Meh. Took forever to get going—no, dubbing this “psychedelic horror” does not excuse how drawn out the lead-up to the inevitable is—and just wasn’t that good once it did. Nick Cage acting crazy is tired (when it is the basis of a dud movie), and no amount of blood in this era of the desensitized can make this work (at least not this amount....maybe if there were more). This is, in essence, still a vigilante movie; it’s also a genre…

After rethinking, retalking, and revising my thoughts, I'm giving this one another go:

I didn't love or even super like Moonlight; not because of the subject matter (which I happily champion its existence, especially as an "Oscar movie"), or because it's a "victim-movie" (a crude term I've encountered after seeing a few critics pussyfoot around the idea of not liking a movie because it victimizes its characters, which, you know, is dumb, because it is the prerogative of the filmmaker…

Nagasi Oshima's Max Mon Amour isn't like Sam Fuller's White Dog. This isn't an allegory for racism. Nor is it a Bunuelian attack on the bourgeois, despite Bunuel's hands being on the production. So what is this movie?
Like it's billed to be, it is probably the greatest ape-on-woman romance since King Kong (though Max, the ape, is life-sized). The eerie truth is that Oshima's "comedy" (which is antagonizing in its unfunniness) is a comedy because it makes us uneasy,…