Movies are supposed to be good.
The raison d’être for The Film Optimist, movies. I hear they’re supposed to be good.
I like these weekly projects like the Friday 10 or posting my Letterboxd recent activity. But I’ve gotta find some to do that aren’t on Fridays. This day is starting to show some strain under the weight of carrying this blog. Here’s the recent activity for this week, with brief thoughts to follow. (Just to…
It’s time for another Letterboxd Friday where I share my most recent views on BlueSky as grabbed from my Letterboxd profile, and give just a few brief thoughts about them here on the blog! Jigsaw (2017)(HBO Max) 2017’s Jigsaw feels like it was a direct response to the previous installation, Saw 3D. That movie cranked…
Over on BlueSky there’s a running thing of LetterboxdFriday, where people share screenshots every Friday of the last four movies listed on their Letterboxd profile. I love it — and I thought, “Hey, why not expand a little bit on my LetterboxdFriday by putting some notes on the blog?” So here we go! Shake! Otis…
Every movie has a person out there who will love it as it is — unironically and without reservation. The idea that such a person exists for Tommy Wiseau’s “The Room” (2003) is beautiful and terrible.
2011’s The Muppets was a sentimental tribute to the lasting legacy of The Muppets. On every other single metric — story, comedy, original music, use of guest stars and cameos — 2014’s underappreciated Muppets Most Wanted is far and away the better Muppet movie.
If your movie goes over 150 minutes, you owe your audience a musical production number.
Also, for real, Justice for Frankie. The third movie was all set up to be about them and then it never happened. We still need that.
Jennifer Love Hewitt was an absolutely fine comic actress, y’all were just mean.
There’s a lot at work around the news of the Academy nominations for the 2024 ceremony, so I thought I’d take a moment to look at them. But first: Let’s acknowledge that as an AMAB who has spent around 40 years of his life presenting as a cisgendered white dude, I’m not exactly the person…
We had fallen into a habit where music was either the background hum of our day-to-day lives, or just a little reward for doing the things we all have to do. You either put on some music in the background while you’re working, cooking, driving — or you put it on while running those chores to help encourage you to actually do them.