motherhood is visceral violence

i really appreciate the toxic yuri setup in the end

the patriarch and the bourgeois move as one

at the center of the patriarchal family is a rot. a mould that grows and destabilizes the sturdiness of a home and lets in the deluge to sweep away those trapped, in particular the mother and the daughter. the prison and alienation of being a mother and a wife is not cold and sterile but filled with ferment and smoke, of dripping black water and iridescent paint. hopes and dreams lie in the family and yet it acts as the system of roots that destroys the possibility of being able to connect as people.

the relationship between a mother and daughter and their inability to communicate outside the rot of family relations embeds itself at the heart of this cycle. the daughter desires to be free, but the mother can only resolve to teach her she will be encased in the same rot. and yet, the mother never gives up the hope that her daughter may free her too

really thought provoking debut feature. looking forward to more work from the director!

the interplay of drugs and gay desire creates a whirlwind trip of trying to get closer and closer to the object of taboo gay desire until both of your egos melt away and you simply dance together in the flesh. a complicated film that benefits from luca's touch and exquisite way of lingering on bodies and scenes, with imagery that very emotively captures the highs and lows of gay intimacy and alienation. and yet it also feels like one of his more sombre adaptations. anyways this is basically benoit blanc's backstory as far as im concerned

motherhood is a prison but also a comedy

one of the only good police drama films. this is 20x better than scorsese's take imo

i wish i could get sadie plant's opinion on this film

go girl give us nothing

this may be one of the crispest films ever made on the psychology of fascism and its kernel at the heart of the masculine american action hero. rather than a generalized alienation and isolation, travis' experiences as a white male vietnam war veteran echoes the character his relationship to his isolation takes: a particularly dehumanizing, conservative view on the people of his surroundings, "cleaning the scum off the streets". the film constantly pushes the relationship between misogyny and right-wing politics in incredibly complex ways: the porn theatre visits, the treatment of betsy as the "pure white woman" (unlike the tainted sex worker 'scum') , the monologue by a taxi enger about killing a woman with a gun, the incredibly individualistic and almost antipolitical desire to murder a vaguely centre-left presidential candidate, etc. etc. - it animates in a way that feels almost reflective of klaus theweleit's investigations on desire and fascism in a similar group of reactionary veterans, the german freikorps. race, the petit bourgeoisie, a desire for cleanliness, and an unrelenting focus on protecting "purity" (of white childhood, tainted, juxtaposed against travis discarding adult women as irredeemable after betsy's discomfort) through transformation into a physical instrument of violence. an almost prophetic look at what would become the norm of a modern american manhood reinvented into the 1980s era of reaction and which continues into the right wing politics radicalizing young men today

toxic yaoi

its fun but its definitely a character drama more than it is a financial thriller to me. it was funny how penn badgleys character is just kind of there. the atmosphere and characterization is my favourite part though - its all very solid and appropriately stomach churning for a little film about accelerating the collapse of the economy from an office floor to save the ass (net worth) of a guy who monologues that money is just paper despite having thrown everyone else to the wolves just to protect his profit generating capital, like so many capitalists

CW this film has very graphic depictions of rape

stieg larsson takes very literally the adage that a particle of hitler lives in every modern social democratic state in the imperial core and fincher adapts it gruesomely. perhaps a useful double feature with born in flames or to read alongside klaus theleweit. it was honestly difficult for me to watch this all in one go and i had to pause it a lot, but lisbeth immediately has become part of the cool women of all time list love her and rooney mara's depiction

this is Chainsaw Man for mid 20s women working in the media and fashion industry. also i hate nate

when you're playing a gacha mobile game and fall down the rabbit hole of stocking up and rolling for pngs of some wife or husband the anxious anticipation of what is going to happen catches itself in your throat. for about two hours, the film feels like constantly cracking rolls until the phone crashes just when you get SSR rank six star arlecchino or something. 2010s new york has never looked more frantic to someone who has never been there and only knows what it looks like from art and media

hidden in this film is a very sharp criticism of the networks of extraction that work on brutal exploitation and trails of blood

doomed yuri and catharsis beautifully shot in melting colours. the dialogue is sparse but it works for the atmosphere juxtaposed with the violence

(rewatch) this is a slow burn horror movie about abuse to be honest. more than the world of jazz which is mostly just set dressing for that central theme, and it gets critique on this, with people often offering other kinds of alternatives. in my opinion the mentality between neiman and fletcher - being stripped of ion and art and effectively moulded into a machine subservient to a chain of abusive higher ups that construct people into pointless cogs while isolating them from their peers - is the psychological culture that often undergirds more than anything the world of business and the relentless descent of the modern tech industry

when you learn the mere possibility of being a trans woman, you cry. there is relief in the sense that everything clicks into place. the shattered pieces of your life make sense. you were not crazy. these experiences were real. and yet, you also cry because it is unfathomable. to become a woman in a patriarchal society is a terrifying thing. to become a trans one is even worse. you are the poster child for ugly woman thing across the world. you feel you are too hairy, or clothes wont fit on you properly. you know how people like you get treated. the histories of physical and sexual violence. the isolation. the fact of being completely abject and monstrous.

and so you keep holding it off and trying to reject it. anything you can do to prevent letting your heart beat. you keep running away and let the melancholy be your entire life. you cough. you wheeze. you suffocate. nobody is here to take you. you have to jump off the cliff yourself or die something worse than a shell - die a person who was never born nor ever existed, at least not in this reality.

it is one of the scariest things in the world to come to with who you are. and as you grow older, it feels like time slips away. years blend into seconds and your life becomes meaningless. you can either die without having been born, without living, or die trying to live. and if you are trans, no matter what you do, you must keep living. there is still time.

this was the funniest mothers day film ever

it is true that sometimes the thing about sports is that it generates a kind of intimacy you can only find on the court. the oscillation of watching a ball hit back and forth on the court frames the film's structure, fast paced as a tennis match, quickly jumping left and right to weave flashbacks across years to minutes into the contemporary game and contextualize everything up to this point. camera work that at times feels viscerally intimate, with close ups on dialogue, on kissing, and in the frenetic intensity of tennis matches, with a clubby electronic soundtrack that works with the pace of the heart.

the real heart of this though is how it so perfectly captures why athletic homoeroticism is perfect for yaoi. zendaya's careful and multilayered performance, as a tennis prodigy turned coach turned manager of the two lives of the men she is in a sense chained to turning itself on its head - the fujoshi who is made the conduit through which the two white boys who see her mostly as a trophy, or a coach, or a mother, or their savior, secretly pine for each other in ways they can never it, and so she in turn sets up an elaborate ploy to get them to acknowledge each other in their fullness together instead. a true fujothriller

interesting sequel to "Bones and All (2022)"

this was a very solid directorial debut. i think the writing was a little wonky at paces with the plot pacing, and the worst crime of the film was its treatment of the politics of nationalism in india. it's leftist but specifically in a 'caste-blind' way that separates hinduism from nationalism and portrays the former as a weapon of rebellion against the latter. this is disingenuous at best and a little dangerous at worst when it is the institution of a brahminical hinduism itself and the way it frames its historical and mythological narratives that is a contemporary part of the nationalism at the center of india's right wing politics. the most egregious lack of attention was the complete avoidance of discussing caste. at a moment when caste violence is a rampant tool of a radicalized public deputized by the state to police the marginalized of india, this is a glaring omission.

however, what this film does extremely interestingly is the way it intertwines class and gender. instead of a traditional 'working class masses' perspective, the protagonist straddles being a proletarian and an underproletarian ('lumpenproletarian') who is fundamentally moulded and motivated by working women - avenging his mother drives his revenge, the sex worker sita employed in a brothel for the ultra rich (where he works as a dishwasher and then a waiter) sets him on the quest for revenge, and he is moulded into a revolutionary by an ostracized community of trans women who presumably depend on begging, sex work, and temple service maintenance. monkey man's treatment of who 'the working class rebelling against the regime of capital and nationalism' centers strongly on multiple strata of women whose labour is highly gendered in indian society, which is rarely seen in films, let alone action thriller ones, outside of explicitly feminist works. its image of rebellion is the tearing down, spilling blood, and destruction of a luxury brothel by the strata of women who are most heavily driven into sex work and other forms of sexual exploitation - this is a smart decision and an important one. this depiction falters someehat in that the women are more plot devices for the protagonist's arc and the camera likes to linger on the brutality they face, and things like not casting alpha explicitly with a trans woman actress (this was another misstep imo). however, it does show promise that dev patel's work plus his stated influences shows an interest in focusing on protagonizing women, perhaps for the future.

the performances were very good, dev was of course stellar. i really enjoyed the way shots were framed and the lighting in particular - my major issue is that the shaky attempt to edit the flags to red in post to avoid a total ban from the bjp (lol) messed up some of the colour theming (the protagonist is also associated with red, especially in the iconic elevator scene, vs baba shakti's saffron!) the setting made me think that audiences in the west might enjoy more works that depict india as a cyberpunk hellscape

what it feels like to exist in toronto. films may or may not be about toronto proper

• Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
• Videodrome
• Enemy
• Skinamarink