4v291o

Incel Joker musical is a thing you can do, I guess

I showed this to a friend once, and at the end she said, "Wow, there was absolutely no character development whatsoever! I fucking loved it!"

What an absolute goddamn masterpiece of cinema.

Poses the question, “What if Battle Angel Alita sucked?”

Better than the first time I saw it, maybe because I didn’t think back on the TV movie much. Some of the fx are straight up dumb, and I wish It’s voice got a little more menacing, but the coming of age stuff hits pretty good.

I love everyone involved in this, and Kristen Stewart’s collaborations with Assayas are always gold, but I didn’t fully connect with this. Maybe it’s the whole young vs old actor thing, but it just doesn’t interest me.

I’ll watch anything with Aubrey Plaza in it, but this was… actually pretty good! And I’m not just saying that because I’d let Aubrey Plaza spit in my mouth. I’m usually a remake hater, but this works mostly by doing virtually everything different. It doesn’t quite have the same menace without Brad Dourif, and not all of it works, but the kills are gruesome and it’s legit funny in spots.

Either movie though, who the fuck is buying their kid dolls this creepy 😵‍💫

Quite a bit more hokey than I ed. The Creeper works best when he’s kinda shrouded and mysterious, or driving that rust bucket death machine, but you see his face and all that in plain view and I guess we’ve both seen the 90s Swamp Thing show.

Knowing that the director is a convicted child molester is also something I can’t ignore. There’s a larger discussion to be had about restorative justice, whether people should pay for certain acts forever without redemption, and why some things are disproportionately more unforgivable than others. Lots of great theorizing out there, but I’ve also known abs who successfully manipulated these ideas to avoid ability, or weaponized them to attack their victims. Reading interviews, it doesn’t sit right that he refers to it as ‘a mistake’, and emphasizes that he served his time and just wants to move on, versus recognizing it as a sickness within himself or going into detail about what efforts he’s made to address that as a person, not just what the legal system required him to do. A movie is the byproduct of hundreds of people, but the director taints the experience compared to when I didn’t know.

It’s wild that some random dude could just drive around, and kids would run up to him with no parents, and this dude would just give kids food and everyone was like sure that’s cool. Anyway, pretty boring, go watch the Invader Zim ice cream episode instead. YOU LIKE ICE CREAM. YOUR LIFE IS MEANINGLESS WITHOUT ICE CREAM.

Fantastically mind-bending, delirious, bleak, and cold, hitting the mark in all the ways that Vanilla Sky failed. Penelope Cruz isn’t in it nearly enough, but she’s so hypnotic and charming that you don’t really notice until the end.

Even better than I ed! Maybe it’s just me getting old, but Araki’s old stuff really is the most inaccurately accurate representation of 90s counterculture. A time capsule for disaeffected, nihilistic, and outcast youth whose youth is now fading. James Duvall is the king of whiny and confused! Kathleen Robertson is still the coolest and hottest girl in the room! Ahhh my little weirdo heart! It makes me so happy the Teen Apocalypse trilogy has been so lovingly preserved and rediscovered.

I really gotta rewatch Splendor soon too, that was always a big ol’ fave.

You know it’s on the minute that Goblin bassline kicks in. Creeping, stalking steadicam shots, inventive and brutal kills, creepy dolls, a killer score, beautiful setpieces, intense colors, and Daria Nicolodi looking extra striking in black eyeliner. This is more of a proper giallo than stuff like Suspiria and Inferno, and it’s also one of the best in the genre.

Kind of a hot mess! Above average acting for a slasher, endless boring dialog, generic plot, and tame violence on one end, but then you’ve got gratuitous tits and whacky 3D effects on the other. Oh, what might have been. It’s like people made a slasher who didn’t really want to make a slasher, but someone held a gun to their head and was like you’re gonna make a slasher or else buddy! I’m afraid of my own movie oh noes!

I’m in the computer

So fucking awesome ahahaha! Super fun demonic children time right here! So many movies trying to do this these days are just trying to copy The Exorcist formula, omg so serious, but this stuff almost always works best when it’s a bit tongue in cheek.

Doing cocaine out of a little toy car is just a thing everyone did in the 80s ok

Grim as it gets. It’s a pretty simple story when you really get down to it, but every moment is so tense and ready to snap that it’s impossible to not sink into every moment. Viggo Mortensen and Maria Bello are a fucking incredible combo.

Katie Holmes carrying a whole ass movie by herself

More aggressively evil and cheese, more cute girls, and just goes straight into everything without much build up. Like a less good [REC] I guess and it kinda shits the bed in the last half instead of getting freakier. It’s fine if you want some dumb popcorn though!

It’s alright! You know how it’s gonna play out from the start, and the CGI effects are kinda eh, but I’m a sucker for found footage and it’s got some decently creepy bits.

Hot girls with big hair, big guns, and barely any clothes on fighting the bad guys. That’s it. That’s the movie. Bye!

Less mystical and sleazy than the first one, more Saturday morning cartoon with boobs energy, so I guess this was a pretty good choice for a Saturday morning

The exact opposite of relationship goals

The contemplative other side of the coin. Worth the price of ission for the training with Pai Mei alone, but you really can’t fuck with Daryl Hannah or David Carradine either, just slick as fuck. And let’s be real, Uma Thurman is absolutely perfect in this role from start to finish. Career defining.

I also love that both 1 & 2 end with Meiko Kaji songs. Deep cuts!

Whether you think it’s pastiche or collage, this movie absolutely fucks. I’d let Lucy Liu spit in my mouth.

Lena Olin in a bowler hat reminding me why I liked this so much when I was younger and still do

“There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars.”

Prescient, terrifying, dystopian, resonant… and still absolutely spot on in 2025. We still aren’t mad enough.

Gets by on the novelty of the setting and hot girls, but this is sort of PTAs worse impulses all coming together. Bloated, dull, long as hell, trying really hard to be super clever, sleepwalking its way through stilted dialog and celebrity cameos. Reminds me a lot of Once Upon A Time In Hollywood in multiple ways, and like that flick, it’s occasionally charming and quirky, but also just kinda whatever.

A movie that relies on you stumbling into it because no one was asking for a romantic comedy/horror. Pretty dumb, occasionally fun, and I spent half of it thinking how much my ex would hate it, even though it’s probably meant as a date movie.

My first time seeing Casablanca! I’ll be honest, the big famous lines everyone’s heard before? Eh, I could take ‘em or leave ‘em.

That aside, this thing is a whole ass mood, filled with colorful characters, fantastic costumes, shadowy figures, intrigue, romance, and you feel like you’re right there in the midst of it all. Fantastic stuff.

Pretty much follows the same beats as the original. Wife gets killed because a woman always has to die for dude motivation, dude gets mad, slave master with a heart of gold, revenge plot, etc. The arena fights are rare, mostly cheesy, and mostly full of absolutely bargain barrel CGI. Big hero falls down a lot for some reason. You’ll see him sitting around talking after fights they didn’t show more than actual fights. The twin emperors look like rejected Ed Sheeran clones. Obligatory flashback sequences. You guys Gladiator?! Now there are two! Two Gladiators! Ah ha ha! Sigh.

Someone desperately wanted this to be a deep court intrigue thing, and thought it would be super clever to have twin gladiator protagonists and antagonists, and it’s… something. THE DUALITY OF MAN I guess.

Better and more deeply layered than I ed. This is often cited as a controversial, offensive, and problematic film, but once you get past that superficiality, it’s really touching on the kind of difficult, life scarring choices people were forced to make, friends becoming enemies, enemies becoming friends. It’s not advocating for good Nazis, but there are shades of grey in times of war and atrocity, as much as nobody wants to hear that. 

Carice van Houten is as fantastic then as she is now too. You should follow her on IG, she’s extremely pro Palestinian, not even remotely shy about it, and she has a bunch of cool synthesizers.

A real groovy, stylish and ridiculous 70s vibe here, complete with villains that border on anime characters! I’ve gotten kinda tired of giallo over the last few years, because a lot of it is actually just kinda droll and lacking any real style, but this is pretty cool.

I WOULDN’T MIND SHOWIN’ EM ONE MORE BIG THING HUEHUEHUE
YOU’RE FUCKIN’ WITH THE DEVIL NOW, BOY!

A whole lotta tits, ass, and asshole confederate flag dudes in this nasty slice of 80s sleaze. For what it is, everyone takes it pretty seriously and the acting isn’t that bad! Not that it matters, you pretty much know within the first 3 minutes what you’re in for.

All the girls are in halter tops and short shorts, one gets pinned to a tree with an arrow, some dude with an arrow through his chest, gunshot wounds, knife wounds, baseball bats to the head, doggystyle rape, sensitive DX7 jams so you know when it’s time to feel something. Totally normal things that happen when girls beat dudes at baseball! BLOOD GAMES INDEED.

It’s hot Russian Nicole Kidman, what more do you want?

No BS filmmaking at its finest. You really get a sense of Spielberg being young and having something to prove because every fucking shot is meticulous. There’s this thing going on in chases where it’s like the car looks fairly stable, but the environment around it is vibrating and distorting, the camera panning and zooming under, over, everywhere, and it just hits perfectly.

The plot doesn’t really matter, all you need is a car and a murderous trucker whose face you never see.

In my late teens and early 20s, I was basically obsessed with Asia Argento, like she was my big fantasy crush. So when I first saw this in ‘98, I was a big Abel Ferrara fan, even had this on VHS, but didn’t really give it proper attention, I was just there to gawk at Asia. My horny young brain was mush.

Anyway, this is 90s as fuck. Nihilistic, slow motion, VHS visuals, cyberpunk orientalism, beautiful women, over the top, adrift characters, shady deals. You’ve got Abel Ferrara directing a movie based on a William Gibson story, and they even threw Yoshitaka fucking Amano in there just because. Asia’s English was a little rough back then, but it totally suits the gig.

Abel’s never gonna be as good as he was with Zoe Lund fully involved, but this still has the seedy, sleazy and sad down right. Good shit. My brain is still mush though.

Asia’s been dragged to shit the past few years, but it seems she and Dafoe have something coming up with Abel again too.

You know you’re gonna dig it when one of the first scenes is Emma Stone pretending to be a monster going rrrgggh! A whole lotta shenanigans here and I’m all about it. Such costumes! Such deviants! Perfect casting! Wild ass camera times!

It’s a toss-up whether this, Poor Things, or The Lobster is my fave Yorgos film, but all of it slaps.

People have talked this up to me ever since it came out and I suppose I didn’t until now because I have some weird contrarian streak. Anyway, it’s pretty good! Sort of a more child-like tone than I expected. Like he’s clearly got the problems, but he’s never quite actually unhinged to the point where you’re like oh shit he’s gonna getcha! His hair is fucking creepy though.

I haven’t seen this in forever, but it’s shockingly pertinent in 2025, when racist and xenophobic right-wing scum are doing everything possible to harm and abuse immigrants. This starts kind of innocuously, tempting you to think it’s a black comedy, before diving into organ trafficking and sexual assault. Audrey Tautou is always charming no matter what, but this is a pretty dark film when you really look at it. Good stuff.

This review may contain spoilers.

Satanic Italo-surrealist take on I Drink Your Blood. Ok, not quite, because it moves past most of the evil hippie stuff early on, only to turn into a mystical 90s giallo. Soavi really gets dreamy a few years later with Dellamorte Dellamore, but you can kinda see him moving in that direction here. Love that hazy soft focus aesthetic and there’s some real nasty bits sprinkled around for spice. Plus you get a lil bunny rabbit watching tv! I love rabbits.

What the fuck is up with that extreme nose hair close up tho

Andy Griffith: SVU

The awkward love child of Avalon, Hardware, Gunhed, Zeiram, Sukiyaki Western Django, Code Vein, and Hakkaider... or something like that. Anime but make it live action. I love Oshii’s work, and I’m one of those freaks who loved Avalon, but where that leans mystically sepia and features a hot masked Polish woman shooting big guns, this leans mystically monochromatic and features hot masked Japanese women shooting big guns.

It’s completely ridiculous, not as good as any of the things I compared it to, the CGI isn’t very good, the plot is incomprehensible, everyone speaks heavily accented English, everyone looks really cool, and Rinko Kikuchi is in it. Why is Rinko Kikuchi dancing with a little hat and opera-length leather gloves on? Who knows, but she can turn into a crow.

Unsurprisingly, I’m still kinda charmed, but you probably won’t be.

Shinya Tsukamoto making a film about a single mother losing her fucking mind is exactly as intense and unhinged as you’d expect. It’s almost hard to believe Cocco had never starred in a film before because her performance in this is absolutely next level, made even more anxiety-inducing by the chaotic camera and ASMR that’ll make you wince. On the other end, you have tender, poetic moments, like her dancing in the rain.

Reading later, it seems Cocco herself struggles with self-harm, depression, and mental illness. It seems this collaboration occurred after 9 years of correspondence between her and Tsukamoto. A lot of layers here.

If you want to watch a film where just watching someone make dinner is really disturbing, this is it.

One thing you can almost always count on with Reiko Ike is that she’ll take all her clothes off and kill a bunch of people. Death by hanafuda, sword, or poison pussy. Diversity of tactics!

This is great for watching with subs on so you can read gems like “somber synth instrumental.” Bad ADR, bad acting, borderline Neil Breen dialog, pulsing dance rock, Linnea Quigley, bargain bin swords. Vinegar Syndrome knows their audience.

You might think the fight scenes have to be some hyperviolent insane shit, right? Hell no. This makes Cobra Kai look like MMA. Awkward ass punchu kicku. He goes fishing for some reason wearing just a speedo with his dick deliberately pointed straight ahead while a kid watches and asks to be his friend. All the criminals walk around all the time wearing pantyhose or ski masks. You even get some white girl karate. There are also naked boobs. Hilarious sword fight at the end and the synth score is great!

Is this good? Not really, but it’s kinda fun when you just wanna kick back and watch some dumb popcorn. Probably even more fun with friends!

One I’m gonna have to rewatch and don’t think I can rate properly right now. Too distracted today, and for some reason, it switches to 4:3 partway through (is it supposed to?). Add in small subtitles that don’t appear until after people stop speaking, and I just couldn’t really get into it. Gorgeous costumes and action, but also really slow, with very formal, sparse, quiet dialog.

Beautifully shot, languid, phantasmagoric, atmospheric, non-linear, romantic, slow burning neo-noir, like Wong Kar-wai on quaaludes set to a mystical soundtrack. Just when you think you have no idea what’s going on, something comes along to snap it into focus, only to drop into an hour long dream sequence. Not a casual watch, but one that will totally suck you in if you’re open to it. Definitely deserves a rewatch.

Someone like Tang Wei killing her husband probably wouldn’t be a dealbreaker for me either tbh

Absolutely fantastic mystery/drama/romance/black comedy that gets way under the skin, and leaves you with a lot of thoughts and feelings by the crushing end, as expected from Park Chan-wook. Ruined and broken, would do it again.

I’m so happy to see Tang Wei pulling off amazing performances like this too. She was treated horribly and blacklisted for 3 years in China because of Lust, Caution, while none of the men were, and every success she has since then feels like well deserved revenge.

I mean, who doesn’t reveal childhood ritual Satanic abuse to the guy you’re dating and refuse to bang while riding a horse drawn carriage in the park after going Christmas shopping?

None of this really makes any damn sense, but I’m still pretty here for it. Creepy old men, creepy priests, beautiful women, blasphemous nuns, goofy lookin’ dudes in hoods with knives and randomly placed chainmail pouring water in someone’s mouth to kill them, even though they’re holding knives. I don’t mean like waterboarding either, they just haphazardly dump water from a beaker on her face and miss her mouth most of the time. What a way to go! For some reason, no one nearby hears this person yelling despite no attempts to stop her from screaming. Ok!

The evil kvlt ritual stuff really kicks in toward the last half, but it all kinda works, even though none of it works. Y’know.

Like so many 90s classics from China and Hong Kong, Bride With White Hair has kind of fallen into obscurity, and it’s a tragedy, because it’s one of the best, most psychotronic wuxia ever! It’s got it all - soft focus mystical fog, demonic cults, blood magic, blood spraying all over, erotic wound sucking, Brigitte Lin looking cool as hell playing a veiled witch with the best eyebrows ever who kills shitloads of evil dudes with a whip, evil siamese twins, intense slow motion, tribal dancing, weird masks! Exotic fantasy on overdrive in the spirit of Lam Ngai Kai!

Brigitte Lin is one of the greatest of all time. Intense eyes right up there with Meiko Kaji! Yammie Lam Kit-ying is hugely underrated in this too. The latter part of her life is really sad and she deserved better.

Anyway, this movie is fucking insane and totally rad!

Like the title says. I delete stuff as I watch it, trying to whittle down to 0, and maybe occasionally add stuff.

• 13 Steps of Maki: The Young Aristocrats
• 14 Video Paintings
• 18 Shaolin Riders
• 20 Million Miles to Earth
• The 400 Blows
• The 4th Man
• The 7 Grandmasters
• The 8 Diagram Pole Fighter
• 8½
• Abashiri Prison

...plus 1097 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

free palestine you cowards

• Angel Dust
• Anora
• Badlands
• Black Widow
• Blood Games
• Broken Oath
• Cabrini
• Casablanca
• Companion
• Creep

...plus 34 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Unlike 2023, 2024 has meant spending a lot of time alone and isolated, taking a leave of absence from work, and dealing with medications, depression, heartbreak and reflection. Plenty of time to catch up that watchlist, I guess. I need to get off my ass and read more books though.

• 10 Cloverfield Lane
• The 36th Chamber of Shaolin
• Absurd
• After Blue (Dirty Paradise)
• After Hours
• The Alien Factor
• Alien from L.A.
• All About Evil
• Alligator
• Alucarda

...plus 230 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

2023 was a return to me watching movies regularly again, thanks entirely to a person I was with constantly recommending stuff and us watching a lot of movies together. Doing some fuzzy math, at least 53 of these together, and 14 that they recommended and I saw alone! As a result, I saw a shocking number of great movies and had some really nice times.

• Angst
• Barbie
• Belle de Jour
• Benedetta
• Beyond the Darkness
• Black Christmas
• Black Sabbath
• Blonde Death
• Blood Rage
• Cade: The Tortured Crossing

...plus 82 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.