Posts Tagged ‘Mia Goth’
Monday, July 8th, 2024
I hope everybody had a good Big Mia Weekend this year! For me, MAXXXINE was easily the most anticipated non-FURIOSA movie event of the summer.
In case you haven’t met Maxine Minx, she’s a character from Ti West’s X (2022). That’s a slasher movie set in 1979, when a group of amateur pornographers rent a farmhouse to shoot their first movie and are terrorized by the octogenarian owners (and an alligator). Mia Goth (A CURE FOR WELLNESS) plays both Maxine, the star of the porno shoot, and Pearl, the withered psychopath she runs over at the end. The prequel PEARL (shot back-to-back and released in the same year) is set in 1918, with Goth playing young Pearl growing up and losing her shit in the same farmhouse.
Now MAXXXINE completes the trilogy with Goth playing Maxine in 1985. Since surviving the massacre she’s had a successful porn career in Los Angeles and is now trying to move into “real” movies, like Marilyn Chambers or Traci Lords. But just when she seems to have her big break a sleazy private detective named John Labat (Kevin Bacon, FRIDAY THE 13TH, WILD THINGS) starts to harass her about her past, and also someone starts killing her friends and co-workers. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: A24, Bobby Cannavale, Elizabeth Debicki, Giancarlo Esposito, Halsey, Kevin Bacon, Larry Fessenden, Mia Goth, Michelle Monaghan, Moses Sumney, Simon Prast, Ti West, Toby Huss, Tyler Bates, Zachary Mooren
Posted in Reviews, Crime, Horror | 22 Comments »
Thursday, February 2nd, 2023
When I first encountered the trailer for INFINITY POOL I spotted Mia Goth, who gave one of my favorite performances last year in PEARL, so I knew I would be seeing it. Then I noticed Alexander Skarsgård, star of one of my other favorite 2022 movies, THE NORTHMAN. And at the end I learned it was the new one from writer/director Brandon Cronenberg, whose 2020 film POSSESSOR really knocked me on my ass, so this was a first show opening day kind of deal for me. And it lived up to my hopes.
It’s the story of novelist James Foster (Skarsgård, 13, BATTLESHIP, THE LEGEND OF TARZAN, GODZILLA VS. KONG) and his wife Em (Cleopatra Coleman, STEP UP REVOLUTION, IN THE SHADOW OF THE MOON) on vacation at a resort in the exotic foreign land of Latoka. It’s a beautiful place on the sea, but it’s creepy – fenced off with guards, tourists aren’t allowed to leave, so the closest thing to visiting the locals is going to restaurants in the resort’s fake downtown area. James is already thinking he was an idiot to believe this trip could break his six year lack of inspiration since publishing his one obscure and poorly reviewed novel. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alexander Skarsgard, Brandon Cronenberg, Cleopatra Coleman, clones, Jalil Lespert, Mia Goth, Thomas Kretschmann
Posted in Reviews, Horror, I don't know, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 19 Comments »
Tuesday, November 15th, 2022
I don’t know why it took me so long to see A CURE FOR WELLNESS. I guess I missed it at the time and kept putting it off due to mediocre reviews, but what the fuck, Vern? You’ve liked this director since fucking MOUSE HUNT, you were won over by his remake of THE RING which you were ready to hate, you loved all three of his PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN movies (even that third one, after everyone turned on them), and you especially loved his widely hated (and now harder to vouch for for external reasons) THE LONE RANGER. Why would you care what anybody told you about this one?
Not that I liked this as much as most of those. But it’s a pretty good movie, it’s definitely a distinct one, and I’m disappointed in myself for neglecting the principle that a director who has already proven interesting is worth keeping track of even after everybody else dismisses them. Among other things, because of his lingering clout in the industry at the time this stands out as one of the rare modern horror movies done with lavish studio production values. It cost about $40 million (more than IT) and because it’s Verbinski every set and prop seems designed and built from scratch to fit into this world. We don’t need all or most horror movies to be this detailed, but it’s a treat to get one every once in a while. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Benjamin Wallfisch, Bojan Bazelli, Carl Lumbly, Dane DeHaan, Gore Verbinski, Harry Groener, Ivo Nandi, Jason Isaacs, Justin Haythe, Mia Goth
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 11 Comments »
Tuesday, October 4th, 2022
It seems like a fluke that PEARL even exists. It’s director Ti West’s prequel to his previous movie X, which was a hit for A24 earlier this year. It came so fast because he thought of the idea during a pandemic delay for the first movie, wrote it real fast and built it in as a back-to-back shoot.
X was of course a ‘70s set TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE homage about a very old couple taking out some of their issues on the young people who rented their barn to film a porn movie. One of its novelties was realizing somewhere in the middle that Mia Goth (SUSPIRIA remake), who plays the wannabe starlet protagonist Maxine, is also playing the lusty elderly villain Pearl. So in this one she return as a young Pearl in 1918, and as the central character. You don’t see that every day. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: A24, Alistair Sewell, Emma Jenkins-Purro, Matthew Sunderland, Mia Goth, prequels, Tandi Wright, Ti West
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 8 Comments »
Thursday, March 31st, 2022
X is the new horror picture from writer/director Ti West, his first movie since the 2016 western IN A VALLEY OF VIOLENCE. The fastest way I know to describe it is “what if THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE was BOOGIE NIGHTS?” It takes place in 1979 and it’s about a group of people from Houston who decide to make their first porno movie, and rent a small house on a remote farm to film it. In the process, their strong sexual content, graphic nudity, drug use and language is met with strong bloody violence and gore.
That’s from the actual MPAA rating, but it’s misleading. Though X is hardly tame, it doesn’t strike me as particularly extreme either. You gotta say this in hushed tones in these parts, but this is West’s first collaboration with A24, and I would consider him one of the pioneers of the style of 21st century slow burn horror that has become one of that company’s trademarks. I enjoyed his movies THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL and THE INNKEEPERS, from 2009 and 2011, before A24 existed. This is in a similar vein, but being a slasher movie it’s a little more generous in its pay off, so I enjoyed it too. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: A24, Brittany Snow, Jenna Ortega, Kid Cudi, Martin Henderson, Mia Goth, Owen Campbell, slashers, Stephen Ure, Ti West
Posted in Reviews | 17 Comments »
Monday, November 5th, 2018
SUSPIRI… uh…
Luca Guadagnino’s SUSPIRIA (2018) is technically a remake of Dario Argento’s SUSPIRIA (1977), because it’s about an American named Susie Bannion going to a dance academy in Germany in 1977 where other students are turning up dead and weird shit is happening because it’s run by a coven of witches led by Mother Suspiriorum, The Mother of Sighs. But don’t expect to see any of the things you think of when you think of SUSPIRIA, like the colorful lighting, the maggots dropping from the ceiling or that room full of razor wire. Guadagnino (CALL ME BY YOUR NAME) doesn’t use the same look or any specific scenes or story points, he just plays with the basic idea. Now there’s more intra-coven political stuff going on, as well as news coverage of Baader-Meinhof bombings and the hijacking of Lufthansa Flight 181 by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and a subplot about an old therapist looking for a patient who disappeared after telling him the school was run by witches, and also his wife (played by o.g. Susie Bannion Jessica Harper) disappeared during the war and he keeps thinking about her, and…
I mean it’s 52 minutes longer than the original so there’s alot more stuff going on. It bills itself as “Six Acts and an Epilogue in a Divided Berlin” (spoiler: actually should be Six Acts, an Epilogue, and a Brief, Uneventful Tag Near the End of the Credits). I appreciated the act breaks. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Chloe Grace Moretz, Dakota Johnson, dancing, Dario Argento, David Kajganich, Jessica Harper, Luca Guadagnino, Mia Goth, Thom Yorke, Tilda Swinton, witches
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 75 Comments »
