50s musicals and body horror
Co-host of Shite & Sound Podcast
I think Agnes Varda, at least in her documentary work, might be the ultimate feel-good filmmaker. There’s such an intense joy to films like Uncle Yanco, but whereas other feel-good filmmakers often inspire apathy and complacency, Varda’s work is suffused with a restlessly inquisitive creative energy that encourages engagement with the world.
Let's just get this out of the way right up front, Mile 22 is Loqueesha-bad. It is totally incompetent on every level, with maybe the worst lead performance I've ever seen in a major film, horrific and repugnant politics, the worst editing I've ever seen in an action movie, and dialogue that veers sharply between inaudible and incomprehensible. Were it not for the presence of Iko Uwais, the coolest dude in the world, this would be the worst movie I've…
Lou Reed This Magic Moment needle-drop as Alice (Patricia Arquette) gets out of the car. One of the great moments in cinema. Like, yes, that is exactly what it feels like to see a woman so beautiful you just know you’re willing to throw your whole life away for her.
The greatest episode of TV ever made. The first 35 minutes are unrelentingly emotionally pummelling, a towering yet intimate depiction of family, friends, and community in grief, but Twin Peaks still feels full of life, charm, and humanity. Perfectly establishes 25+ indelible characters and the web of intrigues that connects them. Grace Zibriskie and Ray Wise give these incredible, outsized performances that feel like they’re playing to the back of a theatre rather than a television camera in close-up, but the incongruity just makes their despair all the more crushing.
A masterwork
Rest in Peace, David Lynch. I don’t know what we’ll do without you
David Lynch with his eyes shut tight, imagining and describing Kyle MacLachlan and Laura Dern having sex, is a mood.
Things Virgil Vernier loves to put in his films:
- Young African-French men working as security guards
- Casual nudity
- Breast augmentation surgery
- Urban malaise
Things Virgil Vernier hates to put in his films:
- Plot