Jozlyn Recommends 20: I'm Not High Enough for This
I feel like the Criterion Blu-ray should include a sheet of blotter acid, no? It's like a crime against nature to watch this without the aid of mind-altering substances.
This film has always sat just at the periphery of my awareness. I knew it existed but it never quite worked its way onto my watchlist. I would hear things about it from time to time, but I always just kind of…
Ranking the King (Kong, that is)
Movie Magic!
The aspect of filmmaking that most captured my imagination, at a very early age, was the capacity for pure invention. Sure, the motion picture in and of itself is a magical thing. Edison and the Lumière brothers forever changed the world. But changing the world is mere child's play compared to creating entirely new worlds whole cloth. The invention of special effects has always been, to me, where the real magic lies.…
Step aside, please. We have white privilege.
Maybe I'm just an easy-to-please kinda guy. I mean, the amount of 4 and 5-star reviews I toss out would seem to suggest so, no? Or, maybe that's just a function of me mostly watching things I know I'll like.
Maybe I'm just stuck in the 80s and 90s, gorging myself silly on memberberries to the point that I'm mentally regressing to an earlier incarnation of myself. Or, maybe I'm just not willing…
I guess I'm just a sucker for these phantasmagorical Rollin jams, cuz I was really vibing with this. A surreal, gothic treat that feels simultaneously artsy and sleazy, with huge swaths of its runtime eerily devoid of dialog and bordering on being a silent film. A tale of two lost girls wandering into one of Anne Rice's wilder dreams, filled with dilapidated cemeteries, crumbling chateaus, rapey vampires, and cunnilingus bats, apparently (yeah, that's a new one for me). Kind of reminded me of The Demoniacs, except with a more haunting and dreamlike quality (which is saying a lot, actually).
Watched with Jozlyn
So, I'm not entirely surprised that this is getting mixed reviews. I think it's something that afflicts the Godzilla franchise as a whole, rather than just this latest film. In my opinion, there are two main reasons why people dislike certain Godzilla films.
First, we must consider the fact that Godzilla is just not for everyone. It's a very niche franchise that began as a series of sci-fi B-movies, featuring actors in rubber monster suits wrestling amongst, or demolishing, miniature…
In 1990, Sion Sono traveled to the US to study at UC Berkeley. He claims to have spent the entire time he was there (around 15 months) watching B-movies and porno films, at a rate of about 5 films a day. He decided, during this period, that he would return to Japan and make the kinds of films that Japan would hate. And so he did. From what I've heard, most Japanese people hate Suicide Club. Well, that's their loss…
