i have the amc theater subscription that lets you see three movies a week for $25 a month.

it can be imax, 3d, premium theaters, anything, and it’s a good chunk of what’s out there.

living in hollywood, theres 7 theaters within a 9.5 radius of me. over 70 different screens.

but lets say you’re enjoying a few days out in palm springs or scottsdale and wanna see Gloria Bell

well you can do that too

i saw Us the same day i saw the Motley Crue thing on Netflix and it pained me to realize i liked the trashy hair metal bio pic better than the stylized mind trip masquerading as a horror flick.

im told Us is better the second time, and i must say i feel the same way about The Dirt.

another guilty pleasure was The Beach Bum which is utterly ridiculous but was beautiful to watch

and i felt supercharged afterwards.

arent movies supposed to be art?

isn’t it interesting to watch your buttons get pushed and your feelings get futzed with

while your senses are tingling, in my case, additionally due to the on-the-money soundtrack

maybe im an easy audience but i also liked Alita: Battle Angel

i wasn’t expecting much but i was more than impressed by the live action / animation sfx bruiser

plus you have christoph waltz and mahersala ali – four oscars between them – in surprisingly intricate roles

i dont know why i expected a james cameron / robert rodriguez movie to be bad, but im an idiot

was not in the slightest bit scared during the remake of Pet Semetary, the story steven king says was the one story that freaked him out.

is there something wrong with me? probably. i will cry in movies no problem but rarely am i scared.

is it because ive seen it all? am i really a million years old?

i thought it was a trudge through most of it, but i was stunned at how well the third act was.

still i give it a D and feel totally alienated when i read good reviews about it

Dumbo was another one that i had low expectations for and that Disney magic got me

how do they do it?

last night i saw Shazam in imax at citywalk

you dont have to watch it on a giant screen but it sure looked good.

i laughed i cried i cheered. this is my favorite movie of the year so far.

it is everything you should want from a comic book superhero origin story

whoever the dude is playing shazam couldnt have been more perfect

dc has done an excellent job of putting b and c-list actors in leading roles for

wonder woman, aquaman, and now shazam

and because the movies are so well written and well made

the movies become monsters and the stars become super famous.

its money ball for movies.

i dont know how much free will we have. but heres my guess.

when i was a kid they had electric slot cars that you could get from the sears catalogue for like $50-$60

which was a lot of money in those days. a house cost a nickel.

the thing about these slot cars were you could go fast but if you took it too hard around the corners they would fly off into the dining room and you had to go get em and put em back

i think God sees us fly off sometimes and he’ll put us back when he sees fit

or maybe not at all if he’s tired with your triflin ass.

for a week i was nervous about today and i thought i was gonna spiral off in a way

that would have me inconvenienced, lets say, for the rest of the year.

but that wasnt the case at all.

my weird little whip around the corner was fun, oddly.

and afterwards i picked up the pretty girl. drove her home.

she wanted to work on this thing shes doing. so i went back to burbank

and watched Dumbo in iMax and it was good.

so thank you Lord!

she hadn’t seen any of Harmony Korine’s films (Gummo, Spring Breakers, Julien Donkey Boy) but i had and loved him.

i love how free his characters are, how complicated he makes them. equal parts disgusting and wild, selfish and unconscious. do they have feelings? do feelings limit us? are morals important? should we push tuba players into the sea? should we kill cats and sell them to the grocer? is drinking and driving bad?

he pushes all the buttons about sex drugs and rock in this one. friendship. marriage. even crossdressing. it’s a wild journey through the vessel of oscar winner matthew mcconaughey who goes through ups and downs, but the low points dont effect them the same way it would you and i. which is inspirational to a point, but unbelievable. this is a man who can be homeless, live among the poorest, and then ride in a giant yacht with snoop dogg and have exactly the same experiences.

isnt that what we should all aspire for? isn’t that how life should be?

harmony’s extremes have always included neon colors and boozing and guns and drugs and music (an excellent array here from The Cure to Jimmy Buffet to many sounds of the 70s) and random topless women.

it can be startling to endure 90 minutes of debauchery from a character who you are trying to determine if you like or not. he is a poet. or at least he thinks he is. his agent, played poorly by the usually talented jonah hill, thinks he’s a great writer. in fact everyone including the judge who is deciding whether or not to send him to jail thinks he’s hugely talented. but is he? (yes) and is that enough to let him get away with acting like a spoiled brat? (maybe)

when the film was over and people were still in their seats, Amber, who is also a free spirit, said, loudly, THAT WAS THE WORST MOVIE I’VE EVER SEEN.

as we walked out, we passed a group. from it emerged a voice that said THAT SUCKED. I HATED IT. it was a mom with a huge scowl on her face. WE WASTED SO MUCH MONEY AND TIME ON THAT! she marched away from the group. I tried to console her by saying amber agreed with her. but that didn’t turn her frown upside-down. she clomped her way into the ladies room, her wildly dressed daughters trying to catch up behind.

Well, I liked it. I told them. They said, we did too.

I said, I couldn’t wait to see it.

SAME! they said.

I asked, have you seen Gummo.

They said OMG YES!

then amber said, oh so i guess I’m the mom and you relate to the hot young chicks. Nothing has changed.

in school they taught us the secret to writing a good story

introduce a totally lovable character, then fuck their lives over and see what happens. if they pull it off, great. if they die, then thats a tragedy. either is fine.

either is fine.

so here they make us fall in love with this totally unique person. he happens to be a mountain climber.

and the thing he loves to do the most is climb without ropes.

one false move and he dies.

at the academy you will meet some people who are obsessed with watching movies. one of those people worked on the same floor as me.

and i noticed that he was going to see this movie again because he loved it

and he was seeing it in IMAX, because it’s made by National Geographic

because mountain climbing is beautiful, apparently

and even though i think this movie would be emotional and beautiful and terrifying no matter where you see it

im so glad i saw it on imax.

for 2018 movies theres two movies ive given an A+ to:

isle of dogs
and now
free solo

some i had seen before some i hadnt. in just the last seven days ive seen

the big lebowski
greenberg
confessions of a dangerous mind
devil in a blue dress
500 days of summer
and a doc on jerry lewis, who i learned bought his first big house in pacific palisades