More compelling in its examination of creating and sharing art than I remembered (and pretty cool to see in the wake of my wife releasing her own deeply personal indie, even if the stakes have been much lower). What a fascinating time capsule of a pivotal moment in gaming it is, too. The only real sticking point for me is the inclusion of lengthy clips of Fish talking shit about his former business partner mid-panic attack. While I won't pretend…
-
-
Barbie 2023
I think Barbie stumbles, but in my big stupid swollen heart I can't be very critical of it. The role of play and symbols in our lives, in coming to understand the world and ourselves, has always been close to my heart. It's such a beautiful and human thing. Even as it's tempered and made complicated by capitalism and patriarchy, even as its beauty is being used to sell me something, it makes me emotional. Seeing these things used in…
-
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse 2023
Absolutely goddamn gorgeous. So many styles pulled off so well. Spider-Man is such a fun lens through which to think about modern myth, too. UGH. March can't come soon enough!!!
-
The Super Mario Bros. Movie 2023
So fun. Absolute joy to watch. You can feel the love for Mario in every little detail of this thoughtfully-crafted world and I almost wish I could get lost in it. The friends we've made over the years are all here: Jack Black's Bowser was perfect; Peach and Donkey Kong were great; Mario and Luigi's dynamic was delightful. The handful of kids' movie-isms (because this is a kids' movie) didn't bother me much because I also got to hear kids…
-
Equilibrium 2002
The Matrix worship wrapped up in vintage twentieth-century totalitarian dystopia aesthetics and tropes, fascist and brutalist architecture looming around scenes of hyperstylish gun kung fu. It lives and breathes The Giver and 1984 and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Fahrenheit 451, using emotion-suppressing drugs and book burnings and Big Brothers and bounty hunters to illustrate the bleakness of its world to both us, the viewers, and to the cog-in-the-system enforcer protagonist that eventually joins the revolution, but also…
-
Attack of the 50 Foot Camgirl 2022
Attack of the 50 Foot Camgirl is a parody of the 1950s monster movie Attack of the 50 Foot Woman with a combination of that particular peculiar porno writing and acting, and the also peculiar writing and acting of 50s scifi monster movies. There's no actual sex, but fear not: there are lots of boobs, as is the vintage sleaze tradition. I had a lot of fun with it -- the scene where the giant girl picks up her tiny…
-
Skinamarink 2022
Powerlessness. Smallness. Primal fear. The blurred border between dreams and reality. Having only each other and the sound and light of the TV screen. "I got you a juice." The secrets hidden in the homes next to ours. Blood on the carpet. 572 days.
Skinamarink is probably the scariest movie I've ever seen, and you spend 80% of it staring at the floor or the ceiling or the darkness.
-
Weird: The Al Yankovic Story 2022
Good stupid fun dampened by -- and I feel like a killjoy saying it, I really do, but it didn't sit right with me, no matter how big a joke it was -- how sexual the Madonna bit was. I tried to ignore it but just feels damn weird to me to have a real-life woman you met once fuck you pretty much onscreen in your biopic without consulting her, no matter the narrative purpose.
-
Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Pony 2012
Brony culture's darker side is both fascinating and important to discuss. The way that men dominate geek spaces, and what they do with the room they take up in fandom, is concerning. But that isn't what this documentary about, because that isn't all that brony culture is about. While I will never dispute the negative impact of bronies on kids' Google search results or the unfortunate role of 4chan in the fandom's cultivation (or the resulting brony-to-shithead pipeline) or that…