october acolyte
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Exorcist II: The Heretic 1977
“Father Merrin himself was afraid that he’d slip into admiration.”
Sacrilegious to prefer this sequel at all: its effectiveness relies so heavily on the primacy of the transformation from the first film, a genre-defining performance-effects cocktail which it reproduces so shoddily by comparison--Linda Blair didn’t want to don demon make-up again, but there’s no excuse for the botched voiceover--the entire concept of a 4-years-later sequel is nearly DOA. It omits mention of Damian but retcons all sorts of out-there backstory…
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Mad God 2021
It’s obviously just thrilling to see anything this ambitious actually realized—Jodorowsky’s Dune, Sufjan’s 50 states, etc., came to mind while I was watching, and Tippett himself invites comparisons farther back to headier stuff like Jung’s Red Book or Beethovan’s 9th.
More interesting is that there’s not a single interview on this thing where he doesn’t refer to it as a kind of antidote to his “day job," a pretty sobering label for a hugely successful artistic career doing—often revolutionizing—effects work…
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Margin Call 2011
Like Succession this manages the rare trick of painting a particular fantasy about the American ruling class, one in contradistinction to the pitiful Giulianis and Murdochs of our world: these people are verbosely articulate, cosmopolitan or cultured if not straight cool, and doggedly hardworking if not genuinely hyper-competent, through sharp dialogue that somehow never feels inauthentically stylized…an ironic balm for the current moment and all others, in which the ultra rich don’t seem to read, or work, or reflect. I…
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Mickey 17 2025
A messy thematic redux of Parasite, Okja, and Snowpiercer much worse than all three of them, and i’m no superfan of the latter two. First half is constant voiceover exposition which over-explains a spec fic reality that isn’t remotely novel or complex and then it’s just a lot of limp jokes with limper politics
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Beau Is Afraid 2023
Unsurprising that people are bouncing off of this. The literal register here--if there even is one--is dominated for three hours by allegorical anxiety (or is it anxious allegory?), an oedipal odyssey whose plot jerks towards the obsessive (and imagined) worst-case scenarios of agoraphobia, hypochondria, depression and repression: Will taking this medication kill me? Couldn’t any moment be interrupted by the spectacularly violent impulses of one very sick person? Is someone hiding in my apartment? Is my every action not only…
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In a Violent Nature 2024
yeah I'll go to bat for this for sure. Its entire conceit--to remain ambiently within the perspective of the killer--is not interesting or revolutionary in and of itself, and our programmers reasonably recommended Elephant (89) & Angst (83); I was thinkin Maniac (80). But the execution is exciting, an inventive riff on stale genre structure which weds several methods of slow-burn naturalism with gratuitious camp. Absolutely sublime closing act here. Editor Alex Jacobs had some nice nice Q&A quips w/ us--arguing…
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