Movies I Watched in Sept. and Oct.

Y'all, I am way behind on my reviewing, so here is one big catch-up post.

***

Speak No Evil

Released both in theatres and on the streaming service Shudder, this Danish film is a nasty little movie about the consequences of not enforcing boundaries. A Danish family and a Dutch family, each with one child, meet on a holiday in Italy. They get along so well that the Dutch family invites the Danish family to come stay with them for a weekend. 

During the visit, the Dutch family begins to push the Danish family's boundaries. For example, they repeatedly ask the mom of the Danish family, who is a vegetarian, to "just try" various meat dishes. They invite the Danish family out to dinner but then expect them to pay. The Danish family, after one pretty bad violation, leaves...but then returns to the house when their daughter realizes she left a favorite stuffed animal behind. Bad decision.

The Dutch family asks them to stay and apologizes while also implying that the Danish family are the ones with the hang-ups. The Danish family is too polite to leave, so they stay. And it gets so, so much worse from there on out. 

Speak No Evil is an excellent psychological horror film in the vein of Funny Games. It is a "feel bad" movie, through and through, but it is so good. Definitely recommended, but proceed with caution.

Grade: A-

***

No Exit

This is film adaptation of a very good book by Taylor Adams. As is often the case, the book is far superior.

A young woman, Darby, is driving home to Utah to visit her estranged mother who is in the hospital and in critical condition. However, a snowstorm forces Darby to stop at a visitor's center, where four other strangers are also stranded. 

As Darby walks outside in the parking lot, hoping to get a cell phone signal, she happens to spot a little girl tied up in the back of a van in the lot. She does not know which of the strangers has kidnapped the girl, but she knows that whomever is responsible is likely armed and dangerous. So begins a cat-and-mouse game between Darby and the person or people responsible. 

This is definitely a movie to skip--but read the book if the plot sounds interesting. The film itself isn't bad, per se, it's just not as thrilling as the novel.

Grade: C+

***

You Are Not My Mother

An Irish film about changelings. Char is a young woman living with her mother, Angela, and grandmother, Rita. Angela suffers from depression and one day straight-up disappears. When she returns home, she is notably different--more energetic and happy, but also not quite the same person as before.

Eventually, Rita reveals to Char that when she (Char) was a baby, Rita realized that she was taken by faeries and swapped for a changeling. Rita did a ritual to bring the real Char back. Rita now believes that this new version of Angela is actually a faerie intent on taking Char back to the faerie realm.

When Char is nearly killed by some bullies, the faerie Angela comes to her rescue. In the ensuing chaos, faerie Angela is killed and Char is saved. However, this means that the real Angela returns and Char is grateful for her imperfect, yet real, mother.

This film was ok. It didn't blow me away, but if you're into Irish lore you might enjoy it. 

Grade: B-

***

The Lair of the White Worm

Directed by Ken Russell, The Lair of the White Worm is a very bizarre horror-comedy about a mythical giant snake that lives in the hills of Derbyshire. Basically, there is a sexy lady trying to kidnap virgins and feed them to a snake god. And Hugh Grant is the lord of a nearby manor whose family is part of local legend--one of his ancestors slew "the white worm". So, naturally, it falls on him to kill the snake again. Peter Capaldi (aka the 12th Doctor Who) is also in the movie as an archaeologist. 

I watched this movie a couple times as a kid when I was going through my Hugh Grant phase, but I barely remembered any of it. Tonally, it's kind of all over the place. It's got horror, sci-fi, a sexy lady wearing dominatrix-type clothes, humor that is both dryly British and also just straight-up slapstick. It's an interesting movie, but I don't really think it sticks the landing. Ken Russell also directed The Devils (see below), which is a much better movie.

Grade: B-

***

The Blair Witch Project

This was a rewatch for me. The first time I saw it, I was like "pretty good, but not really that scary". This time around I thought, "pretty good, kind of annoying, and not really that scary". As far as its importance within the horror genre, Blair Witch is canonical. It was a HUGE game changer, especially in the subgenre of found footage. It was an example of a horror movie being made on a shoestring budget and looking like a piece of shit but being actually good. Also, it did the whole thing where it was marketed as a "true story" and had a website with a whole backstory which was straight-up marketing genius. 

If I had seen it in the theatre in 1999, I probably would have shit myself. Watching it today, in the comfort of my own home, knowing that it is not a true story and also seeing memes and jokes about it for two decades...it's not scary at all. Other than the idea of being lost in the woods, which is inherently scary. But I still have to respect it as an OG of found footage with some excellent acting by the three unknowns in the lead.

Grade: B+

***

Deadstream

This film, which is streaming on Shudder, is a found footage horror comedy. Shawn (Joseph Winter), is a "canceled" YouTuber trying to make a comeback. Shawn's YouTube schtick is facing his biggest fears, so for his return to streaming, he decides to spend the night in a haunted house. He creates rules for himself--for example, if he hears anything strange during the night, he must investigate it--and if he breaks them he won't get paid by his sponsors.

Deadstream is both legitimately scary and legitimately funny, which is a difficult line to walk. The use of multiple camera makes the film ripe for jump scares, and I did indeed jump (or watch the movie through my fingers) many times. But because Shawn is ridiculous, it also felt like the scares were kind of low stakes. This is a really inventive movie and I would recommend it.

Grade: B

***

Practical Magic

My friend and I "swapped" spooky season movies recently--meaning I showed her a movie she hadn't seen before (It Follows) and she showed me Practical Magic, which is an entry in the "movies that millennial women know and love" genre that I somehow managed to miss.

Knowing me, you might think a movie about a sisterhood of witches in idyllic New England would be my jam, but Practical Magic has the problem of being too cozy (even though it's about abusive relationships). It has the same problem as Schitt's Creek, which is a show I WANTED and TRIED to like, but ultimately didn't: it's too dang nice! When I think of all the media I like, there's always an edge to it: either through violence, irreverent humor, sexuality, or ambiguity. Movies and shows that are kind, earnest, straightforward, and cozy always feel like an itchy sweater to me. Like, it should be comfy, but it's not (there are some exceptions, of course).

That said, I appreciated the vibes of Practical Magic. I totally get why so many people (mostly women, and probably mostly white women) love it. Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman are great in it and the message of "sisters over misters" is always an important one, especially for young girls. 

Grade: B

***

Hellraiser (2022)

I followed up Practical Magic with a movie about sadomasochistic demons from hell! But, damnit, the Hellraiser reimagining (directed by David Bruckner) just wasn't that great. Now, I haven't seen the original, so I don't really have anything to compare it to. And it wasn't bad, per se. I just expected more. 

This iteration of Clive Barker's book series focuses on Riley (Odessa A'zion), a recovering addict who is talked into committing burglary by her shitty boyfriend to make a few extra bucks. They break into a safe in an abandoned warehouse and find...a puzzle box. The box has a few configurations and when you solve part of the puzzle, a blade pops out--if it sticks you and you bleed on the box, these things called Cenobites come out and basically rip you to shreds and act like you should be happy about it.

I've read The Hellbound Heart by Barker, but I haven't read any of his other books or watched any of the other Hellraiser movies, so I don't know a lot about the "lore". But basically, Cenobites are creatures from another dimension where pain and pleasure meld together so that they are indistinguishable. They offer "rewards" to humans who solve the puzzle, but it's always a monkey's paw situation. For example, in this movie a billionaire named Roland Voight (Goran Visnjic...who, interestingly, is also in Practical Magic), solves the puzzle and asks for a reward of "sensation", thinking he's going to end up experiencing a constant orgasm or something like that. Instead, the Cenobites hook him up to a device that twists his nerve endings, causing him constant, horrible pain. When he begs them to remove the device, they're like "what the fuck dude, this was a gift".

So, Cenobites are cool. But Hellraiser is waaaayyy too long. It's 2 hours, where it should be 90 minutes. It's not gory or sexual enough, which is weird given that the whole point of the Hellraiser franchise is to mix gore and sexuality. Bruckner is a really talented director, but this iteration of Hellraiser is just ok. Pinhead said "I have such sights to show you", but this movie ain't one of them.

Grade: B

***

The Devils

The Devils, directed by Ken Russell, is CUH-RAY-ZEE. Filmed in 1971 and starring Oliver Reed and Vanessa Redgrave, The Devils is based (loosely) on true events. Reed plays Urban Grandier, a 17th century Catholic priest in Loudun, France. 

A nun, Sister Jeanne de Agnes, is sexually obsessed with Grandier, and after finding out he married another woman in secret, she accuses him of being a witch and possessing her. Since Grandier has a lot of political enemies in France, her accusations are taken seriously and a witch hunter is brought in to investigate. The other nuns in the convent also accuse Grandier of possessing them and begin acting out sexually.

The Devils faced censorship, primarily for a scene where an orgy breaks out in the convent and leads to the nuns pulling down a statue of Christ and masturbating all over it. I've seen a LOT of freaky shit in movies and I was surprised at the amount of sex and violence in this film, especially for a 1971 movie. It reminded me a lot of A Clockwork Orange, which also came out in 1971 (and, like The Devils, was stamped with an X rating). 

The final third of the film is Grandier being tortured, shaved, and burned at the stake, which is incredibly brutal. I thought the movie would be a light-hearted sex romp, but damn. The ending is similar to The Wicker Man with an innocent man being burned alive--only more violent and more harrowing. 

The Devils is a lot. It did not disappoint. Words like "hysterical", "frenzied", "chaotic", and "hypersexual" come to mind. It's really good, and I recommend it, but obviously it will not be for all tastes.

Grade: A-

***

Night and Fog

Night and Fog is a 30 minute documentary about concentration camps directed by Alain Resnais. It is probably one of the most, if not the most important documentaries of all time and should be required viewing for every human on the planet. The film came out in 1956, only a decade after the end of WWII, with memories of the Holocaust still fresh in collective memory.

The film is narrated and shows increasingly distressing imagery, starting with the trains to the camp and ending with piles of bodies being thrown in ditches. I believe that there is a moral imperative for everyone to watch this movie, or similar films (I will be watching the 9 hour documentary Shoah at some point in the future). There are some things in life that people should not be allowed to opt out of seeing, and genocide is one of them. To look away is to be complicit. It doesn't matter how triggering or painful it is, I believe it is our duty as human beings to bear witness to such atrocities...and also to understand how they happened and that they can happen again.

Grade: A+

***

Fright Night (2011)

Wow, I was disappointed in this 2011 horror-comedy. Despite a great cast, Fright Night--a remake of the 1985 film starring Chris Sarandon about a teenager who must contend with a charming vampire who moves in next door--was limp, unfunny, and not scary. 

Anton Yelchin (RIP--he died tragically in 2016) plays Charley Brewster, a high schooler living in the suburbs of Las Vegas. His friend, Ed (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), becomes convinced that there is a vampire in their neighborhood because kids from their high school keep going missing. Specifically, Ed thinks that Charley's new neighbor, Jerry (Colin Farrell, whose unbelievable good looks were one of the few good things about this film), is the bloodsucker. 

After Ed goes missing, Charley becomes fully convinced that Jerry is responsible, and he and his girlfriend, Amy (Imogen Poots), seek help from Peter Vincent (David Tennant, excellent as always), a "Criss Angel" type Las Vegas performer who claims to be a vampire slayer. It's a race against time to slay Jerry before anyone else gets bitten by the charming, sexy bloodsucker.

As mentioned above, the cast of Fright Night is stacked (I didn't even mention that Toni Collette plays Charley's mom). But the writing is unfunny at best and downright misogynist at worst. Despite coming out in 2011, Fright Night has the very distinct stank of early 2000s "ironically offensive" comedy on it. And it ain't a good stank. Women are called "bimbos" and "skanks" throughout, by multiple characters (except Charley, because he's the Nice Guy, you see). Jerry tells Charley that women who "look a certain way" need to be "managed" before he murders a stripper. Ed refers to Charley's girlfriend as a "skank" and then later makes a "no homo" type joke. 

Sometimes I'm ok with edgy and politically incorrect humor when it's done well or has something else to balance it out. For example, I still love The 40 Year Old Virgin which is filled with outdated jokes, mostly because Steve Carell's inherent sweetness and innocence holds up a damning mirror to the crude characters who make the jokes. But Fright Night is just...not funny. I also found myself playing on my phone during the final third. 

I'd skip this one. Like Jerry, it sucks.

Grade: C

***

The Skin I Live In

This intense, shocking film by Pedro Almodovar is based on a novella titled Mygale (which means "Tarantula") by French writer Thiery Jonquet. I read the novella long before the movie was made, so I knew the central twist of the film, and I am indeed going to go into the twist here, so spoiler warning!

Antonia Banderas plays Dr. Robert Ledgard, a plastic surgeon developing an artificial skin that is resistant to burns and insect bites. He lives isolated in a mansion with his loyal housekeeper, Marilia (Marisa Paredes) and a woman named Vera Cruz (Elena Anaya), whom he is testing the new skin on.

Through a series of flashbacks, we learn that Vera is a captive. Years ago, Robert's wife was in a horrible car accident that left her alive but burned beyond recognition. One day, when she accidentally saw herself in a reflection, she jumped to her death in front of Robert's daughter, Norma. Seeing this mentally destroyed Norma to the point where she had to stay in a mental institution for years. When she was released, she and Robert attended a wedding and at the wedding, Norma met Vicente (Jan Cornet).Vicente and Norma went into the woods during the wedding and began making out, but Norma has a PTSD reaction and began to scream, causing Vicente to slap her and for Norma to pass out. Vicente left quickly, but Robert saw him leave. When he went to wake up his daughter, she woke up and apparently assumed her father had just raped her, which sent her spiraling back into her mental illness. A year later, she killed herself.

If this all sounds like a wildly convoluted soap opera, well, welcome to the films of Pedro Almodovar! And the craziest part is yet to come...

Robert, believing that Vicente actually did rape his daughter (he didn't, to be clear), kidnaps him and....hoo boy...gives him vaginoplasty surgery. But not just that. He feeds Vicente hormones, does plastic surgery on him, puts the new artificial skin on him, and gives him a new name: Vera. So the woman who is mysteriously trapped in Robert's mansion is Vicente...after being transformed against his will into a woman. Well, into having the body of a woman.

I'm sure you can imagine why this movie is difficult to watch and tricky to talk about. Almodovar is queer and his movies are all about queerness, including trans and gender-nonconforming identities. I personally do not see The Skin I Live In as transphobic and, in fact, I think it shows how detrimental to a person's well-being it is to be forced to live as a gender one does not identify with. I think that such a movie perhaps helps cisgender people get the smallest glimpse of the pain trans people have to live with when they can't transition in whatever ways feel right to them.

While The Skin I Live In is not transphobic (in my opinion), it is certainly verging on exploitative. Basing a film around a forced gender reassignment surgery is A Choice! But because this is Almodovar, a filmmaker who is deeply empathic and a master of High Camp (basically, campy movies but done very artfully), the movie just works. We feel immense sympathy for Vicente, especially since he didn't do anything. I mean, he slapped Norma, yes, but he didn't rape her. But we also are encouraged to have some sympathy for Ledgard who lost both his wife and daughter in horrible ways and is so angry that he seeks revenge on an innocent person. But don't worry: Ledgard and his loyal housekeeper don't make it out of the movie alive. Vicente/Vera strategically gets closer (erm...REAL closer) to Ledgard and then when the opportunity to kill him and escape arrives, Vicente takes it.

This is a great movie, but of course I only recommend it with strong trigger warnings, especially around gender and body dysphoria. 

Grade: A-

(Literal) Bromance

Movie: Bros

Bros is being marketed as "the first gay romantic comedy from a major studio featuring an entirely LGBTQ principal cast". I don't know what's more remarkable: the previous sentence itself or the fact that it took until 2022 for the previous sentence to become a reality.

Gay rights has always been a big thing with me. I'm (mostly) not gay, but I had a lot of gay friends growing up and when you spend your life caring about gay people and seeing them as, you know, human beings, giving a shit about gay rights is part of the package. But to be clear: I'm not special because I care about gay rights. I pass the bare minimum to not be a shitty human being because I care about gay rights. Sadly, though, many people cannot even clear a bar so low, it's underground. And, in America at least, this is mostly due to the influence of evangelical Christianity. 

The fact that Bros is about cisgender, white, conventionally attractive men is no accident. This subgroup within the rainbow of diversity that is LGBTQ+ is, by and far, the most privileged group. And the film is aware of this, as it opens with Bobby, played by Billy Eichner (who co-wrote the script), recording his podcast which is titled "The 11th Brick" since, as Bobby puts it, a transwoman of color probably threw the first brick at Stonewall, and it was certainly a white cisgender man who threw the 11th brick.

I don't think we should hate Bros for being about a privileged group--it's doing the work. Not all of the work, but some of it. Different people will have different opinions, but I think a "mainstream" movie in which men unabashedly make out, do poppers, talk about not just homophobia, but the specific nuances of homophobia that they, and their friends, have experienced, and also get a happy ending is really fucking cool. The film certainly doesn't feel "toned down" to appease a straight audience. 

At the same time, Bros is a pretty "traditional" romcom in that it hits all the familiar beats we've come to expect in the genre: the men at the center of the romance, Bobby and Aaron (Eichner and Luke Macfarlane--both out gay actors), kind of hate each other at first, then fall for each other, then have the Big Mis (or "big misunderstanding"), then there is a very big and public romantic gesture, and then they make up get back together. The "types" the characters inhabit--Bobby is intellectual, grumpy, "totally happy" being alone, sarcastic, etc while Aaron is basic, model-level beautiful, warm, and open--are pretty common to romances. Also, the relatively easy, White Middle Class lives of the men is a common thing seen in romcoms. Bros is comfort food, guys, you're not going to see a lot of tropes thrown out the window here.

And there is something radical in taking something still (STILL!!!) considered "deviant" by a not small portion of society and showing that it, too, is mundane. AND YET, right off the bat the film pokes what I think is gentle fun at Lin-Manuel Miranda's famous "Love is love is love is love" speech that he gave at the Tonys mere hours after the Pulse mass shooting. Bobby makes fun of "love is love" on his podcast saying "[gay men's] relationships are different, our sex lives are different..." and the film, indeed, turns some basics of straight romantic comedy upside down, especially in how Bobby and Aaron negotiate nonmonogamy within their budding romance. 

I think Bros deftly (and not always perfectly) walks that line between honoring the uniqueness of gay men's relationships while still showing that, yes, love is a human universal and we all deserve to be loved well. The Big Mis focuses on a specific aspect of gay culture* --the difference between straight-passing gay guys and "gay-acting" gay guys. Basically, Bobby is more "gay acting" and his job literally revolves around gay history, as he is a curator for the first ever national LGBTQ+ history museum. Aaron is more "straight passing" and his job (lawyer) and hobbies (the gym, the music of Garth Brooks) is more, well, butch. Aaron asks Bobby to "tone it down" while meeting Aaron's parents, and you can guess how well that goes.

The trope of someone is being "too much" is fairly common within romcoms, but this particular interpretation of that trope is unique to the LGBTQ+ experience. I doubt straight people worry about their partner being "too straight" while meeting the parents.

That is what I love about Bros--it reflects (some aspects of) gay culture back at us, while also reflecting back some of the universal experiences gay and straight people share: being vulnerable is hard. Accepting others as they are is important to making a relationship work. Love is love is love. But also, love is not love is not love. Both are true.

The only things I didn't like about Bros are: 1) it's bit too self-aware in a way that comes off as cutesy or twee sometimes, 2) Billy Eichner really does pack the script with himself talking a mile a minute, forgetting to let the film breathe at times, and 3) uh, it's a romcom and I don't like romcoms. LOL.

But despite those little things, I really enjoyed Bros and would watch it again, which is the highest praise I can give a romantic comedy.

Grade: B+

*I make a lot of statements in this review about "gay culture" or "the gay experience" and I very much don't have that lived experience, so if I am talking out of my ass feel free to tell me so! 

Memoirs of a Young Psychopath

Movies: Pearl

Until this year, I was "meh" on Ti West's horror films. He directed The House of the Devil in 2009, which a lot of people really love, and I thought was good but a little boring. Then, he directed The Innkeepers in 2011 which I found really boring. He also directed The Sacrament in 2013, which was much better. 

Nine years later, he comes out with not one, but two horror films in one year that blew my fucking doors off! In March, we got X, which takes place in the late 1970s and is about a crew of adult filmmakers who rent a guest house on a farm from an elderly couple and secretly make a porno. I gave the movie a B+ when I first saw it, but upon rewatching it, I changed that grade to an A-. It's a really fun and funny slasher that also squeezes in some Deep Thoughts about aging and sexuality. Notably, actress Mia Goth plays both porn actress Maxine *and* the elderly woman Pearl, who murders everyone. 

Well, only a few months later, West comes out with a prequel to X about Pearl herself. Once again, Mia Goth plays the character, who we now see as a young woman. Pearl takes place in 1918, 61 years before the events of X. Pearl is probably somewhere between the ages of 18 and 22 in this movie, although she seems much younger--mostly due to Mia Goth simply looking young for her age, but also due to Pearl's immaturity and selfishness.

But it's hard to blame Pearl for these qualities, as she lives on an isolated farm with her incredibly strict immigrant mother (a German immigrant, to boot. Germans weren't looked too kindly on during WWI) and her catatonic father. Pearl is also married to a man named Howard, who is serving in the war.

Times are tough for Pearl: an influenza pandemic is sweeping the nation, her husband isn't there to support her, she has to feed and bathe her father and do a ton of farm chores, and her mother won't even allow her the money to go to the moving pictures, which is her favorite activity. Pearl wants to be a dancer and dreams of being in movies. But she is also aware that she's...different. She describes it as "I don't have something that other people have".

Pearl is filmed in gorgeous technicolor, with references to The Wizard of Oz as well as the films of Douglas Sirk. Sirk's films focus on women who are unsatisfied with their lot in life and were sometimes called "weepies". Movies like All That Heaven Allows and Imitation of Life are good examples to check out. And interestingly enough, although Pearl is a horror film, most of the movie is more of a mixture of the "women's weepies" genre plus some absurd comedy. The bodies don't start piling up until the second half of the movie. 

Pearl is so much fun. It's a good movie if you're dipping your toes into horror but don't want a lot of jump scares or really intense gore (there is some gore, but I didn't find it gratuitous). Mia Goth is delightfully unhinged as a young, psychopathic woman. Her needs and desires are more important than everyone else's and she will stop at nothing--including murder--to get her way. She's also just so darn cute!

With so many horror movies these days trying to be "about" something (and nothing wrong with that), it's nice to see a horror movie that is just fun, but not in a way that sacrifices quality. Pearl is much better than a low-budget slasher, but it's also much less intense than, say, an Ari Aster film. Highly recommended (alongside X) for longtime fans of horror and those just getting into the genre. 

Grade: A

Men Be Controllin'

Movie: Don't Worry Darling

Olivia Wilde's follow up to her 2019 debut film Booksmart has been mired in controversy, mostly to due behind-the-scenes bad behavior on the part of Wilde. I haven't bothered to delve into all the details, but there seems to be two issues: one is that Shia LaBeouf, a noted shithead and abuser, was originally cast in the movie but was supposedly fired after Florence Pugh was uncomfortable with his behavior. LaBeouf claims he wasn't fired, he quit, and that Wilde wanted to keep him on. The other issue is that Wilde began a very public romance with leading man Harry Styles (who replaced LaBeouf) and acted unprofessionally on set, leading to a "screaming match" between Wilde and Pugh.

On top of all that, Wilde plays a character in the movie, Bunny, who wasn't in the original script. So, she created a character for herself to play. What's more, Wilde took some lines of dialogue that belonged to characters played by Gemma Chan and KiKi Layne (both actors of color) and gave them to her character instead. She additionally cut a lot of scenes featuring Layne. Very white lady of her.

Some of this might be forgiven if Don't Worry Darling was a good movie...but it's not. It's not *the worst* movie ever, but despite the lovely cinematography and costuming, and despite a great performance by Florence Pugh in the leading role, the movie is derivative and a bit of a mess. Scenes that should be intense come off as campy. The big reveal of "what's really going on", which I will spoil below after a warning, only leads to a ton of questions that are never answered. 

So what is Don't Worry Darling about? Florence Pugh plays Alice Chambers, a 1950s housewife who lives with her husband Jack (Styles) in a picture-perfect town that appears to be built in the middle of the California desert. The mastermind behind this town is Frank (Chris Pine), more of a legend than a man. Frank created the Victory Project, which includes the town of Victory where all the housewives live as well as the mysterious project itself which is only explained as "developing progressive materials". Every morning, the men of Victory leave their mid-century modern homes and drive out to Headquarters in the desert to work, and each night they return home to a meat-based dinner cooked by their adoring wives. Notably, none of the wives really know what their husbands do (the Victory Project is top secret) and are forbidden from going into the desert themselves.

Jack and Alice are especially amorous, often having spontaneous sex on the kitchen table or in inappropriate places, such as Frank's bedroom during a cookout. All seems well and good except for two issues: 1) Alice starts experiencing odd things, such as opening a container of eggs in which none of the eggs have yolks and 2) Margaret (Layne), Alice's next door neighbor, is suffering from a mental breakdown leading to embarrassing public outbursts where she asks Frank "why are we here?" and ends up costing her husband his job at Victory. No one is sympathetic to Margaret--this is the 50s, after all, and appearances are everything.

But after Alice breaks the one rule of Victory--never leave the town--when she goes out into the desert after seeing a plane crash out there, the strange visions and experiences she has begin to increase and she starts to wonder if Margaret was right to question Frank.

I'll pause before I reveal the truth about Victory and just say that Don't Worry Darling could have been much better if different choices were made. If more time was spent after the big reveal explaining how and what was going on and less time was spent showing men in bowling shirts and women in A-line dresses dancing around with tumblers of whiskey balanced on their heads, this movie could have said something interesting about why having a "perfect life" comes at a great cost and a marriage without honesty a mutual respect is worthless. But Wilde focused more on the pretty dresses and 1950s set-dressing and rushed the ending, throwing explanations at us minutes before the movie was over.

Between that and the ick factor of Wilde's unprofessionalism, Don't Worry Darling gets a big, fat

Grade: C 

Spoilers!! Spoilers!!

***

***

***

Ok, so a lot of people guessed the twist even before the movie came out. People are comparing Don't Worry Darling to The Stepford Wives, but a more apt comparison might be M. Night Shyamalan's The Village because....it's not the 1950s, fuckers! It's the present day!

Turns out, Victory is actually a virtual simulation. In a flashback, we see Alice working as a surgeon and returning home to her unemployed boyfriend, Jack. Frank is basically Jordan Peterson--a neo-conservative piece of shit who thinks that present day unhappiness is tied to men not having a masculine role and women not being the fembot housewives "nature" intends them to be. We gather than Jack has forced Alice into the simulation: he has her cuffed to the bed with these Clockwork Orange-looking eye thingies propping her eyes open while the simulation runs constantly. The men of Victory leave the simulation for an allotted time and must return at the end of the day.

Alice manages to break out of the simulation at the end, and she also finds out that Bunny knew all along and chose to be in the simulation anyway because her kids died in real life and in Victory she still has them. But basically all the women are forced into the sim by their men.

There are SO MANY questions the twist brings up and never explains:

• How does Alice get proper nutrition? I didn't see any IVs hooked up to her while she was tied to the bed. I guess Jack has to keep her in diapers too?
• When the men leave the simulation, are they actually working for Frank in the real world, or just working any old job to pay for access to the simulation?
• Alice kills Jack at the end (yay!) and Bunny tells her "if a man dies in the simulation, he dies in real life"...ok, so first of all, how is that possible? Wouldn't you just wake up? She specifically says "if a man dies in the sim", does that mean women can die in the sim and be fine? What if a man dies in the sim--does the woman's body in real life just starve to death?
• After hearing the news about Jack being killed and Alice running off to the desert to get out of the sim, Frank's wife, Shelley (Gemma Chan), kills him immediately. She says "You stupid man. Now it's my turn." What does that mean? Was she also a prisoner? Is she mad that he failed? What does "my turn" mean?

It really annoys me when there is a sci-fi twist like this in a movie and it's never explained. The audience is just expected to swallow the implausibility of it all because the greater message is "1950s bad! Men be controlling!". Uh, yeah, I got that. Clearly this movie is supposed to be spooky-ooky about the dangers of men being lured into extremism online, but the movie barely fucking touches on that. You hear like one second of Frank's podcast. Also, apparently there are only like 75 people in the simulation, but in real life these dumbass men would 100% be blabbing to their buddies and the top secret project would be known by everyone immediately. 

So, Don't Worry Darling fails both as a science-fiction story, but also as a social satire. The only way it succeeds is by being unintentionally campy with a strong performance by Pugh and a good performance by Pine (and a wooden performance by Styles). 

Seeing it wasn't a total waste because it was fun for what it was, but it's not rewatchable and it's just not that good.

Grade: C

Also:

Dirty Movies

Movies: Pleasure

Oh, pornography. We love to hate it. We hate to love it. We love to judge it (while secretly watching it).

Maybe the weirdest thing about porn is how the hatred and fear of it brings natural enemies, like feminists and conservatives, together to become strange bedfellows.

I'm not going to get into a huge history lesson here, but back in the 1980s, there was a thing known as the feminist sex wars (which would be a great title for a porn, incidentally) where a bunch of feminists believed that pornography (and BDSM, and sometimes even consensual heterosexual sex) was inherently violent against women and degrading to women. Some of these feminists even teamed up with folks who worked for Mr. Ronald Reagan himself to fight against pornography and attempt to regulate it or even ban it. The 1980s were dumb, y'all. I should know because I was born in the 80s. 

Personally, I identify as a "pro-sex feminist", which means I believe that consenting adults should be able to have whatever kind of sex they want as long as it does not harm others. I also think adults have the right to NOT have sex--at all, or certain kinds of sex. Not everybody likes sex or wants it and that's ok too. 

So, I am pro-pornography (IF you want to watch it). I am in favor of people paying for porn. I am in favor of more women, BIPOC, and queer people making porn. I am in favor of there being more options for different tastes. This means that while there are certain types of porn I find ridiculous, gross, and even offensive, I still believe in the right for it to be ethically made and I still believe in the right for people to watch it. 

The tricky thing is, just like many industries, the porn industry has bad people and good people. The movie Pleasure, which is about a newcomer's journey through the LA porn scene, is about how there are good and bad people in porn and how there are good and bad business practices in porn. 

I will say that overall the film is a bit anti-porn, which makes sense given that the director apparently used to be an anti-porn activist and I guess now has sort of come around to the "let's push out bad porn with good porn" side of the table. But the movie shows more of the negatives aspects of the industry--everything from on-set rape (we'll get to that in a minute) to creepy old men controlling everything to in-fighting among adult starlets. 

Pleasure follows Bella Cherry (Sofia Kappel, one of the few actors in the movie who is not actually in porn), a 19 year old from Sweden who comes to LA to be the next biggest porn star. The film starts with her first-ever shoot, which involves Bella acting with an average looking guy in his 40s. If y'all want to see actual penis in a "mainstream" movie, Pleasure has you covered! Though there isn't any penetration shown in the movie, there are dicks, tits, bush, and butts aplenty! 

Bella makes friends with her housemates, who are also up-and-comers, especially Joy (Revika Anne Reustle), who helps her learn the ropes. Both Joy and Bella dream of being "Spiegler Girls"--starlets who work with real life agent Mark Spiegler (playing himself in the movie). Spiegler girls are enormously popular, but basically have to work their literal assess off and can't really have limits. 

There are two scenes in the movie that really capture the dichotomy of porn. In the first scene, Bella does a BDSM scene with a female director (Aiden Starr) and tatted up actor (Small Hands, who is by all accounts a super nice guy IRL and super cute, too) where they ask about her limits, offer her breaks and water, make sure she is comfortable, etc. The shoot is portrayed as very positive and Bella has real orgasms during it.

This is followed up by one of the worst scenes of sexual assault I've ever seen in a movie. Bella asks her agent to get her more "rough" shoots, and she ends up doing a scene with a male director and two actors who don't go over limits, don't pay attention to her bodily clues, and pressure her into continuing the shoot when she is clearly terrified and wants to stop. They even tell her "if you leave now, you won't be paid. You'll have done all this for free." This is rape! Even if she consented on paper, this is fucking assault. It's *incredibly* difficult to watch and I would only recommend this movie with massive trigger warnings. 

Bella fires her agent and decides to work independently. In her quest to become the next biggest thing in porn, she agrees to do a double-anal interracial scene for free. (I really hope my mom isn't reading this!!). She specifically requests Bear (Chris Cock), an actor she met early on, to be one of her scene partners since she trusts him. Sure enough, he helps her breathe and get through what I can only assume was a pretty painful scene. Earlier in the film, Bear tells Bella that interracial is the most taboo thing in porn. Bella says "that sounds kind of...racist" and Bear replies "that's because it is racist". I kind of wish there had been more exploration of why interracial sex is still considered such a taboo in porn because I find that to be very interesting especially since there is a high demand for it in the United States...especially the Southern United States. Pleasure doesn't really editorialize on these things (both the rape and relationship between racism and interracial porn)--it just show things, or brings things up, and then moves on. 

The gambit pays off and Mark Spiegler agrees to let Bella become one of his girls. The only problem is that being in the in-crowd sucks. Bella leaves her old friends behind and has to hang out with people she doesn't like. Worse, she begins acting aggressively during some of her shoots, mimicking the behavior she's been on the receiving end of. She has a realization at the end of the film and gets out of a limo taking her to a party, and that's where the movie ends. 

So, what to make of this film? First of all, I liked it. I thought it was shot beautifully and the acting was very natural, very slice of life. I liked that Ninja Thyberg cast real porn actors, directors, and agents in the film. I also like that the film didn't lionize the porn industry because, let's be real, at the end of the day it's an industry dedicated to making money and there are going to be more than a few shitty people in it who exploit others, especially young women, for personal and financial gain. I'm a pro-sex feminist but people who refuse to hear any criticism of porn are naive at best and willfully ignorant at worst. I'm pretty sure most people *in* the industry have complaints about it. 

I also think the film could have been a touch more even-handed and nuanced. Maybe there's no room for nuance in an industry that brought us such films as "MILF Squirters Vol. 7", or maybe by portraying the porn industry "warts and all", Thyberg felt that she *was* being even-handed. 

I'm giving this movie a high grade because it's a very good movie and I enjoyed the hell out of it (I didn't "enjoy" the rape scene, but I appreciated how raw it got...it didn't try to pretend that rape on set is no big deal). But I'm also going to leave you all with a YouTube playlist of a series called "Ask a Pornstar", where pornstars are asked a variety of questions from "do you believe in aliens" to "how to give a good blowjob" to "did you go to college" and I really recommend watching some of the videos--especially the ones that aren't about sex. I watched a ton of these during the early stages of the pandemic and I have to say--it really humanized a lot of these actors for me. They're just people, like you and me. Most of them are incredibly smart and funny and are probably people I'd like to be friends with. Let's demystify an industry that many of us, er, use on a regular basis and let's have a little more respect for the people in it. 

Grade: A-

Don't Go in the Basement

Movies: Barbarian

Hi folks! I'm going to provide a shorter, spoiler-free review of Barbarian first, and then we'll go into full spoilers below.

Spoiler-free review:

Once in a while, a horror movie just fires on all cylinders. Written and directed by Zach Clegg, Barbarian is such a horror movie. From the blood-red poster, which gives vintage giallo vibes, to the terrifying trailer, to the film itself: a masterpiece of misdirection and subverted expectations with a premise that is truly horrifying on multiple levels.

Just go see this movie. Go in knowing as little as possible, and strap in for the ride of your life.

The parts of the film I can safely go into are the same parts the trailer focuses on. A young woman, Tess (Georgina Campbell), shows up at an AirBnb in a rough neighborhood of Detroit, only to find that someone else is already using it. That someone is Keith (Bill Skarsgard). It seems that the property was double-booked through no fault of Keith's or Tess's. Keith, a bit reluctantly, invites Tess to stay. He even washes the bedsheets that he already slept on and gives her the bedroom while he takes the couch.

Tess is cautious and wary (she takes a picture of Keith's driver's license and diligently locks the bedroom and bathroom doors behind her), but when she realizes that all the hotels are booked up due to a big conference, she agrees to stay.

If you saw the trailer, you know that there's something in the basement. But Barbarian holds its cards close to its chest for a while, allowing unsettling noises and the general air of suspicion Tess has about the whole AirBnb situation slowly build tension before letting all hell break loose. The scene where Tess finally goes into the basement is almost nauseatingly tense. While certain horror movie tropes (demon possession, vampires, etc) don't scare me, fucking pitch-black, claustrophobic-ass basements sure as hell do! I was going "No...NO! NO WAY WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU??" the whole time.

And that's where I gotta end my review! Either go see the movie or read the spoiler review to find out what lurks in that basement. Just know that Barbarian is a wild fucking ride.

Grade: A

***

SPOILERS BELOW! 

***

***

So one thing both the trailer and the beginning of the film do is misdirect the audience into thinking that Keith has something to do with whatever is in the basement. Bill Skarsgard just looks creepy. However, other than hearing a few weird noises, Tess's first night in the AirBnb is relatively normal. In fact, she and Keith have a great conversation over some wine (that he waits until she is present to open, as to not freak her out...this guy knows his shit) and even begin to flirt a little.

It's not until the next day, when Keith is off doing whatever he is in town for, that Tess goes into the basement in search of extra toilet paper and discovers a hidden door that leads to a creepy, dark hallway and a room with: 1) a camera on a tripod, 2) a bed with a stained mattress, and 3) a bucket. Oh, and a bloody handprint on the wall. Now, I'm no fancy big-city lawyer, but if I saw that I'd assume something unsavory happened in that basement. Thoroughly freaked out, Tess tries to go back upstairs, but the door to the basement has shut behind her and locked her in.

Luckily, Keith arrives back to the AirBnb soon and is able to get Tess out. When she tells him what she saw and that they have to leave immediately, he insists on seeing it for himself. Tess begs him not to, but agrees to stay upstairs while he checks it out. Well, he stops responding to her voice and Tess goes after him. Even though it's clear that Tess has a little crush on Keith, I thought "ain't no dick in the world worth going into that basement for."

This time, when Tess goes into the basement, she discovers another set of stairs beyond the room with the bed that leads to a series of tunnels. Tess sobs and cries for Keith, who finally bursts into the frame, looking like a ghost and yelling about someone else being down there, someone who bit him. This "someone" shows up and beats Keith's head against the wall into a pulp. RIP Keith! We only get a glimpse of this monster before the scene ends, but it appears to be a very tall, naked woman with straggly hair, pale skin, and missing teeth. 

CUT TO...something entirely unrelated! AJ Gilbride (Justin Long) is cruising along the California highway in a red convertible when he receives a call. AJ is an actor who just started working on a new sitcom. The lead actress accuses him of raping her and refuses to work on the show unless he drops out. We know that AJ is actually a Nice Guy when he refers to the woman he assaulted as a "fucking bitch". 

So, out of work, AJ looks to sell some of his properties to pay his legal bills. That includes...the very house in Detroit with the terrifying basement! So, AJ heads back to Detroit to prepare to sell the house. He is surprised to see that there are multiple suitcases still in the house and calls his property manager to see if anyone is staying there. She says that no one has been there since the last people left a couple weeks ago.

AJ is further confused when he sees a chair propping open the basement door and when he goes down to take a look, he also discovers the hidden door (he apparently bought the house and never knew there was a secret basement down there). But he is delighted to discover the secret basement because he realizes he can tell prospective buyers about the additional space. He whips out his measuring tape and gets to calculating square footage. These scenes with AJ are hilarious and whiplash-inducing. From here on out, Barbarian is more of a horror-comedy, although, trust, there is still PLENTY of horror.

AJ ends up also being chased by something and falls into a pit, where he finds Tess, who frantically tells him to stop screaming because "if you get upset, *she* gets upset". And then a gnarly hands enters the pit holding a baby bottle, which Tess drinks from. "Don't you see?" she says "She just wants you to be her baby." When AJ refuses the bottle, the woman grabs him out of the pit and forcibly tries to get him to breast feed. I guess AJ doesn't like it when *he's* the victim of assault, huh?!

At some point, there is a flashback to the 1980s. A man leaves the house (the original owner, we assume) and drives to the store for supplies: plastic sheets, diapers, and other baby stuff. He tells the shop clerk it will be a "home birth". And then he puts on a uniform and stops by a woman's house, telling her he's there to check that the water is running since there have been some outages nearby. While alone in the woman's bathroom, he unlocks the bathroom window.

We can gather from this flashback that this man kidnapped and raped women, forcing them to give birth. We surmise that the naked woman with the baby bottle is his daughter, although clearly something is not right with her. Later, when AJ escapes, he finds this man--decrepit and wasting away in a bed with an old-fashioned TV nearby and dozens of video tapes labeled things like "red head from gas station". Thank goodness we don't see what's on these tapes, but we can infer. 

AJ and Tess escape, only to be followed by the woman. They end up at the top of a water tower and realize they can't get away. Ever the selfish asshole, AJ tells the woman, who is climbing up the tower, "come and get your baby" and pushes Tess off the tower, and the woman dives after her. Assuming they are both dead, AJ climbs back down...only to realize Tess is not dead and he begins apologizing profusely. Before he can stammer out an excuse for his cowardice, the woman awakens, grabs AJ's head, and pushes his eyeballs in before giving him the old Oberyn Martell head-crunch. However, when she tries to get Tess to go back, Tess takes a gun that AJ had on him, but dropped like a butter-fingered idiot, and shoots the woman. Cut to credits. 

So, couple things. First of all, man, Detroit sucks. This poor town could not get shit on harder, could it? Second of all, wow. This movie is a fucking roller coaster. The movie starts out making us think Keith is the creeper. Then, it turns out it's actually some monster in the basement. Then it's actually the *daughter* of the real monster. Plus, the whole AJ plot line comes out of nowhere but gets seamlessly woven back in. And the movie becomes a comedy (albeit a dark one). 

A poster in a Facebook film group I'm in pointed out that Tess starts out mistrusting Keith, but learns to trust him only for him to die. Then, she starts out by trusting AJ and trying to save him and not just herself, only to find out that he's NOT trustworthy just in time for him to try to kill her. Also, Keith LOOKS creepy, but is actually a good guy, whereas AJ looks and acts like a "nice guy", but he's really a cowardly rapist asshole (and there is a scene I didn't mention where he admits to forcing the woman when she said "no", so we can 100% not care that he dies). 

Despite the "can we trust men?" text/subtext, I don't really think Barbarian is trying to be that deep. I think it just wants to be a really scary, unpredictable movie. I don't get the sense that the director wanted to make some greater statement about gender or motherhood or poverty in Detroit. I think he just wanted to freak us all the fuck out. Mission accomplished.

Barbarian was a ton of fun and it's everything I hope for in a scary movie: good writing, good cinematography, good acting, and genuinely scary. There are some jump scares for sure, but the director knows how to build dread. Jump scares are easy. Dread is an art. 

Grade: A

Stuff I watched in...August, 2022

Crimes of the Future

I was sooooo hyped for the latest David Cronenberg movie, which looked like it would be a return to form for him. Cronenberg is well known for his films which delve into body horror and the trailer for Crimes of the Future looked exactly like the weird, sick shit I'm into. 

The story is takes place in a future in which humans no longer feel pain and some people start mysteriously growing new organs. Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen) is a performance artist whose body is especially unusual, as he grows new organs at a very rapid rate. He and his partner, Caprice (Lea Seydoux), remove these organs as part of their live art. 

Sounds really cool, right? Or, at least, really fucked up? Well, sadly, Crimes of the Future is more boring than anything else. I'm still going to give it a fairly decent rating because the *ideas* behind the movie are really interesting and the special effects and body horror elements are visually interesting, but underneath the grotesque images was a whole lotta nothing. Saul captures the interest of both the government, who require all new organs to be registered, and anti-government activists who are hoping to usher in a new wave of human evolution. Saul himself is a bit of a passive pawn caught between these two groups.

Overall, I'd only recommend Crimes of the Future to fans of Cronenberg (who are likely to see it anyway). Most other viewers will find the movie gross and/or boring.

Grade: B

***

Resurrection

*Spoiler warning for this review*

Resurrection is a difficult, enthralling roller coaster ride of a thriller. Starring Rebecca Hall, who is an incredible actress, Resurrection tells the bizarre and upsetting story of a woman whose abuser shows up years later to torment her some more.

Hall plays Margaret, a business woman and single mother who just radiates strength and steely reserve. She is the woman younger women go to for advice. She looks fierce in a perfectly tailored business suit. She looks like she does not suffer fools gladly. Everything seems to be going well for Margaret, who is about to send her daughter off to college in just a few weeks, when a man from her past shows up and destroys the safe world Margaret has created for herself.

This man, David (Tim Roth, terrifying in that soft spoken way), groomed Margaret when she was 18 and he was in his 30s. He seduced her and her parents with his charm, asked Margaret to move in with him, and then slowly began to ask more and more of Margaret--"kindnesses", he would call them. They included things like going barefoot all the time and holding stress positions for hours. When Margaret got pregnant and gave birth to a baby boy, David saw that he was no longer the center of Margaret's world. 

When Margaret went to the store and left Baby Benjamin with David, she returned to find the baby gone...except for two small fingers on the kitchen table. This is where it gets really bizarre: David told Margaret that he "ate the baby up" and now Ben was in his stomach. Crazed with grief, Margaret believed him and stayed under David's power to be close to Ben. But eventually, she was able to leave David.

Now, 20 years later, David is back and telling Margaret the same bizarre thing he told her years ago: that Ben is safely in his belly and aching for his mother. David also implicitly threatens Margaret's daughter and within one meeting, Margaret is back to doing the "kindnesses" David requires of her. 

Although the whole "I ate the baby and now he's living in my stomach" thing is incredibly weird, it shows how abusers can manipulate their victims into disbelieving basic reality. It is shocking to see Margaret switch from a boss bitch to a woman holding stress positions in a park at 2 in the morning with just a few words from a man who looks harmless enough. Resurrection is a film about the power of grief and gaslighting. I'd be interested to hear what survivors of intimate partner violence have to sa about this movie because I could see it being offensive to some, but very accurate to others.

I have to give Resurrection a high rating because of Rebecca Hall's stellar performance and just how much I was on the edge of my seat the whole movie. It will grip you.

Grade: A-

***

Prey

I haven't seen any of the other Predator movies, but the premise of this film was very intriguing. It takes place in the Comanche Nation in 1719. The Predator is an extraterrestrial being that has advanced technology and weaponry and he comes to earth to hunt both the Comanche and the French fur trappers in the area. 

A young Comanche woman, Naru (Amber Midthunder), has to prove herself as a hunter to the men of her village who don't take her seriously. She can tell there is a strange threat on the periphery of her village, but no one believes her until it's too late. Over the course of the film, she learns enough about the Predator to outsmart him at his own game, proving that she really is a great hunter. 

Prey was...just ok. Other than the really unique setting (a futuristic villain, but set 300 years in the past), this is a pretty cliched action-horror movie with cheesy lines, common tropes ("You can't do X because you're a girl!"), and not a lot of character development. It was entertaining, but I think the rave reviews are less about the movie itself and more about the fact that the film cast Indigenous actors playing Indigenous characters (which is awesome!). 

Grade: B-

***

The Sandman

I haven't read The Sandman comics, so I watched the Netflix series with a totally blank slate. I really enjoyed it! There is A LOT going on, but I never felt out of my depth. The first season is sort of roughly divided into two plot lines: Morpheus, aka "Dream" (Tom Sturridge, looking pouty and gothic), being held captive and losing some stuff he needs and then being set free and finding said stuff, and Morpheus hunting down a rogue nightmare, The Corinthian (Boyd Holbrook, playing a really excellent villain). 

I'm not going to go too much into the plot since it's too complex to explain, and you should really just watch it. I'm not usually into fantasy, but The Sandman had enough horror elements to keep me intrigued. There were also stand alone plot lines, such as a man named John Dee (David Thewlis) causing mayhem in a diner and Dream meeting a man granted the gift (or curse?) of immortality in the same pub every 100 years to catch up, that I just loved. These little tangents, side-plots, and stand alone episodes are what I enjoyed most about the show. 

I'm glad I gave The Sandman a chance (my partner, who is a huge fan of the comics, encouraged me). The cinematography was lovely, the characters--even the ones who pop up for a single episode--are interesting and feel fully fleshed out, and the show was overall entertaining and enchanting. Highly recommended!

Grade: A-