Well, you can’t win ’em all. Thought exercise: Even if I did like Suspiria and Hereditary (they’re bad), I’d probably put Mandy ahead of them both. Mandy is a distinct horror throwback, but the film feels current, of the moment, a time capsule for reviewing its era sans wistful nostalgia, and it frankly stands to move the genre forward in … Continue reading
June has arrived, and also it’s about to end, the month-long worldwide celebrations of my birthday winding down* as I settle into my new age-number and look ahead to the rest of the year**. Thus, this, my Best Things halftime report, expanded once more from merely a ranking of film and TV to include music, … Continue reading
It’s June. “Best Of (So Far)” list time. About a third of the blurbs on Paste Magazine‘s June ’18 list have my name on them, and of those that don’t, there are a handful I don’t agree with: I think Avengers: Infinity War is an exhausting slog, How to Talk to Girls at Parties is garbage, and Hereditary … Continue reading
This month, we didn’t report on five movies directed by women currently in theaters or available at home. We reported on seven. Grant that two of them, The Rider and Let the Sunshine In, expanded in May but originally came out in April; we’re sort of cheating on this one. But if they’ve only just expanded, that means you … Continue reading
In the words of Michael David Cummings, everybody needs a little vengeance, especially rape victims, and then especially rape victims left for dead in the desert by their married boyfriend and their boyfriends’ friends (one of whom is the rapist). That’s the set-up for Coralie Fargeat’s excellent debut, Revenge, a French genre exercise that’s as gory and … Continue reading
I’m officially free of my Taboo-reviewing duties, at least until the next series (because there are two more, apparently, which is as much a surprise to me as it might be to you all) goes to air in 2018, presumably. If I’m being honest, I’m going to miss writing about this thing; I wouldn’t say I … Continue reading
I think I finally figured out how Taboo could have been a better show to start with, and it involves introducing Lucian Msamati’s Sons of Africa lawyer way, way earlier in the narrative than “Episode 5.” George Chichester has a clear cause that could have given the story backbone; by contrast, James Delaney’s cause is muddled, which … Continue reading
…man, I don’t even know with this Taboo show anymore, guys! I’m riding a fucking roller coaster here! The frosted side of me is in love with its unapologetic, bizarre narrative course as well as its aesthetic, which borrows as much from Game of Thrones and Deadwood as it does Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and Alice in Wonderland. … Continue reading
This week on Taboo: Andy can’t take it anymore, so he dives deep on the show’s lack of focus on its non-Tom Hardy people, especially its non-Tom Hardy people who are ladies. Maybe it’s Oona Chaplin’s lot in life to be cast as women caught under the heels of patriarchal violence, domination, and abuse; I don’t … Continue reading
I’m a big fan of weirdness and debauchery in my visual media, and when you mash them together, all the better. So it’s fair to say that Taboo is slowly but surely becoming more and more my jam as it leans more into its weirdness and its flagrant aristocratic indulgences. To wit: This week’s episode, where … Continue reading
Alright! A quality episode of Taboo! After the stumbles taken in “Episode 2,” it’s nice to see the show get its footing back by actually telling a story instead of just checking off plot points. Plus, people who are not Tom Hardy are now getting more opportunity to strut their stuff, though Hardy is still the … Continue reading
Eye-catching stylishness and cool fight scenes have almost become the barometers by which a revenge film is measured in contemporary pop culture, rather than the protagonist’s quest for vengeance. Take Kill Bill, Quentin Tarantino’s bloated homage to all things cinematic which he adores, from chambara movies to kung fu flicks to spaghetti Westerns; the aesthetic … Continue reading
