🎬 “I know quack fu!”

Hello! I’m Eric Johnson, the author of the free email newsletter ESJ’s Movie Project. Every Friday, I publish short, spoiler-free reviews of every movie I’ve watched in the past week … and I watch a lot of movies.

I’ve been doing the newsletter for a while now, and occasionally I would think, “Gosh, it would probably be a good idea to cross-post new issues someplace like Medium … but that seems like a lot of work, maybe next week.” I finally got off my ass and did it, so please enjoy.

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🤡 Honey Boy

I had a vague memory from the trailers that Honey Boy was based on costar Shia LaBeouf’s real life, but I didn’t know, or had forgotten, that LaBeouf wrote the movie, too.

Autobiographies are notoriously difficult, but he excels here; this film is suffused with empathy, pain, and introspection in a way that most Hollywood stories are not. Rather than painting himself as merely the victim of an abusive father, LaBeouf literally steps into his dad’s shoes, playing an alcoholic veteran-turned-rodeo clown who lives with his TV star son (Noah Jupe) in a dirty…