Sheep Detectives (2026)

 Combination of 'Babe' and 'Midsummer Murders', two genre types that you wouldn't think would work well together, but here they do. Remarkably well constructed screen play. ***

Carbon Copy (1981)

 Businessman George Segal finds out he has a black son and everyone over reacts. Major misfire was a major flop, and got seemingly everything wrong except the casting of a young Denzel Washington, who gets an "Introducing" credit. *

Happy Happy Joy Joy (2020)

 Documentary on the troubled production of hit 90's cartoon show 'Ren & Stimpy', as well as it's troubled creator John Kricfaluci. Very informative. ***

Miller's Girl (2024)

 Prime example of "High Tash". Jenna Ortega is the daughter of rich, absentee parents, who is just starting her senior year at a middle Tennessee public high school. Jenna is passionate about literature, and bemoans that she is not very interesting; she aspires to be a writer but fears she dosen't have anything to write about. After the idea is jokingly planted in her mind by a friend, Jenna sets out to seduce and ruin the life of her English teacher Martin Freeman, a failed author with one unsuccessful book to his credit. 

The minimalist story feels like a once salacious  stage play in the tradition of 'The Children's Hour', which flirts, teases and implies but never quite crosses the uncrossble line. Fine performances make the movie watchable, but it's never as deep and probing as it wishes it were. A meta tale about cliche and failed writers, that gilds a trawdry story to demonstrate the pain of not quite measuring up, and ironically succeeds in so doing. **1/2

Housekeeping (1987)

 'Housekeeping' is based on the award winning 1980 Marilynne Robinson novel of the name same and both adapted and directed by Bill Forsyth, a master of both melancholy and whimsy and my favorite Scottish director. Set in northern Idaho during the 1950's, the story follows sisters Ruth and Lucille (played as teenagers by Sarah Walker and Andrea Burchill, both give impressive and understated performances).

The two girls are deposited in a small mountian town with a grandmother they don't know, just before their mother abandons them to commit suicide. The two are raised by this loving grandmother until she dies, then briefly taken care of by two great aunts, before their mother's sister Sylvie (Christine Lahti (I'm always happy to see her)) is more or less forced to take over their care.

Sylvie is a kind, pleasant woman, but deeply eccentric, a horder, with little sense of time and decorum, she is cagey about her past and no doubt suffers from various mental illnesses. The whole movie is about growing up in a family that is haunted by the specter of mental illness, and how the two girls very different reactions to their aunt eventually drives them apart. The film is beautiful and muted, contrasting the gorgeous exteriors of the mountians with the troubled interiors of people with deeply held feelings they don't know how to process. ***1/2

Disclosure Day (2026)

 'Disclosure Day' is (hopefully the final iteration) of "That movie" that Spielberg has been making off and on for nearly 50 years. It is the spiritual successor of 1977's 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' and a highly condensed version of 'Taken', a generation spanning mini series about alien abduction produced by Spielberg that came out in 2002. The film principly follows two likable protagonists, an on the run former government tech expert played by (newish commer) Josh O'Connor, and a Kansas City weather lady played by Emily Blunt. These two are central players in a plot by renagade government agents, and extraterrestrials, to reveal the presence of aliens on Earth going back at least 79 years, which has been covered up by the United States government, quasi governmental agencies and even....

It's a tight, efficient movie, with some good set pieces, good mood pieces, and some time spent contemplating the implications of extraterrestrial existence on organized religion and other matters. Our current "post-truth zeitgeist" is a theme running under the film, but not as explicitly as the post 9/11 imagery in Spielberg's 2005 remake of 'The War of The Worlds'.

The movie has it weaker/shakeir bits, not everything lands and it's somewhat uneven, but it's truely Spielbergian moments and flirting with wonder made it an enjoyable watch and kept me with it throughout. I do wonder however, how well it will fair on a rewatch. The movie felt like it came out about a decade too late, if this had been released close to as is during the Obama years, I think it would have been widley embraced. The movie is getting alot of crap on YouTube, but I'd still recommend it. This is the weakest of the directors four films about aliens, but even a meh Spielberg movie is better then most theatrical releases of today. ***

Sins of Youth (1975)

Also known as "So Young, So Lovely, So Vicious", this Italin explotation film is essentially a meaner and more graphic, unauthorized remake of the 1958 Otto Preminger film 'Bonjour Tristesse'. Both films are set in Europe and concern a love triangle between a wealthy older man, his 20ish blond daughter, and the middle aged red head he wants to marry. Heck, Dagmar Lassander even looks a bit like Deborah Kerr, and both movies have the same ending. 

Getting to that ending their are some noticeable differences, including that the perspective step-mother/ step-daughter pair seem to want to fuck each other. There are some artie stylistic elements, but this is still Euro-trash, soft core stuff. At an hour and 16 minutes it's about the perfect length for what it is. **