Film diary

War is hell.

A sloppy film in many respects, but its formal shortcomings do little to diminish how fascinating its subject’s single-minded obsession is. Reading some of the more prominent critiques of said subject in the Guardian and the New York Times, which describe Tim Jenison as a philistine whose attempted deconstruction of Vermeer’s technique is an act of denigration, I was struck by how willfully they miss the point. Jenison makes no bones about being a dilettante,… See more →

The Terminator movies are all basically the same: a bad robot is sent from an apocalyptic future to kill someone who will later be important to humanity’s survival, and a good person or robot is sent to protect that important person. One of the main things that determines a Terminator movie’s quality is how much it ties itself in knots to justify the inclusion of an aging Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose titular character is conveniently (if… See more →

I avoided seeing Rocky Horror forever, mostly because throughout high school and college, I found all the attention-starved theater kids who worshipped it to be so irritating. Decades later, I can’t help but be charmed by how giddily transgressive it is.

When Melanie says to Sgt. Parks, “It’s not over, it’s just not yours anymore,” I so badly wanted Sgt. Parks to be Mitch McConnell.

Like all Dahl adaptations, this pulls its punches more than it should, but Jim Henson’s magic and the crazy camera work manage to make it truly special, and it’s miles beyond the atrocious Zemeckis version that came 30 years later. The experience was also elevated for me by watching it with my partner, whose lifelong idolization of the titular witches is morbidly adorable.

The office politics themes and serial killer plot may be uninspiring, but Office Killer’s overall craft is very enjoyable. Though it doesn’t noticeably echo the self-portraiture Cindy Sherman is best known for, the cinematography is deliciously and unselfconsciously skewed, which, in tandem with the chamber ensemble score, lends it a peculiar elegance. The whole thing is pretty firmly dated by its pre-Y2K anxiety and the ostentatious graphic design of its titles (courtesy of Bureau),… See more →

Tales from the Hood’s vengeful ghosts aren’t nearly as scary as the real-world racism and cycles of violence that provoke them. The film’s portrayals of those social ills are anything but subtle, but they are nevertheless undeniably horrific.

Why in the world did it take me so long to see Street Trash?! It might be the most grotesque film I’ve ever seen, and its gleeful commitment to thorough vulgarity wouldn’t be a virtue if it weren’t made with such flair. It’s several steps above what I remember of the Troma movies, but doesn’t quite reach the bravura heights of Sam Raimi’s and Peter Jackson’s early splatstick gems. Street Trash is apparently also the… See more →

Neither the trailer nor writer/director Leigh Whannell’s bonafides in the Saw and Insidious franchises gave me much confidence that this Invisible Man remake would be any good, so its overall high quality is a very pleasant surprise indeed. Its loudest moments are its weakest, but thankfully it spends much of its time quietly plumbing the depths of Elisabeth Moss’s crippling PTSD. If there is to be a modern version of the scream queen, may Moss’s… See more →