Author of books, oral histories, the occasional TikTok.
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Wicked 2024
My brother and his husband LOVED this. See: exhibit A. They’re the kind of fanatics who take multiple trips to NYC a year and 95% of the time confine themselves to the Theater District, aka Wicked Ground Zero, where they binge literally every Broadway production in sight. One time he wanted me to pick a restaurant where we could hang out in between their shows and was like, “The theater’s on 42nd St. - I hate going down there but…
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Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles 1975
Metrograph showed an older print and it maybe had a few sounds that aren’t as pronounced on the DCP or the Criterion version: her humming along to Beethoven on the first night, for example, or squeakier bed springs in the son’s couch pullout the following morning. (I had to double-check as soon as I got home.) These are psychotic and tedious observations that surely some of my Jeannie comrades would appreciate, or perhaps also noticed? For further discussion about the inner struggle of a sexually repressed middle class widow, you have my number.
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Tragic Ceremony 1972
The Tubi addiction is real, folks. Fire Walk with Me awaits patiently on Criterion, yet Camille Keaton and ads for charter schools keep calling me. Not a complaint.
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Double Face 1969
Kinski cleans up nicely as a grieving aristocrat drifting through Swinging London, a change of pace from his usual settings, i.e. inside one of Jess Franco’s Turkish hump dungeons or going insane with Werner Herzog on the Amazon. The first third is cool. Certain scenes feel almost as if Fincher drew inspiration for The Game. Then the story falls apart, and not in some way that could be defended as intentional. Are we supposed to suspect Kinski as the killer?…
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BRATS 2024
If memory serves, Bret Easton Ellis has done multiple podcasts about why he loathes The Breakfast Club. Here he comes up with some nice things to say about it—doing a solid for narrator/director Andrew McCarthy, whose Brat Pack doc thirsts for substantial material. It really does hang by a thread. He offers a lot to discuss, but doesn’t delve deep.
Another alum could have directed a more interesting version. Rather than being headed up by the one who distanced himself…
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The Substance 2024
This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
“Edgy” but not edgy. The close-ups and slo-mos don’t shock or impress me. I’m maybe a little offended that the movie thinks I ought to be? The technique is such a distraction, feels so dated, almost like it’s giving cover for what’s lacking. I tried to watch Revenge last year but never finished for similar reasons.
Fred sure dodged a bullet, though.
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