at the cinema no. 2

thoughts on recent[ish] films

It’s kinda goofy for me to pose this as at the cinema no. 2, because the last time I did one of these was in November.

at the cinema

In an earlier version of this newsletter, I’d also included some not-so-new films (see: Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), The Big Sleep (1946), How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) … you get the picture) I’ve seen recently, too, but out of respect for our dwindling attention spans, I’ve decided to discuss those at a later time. Maybe in a what to watch when you wanna remember that film stars used to possess chemistry and charisma capacity. I don’t know. I’m workshopping the name.

(Below, the list of films featured on this newsletter. Yes, In Bruges and Tenet snuck in there. What am I gonna do? Apologies for containing multitudes, I guess.)

In Bruges (2008)

Tenet (2020)

I Was a Stranger (2024)

Rebuilding (2025)

The Last One for the Road (2025)

Obsession (2025)

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (2026)

The Odyssey (2026)

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Before you ask: no, I haven’t seen One Night Only (2026) yet. Normally I don’t mind a cheeky hate-watch, but knowing my vacation and literary role model Dua Lipa had to sit through her husband’s bad movie … it breaks my heart.

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I don’t love when a habit is used to supplant a personality, like that guy I went on one (1) date with last year revealing he went skydiving once a week,¹ but a dark theater is indeed a place where I feel at home. Clara is someone who frequently goes to the movies is not a personality, but it’s also not a lie.

Once a week or so I walk to the cinema at an unemployed time of day and watch a relatively obscure foreign (to me) film that no one else but the retirees sharing the screening room with me have heard of, and I am left with all these little thoughts that I’m too lazy to type into a Serious Letterboxd Review but am, on the other hand, quite eager to share with you all. I’ve stopped trying to find any sort of logic in my behavior.

So let’s discuss, in a spoiler-free capacity and more or less in the order of first to last seen, the aforementioned little thoughts:

In Bruges (2008) (dir. Martin McDonagh) (108 minutes)

Sometimes² I do this thing where I know just enough about a film that I can pretend to have seen it if I don’t wanna do the whole “yes I know I should’ve seen this but for some reason I haven’t quite yet managed to do so” song and dance. In Bruges was, up until quite recently, one of these films, alongside (I know) Call Me by Your Name and No Country for Old Men. Like okay sorry sometimes it’s more important to rewatch When Harry Met Sally and hear Carrie Fisher utter a dejected “... married …” for the 197th time than it is to watch a critically acclaimed film that’ll make me wanna die.

This is how I look at my friends all the time btw.

What I’m trying to say is people just assumed I’d seen In Bruges, possibly because I have frequently waxed poetic about The Banshees of Inisherin, McDonagh’s 2022 film much in the same black comedy vein as Bruges and starring, once again, Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson. I liked it so much that for a while my friends and I had a trivia group called “The Banshees of Ed Sheeran.” We were very good.

Anyway, I finally watched Bruges, and, to nobody’s surprise, I enjoyed it. Obviously. Like, oh, a story about two hit men resorting to dark and uncomfortable humor to thinly veil their all-encompassing trauma while on a job in Belgium, a country specifically made for depressed people?³ Please. You do not have to sell this one to me. I loved it.

(I will say, I didn’t know Ralph Fiennes was in this. Quiet as it’s kept, Fiennes is one of the most prolific actors working today—I just did the math, and from 2008 to 2025 he had a grand total of 59 projects released, coming out to 3.28 a year. What is this man running from? Which brings me to …)

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (2025) (dir. Nia DaCosta) (109 minutes)

Can you believe I watched this masterpiece while eating cereal? It’s of course not the cereal specifically that one might find objectionable, just the consumption of any food while on screen zombies are quite graphically—and not without relish—eating brains. You’d think it would turn one off any nutritional endeavor. But no. Every day is a new chance to discover just how anxious my attachment to my bowl of cereal is, and I think that’s beautiful.

This is how I look at my bowl of cereal every day. (The scenes between Fiennes and Jack O’Connell, btw … I was giggling and kicking my feet because these two girlies were having fun with the material!) (Photo: Columbia Pictures/Sony Pictures)

I’d watched 28 Years Later (2025) in theaters last June, but I didn’t manage to catch the immediate follow-up when it was released earlier this year. So the other day I made it one of my lunch movies, which is what I call the movies I watch at home while eating lunch. Sometimes I watch them over the course of two days (two lunches). People are weird about this, but it’s perfectly fine to break up a film into two parts. Don’t let great be the enemy of good and all that.

With every horror movie I watch, there comes a point where I’m like okay the horrors may persist but I personally will not, which I realize goes against the Girlboss Party Platform, but you will not find me forming part of any post-apocalyptic rebuilding taskforce. I’m good. Ralph Fiennes—the Fauci of the 28 cinematic universe, is that anything?—can handle it.

Despite the gore and the brains-eating situation, the cereal ended up not being an issue for me. I was busy pondering the film’s many queries. Who do we choose to be when everything is taken away from us? Does survival entail a loss of empathy, an abdication of goodness? Forget greatness, The Bone Temple asks a much simpler question: are we born human, or is humanity thrust upon us?

The Last One for the Road (2025) (dir. Francesco Sossai) (98 minutes)

Had the absolute time of my life watching this Italian film about two insane, alcoholic, and above all, jobless best friends drinking their way through a neverending Venice night. In this journey, some time between their second and fifth brush with death-by-drunk-driving, they meet a neurotic young man and, in an attempt to loosen him up and teach him to live as recklessly as they do, they more or less take him hostage. In a friendly sort of way.

The aging friends in question, two men whose livers are surely a mere facsimile to working organs. (Photo: Simone Falso/Bulldog Film Distribution)

This could not have been a more Italian film, in the sense that its essence was wildly depressing but the vibe … the vibe was magnificent. If it’s the end of the world, you might as well go out on a high.

Tenet (2020) (dir. Christopher Nolan) (150 minutes)

I’d just pretended to have watched Tenet the week before I finally saw it, and I really only saw it in preparation for The Odyssey.

Can’t say I loved it! There’s of course a chance I wasn’t watching it attentively enough, but I genuinely don’t think that would’ve helped much. Like, why is Kenneth Branagh Russian? Why am I supposed to buy into a presumed love story between Elizabeth Debicki and John David Washington despite the absolute dearth of chemistry between them?

To be clear, not much chemistry between Branagh and Debicki, either, despite their characters allegedly being married. Commendable bisexual lighting here, though. (Photo: Melinda Sue Gordon/Warner Bros)

I’ve seen Washington in several films now and my conclusion is that—sadly—he is not, at this time, a great performer. He doesn’t command or disappear into a role the way someone leading a rather esoteric Nolan film probably should. The vibe with Washington, and here I’m thinking of his work in both Tenet and The Piano Lesson (2024)⁴ is always I’m an actor and these are the lines my character is delivering, which as a viewer is only entertaining for about ten minutes before it becomes distracting. The exception to this is his turn as Ron Stallworth in BlacKkKlansman (2018), which had such an excellent script. Famously not something one often says about Nolan films, I fear.

Which brings me to …