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Watching this at the same time as reading The Last Temptation of Christ is pretty crazy. I feel like that Jesus would get along well with Benedetta. Anyways, believe women when they tell you they’re a messenger of God sent to protect you from the plague.

I had a dream involving people getting into Twitter discourse about whether Gus Van Sant’s character in this was the greatest director as actor performance in cinema which is very funny now that i watched this when he’s in it for like a minute tops. Every actor in this is horrible besides Lohan whose fractured hurt energy makes the film come to life when she’s on screen. Unfortunately the rest of the movie exists. The character of Ryan is so annoying and James Deen is a piece of shit who can’t act playing a bargain bin Patrick Bateman. I really wish Lindsay Lohan would get a substantial role again because she deserves far better material and proves here that she is a compelling actress even working opposite garbage.

This film excels at creeping dread and a lingering sense of doom that pervades every second. An interesting remix on Night of the Living Dead imagery mixed with Exorcist style possession. Probably the Carpenter film I most wished had a sequel now because there’s so many places you can go in another film. Loved the VHS messages transmitted through dreams. Good to know that analog horror has always been a thing since the medium existed. Not sure why but there’s something weirdly off about VHS camcorder images. Great synth from Carpenter as usual as well. Alice Cooper is also here as a zombie hobo.

Michael Keaton goes all in on the “old badass gets rapid onset dementia” genre that others of his peers like Nicholas Cage and Liam Neeson have done thinking it adds a layer of “acting” to your standard Redbox Geezer Teaser action fare. James Marsden is giving a good performance above the pay grade for a script that has major first draft energy. Pacino doesn’t do much but it’s nice when he pops in here and there. I don’t find Keaton’s direction all that interesting here, it has that anonymous journeyman look you assume one of these films to have.

Conspriosexuality. The many layers of grief we wear that never ends even when we loosen the blanket that envelops us in it. Has probably one of the hottest sex scenes in film this year that also served as the link to make everything in the film fall into place for me. Such a singular film that captures the intertwining nature of the way we interpret our emotions through sexuality in the highly sterile tech world we inhabit.

“I know now I live in a world I didn’t make”

Despite being most well known for its troubled production and drastic changes to Hal Ashby’s film after he was kicked out of post-production this is still a profoundly empathetic film about addiction and recovery wrapped in the sheen of a neon soaked Neo-Noir thriller. Each performance is top notch, Andy Garcia in particular is terrifying in this film. I do wish that we could have seen the cut that Ashby originally intended with Rosanna Arquette’s character more fleshed out but I do think his voice is still present despite the studio interference. Far from the disaster critics claimed it was at the time. Even in its compromised form, it’s a far stronger dramatic character study than you would think. As someone who is 3 years sober, how humanized it portrayed Cudder’s struggle with sobriety I found moving. Also I like James Newton Howard’s studio mandated re-written Miami Vice ripoff score.

Feels like an ancient text dug up and screened into your nightmares. The church would rather put women on crosses and stab them than let lesbians exist. I'd probably try and burn everything in sight with my psychic powers too. Feels very Ken Russell inspired. The actress that plays Alucarda reminds me of Lorde.

Beautiful film, feels really necessary for me to see something like this at this moment in time. The trailer for the Shrouds played before this which felt like a bit of synchronicity because the slug parasites remind me quite a bit of Shivers. Whereas that film I feel only exists to shock and to see what Cronenberg could get away with at the time, this is a much more fully realized vision so props to Alice for making something so special so early in what is already an incredibly dynamic career!! I might try and write more about this for my first entry in my Substack so stay tuned for that if you want to hear more.

God what a film!! Rosanna Arquette and Madonna giving such great performances, brilliant deconstruction of identity and the way the “ideal suburban American dream” silences women who want a life beyond. One of the best screwball comedies of the 80s. I think this would make a great double feature with The Linguini Incident, Rosanna Arquette is really in her element in this type of film!

There is no catharsis is the silence of God, that which even Jesus Himself faced on the cross in his hour of darkness as Algot describes. Algot who is the only one in the film we see with genuine faith, who has found meaning in his physical pain but recognizes the immense burden of emotional pain that can crush a person so clear eyed. That emotional pain is the Pastor made flesh, buried so deep into routine it comes rushing out of him when forced to try and comfort someone with that same existential dread. There’s no answers, just a continued sermon to an almost empty room.

Second watch, this time I focused on the way Samuel L. Jackson is able to portray a guy who is unraveling but desperately needs to think he still in control and he’s really putting in some all time great work here. Doesn’t get talked about as much because Pam Grier and Robert Foster are such powerhouses but he definitely ties everything together.

A better version of The Crow than the one we got last year I’m sure. Stylistically impeccable but I think my favorite part was the drugged out pontifications from Jeremiah to Mandy while the garbage music he made plays in the background. Points for the King Crimson. I feel like it doesn’t gel completely for me but I am interested in checking out Cosmatos’s other film Beyond the Black Rainbow because he certainly has an eye for interesting visuals.

Watchable but it drags in the last twenty minutes. Some funny jokes here and there but definitely a few moments where you are distractingly reminded “oh yeah this made by one of Red Scare hosts.” Good score though. Dasha’s performance is pretty bad and the movie definitely gets worse the more it begins to focus on her but it does feature a pretty unhinged interesting performance from Betsey Brown which kind of counterbalances it. It’s fine. Evokes images from better movies too much to be anything but that.

The wonders of Tubi. A really dumb version of They Live filtered through the brain worms of a QAnon disciple which I think is supposed to be satirical but I don’t really feel like it has anything to say really.

The usage of DeepFakes is jarring in the ways the director is probably intending and that seems to be where the main satirical angle is coming from but it’s a little one note. I mean is it disturbing hearing a monotone George W. Bush ramble conspiracy theory nonsense? Kind of I guess but it’s also a little eye roll inducing. I mean the idea of creating a film that tries to make logic out of the nonsense conspiracy shit that gets filtered through the internet every day is not inherently bad and I do think taking the film to its logical conclusion does have a disturbing element to it but I mostly found myself struggling to emotionally connect to anything that was going on prior to that point.

 I have an interest in films that tackle the brain worms of the Internet directly which is what drew me to watch this stumbling on it on Tubi in the first place but I just can’t really recommend this one. Ari Aster seems to like this though so maybe that should inform what he’s going to do with his pandemic film. Also Betsey Brown is really trying to bring some kind of emotional connection the film, just wish she had better material.

Not for the weak of stomach. More moving than I thought it would be initially. All of the gross parts of the human experience we try and hide away. There’s something about pizza that makes it the go to food for the most upsetting to the stomach scenes in cinema.

I want to go to the beach again. A person I went on one date with said this was their favorite movie and I hadn’t seen it yet so I blame that on their not being interested. Great movie though, Maribel Verdú putting in great work. Challengers if tennis was just sex instead of a metaphor.

Don Siegel is such a great director of tension and action, it’s easy to forget how unlikable of a character Coogan is throughout this film. Definitely proto-Dirty Harry vibes throughout but the Clint film this was most reminding me of was Tightrope in that both films feature him playing a cop who is way more of a failure than he would allow himself to believe. I would say most of the problems in the film are directly caused by Coogan himself *because* he doesn’t follow procedure so it’s almost like Dirty Harry is the version in Siegel’s hand where Coogan is actually right in how he is going about everything extrajudicially. It’s Coogan’s incompetence that keeps this from feeling completely like a Fox News power fantasy of a “good old boy lawman coming to clean up the filth of the city.” Big fan of the hippie club scene, I’d probably hang out at the Pigeon Toed Orange Peel.

Makes a strong case for why intersectionality is important otherwise you get someone like Gennarino with valid critiques about the ways the rich stomp on the poor while reenacting those same power dynamics in his brutish misogynistic power trip on the island. Not sure what this says about Guy Ritchie’s marriage to Madonna though that this is the film he wanted to remake and direct his then wife in.

I’m not entirely sure it entirely achieves what it sets out to do but it is interesting. The dynamic of repressed guilt between perpetrator and victim, fascism devolving into eating its own “aberrations” but I don’t know if it ever fully explores any of the questions it raises. It is beautifully shot though, I love all of the slow quiet camera movements. I don’t know, certainly not sure how I feel about it completely!

Incredibly funny and incisive. The Shylock speech still stabs at your heart. Jack Benny is also so good in this. One of the best films to highlight the phenomenon of actor brain as well.

It never gives you closure while making the silences feel as brutal as a stab to the chest. The way the film uses spaces to create a sense of hostility. Everything is clinical, the opposite of a warmth. The crushing weight of repression, a grasping hand to find comfort and the destructive tyranny of misogyny and bourgeois sensibilities. Made me sick to my stomach, don’t think I can watch it again!

This kind of emotionally wrecked me in ways i can’t really figure out why. What a gorgeous film. Jeremy Irons giving one of the greatest performances in a film I’ve ever seen. Howard Shore’s score for this is incredible as well. I had to let the end credits play in whole to let the main theme wash over me as I cried.

Lee being such a fully realized person who understands completely what she wants and needs and Grey being a neurotic mess who is so stuck in his sex shame spiral to understand he has found a partner who understands and wants exactly what he is envisioning. Two pervs navigating each other is beautiful. Pain as self actualization. Only distracting thing is this seems to have the exact same color palate as the Room to the point where I had to check and see if it wasn’t the same DP. The Room being shot to resemble early 00s Cinema softcore porn is probably why I’m thinking that though.

Rides the thin line between being incredibly funny and sad so well. Griffin Dunn is so good, every time he pops up is great. More monster movies should reach climax in a porn theater. Also probably the best abrupt ending music cue punchline.

Vibrant colorful demented perverse horrific romantic erotic. The seven pillars of cinema wrapped into a modern day “fairy tale” that feels like it was buried in a sea of stories on a forgotten kink website. Has what might be one of the best sex scenes in cinema. Like many of my favorite films, as much about the trappings of cinema itself as it is the surface story right down to The Graduate style ending. A++

A pale imitation of the first film that tries to offset those feelings by engaging in “isn’t is so lame we’re a sequel” meta humor that just comes off as annoying. Vince Vaughan is also incredibly annoying in this, just because he’s supposed to be annoying doesn’t mean that translates into being funny. The only things that save this from being worse are Cedric the Entertainer who is legit giving a good performance and is about the only funny person here and seeing Dwayne Johnson parody himself.

I don’t have the language but the water will wash it all away.

Morbius is so cool, he can do bullet time like Neo Matrix and talk to bats like Batman

What happens when your ghosts are more real than reality. When you yourself are more of a ghost than a human. Questions I ask myself often. How can we explore the cosmos when we refuse to look at each other? At ourselves? If all we want is a reflection of ourselves then all we will ever be is mechanical reproduction. Love can transcend this but is it too late? Does our grief extinguish hope of a life beyond? Dooming us to replay the same things over and over?

So viscerally upsetting in ways none of the other slasher films that followed in its wake could be. Cruel and sweaty. Blood mixed with dirt. The color of rust. The most American film ever made.

It would be easy to draw comparisons to Peter Weir’s similarly ethereal horror Picnic at Hanging Rock but this goes a step beyond by removing any sort of “responsible adult” figure from the equation. I was instantly taken back to being freshly 18 at the end of high school feeling low in self-worth, confused about my place in the world and where life would go. I also had a similar group of friends who i spent what seemed like every day with and under the right circumstances it wouldn’t feel far fetched for something like this to occur.

The naturalistic dialogue and nonchalant way the friends communicate paired with the escalations of intense violence creates a real feeling that something is terribly wrong. We’ve traded one set of oppressive rules for another. We’re reminded again and again that these are still kids simply imitating the carceral rules that they’ve grown up surrounded by because they’ve been shown nothing else. The benign violence of the suburbs is carried over into the “new world.”

Hard to say “they don’t make films like this anymore” about a film from 2007 but they really don’t. One of the tightest written scripts I’ve seen. Literally cheered at the end.

In the Mood for Love for writers who hate what they write. So it’s no shock to anyone that I connect with this film and Ms. Parker herself on a deep spiritual level. When you’re tired of wisecracking but there’s nothing left for you to do because the world you’re living in has beat it out of you.

Feeling stuck in a dream where we are forced to bear witness to the evil men inflict on women and being unable to comprehend until you’re feminized yourself by the oppressor. Frank’s not a caricature, that is a very real being. That’s reality.