"CATCH YOU FUCKERS AT A BAD TIME?"

Cosmopolis / Maps To the Stars

Watching MICKEY 17 reminded me that I should create more peace with Canada by finally watching those two movies Robert Pattinson did with David Cronenberg. Since Pattinson is Batman he counts as American now, and these fine Canadian films set in the U.S. have become a beautiful bridge of brotherhood between warring nations. Furthermore, it just so happened that they were the only Cronenberg movies I hadn’t seen. Now that I have seen his full filmography I am complete, and I cannot be stopped. LONG LIVE THE NEW REVIEWS!

COSMOPOLIS (2012) is one of those movies that gets enough exactly right about modern Capitalism ’n Shit that it seems kinda prophetic right now, but also, I’m pretty sure, plenty of other times. It depicts the world of a damaged 1%er freak whose alleged genius is only in relation to the arcane manipulation of international currencies. The way his work is discussed I’m not sure if it’s math or sorcery. As far as I can tell he contributes nothing to the world while taking everything and believing he doesn’t get enough. (read the rest of this shit…)

April 11th, 2025 | 21 Comments »

Jade (2025)

JADE is a 2025 indie action movie that’s pretty derivative and very messy but kinda fun. It’s clearly made by a bunch of stunt people having a good time and not taking themselves too seriously, so it’s hard to be mad at. It’s a vehicle for Shaina West, who was in BLACK WIDOW, THE WOMAN KING, THE KILLER’S GAME and a The Weeknd video. According to her websight she’s a self-trained martial artist and “a real life superhero” called “Samurider.” (I think this is a character she dresses up as at Comic-Cons? I don’t think she’s saying she’s a vigilante.) She’s also credited as the stunt double for herself.

She plays Jade, who the opening narration explains moved here from London when she was 13 and became part of a “Club” but accidentally shot her brother to death so she left the Club and swore to never pick up a gun again. Since the DVD cover shows her with a sword I was pretty excited about this detail. I’m more into action heroes who don’t rely on guns, and it’s even better when it’s a conscious preference. (read the rest of this shit…)

April 10th, 2025 | 3 Comments »

The Apprentice

THE APPRENTICE is a well-made movie that’s a good explanation of and well deserved middle finger to the historic moment we find ourselves in. It’s also a movie I was dreading watching and that I don’t even necessarily recommend because one could hardly blame you for not wanting to spend another second thinking about or watching even a simulation of that miserable fucking worthless prick asshole ratfucker Donald Trump (Sebastian Stan, RICKI AND THE FLASH).

It’s not exactly a biopic, more of a super villain origin story, or maybe a thesis, an argument that the very familiar modus operandi of our current nightmare came from Trump meeting and idolizing another one of history’s most wretched fuckfaces, Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong, SERENITY). If you’re not familiar with his works, he was Joseph McCarthy’s chief counsel in the ‘50s, working with the notorious scumbag senator to tear apart America with politically motivated harassment prosecutions accusing people of communism. They also ran a witch hunt against closeted gay men, blackmailing them and hectoring many into suicide (though Cohn himself was a closeted gay man).

In the ‘70s Cohn was an attorney and fixer for some famous rich people and a number of gangsters including John Gotti, so Trump fit right in there. We might be living in a golden age right now if this one person had found a good therapist instead of a good fixer, but, as depicted in the movie, he was impressed that Cohn helped Nixon by leaking the medical records of Vice Presidential candidate Thomas Eagleton, showing that he had been treated for depression. Muppet Babies Trump can’t help but idolize a bully and cheater who does whatever he wants and fucks over anybody he sees with the cheapest shots imaginable. That’s what he wants to be when he grows up. (read the rest of this shit…)

April 8th, 2025 | 8 Comments »

Love Hurts

LOVE HURTS is a trifle, a truffle, a little treat meant to be devoured quickly and forgotten. But that’s much better than I’d heard (one critic called it “nearly unwatchable,” I remember), so I feel kinda guilty that I listened to the conventional wisdom and skipped it in theaters. Ke Huy Quan got his 87North-produced action vehicle, an even greater honor than his Academy Award if you ask me, and I waited for video. For that I apologize.

Quan (BREATHING FIRE) stars as Marvin Gable, a corny realtor who rides his bike to work, toting the heart-shaped cookies he baked for Valentine’s Day, and spreads joy like his name was Ke Huy Quan, so his co-workers would never guess that he was once a brutal and feared assassin. But some old associates and other dangerous people come crashing through his comfortable suburban life when a woman he was supposed to have killed resurfaces to leave them all taunting love notes. (read the rest of this shit…)

April 7th, 2025 | 7 Comments »

Reality Winner double feature: WINNER (2024) and REALITY (2023)

You know Reality Winner? The young translator who was working as an NSA contractor and got busted for leaking an intelligence report about Russian interference in the 2016 election? She got sick of hearing Glenn Greenwald in particular say it was a hoax when she had proof sitting right there, so she mailed it to The Intercept, who published unredacted scans of the documents, “accidentally” leading the feds to the exact printer they came out of. She pled guilty and was sentenced to 5 years and 3 months in prison under the Espionage Act of 1917, the longest sentence ever imposed for leaking classified information to the media.

I always thought it was an intriguing story because it seemed like such a foolish thing for somebody to do, but also sorta relatable, and of course you did a double take when you read her name. What was up with her? I got why they had to prosecute her, but it really seemed like she got a raw deal, even moreso in retrospect. The very guy who benefited from the Russian interference (and who ignored her pleas for clemency) later stole a literal truck load of secret documents, dumped them around his shit-ass country club like half-eaten pizzas in an ‘80s movie cop’s apartment, then committed numerous other serious crimes in the cover up of that crime. Winner served about four years, Trump was able to slow walk his with his own judge, have it dismissed and then fire the FBI agents assigned to (unsuccessfully) investigate him – this seems like an imbalance to me. They should at least fly Reality Winner to DC and give her one running kick to his nuts wearing a cement boot. Or she could outsource it to a Make a Wish Foundation kid if she chooses. I think something like that would be good for the country.

Anyway I was intrigued when I came across the 2024 movie WINNER on Hulu and realized it was a biopic of Reality Winner. (Tagline: “based on reality.”) The thumbnail looks more like a quirky indie comedy, and that’s kind of what it is. Instead of doing it as a big dramatic whistleblower thriller it’s Reality Winner (Emilia Jones, star of CODA) telling you the story like you’re a friend who gets her sense of humor. It has all kinds of drama and it got me emotional about family stuff but also it knows this is a colorful character and a wild story and it’s more effective to have fun with it than be self-important. (read the rest of this shit…)

April 3rd, 2025 | 7 Comments »

Maleficent: Mistress of Evil

I don’t want to fairy-tale-reimagining-sequel you guys out, but the truth is right after I watched THE HUNTSMAN: WINTER’S WAR I decided it was a good time to knock out MALEFICENT: MISTRESS OF EVIL too. I almost didn’t want to post about it, because there is no dignity in being a “not all Disney live action remakes are bad” person, but the truth is I remembered liking the first MALEFICENT when it came out in 2014, so I always meant to see the sequel.

I suppose there’s a distinction that it wasn’t a straight remake of SLEEPING BEAUTY, but a WICKED-inspired revisionist spin-off where it turns out those jerks got the iconic villainess all wrong, she’s another woman who got screwed over and demonized and she’s actually pretty cool if you get to know her. As crazy as it may sound I remember it being structured like a rape-revenge movie, with Maleficent’s prince cutting off her wings as the violation to be avenged. (Yes, in live action she has wings. Also horns. I always thought that was just a weird hat.)

Well, now Maleficent has her origin, the king is dead, the beauty is awake, and I’m kind of surprised how much mileage they get out of “what’s next?” After the not-your-mother’s-Snow-White of THE HUNTSMAN it’s nice to see some yes-this-is-like-the-old-Disney-movies enthusiasm for bright colors, fanciful creatures and shit. There’s more of that in the opening ten minutes of MISTRESS OF EVIL than in all of THE HUNTSMAN. After a prologue about people in the woods at night trying to capture a toadstool-headed fairy (Fantasyland truffle hunters), we’re reintroduced to Aurora (Elle Fanning, SOMEWHERE), now “Queen of the Moors,” convening a meeting of all the magical pixies, talking animals and walking trees of the forest.

(read the rest of this shit…)

April 2nd, 2025 | 2 Comments »

Legend of the Eight Samurai

I knew right away that LEGEND OF THE EIGHT SAMURAI (1983) was gonna be interesting because the cosmic opening credits are backed by an English language rock song that would feel right at home in NO RETREAT NO SURRENDER. It’s called “White Light” and it was recorded specifically for the movie by John O’Banion, lead singer of Doc Severinsen’s band Today’s Children and winner on the pilot episode of Star Search.

The guitar solo starts over the director credit for Kinji Fukasaku (BATTLES WITHOUT HONOR AND HUMANITY), then abruptly fades out and we get this beautiful matte shot of an army, a castle and a red sky…

 

…with a big orchestra playing something more like you’d expect in a period samurai movie. The music is credited to six different people and veers between styles, mostly to my taste except when it resorts to keyboard horn sounds vaguely mimicking themes from STAR WARS, which seems pretty cheap. Mostly this is an extravagant affair, though, a lushly produced fantasy epic with colorful costumes, huge crowds of armored extras carrying spears and banners, atmospheric sets built on four giant soundstages, and a wicked queen to put the one from SNOW WHITE to shame. (read the rest of this shit…)

April 1st, 2025 | 17 Comments »

Mickey 17

MICKEY 17 is one of those lucky breaks humanity gets every once in a while where for some reason some American company gives South Korean master Bong Joon Ho (THE HOST, PARASITE) a whole bunch of money for a big, weird, wonderful English-language goof that they have no idea how to make money off of. The fucking Weinsteins did it as distributors of SNOWPIERCER, Netflix did it with OKJA, now it’s Warner Bros.’ turn with a movie that shares elements with both of those but speaks directly to this specific era of capitalistic exploitation, idiotic cults of asshole personality, and just all-around reckless stupidity. But in a fun sci-fi way. It’s based on the 2022 novel Mickey7 by Edward Ashton, but its sensibilities are unmistakably Bong Joon Ho.

Robert Pattinson (THE ROVER) stars and narrates as the 17th clone of Mickey Barnes, a harmless doofus who, in debt to a loan shark over his failed macaron business, tries to flee by signing up as an “expendable” on a flight to colonize the snowy planet Niflheim. This is not a common line of work – everybody acts shocked when he writes it on the form, and keeps double-checking that he read the paperwork. Basically, nobody’s been stupid enough to sign up before, but he agreed to it out of ignorance and because a lady’s shampoo scent reminded him of his mom. He admits this with embarrassment but also like he’s telling a funny story you might be able to relate to. (read the rest of this shit…)

March 31st, 2025 | 23 Comments »

March 2025 sci-fi (ish) double feature: ASH and THE DAY THE EARTH BLEW UP

Today instead of one regular-sized review I have two fun-sized looks at movies I saw in theaters last week. They are not making much money and might not last long, but I support the theatrical experience (please clap).


ASH is a low budget sci-fi movie produced by Shudder and directed by Flying Lotus, who I’m a little familiar with as a musician, but I have to confess I couldn’t make it very far into his previous cinematic effort, KUSO (2017). This doesn’t happen to me often but it was just too gross with its pervy opening segment about pustules and stuff. By comparison this one is normal and tolerable, but it still makes sense coming from the same director.

Eiza González (BLOODSHOT, CUT THROAT CITY, AMBULANCE) stars as Riya, a space traveler of some kind who wakes to find her ship in emergency mode, her entire crew dead (including one with a kitchen knife in his chest), not remembering what the fuck happened, or even who she is at first. She medicates herself to calm down (a patch that lights up when she puts it on her neck – nice future tech), wanders out onto the desolate planet where they’ve landed, looks up at cosmic mandalas in the sky, has little scary blips of flashbacks and begins to slowly remember some of the events leading up to this, including bonding with crew members Clarke (Kate Elliott, 30 DAYS OF NIGHT), Kevin (Beulah Koale, DUAL), Davis (Flying Lotus himself), and the captain, Adhi (oh shit, it’s Iko motherfuckin Uwais, MERANTAU, THE RAID, HEADSHOT, BEYOND SKYLINE, THE NIGHT COMES FOR US, TRIPLE THREAT, SNAKE EYES, FISTFUL OF VENGEANCE). (read the rest of this shit…)

March 27th, 2025 | 14 Comments »

The Wicked City (1992)

THE WICKED CITY (1992) is the Hong Kong version of WICKED CITY. I’m honestly not sure if it’s meant to be based on the anime or on the novels that the anime is based on, because it’s pretty different. It’s written and produced by the great Tsui Hark in a prolific year; 1992 saw the release of three movies he wrote, produced and directed (TWIN DRAGONS, ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA II and THE MASTER) and two others that he wrote and produced (SWORDSMAN II and NEW DRAGON GATE INN). Jeez, man, slow down.

As usual, there are claims that Tsui directed some of this himself. I wouldn’t be surprised if he second unit-ed some of the crazy action shit, but let’s not POLTERGEIST the actual director, who is Mak Tai Kit, a.k.a. Peter Mak (THE LOSER, THE HERO).

It opens in Japan (city unspecified in English subtitles of the DVD I watched), with a pared down remix of the anime’s opening. It skips the hero picking up the woman in a bar, replacing that character with a demon disguised as a prostitute named Perrier (Reiko Hayama, FEMALE NINJA MAGIC CHRONICLES), who does the kissing-while-going-up-an-elevator shot. In this version the john (Leon Lai from Ronny Yu’s SHOGUN & LITTLE KITCHEN) already knows what she is, goes into the bathroom and loads a gun before she sprouts claws and long legs – it’s genuinely very cool monster FX, though they’re unable to move her around enough to be nearly as creepy as in the animated version. Also there’s no venus flytrap snatch snapping at him. The same mistake most movies make. (read the rest of this shit…)

March 26th, 2025 | 4 Comments »

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