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when mary elizabeth winstead and her bangs whip out a kinko’s printout of a photo of abraham lincoln

bought in right from the beginning. mainstream cinema positioning itself as the great equalizer and connector that can and will save the world, so long as God’s only son Tom Cruise is willing to die for it—or, at the very least, come really close. some of you guys worship these movies like it’s your religion and then get mad when they test your faith! fake believers! posers! love how dour and bleak and completely real this gets, and the connections to past films were threaded through wonderfully for me because, well, i simply don’t have an encyclopedic knowledge of these movies. at one point i audibly gasped at a reveal lmaooo. 

loved it, cried, thought parts were genuinely really touching. how can you not be moved sitting in front of the big screen, cold diet coke at the ready, watching what could very well be the last film of this franchise strip itself of the silliness it has worn like a rubber mask from the beginning to face the facts. the espionage terror the mission: impossible films have cooked up has come to reap. tech will be our downfall one day. under the dark of the theater, we’re afforded the rare chance to remove ourselves from the digital umbilical cord and experience a capital-M movie, alongside people who want to do the same. that’s what these films have really always been about.

more soon @ salon

funny. beautifully conceptualized and designed. memorable, likable characters. a mug for the gods on mia threapleton. but if ol boy doesn’t turn up the energy soon…i was almost three for three with wes anderson films released this decade that i’ve fallen asleep during. there’s a lot to be said about how a signature style has been actively working against his narrative writing as of late. aside from a few key scenes and sensational frames, it all just feels like lovely window dressing—especially here, where the cold emptiness of business and commerce seep into the bones of the film and left me almost entirely emotionally disconnected. idk i have a headache rn so i can’t think. more coming soon.

ohhh brother this GUY STINKS!!!!!!

check back for a link in the coming days

stinks even worse the second time around, when all of the surprise from the elements that could be considered “fun” has worn off. all we’re left with then is a slapdash hodgepodge of slightly clever ideas, lifted from far superior references, mangled into a film that thinks being formally averse to good pacing is a bold directorial vision. had cregger decided to play this straight and move through it chronologically from where it starts, filling in the gaps along the way, it would have a strong shot at being something good, maybe even great. but he’s more interested in making stoners go bro what thefuuucck and having people audibly react in a theater setting—the latter of which lost its cheap merit the second this schlock departed theaters. let’s cram another 20 thin attempts at contemporary sociological metaphor in there, don’t think we got enough of the first 50! if the “copy of a copy of a copy” line is this thing’s thesis, it makes barbarian the ugly-as-sin inbred beast born from better films and better filmmakers. 

all that said, i look forward to weapons.

It’s not enough to say that I miss you…

i’m still caught up in the trenchant sadness that overwhelms bring her back, even a couple of days after my screening. there’s so much more emotion here than your standard grief-as-horror allegory, leaving the film light on scares and heavy on fantastic character work. danny and michael philippou dredge tension out of the deeply rooted fear of loss that lives inside of us all, and present such a simple yet effective scenario for it so fester into something rotten and devastating. the great sally hawkins imbues so much humanity into this film—as she so often does with her roles—but the layer of psychological torment that sits just below the surface in her performance is just gutting. i can’t stop thinking about it. it’s must-see horror work; i’m a hereditary defender but i’d argue she skates past toni in of what she does with mainstream a24 grief horror (lol). sora wong made my heart shatter over and over again. what a stunning debut. being able to telegraph so much sadness and fear, alongside resilience and hope, is not something that everyone can do. i did not expect for this one to bowl me over, but i had tears staining my cheeks when the lights went up. tender, beautiful, terrifying stuff.

Last thought before I fall asleep. First thought when I wake up.

one of the most romantic films i’ve ever seen. it had me in its grasp from the opening credits, a they-don’t-make-em-like-this-anymore montage of high-production-value, on-location travel pieces that beautifully set up an introduction of two characters, molly and frank, who we get to know so completely and fall head-over-heels in love for before they even meet for the first time. when they do, it’s electric, yet nothing more than a brief encounter you’d completely forget forever, if it weren’t for the slight blunder of mixing up two purchases from the rizzoli store. (one of the most romantic places you could encounter a stranger who will alter your life forever.) when they see each other again, grosbard captures the spark of fate on celluloid. 

from there, how can you do anything but hang on every word these two people exchange? they have such an innate, natural connection; pulled together by a raw force of nature. they exist on the same plane. they are sensitive and considerate, funny and tender. they suddenly realize that they speak each other’s language in a world where no one else could understand them. michael christofer’s writing is so human and genuine, so perceptive of the guilt we carry, and the weight of expectations. his characters are three-dimensional and fascinating. their world is so richly detailed, so truthful. this is a real movie for real adults, mature and considered and beaming with the vitality that real life is made of. streep and de niro look at each other as if there is no one else in the world. they hold each other, and the camera holds on them. grosbard lets us sit with them, watch them talk on the phone to one another. he frames and lights their faces so we see every emotion as it runs across two of the greatest actors to ever live. this is so perceptive and vital in a way that so many films just aren’t anymore, never mind any films that star “big” names. these people just want to be next to each other. what could possibly be more beautiful and important than that? i wept the entire time. a “where has this been hiding all my life?” watch.

had to fight the city on it but at least now the whole neighborhood’s not a GOD DAMN RACE TRACK!!!!

loved. so fresh, so innovative, so fucking funny. dark and sad and delightful. andrew deyoung mentioned at the screening he wrote this for tim, but it has so much of his brand of knife-sharp absurdism and observant humor that it feels more aligned with his work than i think you should leave. (though they do have quite of bit of crossover.) i’m sure i’ll rate this higher upon rewatch when there aren’t barnyard animals who are out in public for the first time sitting behind me, laughing hysterically at every single shot, having full conversations, singing, and then hacking up a lung. but, in a way, i suppose that’s the great thing about this film: it can entertain even the most unrefined rube as much as it can people who are here looking for high-concept, original work, detailed work.

he’s doing T-I-M-E in jail

what filmmaking is all about. a revelation. a massive, breathing grief odyssey that constructs its own myth before poking the bricks out one by one, in ways both droll and achingly sad. callie hernandez searches for truth in a place where there is none: her dreams, where she turns over every alluring, oddly shaped stone, only to find that underneath is a portal that will slowly take her to another dimension that looks and sounds and feels just like ours. the only difference is that the hope hasn’t bled out of this new realm entirely, at least not yet. it just has a clock on it.

everyone she meets on this journey is desperate to discover something greater than themselves, a power that will stop time’s ravages forever. in the end, it’s all a ruse. the portals close. the energy dissipates. the rabbit hole alice fell down spits her out of wonderland and back into reality, where a ticking clock waits to greet her. (if only she had minded the rabbit’s watch before all this happened; such a perfect invention would never lie about how much time there was to enjoy in the first place.) 

yet, oh, what fantastic beings she met along the way. all the stories she heard, the minds she peered into. didn’t they all feel like they brought a greater truth into reach? it was a dream, but god, it felt so real. now, shaken from a reverie, reality collides with illusion at the languid pace of a stream. the fabric of an image burns into another. a book about unconventional healing powers of water can be a new york times bestseller. and that microscopic inkling that lingers—buried in the synapses of the brain, suggesting it might’ve all been real and true—is what keeps us moving through waking life, searching for someone whose energy meets ours so we can connect on a one-to-one level. 

a stunning achievement in every way. a feast for the curious brain. i can’t wait to watch it again.

the joy of blake lively being so, so, so good in a movie that is so, so, so terrible. a feeling i’ve felt many times before and i’m sure will feel many times again. don’t really understand what’s happening here in the slightest. nothing’s screamed “italian tax cuts” this loudly since mafia mamma—maybe the only film that gives this one a run for its money in of dead air. i love when you can tell a movie is hinged on one single punchline. last half hour of this is cuckoo bananas maximalist in a way i deeply respect but that doesn’t uhhh…work in the sort of traditional sense that any filmmaker would be going for. that’s the twisted mind of paul feig for ya! i hope they make 40 more.

had a great time writing about the multitude of jaw-dropping ways this falls off a cliff in the third act @ salon

carrie’s funny. she knew i should meet you. do you know how my mother died?

I can hold onto my loneliness and still love enormously. I’m very good at doing both at the same time.

jaw-droppingly chic, and like all great image-makers, durga chew-bose innately understands how to weave meaning into each carefully constructed shot. everything is intentional. the camera blocking is acute and almost frustratingly perfect. how can anything look so magnificent? it’s consuming, all we want to do is live inside it forever. but even all of that beauty and precision can’t protect us, they can’t keep life from moving forward. like the warm glow of the summer sun caressing the skin, its touch will fade and seasons will change. everything is cyclical, and the cycle turns the hedonism of a late-july afternoon into something cold and cruel, staring in the face of an early morning freeze just weeks away. not just a great remake, a worthy film all on its own and finally another stellar dramatic showcase for chloë sevigny. the scene where she describes her creative process, and how she grasps at a nameless, formless feeling before it drifts away—and it always does—is enormous.

had a lovely chat with chloë sevigny and lily mcinerny about the illusion of one perfect summer

vincent cassel taking his date to his cemetery and showing her a live feed of his dead wife’s body rotting in the ground and saying, “the classic wide-angle view!” is like piss yourself funny. this movie’s still great i love it and i really enjoyed wrestling with it for my review seven months in the making since my first watch. 

Karsh’s life is thrown out of whack by the sheer horror of losing the love of his life, leaving him alone in this world, vulnerable and in need. He is emotionally weakened to the point of subservience — to tech, to conspiracy, and humor; anything that will restore some meaning. He’s a man riddled with contradicting views and tones, as is “The Shrouds.” There is no containing death, no trapping the memory of someone in an app on your phone. Death will always be a force more powerful than us. It’s funny that we could ever be so arrogant to think otherwise.

full review @ salon 

paved the way for jigsaw. joel schumacher directs the shit outta this, in the most unnecessary ways possible. parts of it are like genuinely surreal, others are downright hokey. totally worked for me. colin farrell lowkey incredible in the confession scene. ultimately minuscule stakes blown up to the size of an entire new york city block. final seconds are so funny imagine seeing this and being like omg i’m sooooo scared to pick up my phone, what if it’s…..kiefer sutherland 😳

i can’t shoot everything for the rest of my life with steven meisel at alder mansion which is an ugly fucking house 

at the risk of sounding self-important, this is the first time i’ve watched this since i became a journalist and made a career in media and it felt like watching with an entirely new perspective. it’s wild what can happen when you take a seven-year break from one of your favorite films. and even wilder when you watch it and look back on all of the times you used to devour it when you were a newly minted teenager and realize—oh! it was never just about the fashion. it was the rooms full of people, trying to put something beautiful and thought-provoking into the world, who have to contend with people every day who think that their jobs are unimportant or frivolous. that’s the world i wanted to be a part of. i just didn’t know it then. and because i understand that now, and because every day i try to make things that will connect with people, i understand that these jobs will never be unimportant or frivolous. ostentatious, maybe. but the world needs fantasy. it needs dreams, and it even needs frivolity.

ending is kind of mind-blowing; tender but very heavy. we’re always reg ourselves to something to make other people happy, because if we weren’t making other people happy, life would be unbearable. i guess it’s better to live with some some resignations than to not feel like you’re living at all.

real star rating this time. such a treat to see this on the silver screen in a great 35mm print. everything here is so rich—occasionally veering on heavy and cloying but never stays there for more than a second. the dialogue so perfectly written for the mind of a self-obsessed performer creating her story as she goes, who just so happens to be an over dramatic teenager. some total slugger lines here, all performed with such aplomb by miss lohan that my jaw went skittering across the floor several times. (this is the first time i’ve seen this in a theater and the first time lately when i haven’t been stoned out of my gourd.) she’s such a gifted performer, so wise beyond her years, and this is the perfect character for a girl who, in real life, was simply trying to claw her way out of the drab life of a long island misfit. production design staggering. costuming delicious. two split diopters in a disney movie. carol kane. and all introduced by my beautiful friend kristen who gave a truly moving speech about relating to a girl just trying to make her own way in a world that couldn’t see how special she was. when lola’s mom calls her by her chosen name for the first time? that’s the kinda stuff that changes lives, even when you don’t know it yet.

very sweet and i usually am wary of things that feel like they’re trying to shield themselves of criticism from being like…well-meaning and gay. but this is genuinely very heartwarming and the character writing is unexpectedly rich. younh yun jung easily the mvp. at times feels a bit under-realized but if you can meet an april bleecker street release where it lives there’s nothing to stop you from having a nice time at the theater.

truthfully, don't you find being a woman in the '80s complicated?

happy to finally have this on criterion blu-ray in honor my grandma phyllis, who owned this on vhs, and looked just like dorothy

like everyone i follow has logged this movie okay can we get that energy for like demonlover or something. birth? hell i’ll take some more eyes on mistress america!

thought this was great! looking for a larger point or more literal, concrete worldbuilding feels pretty futile, yet i suppose i understand that frustration. but i like a movie that can successfully be about the significance of something without delving too much into specific themes. (that, i think, has long been garland’s strong suit and his most major point of weakness.) the opaque quality that hangs over this really works for me. it’s a movie about the importance of photojournalism, in which garland asks you to apply that to real life, and creates a dystopia in which to relay that importance. which side is which—and what they stand for and how the world got there—isn’t the point. inhumane violence removes the need for it. all there is is wreckage.

idk it’s not really the totally heinous american war propaganda people are positing it will be but it’s also not anything of substance. a decent anti-enlisting campaign until the end that feels like a big fat salute, though, so. i ire the bait and switch of casting a bunch of internet obsessions only for it to be totally impossible to tell who’s who 78% of the time. it’s not an incompetently made film by any means, but i find hyper-realism a boring filmmaking tactic. halfway through my mind started wandering to what i’m going to make myself for a late dinner. rigatoni with some basil and tomatoes i think.

will say, though, that opening this with the whole platoon watching the video for the eric prydz dance classic “call on me” and having them all go fuckin crazy over it? did remind me of some fond moments where i’ve witnessed a group of masc and/or straight guys let their guard down to just be totally bananas over the intense immediacy of electronic music. always love to see that. and a treat to see the video on the largest screen in america and hear the song pumping through imax sound.

wrote about the impossible task of making an “apolitical” war movie @ salon, and how warfare refutes its directors’ intentions every step of the way

i feel i’m owed compensation of some kind for some of those frenetic shot-reverse shot conversations. genuinely i think they should show those initial restaurant sequences in film schools as examples of how not to edit dialogue. but once it picks up this is a lot of fun! a little exhausting in the middle—at a certain point you have to wonder if everyone else in the restaurant realized it was turning into mother!. everyone’s gettin’ their steps in. but the final act is perfectly paced with relentless tension. rips red eye a bunch, but my god, more thrillers could stand to! meghann is a movie star, jeffrey self is a supernova. what else is new.

full review (with expanded red eye shoutout) @ salon

a scorching study of power and control inverted, covered in sticky, matte lipstick and dipped in fabric dye. at times impossibly chic, and the gorgeous hard-bound cinématographe packaging of their blu-ray restoration absolutely does streitfeld’s stunning, dynamic shot/camera blocking the right justice. mod ‘90s furniture—spiral staircases, curvy iron bed frames, strangely shaped mirrors—that place this eternal struggle for balance within a specific moment in time; a chronicle of a feeling, preserved on film. tilda’s auburn hair cascading against her pale skin, a woman who’s hyperfemininity is wrapped up in colors and shapes, all designed to outwardly reflect an internal conviction she can’t quite get a grasp onto. at times, female perversions feels almost monumental, even with something as simple as the swivel of two legs strapped into green wedge heels as a woman turns toward a man. structural beauty and striking color, moving to face the plain, cold face of masculine dominance that dictates what is and is not normal with such rigidity that it becomes violence. the ultimate, most provocative affront to such a force is not just a complete lack of shame, but bountiful love. i loved it!

sweet even if it’s a little slight. breezy even if it’s a bit brief. michael angarano is so funny (and hot) here, and i continue to enjoy tracking his career. excellent work from cera as well, and though maya erskine and kristen stewart are a tad underutilized, angarano’s dialogue is tender enough to give them a whole lot of realism in a short amount of time. great wink humor. speaking from experience, the city of sacramento really does teach you about yourself whether you like it or not. greta gerwig and joan didion, you know what i’m talkin about ladies!!!!

spader is so hot here i was barking. soderbergh’s writing nom is so earned but where was andie’s? a beautiful, pulsating performance that takes in air and lets it out again, holding it just a little bit longer before each exhale. cliff martinez ambient score is a positively delicious, juicy cherry on top. early reviews treating this line a yuk-it-up woody allen comedy are so funny. it’s wry and witty but it feels so much more like a slow-burning love story, which i adored because i think it would be so easy to tweak this toward thriller or straightforward melodrama. instead, soderbergh arrived fully formed with his debut—the perfect combination of lynch’s eeriness, de palma’s voyeurism, and cronenberg’s fascination with how the mind and body interact, but with a more immediately gripping, recognizable intimacy—and he’s only kept challenging himself to keep the depth fresh ever since. love that guy.

when american propaganda hits it really hits. forgot that you can turn on a sports movie and be moved in a variety of ways at the sequences of bonding and brooding. men are awesome i wish they were real. kurt russell had that thing ON. his unit absolutely stiff as a board. patricia clarkson rocking a bob and a silk nightie. watched a making-of featurette afterward and was pretty dazzled by the precision with which this is shot. michael mantenuto’s casting story is so sweet and i fell in love with him here and learning about the tragedy of everything that came after this film is um….very sad!

ali larter the best uberbitch of the millennium. first scene really is so expertly constructed. introducing characters as they speed down the highway is such a clever setup. everything else serviceable but never lives up to that thrill. justin freakinggg machado with the show-stealing one-liner.

okay so there’s two 56-year-old women here

took an edible and halfway through i pointed at the screen and said, “oh! that one’s british!” they’re all british. beautiful movie i love the concept of giving rabbits a devout religion.

the moment when the killer jumps out of the ditch made my blood run cold. chilling to the final frame. hope fincher sent bong flowers with a thank-you note when zodiac was released.

“executive producer ari aster” oh i’m sure. can’t say i’m not charmed by téa leoni saying the word “girthsome,” and the dynamic between her and richard e. grant and will poulter is the film’s brightest element. but the toothless, cocomelon ipad baby satire here is one of the most grating things i’ve seen in a theater in recent memory. does absolutely nothing with the plot aside from stew up demon unicorn violence and even that is undercooked and tiresome. a movie that has little faith in itself and even less faith in its audience. funnily enough, the very last moment is the most interesting part of the movie, but by the time death of a unicorn gets anywhere, it’s already far too late. anyway, more later, but also just watch common side effects.

your debut feature being heavily about animal abuse is wild enough as it is but making that abuse almost farcical is crazy. respect.

a noir tribute that attempts to address the complicity of its inspirations but buckles under the allure of pastiche. hard to follow at points, but when it works, it works. anyone who says soderbergh can’t light a movie is a goddamn fool. this looks like heaven.

i don’t even want to talk about this, but i happily fought through it to write about how holland is an egregious mishandling and misjudgment of nicole kidman’s well-demonstrated capacity for weirdness. (and her single great line reading to a danish pastry). read it @ salon.

difficult to watch something that i find so objectively confident in its tone and structure and story, knowing full well how its been seen and censored and derided, and not spend an entire review talking about how a lot of viewers have been projecting and willfully misreading actors. so i won’t do that, because i think betsey’s film speaks for itself, and i also think that if you have the ability to put your own ego and aside for 80 minutes, this is one of the most enjoyable and inspiring indie projects of this decade so far.

totally scathing and outrageously funny. ambition eating itself alive before being regurgitated as a cold, angular brick of narcissism carved out of marble with a shitty shake-and-go wig on top of it. so incisive in the way that it analyzes gender identity in brother-sister dynamics; in many ways, i felt like my truest and happiest self when my sister used to dress me up in her clothes and jewelry as a child. i loved feeling that closeness to her. actors digs into the pursuit of that feeling, that runs parallel to the desire for greatness and beauty—especially among siblings—and displays all of its thorny repercussions. truly a brilliant finale.

made the mistake of reading a review on here that said we’re supposed to laugh when peter’s called pretty at an audition and that’s how i know some people are fake beauty irers. he’s so pretty! i love the parts of the film that allow for these characters to pause and just study themselves in a camera or in a mirror. who am i when i turn my cheek that way? or when i wear my hair like that? if i stick my chest out or purse my lips? what angle do we look the identical? can i become you? 

“i’m so scared that people are going to think i’m narcissistic! but really i just want to be analytical and truthful!”

a director having two great movies out within one year is already an embarrassment of riches for the cinema-starved public. but two great movies out within two months? that’s like being served the will to live and the meaning of life on the same platter and being told that you can indulge in both. (spoken from a presence defender.)

black bag is easily the most fun you can have at a theater this year. a whip-smart, wit-heavy spy romp that energizes like a double shot of freshly pulled espresso. so cleverly ponders what constitutes spice in a marriage and line of work where spice is the primary flavor. and if it makes a point for monogomy, it makes 10,000 more for marisa abela’s movie star prowess. she grabs scenes from her more seasoned costars and spins them around atop her finger with a smirk. how brilliant that a film where being boring is the biggest offense a human can commit is never dull for a single second. will watch one million more times.

full review @ salon

ann dowd’s first line is “zoinks! there’s a horse on your bed!” so yeah i think it’ll make $100,000,000 at the box office opening weekend. on one hand naomi watts is really wonderful and brings true nuance to a character who, in someone else’s hands, could come off like an absolutely unlovable menace to society. on the other hand, iris is still very much a menace to society. but as someone who worked with dogs for years and misses my beloved yellow lab every day, the friend gets a lot right about companionship, grief, and needlessly restrictive building codes. (if you think what happens here is an “abuse” of the emotional animal certification, let me point you to the clientele i’ve worked with in my life and i’ll show you society’s real monsters. they all have a ton of money and would push you in front of a moving vehicle if it meant they could capture their dog in perfect lighting for the instagram written in the dog’s “voice.”)

wrote about meeting the worst dog owners ever before i became a writer (and also this sweet movie) @ salon

everyone who kicks dirt on naomi watts’ name needs to be shamed one way or another. god she’s so incredible, actually one of the best of this age, whose talents are so specific and singular so many don’t quite understand them. she has a way of getting to the humanity of every single word of dialogue. having this and king kong come out the same year? something every artist would dream of. this is just wonderful. somehow a video store movie for me…idk what the north dakota Video Action was doing with this on display, but i’m glad i have that reference. video style is totally hypnotic, ideal mix of humor and drama in a way that feels like it’s being forgotten by working writers and directors every second that es. i loved loved loved.

better than i it being when i watched it with my parents which is really crazy. something about the snowy street of toronto and egoyan’s use of locations and cold, natural winter light against amanda seyfried and julianne moore’s skin is so stunning. can definitely sense he didn’t write this because it certainly does have that 2005-2010 thriller flavor, but up until the last few minutes it’s very sexy and scintillating. julianne and amanda so good awww yay. would love to meet someone for a 6:30pm coffee and cognac at the cafe diplomatico while snow falls outside okay we neeeeeeed to move to canada. hope egoyan makes another film that features fine arts as a plot point to complete an amanda seyfriend arts world psychosexual triptych.

from the opening credits that slowly cascade along the walls of club exotica, egoyan leads you into this world of favors and transactions that are far more sinister and beautiful than they look from a distance. every shot of the grassy hills took my breath away. you can see each piece slowly moving toward another from the beginning, but it’s watching how exotica casually slinks into place that’s the real titillating thrill. everyone’s doing impeccable work here but mia kirshner is just jaw-dropping. need to rewatch chloe.

loved and was so intrigued by the story here and the staging of the performance scenes is really quite beautiful. seyfried good as always but egoyan’s formally stylish, rigid direction leaves jeanine slightly detached from his more imioned script. still enjoyed very much but i’m a sucker for being driven mad by the fine arts.

should i also just plug mayhem under every review. okay. “she’s me hyper-intellectualizing every lyric in mayhem before i’ve heard a single one.” in stores march 7. #DiseaseDivas

I could love him without noise for eternity.

very sweet and horny and unfortunately terribly relatable as a gay guy who used to drink a lot and make terrible decisions when we he went home to the small town he grew up in. enjoyed guiraudie’s opaque script, especially its more tender moments. the comedic elements work just fine but i relished the quieter mystery before things turn somewhat farcical. i would’ve hit on the most giant rugged man in town too damn.

a total blast. bong joon ho deftly juggles several plotlines without mickey 17 becoming narratively dense or haphazardly written. in fact, it’s one of the most engaging theatrical experiences i’ve had so far this year, thanks to both robert pattinson’s dopey, amiable performance and bong’s inimitable worldbuilding and timely screenwriting—which remarkably never feels cloying, despite its themes and some characters being snatched from the headlines. has no trouble balancing action and heart, which might be my favorite aspect. its conversation around death and how much/how little stock we put in it worked 100x better for me than something like the monkey, and i think earnestness goes a long way to make this film successful—though i imagine some of its more overt resistance messaging will have its detractors. pattinson has never been dreamier hmmm maybe human printing should be real after all.

full review @ salon

I think there is beauty and light on the other side.

nerve-shredding. jaw-dropping. explosive in every way, from its electric style to its gripping story. the first speech scene put a pit in my stomach that’s still here. the way these people act, the systemic evil embedded into almost all of their beings. and then you have the small section of the fruit that, somehow, hasn’t rotted yet. on a performance level alone this is magnificent, every person obliterating themselves by revealing and accepting the truth in real time. grim and sickening to the core, and so very beautiful. has many one of the most shocking lines i’ve ever heard in a film. the twin hallucination scene is like capturing the feeling of love on video.

hehe i loved this. michel franco gives tim roth just enough moments where his body language can make you say “…wait” until the movie flips, and from there, it can go in any direction. i did not once guess correctly which direction that would be, but i loved being strung along the whole time to find out. the film is one long litmus test of morality, where every 10 minutes you could pause and ask someone you’re watching the film with, “so…is he just a little justified in this with the context we’ve been given, or is he a total psychopath?” and the answer will change from person to person each time.

at one point i did get to excited for lady gaga’s mayhem that my ears started to ring. but that’s neither here nor there.

these two characters are so fascinating. their relationship is so volatile yet so filled with iration and respect. they could be great friends in another life, but their violence from their decisions in this one will only tear them apart. some really beautiful shots and earned moments. the rest is a bit too totally cluttered for me.

briefly thought the ending implied that he made the whole thing up as he was spinning a yarn to the time during a mechanic shift, before going home with his daughter and his boyfriend. now there’s an idea.

a lesbian—let alone two of them—would never make such thoughtless, moronic decisions. but i guess it’s good that we’ve moved on from kill your gays. now we just brutalize them in a near-fatal hatecrime and put them in the middle of the ocean to fend for their lives against a shark after watching their friends get picked off one by one.

oh my god i loved this. so incredibly special. a true equally balanced dramedy, unlike most contemporary films that are weighted to the to the drama. jerry and anne’s intimate familiarity allows the tone to shift quickly and naturally. a family who cannot talk to each other because they’re always so busy doing things for each other. that’s how they show love, by being constantly tied together through small acts of affection. when sam buys the fish, he’s out picking up things for molly! and when they start one task for someone else, another person feels slighted. everyone’s rhythm is off, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be fixed. they just have to that, in relationships, generosity isn’t just giving time to each other, it’s giving each other time apart. kindness is a two-way street in queens.

oh…not really. was a longlegs defender but this is depressingly thin in every way. has all the same gleeful cynicism as a modern day keyboard warrior. nihilism is so out. the great thing about the final destination films is that they both fear and respect the power of death. they also know how to craft a punchline, even if it’s grisly. i could practically hear the sound of quips slapping against the ground every time they were mobbed into dead air. “it’s funny bc a guy accidentally chokes on his vape 🤣” yeah real fuckin knee-slapper. editing that occasionally veers on unintelligible as perkins plops one or two (small) visual swings between an endless barrage of tasteless photography that never justifies the screenplay’s tangible snobbery. hot theo james with a half-mullet but even that can only do so much. kills are shockingly uninspired save for maybe two memorable deaths, which only highlight how drab and scattershot every other aspect of the monkey is. most thrilling part was when i got momentarily stuck in the elevator on the way out.

if we stopped adapting lesser-known king works i think society would be just fine. better, even. this is weenie hut junior for the “this is for true sickos” crowd.

full review @ salon

• Poor Things
• Problemista
• ages
• May December
• A Thousand and One
• Sometimes I Think About Dying
• Showing Up
• Of an Age
• Monica
• Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.

...plus 16 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.