(not to be confused with the one where Joaquin Phoenix raps)
Last Saturday morning I was stressing about the situation – the billionaire gremlin coup and dismantling of society that is happening before our eyes with only measured pushback – and it was too much. I had to make myself stop thinking about it. I want to stay aware, but I have to take care of myself mentally, I can’t spend every day dwelling on catastrophes that I’m powerless against. It’s the weekend, I told myself. It’s a nice day, and I’m seeing a movie, the last best picture nominee I haven’t seen…
But the movie was I’M STILL HERE (Ainda Estou Aqui), about a family dealing with their patriarch being disappeared by the Brazilian government in 1971, and I couldn’t help but come out thinking that’s gonna be us very soon. I hope that’s just the doom and gloom talking, but I have zero doubt that Musk and Trump would love to have this kind of stuff done in their names, that more than enough cops and soldiers would be on board (or would sign up just to do the honors), that not one Republican would raise one finger even one time to do one tenth of jack shit about it, and that Democrats or laws wouldn’t be adequate to stop them. So… signs point to bad, and my morale did not improve that day.
The movie is great, though, and maybe not what you expect. Directed by Walter Salles (CENTRAL STATION, THE MOTORCYCLE DIARES, DARK WATER remake), it opens with the deeply unsettling juxtaposition of a title saying “Rio de Janeiro, 1970, Military Dictatorship,” and a bunch of beautiful people in a beautiful place having a great time. Teens are playing beach volleyball, a dog keeps getting in the way, so they hand him off to little brother Marcelo (Guilherme Silveira), who shows him off to his friends, and then their bare feet pitter patter off the sand across the street, to the house to ask his dad, Rubens Paiva (Selton Mello, upcoming ANACONDA movie?) if they can keep him. He’s in an important meeting in his office and their lovable maid Zezé (Pri Helena) begs the kid not to interrupt, but luckily Rubens is just as charmed by the mutt as everybody else, and even gives him a name. (read the rest of this shit…)
A sincere trigger warning here: ON THE COUNT OF THREE (2021) is a movie about suicide. So please skip this one if that would bring up thoughts you don’t want. This is a very dark buddy comedy and in the opening scene the buddies have agreed to shoot each other. One of them hesitates at the last second and knocks the gun away (“I balked on that one, sorry,” he says), and they agree to have one last day, unencumbered by any worries about the future, before they go through with it.
RODEO (2022) is a raw, low key, French crime drama about the world of motorcycles. Specifically it’s about one woman, Julia (Julie Ledru, Furies), a.k.a. Unknown, who loves to ride. It just kind of throws us into her life and she’s not big on talking or being vulnerable, so we never really learn much about where she’s coming from other than what can be gleaned by what she’s up to at the moment, or by doing the math from the little details. For example her mom is only mentioned as someone who will call the cops on her if she sees her, her dad only when she lies about him as part of a scam. As she falls into an underworld the movie doesn’t hold our hand explaining what’s going on, but it’s mostly straight forward anyway. They steal motorcycles, fix them up, sell them, ride them. 
To date I have not seen Kevin Costner’s HORIZON: AN AMERICAN SAGA – CHAPTER 1/?. I want to see it, I’ve heard good things, and I’m sure it will happen eventually, but there’s another independent western passion project by an actor/director that’s more important for me to catch up on: Viggo Mortensen’s THE DEAD DON’T HURT. Which I also haven’t seen, because there’s another one that’s even more important than that, and it’s Michael Jai White’s OUTLAW JOHNNY BLACK. Of the three he’s the actor I follow the closest, and I even have a t-shirt for this movie because I donated to its IndieGoGo a million years ago. But then it didn’t play theaters in Seattle and when it came to DVD I kept putting it off because it was 135 minutes.
Yep, they made a new STREET TRASH in 2024, it recently had a limited theatrical release, it’s produced by Bloody Disgusting and Screambox so it’s probly on there, and also it’s on blu-ray from Vinegar Syndrome. When I say “a new STREET TRASH” I’m intentionally being vague about how it relates to 
WICKED: PART I starts near the end of 
Hey guys, it’s me, member of a small club of people who enjoy post-2000 Robert Zemeckis, the guy who has gotten carried away with digital technology and always finds something weird to do with it, whether or not it works, and whether or not society approves (which it usually does not). HERE is a movie that would only, maybe could only be made by that person. And that’s what I want to see out of art.
There’s a point in Brandon Cronenberg’s first movie ANTIVIRAL (2012) where a TV interviewer asks a CEO if our fascination with celebrities has become unhealthy. Generally I hate when a dystopian satire has to have characters point out that it’s a dystopia (see 
If you’re in a movie and you live in a small town then you bet your ass you’re a waitress at an old timey diner. In the case of LAST STRAW (2023), the dinerest movie I’ve seen since 
