I've watched a lot of movies in the last month.

I've logged them all on Letterboxd, but here's a quick rundown with a few fresh comments.

2018 films
A Quiet Place
Avengers: Infinity Franchise
Solo: A Star Wars Story
Zoe
Hannah Gadsby: Nanette
Chris Rock: Tamborine

2018 has been a bummer so far, but I was pleasantly surprised by A Quiet Place and Solo. I liked how blatantly stupid the whiteboards were in AQP. I liked the stupid humor in Solo. Once I started thinking of Solo as a kid's movie, I realized how much I would have enjoyed it as a 10-year-old, and I just let myself enjoy it as a little kid.

I hated Avengers and its meaningless goofer-hero plodding. I couldn't watch all of Zoe. I jumped around in it and gave up on it. Nanette is overrated. It's preachy and not so funny. Some of Gadsby's narration of her own story is pretty powerful, but also misguided. Tamborine held up to a second watch. Rock is obviously in pain because of terrible decisions that he has made. Yet he's still funny. That said, he's the one who should probably quit comedy. It's obviously too late to save his marriage, but maybe it's not too late to save himself from continued celebrated celebrity depravity.

Films w/ DeNiro
Taxi Driver
The King of Comedy
Heat
Casino
Jackie Brown

Taxi Driver would make it into my Top 100 if I put together a new list. I'm convinced that this is the best work of Scorsese, Schrader, and DeNiro. There are aspects of it that I still find problematic, but these are also aspects of America that I still find problematic.

The rest of these films are fine. The King of Comedy is funny, but slight. The rest of these were re-watches. The King of Comedy was new to me. Heat is as bloated as ever, but remains interesting to watch. Casino struck me as an experiment in voiceover narration and propulsive skim-narrative. It's pretty shallow, like Las Vegas.

I'm still not in the "Jackie Brown is Tarantino's greatest film" camp, but this re-watch almost convinced me. Everyone in this seems like they're having fun. Besides Taxi Driver, I think that this is the best of the De Niro performances that I've watched recently. It's fun to think of him coming off of the bravado of Heat and Casino and signing on for this understated role.

Ozon films
Sitcom
Criminal Lovers

I'm listing these here out of respect. Ozon is talented. Sitcom is silly trash, but Criminal Lovers is a complex fable that would be worth wrestling with if it weren't so depraved. I'm pretty sure that that's probably how I'll feel about even the best of the rest of Ozon, so I'm done exploring his work. (The only reason that I watched these is because MUBI is having an Ozon series; my MUBI subscription is up for renewal at the end of August. I'm probably going to cancel since I don't watch enough and they are significantly raising the cost this year. If Filmstruck added offline viewing, I wouldn't even be considering MUBI any longer).

Watched on Filmstruck since the last post.

Shorts
Begone Dull Care
Captain Kidd's Kids
Just Neighbors
Bumpin' Into Broadway
Billy Blazes, Esq. (this is a new favorite)
Hairat
A Gentle Night
Call of Cuteness

Features
Taxi Driver
Singin' in the Rain
Withnail & I (one of my friend Mike's favorite films)

There are at least half a dozen other films that I logged on Letterboxd, but I'm not going to reproduce them here. I don't even have it in me to rant about Cronenberg's Shivers or Altman's Images or Mann's Thief. These all have their defenders. Meh. I guess I don't have anything to say. Blech.