SaltyTheBeast

SaltyTheBeast Pro

Favorite films

  • 2001: A Space Odyssey
  • Fargo
  • Stalker
  • Harold and Maude

Recent activity

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  • Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV

  • Dune

    ★★★★

  • Weird: The Al Yankovic Story

    ★★½

  • Thirteen

    ★★★½

Pinned reviews

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  • Dune

    Dune

    ★★

    The pretentious music snob in me is really torn between two disparate impulses regarding the soundtrack to Dune -- do I scoff at the presence of Toto or do I worship the contribution by Brian Eno?

    Upon second viewing, my opinion on David Lynch's film adaptation of Frank Herbert's science-fiction epic novel has softened a little bit. I admired it a little more this time around, and took note of the more characteristically Lynchian qualities (the dense and meticulously constructed…

  • Saint Maud

    Saint Maud

    ★★★½

    If Saint Maud isn't exactly reaching the same delirious and exhilarating heights of the best works within the mold of A24's so-called "elevated horror" designation, it does represent a promising film debut from its writer-director, England's own Rose Glass. I like the film enough, but I'm even more curious to see where she takes it from here. To say nothing of the central performance of the film's lead actress Morfydd Clark, whose mousy innocence and haunted darkness recalls Sissy Spacek's…

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  • Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV

    Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV

    Watching this one in total horror and disgust. Everyone who appears on camera -- be it child actors, parents, directors, or underpaid female comedy writers -- has a story to tell that speaks to a much larger pattern of abuse, humiliation, misconduct, and flagrant exploitation of power over the young and inexperienced over at Nickelodeon, namely on the sets of shows run by Dan Schneider (All That, The Amanda Show, Drake & Josh, etc.). Seriously, Christy Stratton and Jenny Kilgen seem…

  • Dune

    Dune

    ★★★★

    For about the first hour and a half, Denis Villeneuve's Dune is one of those increasingly rare American blockbusters that's actually awe-inspiring in the clarity and sheer magnitude of its epic vision. It will likely go down as the most faithful and certainly the most approachable cinematic adaptation of Frank Herbert's mammoth and esoteric science fiction novel (apologies to Lynchy boy**) exploring the political intrigue and ongoing cultural oppression in an interstellar spice war.

    The film's momentum does plateau somewhere…

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  • On Memory

    On Memory

    ★★★★½

    "But that's how memory works. We hang on to a piece of truth that becomes less and less recognizable, like a game of telephone that we're only playing with ourselves."

    Deadpan, contemplative, melancholy, and playfully existential. Don Hertzfeldt's animated video essay on the elusive nature of memory -- how some things linger indelibly, how some things fade unceremoniously, how we reconstruct versions of the truth from past memories and subjective feelings, how we unconsciously fill in the gaps in our…

  • Playing for Keeps

    Playing for Keeps

    ½

    How is it that there's a movie where all these thirsty suburban soccer moms are flocking to Gerard Butler with reckless abandon, pursuing his sexual interest in variously degrading ways and often with an aggressive manner that absolutely wouldn't fly (and certainly wouldn't be played with such cavalier indifference) were the genders reversed, and it's still only like the third most misogynist romantic comedy I've seen with the actor in the male lead (The Bounty Hunter poses a big maybe,…