Are you hungry? I haven't eaten since later this afternoon.
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Addams Family Values 1993
I'm just like every modern woman trying to have it all. A loving husband, a family. I only wish I had more time to see out the dark forces and join their hellish crusade.
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Bergman Island 2021
Mia Hansen-Love's latest curdles with a playful energy that unfurls slowly. It begins like a Hong Sangsoo, pleasant and slow, with a minimalism that provides a laser focus on the two tremendously talented performers at the center of the story - Vicky Kreips and Tim Roth. The setting is idyllic, the couple seems happy, and the tone is light. They toy with the prospect of stormy horizons, noting the bedroom they've booked is the one Bergman set his famous Scenes…
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Titane 2021
I'm still twisting and grappling with Ducournau's sophomore effort. Her previous, Raw, burst onto the scene in 2017, fully formed and pulsing with ravenous energy. It was brilliantly assured, riding on the back of Garance Marillier's superb performance and Ruben Impens' confident lens, and has only cemented itself as one of my favorite horror pictures in the years since.
Titane is an altogether slipperier beast. And I am, mostly, glad for it. Agathe Rouselle plays Alexia, a dancer who advertises…
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Cruising 1980
Friedkin's bi awakening, leather-clad giallo is exactly as wonderful as it sounds on paper. Though some of the performances here are a little rough around the edges, Pacino is as excellent as ever. He threads a fine line between tense withdrawal and furtive excitement and does so marvelously. Supporting players are a bit more hit or miss and some of the ADR is jarringly atrocious. Narratively, however, the film works beautifully. The 'undercover cop gets lost in the role' narrative…
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After Hours 1985
Surrender Dorothy!
Papa Scorsese's coked-up nocturnal odyssey never fails to delight. About as simple of a comedy of errors as they come, but also just about the most circuitous of stories in his entire oeuvre. His rain and sweat-slicked characters make one bad decision after another, and there's a perverse pleasure in seeing them squirm and wriggle. While I love his elegiac odes to aging, finding one's faith, and holding contradictory impulses simultaneously, more of these raucous, energetic comedies, please.
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Pig 2021
About as authentic a picture as I've seen from Nic Cage in a long time. Cage has spent the last two decades of his career operating on a principle of maximalism. He goes big, often to ludicrous effect. Films like Mandy capture this manic energy and harness it to brilliant aesthetic ends. Other films like Color Out of Space try, but have a harder time wrangling the overflowing contours of Cage's more expressive performances into something cohesive and engaging. Yet…
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Mirror 1975
And suddenly all changed, like in a trance,
Even trivial things, so often used and tried,
When standing 'tween us, guarding us,
Was water, solid, stratified.
It carried us I don’t know where.
Retreating before us, like some mirage,
Were cities, miraculously fair.
Under our feet the mint grass spread,
The birds were following our tread,
The fishes came to a river bend,
And to our eyes the sky was open.
Behind us our fate was groping,
Like an insane man with a razor in his hand. -
A Quiet Place Part II 2020
The definition of a perfunctory sequel. I liked the first well enough; it was a lean, if inelegant, bit of genre storytelling that relied heavily on its central performances. To see the inevitability of a sequel by the time the credits rolled was to say nothing of its necessity. It made $350 million on a new IP, so of course a sequel was planned.
This is about as clear of a case of sequel by necessity as there is. It's…
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