There’s a moment near the climax of Alex Garland’s horrifyingly beautiful Annihilation, where you’re watching Natalie Portman stalk, assault rifle in hand, down an askew blue but otherwise almost ordinary seashore, toward a scattering of pale crystalline trees and a half distant lighthouse that is not a lighthouse anymore. I wanted to start there, because while that scene doesn’t even almost come close to summing up the film, it does describe the sort of film this is. You’re either totally…
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The Worst Person in the World 2021
"I feel like a spectator in my own life. Like I'm playing a supporting role in my own life."
Well, shit. Gonna be honest and just admit that I went into Joachim Trier's relentlessly contemporary and heart-rent romantic revel with more than a little skepticism on account of it having been declared a "masterpiece" during a time of year when tasteless snots often apply that word to middling dreck, but boy howdy did it ever unfold my unfairly crossed arms…
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Bloody Axe Wound 2024
"Because you're adopted? No. Sweetheart. Of course not, it's because you're a girl."
Feel like I'm always typing this or at least words to this effect hereon, but well Matthew John Lawrence's literally fantastic high-school horror comedy is another improbably stand-up entry the growing slasher-plus cannon. Seriously. How in the gosh darn heck-hell does this keep happening? Bloody Axe Wound is a low low low budget shoestring hack-em-up built atop a retro fantasy premise then mounted with a couple of…
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Borderline 2025
“Well. I have many houses and many … circuit breakers”
In the end, I think, there may only be two kinds of writer-directors, the kind who insists on shooting whatever they wrote and the kind who casts then re-writes to suit that cast and shoots that. First time helmer Jimmy Warden seems to be the former type and though 70-75% happy with his work here, I have to say that being that type doesn’t serve his black comedy slash period thriller…
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Zodiac 2007
"But I am a cop, I can't prove this."
Once upon a time a literal boogie man stalked Northern California. He killed some of his victims with guns and at least one with a butcher knife, some while he was dressed in plain clothes, at least one while dressed in a masked-hooded costume. He killed at least five people but no one really knows for sure, because he may never have been fully identified and he was definitely never arrested.…
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Blow Out 1981
"You'd be amazed what some people would do for a story like this."
There may not be more than one other director that you could say this about, but Brian De Palma literally never met a practical location he couldn’t make look like a meticulously dressed stage or studio back lot when he shot it. He had this odd compulsion toward overtly mannered cinematic presentation that was totally at odds with his vérité obsessed era and that was probably never…
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