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The Residence (2025)
132 rooms. 157 suspects. 1 dead body.

A brilliant, eccentric detective must solve a murder in the White House residence — where the staff and guests at a state dinner are all suspects.

Layers history of film centres on an understanding of noir and how it has become a game between filmmaker and viewer. Central to that is the detective story. The pinnacle of that genre is Agatha Christie but no film has translated well until now. I...


Published July 21, 2025
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Sinners (2025)
Dance with the devil.
Filmmaker(s): Ryan Coogler

Trying to leave their troubled lives behind, twin brothers return to their hometown to start again, only to discover that an even greater evil is waiting to welcome them back.

Visual Music like Jodorowsky but instead of Chilean mysticism, African voodoo, or what we think so through prior films. Something culturally like ‘Snatch’, ‘O Brother, Where Art Thou?’, and ‘Kill Bill 2’ rolled together. Grand cinematic skill but in the small. Like another recent film (‘The...


Published July 30, 2025
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Dune: Part Two (2024)
Long live the fighters.
Filmmaker(s): Denis Villeneuve

Follow the mythic journey of Paul Atreides as he unites with Chani and the Fremen while on a path of revenge against the conspirators who destroyed his family. Facing a choice between the love of his life and the fate of the known universe, Paul endeavors to prevent a terrible future only he can foresee.

Melange my comment on Part One, I noted that the complex charm of the books would in this part be flattened to basically two things: vast engagements with the environment, and action scenes: armies and heroes fighting. This is an action movie, alas, though the...


Published April 12, 2024
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The Fall Guy (2024)
Fall hard.
Filmmaker(s): David Leitch

Fresh off an almost career-ending accident, stuntman Colt Seavers has to track down a missing movie star, solve a conspiracy and try to win back the love of his life while still doing his day job.

No Stuntman film, and every comment I’ve seen seems to not be aware of 1980s ‘The Stunt Man”. That was a similar setup, but before the noir device evolved to the comedic. In the earlier film, the fact of the stunt guy being so was...


Published June 20, 2024
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Inside Out 2 (2024)
Make room for new emotions.
Filmmaker(s): Kelsey Mann

Teenager Riley's mind headquarters is undergoing a sudden demolition to make room for something entirely unexpected: new Emotions! Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust, who’ve long been running a successful operation by all accounts, aren’t sure how to feel when Anxiety shows up. And it looks like she’s not alone.

Lassiter Layers ago, I had the charter to ‘study Hollywood’, ostensibly as a model for virtual enterprises, but that extended into my now serious study of folding in film narrative. One expression of folding is the play within the play, where you have narratives and narrative...


Published June 23, 2024
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Wicked (2024)
Everyone deserves the chance to fly.
Filmmaker(s): Jon M. Chu

In the land of Oz, ostracized and misunderstood green-skinned Elphaba is forced to share a room with the popular aristocrat Glinda at Shiz University, and the two's unlikely friendship is tested as they begin to fulfill their respective destinies as Glinda the Good and the Wicked Witch of the West.

Information Warfare became entangled with Oz in a serious way outside the movie. The Edgar Cayce Foundation in Virginia Beach is a legacy of a trend in the 1930s, begun long before where we seek more elaborate external forces than a single God. This trend...


Published December 17, 2024
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Music by John Williams (2024)
The man behind the maestro.
Filmmaker(s): Laurent Bouzereau

His unforgettable scores are an essential part of some of the most beloved movies of our time, over a career that spans decades. See and hear maestro John Williams' own story, with insights from filmmakers, musicians, and others he has inspired, complete with rare behind-the-scenes looks at the making of movie history.

Pop have commented on about 6,000 films and I cannot recall any of those comments centred on the score. Yet we all know that for many films that is an important component. The primary reason I suppose is that I am not a sophisticated listener,...


Published December 17, 2024
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A Quiet Place: Day One (2024)
Hear how it all began.
Filmmaker(s): Michael Sarnoski

As New York City is invaded by alien creatures who hunt by sound, a woman named Sam fights to survive with her cat.

Memories interesting to me is how genres evolve and sub-genres emerge. This is still advertised as a horror film, and I read some comments from disappointed film-goers that it wasn’t scary enough. What I see is a science fiction film with a consistent threat —...


Published December 23, 2024
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Flow (2024)
Share in the beauty of togetherness.
Filmmaker(s): Gints Zilbalodis

A solitary cat, displaced by a great flood, finds refuge on a boat with various species and must navigate the challenges of adapting to a transformed world together.

Flow of Worlds with many long form projects, you have the world and somewhat separately you have characters moving through that world. In the noir form we have here some innocent characters are selected, seemingly at random, to be tossed by world forces for our...


Published February 5, 2025
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Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023)
It's how you wear the mask that matters.

After reuniting with Gwen Stacy, Brooklyn’s full-time, friendly neighborhood Spider-Man is catapulted across the Multiverse, where he encounters the Spider Society, a team of Spider-People charged with protecting the Multiverse’s very existence. But when the heroes clash on how to handle a new threat, Miles finds himself pitted against the other Spiders and must set out on his own to save those he loves most.

Chapter and Verse I sound overly critical below, let me say up front that this is an important film if only because it extends the vocabulary. I’m excited by it and what we may expect. However, I recently commented on ‘Fast X’ and noted that these...


Published June 29, 2023
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