I shouldn’t be shocked that Pascal Plante’s Fake Tattoos worked so well on me. I’m not a sucker for Before Sunrise riffs. I’m a sucker for good Before Sunrise riffs, and Fake Tattoos is a very good Before Runrise riff. It’s good enough that I almost feel awkward making the comparison. I’ve never heard Plante’s name before, but he clearly … Continue reading
Watching Nostalgia, I never got a sense of who made it, or even who wrote it; the former is Mark Pellington, the latter is Alex Ross Perry, a guy I don’t associate with mush. But Nostalgia , as you might guess by the title, is all mush. It grossed me out. Okay, it didn’t gross me out, but … Continue reading
I probably don’t need to remind everyone how much I love Get Out, though I probably ought to go and update my top ten list on this very site to reflect my love of Night of the Living Dead, which is one of my all-timers. In the meantime, I’ll direct you all to The Hollywood Reporter, which was … Continue reading
Those of you who know me have probably picked up on my enthusiasm for literally everything Sally Hawkins does, even things she does in movies that aren’t particularly good (though it’s rare she shows up in movies that aren’t particularly good, excepting Godzilla). So, because I love Hawkins so gosh-darn much, I went deep on the … Continue reading
Happy Black Panther weekend, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls! Instead of writing strictly about Ryan Coogler’s immediately successful, instantly groundbreaking movie, I wrote about Ryan Coogler’s immediately successful, instantly groundbreaking movie in context with Stephen Norrington’s Blade, the first Marvel movie shaped around a black protagonist, and how watching Black Panther reminded me of my experience watching Blade for … Continue reading
Sally Potter is the typical female auteur in that she is often underappreciated in comparison to her male peers. I happen to think that this is a big dumb failing of movie culture; Potter is superb, at drawing characters, at evoking a sense of time and place in her movies, at constructing sharp-ass dialogue for … Continue reading
Oh dear! I thought I shared this, but, uh, looks like I didn’t! So here it is, my review of Brian Crano’s Permission, which is maybe the only Valentine’s Day movie anyone needed this year. (Maybe also The Shape of Water. Or Phantom Thread.) I rather liked this, with a couple of specific reservations, but those aside it’s … Continue reading
Can someone explain Alex Ross Perry to me? Every time this guy knocks out a film, cinephiles routinely praise it as one of the best American movies in years, which to me says that either a) they have shit taste in movies, or b) they don’t watch a lot of American movies. (That’s coming from … Continue reading
I dislike Clint Eastwood’s new film, The 15:17 to Paris, much as I dislike the overwhelming majority of his latter day films. That being said, I dislike The 15:17 to Paris for reasons I didn’t anticipate. You may recall the 2015 Thalys train attack, in which a lone shooter attempted to massacre passengers on a train from … Continue reading
There’s no reason I should be giving a new Kiyoshi Kurosawa movie a sub-positive review score. Wait, hang on, let me start over: There shouldn’t be a reason for me to give a new Kiyoshi Kurosawa movie a sub-positive review score, but hey, Kurosawa gave me about three or four, so here we are. After reviewing Creepy … Continue reading
February! Paste Magazine! Criterion round-up for January! You know the drill! (The two musts, if you ask me, for January are the Pabst films. I’m only slightly biased, being as I wrote about both of them, but they’re essential regardless.)
File Have a Nice Day under the “movies that I wish I liked more” tab in the file cabinet containing every review I’ve ever written. (Note: I don’t actually have a file cabinet. It’s a metaphor. Work with me here.) Honestly, if this film’s animation scheme actually embraced movement and didn’t feel so fucking stiff, I’d … Continue reading
You may remember that piece I wrote for The Hollywood Reporter from a couple weeks back where I talked about Nicolas Cage and Mom and Dad, his newest movie, which isn’t good per se but which I liked enough to say stuff about. Well, that piece attracted the attention of a chap named Chance Solem-Pfeifer, one of … Continue reading
It’s been a week since my last blog post, and I bet you’re all jonesing for another update. Good news! I have one. Bad news! I sort of wiggled my way out of dealing with a contentious subject in my review of Altered Carbon. Good news! I’m thinking up a long form piece about the subject … Continue reading
A Constant Visual Feast 