4v291o

We love a maggoty climax.

Raises a whole star rating in the wake of "Final Reckoning".

Fun! Colorful! Briskly Paced!

Watched on Monday May 26, 2025.

Watched on Sunday May 25, 2025.

Watched on Saturday May 24, 2025.

This review may contain spoilers.

What begins as Mission Impossible: Clip Show somehow stacks two dynamite sequences together to save this one from the brink of collapse.

Q&A with Jude Law in NOLA. 

Breaking News: movie’s stunning and Law’s charming af. 

Also I am calling for an official moratorium audience questions at these things. There has never been a good audience question and frankly I don’t believe there ever will be.

Cackling and cheering. Pure entertainment.

I'm not mad, "Clown In A Cornfield". I'm just disappointed.

Full review HERE!

Is anything better than the trench run?

One ticket to ride the Ferris Wheel with Pam Grier please!

Crazy how faithful the Verbinski film actually is to this

That bit with the dancers is creepy as hell.

The more this is a Florence Pugh vehicle and the less it tries to be a quippy team movie the better it works. 

AMC cancelled my screening of “The Surfer”, which I was hoping to write about, so this was the next best thing. Them’s the breaks.

Drugs. Money. Sex. 24/7.

My face hurts.

One day, a remake of this delightful, sad, forgotten little monster movie will be made with Ryan Gosling starring in Burt Reynolds' role, and I'm going to write it.

Whatever movie you imagine based on the baller poster is infinitely better than what you get.

Earnest and silly. There’s a part where the little orange monkey puppet gets a milk mustache and I liked that quite a bit.

Even richer on rewatch. Only time I’ve ever cried during a mid-credits scene.

If this was 25% more stylized and 15% trashier we’d really have something here.

Best damn movie I’ve seen in a theater in a long time. Didn’t want it to end. Seeing it again ASAP in 70mm.

The godson had a good time. So there’s that.

SO much goofier than its reputation.

Feels like a magic trick of a movie.

OVERLOOK FILM FESTIVAL:

Predictably Kristin loved this as well.

OVERLOOK FILM FESTIVAL:

William Castle seems like a fun hang.

OVERLOOK FILM FESTIVAL:

Ernest Dickerson baybee

OVERLOOK FILM FESTIVAL CLOSING NIGHT:

Conflicted. Bombastic and silly with lots of blood but tonally very different from the novel, which is a shame cause I loved the tone of the novel.

OVERLOOK FILM FESTIVAL:

World Premiere.

Frailty coded AF.

OVERLOOK FILM FESTIVAL:

Quite possibly the only adaptation of “The Jaunt” we’ll ever get or need.

OVERLOOK FILM FESTIVAL: 

A decidedly non-horror entry to the fest but a damn fine time at the movies. Does stuff with zoom based filmmaking I’ve never seen before.

OVERLOOK OPENING NIGHT:

Barbara Crampton is in the house!

OVERLOOK OPENING NIGHT:

Landon works his best when he takes what seems like a gimmicky premise and flips it into pure entertainment. Had a blast.

OVERLOOK FILM FEST SCREENER #6

SO MUCH sadder than you’d think. Good tho.

OVERLOOK FILM FEST SCREENER #5

A ragged plot threatens to sully the waters of the grief-stricken, yet somehow endearing, latest from Cronenberg, but he pulls it all together more than satisfactorily by the end. Cassel and Kruger are simmering, and Pearce is fun in schlub mode. The gaping maw of love long lost is ever-present and more disturbing than any desecration of the flesh, either living or dead.

With the old masters shedding this mortal coil in ever-frequent bursts, I just feel lucky to live in a world where Cronenberg can just casually drop something this weird, heartfelt, and entertaining.

OVERLOOK FILM FEST SCREENER #4

Imagine John Waters directed a feature length adaptation of the dream sequence from ‘Lisa Frankenstein’ through the filter of ‘Hundreds of Beavers’. 

Categorically rules.

OVERLOOK FILM FEST SCREENER #3

This review may contain spoilers.

OVERLOOK FILM FEST SCREENER #2

Farm to Table Rosemary’s Baby

Death and love find a home, even in the most beatific of locales, in Alain Guiraudie’s quietly devastating erotic thriller “Misericordia”. A Latin word that means ‘to pity’, “Misericordia” offers a tragedy as deliberate and seemingly natural as blood on the fallen leaves of a forest after a murder. “Misericordia” follows the story of Jérémie, an adrift young man who returns to his hometown to attend a funeral for his former employer, only to linger and entangle his life and desires into the mourning of the dead man’s widow and son. I knew little about this movie before watching it, but found myself enraptured with its steady, nearly comic presentation of the small town of Saint-Martial and the quiet, mushroom-picking lifestyle of its locals. It is soon clear that Jérémie, while an outsider, loved his former employer beyond simple affection and mourns in his own lingering way. However, the man’s son Vincent, boorish and overly protective of his mother, believes Jérémie’s intentions to be more parasitic and malevolent, leading to bloody and ultimately pitiful consequences.

That there is bloodshed in “Misericordia” is merely a leaping-off point for the film’s unique spell as the aftermath of violence creates the circumstances for sad people to find solace in secrets and each other. “I don’t want to be alone,” several characters relate throughout the film, and truly, is there any creature more deserving of grace than one in the aftermath of loss? The spiraling interweb of love, desire, and comfort spun by “Misericordia” grows on you like mushrooms from the rotted remains of a poorly buried body, yet offers a flavor unique to itself and desirable to the soul. Fungus, much like ourselves, can only exist within the presence of death in some form, with its black cloud as natural and ambivalent to existence as a kind word from a friend or the blind rage of fratricide. As one character, a local priest with a hidden agenda, opines to Jérémie, “The world is going to the dogs. But that doesn’t stop people going to the movies.” Thank God for that.

“Misericordia” is the kind of oddball cinema Americans rarely get on the big screen, a story that sticks like sweat and leaves a lingering taste in one’s mouth. Check it out and see if you can untangle its moral web, but don’t be surprised if you find the pursuit fruitless, yet satisfying all the same.

OVERLOOK FILM FEST SCREENER #1

A foundational text in my cinematic education came in the form of “Nightmares in Red, White, and Blue”, a fantastic little documentary that strove to paint a picture of the horror film as a warped mirror that has reflected American ideals, hypocrisies, and atrocities back at us for over one hundred years. Reading film as literature, as worthy of minute discussion and vivisection, was no surprise to me. Doing so with even the most shocking and upsetting horror films certainly was. I find any film that feels like overhearing a late-night drink between great artists going into the weeds on their favorite movies to be borderline intoxicating. To that end, Alexandre Philippe’s “Chain Reactions” readily became my new favorite fix.

Structured around the remembrances and introspections of five unique artists; Comedian Patton Oswalt (Author of “Silver Screen Fiend”), Filmmaker Takashi Mike (“Audition”), Film Critic Alexandra Heller-Nicholas (Author of “The Cinema Coven” and “The Giallo Canvas”), Writer Stephen King (Do I really need to list them?), and Filmmaker Karyn Kusama (“Jennifer’s Body”, “The Invitiation”), “Chain Reactions” lays out the sobering case that Tobe Hooper’s sun sick video nasty “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” is not just a bedrock film to each artist’s own development, but is one of the great pieces of American art ever shorn from the bloated carcass of polite society. Unspooled through the prism of the filmmakers’ and writers’ first time seeing “TCSM”, each artist takes a scalpel to their own impressions of the film, digging through the miasma of memory and revealing the long, lingering tail that great filmmaking can leave on our souls, not unlike the smell of stale gasoline or the stench of rotting meat in a long abandoned abattoir. Often, Alexandre Philippe uses the artist’s remembrances of other films such as “Nosferatu” or “The Picnic at Hanging Rock” as sister stories worthy of counter-dissection, using one film to make the case for another in a Jacob’s Ladder of dueling criticism and appreciation, a veritable Rocky Road of my all time favorite flavors. As a rapt audience member, “Chain Reactions” sprinted by, with each of the speakers spinning an ever-enthralling web that entangled their own life experiences with their lasting impressions of Hooper’s masterpiece. I could have watched for hours more.

It’s no secret that “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” is my favorite movie of all time, and I’ll take any opportunity to espouse its glory on this very blog. But what “Chain Reactions” gets to the heart of through its conversational structure, both free-wheeling yet insightful, is that great art doesn’t explode fully formed from the head of Hooper. It has roots in the art both before it and after, with each generation’s artists taking the mantle of divine storytellers, ing down respun legends and ghost stories to better understand a legacy of destruction and pain. I left “Chain Reactions” with a fresh stack of films I need to watch to further my cinematic education and the overwhelming desire to talk about horror movies until the witching hour dawns. If cinema is a cultural memory, then “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” is the nightmare from which we may never wake up from. The very least we can do is commiserate in our shared experience and try to learn something new from the blood the past has let spill.

Harrowing af.

Watched on Monday March 24, 2025.

Wes you crazy for that honky tonk score but I love ya for it

A Guys being Bros Movie Brundle Fly.

Thats a compliment.

Total kitchen sink movie. Loved it.

"Our world is a tire fire, floating in an ocean of piss."

Kristin woke up near the end and said “I still don’t get it.”

Love any excuse for a Will Patton showcase.

Watched the Director’s Cut with a dear friend who informed me after the movie that he does not know who Stanley Kubrick is.

1. Mission: Impossible – Fallout
2. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol
3. Mission: Impossible III
4. Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation
5. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning
6. Mission: Impossible
7. Mission: Impossible II
8. Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning

Definitive.

• Sinners
• The Monkey
• It Ends
• Dead Lover

1. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial

   cinema baby.

2. Schindler's List

   Neeson weeping because he could have saved more.

3. Raiders of the Lost Ark

   quite possibly the most perfect movie ever constructed by human hands.

4. A.I. Artificial Intelligence

   recent rewatch made me cry in front of my in-laws.

5. Jaws

   my favorite movie to show at a party and drunkenly scream about.

6. Jurassic Park

   scared my six year old godson so much we had to turn on Bluey.

7. Saving Private Ryan

   earn this.

8. Catch Me If You Can

   the way Hanks says "knock...knock".

9. Close Encounters of the Third Kind

   might raise a few spots on rewatch.

10. War of the Worlds

    Cruise the movie star and Cruise the actor have never been in better sync.

...plus 24 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Nickel Boys
2. Anora
3. I'm Still Here
4. The Substance
5. Dune: Part Two
6. The Brutalist
7. Conclave
8. Wicked
9. A Complete Unknown
10. Emilia Pérez

• Strange Darling
• Dìdi (弟弟)
• Oddity
• Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1
• Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
• I Saw the TV Glow
• Challengers
• The First Omen
• Cuckoo
• Destroy All Neighbors

...plus 8 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Zodiac
2. The Social Network
3. Gone Girl
4. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
5. Se7en
6. Mank
7. Panic Room
8. Fight Club
9. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
10. The Killer

...plus 2 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
• Band of Brothers
• Elf
• Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
• The Breakfast Club
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
• Kill Bill: Vol. 1
• Kill Bill: Vol. 2

1. Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
2. Jackie Brown
3. Inglourious Basterds
4. Django Unchained
5. Kill Bill: Vol. 2
6. Pulp Fiction
7. Kill Bill: Vol. 1
8. Death Proof
9. The Hateful Eight
10. Reservoir Dogs

1. Rocky
2. Creed
3. Rocky II
4. Creed III
5. Rocky IV
6. Creed II
7. Rocky Balboa
8. Rocky V
9. Rocky III

• Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2
• The Matrix
• Haunt

• Witness
• Dark Night of the Scarecrow

• Stand by Me
• The Princess Bride
• When Harry Met Sally...
• Misery
• A Few Good Men

• Glass Onion
• Elvis
• RRR
• Top Gun: Maverick
• Jackass Forever
• Everything Everywhere All at Once
• The Black Phone
• The Fabelmans
• Adult Swim Yule Log
• Confess, Fletch

...plus 5 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
• Harper
• Hooper
• The Haunting
• Black Sunday
• Christine
• Cop Land
• The Last Duel
• Nine Days
• Network

...plus 2 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

(As of 04/24/2021)

*Subject to change as I see more movies.

1. Spontaneous
2. Minari
3. Nomadland
4. The Invisible Man
5. Palm Springs
6. Sound of Metal
7. One Night in Miami...
8. Another Round
9. Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)
10. Da 5 Bloods

• The Natural
• Sneakers

1. Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives
2. Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter
3. Friday the 13th Part 2
4. Friday the 13th
5. Friday the 13th
6. Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood
7. Friday the 13th Part III
8. Freddy vs. Jason
9. Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan
10. Jason X

...plus 2 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.