Well, there’s one or two happy endings. Besides that, enjoy the usual shitty review format. It’s amazing how something I did simply out of being too lazy to bother for capital letters has continued this long.
dream scenario
“very similar to beau is afraid” says the notes. basically people start collectively dreaming about a guy and that guy has a surrealist life-is-cruel sort of experience about it. meh.
the killer
comfortable movie about an assassin who has a series of bad days. it’s not an original story but it’s an effective one.
godland
a priest gets sent on a journey and fails every step of the way, somehow. decent movie if you want to watch someone suffer and you’re in the mood for slow.
saltburn
a good movie to go into blind because of how it develops. but basically a guy has an obsession with another guy who decides to take him on a trip to his home. proceed weird and gross activities. the generations younger than me really seem to be eating this movie up for the “it goes there” elements it has.
birth/rebirth
a morgue tech and a nurse meet up to have a fun little life & death party after the nurse loses her kid. definitely interesting and novel for horror.
rye lane
have you seen before sunset or before sunrise? it’s a lot like that but way more colorful.
when evil lurks
brothers investigate some nonsense to discover their neighbor is harboring a contagious possession. instead of minding their business or skipping town, they manage to release the possession. i literally yelled “jesus!” at the dog scene despite seeing it coming the second i saw a dog on the screen. the end of the movie didn’t feel quite right but it was a quality horror movie.
laurence anyways
seems i was musically target audience for this one, so it’s weird i didn’t see it sooner. straight couple go through years-long turmoil because dude shares that he wishes to dress and appear as a woman. and so (s)he does. i talk a lot of shit about french movies going to some dark places, but despite its mood, this had a lighter energy than usual. ended up with duran duran stuck in my head.
priscilla
a disturbing bio about the wife of elvis from the time they met until divorce. it’s told decently well but treats elvis like an ironically uptight, moody predator more interested in owning pretty things than anything. it’s less an elvis movie and more a statement about how being a woman sucks regardless of the package, and for that it had a lot of basic similarity to prior movie marie antoinette.
night swim
average horror with a simple premise: a haunted pool. it hits all the usuals and wraps up nicely. and it was also boring and predictable. the production is good, in any case.
your place or mine
predictable romance about long-time friends who obviously love each other. it’s very watchable but if you don’t like romcoms, it’s not going to work out.
anything for jackson
horror movie about a satanist couple who kidnap a pregnant woman to turn her unborn child into their dead grandkid. it’s lower budget but i was surprised at how well fleshed out every person who had screen time was. everyone felt like someone you might know. except jackson. he sounded like a punk bitch.
caveat
incredibly slow horror about a lady with mental health issues who supposedly needs babysitting and it turns into another thing entirely. this had some interesting elements but overall didn’t work for me. the drummer bunny caused me to internally joke about meshuggah and captured! by robots. that second choice might be thematically relevant to the movie.
lifeforce
naked alien vampire comes to earth to eat souls. it reminded me a lot of the villain plot of stargate: atlantis, so it was fun when – after the many times i pointed out before that stargate and star trek share cast – captain picard showed up on screen and had a very “there are four lights” time. the effects team had fun. kid me would have loved this movie. adult me is like, nice trans flag tie, there, death man.
i also rewatched eyes wide shut, lost highway, the sixth sense, 28 days later, and mulholland drive to wrap up those stray thoughts i had about not remembering movies and see how those i did remember held up over 20 years.
eyes wide shut made me laugh. the guy’s utter failure with women did it. he finally had a sure thing, annnnnd nope. lost highway made more sense than i remembered – not entirely – but the acting was perhaps purposefully too stiff and artificial. mulholland drive seemed to be making fine sense and i was remembering it well enough but then it jumped off a cliff and i have no idea wtf. the sixth sense was easier for adult eyes but it’s still a shrug-level movie. i also remembered 28 days later just fine, laughed at the scene where dad dies (it reminded me of the mist), and then was struck by how this movie seemed like a statement about toxic masculinity. i wasn’t thinking about things like that when it came out, but the mist also seemed like a statement about toxic masculinity and a need for control. now i’m wondering how often that comes up in the apocalypse subgenres of horror.
looking forward to eventually seeing poor things.