Some movies I watched recently
Avatar: Fire and Ash
Not very good! It's Avatar 2 almost exactly all over again, with the single big change being that the bad guys have a Horny Arc that, in my opinion, doesn't go far enough. Sigourney Weaver continues to strain credulity in her performance of a child. I'm not a fan.
The Lion in Winter
Remains one of the best scripts ever written for a film. Absolute banger. Insanely quotable. Every time I watch it I lose my mind at the "knowledgeable family" rant, and the rant about how the royal family generates war as a kind of whole-body war syphilis. Great shit.
Emma (1996)
I cannot watch this movie without thinking of Gwenyth Paltrow's current career - and specifically, about the Maintenance Phase episode about her and about Goop. It's difficult to watch and enjoy this movie when thinking about how loathsome the actress is. Harder still when it's Emma, a story about a girl who just spends all her time being overly mean to her friends??
Le Cercle Rouge
Incredible vibes. Peak heist sequence, really one of the best. Ending lost me - it escalates with a twist at the ending, but it's the kind of twist which seems to invite a further twist... and it never comes. Love to see all these guys acting and hanging out and doing crimes but I think it misses being truly great by just running out of things to say. If it were made today it would have a lot more to say because it would be substantially gayer.
I usually watch a lot more movies than this during December - there was one year I watched more than one film a day for the final few weeks of the month - but I had a very busy schedule this year, and this is all I've seen in the last few weeks. However, I'm on vacation with a USB full of foreign horror films and Euro thrillers, so I will probably get in a few more good ones before 2026....