Or, The Misdirects of Mr. Y

THE MYSTERY OF MR. X

1934

Directed by Edgar Selwyn

Written by Howard Emmett Rogers and Monckton Hoffe (based on the novel X v. Rex by Philip MacDonald)

Spoilers: moderate

The Encyclopedia Brown: I don't suppose I'll have to beg your forgiveness

CHAINED

1934

Directed by Clarence Brown

Written by Edgar Selwyn and John Lee Mahin

Spoilers: moderate

The merry-go-round broke down

THE DAY THE EARTH BLEW UP: A LOONEY TUNES MOVIE

2025

Directed by Pete Browngardt

Written by many many many people, including Pete Browngardt

Spoilers: moderate

Walt Disney, part LXXXIII: Failure, then learning, then death

MOANA 2

2024

Directed by Jason Hand, Dana Ledoux Miller, and David Derrick Jr.

Written by Jared Bush, Bryson Chun, Bek Smith, and Dana Ledoux Miller

Spoilers: moderate

Note that will eventually be removed: "part 83" is an approximate one, but it is where I believe this film will eventually fall once my not-so-diligently pursued retrospective catalog of Walt Disney animation is done sometime in the next couple of months; meanwhile, since I intended to be done with it before Moana 2 came out on streaming, even if I did not succeed in doing so, it's still best to treat it as just another entry in that series, something I've been sub rosa doing with all of Disney's new-release cartoons for the past two or three years anyhow

Cardboard Science: Not dead the way we understand death

CURSE OF THE FACELESS MAN

1958

Directed by Edward L. Cahn

Written by Jerome Bixby

Spoilers: moderate

Walt Disney, part LXIII: Make pishee

CHICKEN LITTLE

2005

Directed by Mark Dindal

Written by Steve Bencich, Ron J. Friedman, Ron Anderson, Mark Kennedy, and Mark Dindal

Spoilers: high

Time just went

HERE

2024

Directed by Robert Zemeckis

Written by Eric Roth and Robert Zemeckis (based on the comic book by Richard McGuire)

Spoilers: maybe high, more like inapplicable

Note: runs slightly long, but it was the most movie of 2024, whether we treated it that way or not

In the light, everybody needs the light

UNDER THE LIGHT

Jianrupanshi (Solid As a Rock)

2023

Directed by Zhang Yimou

Written by Chen Yu

Spoilers: moderate

Reviews from gulag: Guadagnino'd

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Reviews from gulag: Down with the Oscars (this isn't about the Oscars)

But I will indulge myself a moment, because today I watched Robert Zemeckis's Here—the boldest Goddamn movie of the year, in its way, just a real achievement, and one that deserves a full review—but perhaps just as importantly, I also watched I Saw the TV Glow, the third feature (second anyone's heard of) from Jane Schoenbrun, the follow-up to their torturously boring and bad We're All Going To the World's Fair; and, in tandem, they very briefly restored my faith in the state of cinema, one being a fearless late-style swing from a tottering master that does some truly new shit, the other being the kind of redemption I genuinely want to see from a filmmaker who might've burned me terribly in the past, but is willing to evolve towards good, exciting work.  And this feeling was shattered, because 2024 now bears the ineradicable stain of producing Anora as America's putative Best Picture of the year, and now it's all just a bunch of morbid considerations about that whole "state of cinema" thing: the possibility that Zemeckis might never make another movie (because hardly anybody's seen Here and I do not think its reputation will grow going forward); the possibility that Shoenbrun's literal physical well-being could be jeopardized, let alone that of their career; and the certainty that Sean Baker is going to go on to keep making the worst motherfucking movies in the world for decades and decades to come.

Anyway, we'll get to I Saw the TV Glow, but I also watched Marielle Heller's Nightbitch, and now they're together, because they're both obtuse horror movies or something.  I'd say it's because they're both about nighttime, but I believe Nightbitch takes place mostly, like at a 3:1 ratio, during the day.  Oh, whatever, it's fundamentally arbitrary.

NIGHTBITCH

It's not clear whether it was Nightbitch source novelist Rachel Yoder, or its writer-director Marielle Heller, or its coterie of producers, but clearly it was decided that what women needed was their own 1994's Wolf, though I certainly can't tell you what all these women thought women must've done to deserve that.  And, somehow, the results are even less impressive: both Wolf and Nightbitch are using a story of canid transformation as a means of actually pursuing a fantasy about middle-aged rebellion and rejuvenation, and, as we weigh each film against the other, Nightbitch ought to have an advantage, because it's at least not embarrassed of being a fantasy movie like Wolf was; yet it's counter-intuitively interested in being a fantasy movie even less; and while Wolf is surely not good at "being a werewolf movie," and does not deliver on the genre pleasures which a movie about Jack Nicholson playing a werewolf has blatantly promised, at least it did have Jack Nicholson fucking a woman half his age and pissing on his corporate rival's shoes, whereas Nightbitch isn't concerned with the genre pleasures of either the werewolf movie or those of the middle-aged rebellion story.  For the long, repetitive middle half the most Amy Adams's (oh boy) unnamed mother (credited thusly, though I could've sworn she received a name) ever gets out of being a human dog, or a rebellious middle-aged woman, is... well, I guess let's just say that Heller must actually hate cats, but at least the storytelling in the corresponding sequence of Can You Ever Forgive Me? suggested she understood the concept of not hating cats.  Her movie's "nighttime" photography isn't as risibly bad as Mike Nichols's.  Let's give Heller that much.