Heard of four of them. Saw one: ME AND EARL. Indie mediocrity

But thanks for the suggestions. I'll look up the ones I don't recall.

Movies come in so many shapes and sizes these days....I never think there is a slump - if you're talking mainstream hollywood shit only...well, I don't watch too many of those to properly comment.

You like Hong Kong action films and didn't like John Wick?!

It's not our fault you have very specific tastes that most movies cannot satisfy.

I was thinking the same exact thing.

So far this year I've seen The Witch which I loved. There are a bunch of films scheduled to be released this year from Pedro Almodóvar, Richard Linklater, Jeff Nichols, Werner Herzog, Olivier Assayas, Jim Jarmusch, Todd Solondz, Kelly Reichardt, Park Chan-wook, Xavier Dolan, Derek Cianfrance, James Gray, Denis Villeneuve, Nicolas Winding Refn and others which I am looking forward to.

Can't argue with that.

My favorite theatrical release of the year so far: KAMEN RIDER ICHIGO (KAMEN RIDER #1), the newest Kamen Rider movie in a franchise that goes back to 1971. I saw it in Osaka, Japan on April 1. The star of it is the original Kamen Rider himself, Hiroshi Fujioka. Anybody in Hollywood starring in a franchise they created 45 years ago? Not even Clint Eastwood or Sean Connery are doing that. (I guess Harrison Ford comes closest.)

I am still recovering from a near heart-attack after seeing the price of the Hawaiian boxed set of Kamen Rider V3. Good Lord.

Let's just be honest here, guy. Don't fuck yourself in the ass in front of us and tell us bullshit like that. You like crap. Get over it. We all like some sort of crap. It's ok. Call yourself out on it at least. A lot of the long running Japan culture hero sci fi whatever the fuck crap you want to call it is most likely mediocre crap but it's totally fine. But don't go on your fucking knees sucking that dick to where you're so face fucked that you can't get some objectivity in there. There's a shit ton of reasons why Japan has shit that in an industry form that wouldn't survive here in the States. Get the fuck over it. Just cuz you don't like some of the films that are legitimately good doesn't mean they aren't good. Get some objectivity pulled out of you from whatever end.

You like crap. That's fine and fucking dandy. And we all at some point like to take a dick in the ass but take it out of yours for a bit and actively hit points that matter beyond what YOU like. There are a shit ton of films I don't like. But I may also think they're good. Separate yourself from the bullshit.

There comes a point where I don't think you're even speaking metaphorically. This sounds like real lived-in experience.

I think this is a bit of an overreaction. I'm not suggesting that Kamen Rider is on a par with Kurosawa. It was simple, unpretentious genre entertainment, something we don't get much anymore in the U.S. It's why I like Pokémon movies over Pixar. They're not bloated and overdone like your typical Pixar production. I prefer westerns to superhero movies because there's no sensory overload in them.

Speaking of which, yesterday I watched one of the ten best Hollywood movies ever made, John Ford's THE SEARCHERS, on Blu-ray. Still a masterpiece and far superior to anything I've seen coming out of Hollywood in over 20 years. Followed it with my DVD of DJANGO UNCHAINED. Not a masterpiece, but a provocative and audacious genre exercise that offers a big-budget version of some of the pleasures we used to get from exploitation films once upon a time. And easily one of my favorite films of the 21st century, although I don't know that I'd place it in the "best." Tarantino is the equivalent of auteur directors who worked on the margins of the industry, e.g. Sam Fuller, Phil Karlson, Don Siegel, Robert Aldrich, Walter Hill. There are no equivalents today of Ford, Hawks, Welles, Wilder, Capra, Stevens, Wyler, et al. Just as there are no equivalents in Japan today of Kurosawa, Ozu, Mizoguchi, Kobayashi, Naruse, Honda, Fukasaku, et al. So I appreciate the small pleasures when I can get them.