It is a strange, strange thing to watch this movie just after I finished reading the manga off which it was based, finally back in print. The movie adaptation is clearly made by people who love the manga, lavishly devoted to the source material to such an extent that the script frequently pulls directly from the manga. It is a deeply faithful adaptation in the most literal sense, trying to capture and condense a 600 page story in a little…
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Twilight 1990
Watched while cooked by Covid at 4 in the morning, which is both acutely fitting for a Eastern European nightmare about murdered children, the flitting mass of an unseen, hungry, lecherous giant, a policeman desperate for justice and answers in the wake of eternity, all lost in the forest, devoured by the fog. I’m too delirious and in pain to give this as incisive a dissection as this black hole of a film deserves, I’ll have to watch it again,…
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The Company of Wolves 1984
“Never trust a priest— they don’t call them Father for nothing.”
Narratively inconsistent and sometimes too story within a story for its own good, but the atmosphere, nasty practical effects, and the striking but all too infrequent use of surrealism elevate it into something more interesting than just another grim fairytale for grownups (tho it absolutely is that). The ending kinda whiffs it on its central metaphor (the same metaphor as every Red Riding Hood story: never trust a man)…
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Space Is the Place 1974
A really excellent write-up about this movie and the concept of afrofuturism as a whole that is far more insightful and relevant than anything I have to say:
boxd.it/1TPiHnOne of the most gorgeous looking movies of all time, the colors and production design go unbelievably hard. A seminal audiovisual text of the 70s and for afrofuturism as a genre and medium. You can feel its influence across so many works of the last 50 years, both within afrofuturism and…
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The Stroll 2023
Makes me so fucking happy seeing Black Trans Sex Workers telling their own stories, filled with as much joy as pain, and getting to see (too few of) them achieve so much in the face of everything.
Cried a bunch during this one, both tears of sadness at everything the girls relay of their experiences on The Stroll and tears of joy about the community and joy these girls cultivate with each other. The kind of movie that makes me…
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The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 1986
We used to be a proper country, we used to rev up a bunch of fuckin’ maniacs in front of a camera and let them run loose, capturing the circus of carnage left in their wake. A masterpiece in the exact opposite direction of the original.
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The Marvels 2023
The story and character arcs are hacked to pieces and it’s kinda nothing but it’s fun and charming in a head empty sort of way. It’s nice to see some actual chemistry among the leads and a real effort to try something a little different here without as much MCU baggage, an actual earnestness that mostly eschews the Whedon-esque ironic detachment shit that makes me a lot more charitable towards it even when it’s objectively not a very good movie.
Ms. Marvel and Goose the real MVPs
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Suicide Club 2001
Either unfortunate proof that old men yelling at clouds can make good art or an incisive look at how the internet and fandom culture flay some us from ourselves, connected only to others in our alienation. Either way, Sion Sono films the hell out of it. I don’t know that I’d call it transgressive, exactly, perhaps cringe or inconsistent, but I’d certainly say Sono got something right about the incalculable damage the psychosis incubator of the Internet did to our brains
Deeply conflicted! Great filmmaking and score for sure
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A Short Story 2022
Bi Gan’s craft with a camera is simply unreal, actively astonishing to watch unfold moment by moment. Genuinely one of the best looking movies I’ve ever see.