Eddington (Ari Aster, 2025): 4.5/5
We’re all being pulled in separate directions according to who we find online, and in the end, it’s big tech that wins. That’s a fairly cogent look at today—although admittedly there is tons of static in the storytelling. Privileged young white kids chanting Black Lives Matter and ACAB. The self-righteousness of victimhood. Who else is grappling with these sacred cows? For that and for its anxiousness, it’s a difficult watch but a bracing one. Half the time I’m rooting for our protagonist and half of the time not, and all the characters make sense sometimes. “I wanted to make a movie about what it feels like to live in a world where no one can agree about what is happening.” Phoenix is perfect.
Vulcanizadora (Joel Potrykus, 2025): 4/5
A character in the film describes hell not as pain and heat but as sad and nervous. Everything that you figure is going to happen in the first act is only half the story. Funny and dark. Effective use of one-ers in both very long shots and close-ups.
Sorry, Baby (Eva Victor, 2025): 3.5/5
Well written and acted, although I didn’t love the subject matter. Lucas Hedges is excellent and should be in all movies.
On Becoming a Guinea Fowl (Rungano Nyoni, 2025): 3/5
The situation is similar to a different modern classic (not saying which), but the setting, characters and style make it worth watching. A fascinating look at what life Is like in Zambia, with great attention on morays and rituals of behavior, and the feel of village and family life and the nearby areas is vividly rendered. The younger generation all speak English (Zambia being an English colony until 1964.) which makes it significant what language is being spoken (and it’s often a blend).
Together (Michael Shanks, 2025): 2/5
Paper-thin body horror for Zillennials. These actors are bad.
The Man Who Wasn’t There, rw (Joel Coen, 2001): 3/5
Maybe the hardest Coens movie to watch. It’s true that it’s filled with comically exaggerated characters and good roles for some of our favorite character actors, but the tone and protagonist are somnambulant, the Citizen Kane dramatic lighting is stultifying, the pace is glacial, and the worldview is grim.
He Who Gets Slapped, rw (Victor Sjöström, 1924): 4/5
A clown fetishizes his moment of greatest degradation and reenacts it for laughs over and over. Smiley-face emoji.
They Shoot Horses Don’t They (Sydney Pollack, 1969): 3/5
A lot of human suffering, a static drama, and no catharsis. Like Beckett without the laughs.
The Wings of Eagles (John Ford, 1957): 3/5
A little bit of everything wrapped up in one corny but watchable autobio-pic swiftly covering 40 years. A slap and tickle tale of the rivalry between Navy airman and Army airman with plenty of drinkin’ and brawlin’. A domestic drama. An accident and hard-won medical triumph. A portrait of a writer. And finally a war drama with some very authentic footage. John Wayne plays Frank Wead, who wrote They Were Expendable and 20 other mostly military-themed films throughout the 30s and 40s. Maureen O’Hara is his impossibly forbearing wife, profiting from the familiarity built from their work together on The Quiet Man five years earlier. (They would work together twice more, in 1963’s McClintock! and 1971’s Big Jake.
Kanehsatake , 270 Years of Resistance (Alanis Obomsawin, 1993): 3/5
The town of Oka, near Montreal, wishes to create a 9-hole golf course (!) on land that belongs to the Mohawk Nation, so the Mohawks create an encampment on the land, leading to a stand-off with the Canadian army. A portrait of the state and society of Original People in Montreal and across Canada at a crux point with White politicians, the army, and the general community (all hostile). In truth, I don’t really think occupying an area of land in defiance of the government is a great strategy. Think the Occupy Wall Street folks, the Branch Davidians in Waco, the Malheur Standoff in Oregon, or the Pro Palestine encampment at UCLA. Without debating the relative righteousness of the different groups, real discussions happen in court, for better or worse.
Toute la mémoire du monde, 21m (Alain Resnais, 1956): 3/5
A multi-focused portrait of the Bibliothèque Nationale of France. Part homage to the those who document and catalogue art works, part a marveling at this great brain, the closest thing there was to the internet in 1956. Plus a Wiseman-like portrait of Kafkaesque or Brazil-like bureaucracy—the shoveling of books like coal. Arty and boring (if it had Ed Wood’s name on it).
The Blood Spattered Bride (Vicente Aranda, 1972): 3/5
I just read Carmilla, the short novel that this erotic horror Eurotrash film is based on, about a young female vampire (15ish years old) and her relationship with her newest victim, another young girl. (Written 25 years before Dracula). The film literalizes the novel’s lesbian anxieties. But unlike the book, our female protagonist is not a victim but a villain (for not wanting to have sex with the male but instead with the woman) that must be eliminated. And even this lurid movie didn’t dare touch the very young/underage “vampire,” and instead they made Carmilla’s mother the vampire—although the girl character (here with an unnervingly adult face) is still there, mooning about without much to do.
Joel Potrykus Film Fest
Unemployees, 27m (Joel Potrykus, 2023): 3/5
Two free spirited/ dispirited young women trip messily through a series of surreal Michigan tableaux. Think Daisies and Roy Andersson. Funny!
Joel Calls Indie Film Type Dudes, 12 (Joel Potrykus, 2020): 3.5/5
Highlights the high quality of Potrykus’ sense of humor and Rolodex. The second-best film I’ve seen about the pandemic-times (after Eddington).
The Alchemist Cookbook (Joel Potrykus, 2016): 2.5/5
The acting is good, which reminds me that the acting also always good in Poltrykus’ productions. This one does not star Joshua Burge and is really a monster movie, and as such comes with certain genre expectations, which unfortunately are not met.
Buzzard, rw (Joel Potrykus, 2014): 3.5/5
Wherein we follow the increasingly desperate actions of a squirrely, sweaty young scammer. Joshua Burge is obviously an enormous discovery, and it’s shocking that no one has figured how to use his naturalism and deeply hurt eyes. I imagine a future for him like that of Martin Donovan, who I see everywhere these days just the way I wanted to when he was Hal Hartley’s go-to protagonist in movies like Trust and Amateur.
Ape (Joel Potrykus, 2012): 3/5
Worth watching for “fans” of Buzzard and Vulcanizadora. An origin story for Joshua Burge’s character, showing him somewhat unformed. You actually see moments where he is joyful, and it’s kind of amazing to see Burge’s face light up. Vital and alive in a Cassavetes way (although way less gravity, obv).
Coyote, 22m (Joel Potrykus, 2010): 3/5
Poltrykus often flirts with horror as a metaphor for the disgusting, disheveled nature of living. A bit of a spoiler to say exactly how here.
Gordon, 15 (Joel Potrykus, 2007): 3/5
A droll take on a zombie film. A family man tries to make it work.
Kira Muratova Film Fest
Seven critics or filmmakers put the first two of these movies on their 2022 Sight and Sound top ten lists, and six put the third on theirs. I’m fine with that.
The Asthenic Syndrome (Kira Muratova, 1989): 3/5
The most difficult of Muratova’s films here. Moves from person to person in a litany of random complaints and miseries. Anger, frustration, unhappiness. Pushing, hitting, broken glass. Tears, grudges, disgust, shame, cruelty, hatred, “You have to educate the soul…and cut off some hands.” A director character lists important Russian directors: Aleksei German, Sokurov, and Muratova (herself!), and yeah this movie has the same pretentions to great, ineffable, puzzling, defiant art that that those other two directors’ films have.
Brief Encounters (Kira Muratova, 1967): 3/5
“When I watch a movie or I read a book, the women and men are so beautiful, their feelings and actions are so sensible and complete. Also in suffering, everything is logical and correct, there is cause and effect, the beginning and the end. Here everything is so vague….” A kind of love triangle, but this. Time is jumbled and feelings are uncertain, even to the characters, one of whom never even realizes she is in a triangle, I believe.
Getting to Know the Big, Wide World (Kira Muratova, 1978): 3.5/5
A triangle of young people with time to kill and their lives ahead of them—light, free and improvisational in a Band of Outsiders mode. Find a large shard of a mirror? Goofing around with that’s worth a minute of screen time. Find a harmonica? That’s worth a couple of minutes—with first the girl blowing and then the boy, it’s almost like kissing, you see. Beautiful soft colors, and a perfectly romantic final passage.
Jess Franco Film Fest
Franco (like Ozu, Hong Sang-soo, Wes Anderson (and Bach)), creates his own cosmology of style and theme, where repetition and variation are part of the point. For a director who made about 200 movies, the films here are surprisingly competent, fun, enjoyable, idiosyncratic—and with the same surface pleasures and stillness (or let’s say boredom) of Antonioni. It’s fortuitous that I am just reading Sontag’s On Interpretation, which argues for dealing with a work of art not by analyzing its content (which replaces the art object) but its form. “In place of a hermeneutics, we need an erotics of art.” By which I mean I’m pretty sure these Jess Franco films don’t have meaning, but they are at times beautiful and strange. (Although, gee, come to think of it, many were made by a Spanish director whose country is ruled by a different Franco).
The Diabolical Dr Z (Jesús Franco, 1966): 3.5/5
A Man Scientist (here female) and her Igor. Facial disfigurement and replacement. Cabaret and cool orchestral jazz. Keeping a gorgeous blonde in a see-through cat-suit at bay with a chair like a lion. Revenge. Mind control. Girls in prison/cages. Long nails. Asphyxiation and strangulation. A spiral staircase. Franco himself plays a fun character. Skinny dipping.
Venus in Furs (Jesús Franco, 1969): 4/5
A fun, sexy, drifty, singular and very of-its-time revenge ghost story. Beautiful girls (actually really beautiful), slo-mo, wavey lens effects, ample but not gratuitous nudity, a blonde stripped to the waist and whipped, exotic locations (here Rio and Istanbul and (beautiful) Black Sea beaches). And of course zooms. Reminds me that there are almost no depictions of sex in media these days—or even people being in their private spaces without clothes on—something that happens in every house and apartment every day. Such images have been isolated into their own shameful “porn and soft core” ghetto.
Vampyros Lesbos (Jesús Franco, 1971): 3.5/5
Languid, sensual, and filled with Franco’s stylish signatures. Atonal yet groovy music. cabaret (diegetic, staged productions of arty nudie dancing and music)—and often the genesis of a character’s obsession with the artist. A palatial estate in an exotic location, here Istanbul. Zooms. Arty and free pillow sequences and unmotivated abstract sequences. A spiral staircase. Franco himself playing a fun character. Skinny dipping. Recurrent images: here a kite, a scorpion, a white moth, blood running down a window.
Bloody Moon (Jesús Franco, 1981): 3.5/5
The most giallo of the Franco I’ve seen, complete with murder mystery and some effective scenes of tension, and ample and welcome nudity. Features really pretty blondes and a psycho with a horribly scarred face interacting on a palatial estate. Killer POV. Incest. Disco music and color. And of course zoooooooooms.
Ed Wood Film Fest
To state the obvious, Ed Wood’s films are not the worst movies of all time. In fact, there is no way that any low-budget genre picture by someone with passion, however misguided, uneducated and unfounded—could be the worst. Only a soulless, lazy and uninteresting piece of product could be. These movies feel like cover songs by a sincere and naive amateur band. And within the amateur nature of the acting there are performances and moments that are as direct as in any movie you might name.
Plan Nine from Outer Space (Edward D. Wood Jr., 1957): 3/5
Combines horror tropes and sci-fi tropes, and manages some moments of actual tension. The scenes in the graveyard appear to be shot in a room about as big as my living room, and are in the tradition of similar shots in (say) The Night of the Hunter, Black Narcissus that use artificiality as an aesthetic.
Bride of the Monster (Edward D. Wood Jr., 1955): 3/5
There is a “let’s make a movie” quality here that lays bare the requirements of a film: actors, a script, sets, lighting, music, costumes. “The Monster” is represented by (1) beautiful scientific stock footage of a pretty cool octopus and (2) a large rubber one. This doesn’t work dramatically, but from a certain angle it’s charming. I like the way Tor Johanson’s Igor character, Lobo, suddenly leaps to the center of sympathy and attention at the end.
Final Curtain, 22m (Edward D. Wood Jr., 1957): 3/5
Wood’s Goodbye Dragon In (although I see that the great Will Sloan makes the same observation in his Letterboxd review). A theater is empty except for one man and undead ghouls, although there’s more attention to the theater than the ghouls. “This blackness that permits a new world to appear, a new world of the spirit and unseen.” Explains why Duke Moore, is dressed in a tuxedo in Night of Ghouls—Wood was able to use footage shot for this film in that one.
Night of the Ghouls/Revenge of the Dead (Edward D. Wood Jr., 1959): 3.5/5
The most accomplished of Wood’s genre movies. Some scenes in “a car” that have more dynamic blocking than anything in his other films. Lobo makes a reappearance, and there’s a character named Dr. Acula, which is so dumb that it’s brilliant.
Glen or Glenda (Edward D. Wood Jr., 1953): 3.5/5
I don’t quite understand why this is not celebrated as an early trans text. I have only really heard about it in a tone of ridicule—and it does reflect some out-of-date beliefs— but it stands among the most pro-trans movies I have seen, and certainly of its era. It’s coming from a baldly autobiographical place, and it’s a laudably sincere confession and plea. Wood himself plays the title character, flying his trans flag, expressing all his shame but also all his lust. He uses stock footage of D-Day (for example) but Wood was in fact present at D-Day. (He claimed that during combat he wore women’s underwear under his uniform, and he said that he would have preferred to die than to be injured because if injured he would have been exposed.) Contains some psychologically intense high-contrast fantasy sequences worthy of Lynch and Anger. Begins with Bella Lugosi, skulls and skeletons, and a laboratory just like all of Wood’s movies, but here he’s playing I guess God, looking down at the humanity that he created, laughing at the humans who can’t help being what they are.
