Palestine ‘36 (Annemarie Jacir, 2025): 5/5
A sweeping, horrifying, breathtaking - as in, I kept gasping - historical epic about the Great Palestine Revolt of 1936-1939 that shows, in living color, how the British and the Zionists schemed to steal the land and the lives in a poor farming community. To think that this film was being made in the midst of an ongoing genocide, to think that the story it tells is still ongoing nearly a century later, is heartbreaking and enraging and a call to action for every one of us.


Zodiac Killer Project (Charlie Shackleton, 2025): 2.5/5
Shackleton completes his uncompleted true crime documentary without all the necessary parts (a slyly appropriate approach, given that the subject is a famously unsolved mystery with no smoking gun) even as he uses the absence of those elements as an excuse to riff on the formulaic tropes and ethical lapses of true crime. But the real missing piece here, I'd argue, is any real attempt to reconcile his rather withering critique of the genre and the fact that he was apparently planning to indulge its every cliche.
Beyond one sheepish confession that he's drawn to the tactics of those films, however manipulative they may be, there's not much self-reflection here. Was it pure careerism or streaming-payout thirst motivating him to try to make a movie in a style he knows (and repeatedly, convincingly insists) is both limited and dubious in intention? Without any real reckoning with that contradiction, it's hard to take the movie's takedown of true crime that seriously. Had he gotten the authorization he wanted, his movie would embody every convention he points out with (petty?) amusement.

Also, really surprised that THE THIN BLUE LINE, the (brilliant) ground zero antecedent of so much streaming slop, doesn't get a mention. (And neither does Fincher's movie!)


The Testament of Ann Lee (Mona Fastvold, 2025): 3.5/5
Once again, Mona Fastvold and Brady Corbet have crafted a stirring film about a European visionary who comes to America (the last time it was America at the beginning of its superpower era, this time it’s at the birth of the nation itself) and does battle with the new country that is at once fertile soil and an unsafe space. Seyfried is fantastic and Celia Rowlson-Hall's choreography was the perfect balance of earthly carnality and religious ecstasy. The last act really touched me. I don’t want to say more.


Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere (Adrian Choa, 2026): 2.5/5

Oh, "bring down the system"??? who set the system up huh????? HUHHHH??!!!!!!

As infuriating as you'd expect and doesn't tell me anything I didn't know already. It really gets at how culturally and spiritually barren the world is for young male right wingers. They have no genuine love or appreciation for human connection whatsoever, everything is transactional and about obtaining power through vapid signifiers. A film populated by men who'd probably call you gay when you say you liked a novel, a movie made before the year 2005, a piece of music made with non-synthetic instruments, or a heartfelt conversation with a woman.

SMDH we need to make podcast equipment more expensive.


Send Help (Sam Raimi, 2026): 3/5
Sam Raimi going full Sam Raimi. In a better world, Rachel McAdams would be a contender for next year’s Oscar. This feels like another film that will explain to future generations what the Second Trump Era felt like. Also, Raimi has an affection for out-of-control female anti-heroes that one usually only sees in gay male directors. High praise, that.


BOOK NOOK

The Other (Thomas Tryon, 1971)

So it's 100% because NYRB re-published The Other that I picked this up. Otherwise, it simply wouldn't have been on my radar. Published in 1971 by Thomas Tryon (hunky actor-turned-writer), this is a creepy twin story. Creepy identical twin boys, one who seems good and one who seems bad. There's definitely a murkiness here, and the reader is left in a position to guess or interpret, kind of like at the end of The Turn of the Screw. Which boy is bad? Which boy is good? Is one of them a ghost? Is one of them possessed? Who is killing all these people? And, how stupid is the family, leaving an infant alone in a house where people are being hurt or killed every couple of days?

It's a gothic story, too. They're in the old family house. The mother is mentally disturbed, beautiful and fragile. The grandmother is a wise crone with gypsy blood. There are unexplained happenings. There is magic, trickery, secrets, incantation, a severed finger, and a stolen ring.

I adore gothic writing when it's really good. Huge fan of Flannery O'Connor, Daphne du Maurier, and Shirley Jackson, to name a few. I'm not convinced that Tryon is quite up to their snuff.