Twisters (2024)

Twisters is a fun time. The script is absurd, but I had a good time. Glen Powell is a star. And Maura Tierney is really great. (This film does suffer from a severe and bewildering lack of Helen Hunt.)

My lord the script is stupid though. For some reason we are supposed to believe that these YouTubers aren’t really YouTubers but are actually like humanitarians in disguise? They don’t even chase the last tornado; they drive into the town it’s about to hit and try to save people’s lives? And people listen to them? Makes no sense. But I dunno. It’s hard to be mad at this. It’s loud and suspenseful and has a good soundtrack.

Kneecap (2024)

Kneecap is hilarious, wild, and supremely satisfying. I had a great time. And I fully feckin’ cried more than once.

Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (2023)

Nu Aștepta Prea Mult de la Sfârșitul Lumii (Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World) is the bleakest of dark comedies. This is a funny satire from Radu Jude, delivered in his insouciant, constantly innovative and unexpected style. This is a very challenging film, and it offers its laughs and its critiques in an uncompromising and bold way. This is hardcore, even brave. 

Honestly I just fucking love Radu Jude. This is so hard to watch at times, but fucking hell it’s smart… so smart. There are so many amazing, bananas sequences. And just so much heartbreaking, cutting absurdity.

The Settlers (2023)

Felipe Gálvez's Los Colonos (The Settlers) is very intense. We begin with these gorgeous views of Tierra del Fuego. A Scottish mercenary working for a Spanish settler–colonizer maps a path to the sea and kills native people. The film analyzes colonialism in no uncertain terms – it is about extracting land and people, destroying life in order to transform both land and people into property. "Nation" appears in this film as a nonsensical concept in the first part of the movie (the same colonizer owns the land on either side of the national border between Chile and Argentina) and then in the movie’s third act, nation has become something insisted on by the colonizers, forming a new nation with “justice” and “truth” and “equality” for everyone. The concept is just as absurd in the third act as it is in the first. 

This film gets even better the more I think about it.