Movies I Watched This Week (8/4/25 - 8/10/25)
PRE-ROLL.
- the recent Broadway revival of Jason Robert Brown & Alfred Uhry's musical "Parade" is winding up its first national tour, and we caught it last Wednesday here in Chicago. in short; it's a marvel! i've long been a fan of the piece, a brutal and textured work of historical drama, exploring anti-Semitism and bigotry and what it means to be an American, all delivered with one of the best musical theater scores of the last 30 years to boot. Michael Arden's (Tony Award-winning!) production leans into a minimalist theatricality that serves things remarkably well, and the whole cast (including the tremendous lead, Max Chernin) sang their faces off. as of this writing, it plays through Sunday. one of the best stage works i've seen this year, undeniably!
- Andrew Cuomo is losing his goddamn mind (not that it wasn't gone already). how did Chicago get involved in all this???? leave us alone! oy. at this point, if you live in New York and aren't voting for Zohran Mamdani, you've got to do some real soul searching, is all I'm saying.
THE MOVIES.
- EDDINGTON (2025, dir. Ari Aster). watched at Music Box Theatre.
- if EDDINGTON had anything insightful, or novel, or substantive by any means to say about the summer of 2020 in the United States, that would be great. seeing as how it doesn't, in any way whatsoever, then I'd gladly just take a well-told, engaging work of genre fiction. EDDINGTON doesn't do that either. as interesting and curious as brief moments of Aster's latest film are, the whole sadly comes up as a big bag of nothing, a loose jumble of synapses from that fateful summer filled with Bad Vibes in all directions, with barely any perspective other than "this was Weird, right?" i'm pretty firmly down the middle with this one, and if I ever gave this a rewatch, i'm sure I would either find someone new to love about it, or double down on its inadequacies, but - as with anything dealing with 2020 - why would I want to relive this again?
- STRAY DOG (1949, dir. Akira Kurosawa). streamed on Criterion Channel.
- wrote about this for Cine-File. early Kurosawa is hit-or-miss for me, but I adore the sweltering atmosphere this film gives off, and it has a heck of an ending. for those seeking out a well-made detective film, I give a firm, if reserved, recommendation!
- SINNERS (2025, dir. Ryan Coogler). watched at Music Box Theatre.
- watched this on 70mm! unclear if it's the actual mix for the film, or something up with the Music Box's speakers, but the sound mix (especially regarding dialogue) was a tough hang here. ah, well. still a solid film overall! i'm not as over the moon as most folks are (a lot of mid-scene flashbacks throughout come across as a lack of trust in the audience's memory, and I go back and forth on the deployment of the "post-credits" scene), but it's got top-notch performances and gorgeous cinematography and That Music Scene. it's undeniably the year's best blockbuster, as things currently stand in August 2025 (though what the heck is it's competition later this year? WICKED: FOLIE À DEUX???). our screening was sold out and everyone was having a grand old time. SINNERS!
- 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968, dir. Stanley Kubrick). watched at Music Box Theatre.
- my favorite Stanley Kubrick film, my favorite sci-fi film, just one of my unabashed favorites of all time. fool that I was, I sat right at the front of the theater for this 70mm screening and - though my neck was angry at me - it felt kind of amazing to be completely subsumed by the imagery onscreen. this was my first viewing in a post-"A.I. Is Everywhere" world, and the film's treatment of technology as an all-corrupting force did not go unnoticed. the final sequence at Jupiter completely resets my brain. if you haven't had the chance to see this in a theater, I hope you can make that a priority the next time it comes around.
that's all for now! what film do you want to see on the largest screen possible? if you could make a film about the summer of 2020, why the hell would you do that? what's wrong with you? until next time!
