy to make her smart. But here's the thing: she takes to it.

And she's taking to it in D.C.—the seat of American democracy. And she starts getting ideas about what democracy means and how it should function. And she calls her bigshot fiance a fascist because she sees in his form of capitalism the same sort of selfishness.

And all along it's a comedy. In a different movie, maybe she ends up in a box. Who knows. But she's brave and getting braver in tandem with reading and getting readier.

So my question is this: Is she the model for Lina Lamont? Although the movie comes out only two years earlier than Singin' in the Rain, it takes place twenty years later. But they have exeedingly similar hair and dress and movement and, my word, that voice!

BREAKING

A bit of searching and I learn this:

To create the role of Lina Lamont, the silent star with the disastrous voice, Comden and Green thought of Judy Holliday, their old sketch comedy partner, and even revived some bits of business from their old act. But after Holliday won the Oscar for 1950's "Born Yesterday," they realized they'd need someone else. They turned to Jean Hagen, who'd been Holliday's understudy in the Broadway version of "Born Yesterday." For her audition, Hagen did a drop-dead impression of Holliday and won the role.

So yes. I wasn't crazy.

But it's not just the stylings. There are even echos in specific lines. But while Singin' in the Rain's version is villainous and egotistical—selfish—fascist?, Born Yesterday's version is hopeful and shows growth and curiosity and learns to care about everyone. Quite the opposite really.

(I'm almost afraid that watching this movie to often might even sour me a tad on Singin' in the Rain which would be a freaking tragedy.)

To conclude, when I started writing this I wasn't sure the movie belonged on a top-100 anything, but the more I type the more I am persuaded in the beauty of embracing comedy in the most classic sense. Not because it is funny but, because it ends in a marriage.

And, as a better writer than me once pled: Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments. Because, while love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove—and while it may be an everfixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken and is the right star for every wanderer, love is not time's fool. That's one thing Born Yesterday did that I don't think I've ever seen before. Our romantic leads kiss almost immediately but then they don't proceed. She even assumes the moment is gone. See, love doesn't alter as the hours and weeks pass but, instead, bears out even to the edge of doom. So whatever love is, when it's right, change only makes it stronger.

If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor ever loved.

But check out Born Yesterday. It's not just a normal romcom, for you and your lover. It's also a romcom for you and America. And you need that right now.

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library dvd

Cruella (2021)

I don't like splitting my attention when watching a movie, any movie, but I had some behind-the-curtain crises at Irreantum for the new issue and so split my attention was, for a least two thirds of the movie. And although there are complaints to be made about this movie, one thing it has in spades is freaking coolness. It is such a pleasure to look at this movie. The camera knows its seeing cool stuff and it makes sure we see it as it needs to be seen. And the music. Holy cow the music! It's so great. And so while I have complaints about some of the cgi and some of the heist magic and a couple anachromisms, and, really, it's a shave too long, overall, I was carried along on its wave of cool. When the dvd ended and we were on the loop with just, what, thirty seconds of music on repeat? I never wanted to turn it off.

I'm trying to hold back—don't want this to become a habit—but this might become #3.

But let's talk inflences. Obviously, it knows we know Disney's 101 Dalmations. It's manages to be more true to the facts of that classic than I expected given the first half hour, but it's also willing to ignore that movie as needed. Which is the right choice. You have to have a certain measure of freedom or the whole thing will never work.

It's clearly thinking about The Devil Wears Prada: Emma Thompson (who is, naturally, excellent) is Meryl Streep; Emma Stone (who slays) is Anne Hathaway; Mark Strong is Stanley Tucci. Not perfect parallels, of course, but obviously, obviously intentional. But since I hate that movie (ask me sometime), the Cruella cast cannot suffer in comparison. No worries.

Also pretty sure it's leaning rather heavily on Velvet Goldmine.

Although the film's Horace and Jasper and likeable blokes and played their roles admirably, in the end, this is a two-hander: Emma vs Emma. They both brought their A games and it is delightful to watch them tear apart the scenery and everyone around them. Two killer performances.

In short, even only partially engaged, I was utterly engaged. Exquisite entertainment.

UPDATE: Soundtrack hardly looks worth the bother. If it would take three cds, TAKE THREE CDS.