Archive for Release Year: 2022

24 posts from 30 September 2024 to 01 April 2022.

  • The Batman

    The Dark Seven, a bit lighter due to contractual obligations. Worth it to go in without any marketing exposure. The Penguin is fucking rad, as are all other birds!

  • The Power of the Dog

    Basic home drama set in the dust bowl ages (even though it seems like the 19th century). Visuals over plot, with top actors.

  • The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent

    Nic Cage plays himself, playing himself. I’ve never meta joke I didn’t like.

  • Salgueiro Maia: O Implicado

    The missing biopic of a forgotten hero. Many civil wars were avoided by his charisma, calm and quietude.

  • The Northman

    A very modern take on the revenge plot even though our “hero” murders uncountable people in the most gruesome ways, his raiders of the land of Rus burn up hundreds in a barn (Come and See, history rhymes), and not even his mother escapes his night blade. This is exactly what Beowulf wanted to be, but wasn’t.

  • Everything, Everywhere, All At Once

    A baby fathered by The Matrix, Shaolin Soccer, Moonlight, and In The Mood for Love. Usually, “stuck in a blender” is a metaphor, but this is a corker. A better multiverse than more Marvel crap.

  • Restos do Vento

    Violence begets violence, silence continues the suffering, vengeful catharsis only delays the problem. In this case, for the next generation.

  • Crimes of the Future

    Body Horror Cronenberg is tight. LifeFormWare.

  • The Whale

    The good kind of Oscar bait, not a bait and switch. The anti-nihilist screed we need for our trying times.

  • The Banshees of Inisherin

    In Inisherin, not In Bruges. It’s an improvement, since the protagonists are depressed common people, instead of depressed hitman.

  • Tár

    MrToo with a woman. I can see with the Oscars steer clear of this, there’s enough controversy with anodyne films, let alone one that takes deep stands in the culture wars.

  • Girl at the Window

    One part teen soap opera, other part gruesome body horror schlock. Who is the audience for this, exactly? Probably teenagers making out in the cinema without paying attention to the film.

  • Occhiali Neri

    A Dario Argento film, but not stylised and giallo like Suspiria, more raw and undercooked.

  • Fumer fait tousser

    Mon dieu, c’est magnifique. A higher budget silly B-movie, a much more comedic anthology of Troma-like schlock.

  • Marlowe

    A bona fide old school noir in Hollywood, with all the necessary twists. Turns out to be filmed in Spain and Ireland, Tinseltown is no what it used to be.

  • Nope

    Nope, there’s so much product placement, it feels like a very long commercial. It’s just too much, this is not Transformers. Self-Awareness notwithstanding, there’s no subversion that cannot be integrated into the system, all Hollywood people will eventually degenerate into telling stories about themselves.

  • They/Them

    An important subject matter butchered beyond belief. An abject failure as a film, a lot of money wasted by Blumhouse.

  • Triangle of Sadness

    What a rollercoaster ride of emotions. It starts of a bit too on the nose, and goes completely farcical on the Captain’s Dinner, but the island section is great. The ending freaking sucks, they can shove those damned open ended finales. High-Rise is better at this.

  • The Swimmers

    The story of Yasra Mardini and her sister, told in the most soap opera style possible. It’s no Capharnaüm.

  • Jurassic World: Dominion

    The stupid quotes remain. “He slid into my DMs” used unironically, how the mighty have fallen.

  • La Maison

    The frenchiest of French films, it’s almost a cliché. Putain, soft cocks, you name it.

  • M3GAN

    AI is absolute dogshit. Eat your heart out, Spielberg and Kubrick, fucking amateurs.

  • Typist Artist Pirate King

    Geddit, Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy? “Sandra Panza” is also a Don Quixote reference, like most images on the screen.

  • The Menu

    As unabashedly leftist as Triangle of Sadness, but more hilarious. I see that all these stem from Parasite, that critique of high class using all the Voss water bottles and shit. This is more allegorical, there’s at least one kind of bad people burning in end.