What I've Caught Up With, January 2025 Part 1

My goal every year is to watch 400 movies--not necessarily new movies, but movies in general. A secondary goal is that I'd prefer 80% or so of those movies to be new. To be on pace, that's a movie per day, plus three movies per month. I'm not starting out perfectly in this case, since I watched only 32 in January. I did take a lot of movies off the giant list, though, a number of them being from 2024 and thus getting full reviews. So, while today and tomorrow will look a bit shorter than usual, I actually removed a bunch from that giant black hole of things I need to watch.

What I’ve Caught Up With, January 2025 Part 1
Film: All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (2022)

A lot of people will tell you that the art world is filled with scams and nonsense, and certainly that’s true of some parts of that world. But there are important artists out there, and Nan Goldin is one of them. A hugely influential photographer, Goldin became the tip of the spear attacking the Sackler family who essentially created the opioid crisis and who tried to whitewash their image through massive donations to art museums. Goldin was also a major activist for the AIDS crisis and addiction in general. It’s a fascinating look at a career that has been focused not on controversy, but on subjects that were controversial. Much of her goal was to normalize things that had long been stigmatized, and she was largely successful. It’s not always easy, but it feels important because it is important.

Film: Much Ado About Nothing (1993)

There was a time when it looked like one of Kenneth Branagh’s goals was to walk his way through Shakespeare’s canon. He’s still made the best Henry V and I love his Hamlet. I’m less entranced with Much Ado About Nothing, but this has nothing to do with the cast. I like Shakespeare’s histories and tragedies more than his comedies, so this is much more about the source material than the cast or the production. It is a truly sumptuous production at that, and the cast is as good as you’ll find, even with the “He can’t do Shakespeare” addition of Keanu Reeves as Don John. I’m never going to love this story a great deal, but this is a gorgeously rich film.

Film: Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (2007)

Two brothers played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke both have money issues for different reasons—Andy (Hoffman) has been embezzling from his job and Hank (Hawke) has child support payments that he can’t meet. Their solution? Rob their parents’ jewelry store. Naturally, things do not go to plan, because if they did, there wouldn’t be a movie. The story is told out of order, which isn’t a problem. The shifts from one character to another are jarring, though, and I’m not sure of that artistic choice. Not a happy movie, but the cast is a good one—Albert Finney, Marisa Tomei, Michael Shannon, Rosemary Harris, and Leonardo Cimino among others are all great.

Film: Tin Cup (1996)

The Kevin Costner rule of movies is that Costner movies are good when they are Westerns or about sports and neutral at best otherwise (with JFK and The Untouchables as exceptions). Tin Cup is a golf movie starring Costner, which means that at least on the surface, it’s going to be good. Roy “Tin Cup” McAvoy (Costner) is a driving range pro riddled with personal demons, focused in large part on former college frenemy David Simm (Don Johnson). The two fight a bunch of dick measuring contests in large part over Dr. Molly Griswold (Rene Russo). It’s a pretty standard sports movie up to the ending, which is pretty great. Russo and Costner are an engaging pair, but the movie really shines when Cheech Marin’s Romeo, Tin Cup’s caddy, is on screen.

Film: David Lynch: The Art Life (2016)

The loss of David Lynch is one that is going to be felt in the cinematic community for, well, the rest of time. Lynch was a spectacular weirdo, the kind of person who finds art and is saved by it to the benefit of all of us. Based on this documentary, where Lynch talks about his past, had Lynch not discovered the joys of creation, there’s a fairly good chance that he would have ended up as one of the world’s most prolific serial killers. Like his films or hate them, Lynch’s body of work has forever changed is and can be done on film, and all of us are better for it.

Film: Fear Strikes Out (1957)

Baseball player Jimmy Piersall (played by Anthony Perkins) eventually disowned this biopic of himself, showing his early years up to his eventual mental breakdown on the field. Fear Strikes Out puts a heavy part of the burden on Piersall’s father (Karl Malden), for pressuring him too hard. While the story is a compelling one, it is marred in respects by the fact that Anthony Perkins is about as believable swinging a bat and throwing a baseball as I would be, which is to say not at all. Perkins has the charm and pathos to play a man hanging on the edge of his sanity, but he’d never be believable as an athlete.