Reviews

I find it weird that this has had a critical re-evaluation, because it kind of sucks and is boring outside of a few high-energy scenes that yes, have camp value. I can appreciate those parts. Faye Dunaway is engaging, and there's fun to be had in internally debating whether she's giving a great or terrible performance. After a lot of backwards and forwards in my mind, I came to the conclusion that yes.

Mommie Dearest is a slog for much of its runtime though, and I feel like you may as well just watch the stand-out scenes and ignore the rest. There are little surprises to be found throughout 90% of the scenes here, and if the filmmakers and/or Dunaway hadn't gone full-ham at a handful of key moments, I doubt anyone would remember this.

So, for the people who call this terrible because of the most over-the-top stuff, I don't entirely agree. Those moments give the film something of a pulse, for better or worse, all the while everything else is a slog. But the group of people who seem to love this film in its entirety, and whoever's responsible for getting it re-classified as a comedy/drama on Letterboxd? Nah, get out of here. This is a clunky biographical drama; I highly doubt the humor was intentional.

Maybe I was expecting a little too much from The Legend of the Stardust Brothers, but can you blame me when it's called The Legend of the Stardust Brothers and is promoted as a Japanese surreal musical/comedy film? I may well have been wanting too much, for it to scratch an itch perfectly, and then when it didn't, a little disappointment set in. But... that's on me, or it could be on the mood I'm in tonight.

Taking a step back, The Legend of the Stardust Brothers is quite good, very funny at times (definitely not always), and most of the music is super catchy. It's really all about the songs, and then there's a little fun to be had by seeing how all the music gets strung together. Spoiler alert: it's barely comprehensible, especially in the second half. If it had spiraled out of control in some other way, maybe it would've resonated more, but I just wasn't loving the anarchy and the energy of this one entirely.

But at the end of it all, that's the nature of cult movies, even more so when the cult movie in question is a musical. The Legend of the Stardust Brothers is one I could come back to a certain point, and may well love more. I think for the time being, I can see myself returning to some of the songs here. It works musically, it's occasionally funny, and there's certainly creativity to be admired.

Was it my kind of messy? No, not exactly, but it could well be your kind of messy.

I've seen too many movies where one shocked character asks a character who's done something dangerous, "Are you crazy?", but I don't think I've ever heard a character just flatly say "yes," and as casually as Mickey Rourke says it. It's a small moment in a film that has many good small details, but it stuck out.

Barfly hasn't much of a story, instead following one drunken man as he walks and drinks, staggering through life. He's not partying, like in comedies that involve characters abusing alcohol, but neither does he seem to be drinking himself to death, like Nicolas Cage's character in Leaving Las Vegas. It's an interesting and less expected look at alcohol dependency, and the way drinking a lot seemingly every day ultimately changes one's life, usually for the worse, and occasionally for the better (only really in brief spurts for the latter).

But Rourke's character continues to fight through life. He's not likable, but he's interesting. He's a victim to a compulsion for continual drinking, but he doesn't act like a victim, and sometimes it feels like he wants to do what he does. How much agency he has and how much he's subserviant to liquor is interesting to think about.

Mickey Rourke can act. Easy pick, but I remember The Wrestler impressing me the most. Barfly is another performance of his where his physicality is fascinating and admirably committed. I think it's the second-best performance I've seen of his. I've known some kinda drunks in my time and I don't think the mannerisms and the way he moves around a room are too far off the truth. This is not a fun drunk, but neither is it a Leaving Las Vegas "I want death now" drunk. It's something new, and I liked that.

Faye Dunaway is good, I think, but I'll be honest... I'm not sure how credible she is, because I just haven't seen women of that age in that state. She might look a bit too pretty, too, contrasting against Mickey Rourke who looks consistently rough and schlubby throughout in a way I quite respected.

What we have is a sluggish character study of a film, but that central character is good, and Rourke's performance is excellent. Those qualities make Barfly more than worth devoting 100 minutes.

I generally like Louis Malle's movies, and think he tends to be pretty under-appreciated as far as French directors go. He seems more consistent than someone like Godard, and his hits hit even harder than Truffaut's, but then I get to Damage and it's probably the first time I felt disappointed by one of Malle's films.

It has some great actors in it, including Jeremy Irons and Juliette Binoche in the lead roles, with a story that could've been interesting if handled a little better, or differently somehow. Basically, it sees a father striking up an affair with his son's girlfriend, and chaos eventually unfolds as a result. Actually, describing the plot makes it sound stupid, but maybe "intriguing" is the right word. It sounds alarming and far-fetched but I'm sure there was a way to make it work.

Damage doesn't really work though. It moves pretty slowly and I don't think it was particularly well-written either. It doesn't look bad, and I think the actors do the best with what they were given, but they can only go so far with something this under-written. It'd be nice to be able to recommend it to people who like Louis Malle or one or more of the cast members, but I don't think that's entirely possible. It could've been worse, and there are some decent qualities, but it wasn't a very interesting or exciting watch, at the end of the day.

I wanted to revisit this after seeing Furiosa for the first time, and before seeing Furiosa for a second time. Fury Road is the better of the two, but like its follow-up almost as much for different reasons. Still, it will be interesting to see if I still feel as strongly about Furiosa after rewatching Fury Road right beforehand.

Fury Road probably has the better action set pieces and the pacing is phenomenal, but I find its prequel more interesting narratively, and I think the characters/performances make more of an impression there. Immortan Joe is phenomenal-looking, but I really feel like Chris Hemsworth's lead villain in Furiosa makes more of an impression, and Tom Hardy's schtick in this movie... I don't want to call it a bad performance, but he goes full Hardy and I'm a little tired of it in 2024. I don't think I minded as much in 2015, but Hardy fatigue started to set in for me post-The Revenant I think. He's a bit one-note as an actor, but he played that note extremely well for a few years there, back in the early to mid-2010s.

Across both films, some instances of the hyperactive editing and janky sped-up footage come close to being overdone, but I think it gets reined in just enough. It gives both these movies a distinctive feel, at least, and while some trends in action movies get copied (like filmmakers trying to replicate the Bourne series handheld/shaky footage or "one-take" action scenes becoming trendy), it's a testament to George Miller's style that no one has really tried to replicate the feel of Fury Road. How could you?

That unique voice means we might well have seen the end of the Mad Max series. There are places to go narratively post Fury Road/Furiosa, but if this duology of sorts is the final chapter, I think that'll feel relatively satisfying. I just don't see how another director could step in when this has basically been Miller's series for almost half-a-century now, across five films. I'd always be open for more, but the man's almost 80 now, so I'd understand if this was the end of the road. What a journey, in any event.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind is one Spielberg film I almost love, but there are some things about it that kind of confuse me and hold me back from loving it. He combines a family drama and a portrait of obsession with a surprisingly gentle spin on the "aliens visiting Earth" sub-genre; one that tends to involve violence, mayhem, and destruction.

I think the family drama side of things hits hard and works, and that rift between a husband and wife is something Spielberg would keep going back to thematically, eventually exploring it most explicitly in The Fabelmans (another film of his I like a lot without loving). And then all the stuff about discovering the aliens and figuring out how to communicate with them, while a tad too slow pacing-wise, is also engaging.

I just don't know how I feel about the film as a whole, as something that tells both these stories and eventually makes them converge. I'm not really sure how I'm supposed to feel about where Richard Dreyfuss' character ends up. There's something I'm missing or something I just don't understand emotionally, and it bugs me, because I do want to be moved by this film the same way E. T. moves me. Both films feel equally passionate, in terms of Spielberg's voice being behind the pair, both films are technically astounding and well-presented (his knack for visual storytelling has been praised to the moon and back, but that doesn't mean it's not worth praising once more).

I get to the end of Close Encounters of the Third Kind and feel like it's a bit too slow and just isn't something I can connect to emotionally, but the part of my brain that loves seeing good filmmaking is happy, because this is extremely well-made. The effects, the music, the way it looks... all great. I think the performances are generally good, too, even if I don't fully understand the character journeys or how I'm supposed to feel. I have felt a little frustrated both times I've seen Close Encounters of the Third Kind now, but maybe one day it will click. Until then, at least there's still a good deal I can appreciate here.

Makoto Shinkai's films are always so shiny.

Suzume got off to a great start, hitting the ground running and then showing a willingness to get strange early on (a cat's introduced as something of an antagonist, and a main character gets turned into a three-legged chair within the first 10 or so minutes). It continues to take unpredictable turns, dialing back the craziness at a point to explore some more serious things thematically. It's not even, but it's ambitious; I can respect the swings it takes at least.

There are some striking and emotional moments throughout, and it can also be fairly funny, mostly early on. There was something missing for me, and I guess it continues to be fairly normal for me to come away from a Makoto Shinkai liking it but not loving it, but it's still good. Good can be good enough.

This was my favourite movie as a kid, and now as an adult... yeah, it's still amazing.

All but defined my sense of humour (understatements and ridiculous over-the-too slapstick + destruction), and even now, I still find almost every second of this funny. The way the lead characters are so dry and subdued in a world that basically functions like a live action cartoon never stops being funny.

Then there's the fact it's an action-musical-comedy-crime film all at once, and it all just works. The cast and cameos are insane, the stunts and car chases are incredible, and the music all genuinely slaps.

The pacing is perfect too, and it doesn't drag for a second of it's fairly lengthy 132-minute running time.

You may argue that yeah, the fact that one star died very young, the other turned into a bit of a conspiracy nut, and the director was involved in causing a horrific and fatal accident on set of another film sours the film (as does the fact that almost everyone in this film is now dead, which is weird considering it's not ridiculously old yet), but on the other hand: the antagonists are cops, ignorant rednecks, and literal nazis, so... that actually keeps the Blues Brothers strangely heroic still, even now in 2024.

From the director of Grave of the Fireflies comes Pom Poko. The former's a tragic World War II film about the impact warfare can have on the young, while the latter's about raccoons with some distinct anatomy who can shape-shift and they declare war on humanity because the human race is destroying their land. You could almost call Pom Poko a war film as well, if you really wanted to, because of that conflict, but it's tonally very different and has a lot of fantastical elements instead of brutal realism. There are darker moments throughout, but most of it is pretty fun and generally light.

Unfortunately, it's a movie that feels so much longer than it is, and my one big complaint is that the pacing kind of sucks. Much of the story's narrated, especially early on, and it never really settles into a groove or flows, which is a problem when your movie's two hours long.

However, I did really like - and sometimes love - most of the scenes on their own, and Pom Poko was always finding ways to surprise, baffle, and alarm me (in good ways). I just wish all those great scenes blended together a little more satisfyingly. There are so many great, creative ideas presented and depicted throughout, but the film ultimately lacks cohesion.

There are some Martin Scorsese movies that get better with time, or become easier to appreciate once you're older, but some others are just how you remember them. The latter's the case for After Hours, which I really liked without quite loving a decade or so ago, and still really like without quite loving after seeing it at a cinema tonight. Couldn't resist seeing a film like this on the big screen though, because it's the kind of cult movie that probably barely ever gets screened. Still, there was a solid turnout for it tonight, which is always good to see.

I love how this builds, even if it means the first half-hour of After Hours is a little slow and also lighter on laughs. There was a clear attempt made at making each situation a little crazier, funnier, or more awkward than the last, which you definitely appreciate in the back half. Once it gets going, it never really loses that sense of momentum, and the anxious comedy really works during the film's best moments.

I feel like there's a lot to unpack here. It feels denser thematically (or maybe even philosophically) than I remember it being, and doesn't feel like chaos and randomness for the sake of it (but if you want to watch it just for that kind of experience, it does satisfy). It's mid-range Scorsese to me, in the end, but Scorsese's mid-tier stuff is still outstanding, and I think After Hours teeters on genuine greatness. It is definitely one of Scorsese's more under-appreciated films, and also one of his most distinct.

I've been digging into some more Ghibli films not directed by Hayao Miyazaki lately, and it's been hard to talk about them, because I haven't got much out of them. People seem to like The Secret World of Arrietty and From Up On Poppy Hill, and those films didn't do much for me beyond looking pretty. I was worried about When Marnie Was There, because it was from the same director as the former, but I think it felt like a significant improvement.

I mostly enjoyed this one and found it to work emotionally (for the most) part as well as visually. It was still slow at times, but not to the point where it made me disengage entirely. It's not a top-tier Studio Ghibli release, but it's a good one that works more than it doesn't. It wasn't mind-blowing, but it was a pleasant film, and I was happy to spend some time in this world, more so than the worlds created by those other Ghibli films I've seen over the last day or two.

I saw a screenshot of a Pride and Prejudice review recently where someone gave the book a rating of 1/5 and said it was nothing but people going to each other's houses for the story's entire duration. I don't know to what extent they were joking (that novel's not my thing and I almost agree with the review, but that's another story), but I could almost describe The Secret World of Arrietty as not much beyond tiny people walking around areas designed for normal-sized people. This is especially so in the film's first half - it's glacially slow-paced. When things pick up comparatively speaking, with a bit of a plot, it doesn't fare much better in terms of being interesting.

The animation is pretty great, as one would expect from Studio Ghibli, but very little else appealed to me. It is a story based on a children's book, and it's supposed to appeal to kids, but my problem wasn't really the simplicity. It just felt slow, in a way that I can imagine being kind of boring for kids. If I'm underestimating some kids, I'm sorry, but I wouldn't blame others for being lulled into restless sleep by The Secret World of Arrietty. When it comes to other films, I'd be saddened by the idea of kids getting bored, but with this one, I'd understand in all honesty.

I'm surprised to see other people liking it so much. I just really didn't get the appeal for this one, beyond the animation. It looked very nice. It sounded okay, regarding music and sound design and all that jazz. But in every other respect, it bored the hell out of me.

For me, it was an uncharacteristically dull kind of fantasy story. There are plenty of fantastical Ghibli films that look amazing and feel engrossing to get lost in, but The Secret World of Arrietty made for an odd experience; the world was colorful, richly detailed, and, in some ways, inviting, but I just wanted out of it after a while.

Which Side Are You On? Is the first game-changer episode of Succession narratively, meaning Austerlitz has to be a little quieter, seeing as the show needs to spend time on build-up in order to deliver something else surprising later on. But it functions very well as an episode about the aftermath of the last episode's events. You couldn't quite call it a breather episode, because it's still intense and squirm-inducing to some extent; just not as intense as the previous week's nail-biter of an episode.

Kendall and Shiv have the most important storylines here narratively, so far as future episodes are concerned, with the dynamic between Roman and Logan also being interesting (and more understated, at least for now). It's a rock solid episode, which is about the "worst" thing you can say about most Succession episodes from this point onwards.

Also, even though Gregg annoys me a little sometimes, I'll have to admit that his presence in this episode was actually missed!

The Masaaki Yuasa films I've seen before were a good deal more out-there and comedic than Ride Your Wave. After the first act, there are some fantastical elements introduced, but I feel like they happen a little too late in the film to discuss without running the risk of ruining things.

Basically, to try and stay vague, it's a fairly light and even sappy romance, and then things take a slightly stranger turn, but it never goes all out with the craziness like Mind Game and Night Is Short, Walk On Girl both did. I think I prefer those, even though Ride Your Wave has moments that hit harder emotionally and it feels more moving because it's quite grounded.

It looks great throughout. Again, without too many crazy moments, the visuals aren't as stylized as one might be used to with Masaaki Yuasa, but it's a good-looking movie and it still has a nice (downplayed) style, to some extent.

The final act is a bit weird. Things move away from the main character(s) a little, and then back again, and the side characters never fully fit into the story; not when they were sort of there in the background in the movie's first half, and not when they were kind of between foreground and background in the second half. I did also think Ride Your Wave was aggressively sappy for a while near the start, but the tone/vibe it has in the first half-hour or so does get changed up in interesting ways during the final hour.

It's not a seamless or perfectly executed anime movie, but it's a nice watch. Some moments work really well, there are a few bits that don't quite pay off, and then the rest of the film's fairly solid, if not quite amazing or anything. I think that overall, it's pretty good. Pretty, pretty, pretty good.

Gotta love how this is one of the most striking looking anime films of it's time and it's paired with super silly comedy that quite often literally gets lost in translation (there are many extra subtitles explaining plays on words, kind of explaining things but also reducing the capacity for those things to be funny. I think I would've preferred them being treated like non-sequiturs).

When it's not being silly, there's also some romantic melodrama in here. It's odd, messy, but always fun to watch, it only for how the entire thing looks and sounds. It's a good burst of retro anime, and I dug the style. I think that was enough.

I am fond of Clint Eastwood's work, even when it's not the best (or even kind of bad). I'm close to seeing every movie he's ever starred in now, and have seen the majority of his directorial output. Once you work through the hits, it sometimes feels like diminishing returns digging deeper, because a good many lesser-known Eastwood films just don't really work. However, I was glad I kept digging, because White Hunter, Black Heart is surprisingly good, and feels quite distinctive, too.

Eastwood plays a director here, and someone who's very different from the typical Eastwood kind of character. I feel like film production playing a role gives things a personal and introspective edge, and as a character study, it largely works. Behind the camera, Eastwood's direction is typically solid but never really showy, though in front of the camera, I think he gives one of his most underrated lead performances.

The ending gave me a mild feeling of "that's it?", and aspects of the final scene were so on-the-nose it felt like self-parody (maybe it was? Given the characters are making a film, they talk about endings, and so maybe there's something to the strangeness/bluntness of this film's actual ending). I think it meanders and it's not a strong film narratively, but there are interesting ideas being explored, the central character is fascinating, it's technically sound, and Eastwood's performance is great. Two years later, he'd combine many of these positive attributes with a more emotional/gripping/overall stronger narrative in Unforgiven, but White Hunter, Black Heart is still quite good overall, and worth digging out for anyone who likes Eastwood but has never dug this one out before.

Spy movies really aren't my thing. The slow ones I can respect when well-made, and the more explosive ones can be fun if they have good action set pieces, but I don't tend to go out of my way to watch spy-related films. But The Good Shepherd looked interesting because of the strength of the cast, and because it's one of two movies Robert De Niro's directed. He also has a supporting role here, and it's hilarious how almost every time he's on screen, he's sitting down. If a director wants a certain character to always be in a comfortable position, who can protest?

Comparing it to A Bronx Tale, it's also a bit funny how that one feels like it pulls a little from Goodfellas, and The Good Shepherd pulls a bit from another recent (at the time) Scorsese film: The Aviator. It's got the same kind of glossy look and color scheme, and it's not surprising to find out they both had the same cinematographer.

Look, rambling aside, The Good Shepherd is quite competent as a spy film, and it's interesting (if a little heavy-handed) how it uses a story that takes place between 1939 and the early 1960s to reflect all the U. S. conflict of the 2000s. Outside of acting, De Niro is politically outspoken, so I can see why this story would've appealed to him at this time.

The Good Shepherd is just too long though, being 167 minutes in length. It drags at times, but again, going back to the whole me and spy movie thing, I often feel like these sorts of movies drag. I guess the huge runtime here just compounds that. It's nicely presented, and the performances are generally good. I felt a bit mixed on Matt Damon in the lead role, but that might be more of a writing problem. He's a character whose journey should be interesting, and kind of is on paper, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired.

So, the film looks and feels good, it has thematic weight, and features a good cast, but it's also too long, narratively dull, and sometimes heavy-handed. It's interesting, and would be a recommendable oddity within De Niro's body of work if it had been 30 to 45 minutes shorter; that's really the biggest hurdle to enjoying The Good Shepherd, rather than merely having a decent amount of respect for it.

I was cautiously optimistic Furiosa would be great, with enthusiasm being dulled a little by seeing some reviews that came across as a little disappointed (still, no one saying it was outright bad at least). I think this tempered my expectations a little, and I went in expecting something slow and less spectacular than Fury Road, but honestly, I came away from Furiosa liking it almost as much as that previous film.

It isn't as relentless or white-knuckle, and it's not as pure of an action movie, but I honestly think the amount of action in both films is comparable. Furiosa felt non-stop at times, even a lot of the time... just not all the time, owing to the film trying to do something different this time around. Ultimately, this is a good thing.

The stopping and starting of action would be a flaw if the downtime, so to speak, was boring, but I really enjoyed most of the non-action scenes here too. This is the Mad Max movie that feels the most like an epic so far (a character even says the word here, near the end), and I think it earns its 2.5-hour runtime. A full-scale war plays out alongside the title character's story, almost feeling like two movies in one that also intersect at points. I could understand missing the purity and simplicity of Fury Road, but I liked the different things George Miller was trying to do here.

The action often feels like "more Fury Road," and that's honestly okay with me. There's an extended chase scene around the halfway mark that feels like an excuse for Miller to cram in some of the crazy stuff he couldn't fit into Fury Road, and it's super entertaining. The escalation of it all was wonderful.

It's ambitious and doesn't entirely stick the landing of every single thing it's going for, and I wonder whether some of the callbacks/call-forwards will feel clunkier as time goes on. Still, for now, that doesn't matter. I was engrossed in this for two and a half hours and I found it a joy to see Miller do his thing; here's a guy who's still able to execute a bold vision perfectly on screen, and put a massive budget to good use. This feels a lot more finely crafted than most blockbusters (best blockbuster of the year is still Dune 2, though), the cast's great, the action's fun, and the ambitious story was engaging.

I think it's a pretty significant success, and not too far off Fury Road quality-wise. That being said, I would like to revisit that 2015 film and then see Furiosa once more in cinemas, just to see if my thoughts will change in any way.

When I was younger, I used to feel jealousy towards people who clicked with stuff like this, but now I think I might pity them.

This film's Godard at his lamest and most frustrating. It's pretty much unwatchable. If I have to give him credit, I guess he could've made Nouvelle Vague longer. An 89-minute runtime might suggest some restraint, but it felt much longer.

Godard's a director whose well-known stuff I watched some time ago and kind of liked, but it only took a couple of deep cuts for me to get the sense his style was generally not for me. This is one I wanted to give a chance, because it's been years since I saw a Godard film and Alain Delon was in it, but I found it more insufferable than anything else by Godard I'd seen before.

Characters speak about nothing, every scene is tedious, everything feels meaningless, and if that's the point somehow I don't care and still don't like it. This just sucks.

2 Fast 2 Furious boldly asks the question "What if 2000's The Fast and the Furious was good?", and then confidently follows up on that by being The Fast and the Furious, but good.

I was not a fan of that original movie when I saw it for the first time a couple of weeks ago, but this one delivered. It's made me surprised to find that it tends to get called one of the worst in the series. Honestly, if more of them are like this, I could see myself growing attached to the whole stupid franchise as a whole.

There are still glaring problems throughout, much of it's corny and overblown, and though the pacing's generally good, a few scenes feel a bit repetitive. Still, everyone seems to be taking this film a little less seriously, not to the point of self-parody, but I appreciated this movie going a little more over-the-top and being just generally crazier.

Also, Paul Walker is pretty good here, understanding the assignment and carrying the movie pretty well; also, I think he was better here than he was in the first movie. I didn't like Vin Diesel's performance in the first (he's a charisma vacuum, as far as I'm concerned), so I kind of enjoyed his absence here. I'm hoping that when he returns as a regular, he'll either fit in a little better to what's going on, or everything else will be wild enough that his presence will barely register. That's my Fast and Furious hot-take. So far, I don't like - or want - Diesel in these movies.

The action's more fun here and I think it feels a little less slow and dour compared to the first. There's energy and some big action sequences, and I had fun for the majority of the runtime. This is good fast-food cinema, as opposed to the first, which felt like a Big Mac that had mild but still inevitably detrimental amounts of rat poison sprinkled on top.

Onwards to Tokyo Drift next, I guess (that one I have actually seen before, but some years ago now).

This really could've been great, and I'm a bit disappointed it was merely decent. Werner Herzog's one of my favorite directors, Tim Roth is always great (he has a villainous role here), Udo Kier has a supporting role here (he's a match made in heaven for the Herzog style), and Hans Zimmer even co-composed the score for this film. For what it's worth, that poster also caught my eye, and recalls a memorable image from 1922's Dr. Mabuse the Gambler.

Furthermore, Invincible also has an interesting setting and premise, too, taking place in Berlin during the 1930s and following a Jewish strongman who becomes loved by some and hated by others - namely, the members of the Nazi Party.

There's so much potential here, both with what the movie focuses on and who was involved. And Invincible isn't bad; it's watchable, it's well-presented, and, shock horror, the good actors give good performances. But I couldn't shake the feeling that it wasn't as engrossing as it could be, and it felt a bit overlong and sagged in places pacing-wise, too.

Herzog's hit it out of the park more often than most filmmakers, so a slight misfire is forgivable. Even then, Invincible isn't a total misfire, because there's still a bit here to appreciate and get wrapped up in. Lesser Herzog is still good for the most part, I guess, but I really wanted to come away from this singing its praises as an unfairly overlooked film by the great German filmmaker (whose filmography I've now seen about half the titles from, and I feel like I've already worked my way through most of his bonafide classics... but time will tell if that's really the case or not).