The Jared Hess sensibility is even stranger absent of almost any recognizable jokes. But there's some fun in how purely this is a Wes Anderson pastiche about your kinda funny, kinda annoying high-school friend.
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Napoleon Dynamite 2004
I don't know that any subsequent Wes Anderson rip-off has as good a take as "what if Wes Anderson couldn't imagine a world outside of the barren hellhole he grew up in?". It hits some dry patches in the second half but it's still funny and sweet, and there's no denying that this went a lot better than I expected watching Napoleon Dynamite 20 years later to go. Tina Majorino should've gotten at least as many studio supporting roles off of this as Efren Ramirez did.
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The Con Is On 2018
Incompetent and inscrutable, no performance or scene or moment makes sense in isolation or in conjunction with anything else. I said "the con is on" every time I vaguely understood what was happening, so I didn't say it that often. I don't know what was funnier, the day-for-night or the downright Poor Thingsian use of the zoom lens or the approximation of the Oscars (I'm sorry, the Awards). I keep trying to come up with even a joking explanation of Parker Posey's performance in this, and I can't.
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Room 55 2014
Gorgeous craft, but most importantly gorgeous craft that provides no hints of what exactly it's drawing you into. I was practically holding my breath for most of this, and then the moment of exhale wasn't anything like what I was expecting. Everybody's been waiting for the next great fetish filmmaker and it might be Rose Glass.
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Spaceballs 1987
I have few "I bet this not-super-respected movie I loved as a kid holds up" cases, this was one of them and it might as well be designed to only appear like a "real" movie, on par with its targets, to a child. It's a lot more rickety outside the memory of its best gags, but those gags (mostly) still hit big and Moranis takes this on his back and carries it as far as he can, the rest is at least pleasant though rarely more. I'm sorry but I think Pizza the Hutt looks yummy.
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Love Lies Bleeding 2024
Really great for the first third and then much of the plot that follows is stuff you've seen before, nasty and tense and with the right kind of self-conscious visual flourishes but still a shift away from what works so well at the start (mostly the sex). But I'd sure never seen this ending before and it erased whatever doubts remained, the ones that weren't already negated by putting sensitive butch Kristen Stewart at the center of this story; Katy…
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Adam 2019
"Have you seen Lady in the Water?"
I'm sorry I watched this and I'm sorry I thought it might be worth it when Margaret Qualley is introduced with an Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love poster. This is a fascinating part for Qualley, who already performs with what I and many others have identified as "cis trans girl energy" and applies that here to a dyke who gets playfully accused of being a chaser. Any moments I enjoyed…
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Illuminata 1998
It'd be so impressive if this was funny in addition to looking like it does. Instead it amounts to a series of stunning Harris Savides paintings of a broadly-pitched, off-key backstage farce. The goofy performances don't work very well (no surprise that Bill Irwin is the one actor to sell their clowning as human behavior) and this only has even a slight emotional charge because of Katherine Borowitz, but thankfully the director has a personal interest in putting as much of the focus on her as possible.
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Drive-Away Dolls 2024
Every criticism I've read of this makes as much sense to me as the people who were confused and irate about The Big Lebowski at the time, people will pretend that they always liked this one in ten years too. But not me, I identify first and foremost as a lesbian who thinks a lot of The Ladykillers is very funny. They're both so funny and so hot and full of such love, the way Viswanathan says "Abzug" is a…
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Northern Comfort 2010
In December, I bet my good friend Ethan that "What Was I Made For?" would win the Best Original Song Oscar against his assertion that it would be "I'm Just Ken", assigning him this movie if I won. I would've had to watch Bright if I lost, and instead I became the very first person (almost certainly including its director) to rewatch this; my friends became the forty-fifth thru forty-seventh people who aren't personal relations of the director to watch…
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Ricky Stanicky 2024
First third is mostly just perfunctory, middle third is quite funny with a bravura bris setpiece, last third is mostly just confusing. Certainly better than Green Book, though a baffling, tossed-off subplot about child abuse shows Peter Farrelly hasn't shaken it yet. A much worse Efron vehicle than Greatest Beer Run Ever but the vehicle John Cena has been waiting for his whole film career, I want a Blu-Ray of this with all the song parodies in full.