Film diary
2,058 movies I’ve watched since 2011
See also my other posts about film
Scared Stiff
I’m not well versed in the Hong Kong school of “what if [title of recent successful American movie], but completely incoherent?,” but between Magic Crystal’s kung fu/E.T./Indiana Jones cocktail and Scared Stiff’s action/bromance/comedy take on Nightmare on Elm Street, I’m more than sufficiently compelled to investigate further.
Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio
I came for the stop-motion, but it wasn’t enough to keep me from bailing about halfway through. I assume there are more songs, and I’m not sorry to have missed them.
Saving Christmas
I genuinely appreciate when a movie I know is going to be wretched proves to be significantly worse than I thought possible, so I have no regrets, but this was truly painful all the same.
31st Philadelphia Film Festival: Animated Shorts Program
After having to cancel my plans to attend last month’s Ottawa International Animation Festival at the last minute, I was glad the Philadelphia Film Festival’s animated shorts program gave me a chance to get my fix. This was a pretty solid collection of films, encompassing a variety of styles and narratives. The overall tone was fairly dark, which is always fine with me, but several of the films also made a habit of just stopping… See more →
Tetsuo: The Iron Man
The kind of thoroughly bonkers extravaganza that could easily elicit a bewildered “Well, that was certainly… a movie,” but the thing is, that response is actually pretty accurate and appropriately concise. This movie is more movie than almost any other movie, in that it embraces the form with such maximalist abandon as to leave it completely spent in just over an hour.
Speak No Evil
You know, after watching Watcher earlier in the day, I was like, “Maybe I’m just not a slow burn kind of guy.” And then Speak No Evil comes along to remind me how it’s done. This thing had its hooks in me from start to finish. It is cold-fucking-blooded. Obligatory warning: Parents of young kids might want to steer clear.
Saloum
There’s a lot to like here. It’s stylish and warm and conveys an understanding of brutality without feeling the need to bludgeon its audience. It feels very Bacurau by way of From Dusk Til Dawn: a remote community in a poor part of the world, a certain mysticism, a pronounced genre shift in the final act. And its most important characters manage to breathe real humanity into shallow genre archetypes. It’s all just a bit… See more →
Barbarian
I’m all for the post-A24 let’s-get-gnarly thing, but can we please do it with some more imagination?
Robtober 2022
A month’s worth of movies to help you stay awake
Every October, I broaden my cinematic horizons by putting together a big schedule of horror movies I haven’t seen yet. Alas, this year’s plans have been upended by my abduction, and for some reason, my mysterious captors aren’t interested in money. Instead, their ransom demand is that people watch the movies I’ve scheduled. These dudes seem like they mean business, so if you can help me out, I’d really appreciate it. But if you’re too… See more →
