it’s the kind of movie that makes you think, ‘maybe if someone tortured my balls long enough, a regular guy like me could become james bond, too’
9 Likes
Skyfall (awful) skates by on great casting for the support team including the revelatory Q but cute and gay
2 Likes
I am unironically a huge laura gemser fan now. joey d’amato asked her to do hardcore for EVERY ONE OF HIS movies and she ALWAYS SAID NO but also said that he was one of the best people ever. the only time she even Approaches maybe enjoying a sex scene is with her husband, who’s in all of her emmanuelle movies, who she never remarried after he died in 91. she did the costume design for troll 2 because on the emanuelle sets ‘everyone had to do a little of everything’ and she’s just a recluse now. total legend
4 Likes
dagon (2001) - not really a lovecraft person but i liked reanimator and from beyond so gave this a shot and actually really got a kick out of it. it’s basically “what if jerry lewis was stuck in the town from resident evil 4” and there’s a lot of pleasure for me in watching this cartoon nerd guy pratfalling around going “oh geez!!” and “FUCK day-gon!!” in between getting chased by fish guys and occasionally getting his head dunked in a toilet by said fish guys or executing other prop comedy gags. the first half in particular had the kind of manic vibe i associate with like, people who know the basic structure of genre stuff well enough that they start seeing how quickly they can blast through it and vamp on it without losing the general effect.
back half unfortunately is a bit more rote, only so much you can play around in this story before getting to the big reveal of the town’s “degeneration” and idk… it doesn’t seem like the people in this isolated village really have all that much going on beyond their ongoing desire to fuck dagon, which is basically none of my business… i guess this came out 16 years before The Shape of Water really popularized the idea of having sex with a fish.
there is some very videogamey sound mixing where assorted fishlike noises and soundbarks just kind of play constantly in the background while the villagers are lumbering around in a way that seems disconnected from any particular activity, which i enjoyed. one very weird and funny sequence has him trying to lock his hotel door against an incoming angry mob, notice the little dinky hotel door turnlatch thing had been taken off, turn around and a DIFFERENT door with the turnlatch still attached, and then laborously unscrew it from one door and attach it to the other while all these slavering monster sounds are playing aimlessly on repeat right next to your ear. delirious minigame feeling.
8 Likes
I’m 90% sure The shape of water is a direct response to the short stories this movie is based on, actually. Not sure if Deltorro came out and said that, but knowing how big a lovecraft nerd he is, The Shape of water exploring lovecraft’s racial anxieties and the connection between Dagon and the Creature from the black lagoon just makes too much sense for it not to be, IMO.
3 Likes
Mortal Kombat 2021 is not good or fun and if I were 12, I would’ve been pissed. Kabal looked decent, I guess, but Kano being a Whedon-type comic relief character was too much. That guy really has poisoned the entire industry.
2 Likes
watching La La Land for the umpteenth time, this time the dubbed version after the last two times OV, I find it a bit harder to accept the dub (which frankly hasn’t bothered me in the 12+ times I have seen it before)
Wondering now whether that’s a how-ye’re-feeling-today kind of thing, habit formed by repetition (so why didn’t that prime me on the dub for good, because i’ve watched it 3-4 times before trying the OV) or whether the small, but discernible gap between voice actor and actresses/actors becomes more prevalent the better you know a movie (similar to a piece of art, which you start to know better the more often you see it, discovering aspects you’ve never noticed before).
Still, LLL never fails to make me feel better, so maybe give it a shot if you haven’t, it gets my stamp of approval / 5 out of 5 
s
Just wanted to mention that Kazuhiro Soda’s Inland Sea has been available on vimeo for a month now and I only just realized and watched it.
3 Likes
God help me I liked cruella a lot
Miserable to look at but I can’t stop thinking about it
It feels like a movie that was strictly designed to make people who have actually watched good movies furious. But I reallllly liked it
I’m a basic bitch sorry yall
5 Likes
CLOUDBURST (2011) via Kanopy
what a lovely lovely film. must watch if you are a lesbian. probably should watch if you’re not. it’s a portrayal of two old lesbians, longtime live-in lovers, trying to flee the one’s family, who want to put her in a nursing home where the other will not be allowed to stay. they want to drive up to canada to get married, it’s legal up there. it’s technically a kidnapping? and they pick up a young ingenue lad, who it turns out is a sex worker and probably queer. hetero society is the villain. idk that should be enough for you, it’s a really really lovely portrayal, VERY funny, pretty tight writing, and me being in a longterm lesbian relationship it just… hit different, extremely meaningful. it points the way toward a queer future.
7 Likes
zeros and ones is probably the only honest covid movie
1 Like
Monsieur Báy with Songbird begs to differ
(Cue advertisement bgm and bayhem vizuals, where can i sign up for selling my last shreds of credibility )
1 Like
Heck yeah, I’ve been really wanting to see this one! I gotta thank you again for turning me on to Kazuhiro Soda. He’s one of my new favorite documentary filmmakers.
Glad you like it. I wonder when his other new stuff is gonna be out. No sign of The Big House yet. Though it is available on amazon jp. Maybe I’ll try to rent it on Prime, but I do need to get a gift card loaded with Yen first. Probably another three or so years until Zero (Seishin 0) is available on vimeo 
benedetta was honestly pretty lazy compared to elle or zwartboek but it does imply at one point that a bloodborne-style ensanguined moon is the direct result of a vaginal orgasm so it’s impossible to say whether it’s bad or not
1 Like
Dang, times must’ve been tough in Milwaukee – there’s no road leading to that bottom row of houses, just a wall blocking the cars in to the driveways.
Wait, Nancy worked on Dawn of the Dead '04?
2 Likes
I’m watching The Battle of Chile, a 3-part documentary about the counterrevolutionary conspiracy that overthrew Salvador Allende’s government and the workers who resisted it. There is a narrator but much of the story is told through dozens of on-the-street or at-the-factory interviews and clips pulled from television broadcasts. There is a subtitle to the film that is hardly ever included in listings: “the struggle of a people without weapons.” This underlines that the working class did not resist the conspiracy with an armed struggle, but rather through solidarity and hard work.
It’s fascinating to see all the manipulations of the CIA-backed, nationalist conspiracy play out. Their most devastating tactic is to hoard supplies and ground all buses to induce a shortage of food and necessities. Through this backdrop, many workers decide to push through the owner-led strikes and work together anyway they can. They transport supplies themselves in their own vehicles and keep factories running. Of course, this all stops as the conspiracy successfully whittles away constitutionalist (those who believe the military is apolitical) generals through assassination and coercion. Finally, the executive building is bombed, Allende ends his life, and fascism takes over.
It’s horrifying to think of how this could happen here or anywhere. The first part begins with an election day that will determine if Allende will remain in power. It sounds so much like what happened in 2016 and 2020. The electorate is polarized, but Allende wins with a greater share of votes than he did the first time. Nevertheless, the opposition cries fraud and refuse to accept the democratic outcome. That is the country’s first step in the march towards fascism, but the liberal Christian Democrats, who are part of the opposing coalition, cannot anticipate that outcome.
It is a powerful film. I’m not sure if I do it justice in this blurb.
4 Likes
House of Gucci wasn’t the sleazy fashion film I wanted it to be. It was a movie about meetings.
1 Like
it does have jared leto as psychedelic fredo though doesn’t it. i mean it can’t be all that dull…