There's a lot to unpack in The Departed.  It's possibly my favorite Scorcese, and damn, my girl Thelma is on fucking POINT in this one.  Tons of metaphor and every visual plays to theme about self deception and the poison of ambition.  Rewatch the movie, but with this thought:  Matt Damon's character is closeted.   They don't come out and say it, but it's heavily hinted at through the story.  It adds an extra layer of depth behind his choices.

Rewatched The Insider again, as I try to do every year.

Still a fucking masterpiece and possibly the crowning achievement of the 90s as far as I'm concerned. This time in particular I noticed how amazing the cinematography is, the way Mann uses his edits and frame compositions. Stylistically, it really is one of the most powerful examples of filmmaking talent I've ever seen, taking a totally un-cinematic story and making it extremely tense and compelling.

That's how it works, I think. Movies that are perplexing seem to get people's hate juices flowing more than movies that (they find) merely boring. The beef people seem to have with UPSTREAM boils down to "I don't know WTF is happening" whereas with ALL IS LOST people could follow the action easily (it's as simple as a story gets) but were bored by it. Being told a story that makes you feel bored versus being told a story that makes you feel stupid, I guess.

Also, will someone PLEASE end Paul W.S. Anderson.  END HIM NOW.

Upstream Colour boils down to people who watched it and people who pretended to like it!