‎Dan Santelli’s profile • Letterboxd

Favorite films

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The Devil, Probably 1977

★★★★★ Rewatched 20 Nov 2020

”But doctor, I’m not ill. My illness is seeing too clearly.”
Apocalypse Bresson, the beginning of the End. His world begins to crumble under the weight of modernity; the folly of man despoiling the land as much as polluting the human soul. Bresson remains true to form, capturing post-’68 youth, its laments and failings, with utter clarity, via the ever-present 50mm lens, but the spaces between objects and models, huddled in cramped interiors (garrets, bookstores, buses, even a Medieval community…
Raigyo 1997

★★★★½ Rewatched 26 Jun 2022

The opening images of immolating fish, dead birds, and trash strewn about the overgrown marshlands are the first signs that this is one of the saddest, bleakest pinku imaginable. Elliptical, pure, and primal, Zeze’s dystopian vision invokes shades of Red Desert and Ballard’s Crash while carving out its own brand of severe poetry in the spare, static frames and the splotches of life (red), nature (green), and decay (yellow). Restless souls negotiate transient spaces, incessantly moving or relocating but never…

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Fetus 2008

Watched 05 Jun 2023

Never mind the prominent placement of one-sheets for Buttgereit's Der Todesking and Nekromantik, the platonic ideal Paulin appears to be reaching for with this case of the no-budget SOV doldrums is Ittenbach's The Burning Moon. This is 75 minutes of visceral relentlessness and relentless viscera, vaguely undergirded by a sliver of a story about a bereaved widower unable to process his grief and who would rather use black magic to contact his deceased wife than go to therapy. Paulin's interest…
The Real Cancun 2003

Rewatched 15 May 2023

A synapse-splitting salvo of early-00s pop culture detritus. All frosted tips, shell necklaces, Pepsi cans, body shots, incel vibes, string bikinis, atrocious pop music, and Snoop Dogg. Absolutely fails to meet the most basic qualifications of a motion picture, but captivates from start to finish as a disastrous attempt to cash in on the reality-TV sweepstakes, yearning to be a trend-setting sociological event when it's already well past its sell-by date. This was the fakest shit ever when released to…

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The Whale 2022

★ Watched 20 Dec 2022

Deep-dyed Aronofsky drivel that just doesn’t let up. Fraser is as good as you’ve heard and he deserves everything coming his way, but there’s no ground for him to stand on because Darren would rather he float like a martyred saint than be a flesh-and-blood human being. Two hours of highfalutin self-seriousness, faux-spiritual twaddle, supporting actors playing every beat at Oscar Clip-level, two-dimensional characters, explicated Themes, embalmed Symbols, affected solemnity, and relentless, single-minded dramatic monotony, all tied up in a…
The Shining 1980

★★★★★ Rewatched 30 Oct 2017

A puzzle box for the ages: seemingly deceptively simple on the surface — it is, after all, the story of a man who succumbs to madness, eventually running amok while spending a winter with his family in isolation — but there’s more than one method of opening The Shining's myriad doors.
What I’ll say is there are few films, horror or otherwise, which effectively portray white male hysteria and the terrifying upshots of such behavior. The movie refuses to explicate…