romance

The biblical rain today suggests that summer is over, so my run through a handful or so of John Cusack films ends with it, on the film I’ve seen more than perhaps any other.

Watching Cusack in order suggests some connections I hadn’t gone looking for, mostly around moral compromise and concession. David Shayne in Bullets Over Broadway concedes his way down one compromise at a time, and pays for it. Buck Weaver in Eight Men Out concedes nothing and is ruined anyway. Runaway Jury‘s Nick Easter turns up with the con already written and walks out clean. Martin Blank does the worst thing any of them do, announces he’s stopping, and nobody argues (or even really appears to be listening).

Even the reunion corridor scene (fantastic choreography, btw!) doesn’t hold him to it. Debi refuses every justification he offers, he ends up admitting he got good at the job and then came to like it, and the admission expires the moment the scene does.

Nothing about what Martin does accumulates, or is left owing, which is presumably how I’ve managed however many viewings this is. The film has never once asked me to reach a verdict on a contract killer. I find that… restful, which I doubt reflects well on me.

A VHS staple, seen a hundred times. I first watched it as a teenager, around the time I was getting into the Clash; given how much of my taste Lloyd Dobler and Martin Blank went on to shape, I’m amazed I never started kickboxing.

I’ve rewatched a bunch of John Cusack films this summer and the running thread has been something like moral compromise. That doesn’t work here. Lloyd has no angle and nothing to trade. It belongs to James Court instead, secretly up to no good and justifying it in a terrible, burdensome way. John Mahoney never lets him stop believing his excuse, right through the prison visit. I miss him a lot. Such a talented actor.

Ione Skye is good, though this is Lloyd’s film. Romantic without ever tipping into sentimentality. The boombox got the glory and the memes but the last scene is the best in the film. The pair of them, future undecided, waiting to take off.

Cooper’s least showy film and for me his best. The stand-up scenes could have been a vanity exercise for everyone involved; instead they’re the most honest stretch of the film. I’ve enjoyed Arnett’s bluster for years but he’s doing something else here and it suits him. Dern matches him scene for scene and then some, especially in the back half once Tess stops absorbing and starts pushing back. They feel like two people who have actually been married. I really enjoyed this.

I remember this arriving in 1990, though only as a soundtrack and a general early-60s mood; the film itself never registered. Winona Ryder anchors it completely. Charlotte’s neuroses are pitched exactly right, and the voiceover prayers are the best thing here. Ricci, in her first film, is unnervingly assured. Cher is a natural, somehow both warmer and colder than I expected and with less screen time too. She was forty-four playing a woman of about thirty-one, which no amount of presence quite sells, but it matters much less than it should. Bob Hoskins is charm in a cardigan and flat cap. The whole thing is far sweeter and stranger than its reputation suggested to me.

The time loop genre deserves more entries, not fewer, and Palm Springs is the argument for why. Strip away the gimmick and you’re left with the oldest question there is: what would you actually do if consequences were suspended? Groundhog Day answered moral growth. Palm Springs answers commitment, and the particular flavour of nihilism that sets in once you’ve already tried everything else, and it turns out that’s the richer question. Samberg is restrained here, playing a man who’s been funny for so long he’s forgotten why. Milioti is the whole film.

Bill Murray is doing something precise in the early scenes: playing a man who thinks he’s too good for his surroundings. The film’s quiet argument is that Phil is wrong, but not in the way you’d expect. It’s not that Punxsutawney is secretly wonderful. It’s that contempt is a kind of blindness, and the loop forces Phil to look. David Thomson described Murray as “the obdurately sensible persona responding to orderly madness,” which is exactly right. Phil isn’t heroic. He’s competent and irritated, and the film’s engine is watching competence and irritation gradually lose to something harder to name—attention, perhaps. Care. The kind of knowledge you can only acquire through repetition. Phil’s arc from contempt to mastery to something like grace mirrors what happens when you watch anything often enough: you stop watching the plot and start watching the texture. I have seen this film perhaps fifty times. I’ll watch it again soon.

Watched on Saturday March 14, 2026.

This will be a specific kind of young person’s favourite film for the rest of their life. 10/10 soundtrack

I have vivid memories of watching this at the cinema, especially the delayed opening credits and Beck’s “Everybody’s Gotta Learn Sometime” arriving about 20 minutes in. A song I had no idea was coming. Its appearance and reprise at the end are moments that have stuck with me.

The nonlinearity isn’t as complicated as it first felt, but it still keeps repeat viewings interesting.

Above all, it’s just such a fucking good *film. *A story that could only work in cinema, and a beautiful collaboration from Gondry, Kaufman and Bismuth all at or near the height of their powers.

Chases the Heathers energy but adds a few too many plot twists and minutes.

The leads are terrific: so natural it feels effortless. And the production is immaculate, as always with PTA. But it still plays like a string of fascinating vignettes rather than a fully great film. The stakes stay too low, the runtime feels too long… though I have to admit, I liked it more this time. Half a star bump.

Beautifully shot and with some amazing performances, especially the leads. Would need to be twice as long to explain some of the decisions made by the characters though.