This took me forever to finish. I started watching it before seeing The Secret Agent, and it provided a lot of additional color to that film. But had I gotten further in, I would've seen the real Mr Alexandre, as well as the blood bank. Missed opportunity there.

Really fell off fast, which is a shame. It even repeats a number of jokes from the prior entry.

Probably the best screen adaptation of a stage musical I've seen thus far. The dual nature of stage performance and “realistic” drama allows this to deliver many of the pleasures of stage performances while still taking advantage of the more elaborate staging/sets of a film.

Particular highs: the difference in audio quality within a single song when it switches between the stage-world and the real-world. All the excellent usage of mirrors and practical effects in the stage-world.

Can clearly see the way Satan Met A Lady learned lessons from this. The book was already pretty amusing, but this exaggerates so many of the character moments (especially between our engrossing duo of protagonists), at the expense of the mystery. And it's a good trade! Could've actually dropped more, since this pads the start of the film with events that precede Nick and Nora arriving in town.

Some of the line deliveries in this are genuinely hilarious, an almost pre-cursor to the ZAZ humor of Airplane! and Police Squad!.

Days after visiting the Tower Of The Sun, we came across a gacha machine selling “Taroman” figures. We didn’t comprehend it, but bought some right away.

This is a TV show from 2022 pretending to be a rebroadcast from 1987, complete with nostalgic interviews, never-existed product placement and commercials, and even a return of a child actor as an old man (wearing the exact same sweater). Incredible artifact.

I just don’t understand the appeal of this. Maybe you had to be there when it came out. But where reading the original book in 2026 is still remarkable for its dialogue and structure, this adaptation seems merely fine today.

Doesn’t quite hit the kinetic highs of Ongaku, but something that we get instead is a remarkable camera. Slightly baffling, off-kilter compositions as the camera sits under or behind or within(?) our subjects.

There’s a consistent reluctance to show us the races themselves, which is a lovely touch. often anchored to the floor, pointed at the sky, we instead have to settle for the fading pounding of feet on the track, and the inevitable roar as someone, unclear as of yet, crosses the finish line.

Hell yeah! A movie with a volatile reverence for its material. Effie’s “Be koind tah meee” as a mocking refrain, both of another character in the book/film, but also the book’s prose itself. And yet, despite all the jabs at the book, diligently follows the beats of the book.

I'm surprised by the negative sentiment toward the movie, and suspect it’s largely due to having one’s mind clouded by the stature of the later 1941 adaptation, which is frankly a bore.

As I walk out of the packed theater, “What the fuck was that?”

There’s something about Oscar nominations that makes people gravitate toward a film, and this one is utterly uninterested in making the viewing experience conventional, and I loved it. So many obstructed shots implying a very specific perspective. Visual ellipses of time (like the running in circles around the home).

A movie to be felt first, rather than comprehended.

Something that animation can pull off is to depict the alien in a truly alien fashion. Here, the art style and colors of the alien beings is wholly different from the humans. They belong in distinct visual worlds.

Shame that nothing else about the movie was really that compelling.

This was made so much stronger for having watched Pictures of Ghosts, which I only ever actually finished after I seeing this.