I watched Joker. I thought the most clever part of the film was naming the main character "A Fleck"; I suppose "C Looney" would have been too obvious?

Wife and I watched "The Invisible Man" last night. Strong recommend. I don't want to say anything on here that would end up spoiling any of it. After "Upgrade" and "The Invisible Man" I will be paying more attention to Leigh Whannell.

Mission Impossible: Fallout. It's a formulaic movie that does the formula very well. I have no complaints.

Recently I've rewatched: Knives Out and JoJo Rabbit, both still very good.

Then watched for the first time: Ford v Ferrari which is also good, but definitely what my wife describes as a "dad movie."

Recently got my Columbia Classics 4K vol 1 box. Looking forward to the time existing at some point where I can enjoy everything.

AVENGERS

Favorite scene:

LOKI: there are no men like me
OLD MAN: there will always be men like you

My wife and I finally watched "It: Chapter Two". As always with It the second half is weaker than the first. I usually like James McAvoy but I felt he was lacking in the role of adult Bill. I have rewatched "The Nice Guys" and "The Gentleman" recently. Both are gold.

The wife was curious about Yesterday, so we watched it together. Decent movie but it feels like the premise was a bit wasted on the movie they ended up making.
It looked like Ed Sheeran had fun though.

Star Wars tros, wonderful movie. It’s a damn shame Star Wars “fans” ran that franchise in the ground.

COSMOS

Good movie for what it was.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

I was surprised to see it was only two hours long as I expected the conclusion of the saga to be much longer. Turns out that I should be careful what I wish for, because it felt like six hours. It seems the makers never saw a McGuffin or deus ex machina they did not like. It felt incredibly contrived and the personal drama left me cold.
A shame, really, as Episode VIII was my favourite Star Wars movie aside from the original trilogy and I was fairly optimistic about this one.

This was the last movie I watched recently as well. The premise was great. I really enjoyed the movie...........up until the last 10 minutes or so. The ending of the movie completely ruined it for me. I thought, up until that point, that it was one of the better movies I'd seen this year, and would have given it a solid 8.5/10. The way they messed up the ending drops it way down to a 6/10 for me.

Before the Devil Knows Your Dead. I've read it described as a heist movie where everything goes wrong in the worst possible ways; this is an accurate description. I have a low personal tolerance for maliciously dysfunctional family dynamics, so I checked out of the plot quite early and concentrated on the performances. The actors all did quite well, but ultimately the film is occupying the same headspace as Requiem for a Dream... neither is going to be a top recommendation from me.

I still haven't seen "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead" but I have seen "Requiem for a Dream" and that one is rough. I do think everyone should see Requiem at least once. But it is a harsh once.

BtDKYD is not nearly as (visibly) rough as RfaD, which IMO actually diminishes from it. The characters in the Lumet film are (in many ways) much more vile than most of the Requiem cast of characters, and are (supposedly) even more desperate than those in Requiem... but in "Devil" they felt like cartoon cutouts. Ethan Hawke did the best work in the cast IMO. "Devil" also has a sort of Pulp Fiction/Memento narrative of time-jumping, but I wasn't really that impressed with that element.

Edit: I suppose my ultimate complaint (aside from the very personal feeling like I wasted 2 hours of my life watching this movie) is that there are many other films which I feel "Did ____ better than BtDKYD." I'll have to watch "Before Sunrise/Sunset/Midnight" to see which was the best "Before..." Ethan Hawke film