Movies I Watched This Week (3/10/25 - 3/16/25)

no pre-roll this week, folks, we’re barreling right into The Movies. let’s go!

THE MOVIES

• MICKEY 17 (2025, dir. Bong Joon-ho). watched at Alamo Drafthouse Chicago.

  • there’s a tired, if not entirely inaccurate, maxim regarding Director Bong’s English-language output1, complaining about how loud and obvious and tonally inconsistent they are compared to the intelligence and gleeful darkness of his Korean-language work. i never really understood this complaint until watching MICKEY 17, which, yeah, that kinda fits the bill here. I truly don’t know what this movie wants to be, or how it wants to be it. the use of voiceover in the first hour threatens to sink the whole operation from jump, the very structure of the film feels flimsy and slipshod (surprising given Bong’s proclivity for storyboarding his work prior to filming ), and I sadly was not in the bag for Whatever Mark Ruffalo Was Doing. I think Robert Pattinson is having the time of his life, and the film actively lights up whenever he’s onscreen, which is, thankfully, a lot. it’s great that movies like this exist. it’s better when they’re good.

• ON BECOMING A GUINEA FOWL (2025, dir. Rungano Nyoni). watched at Gene Siskel Film Center.

  • wrote about this for Cine-File. don’t have a lot more else to say other than this is my favorite film of the year so far. I got entirely on this film’s wavelength from jump and never let go. a strange and sad film to say that I Enjoyed, but it’s the truth. what a ride.

• BLACK BAG (2025, dir. Steven Soderbergh). watched at Landmark Century Cinemas.

  • Soderbergh is Two for Two2 this year, and I love that for us as a society. you figure out early on that this film is less about political espionage and more about how Everyone’s Fucking Each Other, and then things really get going. a movie about how Being a Wife Guy is a reward in and of itself. 93 minutes of Very Attractive People saying smart dialogue and looking good. this is what the movies are for. I had a blast. see it!

    

• YANNICK (2024, dir. Quentin Dupieux). streamed on MUBI.

  • dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb (complimentary). during a performance of a stupid French farce, an audience member gets up and declares that he’s bored and having a bad time and wants the actors to do something else. chaos ensues. I’ve previously enjoyed Dupieux’s cinematic antics, and I do appreciate someone so committed to making film comedies that fully commit to their inanity without trying to be About Something. yes, there’s a lot thematically that can be drawn out from YANNICK, but it’s mainly an excuse to watch a ridiculous situation play out to its maddening end. sometimes that’s all you need.

what did you watch this week? any recommendations? tell me in excruciating detail why i’m wrong about MICKEY 17, I dare you. I hope you have a great week!