Love Lies Bleeding
The gays deserve better. What started as a sweet and steamy retro lesbian U-Haul romance story quickly devolved into soap opera level twists and turns in the criminal thriller plot. I think the second half was supposed to be shocking, but it was mostly boring and vapid. The kind of stuff that falls apart once […]
Challengers
These boys sure do love Zendaya, but more than they love Zendaya, they love each other. And really, more than they love each other, they love tennis. The film oozes sexuality between each point of the central love triangle, yet it’s not about characters actually having sex with each other. Tennis is their sex. It […]
Severance S01
Is this praxis? It’s good enough for me. This is a labor movement story, through and through, and it’s good at what it’s doing. You feel for the workers’ predicament—it’s torturous—and are naturally led to consider what parallels can be drawn with our lives. This is because the sci-fi premise brings the labor problems to […]
Aftersun
An extremely beautiful film, Aftersun is a slow, melancholic, and nostalgic story on childhood, fatherhood, depression, and our memories of the important people in our lives. Every scene felt extremely relatable to me, with much of the film focused on simply showing how it feels to be eleven. We see in detail how she experiences the […]
Emily the Criminal
Allow me to be a hater for a moment. This is slop. A “simulacrum of a movie” is how my friend described it. It certainly has all the parts of a movie, but it’s not clear the writer-director actually knew what they’re supposed to be used for. Every scene was so painfully rote you would […]
Book — Dune Messiah
I want to talk about Dune today—the books, not the movies. I’ve just finished the second book, Dune Messiah, and felt very moved by it. I tore into it quickly after finishing Dune, I’d heard that it’s much shorter and serves as a nice companion piece, so I’d been holding off on a full reflection […]
Everything Everywhere All at Once
For a movie that truly values sincerity, why must it dangle keys in my face as if I’m a baby that needs to be kept entertained? A good story, with a good idea for telling it, is bogged down by incessantly having to stop and point out how “silly” it is. The humor fell flat. […]
Avatar: The Way of Water
Avatar: The Way of Water whips ass—no ifs, ands, or buts about it. Unless you really disliked the first movie, go see it on the biggest screen you can. See it not simply for the visuals (though it does look even more jaw dropping than the first), but for the thrilling action sequences and enchanting […]
The Banshees of Inisherin
An intensely sad but darkly funny contemplation of what the point of all this is, the various ways we can try to feel satisfied in life, and how we should treat one another. It was deeply moving. I’d highly recommend it, even if I wouldn’t want to watch it again any time soon. I didn’t […]
In Brief — Decision to Leave
Decision to Leave was immediately gripping. I found myself thinking “oh fuck yes” several times, as I was served deliciously weird and unique characters, each scene leaving me more and more intrigued on what everyone’s deal is, and what this may spell for the murder mystery. The editing and pace of the film was attention-grabbing, […]