2025
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Movie Review: Blue Moon
4 stars out of 5 That I went to see Blue Moon in the theater shows two things: One, that I trust Richard Linklater as a filmmaker and two, that I’ve come a long way in my reappreciation of Ethan Hawke. (It was Linklater’s 2014 opus Boyhood which in fact ended my quarter-century Hawke boycott.) […]
Movie Review: Bugonia
4.5 stars out of 5 This is the best Yorgos Lanthimos film that Yorgos didn’t write himself. (I’m looking at you, well-received Poor Things and The Favourite.) It best captures the very dark comedy that permeates his own scripts. So I was pleasantly surprised to see that Will Tracy wrote the screenplay, as I wasn’t […]
Movie Review: The Mastermind
3.5 stars out of 5I left this movie thinking I’d be giving it a higher rating than the aggregated writers on Metacritic. Was surprised to see that, no, it was averaging 80 out of 100, with a handful of perfect 100s from a few top reviewers. Well, I guess there’s a new hardass in town! […]
Movie Review: Frankenstein
4.5 stars out of 5 Guillermo del Toro has quietly become one of my favorite filmmakers. This is his fourth consecutive movie (after The Shape of Water, Nightmare Alley, and Guillermo del Toro’s Pinnochio) that I’ve rated 4.5 stars out of 5, and Pan’s Labyrinth is a classic as well. And via interviews, I’ve learned […]
Movie Review: Springsteen — Deliver Me From Nowhere
4 stars out of 5 I try to buy any new Springsteen album on the day of release, and it turns out I’m an opening-day guy for any Bruce biopics too. Had obviously been looking forward to this movie, after so many reports of filming days in Asbury Park, Bruce sightings on-set, etc. And I’ve […]
Movie Review: One Battle After Another
4 stars out of 5 Maybe Trump caught an early screening of this before they started sending National Guard troops against U.S. citizens. We start 16 years ago (but it might have been yesterday), when a band of revolutionaries are freeing detained immigrants. These anti-fascists include Leonardo DiCaprio, Teyana Taylor (who I’ve only seen in […]
Movie Review: The Long Walk
4 stars out of 5 I approve of Stephen King as an author and as a human being, but as I covered in my review of IT, I’ve never read his stuff or even seen most of the movies based on it. Which made The Long Walk another total surprise for me. The trailer really […]
Aquarium Playlist, 10/7/25
EPISODE #662: TREMBLING Joey Ramone — “Makes Me Tremble” [ALTERNATE THEME]The Decoys — “Not the Trembling Kind” Flaming Lips — “Silver Trembling Hands” Elf Power — “Twitching in Time” Bobby Hendricks — “Itchy Twitchy Feeling” The Blasters — “I’m Shakin’”Blaire Alise & the Bombshells — “Shakin’” Los Lobos — “Shakin’ Shakin’ Shakes” Big Maybelle — […]
Aquarium Playlist, 9/30/25
EPISODE #661: SINS Traveling Wilburys — “7 Deadly Sins” [ALTERNATE THEME]John Cozz & Ken De Poto — “Oh What a Sin” Sidney Gish — “Sin Triangle” Bruce Springsteen — “Wages of Sin” Nina Simone — “Sinnerman” Dream Syndicate — “Loving the Sinner, Hating the Sin”Sweet Nobody — “Sinner at Gatherings” Pet Shop Boys — “It’s […]
Movie Review: Spinal Tap II — The End Continues
3.5 stars out of 5 Upon re-watching 1984’s This Is Spinal Tap early in the pandemic, I rated it 10 out of 10 on IMDb, and if the scale allowed me, would’ve gone to 11. I was 15 years old when the movie first came out and it was a perfect blend of smart and […]
Jack Silbert, curator