At the movies: The Beast (2023).

 

Bertrand Bonello is the best director working today, it feels like. And this one is something very special.

At the movies: Come True.

 One of the best horror films of 2021, and I got real weird with it. Also, and let's be honest (nobody reads this), this may be my last thing for the AV Club because, well, use your search engine of choice...

At the movies: The Matrix Resurrections.

 Can't help loving what Lana Wachowski is doing. I wish every legacy sequel had this much going on.

At the movies: Split Second.

For an AV Club week focused on SciFi noir, I got to write about 1992's SPLIT SECOND.

 

At the movies: Archenemy.

 

There's a new Adam Egypt Mortimer film, and it is well-worth your time. His 2019 film Daniel Isn't Real was my favorite film of last year, and this year's Archenemy is a violent, vibrant SciFi/Horror/Superhero epic that has a lot of awesomeness going on within it. Check it out...

At the movies: Synchronic.

 Worth checking out, despite some reservations about the ending. Get ready for Synchronic, the latest mindbender from Benson and Moorhead.

At the movies: I Am The Doorway.

I AM THE DOORWAY

Stephen King’s short stories have always been his finest achievement- timeless and unrestrained portraits of humanity in crisis that remain as unsettling and effective forty years down the road as when they were first published. There’s a power in those works that works on a level different from his rightfully acclaimed legacy of novels and their many adaptations across countless media. But anyone with memories of the cover of the mass-market paperback of Night Shift will remember its key image- a hand, covered in bandages and eyes. I Am The Doorway, which lent the collection that striking image, was Lovecraftian SciFi of the highest order, so rich in ideas and tableaux that no one attempted to take it into the realm of the visual. But now, from the Czech Republic, a filmmaker has pulled off the cinematic equivalent of alchemy, taking that story and telling it visually without dialogue and with a subjective camera. In fifteen minutes, Director Robin Kasparik delivers artful cosmic horror, creative mise-en-scene, and the finest Stephen King adaptation in years. Be ready for a bold new voice in horror and science fiction.

At the movies: Her.

So, I got to talk about what I widely consider to be the best film of 2013 for The Scene. There's some stuff I couldn't find a way to fit in completely (like the queerness of Chris Pratt's character, the economics behind the OS One launch, and how rather than children, the creative-minded reproduce through ideas which are exploited by higher-ups) which I will happily go into if asked. But give a read, and then see the film.

Some thoughts on Star Trek Into Darkness.

I am fortunate, because I have an editor and venue that is interested in hardcore Trekkie thoughts. Take a look, if you're inclined to dig deep (by which I mean Arex and M'Ress, a defense of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Klinzhai realness, and why Hollywood considers Wrath of Khan to be some kind of sacred ur-text). I welcome your thoughts, provided you're not just trying to be a jerkface.

I also made a point of not getting into my usual #1 Star Trek complaint (the abandonment of the Deltans in favor of their community college equivalents, the Betazoids), because the bald female navigator in this film (Ensign Darwin, as credited in the cast list), while she may not supposed to be Deltan, that is certainly the visual impression she gives. That she is an actress of color is even more awesome, because it's about time Paramount gave us some IDIC in action.

Also, here's a link to my take on the 2009 Trek, just to acclimate yourself to my perspectives. Cumberbatch is lightyears better than Bana, that is for damned sure.

At the movies: John Dies at the End.

You need to see this. Seriously, dude. You need to see this.

At the movies: The Black Hole.

A 35mm print of The Black Hole in Nashville, and I will not be able to see it. I've seen this film probably seventy or so times, and it still remains dear to me despite its flaws. I get to talk about it briefly online at the Scene, and if you'd like to know more, you can read a review I wrote of the film in 2001.

A Talk with Jamie Bradshaw.

So, a High School friend of mine has a major motion picture opening this weekend. This is awesome on a lot of levels. We talked about Branded, his feature debut, and some mildly philosophical aspects of the current cinematic experience. I hope you enjoy reading it...

At the movies: Sound of my Voice.

Absolutely worth your time. Don't miss this one...

At the movies: Prometheus.

In theory, I've been waiting for this film since 1987.

At the movies: Metropolis: The Giorgio Moroder Reconstruction.

You don't often get a chance to write, at length, about the Giorgio Moroder Reconstruction of Metropolis. So when given that chance, I said "Yes, more please..."

Playing two shows only at The Belcourt on Tuesday, the 25th.

At the movies: Stalker.

I got to write about Tarkovsky's masterpiece Stalker for the Scene this week, which is an honor. And I didn't even get to the tracking shot of human folly, spanning the riverbed where money, weapons, and religious iconography lie, useless, forever.

At the movies: Paul.

So, apparently I liked this movie way more than the rest of the world (barring Steve K and Zack H). I acknowledge some of its flaws, but I stand by it as being a lot weirder and more complex than it's getting credit for.

Also, it does that epic tracking shot along the underside of a spacecraft, and I just adore that.

At the movies: Kaboom.

The more I think about Gregg Araki's latest film, the more I love it. I've seen it three times now, and its genial awesomeness grows exponentially. It's very Nowhere, but with a great deal more positive sex vibes (which is something that the world desperately needs). If I said this was like the sex-hippie version of Demonlover, would that make you want to go?

At the movies: District 9.

After being consecutively blindsided by two stinkers which tried to excuse their own craptitude by meekly saying that escapist explosive-oriented toy-generated spectacles were their own reason for existing, audiences will find the pleasures of District 9 to be a buffet of everything a moviegoer could want.

It’s a SciFi action film with awesome guns and great creatures, it’s an allegorical examination of national responses to otherness (that the film is South African in origin is rather remarkable, though at no point is the word Apartheid ever mentioned), it’s a deadpan funny mockumentary (a colleague calls this aspect of the film “The Office, but with aliens”), it’s a foreign film with a hefty portion of subtitled alien or Afrikaans dialogue, it’s a hero story of a middle-management corporate lackey (the exceptionally good Sharlto Copley) who gets put in the middle of an untenable situation and overcomes his own prejudices (and even learns a few lessons) while at the same time expanding his own definitions of the world, it’s a gory Cronenbergian nightmare of alienation from one’s own body (and sometimes the alienation of one’s head from one’s body), and it’s a political issue film as well.

If you took I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang, The Fly, Alien Nation, Sarafina!, and Robocop, then Brundleflied them together, you might get District 9, but why take that chance. Director Neill Blomkamp (and Executive Producer Peter Jackson) have made something that, while fulfilling all obligations of the summer blockbuster (including precocious brilliant child character- though he has multiple mandibles and a chitinous carapace- and a love story derailed by betrayal) still manages to give the audience a more expansive experience.

It’s like watching a social interest documentary, a grindhouse splatter flick, and a family drama all at the same time. And if by its end, the film feels almost exhausting, it has a style and ambition that is to be lauded. If nothing else, there’s now no excuse for filmmakers to say that big summer cinema has to be brainless.

I hope I look this good when I'm in my seventies.