Midsommar (Ari Aster, 2019): 4/5

Spellbinding, disorienting, and disturbing. A somewhat different beast than HEREDITARY but once again Aster showcases people dealing with a multiple array of personal struggles in a masterful way. Heavy themes are backed by beautiful cinematography and visceral violence. It’s a lot to process and I'm still taking it all in. One thing is certain, this is no sophomore slump.

High Life (Claire Denis, 2018): 3.5/5 

Claire Denis saw INTERSTELLAR and was like "oh cool but what if it was horny and disgusting"

Dragged Across Concrete (S. Craig Zahler, 2018): 4/5

This may be Zahler's best movie yet, in its way his JACKIE BROWN, an exploration of race, police power, class, and crime. As idiosyncratic and weirdly literary as it is vile. Any questions you have about his actual worldview won't be answered but it's an ugly, bleak, and often very funny little bomb.

Serenity (Steven Knight, 2019): 1/5

What the fuck is this movie. What starts as a mid 90s Palmetto-esque thriller goes off the rails, sprouts wings, and flies into the next galaxy. YOU ARE NOT PREPARED FOR THE THIRD ACT TURN THIS MOVIE TAKES. Sadly said turn doesn’t send Serenity into "so bad it’s good" territory.

Always Be My Maybe (Nannatchka Kan, 2019): 2/5

Yes, it's true women only want to date the stoner musician childhood friend they've become more successful than or Keanu Reeves. (Imagine making an entire movie based on one cameo.) Everything about this falls somewhere between annoyingly mediocre/unfunny and actively terrible.

Star 80 (Bob Fosse, 1983): 4/5

A deeply uncompromising film populated by Mariel Hemingway and Eric Roberts' incredible performances. It proved to be Fosse's final film and many would argue that he perhaps saved his best for last. A gruesome, true-crime tragedy of the murder of Playboy model and actress Dorothy Stratten by her estranged husband Paul Snider, and his subsequent suicide. Peter Biskind's description in his 1998 book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls is one that has stayed with me ever since I read it:

"Probably loaded on booze and 'ludes, Snider blew Stratten's head off with a shotgun, and then placed her prostrate on an exercise bench (later referred to in the press as a 'bondage machine') and had sex with her corpse. Her butt was slightly elevated by the bench, on which there were semen stains; there were two bloody handprints on her bottom. One of her fingers, apparently blown off when she raised her hands to protect herself, was stuck to the wall, along with a fair amount of blood. She was twenty. Snider then shot himself in the head. When the police discovered the body, one of his eyes had been moved to the center of his forehead by the force of the blast, so that he looked like a cyclops"

Pet Sematary (Dennis Widmyer, Kevin Kolsch, 2019): 1/5

I feel like dumbwaiters only exist in horror movies. Also, Jason Clarke tries to do a standard American accent here and cycles through like 15 nonexistent regional dialects that all sound terrible?? The family has a son that they and the movie forget about for like weeks at a time?? The movie uses the exact same loud-truck-driving-by jumpscare 5 TIMES??? I love cinema.

Under the Silver Lake (David Robert Mitchell, 2018): 1.5/5

The Funko Pop of seemingly risk taking cinema. Manufactured and monotonous, this is a weak-ass cocktail of Mulholland Drive, multiple Hitchcock movies, Big Lebowski, & Inherent Vice (dreadful to begin with) blended into an ungodly dull, repetitive, poorly written waste of my fucking time. Boring direction - Mitchell has no interesting ideas thematically or visually. Atrocious writing (in terms of dialogue, character and pacing) and ends up feeling like it fades away in seconds. But! An extra half star for when Andrew Garfield forcibly shoves an egg into a boy's mouth and punches him.

Drop Dead Gorgeous (Michael Patrick Jann, 1999): 4/5

More like drop dead GOOD. And the sheer amount of LEGENDS here? staggering

rewatched Performance (Donald Cammell, Nicolas Roeg, 1970): 2/5

I know this is one of those sacred cows in cinema history but I found it an ordeal to watch even after all these years. I still can't get past Roeg's constant barrage of headache-inducing quick cuts to non-sequitur images of SR-71 Blackbirds and giant nipples. The first third of this makes for a ripping British gangster flick, but as soon as Jagger and Pallenberg show up, it slowly devolves into a hot, stinky, psychedelic bowel movement of louche nonsense.

Quadrophenia (Franc Roddam, 1970): 2.5/5

“U WOT, M8?!”
- this whole movie

Is this a meandering romp around 70's britrock culture that isn't that great until the last 30 mins, or is it a bizarre yet effective 2-hour Vespa scooter commercial?

Arctic (Joe Penna, 2018): 3/5

A straight forward survival drama that'll make you wish that if you're ever stranded in any sort of climate you'll have Mads Mikkelsen there to take care of you.

Captive State (Rupert Wyatt, 2019): 1/5

So obnoxiously low on entertainment value that it’s shocking it ever made it to theaters. What a waste of John Goodman.

rewatched Purple Noon (Rene Clement, 1960): 3.5/5 Not sure how blasphemous it is to think Minghella's adaptation superior to this one, but I do. My favorite part was Alain Delons's face

Swing Time (George Stevens, 1934): 3/5

“Oh, Fred’s getting his makeup ready for the next dance routine!

Oh.

Oh no.”

rewatched Beau Travail (Claire Denis, 1999): 5/5

Masculinity at its most toxic and elemental, in these lens men are nothing more than colonialist creatures, animals who fuck, kill and train in the name of nothing, all they are is movement and repression.

🎶This is the rhythm of the night🎶