Probing your mind, not your anus. A renowned horse trainer and his sister experience strange happenings on their farm. They soon discover the horses are being spooked by something Not Of Planet Earth. Writer-director Jordan Peele subverts our expectations with such an original story in NOPE that it catches us off-guard. Yes, there is something extra-terrestrial prancing around in the … Read More
MY OCTOPUS TEACHER
An Octopus’s Garden. In this time of world paranoia and pissant politics, anti-social media and overwhelming junk art, you can do nothing better than to extricate yourself from humanity and immerse your overextended senses in nature’s harmony and fluid balance. Put something off, be irresponsible, and sink into the wondrous world of MY OCTOPUS TEACHER, a documentary about a man … Read More
BORAT SUBSEQUENT MOVIEFILM: DELIVERY OF PRODIGIOUS BRIBE TO AMERICAN REGIME FOR MAKE BENEFIT ONCE GLORIOUS NATION OF KAZAKHSTAN
For Make Benefit of US&A. I was terrified that if Trump got in again, that America would be a democracy in name only… I felt very clearly from the start of the last administration that we were heading towards authoritarianism. And so I felt I had to do something. — Sacha Baron Cohen The moral of this story: You fuck … Read More
COBRA KAI SEASON ONE
Beating us Beautifully with Moral Ambiguity. Well, what a surprise COBRA KAI is! One of the best series reboots of a campy 80s movie franchise, proving old rivalries never die, they just get and sexier and dorkier. The original 1984 KARATE KID was just ROCKY with an Italian Ferret (both movies directed by John G. Avildsen). In that movie, Daniel … Read More
DAVE CHAPPELLE: 8:46
The Number of the Beast. Dave Chappelle vents on the death of George Floyd and the re-fuel of a movement. June 6, 2020. An open-air venue, Wirrig Pavilion in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Can’t be more than a hundred people attending, temperature-checked as they enter, all masked; seating in twos on cheap wooden chairs, each pair isolated from the rest. Is … Read More
GODZILLA: TOKYO S.O.S.
Sacrifice Our Rubber Souls. I cried for the moth. Then I cried for the human. Then I cried for the ROBOT! GODZILLA: TOKYO SOS is a heart-rending, dambusting actioner that turns our eyes into running rivers, as it revolves around one word: sacrifice! One year after GODZILLA AGAINST MECHAGODZILLA (2002), Godzilla is heading toward Tokyo again, as the military races … Read More
ANTHONY JESELNIK: FIRE IN THE MATERNITY WARD
Pagan Prophet. Dropping a baby – that’s just what he does. According to Anthony Jeselnik, he’s “never held a baby… to completion.” Directed by Marcus Raboy, shot in New York, FIRE IN THE MATERNITY WARD is Anthony Jeselnik’s second Netflix Standup Special, his fourth “album” of material. And he’s still twisting people’s panties into pretzels. Media itself has become so … Read More
AFTERMATH 2017
Misery as Entertainment. When you think about it, practically all movies are “misery as entertainment,” but most have some form of redemption, deliverance, or happy ending to look forward to. AFTERMATH is one of the bleakest slices of life you will ever see: the story of an architect who loses his family in a mid-air collision, due to a distracted … Read More
BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS – PART 2
Should I Bats or should I go? A decade after retiring, Batman has returned to Gotham. So has The Joker. A new police commissioner wants Batman arrested. And the president wants Batman dead – enlisting the aid of Superman. BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS – PART 2 concludes the epic journey of Bruce Wayne/Batman (voiced by Peter Weller) in his … Read More
BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS – PART 1
A Chinful Of Knight. Published in 1986, Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns was a watershed moment for The Batman. After a ten-year absence, a 55-year-old Batman returns to fight spiraling crime, though fiercer criminals and simple old age threatens to stultify his efforts to redeem Gotham. And then there’s the problem of exorcising his own demons that made him … Read More
1917
The one-take war. War! Huah! Good God y’all! What is it good for?! Absolutely Oscar! GALLIPOLI meets SAVING PRIVATE RYAN in the Newest Generation’s gritty war film, “1917.” (The year people started to realize Archduke Ferdinand probably wasn’t worth all this bone and blood sausage.) World War I (a rare topic, as most modern war movies cover WWII onwards). Two … Read More
HEREDITARY
New Horror from Old Trope. HEREDITARY inherits its DNA from THE EXORCIST and THE OMEN. Writer-director Ari Aster’s feature film debut is a brutal masterpiece, drenched in dread, an eerie thriller about a fractured family that ends in a different genre altogether. Movie’s opening scene is a study in creativity: camera pushes in on a room filled with paraphernalia, then … Read More
BLADE RUNNER 2049
I’m too sexy for my existential crisis. He’s a BLADE RUNNER in 2049. And he’s a Replicant – a robot that resembles humans. And he hunts older-model Replicants that are not as gorgeous as him. And – unlike the last guy – he’s terrific at his job! Ryan Gosling is Agent K, a Nexus-9 Replicant, the newest products of the … Read More
BLADE RUNNER
Incompetent Killer of Incompetent Killers. He’s a BLADE RUNNER. He hunts Replicants – robots that resemble humans. And he’s terrible at his job. Deckard (Harrison Ford) is regarded as the indomitable hero of BLADE RUNNER, especially since his captain (M. Emmett Walsh) pulls him out of retirement to do a job that his best officer failed at doing – “retire” … Read More
JOKER 2019
Wanna know how I got these (O)scars?… Joaquin Phoenix is unpredictable, funny, disturbing, and when you meet him, he might just kill you. In JOKER, he won the 2020 Oscar and Golden Globe for Best Actor… But was he really acting? JOKER, like STEPHEN KING’S IT, shows clowns for what they really are: insecure, unbalanced, traumatized sociopaths. Again, was Joaquin … Read More
AD ASTRA
In AD ASTRA, Brad Pitt flexes all his other muscles. Brad Pitt saves the world (like WORLD WAR Z) while pondering the meaning of existence (like Tyler Durden), in transit from the Moon to Neptune (like we didn’t already know Brad Pitt was a heavenly body). AD ASTRA (“To The Stars”) turns an astronaut’s mission to save the Earth into … Read More
ANNIHILATION
Invasion of the fittest. A military biologist treks to an extra-terrestrial landing site, and discovers that one life form’s expansion means another life form’s annihilation. ANNIHILATION is about nothing less than the dissolution of the human species. I love it already. An extra-terrestrial species insidiously “invades” our planet, not via rockets and lasers, but through DNA, mimicking and overrunning every … Read More
THE PERFECTION
Classical music is torture. Lust, jealousy, lesbianism, diarrhea, rape, dismemberment, torture, body horror and classical cello. No wonder this movie is called THE PERFECTION. Perfection – it’s what young cellist Lizzie now has, under the tutelage of mentor Anton, from the prestigious Bachoff Institute. It’s what Charlotte once had, under the same tutor whom she left a decade ago, to … Read More
DAVE CHAPPELLE: STICKS & STONES
Breaking Bones. I was dreamin’ when I wrote this, forgive me if it goes astray But when I woke up this mornin’ could’ve sworn it was Judgment Day. The sky was all purple, there were people runnin’ everywhere Tryin’ to run from the destruction, you know I didn’t even care… — “1999,” Prince. Dave Chappelle calls the world a bunch … Read More
KILLING GROUND
KILLING GROUND is killing it. The MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) has tainted American storytelling so badly that even in a brilliant movie called UNFORGIVEN (1992), though all the characters do in fact remain unforgiven, yet the lead character finds redemption. So foreign movies, unbound by the juvenile strictures of the contradictory MPAA, are like a cold bucket of … Read More