Movies I Watched April 2024 - Greenfield Writes

Lifeforce - dir. Tobe Hooper

Sci-Fi/Horror

Unbelievably convoluted. 3/10.

Badlands - dir. Terrence Malick

Romance/Crime

Eulogizing the American Dream, the grand mythos of the outlaw, the cowboy, the James Dean-style bad boy who stole hearts and stuck it to the man. Kit is fictional, a man whose charisma and looks create an aura too big and dreamlike for reality, and of course the bored aimless teenage girl Holly would get swept right up in the dream. How could she not? How could anyone resist the fantasy? Building tree forts, driving a Cadillac through the frontier plains while smoking cigarettes and cooking meat over an open fire. It’s beyond tantalizing. It’s nostalgia for a time period I’m not even the slightest bit familiar with.

Malick is in a league of his own. A filmmaker of poetry, purpose, and poignance. There are none like him. None who come close to his vision. Only Terrence Malick could’ve created such a powerful love story of Americana. 8/10.

The Passenger - dir. Michelangelo Antonioni

Drama

Pure vibes.

A conflict of identity, morality and purpose. Plotless with a small hook, ultimately the focus is primarily on the desire to escape, to exist in a different body with different possibilities.

I’ve never been more engaged with a movie purely for its vibes though. 7/10.

Days of Heaven - dir. Terrence Malick

Romance/Period Drama

The biblical tale of the Americana.

This review from one of my favorite writers on Letterboxd is, in my opinion, a must-read for those who want to enrich their understanding of Malick’s biblical allusions.

Malick, with only impressionistic vistas and visual exchanges, is able to weave a story of the American dream into a tapestry of Paradise and the Seven Plagues. Aided by a breathtaking score from Ennio Morricone, this is a film that demands to be experienced. 8/10.

Ape - dir. Joel Potrykus

Black Comedy

Really impressive little indie banger. I’m kind of a sucker for stories about shitty comedians, and a sucker for stories about people who just generally suck at life, and Ape works as a surreal character study of a man who fulfills both. Not all of the weird bits worked for me, and the dialogue was clumsy, but I found that the heart and soul of the film peaked through enough for me to enjoy myself. 6/10.

Trouble Every Day - dir. Claire Denis

Erotic Horror

Sex is crazy man.

Claire Denis takes the animalistic impulses of sex and translates it into body horror. It’s not reinventing the wheel but as a mood and erotic vibe it’s effective.

This makes Irreversible look like even more of a joke lol. 7/10.

Happy-Go-Lucky - dir. Mike Leigh

Comedy/Drama

Fiendishly difficult to muster up a negative word about this film. As an introduction to Mike Leigh, I recognize that, via reputation, his films typically lean darker–yet what I pick up on here is an acute attention to detail and idiosyncrasy. Leigh’s script is attuned to the small turns of speech that individualize characters from one another. His dialogue feels precise, effortless, and wholly natural. Only a skilled pen could’ve drawn tears from me during what were objectively “cliche” scenes, or gotten me to feel tense as fuck during some of the more emotionally complex moments. 7/10.

Inside Llewyn Davis - dir. Coen Brothers

Music/Drama

Watching this is like looking at an alternate version of myself, fast-forwarded a decade. It’s like looking in a mirror that magnifies all my worst traits. A deadly combination of ego, self-loathing, and just enough talent to feel like missed potential. An absolutely devastating film. Being an artist is sometimes like getting your heart repeatedly stomped on until all it can muster up is a weak rhythm, barely sufficient for sustenance but nowhere near alive. 9/10.

The Thin Red Line - dir. Terrence Malick

War

Certain sects of Christianity state that nature is inherently cruel and it is man’s moral responsibility to rise above, to make Jesus’ sacrifice worthwhile. It is man’s responsibility to live in accordance with divinely ordained principles and not debase himself to the petty conflicts of beasts. Dogs fighting to death for a scrap of meat; trees battling for access to sunlight, every last drop of water for survival. The story of nature, as Malick would interpret, is the story of conflict.

This is not your traditional war film. The heroes and villains are never clear, not in the sense of moral ambiguity, but in the literal sense; we are never given one distinct perspective through which we can anchor ourselves. There are so many characters grappling through the terror and chaos of the battle that it’s impossible to even understand why they’re there. The only glimpses of the ‘enemy’ that we get are when the American soldiers are close enough to witness their terrified faces as they bleed out or scream for mercy. There is nothing glorified or sanctified about war. Nothing holy. Malick is clear; war is a debasement of human divinity. A poison in our soul. A perversion of our goodness.

When the Americans take territory–‘win’ the battle, so to speak–we’re not treated to a victorious score of triumph. We’re treated to a somber hymn that underscores just how fucking miserable it is to kill your fellow man. 8/10.

The Nine Lives of Tomas Katz - dir. Ben Hopkins

Surrealist Comedy

Monty Python fans will love this (derogatory). 4/10.

The Funhouse - dir. Tobe Hooper

Slasher

Texas Chainsaw but significantly less interesting and frightening. 5/10.

Body Bags - dir. Tobe Hooper, John Carpenter

Anthology Horror

This is a Kendrick and Drake collab and let me tell you Hooper is definitely not Kendrick. 6/10.

The New World - dir. Terrence Malick

Period Drama/Romance

Smith projected his Christian values onto Pocahontas, ascribing to her and the Algonquians a degree of purity, innocence, and naivete that, while probably true in part, was never even close to the full picture. The story of Pocahontas is a pop culture touchstone, yet its complexities tend to get reduced in the shuffle. A good story is a good story, but make no mistake; the tale of Pocahontas is one of tragedy. 6/10.

A Single Man - dir. Tom Ford

Period Drama

Lame as shit. Tom Ford is so fake deep man. Zero skill, all aesthetic. This movie smells phony and has absolutely laughable dialogue. 3/10.

The Tree of Life - dir. Terrence Malick

Experimental Drama/Epic

What must be said about this film has already been said countless times and I see no need to regurgitate the common tropes (i.e. it’s not a film, it’s an EXPERIENCE). I will say what I feel about this masterpiece but I make no promises for brevity or clarity.

Terrence Malick creates art that transcends pretty much everything I’ve come to know to be cinema. You grow up thinking the craft can only be explored a certain way, you get locked into this paradigm of creativity, you come to imagine film as a specific process, a constructed series of events that can be meticulously broken down and predicted by a computer. We view movies often as logical, mechanical experiences, stuff that transpires through a right-brained pathway. Somehow, Terrence Malick is able to maintain a pedigree in film while rejecting every screenwriting and filmmaking principle. He is able to make it work when it shouldn’t work. He is able to, quite simply, create magic. Cast a spell. When I watch a film of his, my attention almost NEVER leaves the screen.

The Tree of Life is so many things to me. And clearly, so many things to other people as well. A restoration of faith. A tale of cosmic wonder. A family portrait. As an older brother, I see it as a story of the burden we carry by being the first recipient of our fathers’ flaws, and the way we then deposit it onto our younger siblings. I see it as a film about the tragedy of the American dream, like so much of Malick’s work. We are shown a picturesque image of the suburban American family. The kind of thing conservatives would probably ejaculate for. Malick then deconstructs it through time and space, through death and rebirth.

I think, when it gets down to the nitty-gritty of it all, that Malick speaks directly to the soul, and the potency of such a voice restores my faith in human creativity and ingenuity. I see so many new movies and shows that look like AI creations. Every year we drift nearer and nearer towards the total obsolescence of human art. Malick is the antidote. A robot could never, in a million years, have made The Tree of Life. A robot could NEVER have made Knight of Cups. Or Song to Song. Or Badlands. Or Days of Heaven. Terrence Malick is a testament to humanity. To what we have to offer from our soul, beyond the tantalizing allure of wealth, beyond the safety of the boilerplate, beyond the algorithmic. 10/10.

Gia - dir. Michael Cristofer

Biographical

Why are biopics literally always so fucking lame

3/10.

To the Wonder - dir. Terrence Malick

Experimental Romance

Tested my patience more than I was expecting, but ultimately a rewarding film that has the potential to reignite your faith in love if you allow it into your heart.

Malick’s view of love is so beautiful. I can’t really emphasize enough how much his spirituality speaks to me. Attaching a subplot of a priest struggling with his faith to the story of a couple trying to find their bearings is a stroke of genius. In many ways, marriage between two people is like the relationship a holy man has with God. So simple, so effective. 8/10.

Toolbox Murders - dir. Tobe Hooper

Slasher

Unbelievably boring.

You guys are all just pretending to fw Tobe Hooper right lmaooooooo

2/10.

Djinn - dir. Tobe Hooper

Supernatural Horror

Rare Tobe W? Went out on a relatively high note. Dogwater dialogue, acting, and editing but somehow still really effective horror. I’m not gonna sit here and tell you it’s a masterpiece but it’s the only Hooper movie that genuinely had me clenching my cheeks. Not bad. 6/10.

The Swindle - dir. Claude Chabrol

Black Comedy

Isabelle Huppert is awesome but not awesome enough to save one of the most boring movies I’ve ever seen. 2/10.

A Hidden Life - dir. Terrence Malick

Historical Drama

My journey with Malick has been rewarding, pensive, and inspiring.

My eyes have been opened to the poetic power of filmmaking. I can tell the personal stories I’ve wanted to because Terrence Malick paved the path. I will use this review partly to talk about A Hidden Life, but largely about the impact Malick’s films have had on me.

I’m not religious. I’m not conservative. I honestly don’t care if Malick is either of those things, because his work speaks for itself. His movies place me on a spiritual journey of which I am still not sure of the destination. I’ve been trying to get off of my OCD medication these last few weeks. It’s kind of a nightmare. A constant battle in my own mind to stave off the onslaught of intrusive thoughts. Sometimes I go outside to get some fresh air. I go for walks without any distractions to practice swimming through the muck of my brain. When I walk, I think of the images and beauty of Malick’s films, their gentle power, their ability to guide you through the simplest of human truths as if they were oceans of divinity.

I question the brain that I was given–and I choose the word ‘given’ specifically. I would never have chosen this brain, and yet it’s what I have. It’s what was assigned to me. I’ve got to make it work. I’ve got to navigate love, grief, conflict, life with this brain and this brain alone.

A Hidden Life is a story of conviction in one’s principles, the firmness of the human spirit to resisting the temptations of ever-convenient evil. Politically, it’s a tale of protesting fascism, but religiously it’s a tale of God’s son being tested by the evil around him.

Conviction is a hard thing to come by when you never feel like you can trust what your gut and your mind are telling you. Every second is spent self-analyzing and overthinking and ruminating. The upside is that you get to be pretty introspective. The downside is that it literally makes you want to die. Never being able to trust your gut is a curse that I would not wish upon my worst enemy.

To see Franz trust his moral instincts to the bitter end is nothing short of inspiring. My decision, as a Jewish man, to support Palestine, has been questioned time and time again by my family. I’ve been called misguided at best and a traitor to my people at worst. Obviously this is nothing compared to the suffering Franz experiences in his protest but I still found his story meaningful to me. You don’t need to hold religious convictions to feel inspired by his defiance, and in fact, Malick frequently portrays the Church as weak-willed in comparison to Franz. The Church, a supposed institution that labors under the teachings of Christ, kowtows to the fascists in ways that a lone man never will.

Malick’s movies have been criticized as self-indulgent and pretentious. He’s mocked for his approach to characters and plot. But never has any filmmaker felt more sincere and real to me than Malick. Never has any filmmaker been so wholly dedicated to humanity on such a fundamental level like Malick. Never has the power of love and faith seemed so unbelievably true than under the examination of Terrence Malick. 8/10.

Eraserhead - dir. David Lynch

Surrealist Horror

Decades later, even with his degree of influence, nobody has ever come close to recreating the nightmare worlds that live in the recesses of David Lynch’s imagination. Inland Empire and Eraserhead both occupy a specific realm of the subconscious, a realm that is hard to rationalize yet emotionally real.

Eraserhead is a highly surreal metaphor for late-stage capitalist hell. It is one of the scariest movies I’ve ever seen. I was close to tearing up a couple of times because of just how much it got under my skin.

A visual masterclass. An exercise in subliminal horror. Lynch deserves his spot in the pantheon. 8/10.

The Eyes of My Mother - dir. Nicolas Pesce

“Elevated” Horror

The way in which arthouse horror is the worst shit ever like 99% of the time must be studied. 2/10.

1917 - dir. Sam Mendes

War

Couldn’t get through this, sorry.

No idea why my dad likes this. I understand the appeal of war films–when executed well they can be some of the best cinema has to offer. Paths of Glory and Thin Red Line spring to mind. 1917 not only fails as a contribution to the war genre but fails to convince me that its gimmick is worth a damn.

Visually the movie feels half-baked. Immediately I did not get the sense that this was a lived-in world. This feels like a poorly generated AI impersonation of what a WW1 battlefield would look like. The scale is insufficient, the grime is insufficient, and the whole look of the movie is just insufficient. Too polished for me to be immersed. 3/10.

Maurice - dir. James Ivory

Period Romance

I fucking hate period romances so much

So boring

Doesn’t matter if they’re gay they’re just so insufferably tepid and LAME. 2/10

Pixote - dir. Héctor Babenca

Coming-of-Age/Crime

My heart broke for this boy.

The last twenty minutes are some of the most crushing cinema you will ever experience. It never feels like poverty porn to me. Just an honest portrayal of a lost child searching for family and home.

There’s this one scene where a stripper/drug dealer offers Pixote the chance to play with her son sometime. For a moment, you can see the light come into his eyes; pure joy at the idea of simply playing with a child his age.

Pixote later commits his first murder by killing this woman in an act of desperation.

Innocence peaking through a near-constant barrage of tragedy. Bliss in the face of systematic abuse and abandonment. A joyful dinner with friends as a reward for mugging the client of a prostitute.

I love Brazilian cinema. 9/10.

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer - dir. John McNaughton

Psychological Horror

My interpretations of the film went through several iterations. First, I thought maybe Henry’s pattern of killing women and justifying it to Otis with “it’s us or them” was some kind of commentary on the gender wars. The way men see women not as people but as obstacles or opponents to be vanquished.

But then Henry and Otis kill a dude for shits and giggles, and I threw that interpretation out the window.

I thought about how the story of how Henry murdered his mother had three different versions of events, and that maybe the movie was trying to talk about the language our society uses to discuss true crime, and how stories and urban legends distort reality in sinister ways.

But that theory felt sorta half-baked.

Finally, I thought, towards the end, that this was actually a really funny way of portraying two traumatized souls finding a weird kind of love with each other. Henry and Becky. Not a dream romance but it certainly has a Harold and Maude-ian charm to it.

Buuuut then Henry kills Becky. So fuck that theory. Perhaps Henry is simply a moral black hole, a being devoid of compassion, and all this movie does is document him. A character study of emptiness. 7/10.

Babette’s Feast - dir. Gabriel Axel

Period Piece

I can’t do this shit. 2/10.

Kids - dir. Larry Clark

Coming-of-Age

Funny story; I’ve been aware of this movie as far back as I can remember without ever having watched it. My dad directed one movie back in the 90’s, and he kept a poster of it in our apartment. On the poster it said “from the producers of Kids.”

This kind of thing is right up my alley. I recognize that the film doesn’t accomplish much thematically, but I think its documentarian approach works wonders for making this whole world feel rich and drip with character. Heavily exploitative perhaps, but imma be real I don’t give a fuck.

Chloe Sevigny works well as the heart of the story, the shining beacon of morality in a sea of youthful hedonistic depravity. Which, of course, makes the ending all the more horrifying.

This is gonna be one of those movies that either clicks with you or doesn’t. For me, it clicked. 8/10.

The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 - dir. Tony Scott

Thriller/Action

Absolute heater of a film. Kinda like Red Eye this is one of those movies that harkens back to an era of cinema before everything became Marvelized and dogshit. I miss when your average thriller had good actors and smart dialogue. What the fuck happened? 7/10.

Bound - dir. Wachowski Sisters

Neo-Noir/Romance

OG Uhaul lesbianism?

Really fire. Watching older thriller/crime/action movies really drives home to me that I’m not crazy–‘mainstream’ cinema has in fact gotten worse. The Wachowski sisters cooked with this one. Hard to really argue with their proficiency in the action genre. For what is mostly a neo-noir thriller, you can see early hints of what they would go on to perfect in The Matrix. The smooth and sexy camera movements and the slow-mo action sequences.

I would be the coolest lesbian of all time dawg. 7/10.

Speed Racer - dir. Wachowski Sisters

Sports/Action

Did it need to be 2 hours? No. Was it still decent? Yeah, I guess.

This movie is deadass how it feels to watch anime. Mildly nauseating, generally likable, and just generally way too fucking long.

I can’t really hate. I like how campy the Wachowski sisters get with their genre work, but I can’t overlook how needlessly bloated this is. 5/10.

Children of Men - dir. Alfonso Cuarón

Dystopian

When there are no more innocents, humanity loses its compassion. Violence is interrupted by the crying of a child.

I wish this were as true as I want it to be.

I believe, on some level, that Children of Men attempts to portray the loss of children as a decisive instance in the downward spiral of humanity, but I think all the film is really saying is that fascism (and capitalism) are anti-human. These ideologies have no interest in our future, no interest in love or compassion or community or anything that make us human.

The end of childbirth is a metaphor for the way fascism poisons humanity and robs us of our future.

Emmanuel Lubezki is THE cinematographer of all time. The world feels alive, frenetic, able to flip on a dime. Some obvious nods to Tarkovsky, but far less dreamy in its depiction of dystopia. Fully grounded.

There were several moments in this movie that had me tearing up. But the most unbelievable one was the childbirth scene. I never truly appreciated the beauty of birth until now. In some ways this movie is excellent pro-life propaganda. I digress.

Children are our future.

We simply can’t allow fascism to rob us of our future. 8/10.

Master of the Flying Guillotine - dir. Jimmy Wang Yu

Just ain’t for me. 3/10.

Lila Says - dir. Ziad Doueiri

So much potential here. Such a shame Ziad Doueiri is held back by his inability to write women. Between Lila Says and West Beirut, you have some potentially great stories about Lebanese youth sabotaged by criminally bad female leads. 4/10.

Right Now, Wrong Then - dir. Hong Sang-soo

Romance

Regret. Serendipity. Context.

What if that one conversation had gone a little differently? What if you’d just been a little more honest? More forthright? What if you made the wrong decision, and years down the line it would haunt you in ways you could never predict?

I’m so torn about this film. Its pace occasionally frustrated me, yes, but intellectually and thematically there was so much for me to fall in love with. For now, 3.5. But that could change. 7/10.

Even the Rain - dir. Icíar Bollaín

Political/Drama

A tense script with good intentions and some intelligent meta-commentary on colonialism and exploitation. Holding this back is some really flavorless direction and shot composition. I also found the soundtrack pretty intrusive. 6/10.

Trainspotting - dir. Danny Boyle

Black Comedy

What I learned from this movie is that heroin is fucking awesome.

Is this Wes Anderson for people who vape?

The quirky dialogue, the surrealism, the fact that so many people who go nuts for Wes Anderson and Edgar Wright find this movie to be a masterpiece. I have nothing against this movie, but you people need to watch more movies about lowlifes. This is like entry-level degenerate cinema.

Pretentiousness aside, I gotta give credit where it’s due. The soundtrack is flames. I can 100% see why my dad has been gassing this movie up since I was like 7. 7/10.

Sócrates - dir. Alexandre Moratto

Queer/Coming-of-Age

The sadness of Socrates can fill an ocean. He alone wanders São Paulo, nearly swallowed up by its unrelenting callousness.

I’m going to say it. Alexandre Moratto is the single greatest contemporary filmmaker on the planet. Both his films, starring the brilliant Christian Malheiros, are some of the most effective studies of poverty and misery I’ve ever seen.

Socrates feels conceptually half-baked compared to Moratto’s follow-up, 7 Prisoners, admittedly. Yet I still found much to adore about its stripped-back approach. It’s a lot easier to watch than 7 Prisoners because the ending remains cautiously optimistic. It’s left open-ended as to whether or not Socrates will survive. Rationally, I don’t think he can. The message of the film is quite clear that he is systemically fucked, rejected from society in every conceivable way.

Emotionally, I want him to be okay. 8/10.

[REC] - dir. Paco Plaza, Jaume Balagueró

Found-Footage Horrror

Impressive found-footage horror, for sure. I see the appeal. It’s no Creep but I commend it for actually making zombies scary. Final act is very silly though. The exposition dump via newspaper articles and the tape recorder were goofy as hell. 6/10.

Gerald’s Game - dir. Mike Flanagan

Mike Flanagan’s greatest contribution to cinema is putting Carla Gugino in all his projects.

This is a largely flavorless affair with a few solid moments. Really not a fan of this simplistic, PSA-style of cinema. Jessie starting a foundation for grooming victims is fucking hilarious.

I can’t tell how much of the corniness can be chalked up to Flanagan and how much of it is down to Stephen King being a cornball himself.

All the aesthetics of substance but nothing to write home about really. Very obvious in its metaphors, very obvious in its symbolism, very obvious about everything, really. Thinks it’s being smart but it’s really just ham-fisted.

I give a generous 5/10 because I was invested in certain scenes, and I felt this was a clever execution of what I feared would be an extremely boring concept. 5/10.

The Elephant Man - dir. David Lynch

Bear with me, I have some insight to share from watching this with my friend Jamie.

Jamie and I watched some of Tobe Hooper’s movies and we thought that they were, for the most part, kind of fucking trash. We started watching Lynch, and what immediately struck both of us was the care shown towards the deformed freaks of the world by David Lynch.

Where Hooper sees a vicious, animalistic monster, devoid of compassion, Lynch sees a misunderstood boy. Lynch’s films can feel like exercises in surrealist horror, but there is an undeniable empathy for misfits underlying his work.

What holds this film back for me is that Merrick never felt fully three-dimensional. He always seemed like a simplistic martyr–lovable but not flawed, like all humans are. I’m sure that, in reality, Merrick had his flaws, his demons, his vices, but here all we see is a two-dimensional ploy for sympathy. It works, it’s extremely well-made, but it’s nowhere near as brilliant as it could’ve been. 7/10.

Queen Margot - dir. Patrice Chéreau

City of God introduces probably five times as many characters over its considerably shorter runtime and still manages to make me care for damn near every single one of them.

Queen Margot fails to grab me in the same way. Everything about it feels staged, sterile, and unmotivated. 4/10.

Mist - dir. Kim Soo-yong

Sorry fam just kinda boring. 3/10.

Rear Window - dir. Alfred Hitchcock

Tight mystery that sells me on Hitchcock’s abilities far more than Shadow of a Doubt. Kinda shits the bed in the final leg, though. I was in suspense, yes, but the resolution was lame and unrewarding. So much buildup and thematic complexity (i.e. ideas about surveillance, trusting your neighbors, obsessions destroying relationships) all dropped for an incredibly generic ending.

Also, as some reviewers have mentioned, I find it extraordinarily hard to believe that Lisa would risk her life for this guy. As charismatic as Jimmy Stewart may be in this role, the idea that a supermodel would throw herself at this schmuck of a character is fucking hilarious. Seems to be a trend that Hitchcock’s female characters act like children, but it is worth keeping in mind that this is an unfortunate trait of many older films (hence why I find many of them insufferable to watch). Sorry man I don’t like when women are written like babies. Not compelling.

Makes me want to check out more Hitchcock, but doesn’t end up saying very much or have any rewarding twists to pay off its many excellent setups and thematic propositions. 7/10.

Rabid - dir. David Cronenberg

Pretty terrible introduction to Cronenberg. Laughably repetitive, only occasionally scary.

I give a generous 4/10 because armpit vampirism is kinda fire. 4/10.

DRIB - dir. Kristoffer Borgli

Kristoffer Borgli’s feature debut is perhaps his most interesting examination of his favorite themes: virality, social media, and branding. DRIB takes us into a satirized (but sadly authentic) depiction of LA’s advertising industry culture through the lens of Borgli’s Andy Kaufman-influenced performance artist friend Amir.

The film is metatextual, stripping away its moments of catharsis intentionally to avoid giving release. Like Borgli’s brilliant follow-up, Sick of Myself, there’s constant tension that’s never resolved. Awkwardness that never really breaks. It’s a cynical (though again, not inaccurate) view of the world of advertising, extrapolating its analysis into a grander view on late-stage capitalism.

It’s a very interesting movie/pseudo-documentary, but it’s got so many scenes that add nothing to its plot and drag on for too long. 6/10.

How to Have Sex - dir. Molly Manning Walker

I felt that. Not a woman but I can certainly relate to feeling like you’re surrounded by people who simply don’t care or are oblivious to the fact that you’re not okay.

My girlfriend cried when this ended. For that reason, I’m glad this film exists. One of the most solid, well-made films of the year. 7/10.

Monster - dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda

Best film of the year.

Kore-eda takes an incredibly simple story and elevates it to a humanist masterpiece rich with thematic depth galore. So many brilliant creative choices; the empty void in the middle of the city, hands desperately parsing through mud to find the truth only to be thwarted by rain, two boys sharing a hug. 8/10.

Satan’s Slaves - dir. Joko Anwar

If you want to see an Indonesian take on the haunted house formula, this film is for you.

Decent scares, but this formula won’t impress me even if it’s set in a different cultural context. 5/10.

Beijing Bicycle - dir. Wang Xiaoshuai

Astute social realism from Sixth Generation filmmaker Wang Xiaoshuai.

I have yet to see Bicycle Thieves, but I imagine it must’ve had a huge influence on Xiaoshuai. Elevating a mere bicycle to a status symbol and then using that as a springboard to talk about capitalism is the exact kind of intelligent filmmaking I’d expect from Xiaoshuai. I’ve only seen two of his films, but both impressed me.

He knows how to explore every dimension of a moral quandary, and then extrapolate small stakes disagreements into life and death levels of societal rot.

A man needs a bicycle to make a living. The bike is stolen and sold off secondhand to a boy who needs the bicycle to achieve social status. Who does it really belong to? The answer may not be as simple as you think. 7/10.

Seret Efes - dir. Tom Trager, Or Paz

What happens when the wrong person watches Freddy Got Fingered. 2/10.

Insidious: Chapter 3 - dir. Leigh Whannell

LOL. 1/10.

Shangai Dreams - dir. Wang Xiaoshuai

Wang Xiaoshuai’s films are concerned with the everyday lives of people under the boot of tyrannical systems. Shanghai Dreams is specifically about how an entire generation of Chinese workers got fucked over by their own government and lost years of their lives under false promises.

An overprotective father, in this context, is nothing more than a response to an authoritarian state.

Authoritarianism breeds authoritarianism. 7/10.

Blue My Mind - dir. Lisa Brühlmann

If you are interested in an obviously A24-inspired body horror coming-of-age lesbian mermaid story that is shot and written like a PSA about puberty, this is for you. 2/10.

Red Amnesia - dir. Wang Xiaoshuai

Memories haunt us sometimes more than reality ever could.

The scars of Mao’s communism live on through Deng’s guilt, manifesting quite literally as the grandchild of the man she stabbed in the back to get her family the opportunity of a lifetime.

Her government pit her against her comrades and she did the only thing she could; fight like hell. 7/10.

Swan Song - dir. Todd Stephens

A eulogy to camp. The scene where Pat clubs out to Dancing On My Own is pure visual inspiration to me. This is one of those stories that was practically guaranteed to at least get a passing score from me. I’m a sucker for stories about old people looking back on their lives and tribulations. Reflection is a beautiful thing, and Todd Stephens is obviously coming at this story from a place of real love and appreciation.

Obviously camp/queer culture isn’t ‘dead’–what Stephens is eulogizing here, at least in my heterosexual opinion, is a nostalgic time for gays that existed in the dawn of their renaissance. The time between homosexuality being total taboo and the legal liberation of it.

Zooming out of the queer themes, I see Pat’s story as one of desired immortality. He yearns for his lover, his drag, and his youth. More than anything, he is terrified of being forgotten. 6/10.

11 Flowers - dir. Wang Xiaoshuai

Totally unnecessary to watch if you’ve seen enough Xiaoshuai.

Leading with a child’s perspective strips a lot of the complexity from his storylines because children are far less morally complicated than older characters.

Perhaps if this was my first Xiaoshuai I wouldn’t have been so impatient. 4/10.

Tori and Lokita - dir. Dardenne Brothers

Liberals will nut for this.

Me personally? Nah. Had to tap out. So insufferably self-serious and flavorless. I wasn’t familiar at all with the Dardennes brothers and it didn’t surprise me one bit to find out they were white. You can tell.

If you think this is some neorealist masterpiece please watch some Brazilian cinema. You deserve better than pallid misery porn. 3/10.

The Ernie Game - dir. Don Owen

Everything about The Ernie Game was poised to be a potential favorite of mine. While I did connect to some of its themes and relate to the titular Ernie, I was left mostly disappointed.

Red is important in this film. It represents Ernie’s desire for connection, which is continuously thwarted by his own mental instability. The most important women in his life are redheaded, he goes after a red car that contains twin redheaded women, the phone he uses to reach out to people in the end is red.

Ernie’s arrested development conflicting with his keen desire to love and be loved is heartbreaking, but I would say I failed to truly connect to it for the simple reason that Alexis Kanner fails in the role. It feels like he doesn’t fully grasp the depth of his character, when, based on the writing, there’s so much obvious subtext to Ernie’s mentality. He’s not just a mentally disabled adult child as Kanner seems to play him–he’s someone with severe BPD, which I would reckon he got from his parents’ neglect. He’s a recovering addict. He’s got layers that demand to be explored and communicated–Kanner fails to do this, and so I fail to fully sink myself into the character study. 6/10.

Brawl in Cell Block 99 - dir. S. Craig Zahler

Gritty exploitation cinema with a weirdly thoughtful use of violence. The brutality in this film feels so much more intense because of its coldness. It doesn’t have fancy editing or intense music, so all you’re left with is the stark crack of a skull against the floor, and the ferocious snap of an elbow breaking.

I need to see Vince Vaughn in more serious roles because he really worked for me here. Some of the dialogue was cheesy, and the color grading was pretty nasty for much of the movie, but I didn’t entirely hate it at all.