“We don’t have any expectations for our pets. We’re going to love our dog. Even if our dog craps on the floor, we’re going to love our dog. Even if our dog eats our best shoes, we’re going to love our dog.”
– Garth Stein

Blinded by the Light is a musical celebration of life, family, friendship and love, the song it sings as memorably pure and as hauntingly electrifying as any of the ones Springsteen himself has written and performed throughout his illustrious career.

While there are enough plusses to make The Art of Racing in the Rain moderately agreeable and not particularly difficult to watch, as far as the greater whole is concerned the inelegant mediocrity of its interpersonal human maturations is unquestionably calamitous.

While not for everyone, Ladyworld ended up getting to me, it’s freeze-frame conclusion nothing less than disquietly marvelous.

By the time Tarantino played fast and loose with history and ramped up his masculine Los Angeles fairy tale to bloodily gruesome new heights, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood had pretty much lost me, and I suddenly realized this was one bit of loopy pulp fiction I could have done without.

“Everyone is also all so funny and so good. They’re all very capable actors and improvisers. It was always surprising. The events happened in the moment and I think that you can feel that. ”
– Marc Maron

“I think so many people going into the movie might feel one way, and feel very strongly that way. By the end of the movie, it’s not that I hope the movie changes their mind, but I hope that it at least puts a question mark there. That they’re saying, maybe I don’t know everything, and maybe that’s not the point.”
– Lulu Wang

The Art of Self-Defense is a strange little comedy I couldn’t have disliked even if I had wanted to try to do so, Stearns’ latest a gleeful bit of martial arts rebellion I’m excited to see again.

The Farewell is one of the best films of 2019. Heck, it might even be one of the best of the entire decade.