Michelle: "Do you live alone?"
Mark: "Everybody lives alone."

Quite possibly the greatest, least discussed, and nearly forgotten film about Los Angeles and its beautifully, tragically endemic culture of twenty-somethings who have abandoned family, friends, and the comforts of home in pursuit of big city dreams. It is a reality that everybody secretly recognizes, but that few would ever openly admit to one another. Life in LA is frequently difficult, at times it is utterly unmanageable, and by default requires…

A kinda cute, but rather knowing, light fantasy adventure with beautiful mountain backdrops and a cartoon villain who ends every sentence with “my dear boy.” Features a very young Milla Jovovich (mononymically credited as “Milla”). I love all the academic posturing and the East Coast elite feather-ruffling that happens with respect to Milla’s onscreen mom and dad (i.e. not actually having any sense of what actual problems look or feel like and getting upset at the drop of a hat),…

Forget PUNISHER: WAR ZONE. Goldblatt made an 80s action masterpiece.

10 reasons why you should stop everything and watch THE PUNISHER now:

1. Dolph Lundgren (!) as Frank Castle / The Punisher.
2. Jeroen Krabbe (!) as the new don of the Italian mafia.
3. Explosions. Lots of 'em. Explosions within explosions.
4. Scuba-Ninjas. Stop. Read it again. Fucking scuba-ninjas!
5. A deadly woman who crucifies a man with her earrings.
6. A vision of Castle as a broken, fragile,…

Rewatch with Vincent Gallo’s commentary track from the Japanese home video release. He talks a lot about the start-to-finish booing of the unfinished version exhibited in Cannes; how he positioned a monitor just out of frame, but to match his eyeline, so as to allow himself to compose the shots and serve as cinematographer; and he openly ponders what drove him to spend three years creating a film that (almost) nobody liked, that didn’t make any money, and that has since…