Michael Vollmann

Following Follow Follows you

Documentary Editor: The Romantics, Boys State, The Blood is at the Doorstep, Truth to Power

Documentary Director: The 414s

Favorite films

All

Vox Lux 2018

★★½ Watched 25 Feb 2025

I guess the moral of the story is if you survive a bloody school shooting you might grow up to become a soulless and terrible pop artist and also a shitty mom?
Respect the 70s style return to gritty realistic locations and set design. More of this please filmmakers. On first watch the film doesn't seem to follow th strict narrative structure of most modern day films, which is also welcomed. However, Portman's portrayal was so melodramatic it was hard…
Saturday Night 2024

★★½ Watched 12 Feb 2025

An impossible task. I’ll give casting and costume ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ for actually allowing me to discern who the real-lifers being portrayed were. To me the film felt like a Birdman redux, with a much more grating score and much less authenticity. I never thought John Belushi was funny, and his portrayal makes me like him even less.

Juror #2 2024

★★ Watched 27 Dec 2024

Cowardly ending, unnecessary flashbacks, stiff acting. Incredibly bland in misc en scene and direction. Stylistically feels like it was directed by AI. Overall, an interesting premise that raises some unique moral questions, but in the end not much more than a more ethically complex Law & Order episode that wants to be 12 Angry Men, I don't get why all movies today feel like mid budget tv shows. Maybe the high starred reviews are due to the surprise of seeing that an extreme senior citizen director made a film, but I had no idea who directed it until the movie ended.
The Substance 2024

★½ Watched 21 Jan 2025 2

C'mon guys, uh, no. Hahahahahahaha.
That was terrible.
The Substance, aka, Dark Barbie. Perhaps the most overhyped B movie ever created in human history. In fact, I can guarantee if it was made on a B movie budget it would have been forced to employ an ounce of creativity such as low budget films like Pi or Upstream Color. But then again, I was also never a fan of Gwar, but they SHOULD probably sue the filmmakers for plagiarizing their schtick in the final act.