This review may contain spoilers. e4n6c

'highway to the moon', is an amalgam of many losses, many injustices and violent splinters of collective mourning. in this film letitia wright is a well of speculative ideas, and although at points it could distract from the film's core – which is violence against young black boys – she balances every tonal shift, visual experiment and spiritual ménage with a genuine empathy for the lives to which she's dedicated her directorial debut. gripping to watch and, most importantly, feel with her sitting in the very theatre. honoured.

This review may contain spoilers.

narratively undercooked, but pachenko's performance distilled me and the hundreds of people at my viewing. a masterclass in emoting and giving oneself to an earth-shattering event like war, or perhaps in current affairs – genocide – with care. i couldn't look away. square in on her performance alone and the film is really well done (+ colour-graded omg !?!)

deadbeat fathers cannot be humanised in my eyes, no matter how spectacularly psychedelic and biting the camerawork / performances were. i just don't care, i'm sorry. with every line of dialogue or dent in his character i cared less and any potential nuance soured.

both a political and technical beauty. a poignant piece of historical unveiling / perspective work on both the writer's and cinematographer's end. a standout of the night.

the theatre roared and really moved with the film, as did i. so real, touching and hilarious. definition of gagging the live, and i just know the cast/crew had a ball making it. it's what we love to see.

This review may contain spoilers.

stunning metaphors and subtext. i could gauge the film's twist early on, but it unfolded strikingly in subtle performance cues and eerie cinematography that demanded patience / attention to the grotesque details. motherhood (a cow giving birth) as a foil to abuse and stunted trauma etc - horrific stuff.

a visual frankenstein of a documentary, but fused together with shallow megachurch-like lyricism that at best tinges on existentialism and basic instinct, but at worst comes across as hyper-stylised 'cage the monster within' style moping. it's well-dressed redneck philosophy that doesn't bite or provoke at all.

it just exists.

the most memorable film i saw all night - 'el canon' is a masterful elegy of black bodies as commodity, and the weaponisation of our aesthetics for academia. real transgression, real prose and poetry. i'd die to see a feature from this guy really tearing into this philosophy - but he's already done so much with so little. i adore this !!

pawlikowski looks inward at romance under the weight of the iron curtain, trading violent, history-spanning melodrama for pockets of mazowsze and love cycling through exile.

it’s not (at all) what i imagined, or wanted even, from a title that screams euripidean excess in monochromatic letters – but instead it gut-wrenches as it kills expectations for two brilliantly portrayed characters who fight for a slower death between borders, communism and shared artistic anodyne. i’m in love.

aside from her being thee fucking pop star, this documentary is such a weirdly powerful outline of what it truly means to be one- the intersection of persona, performance and politics. the slight sociopathic tendencies and constant manoeuvring through tension with comedy and provocation ?!

it should be studied, watched and rewatched by any artist or musician who wants to claim themselves the master of any genre or medium. blonde ambition didn’t pave the way; it is the way. even with us having a peek beyond the curtain.

when the city started doing blackface i knew this film was generational.

i didn’t know a film like this existed. we are so rarely ever allowed to exist so transgressively and decadently, with such impressionism and sheer finesse, on mainstream screens—let alone in avant-garde spaces. a fucking masterclass of anachronisms and visual poetry that spills it’s chardonnay to illustrate the only time in history where the culture was both at its most lit and at its most ashamed, and like a fairytale, it never overstays its welcome (though nobody would be mad if it did).

the type of watch that makes an artist realise everything they’ve been making, or wanting to make, has been subconsciously leading to them discovering it. homoeroticism, politics, literature, classical art history, house and blues in monochrome—all synthesised into 40 minutes of tragic ecstasy that rivals some of the best queer cinema we’ve had on screen. this is a turning point for me, but it’s also simply just a good time. 10s all round, so happy to say that i’ll this first watch for the rest of my life !!

first bergman in a loooong time, and although it's technically masterful — trippy, dreamily shot, and paced with really powerful philosophical subtext and dad talk (so much so i recommended this to him) — it was hard to get immersed in what felt like a sequence of things just happening one after the other, with the professor merely acting as a loose connective thread rather than a solid outline of human purpose. (guess that's intentional?) a rewatch's is due at some point, but overall, i liked what i saw. i'm just too slow for this film at the moment i fear but bergman i will EVENTUALLY get on ur wavelength.

madonna’s ahead of the curve once again. 

blues music that crackles and seethes into doom metal, gore, gore, gore and horny southern vampires. a klan-era exploitation beast that demands to be seen on the world’s biggest screens and blared into your skull at max volume – ryan coogler has just entered the pantheon of the greatest black filmmakers oat and i'm more than seated for this film to sweep at whatever awards season brings us.

my audience has never been so gagged leaving a premiere and i've never said thank you jesus once, let alone 20 times in my life. gimmicky ending aside, i'm floored. the blockbuster is alive.

say NO to bullying.

ik the netflix chairmen had a good ki when they approved this.

none of this would’ve happened if steve was a well hung, 6ft biracial king.

sex and pretty european eyes that distil the bourgeoisie in ions that splinter across the screen.

theorem is delicate, hypnotising, poetic, and overtly marxist, sure – but it's of its own mode in a way that feels confrontational and not portentous, unless you, the viewer, allow it to be. it lightly nudges you towards pillars of marxism within a framework of christian fantastique we already have outlined constantly in so much media around us, and then drunkenly wanders in meandering, dream-like shots that stagger as you try to fill in its gaps. i know it's an odd favourite of pasolini's to have, but it's mine for the sheer reason that although it doesn't perfectly synthesise, it bursts with so many ideas and concepts of – well, him and its kind of obsessively sadistic (and gets away with it) in a way i fucking live for...

an all-time fav i’m ashamed to say i’ve at moments forgotten about, especially since i always subconsciously draw (steal) from it.

a sharply directed and paced howcatchem that experiments with takes and form as much as it toys with manhattanite homoeroticism. dall and granger’s performances froth with the philosophical wit that many more explicitly erotic films try to match today, but hitchcock was cognisant of demon twinks before demon twinks were even cognisant of themselves, and it’s unspoken sadomasochism in the mode of murder that makes for true erotic cinema. hitchcock, both an ally and a handler since ‘48.

a24, adding the family and friends we made along the way to a post-letter glue level of substance “eat the rich” horror film does not not make it an a24 “eat the rich” horror film. you’re still in time-out <3

it’s no lemonade but so beautiful nevertheless. dandelion for soty.

i’d personally kill myself—but her choosing to stay with him as a way of saying, no, i won’t let generations of male infidelity toward the african american woman define what i define as my true love—not just for my man, but for my children and their children—is soooo moving to me. she’s the 21st-century beethoven, thru and thru.

it gets me every time, and i haven’t even been wronged like this (yet), and god forbid that i will be. pls cherish your relationships and may thunder strike jay-z.

for those who don’t know “someday my prince will come” was a part of my three-step queer awakening so it’s exclusion hurts a bit but oh well. (dopey and rachel saved this for me). 

make his pockets HURT !!

probably one of the most culturally poignant films of the year, stuffed into a cookie-cutter a24 ‘fucked-up elitist getaway’ formula that feels more tired than innovative. i’ll never speak ill of ayo edibiri, so i’ll hold my peace, but i did have fun—the problem is, i’ve had this exact kind of fun two… three… four, five times now? what the film should have been from the start begins just as it ends.. 

(also, i didn’t know that young mazino was in this film so when he appeared i gasped out of an insatiable homoerotic lust and got stares, don’t EVER bisexually assault and jumpscare me like that again ??)

a (not nearly as bonkers as i was expecting) dip into the post-traumatic/sadomasochistic sequelae of a holocaust survivor, but more importantly, a victim of all the downright evil, underground stratagem and evasive deceit that eroded the nazi party post-war. the second half of that word salad is, to the film’s credit, its greatest strength, but it’s sometimes lost for me in it’s dreary narrative and fittingly cold, almost silver-toned aesthetics. it just feels too risk-averse—almost to the point that the film seems afraid of the very roots of the fascist control it aims both to give weight to through erotica (though the mere thought of it is already heavy) and to tear out from its canal.

trading nazisploitation for kitsch can only get a film’s stench so far before you actually sit down to watch it and realise—hey, this actually isn’t that deep. but it really fucking could be. and for the sheer theatrical (almost operatic) dare of it, and the potential for ugly but important conversation, i’d highly recommend.

the most masochistic thing about this film is that it brought sky ferreira out of retirement. i urge you all to go watch this movie instead !! much love to nicole/harris tho <3

this film flirts with a lot of gut-wrenching practices and ideas, and while they sometimes feel vaguely illustrated or rough—especially towards the beginning—i enjoyed myself too much to nitpick what’s (to nobody’s surprise) just another banging bong joon-ho flick, carried by what is no doubt a demanding but insane performance from pattinson and a plot that refuses to let you see any of its edges coming.

it’s current, it’s philosophical, it’s irreverent and nihilistic—but also really fucking funny. so much so that it’s almost sad?

too abstract, too lyrical, too fleeting. a film that deliberately outpaces you—much like its narrator—in its pursuit of death through art, martyrdom, and homoerotic desire. bio-pics aren’t trash (to me) when the terrain of the story shifts and transforms to match the subject’s psyche, and ‘caravaggio’ does this brilliantly—at times too brilliantly—where the lust feels too performed, and michelangelo’s existential paranoia splinters between arthouse and contemporary. but it’s the randomness of it all that makes it camp, i guess?

realism be fucked !! and i love that for derek jarman and all the twinks who managed to stumble into his campy odyssey of anachronisms and hypnotic incoherence. i think i’ll enjoy putting this on in the background just to feel coveted and romantically doomed.

so ik there’s so much to vehemently loathe about this film, and von trier by extension, but i also find that there’s so much to examine and learn from both the characters of joe and seligman, who i found to be performed so daringly by gainsbourg and skarsgård respectively, that i’m only partly ashamed to say i enjoyed this ??

the sex is so beige and objectificatory to the point that i had to squint to find the farce/allegory between the dry humping, but when u go into this with fried morals, i find within this film there’s the potential to challenge you to dissect every addiction and cruelty you think you know, both within and outside of you, in ways that are lewd, yes, but also anthropologically dense and punishing.

this film is bad !! and that’s okay :)

there’s a sketch of a movie here—or many sketches—not just narratively but as marvel’s red stamp on the culture: a political thriller released at the genesis of what could be four years of the most ruthless and self-serving istrations we’ve seen, meant to bring the people together and all that?

but although i can tell it’s trying really hard to mirror the espionage and finesse of catws, i simply couldn’t bring myself to care about anything that was going on here—let alone feel even moderately unsure or worried about what’s going to happen, given that the franchise has been somersaulting towards a universe-shattering multiversal battle royale for five years and counting. not unwatchable though and danny ramirez the man that you are !!!

so much i have to say about this (grotesque) beauty of a film has already been said—far more eloquently and precisely than i could ever manage—but that scene where isabelle huppert limps onto the ice rink, almost blinded and crippled by self-contempt, with nothing but white light biting into her like she’s a brown bloodstain fizzing into silk, has to be the most insane depiction of sexual repression i’ve ever seen…

eroticism can rlly be the most powerful genre when done with empathy and care (bc that’s what sexuality is ahout), and i can’t name any film, show, or book (the original now being on my tbr) more exemplary than ‘la pianiste’. i’ll hold everything i ever write to the standard of this film and still fail, but a screenplay like this demands it—because depression is just a feeling so impossible to visually materialise. if we had more films like this, ones that don’t shy away from psychosexuality while still centring a woman’s loneliness and estrangement from any form of establishment without villainising or fetishising her, i think we’d fare a lot better as a people overall ??

but, as usual, it’ll be a while before i can bring myself to rewatch this again—even though benoît magimel, you are the most beautiful man i’ve ever fucking seen.

this is a rape and revenge film.

wherever sex goes, the threat of violence follows—a concept that’s somehow so in and out of focus here, so aimless, that it makes the film’s sex and fassbinder’s humid eroticism feel hollow and, at points, depraved, which is sad because that’s obviously not the intention, but i get it fassbinder dw !! the dialogue is too poorly delivered to be camp and too poignant and poetic to be awful… 

regardless i found its subtextual presentation of homosexuality within a framework of violent, criminal, and patriarchal power hierarchies both captivating and aesthetically pleasing? idk, this is the oddest thing i’ve ever watched of my own will. it’s just the kind of thing that demands you rewatch it until you love it or you’re sick of it. but i can really see myself becoming obsessed with this one in the abstract sense. (the ideas and philosophies it flirts both stylistically and in it’s plot) also, i will be going as querelle on halloween sometime during my lifetime pls hold me 2 this.

i’m (not) the problem. 

so my takeaway is that this is a strange but eerily beautiful outlook on how escapism and disillusionment weave self-sabotage. the scenes, especially the surrealist ones, are almost estranged from one another in a way that’s kind of jarring and (maybe deliberately) off-putting, but when i try to look at them from séverine’s (belle de jour) perspective, i can only assume that it’s less a hyper-stylised “attack” on gender relations and power (as it should be) than a meditation on the politicisation of intimacy through what is essentially… maladaptive sex work—an unexpectedly forward-thinking way to approach erotica! (and boredom ??). but prostitution is simply just not this glamorous in reality, so sorry bũnel + catherine deneuve, but i can’t bring myself to be obsessed w this one as much as i could be. but mamas i LOVE your hair !! 

(ik this is just a bunch of words but watch the film and try to get on my wavelength <3)

and if i said best picture-

began kinda averagely and was largely carried by crawford's ability to both live in and elevate suspense in ways that sometimes only theatre can, but its third act really spawns into what the entirety of the film could've been—a devilishly erotic (and kind of camp?) noir with a score that i think physically bit into my eardrums. i'd defo slough through the first 80 minutes again and again to get to the last half hour, despite the makeup on jack palance looking way off, what's up with that ?!!?!

don’t ask questions- my sister wanted to see how bad it was !!

people DO belong to one another, and that’s exactly why cat had no reason to be thrown away like that. anyways, (besides the yellowface), this 100% deserves its classic status—and, in my head at least, audrey hepburn is one of my style icons. (this is me manifesting a tiffany’s date and a nyc pieds-à-terre).

fully convinced that this would be a dud if it weren’t for sharon stone, but thankfully, we live in a reality where it isn’t. the last five minutes are some of the coldest cinematic depictions of power relationships through sex i’ve seen, and although i wish that sharp tension extended through the rest of the film narratively, i’d be lying if i didn’t say this may be one of the most influential films on my taste—well, ever—and that’s definitely not including the vanilla sex that’s supposed to be ‘sadomasochistic.’ ?? the only thing even close was that nastily cunt white turtleneck catherine wore during that interrogation—i think i felt that frame through the screen, and in my dreams…

Watched on Friday January 3, 2025.

oh, bitch. 

eggers is one of the few filmmakers i’d never shame for sticking to a specific niche or storytelling style in favor of ‘versatility.’ and although nosferatu is clearly, stylistically cut from the same cloth as the lighthouse and the witch (perhaps not the northman), it exists in a class of its own. it’s 132 minutes of pure hysteria, panic, and delirium—paced just slowly enough for every prosthetic, set piece, and scream to rattle in your head for images thereafter. it’s definitely erotic and romantic but at your own peril, with depp and skarsgård challenging you—in a final scene i won’t completely describe—to really think about what might physically (and more so abstractly) constitute a human-vampire relationship, in all its macabre glory. depp’s line delivery at moments truly distilled me; she was made for the pentameter of the gothic genre, and i’m grateful to witness such a performance on screen. i’ve been saying “come to me…” all new years.

This review may contain spoilers.

i don’t think i’ve ever seen actors play characters so sick with desire… whatever ‘love’ is in this world, i need to be on it now. power dynamics in gender, sex, aristocracy, and so much more are explored and portrayed so well—glenn close is omnipresent, even in scenes she isn’t in, and malkovich, whose cruelty and eventual succumbing to obsession carries the film to another calibre of excellence. i’m smitten lmao (he’s also devilishly good-looking in this; everyone is).

love is sharp in this film, and i can only guess part of it has to do with the source material (which has been bumped tf up my tbr), but also the way frears uses pictures to illustrate it—colours that are tender and almost flesh-like, movement that’s melodramatic and almost drunkenly fluid during arguments, the way pfeiffer simply stares in this film.

it’s brilliant screenwriting. i’m jealous i didn’t write it. my GOD, romance is such a powerful tool and genre… (will rewatch after reading)

these designs are kinda the best of any dc animated film ever—whoever suggested tans for the trinity and supergirl needs to be a supervisor on all creative fronts going forward.

i’m obsessed with the almost anime-like approach to fight scenes and movement here. that supergirl v darkseid fight—although she lost—may just be one of the best dc has to offer. the title is a little misleading and obnoxious in its shoehorning of batman to get people to watch what otherwise would be a supergirl solo film (but why wouldn’t u want to watch that). but i do appreciate the accurate characterisation of superman himself here. bonus points for big barda and the gorgeous wonder woman design. i live, i live, i live!!

Watched on Saturday December 28, 2024.

when i was like 5 i thought aslan was my dad…

delicately composed pictures of a woman at war with trust in an industry that demands she be drunk on it. mikey madison, mark eydelshteyn, and yura borisov strip the sex comedy of all its satirical borders and imbue it with such realism that it’s more often painful than it is beautiful to watch, without ever veering too far into gratuitous social commentary that wouldn’t allow scenes- like that final one- to truly work. unlike ‘pretty woman’ it doesn’t want to be a classic, and for that reason- at least to me- it so effortlessly is one…

Watched on Wednesday December 18, 2024.

tony leung save me!!!

always changing !!

1. Sinners
2. Thunderbolts*
3. Companion
4. Mickey 17
5. Brighter Days Ahead
6. Opus
7. Warfare
8. Captain America: Brave New World
9. Death of a Unicorn
10. Snow White

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

2024 films ranked. The ratings and rankings are always changing and don’t make sense- don't take it seriously lol.

1. Dune: Part Two
2. The Substance
3. Nosferatu
4. Anora
5. I Saw the TV Glow
6. Wicked
7. Challengers
8. Olivia Rodrigo: GUTS World Tour
9. Gladiator II
10. Immaculate

...plus 10 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

“I’m going to live, and you’re going to watch me.”

1. Poor Things
2. Anatomy of a Fall
3. Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé
4. Oppenheimer
5. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
6. Killers of the Flower Moon
7. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
8. John Wick: Chapter 4
9. Barbie
10. The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes

...plus 14 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.