Nope (Jordan Peele, 2022): 2.5/5

In gymnastics, when someone attempts a really hard move but can’t land it, you still applaud the effort. So, I'm glad Peele is out here swinging, and I don't want him to stop. But he didn't land this one. Fun ideas with some great moments, but ultimately has the depth of a sketchbook. One thing I find interesting is how Peele is carving out this monopoly on what I’m calling “non-scary horror” (it's a shit name, open to suggestions). He’s using the aesthetics of horror and tension films to make interesting but ultimately widely palatable movies for people who normally can’t fuck with the genre. They're not scary, they're just wearing the clothes. And it's obviously tremendously effective. Make of that what you will.

Nekromantik 2 (Jorg Buttgereit, 1991): 1/5

Like most infamous shock cinema, this is more notorious than it is actually any good. The first one at least rubbed up against some vague post-war Berlin Wall-era anti-establishment anger with its antics. There's a hint of mistrust of German reunification here, but mostly this is interested in what it can get away with, which even then isn't particularly shocking.

The Blob (Chuck Russell, 1988): 3/5

Solid semi-solid movie!

The Gray Man (Anthony and Joe Russon, 2022): 1.5/5

I think if someone watched Bourne Ultimatum, got a concussion, and then went to sleep immediately after, this movie would be the dream they'd have.

The Russo brothers cement themselves as dull corporate hacks with this film.

Leaving Las Vegas (Mike Figgis, 1995): 2/5

The pre-credits scene is a superb little 15-minute short. It's only when he meets Shue that the whole thing turns putrid.

Broadcast News (James L. Brooks, 1987): 3/5

Some days I'm Al Brooks, some days I'm Holly Hunter. But every day I'm Joan Cusack running full-speed into a water fountain.

Citizen Ashe (Sam Pollard, Rex Miller, 2021): 3.5/5

The film is a monument to the gentlemanly and cerebral Ashe, the way he met the challenges of his times, and the toll it took on him. I wouldn’t call him the anti-Ali since Ashe and Ali wanted the same outcomes, they just had completely different styles of going about it. I loved when Dr. Harry Edwards acknowledged that Ashe, whom he initially wrote off as an Uncle Tom, was in some ways more radical than himself while maintaining an elegant, soft-spoken persona. He learned something from Ashe that I think far too few of us (who prefer loud performative defiance to quiet efficacy) have learned.

Persuasion (Carrie Cracknell, 2022): 1/5

A "Fleabag" style punch up of an Austen novel. Horrendous miscalculation. The anachronistic language was another awful decision. AND it's completely UN-HORNY, lacking any real sensuality or romantic vibes. Also, Dakota is just that person who can't be in a period piece...She looks like someone who knows what an iPhone is.

Parallel Mothers (Almodovar, 2021): 4/5
Fantastic. Should have been in a neck-and-neck race with Power of the Dog for the Oscar, but maybe Almodovar's color fetish and flirtations with kitsch and excess don't appeal as much as a good-old stolid drama. How the mothers/lovers' lives and the lives of their babies intertwine is the reason to see this film. It is a film of power and honesty, without a single false note along the way.

Secrets & Lies (Mike Leigh, 1996): 3/5

“We’re all in pain.

Why can’t we share our pain."

A bit dated and melodramatic but I found it moving at times.

The Secret Lives of Dentists (Alan Rudolph, 2002): 3/5

Harrowing trip into the reticent male psyche with Campbell Scott, plus nimble assistance from a beautifully flustered Hope Davis, and Dennis Leary in the Tyler Durden-esque motormouth role he was born to play; shows a family unit with neither sentimentality nor garish caricature.

The Automat (Lisa Hurwitz, 2021): 3/5

Nice and sweet. Like any good American film it slowly convinces you its subject is somehow integral to understanding modern America even if you knew nothing about it beforehand. Some might think it frivolous or a trifle but I think the film has something to say about the shift in American capitalism before and after World War Two and what we lost as a country in the modern age. Also liked how the editors used the subjects asking questions of the director (which most docs would have cut) and also allowed the subjects to ask questions of one another.

Good Luck to You, Leo Grande (Sophie Hyde, 2022): 3/5

Never really transcends its dull overlit look or PSA mindset, but charming enough on the strength of its leads. Obviously I knew Emma’s performance would be spellbinding but goddamn where has Daryl McCormack been hiding? Goes from holding his own to fully stealing scenes.

The 355 (Simon Kinberg, 2022): 1.5/5

Women…we gotta do better than this

Chastain if you don’t stop bussin down for the CIA…

Peggy Sue Got Married (Francis Ford Coppola, 1986): 2/5

Where Kathleen Turner and Nicolas Cage have weird fucking faces that somehow pass as both 18 and 43 years old.

JFK (Oliver Stone, 1991): 2.5/5

This movie is almost as long as the actual Kennedy administration. The whole thing is just one long argument and every detail of that argument is wrong.

Dog (Channing Tatum, Reid Carolin, 2022): 1/5

More like Dog SHIT. This is probably Tucker Carlson's favorite movie.

Clean (Paul Solet, 2021): 2/5

Adrien Brody must be going through a midlife crisis. Lead, Co-Writer, Producer, and Original Music & Score.

The Bob's Burgers Movie (Loren Bouchard, Bernard Derriman, 2022): 3/5

“Cotton Candy Dan? Is that the guy who sold corn dogs?”

Delightful and accessible. (Never seen one episode of the show. I might change that.)

The Black Phone (Scott Derrickson, 2022): 2/5

You’re telling me kids in this small town are being kidnapped and murdered every few weeks and no one is hip to the giant black van circling the school that says “Abracadabra” on the side?

Miracle Mile (Steve de Jarnatt, 1988): 3/5

Essentially Los Angeles AFTER HOURS meets THREADS. Who wouldn't want to die at Canter's Deli?

Ozark (Bill Dubuque, Mark Williams, 2017-2022): 3.5/5 

Our anti-heroes are the Byrde family, with Jason Bateman and Laura Linney as the wily, resourceful "our means are better than your means" parents who are digging out of their drug cartel obligations and on the road to "normal" backdoor deals and power brokering that are part and parcel of the free world of a democratic society. On the one hand, the ending begs for continuation, on the other, the cycle of vengeance is never complete as those hillbilly mainstays, the Hatfield and McCoys remind us.

The series is best in the family dynamics with the Byrde kids moving from pre to post-adolescence over the course of the series (as they actors themselves age) and taking polar opposite stands vis a vis their parents, but then there's the cartel family dynamics and Ruth's and Darlene's families as well, all of which reveal flaws that if not classically tragic are still tragic enough to bring death and woe upon those who survive.

And the Byrde parents, though capable of just about anything, never commit violence themselves. Both are supremely skilled at talking their in and out of pickles and devising bad ends for others but always at arm's length. It's a tribute to smarts of a peculiar but vivid kind and is one of the qualities that makes this a worthwhile series to check out. 

SUCCESSION (Jesse Armstrong, Seasons 1-3): 4.5/5

I love Shiv (Sarah Snook's) facial expressivity. She lights up or dims down in a 100 different ways and contrasts with the semi-frozen monster dad, Logan (Brian Cox) and her two brothers Roman (Kieran Culkin) with his straight-faced witty, naughty and sometimes stinging quips, and Kendall (Jeremy Strong) with his slightly tensed, not quite there look and seething anger. Unlike Lear, Logan never turns power over. Instead, maybe because we have much more time to fill, he flatters and seduces one offspring after another with promises that never quite materialize. The betrayals and undercutting piles up, dirty secrets leak out, crises recur, and much of the time the series is a mix of intense close ups and barbed dialogue. It keeps one's focus, and, apart from the predictably musical chairs, interest. It's not quite over but you can bet it won't be changing stripes either.  There's a reason I didn't want to be in the world of business. 

Mad God (Phil Tippett, 2022): 2.5/5

A miraculous, odd, sui generis object involving elaborate set design, plus a slosh of artistry including traditional cell animations, stop motion, puppets, models, stagecraft, photography, sound design, armatures, props, wardrobe. Although, really, it could have used a writer! 

 

The Offer (Michael Tolkin, Leslie Greif, 2022):3.5/5

Low-rent but still a distinct pleasure to hang out with some version of Coppola and Evans, Pacino and Brando. I rank this at the same tier as the Motely Crue movie, The Dirt: high compliment! They used to make movies about kings, now it’s all Freddie Mercury, Elton John, Joan Crawford and Elvis. 

 

Dashcam (Rob Savage, 2022): 3/5

From the director of 2020’s Host (a favorite, made with very scarce means). This one is not the in the same league, but it’s nevertheless worth one’s time. The “Instagram” mise en scène and personalities are a big turnoff. Still, when the horror goes down (which is early and often), the iPhone grammar makes the vicious horror stuff more realistic and intense (while also choppy and abstract). 

 

Love Death + Robots, S3E2, “Bad Travelling” (David Fincher, 2022): 4/5  

Smart, fun and good-looking quasi-retelling of Alien in 22 minutes. My favorite thing associated with Fincher since 2010’s The Social Network. 

 

Sicilia! (Jean-Marie Straub, Danièle Huillet, 1999): 2/5

A man returns to Sicily to visit his mother. The movie seems to be made by someone who has never seen a movie, just heard them described. The characters declare their lines like kids in a school play, and the camera often lingers on their blank faces long before they speak and long after they have finished. A camera on a hill slowly pans from one side of a valley to the other and back again, then repeats the pan and return. Shrug!

 

THX 1138 (George Lucas, 1971): 3/5

Quite a weird, off-putting and bold film—a 2001-drunk fence-swing full of audacious world-building. Unfortunately, it’s dramatically inert and full of barriers to audience identification and enjoyment. Lucas is not quite done with the extreme use of white, technology that is both old-feeling and futuristic, and robot cops. 

 

Night Across the Street (Raúl Ruiz, 2012): 1.5/5

We wander around inside of an old man’s idiosyncratic memories and fantasies, kind of like spending two hours talking to someone else’s quirky father in a retirement home. 

 

Man Push Cart (Ramin Bahrani, 2005): 3.5/5

Simple and specific, but with a deep well of feeling, primarily sadness and nostalgia. 

 

The Pianist (Roman Polanski, 2002): 3.5/5

Survivor guilt, the movie. The watcher. The feeler. The revenant. A sort of greatest hits of Warsaw ghetto anecdotes, all exceedingly grim on the subject of power. Dramatically, extremely compelling.  

 

Destry Rides Again (George Marshall, 1939): 3.5/5

Oh, the pleasure of watching, amidst sundry odd World Classics, a normal, swift, witty entertainment such as we have here. Dietrich is so great: sexy, strong and game for anything, including a prolonged cat fight. Stewart is clever and full of savoir faire—the other side of Stewart in the West, since this is the peacemaker and bringer of the law/future (a la Liberty Valance) instead of the psychopath of most of his Anthony Mann westerns, including…

 

The Man from Laramie (Anthony Mann, 1955): 3.5/5

Technicolor and cinemascope plus Anthony Mann’s shot composition and those cloudy skies of New Mexico, and you barely need anything else. Which is good, since the themes of this run thin beyond “Apache bad.” This turns out to be a kind of family drama with weak actual sons vs. strong adopted sons, wherein Stewart serves as a vengeful detective character outside of the dramatic action. He and Arthur Kennedy are both predictably great. 

 

Tommy (Ken Russell, 1975): 3/5

Some spoilers ahead for the “plot” of Tommy, but: I had no idea that the reason Tommy was deaf, dumb and blind was that he witnessed his mom and her new lover murder his father (returned from the war). Hamlet alert! But instead of Hamlet's “the play is the thing," Tommy becomes a Stranger in a Strange Land-type spiritual leader. All the consumerism paranoia (and baked beans) are leftover obsessions from The Who Sell Out era. Nicholson and Ann Margaret reunite four years after Carnal Knowledge. Townsend re-recorded all these songs, liberally incorporating the synths he was so obsessed with at the time, and it sounds pretty cool. The vocals by Oliver Reed and Margaret ruin almost everything, but the groovy extended synth rock jam-outs in "Eyesight for the Blind" then "Acid Queen" {starting at 26 mins in), make those parts worth a watch. Unfortunately, I’m only talking about the remarkable music here, not the visuals, which are garbagy.

 

 

Céline Sciamma Mini-Fest

One’s the short, sweet and unforgettable story of a young girl going into the woods and making some discoveries about herself … and the other is Petite Maman. 

 

Petite Maman (Céline Sciamma, 2021): 3/5

An 8-year-old tries to grok her own mother—a mysterious process. A dream play, digging into trauma through metaphor (although I feel as if this describes half of the contemporary moves I watch, including those from my beloved Ari Aster and Miyazaki). I was expecting a more overtly supernatural presentation and felt a bit let down; I will re-watch soon. 

 

Tomboy (Céline Sciamma, 2011): 4.5/5

Stunningly beautiful and emotional. Although I am unlike the main character in many ways, I related to it deeply. Some of the best child acting I’ve ever seen (outside of Paper Moon.) 

Terence Davies Film Fest

In his later career, Davies has (more or less successfully) ported the intensity and interiority of this autobiographical works to fiction. What surprises me is that the screenplays he writes now are so packed with words. He once make poetic works about normal people; now he makes normal movies about poets. 

 

Distant Voices, Still Lives (Terence Davies. 1988): 4/5

A movie glowing, vibrating with personal feeling. Here, irony is foregrounded, with the cheery songs juxtaposed with hard times and bad fathers. The group singing of "Roll out the Barrel" in the bomb shelter is a highlight of this method. 

 

Of Time and the City (Terence Davies, 2008): 2/5

Liverpool, late 40s to the present, through documentary footage, poetry, songs. My favorite bit is when the narrator (Davies) talks about his adolescent love for Bruckner and Mahler over footage of the Beatles and young people rocking out joyfully in the Cavern, etc—a rare bit of irony in what is for the most part sentimental, sacred and mournful about everything up to about 1960 and cranky about much after. 

 

Sunset Song (Terence Davies, 2015): 4/5

An “epic” made up of the most normal things of life: parents dying, brothers leaving home, falling in love, the day of marriage, babies being born. Yet Davies makes each moment hum with great feeling (as in his earlier autobiographies). The last 50 minutes, regarding WWI, worked less well for me, but overall this is Davies putting his particular gifts to good work. 

 

A Quiet Passion (Terence Davies, 2016): 3/5

A script full of arguments that are witty to the point of being airless, plus perhaps too few dashes of her great poetry. Still, Davies displays an interest in the melancholy details of not just his own history but also those of other artists. 

 

Benediction (Terence Davies, 2021): 3/5

Some years in the life of poet Siegfried Sassoon, dealing with the aftermath of WWI and a serial love life—with a script once again chock full of catty witticisms (and here Wilde is explicitly cited). Overall, pretty compelling, but one can’t help feeling that Davies is moving through familiar territory in relation to both the subject and style of A Quiet Passion. Only the occasional, startling eddies of dream and surreality enliven the proceedings. 

 

 

Pier Paolo Pasolini in the 60s Film Fest

Always too intellectual, perverse and detached to really make Neorealism, Pasolini increasingly reaches towards realms spiritual, mystical and abstract.

Accattone, rw? (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1961): 3.5/5

The lead character is a two-bit pimp, and we spend too long hanging out with him and his woman-abusing pig-friends. In this and in Mamma Rosa, the pimp (played by the same actor) makes the same complaint: that their prostitute ruined them by giving them money: “Without you I would be a decent thief by now.” As the film progresses and as our main character becomes more lost and suffers more, it becomes more complex, more dreamy and more symbolic, eventually becoming a bit of a Passion Play. Bertolucci serves as assistant director. 

 

Mamma Roma (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1962): 3.5/5

The titular character is indeed a whore with a heart of gold, but thankfully this is mostly about her trying to save her son from idleness and the world’s everyday brutality. Wonder if that works out for her: “You would hang on the cross for him, wouldn’t you?” her friend eventually asks. A deep class resentment extends all the way up the line: “Explain to me why I’m a nobody and you’re the King of Kings.”

 

The Ricotta, 31 mins (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1963): 3/5

Part of the omnibus movie RO.GO.PA.G, which also features shorts by Godard, Rossellini and (the undistinguished) Ugo Gregoretti. This one is about a director (Orson Welles, dubbed but seemingly speaking Italian) filming a life of Jesus, specifically the Calvary scene. It’s comic and I guess blasphemous, but it’s grappling toward a re-made sincerity about Jesus and what he stands for. Still, it got him sentenced to several months in prison (suspended) for contempt of religion. 

 

Love Meetings (Comizi d’amore) (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1964): 4/5

Very generous of Pasolini to create this documentary where he travels throughout Italy and interviews people about their ideas on sexuality of kinds, women’s rights, divorce, the family and so on. Fascinating view of a divided nation (north vs south, men vs women, rich vs. poor, educated vs. non-educated) and quite a clear context for his films’ sense of anger and protest. Similar but superior to Chronicle of a Summer, three years earlier, because of its frankness and interest in taboo.

 

The Gospel According to St. Matthew, rw (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1964): 3/5

Peculiarly restrained. For example, when Satan is tempting Jesus in the wilderness, he shows Jesus “all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor” (according to Matthew). One would suspect that any director (and most of all Pasolini) would have some fun with a line like that, but here it’s just the camera looking down from a mountain onto some distant, hazy villages. I suppose this is Pasolini showing he can play it straight and daring the Catholic church to hypocritically condemn him anyway. In the end, Pasolini brings total simplicity and a bevy of expressive (and hot) disciples. 

 

The Hawks and the Sparrows (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1966): 1.5/5

A nonsensical and tiresome comedy. Here’s a sample joke. There’s guy whose name is Hannibal the Vegetarian, and his two kids are named Paysthepiper and Colgateandgargle. Do you see what we’re dealing with here? Some broad and silly potshots at religion, class, conformity. Has it ever worked to speed up a bit of action, Benny Hill-style, to make it “funnier”? Bergman did this too, in his worst movie, All These Women. 

 

Teorema, rw (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1968): 5/5

Terence Stamp shows up in a bourgeois household and fucks the maid, son, wife, daughter and father, in that order. This profound mystical experience, or as Pasolini called it, “an encounter with the real,” sends each of their lives in a new direction: becoming artistic, sainted, mad, and free from material desires and traditional sexual roles. A kind of solution for the problems of the bourgeoisie, told simply and with little dialogue (The tagline: “There are only 923 words spoken in Teorema–but it says everything!”)

 

Porcile (Pigsty) (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1969): 2/5

Cannibalism, pig-fucking, Nazis, beheadings, Jean-Pierre Léaud, and other atrocities. Two stories, one involving blabby ex-Nazis now successful industrialists and the other an almost wordless tale of people battling with swords and primitive guns (and being visited by the Virgin Mary, Adam and Eve, etc.) on a prehistoric volcanic terrain (left over from Teorema). Basically: bourgeoisie bad.

 

 

Bob Fosse Film Fest

Miserable, sad and obsessive movies from a miserable, sad and obsessive guy.

Sweet Charity (Bob Fosse, 1969): 2.5/5

Fosse’s adaptation of Nights of Calabria, but our protagonist is not allowed to be a prostitute, just a taxi dancer. Brilliant dance sequences and lots of fun with the camera and framing, but since it’s a musical from a certain time, it’s a 2 1/2 hour plus intermission roadshow—bloated, overstuffed and undramatic (and a huge flop).

 

Lenny, rw (Bob Fosse, 1974): 2.5/5

Top-shelf movie craft, as Fosse pushes to expand film grammar, with long takes and flashy and new-feeling editing—and demonstrates ample emotional control. But, hot take, Hoffman sucks. He’s comic timing is poop, and his evident desire to be liked by the audience is a turn-off and probably inaccurate biographically. On the other hand, the movie isn’t really interested in Lenny the Comedian but rather in Lenny the First Amendment Warrior. We’re shown him being not funny on the way up, then a very brief window of being pretty funny, then not funny on the way down.

 

Star 80, rw (Bob Fosse, 1983): 3/5

in the conversation for the darkest, creepiest movie of all time—or at least the most repugnant movie that also features The Band’s “Up on Cripple Creek.” Roberts is superbly slimy and toxic, and Fosse’s control guarantees an intense emotional experience. It’s Fosse’s most savage condemnation of the entertainment system, featuring not just Paul Snider but also Hugh Hefner and several other gross men victimizing the naïf. Hemingway is perfectly cast.

  

 

Noé Film Fest

Like Kubrick, minus 50 IQ points. This is not necessarily an insult.

 

Irréversible, rw (Gaspar Noé, 2002): 4.5/5

Noé displays a mastery of his medium and an authentic sadism. The film is so powerful and so unlovable—a grotesque, tiresome and mean masterwork. 

 

Lux Aeterna (Gaspar Noé, 2019): 4/5

Coincidently, this has the same plot as Pasolini’s La Racotta, above, but Noé is of course more interested in the pain of the Calvary than in salvation. As if usually the case with Noé, most of the interest is in the technique, which here is all split-screen—something Noé makes seem bold and new, on the level of 3D. But in this case, by combining two planes of drama and tone into a single cinematic moment, it creates emotional and spiritual depth instead of visual. The first Marvel movie that is shot completely in split screen is going to blow people’s minds. Watching this made me realize that Vortex is actually a refinement of this technique, but what is lost? Because … 

 

Vortex (Gaspar Noé, 2021): 2/5

For a filmmaker whose bread and butter are his audaciousness and originality, this film surprisingly runs over much of the same ground as the great Amour. And in great contrast to Lux Aeterna, I simply don’t understand what the split screen brings to the table. With this technique, the deepest effects occur with the greatest differences between the two images. But here, for the most part, both images are within the same apartment and often within the same room and even abutting one another. What’s the value proposition of the split screen in such a case?

Veep (Armando Iannucci, 2012- 2019): 5/5

"That's like trying to use a croissant as a fucking dildo. Let me be more clear: It doesn't do the job, and it makes a fucking mess."

Sublime, vicious, and masterful. Zenith of comedy.

Flux Gourmet (Peter Strickland, 2022): 2/5

More like FART GOURMET amirite. An acquired taste, Strickland is cementing his reputation for boldly weird artsy films defined by oddball characters and eroticism made tedious. Flux Gourmet is an unappetizing send-up of our culture’s obsession with creating viral art and the corporations who fuel them. Not for me.

Merrily We Go to Hell (Dorothy Arzner, 1932): 3/5
Started hooting and hollering when Cary Grant randomly showed up as Sylvia Sidney's sidepiece.

Wiener-Dog (Todd Solondz, 2016): 2.5/5
Solondz doing Au Hasard Balthazar. Not as deliberately galling as Storytelling or Palindromes. Loved the Intermission.

Cha Cha Real Smooth (Cooper Raiff, 2022): 1/5
Just insufferable, masturbatory nonsense. Pure vanity act for a narcissistic kid with no story that makes any iota of sense or has a compelling nature whatsoever. COOPER RAIFF COME OUTSIDE I PROMISE I WON'T JUMP YOU.

Streetwise (Martin Bell, 1984): 4/5

In 1983 Life magazine featured an article called “Streets of the Lost”, written by Cheryl McCall with accompanying photographs by Mary Ellen Mark. The topic was the homeless and/or downtrodden teens of Seattle, kids who form their own loose civilization on the streets, surviving through prostitution, pimping, stealing, dumpster diving, donating blood; whatever it takes. Mark eventually convinced her husband Martin Bell that there was more to be discovered, and that making a documentary would be a worthwhile endeavor. And thus the uncompromising, devastating, sprawling, intimate, fragile Streetwise was born.

Spiderhead (Joseph Kosinski, 2022): 1/5

STOP MAKING MILES TELLER HAPPEN

Crimes of the Future (Cronenberg, 2022): 2.5/5

Sad male artist is saved by eating plastic. They have sex by letting bone machines cut them up. Viggo growls a lot. Kristen is straight.


The Mountain (Rick Alverson, 2018): 1/5
It's formally rigorous, full of actors you'd want to see in a movie (Goldblum! Denis Levant! Udo Kier, very briefly!) and a story about a man performing lobotomies, electroshock therapies, plus other barbaric procedures on the road. And yet, this is one dryyyyyy cracker. Rick Alverson is really working hard to drain every last drop of energy.


TFW No GF (Alex Lee Moyer, 2020): 2/5
Surely there's no way we're enabling the worst parts of these guys' behavior by making a documentary that purports to examine them as a social trend but really just gives them another platform for self pity and attention-seeking.

Jack Goes Boating (Phillip Seymour Hoffman, 2010): 2.5/5
Dull indie flick with a rough script, carried only by PSH's acting chops. Then again, what movie is PSH bad in? Exactly.

The Honeymoon Killers (Leonard Kastle, 1970): 3/5
Was prepared for this to be clumsy and amateurish (after all, Kastle took on the job only after Scorsese got fired, and then never directed another film) but it's formally precise and well acted which makes the film's squalid nature that much more upsetting. Shirley Stoler, in particular, transcends the easy grotesquerie that her role seems to demand, while also avoiding stealth plays for audience sympathy; alternately petulant and ferocious, Martha simply IS, without apology or explanation.


Devs (Alex Garland, 2020): 1.5/5
There's something intriguing -- always -- about Singularity-type ideas that somehow fuse the concept of a computer simulation with a pot-boiler of a mystery, and DEVS serves it on the most beautiful platter possible: a marvel of production design, clean and supportive. But for all the money spent on the sets and effects, there's no excuse for featuring what is probably the single worst lead performance of any major prestige drama in the last 25 years. Sonoya Mizuno is deeply, all-encompassingly terrible in a way it's hard to fathom, episode after episode. No idea why Garland's obsessed with her


Total Recall (Paul Verhoeven, 1990): 2/5
You like tits here's 3.

Plan 9 From Outer Space (Ed Wood, 1957): 0/5
Cool automatic door I'm glad they opened it every 3 seconds to remind me of where the entire budget went.

The Lost Leonardo (Andreas Koefoed, 2021): 3/5
Pretty standard but interesting documentary about the strange provenance of one of the most contested and virtually priceless paintings in the world. The Lost Leonardo and its examination of "the male Mona Lisa" looks beyond issues of authenticity and to more interestingly related topics like tax shelters for the world's wealthiest people, academics who only want to discover or discredit things to serve their own egos, and the increasing use of art works as political capital.

Watcher (Chloe Okuno, 2022): 2.5/5
Low impact, Polanski laced Eurohorror with a solid attention to atmosphere. Does it amount to much? Not really, but the compositions (and Maika Monroe) look great on a big screen, and the bloody finale is satisfying enough that it’s worth at least one look.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Jim Sharman, 1975): 0.5/5
i-
WHAT

Official Competition (Gaston Duprat, Mariano Cohn, 2021): 3.5/5
Well crafted, very funny, and a great looking film about filmmaking and the art of acting. Also a fabulous production design which enhances the over-the-top isolated world of artistic pretension.

Fire Island (Andrew Anh, 2022): 2/5
fire island gays u mean FIGS