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Jeez, I had written this review in which I compare this film to another early Redford starring film, Barefoot in the Park. They played in succession two nights ago on TCM and I caught the tail end of Barefoot but saw The Hot Rock in it’s entirety.

I blathered on & on about how some 70’s movies would pile plot elements on top of plot elements to the point that it could make them overlong and muddled, blah, blah, blah.

So anyway, I ed out while writing it and lost the whole thing. No biggie. My posts are always too long.

So, very quickly, Robert Redford plays a jewel thief, recently released from prison. Imagine Redford in prison😀

I will talk about only one segment from this film, the helicopter scene.
Redford and his team of jewel thieves have to re-steal the diamond from a police station that they had already stolen from the Brooklyn Museum.
They procure a helicopter. It’s to be flown by one of the henchman(Ron Liebman) but he’s never flown a helicopter before.
The plan is to land on the roof of the police station, break in, yada yada.

Since this guy is a novice chopper pilot, this is a harrowing flight. He nearly crashes into every building and bridge in lower Manhattan to include, the still being constructed, World Trade Center.
I’m kinda meh on the film as a whole, but my 2.5 ⭐️’s are for this scene alone. This was a capital D, Dangerous bit of stunt flying over a couple million people.
It would never be allowed today, obvi.
Also to the film’s credit is that it appears to be entirely shot in NYC. Director, Peter Yates really captures that early 70’s NYC essence very well. If someone were to program a Streets of New York 70’s film festival, this should be in there with French Connection, Dog Day Afternoon, etc.

So thanks to TCM for showing me a Redford film that I never knew existed.

PS. This was probably too long, too!🤭

NGL, I was watching this at home and was having trouble staying engaged. This film is all greys and rain until out of nowhere; music and color!

These beautiful sequences are really what makes this film tick. 
They exist as fanciful escape from the drudgery of a decayed apartment building in Taiwan.

It rains incessantly and we learn from a TV news broadcast  that the world is suffering through an “end of the millennium” pandemic. How quaint for 1998😀

This isn’t truly a silent film but the dialogue is sparse. In fact, I would venture a guess that the majority of words spoken come from the songs and news broadcasts and that made it all the more interesting.

Also, there’s some good cat acting! 😸😸😸

Why in the world did I watch this after seeing Tarkovsky’s, The Sacrifice AND Alan Parker’s, Mississippi Burning?!
These three films are simply awash in existential dread and human suffering. But hey, I’m a wacky guy!

I know this is a John Cassavetes’ film but again, for the billionth time, would his films have the punch that they do if it weren’t for Gena Rowlands?  She is as much the author of the films they collaborate on as he is; actually, she is FAR MORE the author because everyone is looking at her! She’s the driving force in breathing life into these characters.

In this film, Gena plays a wife and mother of three named, Mabel. 
She isn’t under the influence, at least not in an abusive way, of drugs and alcohol. 
She seems to be dealing with mental illness. If she IS suffering from mental illness, it’s quite possible that it has stemmed from a variety of pressures all converging on her in a cumulative hammer blow.

Her husband, played by Peter Falk is ill equipped to be of any true to her. He thinks his love is enough, but we find out his love is an angry, violent love.
There are scenes of violence toward Gena so please brace yourself if you haven’t seen this film yet.

Interestingly and maybe, smartly, John & Gena’s real life children play their kids in this and it must have been, even with the most generous and empathetic coaching from Gena & John, a total mind fuck to watch and act with their mother while she exhibits these tremulous and painful moments and more than that, watching Peter Falk slap and threaten to kill their mother and them. This movie is hard, it’s daring, but it’s so goddamned hard.

This film is a study of a society that seemingly has no interest in addressing, in any therapeutic way the struggles of Women, mental illness, and generational trauma.

Watching Gena in this film… I think I can see generations of trauma play across her face and I feel helpless.

I just gave this film 4.5 ⭐️s and I’m not sure that I like it.
The Senator Theatre here in Baltimore was showing it tonight so I wanted to make sure that I didn’t miss my chance for a big screen viewing.
I marveled at the blocking both interior and exterior. These actors were exceptional! They were given some very obtuse, sometimes, sparse, sometimes frustratingly long winded dialog to work with and they crush it.
Sven Nykvist was the DP on this so it looks incredible.

As a matter of fact, this movie has so much going for it that it should be an unimpeachable masterpiece.
The Sacrifice, is a tad frustrating. Frustrating on purpose, is my assumption.
I know for a fact that I will be thinking  and talking about this for flick for a long time.

It feels as if Tarkovsky created a huge chessboard and the characters are chess pieces. But they are chess pieces without clearly defined purpose. This is challenging for the audience, at least it was for me🤷🏼‍♂️

There is a supernatural plot device that seems designed to leave us…wondering if it was necessary !?

I am very tired so I gonna drop this now. 
Hopefully, I will come back to this once I feel that I’m clearer on my purpose and intention of logging this.

Senator Theater

When Gene Hackman ed, I went into a bit of a reverie of his stand out performances. Hoosiers, French Connection, The Royal Tenenbaums and even his creation of Lex Luthor in Superman all sprang to mind. But his performance as FBI Agent Rupert Anderson in Mississippi Burning is the performance that has lingered in my mind all these years.

Before I go any further, if you’ve watched this film and haven’t rated it 5 stars, please view it again.

I will also say, for as much as I love this motion picture; for as much as I am astonished by Hackman’s performance, I had not seen it in quite a while and I was hesitant to seek it out in the aftermath of his and his wife’s ing.

I came home after a 15 hour day this morning and did as I normally do; I turned on TCM and there it was, just starting. I needed sleep but I couldn’t look away.

Within a minute, I was following Hackman & Willem Dafoe as they set about investigating the disappearance of three civil rights workers in the most heinous and horrifically racist community in arguably the most racist state in America.
That’s the reason for my hesitance, for all its’ brilliance it is indeed, capital H, Heavy.

This is also a capital H, Horror film. Monsters are real. They own the stores, the banks, the land upon which you live, they work in the schools, the hospitals and they are the police, the local government. The KKK is in them and they are the KKK. To be Black in Mississippi and of course the South in general, was to be beset on all sides by evil forces. That might be putting it euphemistically.

The fact that this film only won one Oscar for cinematography is bewildering. The Academy should have assembled the full cast & crew and backed up a truck full of Oscars and tossed them out. Hackman and s McDormand were nominated but Dafoe and Brad Dourif and a young, Darius McCrary were all amazing. We also really get to see R. Lee Ermey’s acting chops. In Full Metal Jacket he’s so damned believable as a Marine Corps drill instructor because he’s been one. I delight, as a former Marine, in watching Hackman, also a former Marine & Ermey go toe to toe in this. Honestly, it’s kind of exhilarating.

I don’t want to gloss over s McDormand. I don’t know how she got to that place of constant internal conflict but she is consistently awash in it without being “showy”. Her character is married to evil and she knows it. How do you reconcile that? How do you get up and go to work? How do make it dinner and lay under that demon?

Mississippi burning is full of this nuance when it could just be a good versus evil story. Hackman is mood put into action. 
There are no moments of victory just an unrelenting pursuit of our darkest human impulses and a contemplation of what our American experiment means.

At this very moment, the President of the United States, is waging war on Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. He is in direct conflict with the very notion of what it means to be American but more than that, he and his istration have no concept of what it means to be a good human being. They would have us accept a status quo of powerful white men, usurping decency in any which way they can, leading us into societal division. 

That is also, Capital H Horror.

I’m sure that I am one of many folks logging this documentary that first heard about this project on the podcast, 99% Invisible, hosted by Roman Mars and his sultry baritone.

99% Invisible concerns itself with the fascinating world of design, particularly, urban design and how it intersects with and flows through our physical & psychological space. It’s really cool! You should listen!

This film documents, from inception to destruction of, you guessed it, a secret mall apartment. An apartment that never would have been created unless the government of Providence Rhode Island hadn’t decided to evict a bunch of Artists from the old WW2 era vacant buildings that they had turned into viable living, studio & performance spaces.

An Artist named Michael Townsend had watched the Mall being constructed and realized that there was unused space in that huge concrete edifice.
He and seven compatriots set about creating a home of sorts, out of that forgotten space. They were undiscovered for 4 years!

The story is fascinating and so are the eight people that pulled off this feat.

If the creation of the Secret Mall Apartment was the only story displayed, that would be pretty interesting but in a way, it is only window dressing for the real thrust and ethos of this film. 
Cities and society writ large NEED Artists to remind them of their humanity. Artists help us explore and expose our frailty, inequities and bullshit so that we can become more human. Art helps us connect, empathize and heal.

If you see this documentary, you will gain a greater understanding of what I’m saying. It’s in theaters all over the country right now so get to it you beautiful nerds!

“Will your bones break if I hold you?”
“Hold me.”

I think that I’ve unlocked the difference between David Cronenberg and David Lynch.
Cronenberg films “dissect the frog”.
David Lynch films explore the frog’s journey to the dissection. 
And that’s why Lynch was so loved; in his work we care about the frog.

The dialogue at the top this review is pretty much, THE emotional beat of the movie.

This logging isn’t an anti-Cronenberg screed but I do wish to compare his last two films to Lynch’s final feature, Inland Empire.

For all of the identity shifting that Laura Dern’s character goes through in Inland Empire, it’s easy to feel for her and maybe even empathize with her. I understand when people express that Inland Empire is the least likable of his films. It doesn’t look like a movie as much as a collection of bizarre home movies. But I’ll be damned if Lynch wasn’t able to wrangle that into a compelling narrative in which we the audience can’t help but be completely fucking worried about Dern, every version of Dern.

In The Shrouds and his previous film, Crimes of the Future, we see extremely good actors; Virgo Mortenson & Lea Seydoux in “Crimes” and Vincent Cassel & Diane Kruger in “Shrouds”, working through problems of science, our physical frailty, our mental & emotional vulnerability held together by the framework of capitalism and socio-political intrigue.
Sounds good, right?!
Well, it is good, it just lacks emotion.
The characters are all so goddamned detached.

The Shrouds looks amazing! The tech is sound!
The story concept is very interesting
and it gets a ⭐️ for some steamy scenes. 
The scenes with body modification are interesting and there’s a bit of a nod to the original James Whale Frankenstein/Bride of Frankenstein.

The ending is ambiguous and while I appreciate the lack of a concrete resolution I’m not left wondering about it. 

Think about it this. Lynch’s Mullholland Drive was a failed TV pilot that he was able to turn into, arguably, the “best” film so far of this century. 
That film leaves us reaching back to it, again and again because we can’t shake the feelings that Naomi Watts, Laura Herring  and Lynch are leaving us to grapple with. 
How did the figurative frog end up on the dissection table and what could have been done to stop it? What could WE have done?!
Also, I’m sorry for the frog metaphor.

NOW…here are some notes I took on my phone:

Baltimore Style Crabcakes appear at the top of a menu in closeup. A tip of the cap to John Waters?🤷🏼‍♂️

Vincent Cassel- the world’s worst first date? See the movie. You’ll get what I’m saying.

Corpse voyeur-great name for the death metal band in my head.😀🤘

Diane Krueger- Conspiracy theory dog groomer!

If Guy Pearce played his character in The Brutalist with the energy he displays in this, he would’ve won the Oscar!

“I know now there is only one true happiness in this life, to love and be loved.”

I first learned of this film when it was the cover story of the June 2023 issue of Cineaste.
 Reading the interview with writer/director s O’Connor truly peaked my interest. I think because this film isn’t a biopic of Emily but a telling of her story as O’Connor imagined it.

I have finally tracked it down at my local video store, Beyond Video and I’m happy to report that it is indeed quite good and would be entertaining to folks that weren’t Brontë Sisters nerds.

I completely dig that O’Connor feels that Emily Brontë is dark eyed, dark haired and brooding. An outcast and outlier in her community and at times her family. Her sister, Charlotte is particularly dismissive and harsh towards her. She’s often onished for looking at her feet. Yup. She’s a shoegaze goth!

There is a sensuous and tragic love story at the center of this film. Emma Mackey, in her portrayal of Emily Brontë, does a fantastic job of letting the glory of a first love and the eventual shunning of her by that lover, wash over her.
O’Connor shoots Mackey in closeup throughout the film to mesmerizing effect. This might feel overwrought in any other movie but Emma Mackey has got the face for it. Her dark eyes bore into me and I wanted to…help.

Emily Brontë is depicted here as an almost supernatural being. A supernatural being that is being tethered to this earth with the heaviest chains. 
Amongst those heavy chains are a fraught family dynamic, societal and inter-relational misogyny and the constant, looming spectre of death.

The score is perfect and the cinematography is brilliant. DP, Nanu Segal made the hills of West Yorkshire feel grand and claustrophobic at the same time.

And if all this isn’t good enough for you, there’s opium use and implicit cunnilingus & fellatio!

“Shooter’s gonna take you home. You pay attention.”

Crying my fucking eyes out!

Hackman! Hershey! Hopper!

Three actors at the MOTHERFUCKING peak of their craft!

Everyone is on a redemption journey and Gene Hackman might be the coach but he’s giving everyone room to lift each other up.

While logging Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 the other day, I think I mentioned that Hopper won the best ing Actor for playing, Shooter in Hoosiers. I stand corrected, he was only nominated. But, man…he did have a helluva 1986!

Anyway, I gave this 4.5 ⭐️’s because the score is meh, and I rarely don’t enjoy a filmscore. Oddly enough, composer Jerry Goldsmith received this film’s only other Oscar nom. Watcha gonna do, it was the 80’s🤷🏼‍♂️

Seeing Greta Garbo’s wild eyed horniness while she watches the men competing for her affections literally WHIP each other is the fucking best!!

What makes the scene even better is that these lovesick morons are whipping each other in front of a Mariachi band!!

Garbo was amazing!

Hell! This movie gets 4 ⭐️’s just for having a male character that enthusiastically desires to perform cunnilingus! The 5th ⭐️ is for everything else. And there’s a whole lot of everything else!!

I’m betting that Ryan Coogler shot everything that he wrote. I could almost imagine him thinking to himself, “should I have three scenes of traditional Irish music?!” The answer is yes!

This movie is a feast! First off…it might count as a musical! There are definitely choreographed dance scenes with bespoke songs.
Michael B Jordan playing twins! He’s in so many scenes with himself that shooting coverage must have been exhausting.

All of the performances are amazing! Miles Caton is a certified star. Hailee Steinfeld, Tenaj L. Jackson, Jack O’Connell, Delroy Lindo etc.. everyone was totally bought in.
 
The 1st hour alone is a very good film depicting two brothers  that are gangsters(Jordan) returning to Mississippi after 7 years in Chicago, looking to make a fresh start by opening a juke t, enlisting the help of  the community of folks they relied on from their early days; and shooting some guys along the way.

At the hour mark there is the coolest fucking scene that I’ve had the pleasure of viewing but I don’t want to give it away! But it’s about the power and influence of traditional African music and the Blues…. Just go see the movie! This is when I started crying!

There is also a tonal shift at this point and  it turns into a horror movie and it’s really fucking cool!

I’m not gonna give anything else away other than I expect this to garner Ryan Coogler an Oscar nod for directing and original screenplay.

PS. I know that you’ve heard that it’s sexy. It is.
I definitely cried 3 times but got all horned up 4.😀

I don’t know if the title in Polish sounds as campy as it does translated into English, but I’ve watched, ‘I Like Bats’ twice and the comedy of it was more evident on the second watch.

‘I Like Bats’  is part of the ‘House of Psychotic Women’ dvd box set that accompanies Kier-La Janisse’s book of the same name and it’s such a cool take on the Vampire genre. Its power is in its turning of this story tradition upside down.

The Vampire in this film is, as you may have guessed a woman. Her name is Isabel and she works in a curio shop with her aunt.
She’s reserved, strong and fiercely independent AND she has a bat sanctuary in her house!
Kudos to the bat wrangler! There might be more real bats in this film than any other motherfucking vampire movie!
And MORE KUDOS to the star, Katarzyna Walter for working with all of those bats! They zip around her, they fly into her hair and she even holds one close to her face! Trust me; they don’t teach that in acting class!!

A plot point that gets alluded to is that there is a serial killer in the area that has killed 7 girls. At first, I thought that Isabel was feeding on them. It’s never explicitly stated that she isn’t the killer but through deft visual storytelling, one is left with the notion Isabel has killed the serial killer. 

We do learn that Isabel is only doing away with men. Very bad men. Good on ‘ya girl!

I need to stop with plot stuff now, but it’s at this point in the film that a major shift in setting and tone happens, setting up the conclusion. A conclusion that I don’t love, but I get why it’s necessary.

This film has some incredible shots! The Polish sky always seems to be a dark teal. Really beautiful. 
The locations are amazing and dare I say it, I have an incredible urge to fuck in a greenhouse now, but only if I’m wearing L’il Abner overalls.😀

Also, I recommend listening to the commentary. It provides context for the repression that existed in Polish culture in the 80’s, letting the viewers know that the depiction of Queer & Trans characters, while minor figures in this film, was a boundary pusher.

I may have only given this 3.5 ⭐️‘a but it gets 5 🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇’s
Rented from beyondvideo.org/

It’s possible that my star rating would be different if I hadn’t watched this at my fave punk bar hangout. With that said, watching this without subtitles while, Sheer Mag, Motörhead & The Ramones are pumping out from the DJ booth was actually perfect!
It’s the Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, I needed zero bits of dialogue to discern what was going on😀😀

Tobe Hooper directed this and the original and it was interesting to see him decide to make this less sinister in favor of campiness.

But the reason I’m even bothering to log this is because Dennis Hopper is in it.
Early in the film, Hopper uses some of his Frank Booth energy and I just had to look up when this and Blue Velvet came out. Turns out they both came out in 1986.
Other Hopper movies that came out in 1986?
River’s Edge and Hoosiers! He got an Oscar nom for Hoosiers! That’s a hell of a run for an Actor that had gotten sober only a year or two earlier. All those films had to be shooting in 1984-85.
As a person that recently celebrated his 23rd year of sobriety, I can tell you that trying to make a living that first year of sobriety is tenuous at best.
So kudos to Dennis Hopper for being so goddamned cool and pushing past the fear to deliver some of cinema’s most iconic performances… and this one, too!😂

A few years ago, I started following a woman named Kier La Janisse on Instagram. I’m guessing that the algorithm decided that I would be interested in a person that had written a book called, “House of Psychotic Women”. Which is a study of female psychosis as it’s portrayed in cinema. As an accompaniment to that book, a dvd box set was released showcasing 4 of the films that she writes about. This film directed by Jane Arden is one of those.

This is amazing but I can see this being very difficult for some to watch.

The plot  of this film can be hard to nail down but at its core it follows a woman through her journey through schizophrenia. She’s in a facility with other patients but we never see any doctors or nurses. What we do see are free range children, a Prog rock band, farm animals, an axe murder, etc.

Director Arden was so gifted at filming bizarre scenarios and then editing the film in such a way that it both creates story as well as chaos.

So much of this gave off Multiple Maniacs/Pink Flamingos vibes that I felt the need to make sure that both this film and Pink Flamingos came out in 1972. I mean, there is an extended scene towards the end in which gypsies and tinkers are having quite the celebration( I think it’s a celebration) and I’ll be damned if it doesn’t look like Divine’s birthday party in Pink Flamingos.
The big difference is that John Waters was making a comedy and this film is essentially absurdist horror. But there was something definitely in the water in 1972.

It was shot in South Wales and it certainly looks like a rough place to shoot a movie.

The sound design is amazing. Lots of voices from unseen speakers and crunchy gothy cello.

It’s very violent at times and I feel compelled to provide a trigger warning about farm animals being plucked and roasted.

With that said, I could list 10 more things that are pretty unsettling and I wouldn’t get close to giving you a complete recounting of the weirdness.

But I’ll tell you this, you haven’t lived until you’ve seen the naked showgirl on stilts.

I haven’t read any Letterboxd reviews of this film yet but I’m betting that more than a few of them will mention how much they want to kick French Stewart in the nards.

I might be a little loosey-goosey with my 5 star reviews but I tend to judge on feeling and this film is FULL of them!

I think I only gave the Brutalist 2.5 stars. Why? It just lacked…feeling.

I know it’s only April but nothing would make me happier than to see serious Oscar consideration for Barbie Ferreira & John Leguizamo.
Their characters have been so stunted by trauma that your heart breaks for them within the first seconds you see them.

This is Writer-Director, Tracie Laymon’s first feature and I look forward to her future projects.

An element that makes this flick 5 ⭐️ worthy is that she gives the minor characters voices; points of view. Most filmmakers, if they attempt this, end up spending too much time going down those rabbit holes, losing the dramatic force along the way. Lolo Spencer as Barbie’s employer and Rachel Bay Jones as Leguizamo’s wife are wonderfully nuanced.

This film is still in theaters so please go to the cinema so you can cry in public!

And if you do see French Stewart, please do your best to not punch him in the face, but maybe you hated him on 3rd Rock🤷🏼‍♂️ 
So whatevs!

PS. One of the producers is Mark Pellington and he’s from Baltimore, so hell, that gets this movie 1 ⭐️ just for that!

“I you falling into my river.”

Cue the waterworks! 😭

How much magic can be in one film?!

When this came out, the movie reviewer for the Financial Times, Nigel Andrews, who only rated films 0-5 stars, gave Spirited Away 6 stars.

Also, the score is gorgeous.

All 5 of these ⭐️’s  are for Gena Rowlands.

This post will be frightfully incomplete and I might add more later.

I’m wondering if writer/director John Cassavetes was in part, inspired by Bergman’s Persona and in turn, I wonder if Coralie Fargeat saw Opening Night and was influenced by it and transferred that to her making of The Substance.

All three of these films deal with women in professional and existential crises. Professionally, they are all actors. Also, they all have an Other.

Liv Ulman has Bibi Anderson. Gena Rowlands has Laura Johnson and Demi Moore has Margaret Qualley.

In all three films, the leads are struggling for viability, swimming upstream mightily against the volatile forces arrayed against them. Misogyny, ageism, societal expectations of women and the struggle for meaning, reason & purpose.

There is so much to unpack in this film but it’s late as I type this and I fear I may ramble too much. 
I will close for now by stating that it was an injustice that Gena Rowlands didn’t receive a Best Actress Academy Award nomination in 1977.

On a more personal note, there is so much cheap scotch and cigarettes in this movie that could almost smell my father’s skin. He died in 1977.

Just a tad of a step down from Agnes Varda’s Le Bonheur. 😀

Street Trash is a remake of a film of the same name from 1984, I think. 

It’s a South African production starring whom I assume to be the B movie stalwarts of that country.

The good stuff: big ol’ goopy  exploding skin comedy body horror. Lots of melting faces, de-gloving and fake penises being chopped off. And most importantly, all the actors are giving it their all.

The not so good stuff: The actors ARE giving their all but so much of the dialogue is shouted and relatively indiscernible. 
The actor playing “Chef” is using a stereotypical “old Jewish man” accent that is pronounced just enough that I feel Zero Mostel would advise he pull it back a bit. For a film from 2024 it seemed like an unadvisable last minute choice.
Also, there is an imaginary character that is a puppet that is voiced by the director, so obviously, this is something he’s very proud of. I think the puppet’s name is Spockle or Spocket. He looks like the alien puppet from Mac and Me spray painted blue. He’s unfunnily horny and boorish which would be fine if it had any bearing on plot. 

Now did I laugh at all? Yeah, a couple times and most of the kills are fun. So if you see it, you probably won’t hate it.

I cannot recall ever viewing a film that was so awash in positivity, goodness & sweetness that gives way to such tragedy. Followed by a form of resolution, but that resolution, that “happiness”, compounds the tragedy. At least, it compounded it in me

I’ve watched this Agnes Varda classic on successive nights after long days of work and I’ve been dragging its’ melancholy along with me as I go about my day.

This is the kind of film in which I want people I know, love & respect to watch it, think about it for a day or two and then I want us to watch it together. I want us to feel utterly free to hit pause and talk about each scene as it strikes.

There is just so much to talk about! Not just character & story, but editing, the use of color the music, the silence…everything.

Agnes Varda was a staggering talent. I’m so sorry that I’m coming to her so late.

PS. This might be a horror story.

My uncle told me about this movie back in the day.
You may have already figured out, given the name, the plot of this film centers around a woman who out of nowhere discovers that her vagina talks and sings.
I found this in the Cult section of my video store so, recalling my Uncle Kelly’s giddy recounting of its shenanigans, I decided to check it out.
The good stuff:
The star, Candice Rialson as Penelope Pittman is good! According to a couple of things I’ve read, Tarantino based Bridget Fonda’s character in Jackie Brown on her. Who knew!?
It has some funny bits. It also has fun costumes and some fun dance sequences.
I also appreciate that the first thing that Penny’s vagina calls out, is how crappy in bed Penny’s beau, Ted is. Spoiler, he ends up having a talking penis.
Also, it’s only 71 minutes long👍
The bad stuff: 
Jokey depiction(s) of sexual assault. Truly, truly reprehensible.
Also a scene of suicidal ideation.
The glib use of the C word. It isn’t uttered until the film is almost over and it feels that they were trying to force it in at the end to make the humor more shocking. It doesn’t fit and it just sounds gross.

I guess, I should be clear, this isn’t a porn film. Candice is occasionally topless but that’s it. 
I was always under the impression that this was indeed porn. It ain’t.
And considering that one of the age-inappropriate films my Uncle Kelly took me to was Kentucky Fried Movie, which is far “dirtier” than this, I’m kind of surprised that he didn’t take my 10 year old butt to see it.

PS. There are 3 super obvious boom mic drops into frame in the first 5 minutes of the film. I always delight at that shit.

So, you certainly don’t have to see it but it is a slightly interesting time capsule of the late 70’s.

Betty: “It’s strange to be calling yourself”
Rita: “Maybe it’s not me?”

I only have two very strong core beliefs: 1. If you find a Kate Bush vinyl record out in the wild, buy it! And 2. If you have the opportunity to see a David Lynch film on the big screen, DO IT!

In the wake of David’s ing, theaters all over the country are having tribute nights showcasing his films. Here in Baltimore, The Parkway presented, Eraserhead, Blue Velvet & Mulholland Drive this weekend.

I managed to get to Blue Velvet & Mulholland Drive and I couldn’t have been more delighted to be cleansed in the purifying light of Lynch’s work again. Boy! That sounded pompous!!😀

An element of “great” Art is that it continues to inform, delight, surprise and agitate our minds and move our souls, every time we experience it. We evolve and the Art evolves within us.

Lynch does this for me and I’m sure, most of you. 

Watching Blue Velvet & Mulholland Drive on succeeding nights on the big screen reawakened my appreciation of the depiction of hallways and corners in Lynch films. Every corner that the camera skulks around; every hallway that the camera creeps down puts the character and viewer on edge. Virtually, every step is consequential.
It made me realize the journey through the mysteries of our existences we all travel. We are all filled with these pathways of uncertainty that we ultimately must walk. Each of these pathways ultimately point toward the most elusive element of all, our own true selves; our identity. And often, the person we were when we started down a path is completely changed at the end.

Diane: “Hi, it’s me.”

Always makes me happy to see Dr. Jacoby and Ben Horne when they were youngins.

Before I talk about Opus, I just want to state for the record that I am still in my feels about Cleo 5-7.

But hey! Opus! That was a good ass time in the theater!

I wanted to see it simply for the fact that I thought it would be fun to see Ayo Edibiri and Malkovich swap energies. 

Ayo is perfectly measured and I don’t think I’ve ever seen Malkovich have so much fun!

I mean, Malkovich as an aging pop star, no, the world’s biggest pop star ever, is, in itself a hysterical premise.

This flick is goofy and scary and gory and fun and mostly pretty clever. So enjoy!

My first Varda and I’m smitten!

My trite little musings here won’t do this film justice. 

With that said, I wish to communicate that Cleo, portrayed by Corinne Marchand, is, by the end of this film,  seemingly, a completely different person than she was at the beginning of the film.
She transforms from superficial & superstitious pop star to grounded, pragmatic adult over the course of one day; or in the case of this movie, 90 minutes.
It’s a testament to Varda’s writing and directing as well as Marchand’s performance.

Varda keeps the camera and characters moving! It reminds me so much of Godard’s, Breathless and Jules Dassin’s, The Naked City.
Putting the actors on the streets without guardrails, essentially making unpaid extras out of the populace. It creates these little boxes of chaos that the characters have to navigate and we have to follow! 

Cleo from 5-7 has a couple sure fire Scottie pleasers: 
1. There’s a movie within the movie ( I ALWAYS enjoy this!
2. Jean-Luc Godard & Anna Karina are in that movie! Fucking brilliant!
And 3. CUTE CATS!! Kittens, actually!

Ultimately, this film seems to be about learning one’s truest self. Not the one you show the world but the one you show yourself.

PS. I can’t wait to watch it again with the commentary!
PPS. I just watched it again and it’s 5 million times BETTER after the second watch. It’s so much deeper. There is so much going on with Cleo!
It’s a struggle for identity and agency and mental and physical health!

I stumbled across this at my local video store, Beyond Video here in Baltimore. There was a hand written sign on the display, mentioning that Rapture or Arrebato in Spanish, had been the most requested film since they opened. Of course, I snapped it up and was excited to see a film that is so respected by my fellow film nerds and one that I had never heard of.
I’ve watched it twice now and I’m underwhelmed.
This flick has some basic things that I always enjoy; It’s about  making movies, it’s about relationship dynamics and it includes up close shots of drug use! Huzzah!
I will also say that there is an amazing scene
at the beginning of a female vampire, shot in black and white that the protagonist is editing because it’s from the film that he is working on. It is so Goth and the actor looks so cool that I was ready to be taken along for the ride. And then the movie just left me on the curb.
The film IS ambitious…I guess, but it’s not interesting.
The commentary track is done by filmmaker and podcaster, Mike White. As you can imagine, he loves it! Most of the Letterboxd reviews are positive. What am I missing?!

This movie had me at Mia Goth humping a scarecrow! 😀

In all seriousness, a pretty good film that definitely wears its love of cinema on its bloody sleeve.
Styled like a Southern Gothic, it makes room for nods to The Wizard of Oz, Psycho and Flannery O’Connor’s, “A Good Man is Hard to Find”

This is my first Mia Goth film. She’s good! While this movie isn’t scary, in  the traditional sense, if you can’t watch that final scene in which the camera locks on her face and her deranged smile that she holds for maybe over a minute and NOT be creeped out, get your eyes checked!

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to do a search for scarecrow humping  on Pornhub

Gosh, where do I start? 
First! I’m a dipshit. It dawned on me very recently that the  Andre Gregory in this film is THE Andre Gregory that my friend, Chris has been working for, for 20+ years. I’ve been in his fucking apartment! (He wasn’t there)
Also, this film kinda lives in a portion of the film nerd zeitgeist as the quintessential snobby New Yorker talking head flick; if we want to think that’s a thing.
I mean, most of us are aware of this film but probably only as a punchline in ‘Waiting for Guffman’!
I must it, as I began to watch a few nights ago, it was late. It wasn’t long before I was looking at my phone. But every few minutes my ears would catch something and I’d look up and rewind.
This conversation that Andre Gregory & Wallace Shawn are having, a conversation that is dominated by Gregory, has these sharp peaks of weirdness that act as the gateway to greater, more elaborate and often philosophical discussions. 
And even though I’ve now watched this 3 times, I can’t exactly tell you what is said but I can definitely report that they take on the frailty and mutability of humans. For a film from 1981, it seems to have a real sense of how WE would be in 2025. It’s fascinating.
So hats off to Wallace & Andre for not only their thoughtful and unique performances but their prescient screenplay.
I would be remiss if I didn’t laud the direction of Louis Malle. He proves that it’s entirely possible to film two people talking at a table for two hours and make it interesting.
And one last thing of note is the fucking perfect use of Erik Satie’s Gymnopedie No. 1. 
What a perfect piece of music. It’s both mournful & hopeful at the same time.

I need to make these log entries shorter and I will endeavor to do that but it’s challenging to do that when a movie impresses upon me.
I’ve only seen two of Ozu’s films; Tokyo Story and now, Late Spring. Both of them star Setsuko Hara. Hara made many films to include a number of them directed by Ozu. She was arguably the Meryl Streep of Japan and then suddenly retired from acting and lived out the rest of her years in semi seclusion. She was, at least partly, the inspiration for Satoshi Kon’s, Millenium Actress. 
I’m gonna stop all this background stuff and just talk about feeling.
Setsuko Hara’s character of Noriko knows & fully understands what makes her happy and WHY she is happy. But everyone around her conspires to destroy her happiness. She clearly expresses her intentionality to remain happy, but she is browbeat and her agency is under assault. She finally bows to the pressures inflicted upon her and by that time, her voice, that had been full of humor and pride at the beginning of the film, is now a whimper. They’ve broken her. And it broke my heart. 
Hara’s performance touched me so deeply that I could barely sleep last night. I arrived at work 20 minutes early today and just sat in my car, processing my feelings. I just couldn’t face people…and I manage a restaurant! That’s my fucking job!
At one point this evening I started describing Late Spring to a coworker and my eyes started filling with tears! I just kept seeing Setsuko’s wounded eyes in my head.
It’s 3:21 in the morning. I’ve just finished watching Late Spring for the third time in 24 hours and I have got to try and get some sleep.
PS. Should I get a Setsuko Hara tattoo?!

This was on TCM tonight. I adore Cabaret and I own the score on vinyl #nerd.
Here’s what you need to know: it was nominated for 10 Oscars and won 8 of them. 8!!!
3 of those 8 were Liza, Joel Grey & director, Bob Fosse.
I’m tired and I have to go to bed so I’m not going to spend any time over-explaining it. You’re all grownups, so watch this genius film and use your grownup sensibilities to ruminate on why this film is so entertaining and so very important.

I so appreciate the completeness of Park Chan Wook films. I could also argue that maybe, Thirst, is too complete. But after reading a synopsis of the Emile Zola novel that this is based on, Therese Raquin, I can see that Park wanted to make sure that he created a story and characters that possess layers of conflict and desire. Oh yeah, it’s also gotta be a kick ass vampire flick, too!
And it IS a kick ass vampire flick, but it doesn’t feel cliche or trite.
I don’t want to give too much away but I’m going to hit a few points.
Song Kang Ho and Kim Ok Bin are incredible together! I can only imagine the hours of choreography they put in to create their intense intimacy that is displayed through their flying, fighting & fucking.
The score by Cho Young wuk is sparse but very effective and the main theme seems to be purposefully similar to Swan Lake, which was used as the intro music for Tod Browning’s 1931 Dracula. Intentional or not, that shit works for me!
Director Park puts the camera in motion to great effect. It’s like he’s inviting us along for the ride.
Now here’s my boring ass rundown of films & directors that I think Director Park found some inspiration in.
The Exorcist.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
Westside Story.
Satoshi Kon’s Paprika.
Any number of Hitchcock films
And maybe most notably, it’s got Raising Arizona/Fargo vibes. It’s got comedy chaos energy and it reminded me that Park’s films have some zany bits in them.
I will say there is a scene towards the end, which again, I don’t want to spoil, but it involves people in an encampment that I don’t quite know why we needed it. When you see the film, get at me. I wanna talk about it!

And this is why I never masturbate while wearing a Walkman.

I own this on blu-Ray. I found it for cheap in a bin somewhere and picked it up because I enjoying it when I first saw it not too long after it came out. As a matter of fact, it was one of the flicks that people get bringing up. So back in the day, I rented it, I thought it looked great. The performances were strong, the kills were really good and it was French! 🇫🇷🇫🇷🇫🇷 Mon Dieux!

I certainly had not forgotten that the lead character, Marie is Gay. I had forgotten that there is a twist ending. My brain ed it more as a reverse Texas Chainsaw Massacre kind of film.
I won’t give the twist away but it’s this twist that has cast a pall over this film in the intervening years. Not because it’s a stupid twist, it’s because it’s easily perceived to be Gay & Transphobic.
This reading of the film is discussed perfectly by Henry Giardina in their article, ‘ing the Homophobic, Transphobic horror of “High Tension”.
After rewatching the film, reading reviews amongst our Letterboxd community and reading the Giardina piece, I certainly agree.

But what this film has to its credit are all the elements I mentioned at the outset. It’s grainy and grimy looking. The kills are really good, particularly the demise of “Voiture Homme” and the performances are strong. Cecile de ( what a name! ) and Maiwen are locked in and I don’t want the storytelling shortcomings of the filmmakers to overshadow their excellent work.

Now if you’ll excuse me, ‘A League of their Own’ is on AMC and I simply must get back to weeping at it.

I sought this out because The First Omen’s director, Arkasha Stevenson was the guest on Blank Checks’ Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me episode and she ruled!
She was such an astute observer of FWWM that I instantly became a fan without seeing a frame of TFO.
So hey! Are you a fan of Rosemary’s Baby? Sure you are!
Do you dig The Exorcist? Me too!
How about Mullholland Drive, you good with that? Of course you are! 
And what about Isabelle Adjani in Posession?! Iconic, right!?
And hey, thoughts on the original 1976 Omen? You like it! Fuck yeah, you do! So dig it; you are gonna eat this flick up!
This movie gets a star for reminding me that Sonia Braga is still alive!
It also gets a star for an amazing score. Consider that ed!
I also want to mention that the star, Nell Tiger Free,( what a name, right?!)  gives a full body performance, like those of Demi Moore & Margaret Qualley in The Substance as well as Lilly Rose Depp in Nosferatu. She also has a full on Isabelle Adjani in Posession moment towards the end, which, if you’ve seen that, is the very definition of full body performance.
Anyway, it’s creepy and gothic and scary . The production design is fantastic, the costumes are perfect and the visual effects are really strong.
Can’t wait to see more from Arkasha Stevenson!
PS. Sister Anjelica, call me.

“After all, it’s the chasing after him that I really love.”

I don’t think that I’ve ever been so charmed by an opening credit sequence.

I’m so sorry that I never saw any of Satoshi Kon’s films when he was alive.

All I’m going to bother with saying is: Millenium Actress is Satoshi Kon’s love letter to the great, Setsuko Hara; but you nerds know that already.

It’s a love letter to Cinema.

It’s a love letter to Love and it’s great mysteries.

I was chatting with my Uncle Drew today and since we are both film nerds we started doing our normal nerdy movie chat.
He mentioned that he felt that The Brutalist left a bit to be desired. I agreed ( read my Letterboxd review, why dontcha?!) 
For a movie that spans 3.5 hours, let’s make damned sure that the message that you are trying to convey…gets, um…conveyed. Also, without reading any spoilers, I was unsurprised by the ending.
Nickel Boys, on the other hand, has a message that is clearly conveyed. The dialogue isn’t overwritten or acted. The camera does a lot of the work in creating narratives. There are moments we see the same scene from different POV’s. Now that I’ve seen the film, it appears that some folks don’t love the use of POV, but I got it. It worked. It wasn’t overused. 
Hatred, Racism and abuse of marginalized populations are some of the most despicable things that humans hath wrought. When presented in The Brutalist it feels like a shrug; in Nickel Boys it lands with a thud.
And…I didn’t see the twist coming.
The Substance is my favorite movie of 2024, but Nickel Boys gets my vote for Best Picture.

I feel dumb and unknowing. For years, I’ve been meaning to watch s Ha. The word on it was that it was a breath of fresh air and a stroke of genius.
So I have finally viewed it and I’m not sure that I understand or “feel” it.
I think the world of Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach and because I respect them so much, I was indeed mad at myself for NOT seeing this film.
To be clear, I AM very glad that I watched it and after also watching the Criterion extras, interviews of both Gerwig & Baumbach led by filmmakers, Sarah Polley & Peter Bogdonovich, I couldn’t be more positive that they created the film that they intended to, which warms my heart. All Artists should be so fortunate.
But even watching these interviews didn’t help
me understand Gerwig’s s’ behavior and actions.
s, a 27 year old dancer in NYC, seems to approach life like a middle schooler. She has great difficulty having even the most simple conversations and flat out lies or at least, peddles in half-truths. 
I guess that I’m longing to know how and/or why she behaves in such a manner. I get that this is the gist and the juice of the story but all I can figure out is that she can’t bring herself to advocate for herself. In fact she explicitly refuses relief.
There are two segments in which s appears as if she is comfortable and happy. 
At one point she goes home to Sacramento, CA to spend the holidays with her family. I completely expected that we would be privy to the root of her dysfunction. Quite the contrary! She looks natural, happy & vibrant. She looks like her authentic self!
The other moment is the end when s choreographs a dance performance and it goes extremely well. As a viewer, I couldn’t have been more ecstatic that she is being a productive Artist! The cartoon lightbulb illuminates above her head and I can’t figure out why.
Maybe there doesn’t need to be a “why”. During those interviews I mentioned, a correlation is drawn between the films of the French New Wave and s HA. The character just IS. No reason need be given. 
As I type these words, I’m becoming more forgiving of s.
I recall being a young actor and comedian in NYC and I was very often a mess. My messiness was directly linked to my addiction and since s doesn’t have an obvious problem, I was left without much to hold onto which led to me feeling dumb and unknowing.

“What if I really was someone else; someone beautiful and powerful. Someone buried alive and suffocating to death.”

I recall wanting to see this when it came out last year. I hadn’t really heard anything about it but it looked like it might be cool.
I managed to not see it and then kind of pushed it to the back of my mind. 

Cut to last December when the Blank Check podcast was covering David Lynch and their guest for episodes 14-18 of Twin Peaks the Return was Jane Schoenbrun; the Director of I Saw the TV Glow. I was so enamored of their thoughts on Twin Peaks, their intelligence & humor that it made me want to finally watch TV Glow. When I saw the blu-ray at my video store I grabbed it.

You can tell by my 5⭐️ review that I am very fond of this film. It’s a breath of fresh air in the horror genre but calling it horror is too simplistic and it underserves the picture. 

I was struck by its depiction of teen loneliness and desperation and obsession and sadness. I was moved deeply by the characters’ need to seek community even if that community consists of only two people.

The two stars are Justice Smith as Owen and Jack Haven as Maddy. Justice is very good and I look forward to more from them. But Jack Haven just crushes it! I’m not sure where to begin with how much I enjoyed their performance but it might be up there with Sheryl Lee in Twin Peaks-Fire Walk with Me or Jason Miller’s portrayal of Fr. Karras in the Exorcist.

Jack Haven is credited as Bridgette Lundy-Paine and is even going by that name on the blu-Ray commentary so their choosing of their new name is quite recent and I wonder if Director Schoenbrun, a Trans Woman, sees Jack as a kind of surrogate for themselves in the same way that most of us film nerds are convinced that Kyle Machlaclan served as a surrogate for David Lynch.

I haven’t even scratched the surface of how creative this film is. It’s also obvious that Schoenbrun doesn’t mind showing us glimpses of the films & directors that they drew inspiration from. I noted nods to Lynch, Maya Deren, Godard, Friedkin, the Blair Witch Project, The Ring and probably 30 others that I didn’t pick up on.  Do you like any of those?! Yeah, I thought you did!
So sit in front of your own TV glow and dig it!

I finally watched this for a second time and the impact was far greater than when I first viewed it.
If you are reading this then I can only assume that you already love David Lynch as much as I do. And what’s left to say that we haven’t shared with each other over the years?
I guess that I’ll just repeat to you what I’ve bored people with for years.
David Lynch always makes me really look at the screen. When I saw Lost Highway in the theater when it came out, I had to sit in the front row and I found myself leaning forward, trying to see everything in the darkness.
For 3.5 hours tonight, I was doing the same thing on my couch. It’s as if my psyche and imagination are trying to wring everything out of the experience that I can.
All the unknowing and sadness of existence being shown back to me by Laura Dern’s INCREDIBLE performance. But Lynch could always trouble me and then make me laugh out loud a few seconds later.
I was lucky enough to check out the Criterion two disc set from Beyond Video here in Baltimore. I’ve just dipped into the extra features which includes a lovely conversation between Kyle Machlaclan & Laura Dern.
It’s wonderful and a welcome salve for the wound left by David’s ing.

Beyondvideo.org

“We can talk. We can talk like two people who meet on the other side of the grave.”  -La Condesa

This movie is something else and I’m too tired to review it properly so you’ll just have to consider that line of dialogue. 

Please also know that the film is still playing and as it gets closer to the end it’s getting heavier and heavier.

I first learned of this film when it aired on HBO in 2023. I didn’t see it then because I don’t subscribe to HBO.
I was made aware of it because I listen to a podcast called Crime Writers On… and they spoke highly of it and the performance of Sydney Sweeney. 
I’m embarrassed to it that I had never heard of Sydney Sweeney before then. I can’t tell you what she’s been in before or since without looking at her IMDB page. I do know that she’s beautiful and that her recent appearance on SNL was panned. Not because she was bad but that she was underserved by the writing. Apparently, the bulk of the sketches focused on her looks.
So imagine my…surprise when I watched her performance in ‘Reality’. It is exceptionally good. The whole film is wonderful and I feel so fortunate that I was able to check out the blu-ray from Beyond Video here in Baltimore. 
The fact that I live in Baltimore is intrinsic to my logging of this film and my appreciation for Sydney’s performance as Reality Winner. Reality was stationed in Maryland when she was in the Air Force and frequented the restaurant that I managed. 
I never had any conversations with her other than the exchanging of general pleasantries. In fact, she seemed a tad socially awkward, shy and even though she occasionally dined with friends, tended to keep to herself.
Sydney nails this element of Reality! It’s really amazing.
Director, Tina Satter does an incredible job of depicting the oppressively claustrophobic nature of the questioning by the FBI agents sent to her home to serve the search warrant and question her about her alleged purposeful breach of national security
I kept saying out loud to the screen, “ask to see the warrant!” “Answer no questions without an attorney present!”
I can’t imagine anyone viewing this and not feeling helpless for Reality Winner.
I now know so much more about this person that existed at the periphery of my professional life.  A person that me and my coworkers often thought was, in a word, interesting.
This film is exceptional. It also has the saddest cat I’ve seen in a movie since the orange tabby in the rain in, ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s

“She’s doing her best to fall in love with Jesus. She’s finding it difficult.” -Michael Powell

That quote is from the director commentary on the Criterion blu-ray of ‘Black Narcissus’. These past 6 months I’ve become fascinated by the incredible films of Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger and after I recently watched ‘Made in England-the Films of Powell & Pressburger’ I knew that I wanted to view ‘Black Narcissus’ next.
I based this primarily on the handful of scenes that were shown in the documentary. Those scenes are part of the climax and they are so dramatic and dark that they look like something out of the original ‘Frankenstein’ or ‘Suspiria’. Without seeing this full movie, I assumed that it might be a horror film. It isn’t. 
But it does tread on the same path that horror follows.
Religious fervor, people at odds, pseudo-intellectual interlopers, upset villagers, a remote location, and some seriously repressed sexuality; just to name a few.
This is based on the novel of the same name by Rumer Godden and I’m interested in learning if the novel deals so heavy handedly with this story of two nuns that are, in a way, fighting over a man. It almost feels too simplistic.
The nuns are Sister Clodagh, the Sister Superior of a newly established convent in the Himalayas, played by Deborah Kerr and the “troubled” Sister Ruth played with INTENSITY by Kathleen Byron. I had never even heard of Kathleen Byron until this and I’m pretty sure that when I do see her in something else, I’ll probably be let down, because she plays Sister Ruth’s paranoia, racism and downright angry horniness with barely restrained fervor. What other role could ask her to be so over the top?!
Martin Scorcese says that ‘Black Narcissus’ is one of the first “truly erotic films” and filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier commented, ‘Black Narcissus’ is one of the most beautiful films ever made about desire, more precisely about female desire.”
Let’s face it, for 1947 it’s pretty fuckin’ hot.
I do want to mention that three of the characters are British actors in brown face. Jean Simmons’ makeup in particular is a bit off- putting. But aside from that the remaining actors portraying the scores of Nepalese are at least Indian. Again, for 1947, that’s fairly impressive.
The editing is amazing, the colors are amazing, the cinematography is top notch and if you can see Kathleen Byron’s red & black eyeliner at the end of this thing and not turn into a Goth, then we can’t hang.

I had seen this 3 or 4 years ago and I recall how much I was impressed by it. Impressed, primarily by Anne Baxter. I have only ever seen her in this…twice now and I cannot imagine her being any better in any other movie.
This is a film about the New York theater world released in 1950 that treats that world like it’s the center of the universe
Bette Davis is an aging, but not really that old, superstar theater actress. Anne Baxter is a young woman that inserts herself into Bette’s life, becomes her assistant and then eventually her understudy and she has some ulterior motives. 
This is a film about blind ambition, identity and the disposability of Women in show biz.
On this watch, I kept feeling that Coralie Fargeat gleaned something of this for The Substance. Bette Davis=Demi Moore & Anne Baxter=Margaret Qualley.
As a matter of fact, Davis & Baxter were both nominated for Best Actress. That’s the only time that two actors were both nominated for lead in the same movie and I wondered if that was going to happen for Moore & Qualley.

This is the second time I’ve seen this and I’m embarrassed to it that I completely forgot about the amazing dream sequence that starts the film.
This dream sequence launches a film that is essentially a “road picture” that utilizes a series of often macabre flashbacks to tell the story of an old doctor who is traveling to receive an honor.
I’m not sure that as I type these words that I have the proper language to describe it.
What I will say is that it seems to be saying something about the lies and secrecy that can exist in families.
It also seems to be saying that people are insufferable.
This was released in 1957 which is remarkable because Ingmar Bergman had already released, The Seventh Seal earlier that year. So old Ingy was on a roll!
Like pretty much every other Bergman film, Max Von Sydow is in this and seeing him always delights me because his performance as Father Merrin in The Exorcist will always be godhead to me.

Cyd Charisse is a fucking bad ass!! She fights off a would-be sexual assault by beating the shit outta the creep with a hair brush. I know that reads as comical but it’s pretty physical and dramatic!  And if you’ve never seen Cyd Charisse dance, well,  you’re missing out.

Also, her co-star, Robert Taylor looks so much  like Konikawa from Paprika that I can’t imagine that Satoshi Kon didn’t use him as the inspiration for that character.

This isn’t a review as much as me going, “hunh Look at that!”

One of my earliest influences, particularly in my artistic life was Monty Python. I would watch it whenever I could. I reveled in all of the jokes that I often didn’t understand until I was in my late teens or twenties. Maybe I didn’t always understand the content or context of the jokes but I soon learned how to decipher much of the comedy by training my 8 year old ears to navigate the different British accents that Cleese, Palin, Chapman, Jones and even Gilliam, the American in the troupe, would use to illuminate their humor. I practiced those accents all of my life for fun and I think that I do them pretty well.
So imagine my disdain while watching Alien Romulus, that one of the characters has a British accent that is so imperceptible that it frustrated the hell out of me. I refused to turn on captioning, hoping that my ear would catch up. No luck. I couldn’t wait for that guy to get killed!
I was very excited when I saw that this was written & directed by Fede Alvarez. I thought his Evil Dead from 2013 was awesome. 
He obviously loves the Alien franchise and I think most of the fan service Easter eggs were clever, except one, but I’ll let you watch the film to figure that one out. 
In the Alien timeline, this film takes place after Alien and before Alien$ and I think that was a solid  story choice and one that was ripe for telling.
The strongest card that Alvarez plays and get ready for the Easter egg, ya’ll, is bringing back Ian Holm; or his image at least. He drives the plot and centers the action. It’s pretty cool.
But even cooler is that his British accent, you can understand.

It’s been just this past year or so that I’ve finally made the acquaintance of the films of Powell & Pressburger. I have Turner Classic Movies to thank for that. Throughout the years of my film nerddom, the names, Powell & Pressburger have lived in the corners of articles in Cineaste magazine and New Yorker film reviews.
But like so many great filmmakers’ works, I just never got around to them. I’m so thankful that I finally have.
Unlike me, Martin Scorcese grew up watching their films on TV.  In this documentary he provides wonderful reminiscences of seeing their catalog of films and becoming inspired and activated by them. He makes sure to remind us that he saw these films on a 16 inch black&white set. Which, if you’ve seen, The Red Shoes or The Tales of Hoffman is almost unfathomable! The Technicolor explodes off of the screen in those flicks!
While this doc was written and hosted/narrated by Scorcese, it was directed by David Hinton and he does a masterful job of cutting in archival footage of interviews with Powell & Pressburger. We’re so lucky that so much of it exists!
Scorcese does a great job of telling us how scenes and techniques pioneered by Powell & Pressburger were so influential on his work, citing direct correlations between his films and theirs.
Scorcese used his clout after Mean Streets, to arrange to meet Michael Powell, thus began a personal and professional friendship that lasted until Powell’s death.
I know that I type stuff like this all the time, but if you love movies, watch this AND make sure you mos def watch any Powell & Pressburger film.
Next up for me is Black Narcissus and I can’t wait!

Hey! Have you guys seen this!?! I just gave this thing 5 ⭐️’s and I couldn’t even hear the dialogue as it was playing on the TV screens at my fave dance night. I might have been shaking my ass to Siouxsie & the Banshees and Nox Novacula, but I would literally stop dancing and just marvel at what I was seeing!
The dance scenes are shot just as well as those in Saturday Night Fever and dare I say, maybe better!
Rudy Ray Moore is just a force! In all of the Dolemite pictures, he’s kind of just normal…pimp masculine…that might not be the best way to phrase that but I would say it’s a one-dimensional character. I didn’t know he had this multi-tiered character in him. When he’s DJ’ing in the film, he wears false eyelashes and mascara and again, I never would have guessed that he would fuck with his tough guy image.
Again!!! I haven’t heard a syllable of dialogue from this film but it really looked like he was giving a nuanced, considered performance. 
It has great nightmare scenes with intense makeup, great dancing AND Kung Fu!
This might deserve 6 stars!!!!

My mother is 78 years old. She has osteoporosis and in the past two years, her mobility & ability to care for herself have greatly diminished.
She has loved Dance ever since she was a young girl growing up on a farm outside of Baltimore.
On more than one occasion, she recounted a conversation she had with my grandmother in which she expressed her desire to take ballet lessons. This desire was met with mockery and cackling derision. “Fat girls don’t take ballet lessons!”
My mother was crushed.
That conversation happened in the 1950’s.
My mom has, of course, lived a life of great happiness and great sorrow. My father died when she was 30 and her life that had been one of a bit of upward mobility due to my father’s career in the trucking industry, was now one of fear & uncertainty. She did the best she could raising my younger brother and me but it was often very difficult.
Jump to the early 2000’s. My mother decided to do something great for herself. She enrolled in classes at the local Arthur Murray Dance school. At Arthur Murray she learned a vast array of dance steps and when they held competitions, she took 1st place in nearly every category.
I’m always blown away by this and I still marvel at the plaque embossed with her achievements. This, of course, exacerbates my concern for her as I watch her degrade.
What does this have to do with The Last Showgirl?
I’m not exactly sure but I have been a witness to the suffering, disposability and criminal undervaluing of Women and their lives.
I have watched my mother recreate herself a number of times and it’s exhausting. I don’t know how she did it.
The Last Showgirl doesn’t only depict Pamela Anderson’s attempt to reconcile her life decisions and her striving for purpose once the show that she has starred in for 30 years shuts down, but also, all of the other Women, some in that same show and others, are all facing questions focusing on viability & survival in a world that is ready to discard them or has no place for them. I felt this. 
I felt this a lot.
Also, the Pat Benatar “Shadows of the Night” needle drop fucking rules.

I’m just gonna jump right in; I am smitten with this movie!
The Loveless is one of those films that as I am viewing it I pick up my phone and pop
Open IMDB to see who the cinematographer was; who the production designer is, Art department, wardrobe, etc.
And of course, all of the actors that I’ve never seen before!
Oddly enough, I found myself reminded of this films existence because of David Lynch’s ing.
The co-writer & co-director is Monty Montgomery and he was the Cowboy in Mulholland Dr. He also produced the pilot of Twin Peaks and Wild at Heart.
But I would argue that Kathryn Bigelow is the true author of this project. This is as good and interesting a first film as John Waters’ Pink Flamingos or Lynch’s Eraserhead.
Bigelow’s training as a painter is so evident! Every shot is presented like she wants you to look…reeeeaaalllly look at each scene as if you are considering a painting in a museum.
It stars baby Willem Dafoe as a biker named Vance who is headed to Daytona. He stops in a small Georgia town. He is eventually ed by other of his “gang” and things happen.🤷🏼‍♂️ It’s moody and weird and I love it!
Dafoe is the only “real” actor. Some of these actors never appear in any other films.
It’s 4 AM and I need some sleep. So just watch this and tell me what you think!

I didn’t actually rewatch this today but I had revisited my logging of it because I wanted to see what I had written when I watched this last summer. To my surprise, I had not reviewed it other than the 4 stars I gave it! I dunno what the hell I was doing because I obviously think very fondly of it.
What sparked this revisiting is the fact that I watched Kathryn Bigelow’s first film, The Loveless a couple of night’s ago. I’m going to write my thoughts about that soon. I really dug it and I’m enjoying thinking about the similarities between the two films.
One similarity is that both films center on a group or a “family” of outsiders that roll into a small town and the effect that they have on that town. In Near Dark, they’re Vampires and in The Loveless, they’re bikers.
Anyway, Near Dark is fucking hot shit cool and I love it!

Watched on Wednesday January 22, 2025.

• Rosemary's Baby
• The Exorcist
• Memories of Murder