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Where the Wild Things Are (2009)
There's one in all of us.
Filmmaker(s): Spike Jonze

Max imagines running away from his mom and sailing to a far-off land where large talking beasts—Ira, Carol, Douglas, the Bull, Judith and Alexander—crown him as their king, play rumpus, build forts and discover secret hideaways.

A Calligraphic Camera Writes the Imagination is a huge success, and I believe that it will reach that status now called "classic," being experienced over and over in whatever ways that classics will in the future. I'll let others note the purity in the way that...


Published August 6, 2025
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The Gentlemen (2019)
Criminal. Class.
Filmmaker(s): Guy Ritchie

American expat Mickey Pearson has built a highly profitable marijuana empire in London. When word gets out that he’s looking to cash out of the business forever it triggers plots, schemes, bribery and blackmail in an attempt to steal his domain out from under him.

Movie Scripts likely Ritchie’s best. It has his comic characters oscillating between real and unlikely. It has a fully created world, less exotic than Wick’s but more accessible. Super-snappy dialogue. But most of all, it has the double, triple, quadruple con in layers, where the top...


Published August 1, 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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Penn and Teller Get Killed (1989)
What more do you want?
Filmmaker(s): Arthur Penn

The "bad boys of magic" go over the edge in this mind-blowing, role-switching comedy murder mystery set in the dizzying world of Atlantic City casinos. In a TV interview, Penn mentions his idea of a fun practical joke: "I wish someone were trying to kill me. It would give focus to my life, excitement. I'd be like James Bond." Twenty million people hear him. One decides to deliver a punchline he'll never forget. Made by people who thought Psycho was a comedy, Penn & Teller Get Killed (they also wrote the piece) features Caitlin Clarke as the femme fatale and David Patrick Kelly as the Edgar Allan Poe-esque nutcase with a new mission. Arthur Penn, known for hip masterpieces like Bonnie and Clyde, Alice's Restaurant and Little Big Man, directs with roller-coaster pacing and subversive intelligence.

Genuine is an absolutely unwatchable film, featuring two by then seasoned performers and directed by one of our greatest filmmakers. The basic idea is that the two magicians play tricks on each other, and toward the end you aren’t sure when dangerous things are genuine or...


Published July 29, 2025
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Black Bag (2025)
It takes a spy to hunt a spy.
Filmmaker(s): Steven Soderbergh

When intelligence agent Kathryn Woodhouse is suspected of betraying the nation, her husband – also a legendary agent – faces the ultimate test of whether to be loyal to his marriage, or his country.

Section 39 am designating this as the first ‘four’ of 2025. I allow myself only two films from a year that have this recommendation. They are the films that I think either changed filmdom, or changed me and it is rare that a mainstream film...


Published July 28, 2025
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The 14 Amazons (1972)

The Yang family, men and women, have served their country loyally for generations. During the war General Yang is ambushed and killed. His widow and the entire family set out to avenge his death and defend the country.

Wonder Women am discovering the Shaw Brothers weighty output. I suppose this is typical: 75% fights with goofy, fakey choreography. There isn’t any wire work in this one, but some magical human bridges and the like. This time it is warrior women who by some guile...


Published July 25, 2025
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The Gamma People (1956)
Gamma-Ray Creatures Loose!
Filmmaker(s): John Gilling

An American reporter smells a story when he is stranded in an Iron Curtain country where the local dictator is using gamma rays to transform children into mutated henchmen.

Women, Trained story here is a bit interesting, deriving from Nazi experiments with children and indicating a trend actually well supported in the US. But the production is ho hum and it has no value for what it is. But it is an example of something...


Published July 23, 2025
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Jurassic World Rebirth (2025)
A new era is born.
Filmmaker(s): Gareth Edwards

Five years after the events of Jurassic World Dominion, covert operations expert Zora Bennett is contracted to lead a skilled team on a top-secret mission to secure genetic material from the world's three most massive dinosaurs. When Zora's operation intersects with a civilian family whose boating expedition was capsized, they all find themselves stranded on an island where they come face-to-face with a sinister, shocking discovery that's been hidden from the world for decades.

Clones really dislike David Koepp’s work, with one exception. He seems to absorb the world of the filmmaker, and amplifies his (always his) vision. In this case, we have a few set pieces that deliver no unexpected situation whatever — just sequences of narrow escapes...


Published July 21, 2025
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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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Murder by Death (1976)
By the time the world's greatest detectives figure out whodunnit... you could die laughing!
Filmmaker(s): Robert Moore

Lionel Twain invites the world's five greatest detectives to a 'dinner and murder'. Included are a blind butler, a deaf-mute maid, screams, spinning rooms, secret passages, false identities and more plot turns and twists than are decently allowed.

Simple Mind Games mystery is like no other narrative device because it challenges the viewer to a duel. You the viewer or reader are invited to outguess the detective character, the crook and even the writer. But since the created world depends on the writer,...


Published July 19, 2025
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