The ship is great and all, but that sequence belongs to Goldsmith.

How much does seeing the biplane sequence in IMAX matter to you?

It's a good sequence, but it's about the only time IMAX adds anything in the roughly three hours of it all.

I'm good with this kind of exposition, but I see it as an exaggeration of the spy genre's general tendency to go in for this sort of thing

It's very much a spy movie about spy movies

(The exposition in INCEPTION is really, really bad)

I would also say the exposition is actually a lot denser and more jargon-y than the very, very "spoonfed" stuff you got in INCEPTION

More INTERSTELLAR-y

Here I am in 2025, ready to die on the "SHOWGIRLS is a masterpiece" hill

I don't know what to say, beyond noting that I used to think De Palma was merely trashy until something clicked in my twenties and I realized that my reaction to De Palma was more about the way I'd been blindly and uncritically equating the arbitrary aesthetics of "good taste" with "good cinema"

They do, but believe me, a lot of that exposition was barely intelligible when it showed in theaters

(I love TENET fwiw)

Here's what I wrote about De Palma a long time ago:

theotherjournal.com/2013/03/de-p...

But I'll also say that learning to esteem "lurid" storytelling and its aesthetics was an important part of my development.

"Trash" storytelling can be more vital and compelling than "highbrow"/"tasteful" stuff by virtue of being more instinctual and primal. It's closer to the "id" of it all.

De Palma is a generally sarcastic filmmaker who is fundamentally fascinated by disrupting the immersion by exposing the artifice of cinema.

That he pivots back and forth between the tawdry and the transcendent is a feature, not a bug. The whiplash is purposeful (and part of the fun).

This is a bad take, my friend

Stay tuned for the "Will Mikey Madison be the next Bond girl?" stories

I haven't seen it yet. I'm saving it for a special day.

The Brutalist is a mess, but I find its messiness endearing.

It's desperately trying to make the Next Great American Epic and I have a soft spot for follies of that type.

That said, at least it's not your typical Academy pick, so that's something.

It's amazing how perfect that reunion episode is

Lovely stuff.