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