Letterboxd — Your life in film

Kristoffer Borgli's absurd dramedy feels like a welcome throwback to the mid-2000's era of Charlie Kauffman-penned absurd dramedies. Complete with that quirky ache of a Jon Brion-indebted score courtesy of Owen Pallett, and a phenomenally sturdy cast, the stage is set for THEE Nicolas fuckin' Cage to take us on a surreal journey of a scathed soul. Hell fuckin' yeah. 

The concept is incredible: Cage plays a university professor who ends up becoming famous/"going viral" because he's been popping up in almost…

This obscure thriller has been on my radar for quite some time, but it wasn't until Eli Roth mentioned it as a key inspiration for Thanksgiving that I finally pulled up my sleeves and put on my detective hat to track it down (translation: I asked a friend to download it for me).

So here we are, this long-lost mid-90's "horror" film that is satisfyingly unique but doesn't quite satisfy that horror tag. In true DePalma worshipping fashion, it opens…

Eli Roth has finally delivered on his supposed legacy as a man-about-town in Hollywood espousing deep horror soundbites and promising to produce the trve gorehound riches. All of that is to say... I think this might be Eli Roth's best film?

Gone is the grindhouse grime and crackle of that magical trailer that pitched the world a slice of gruesome nostalgia from the Slasher Kingdom. He's turned the dial from that late 70's/early 80's golden era all the way to…

Emma Seligman's follow-up to Shiva Baby does the darndest thing: completely switches M.O.'s and delivers a singularly absurd teen-comedy. Gone is that Safdie Bros anxiety-drenched quasi-horror energy, now replaced with subtle zaniness and a tone completely of its own. You know what the best part is? It's also a really good movie.

Rachel Sennot and Ayo Edebiri star as two lesbian teens that are both crushing hard on two cheerleaders at their high school. A series of strange events end…

You ever heard that one about the blind kid that solved a Rubik's cube?
In Justine Triet's prickly courtroom drama, a dead man's body leads to a game of appearances that only a blind child can really solve as he is the sole witness to this death.

When a writer's husband turns up dead in the snow just outside their rural home in France, the evidence of his apparent fall out of an attic window doesn't quite add up for…

After Remy Couture created Inner Depravity 1 & 2, as well as a website showcasing photography that depicted his meticulous FX work and disturbing imagery, he was then arrested in 2009 and charged with obscenity and corruption of morality.
Frédérick Maheux's documentary moves in real time, capturing the story as it unfolds, and with that we get a thorough look into Couture's processes as well as various talking heads instilling their own dissections on censorship.

Despite the execution feeling a bit…

Whereas the first one veered closer to feeling like some obscure NIN music video, Remy Couture's second instalment comes off more like Kenneth Anger having his mystic way with August Underground. Longer takes and less montages lead us into more moments that savour the wild visions on screen. The music even feels reminiscent of Invocation of my Demon Brother's hypnotic broken synth transmissions, a smooth and jagged gurgling that entrances you, pure suffocation tones.

Again we get a killer having…

In the first instalment of Remy Couture's Inner Depravity, a 10 minute culmination of his FX work and disturbing high-concept photography, Couture presents a stylized montage of sadistic death drowning in nightmare fuel. A masked killer (played by Couture) torments, assaults, and destroys numerous women, all with slightly unique approaches and electrifying staging.

There isn't so much a narrative to be pulled out of this as there is a world that is built so meticulously. Starting with crime scene photos,…

Chandler Levack's debut feature is a quirky dramedy that harks back to an era of films that the story takes place in: 2003. That Jon Brion-worshipping score, the feeling like it was adapted from a graphic novel, and the painfully messy central characters that make for an all too bumpy ride. Maybe a little too bumpy.

The film follows Lawrence, a socially awkward film-obsessed teen in his senior year of high school. He gets a job at his local video…

Ah yes, now we're getting into the Dad years of Cannibal Corpse. Released in 2011 to showcase their vast touring itinerary and their unbreakable dedication, we can now watch as these aging rockers become further paradoxes in the form of uber-chill fathers that play songs like "Fucked By A Knife". Love it.

The charming dad vibes are best exemplified when drummer Paul Mazurkiewicz (who low-key looks like Dustin Diamond) says, "wow, we were rushed so much to the stage that…

David Dawson's Flesh Games packs a really great concept into 65 minutes exploding with raw authenticity and verve.
What essentially starts as a rip on Jackass/CKY, we watch as a group of friends assemble for a second attempt at making their own movie full of testosterone-fuelled debauchery and vicious stunts. Between the crevices of these wily sequences though is a narrative slowly blooming until hits a frequency of pure horror. Madness ensues!

And while it could just be as gimmicky…