IT ENDS WITH USFERATU BOYS
5 days into 2025, what have we watched?
Happy New Year folks! I hope your vision boarding and rage cleaning went well. We've taken down the holiday decorations and I'm not mourning them as much as I have in the past. Likely because we've collectively been so desperate for 2024 to end. I felt nothing as we tossed that xmas tree in the green bin. In 2025 I am a cold, practical, unfeeling woman. If I may missquote Thundercat, “I live in LA sweetie, my emotions have been sanded off.”
The biggest surprise of 2025 so far is that I watched IT ENDS WITH US and I really liked it?? This comes with an asterisk because I did watch it quite hungover, and I’m especially susceptible to liking bad movies in that state. I’m still thinking about the one time I watched LOOPER hung over and became convinced it was the best thing to ever come from cinema.
Per IT ENDS WITH US- my partner will remind me that I kept saying “I think I like this movie” while scrolling on my phone, in a DIFFERENT room as pivotal plot points were playing out onscreen ten feet away. He clearly doesn’t understand how we consume media in 2025. Still, the parts I saw were well acted, the script was serviceable, and tbh, I really appreciated the editing. I couldn’t help but wonder- what was the original cut like? Because this is Blake’s (Taylor’s) Version. After watching Wayfarer Studio’s version, Blake said “no no, this won’t do” and brought in her own editor, composer, and threw in a Taylor Swift song. In the end, Sony ended up going with her cut. Lively and Baldoni drama aside, I love a competing cuts story. The power to shape a narrative in the edit will never cease to thrill me. Think Marcia Lucas re-editing AMERICAN GRAFFITI and turning a snoozefest into a box office smash1. Or the other way around, like when studio execs added bad VO and a new ending to BLADE RUNNER after it’s initial screenings. The film didn’t find success until the director’s original cut was released ten years later2. If you have access to the first IT ENDS WITH US cut, let me know. I must see it the way I must click on those extraction videos.
I also rang in the New Year with NOSFERATU. If you know me, you know I’m a vampire girlie. And a Robert Eggers fan despite having only seen THE WITCH (sorry, no one said The Lighthouse or The Northman were worth watching and I believed them). I have to agree with my friend AJ’s Letterbox’d review “Have you ever liked everything about a movie, but not liked the actual movie? That’s where I’m at with this one.”
There’s a lot to like. Eggers is a master at making old folktales feel real. But he has a way of setting a beautiful, grounded scene, and then pushing the characters a bit too far into artificiality. If you’ve seen the film, it's the moment the village people all start laughing in unison, or when Lilly Rose-Depp has her fourth dramatic monologue and does the robot. I thought Lilly Rose was fantastic, I just disagree with Egger’s need to hold on a long close up for what I like to call the “I remember when ma-mah…..” monologues.
Normally I love a long take! Give me a two-shot of actors playing off each other for several minutes and I’m in heaven. But not these far off stares and streaming tears monologues that never end. You get one per actor- that’s it! Not Eggers. Everyone got four “I remember when ma-mah….”s. And that mustache. Jesus. I really couldn’t get past it. The score also felt unremarkable? I don’t want to keep tearing something apart that is a masterpiece in some ways…. butijustcan’thelpmyself- what was with Aaron Taylor-Johnson?? Why was he so bad? Were there better takes and Eggers preferred the ones where Taylor-Johnson sounded like an over-the-top Regency actor? Or is it a classic case of a horror director being more concerned with the aesthetic of a performance than the human element? I’m baffled by it. Costumes were sick though.
Another film that could have used less close ups and more two shots, NICKEL BOYS. If you don’t know about the unique style of this film, it’s shot in all POV intercut with archival footage. This is director RaMell Ross’s first narrative feature. Ross comes from a documentary background and NICKEL is an impressive scripted debut. But over all, the POV didn’t work for me. Used sparingly I think it could have retained its effectiveness, but staying in it for 2 hours and 20 minutes - ultimately I think the performances suffered and it was difficult as an audience member to connect with the relationships. Acting into the barrel of the camera is HARD. Even the most skilled artist can fall into a wooden performance when your acting partner is a lens and an AD reading lines.
Leads Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson are great. And arguably the best scene of the film is where you see them both reflected in a mirrored ceiling (the poster image). I was desperate to have the two boys in the same shot. Or Herisee and his grandmother interacting in a scene. It’s such a devastating story. I’m sure the POV was meant to increase the intimacy and humanity, but when that style is usually reserved for first person video games, it feels less real. Scenes often felt like a historical recreation or a chat with a video game NPC. That said it is a gorgeous film and the last 20 minutes were incredible. Worth seeing in theaters if you can make it.
Now that I’m re-reading this I’m feeling guilty that I praised IT ENDS WITH US and somehow had more critiques for an ambitious film about institutionalized racism. To be fair I expected IT ENDS to be horrible and it surprised me by being quite emotional and effective. NICKEL BOYS was always going to be emotional and effective, and if anything I wanted to drop into the film even more! Too much archival space footage!
Despite seeing so many films in the last few weeks I’m still behind on my awards seasons list. Why haven’t I been able to make myself watch EMILIA PEREZ?? I think I’m worried I’ll hate it. Someone told me the gays aren’t rallying for BABYGIRL and that has me very concerned. After two WICKED screenings and one NOSFERATU I just don’t know if I have THE BRUTALIST’s 3+ hour runtime in me. Oh, I didn’t even get into A REAL PAIN, whose true virtue was being 90 minutes long. Bless you Eisenberg. Give the man an Oscar for the runtime alone.
Marcia Lucas/ AMERICAN GRAFFITI story told wonderfully by the film podcast WHAT WHEN WRONG 14 mins into this PHANTOM MENACE episode
Listen to the story of a VERY resentful Harrison Ford having to do VO for BLADE RUNNER at min 19:40.