the second best joke in Turning Red is Mei having her sexual awakening by doodling a bunch of pictures of her and the convenience store teen in crude manga fashion
the best is finding out the bit where the mom is snooping outside her classroom from the trailer ends in her screaming out that she left her pads at home
(honorable mention to her friend, explaining why her parents won’t let her go to the boy band concert, going “Mine called it stripper music. What’s wrong with that!”, which is a weird line for a Disney movie)
Longlegs was plenty spooky and just slow as hell. When shit goes down it goes down in a hurry but everything else seems glacial. There’s a lot of driving to places instead of just cutting to arriving at the destination. It’s religion horror, a la the Exorcist. I’m not really religious but it still spooked me good. The entire movie has this film grain filter over it It’s really heavily applied so that it looks like an early 80s movie made on cheap film stock like Repo Man despite the color grading clearly evoking Kodachrome. It’s not distracting but there is a big climax that shows the impact by changing the filters to look more in line with the 1995 setting for the last fifteen minutes of the film. that makes it look like it’s trying to be older than the setting of 1995. Also keeping with the whole thing of it not seeming fully contemporary to the date it is set in is that most of the suburbs that the characters go to were developed in the 70s, their cars are late 80s cars mostly. The past keeps crawling into the present of the movie, which is very much the past for the audience. It’s a hauntology vibe on the screen. Recommend.
The highlight of VHS Fest this year was Conrad Brooks vs the Werewolf. Made by SOV auteur David “The Rock” Nelson (who I think I first got hip to on America’s Funniest People or some other show like that), the movie follows the titular star of Plan 9 as he avenges his brothers who are killed in broad daylight by a werewolf. Since he forgot to pack silver bullets for his “uzi gun,” and the wolf was not harmed by a stinky t-shirt, Brooks falls back on hopping in his car and slowing running over and backing up on the werewolf over and over for 15 minutes straight, while he shouts stuff out of the window to the camera about how he’s doing this for the marines, Bela Legosi, his ex-wife, and all the monster lovers.
Paranormal Activity 1, 2, 3, 4, and Marked Ones: i found them worth watching because they are somewhat unique, but the execution leaves so much to be desired. i keep imagining a better director with this concept and it seems like it’d be amazing, but the actual films are mostly underwhelming. i guess now i need to watch blair witch project again…
Greenland: one of the most awkward things about disaster movies is the part after the disaster. it’s tough to follow up, like, idk, whatever the disaster was. greenland is really well-paced in this regard. lots of memorable scenes. it’s a bit light overall, i think, but an enjoyable watch that feels well-structured if in no way revelatory
Civil War: the comments i’d read (seemingly mostly by people who had not seen the film but were sure of its content) were pretty misleading. it’s a good film
Panic Room: god, this is such a fucking banger. jared leto and dwight yoakam and forest whitaker are amazing in this (particularly whitaker). downright hitchcockian in a lot of ways. still love those cg-enhanced long uninterrupted shots where the camera keeps gliding through walls and floors and coffee pot handles. vibes
part of me wonders if Catherine Breillat unretired because someone showed her a bunch of Nikki Brooks video titles and she was like, I can work with this
I was never brave enough to send David “the Rock” Nelson an envelope in the mail for a dub of whatever the latest project is but over the weekend I did make sure to pick up the fancy collection of his (plus the new legacy sequel) Pumpkinman series. We watched half of them today.
The first two both feature the same gourd in the titular role, and in both it’s looking a couple weeks past Halloween. Pumpkinman, despite seeming to be immobile and totally non threatening, we are told can scare people in poor health to death. But luckily David The Rock Nelson and his brother are both some combination of ex-Marines, ex-boxers, and ex-wrestlers so they have nothing to fear. They run back and forth from their backyard where Pumpkinman has appeared into their house to get bats, guns, extra bullets, bricks, and smoke bombs to battle the apparition with. The second movie has a great twist where the out of character credits spiel that Nelson gives is interrupted when he declares Pumpkinman isn’t dead yet and the action suddenly picks back up.
By the third movie, Son of Pumpkinman (because “Pumpkinman had a wife”) stuff is totally off the rails and despite this new Pumpkinman being in his house, Nelson takes breaks to eat several unusual meals on camera, drink several cups of coffee, take a nap, and go for a drive. At the outset he establishes it to be January but with all the dicking around, it’s eventually September somehow. He’s also fallen into the Conrad Brooks vs…model of imbuing each of the many many bricks he tosses at the monster with the power of a cult movie icon’s name. He has a whole lot of bricks to throw around his living room too. There’s a title card early on that explains that this installment is actually two movies but I’m not sure where the divide is.
I’m really hyped for the new one, Pumpkinman Lives, which I hear is about a little girl who idolizes Nelson.
Whisper of the Heart
watching this made me feel like about as much of a bitter sadboy as i expected lol.
Ocean Waves (like 4th rewatch)
i love this thing, its so weird and bad and belligerent and there are tons of odd details and goofs to pick up on rewatch. its like the polar opposite of the “edifying pastoral masterpiece animated cinema with lived-in qualities” stereotype that ghibli represents without being mostly dull like earwig. but i mostly like it because it has rikako, who is the best anime character
Mother (1926)
have a bad track record with silent movies but this one was shockingly watchable and kinetic. lovely lovely
Son of the White Mare
everything being rendered in abstract shapes to be manipulated at will gave it a kind of mythic mood. very manly.
A Man Escaped
ever since getting into bresson i have been paying way too much attention to my hands all the time. thanks Robert. hijacking your eyes indeed.
i have watched 4 bressonz and this is my ranking.
Diary of a Country Priest (i have conniptions related to this movie and thus have never finished it in one sitting)
A Man Escaped
L’Argent
Pickpocket (watched this last year when i knew nothing so due a rewatch)
Genji Monogatari (1987)
i finally finished off the last 2/3rds after like six months, very boring and still and (mostly) restrained in a way unlike anime i have seen (all of the characters maintain more or less the same facial expression for the entire movie and their lips move so little that its sometimes hard to tell who’s talking. also there are several conversations over still shots of building exteriors). could barely follow the plot and im told it doesnt adapt the novel very well anyway… idk if i can say the effect was successful for me overall but i can at least say a less coherent movie than Night on the Galactic Railroad. features cameos from the 2001 stargate sequence and the wireframe tetrahedrons in Night
Was surprised to find out it’s from the guy who made Minari (like, WHAT?) and Kosinski had his hands on the script somewhere (once, probably).
Reminded me of FFCC’s miasma streams again, you have to have the right attrib to pass through these in FFCC, and the sound design always intrigued moi younger self. Here we are in 2024, action blockbuster, and same thing
