A sexually liberated French provincial priest in the early half of the 17th century is the most handsome man in town. Everyone wants him; the women, the nuns, the government. He is most fervently desired by a hunchbacked nun called Jeanne. When she can’t have him, she claims that he visits her in the night in the form of a spirit. Government officials who want him gone immediately see these accusations for the opprotunity they are.
Now, imagine the hysteria of the Crucible with a bunch of screaming, masturbating, nude nuns. And all of this is seen through the director of Altered States. It’s hallucinatory, heretical, gorgeous, and very difficult (if not totally impossible) to find in a complete and uncensored form. Vanessa Redgrave does a masterful turn as Jeanne in a film that probably couldn’t be made today, and I’m frankly shocked they got it made then.

In Leprechaun 3, the titular leprechaun bites a lot of people. It’s kind of his thing, the biting. It’s not explained at all, but one of these bites results in a young man turning into a….wereleprechaun. How do you know if you’re turning into a wereleprechaun? Easy. Your skin becomes comically terrible, you develop a pretty terrible ‘Irish’ accent, you grow some really unruly sideburns, and you gain a manic need to ingest potatoes.

An entire move about a leprechaun in which the word leprechaun is never used. Not once. There is a character called Dr. Mittenhand. That fact alone should be enough to sell anyone. Also a cyborg commander of a unit of ‘Marines’ is somehow enchanted into doing a drag act which, considering that it’s in the cold reaches of space, is vaguely passable.

Up until this point Billions has been great at handling metaphor and analogy in the midst of lecturing monologues. Then Chuck Rhoades started talking about mutton. He tells Bryan Connerty that mutton is on the menu because people wouldn’t eat it if they called it sheep. It would be too cute, too real.
Not only is this wrong, it’s a tremendous missed opportunity.
The Normans invaded Britain in 1066. The Normans spoke French, the Anglo-Saxons spoke early English. The Normans ruled the land and the Anglo-Saxons worked it. The languages merged some of their vocabulary, and we’re still using those words today.
An Anglo-Saxon saw a sheep grazing in the field, a Norman saw a mouton on his plate. So now we say mutton for the food and sheep for the beast. Boeuf became beef, porc became pork, poulet went a little differently and became pullet in a kitchen but chicken overall. (Fish was more complicated, the French is too close to the word poison in English. But I digress.)
So when Rhoades is talking about mutton, he’s talking about the language of the conqueror. People in his position don’t call them sheep because people in his position never see the living animal. It’s not that they’re “too cute.” It’s that it’s work for peasants and food for kings. Billions missed the opportunity to turn this information towards the meaning of power versus effort. He uses the language of a ruler because he is one. He talks about changing the way he speaks for the sake of the sheep, when only really does it for the sake of himself.

“Allow nothing to be in your life that you cannot walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you spot the heat around the corner.” These are the words a big time criminal named Neil (Robert De Niro) lives by. He only associates with his crew, has no love in his life, doesn’t even own furniture. He amasses wealth, but starts to wonder why.
Vincent (Al Pacino) is a detective brimming with passion, but not always for the right things. While he has a wife with a daughter from a previous relationship just waiting to become a real family to him, he’s too focused on his job.
Director Michael Mann spends the first hour of Heat expertly setting up the dichotomy between these two men. De Niro is quiet, detached, understated, and ready to walk away from everything at any minute. Pacino is loud, overly invested, brash, and will doggedly pursue his targets. Of course, once this opposition of two such expert opponents is set up (both the characters and the men playing them), it will start to break down. Neil longingly observes his associates’ relationships and starts to consider whether love may just be worth the risk of attachment. Meanwhile Vincent is hyper focused on the hunt and is gambling with the viability of his own personal attachments in the process.
These two kings meet on multiple occasions across a chessboard, both metaphorically and in the flesh, both as archetypes and as fully fleshed humans. Heat makes you question what you’re attached to; family, history, love, sex, money, self-indulgence, morality, duty, the job. And, inevitably, it asks you what we’re willing to walk away from when not doing so may cost you everything. It’s full of choices. And, of course, it has what may be the greatest heist/shoot out in film.

If you’ve ever worked in a bookstore please please watch this. If you love language play, please just watch anything with Dylan Moran in it. And if you like Graham Linehan’s central crew of an Irishman, a weirdo, and a woman then see the IT Crowd for more.

An overly smart, darkly funny, slightly ominous, practically magical boy arrives as if from nowhere. He takes a shine to a girl and decides to use his abilities, whether constructive or destructive, to give her whatever she wants.
People start falling to his machinations. And she likes it. Then people start getting hurt. And she doesn’t like it so much anymore. But it doesn’t stop.
Mix all this with a razor sharp pastiche of teen culture… Sounds like the plot of ‘Heathers’, right? Sure does. But first it was the plot of Lord Love a Duck in 1966.
If nothing else, check out the sweater buying scene. It’s on YouTube. It’s completely insane.

This tour of 80s horror tropes may as well have been written by a 15 year old boy drunk for the first time. It’s incredible. I love it.
Five sorority sisters have to stay the night in a newly acquired house to “meet the movers early in the morning.” They go about this dressed like they fell out of a Frederick’s of Hollywood catalog. The basement has been locked since there were a whole bunch of murders down there. Because of course it has. There’s a lot of alcohol and shower/clothes changing scenes that go on for…a while.
Throw in a ouija board, a possession, and a man who is stabbed, choked, drowned, and shot. There’s a scene in the kitchen where you can see the shadow of a crew member’s hands holding a squirt bottle of blood just before it sprays across the wall. Schlock magic.

This was a pretty classic 1980s cross between a “car broke down now we’re stuck in this haunted house” story and a killer toy theme. A lot of the doll action is done in stop motion, which is gorgeous. There’s a knock off punk rock Madonna and her friend is a fourth rate Siouxsie Sioux, a pair of a parent and step parent that you are absolutely allowed to hate, an adult sweet Sean Astin type, a little girl that looks like baby Elijah Wood in a pigtail wig, and a precious old couple of toymakers. Let’s see who gets killed by a bunch of dolls!

This film starts with a very interesting change. Instead of Jonathan Harker being an unknowing participant in the story, he instead goes into Dracula’s house knowing full well that he’s a monster. From there is continues to be a sophisticated and nuanced retelling of the Dracula story.
Christopher Lee inaugurates his recurring role in Hammer films as a stately and imposing Count Dracula. He only appears on screen for about 15 minutes, but is truly unforgettable. Peter Cushing is, in my opinion, the best Van Helsing there’s ever been. His portrayal is that of a man you absolutely believe has spent years deep in study gathering arcane knowledge, yet is strong and forceful enough to fight true evil when he hunts it down.
Dialogue is used with great economy, especially in the first half. The script doesn’t need to spell out action as it happens, rather it is portrayed through attenuated acting choices and pops of rich color. If you’re just getting into Hammer Horror, this is a great place to start.

Often referred to as the “best worst movie,” Troll 2 is the story of a family on vacation in a town whose population happens to kill and eat people…because they’re all goblins.
The thing you have to understand about Troll 2 is that it doesn’t involve a single troll. So don’t expect any, you won’t find them. What you will find includes the following:
—-dialogue delivered like a table reading of a 6th grade production of Our Town
—-a character who makes an awful lot of appearances with an awful lot of lines for being dead the entire time
—-ominous messages written on baseballs
—-a boy protected from attack by a mouth full of bologna
—-the immortal line “You can’t piss on hospitality.”
—-a sex(?) scene involving corn on the cob
—-quite possibly the strangest take on vegetarianism ever written
Troll 2 is a paragon of unironically bad cinema. It’s not to be missed under any circumstances.

If the original 1959 version of House in Haunted Hill was run through a theme park ride and what came out the other side was sprinkled with whatever substance the early 2000s was made of, you’d get this.

Geoffrey Rush is (very appropriately) a theme park tycoon who hates his wife. Of course she hates him too. And, just like the 1959 original, they’re going to try to kill eachother at a party. The party, again, involves 5 total strangers as guests and a big cash prize if they make it through the night.
The whole thing reads like a theme park ride, flickering light tubes, insane asylum, some pretty nonsensical medical “equipment,” excessive CGI in places. But Rush turns in an excellent campy performance as a Vincent Price/carnival barker/showman type. That’s a type, right?
Witness the wonder of Famke Janssen dressed in a chinese brocade homecoming scoochy dress, topped off with embarrassing up-do and brow bone gel glitter. Doesn’t get much more early 2000s than that. Oh wait, yes it does. Ali Larter, Taye Diggs, and Chris Kattan are here too.

Dr. Jack Griffin has lost himself. He’s gone too far into something, call it obsession or addiction or some kind of sickness. And now not only is his right mind gone but so is his visible self. Now he’s the Invisible Man.
Rather than a sudden laboratory mistake, Griffin did this to himself through a series of injections over the course of 30 days. He felt himself slipping away and he just kept at it. Now he keeps talking about how there must be a way out by going even further in.
The entire town is terrified. His former associates mean nothing to him now, he’s out to murder them. He robs a bank and throws the money in the street. The police can’t decide what crimes to attribute to his reign of terror and what’s ordinary. All of his actions are now simply to perpetuate his own madness.
Now what if I told you that the United States was in the midst of an opioid crisis at the time this film was made?
Important note: Claude Rains carries this entire film without being able to show a single facial expression or have the audience look him in the eye. Incredible.

Mr. Loren (Vincent Price) hates his wife. And she hates him. He’s rich as Croesus and she’s his fourth wife. The others all died and the current Mrs. Loren isn’t leaving without his money. All of his money.
So they’d better throw a party, right? Offer five strangers $10,000 if they manage to stay the whole night, implying that something may keep them from doing it. Tell them the house is haunted. Tell them seven people have been murdered there. Set up some scares. Lock down the house at midnight. Now, casually place seven tiny coffins on a table, one for each guest. And they all contain a loaded gun.
It’s a game of who is really gas lighting whom. Who can turn a stranger into a killer? Who can turn a loved one into a corpse?
Oh, and if you watched that newest Rick and Morty episode…THIS is where the trope of falling into a vat of acid and only bones rising up comes from. Now go and impress your friends with knowledge of a black and white film from 1959. They’ll all think you’re so smart.

Magic(k) can often feel to the practitioner, and appear to the onlooker, rather silly and ineffectual. On that note…
A man who lives in a storm drain wants to be a god. He wears an ascot and a cape. He has a more developed relationship with a ceremonial dagger than he does with his supposed love interest. For a spell, he asks a young hustler/drug dealer/blonde kid to ejaculate into a tin can. Dignity doesn’t exactly abound in his life.
After hitting all the usual 1970s ridiculous notes in this genre, Simon King of the Witches actually manages an honest note. Put bad things out into the world, like curses on your girlfriend’s dad, and it’s probably going to bite you in the ass. Or, you know, end up with you dead…in a storm drain.
Up until quite recently, if you wanted to see the occult on film, this is the kind of quality you had to be willing to tolerate. It’s getting better, but slowly.

Phantasm is the story of a grieving boy. Death has slithered into this life. It’s taken several people close to him, and now it’s also taken the physical form of an undertaker.
Writer/director Don Coscarelli spent over a year making this film, working on weekends with a crew of family, friends, and “aspiring professionals.” Unlike David Lynch’s Eraserhead, which took 5 years to film and was marked by an obsessively steady vision and tight control, Phantasm let its “aspiring professionals” play. You can see it in the lighting set ups. Clearly, whomever did these set ups spent the work week dreaming of what they got to try out on the weekends.
You get to see characters lit by the sun, the moon, a hanging mechanic’s light under the hood of a car, spotlight, headlights, a flickering flame, a swinging pendant lamp, product display lights, desk lamps, behind, above, below…even a room made of light that looks like it came out of 2001: a Space Odyssey.
Now it’s just remembered for the sentinel spheres…. And, yeah, maybe it’s a dream and maybe it’s real. But Death shows up either way, so who cares.
Bonus: Someone actually (realistically) loses bladder control when they die on screen, don’t often see that.

“In physics, the observer effect is the theory that the mere observation of a phenomenon inevitably changes that phenomenon.” As a documentarian, Nick Broomfield has highlighted this concept in a couple of important ways.
Broomfield is often criticized in the documentary field for “inserting himself” too closely with his subject matter. But I think that the wrong thing to do would be to presume that anyone could go this in depth with a living subject and NOT effect it. People know they’re being filmed, know they’re being interviewed, know that someone is finally listening, and it shows. To pretend it doesn’t would be irresponsible and arrogant.
The Grim Sleeper was called such because of the “hiatus” he supposedly took in his murders. Operating from 1985 to 2007, the Los Angeles police tied no killings to Lonnie Franklin Jr between 1988 and 2002. But he never stopped. He just spent 14 years working in sanitation services. ….Don’t think about that too much.
The only reason these killings were allowed (yes, allowed) to continue as long as they did was because of the victim pool, namely black women, many of whom were sex workers and/or addicts. Police refer to these victims as the “less dead” because they don’t matter to them the way an affluent, white victim would. And it shows. Here the observer effect would tell us that more observation of these crimes may very well have brought about a more timely investigation and prosecution, and dozens of women would still be alive.

So you want to make a direct to video sequel of an unnecessary remake of a legitimately good movie? Well, then Victor Garcia is your director. He sure did churn out a stunner with Return to House on Haunted Hill, why not let him try again with Mirrors 2?
This movie turned out like something that was supposed to be used to teach someone English. Everything is spelled out in blunt dialogue, then repeated, then usually repeated at least once more. Maybe that’s needed to justify the flimsy structure that passes for a plot, maybe it’s just to pass the time.
Well, let’s break it down a little and play a game called
WHERE’D THE BUDGET GO?
—-Opening credits? This might just be the longest opening credits I’ve ever seen on a 4th rate horror flick. So maybe.
—-Mirrors? There are a LOT of them. This is a contender for budget majority.
—-Gary Oldman? No, definitely couldn’t afford him. But they got this blonde bootleg version with an upsetting ponytail situation. Bet he works cheap though.
—-Locations? Most of the action takes place in a single giant building that’s supposed to be a “department store.” It appears to have no “departments” and about 4 things set up for sale, despite it “opening in a week.” But for midcentury architecture buffs, they appear to have a Brutalist breakroom.
—-Psychology consultant? With lines like “the hallucinations are a sign that you’re getting your life back in order”? Nope.
——Special effects glass? There’s one big chunk of it, and it ends up going from shower door to guillotine very quickly. We may have dropped some coin here.
—-Book on mirror symbolism? Possible, but it came off the bargain table…and they shoved everything they learned from it into one hastily spit out monologue. Then they abandon it and have a man’s face reflected in, not a mirror, but… pavement. PAVEMENT.
—-Name tags? There are a lot of name tags. There is a LOT of exposition done entirely through name tags. But I have a feeling they got a deal on these in bulk and just wrote it into the script.
—-Fake blood? A man has both of his Achilles tendons cut, which ought to make an adult male exsanguinate in about 2 minutes, but just seems to paralyze this dude from the waist down in a couple cups of red corn syrup. Budget didn’t go here.
—-Rain effects? Maybe. They do lead to one of the more absurd car crashes in cinema, but they were very clearly aimed over a stationary car. No money for that wind machine, huh?
—-CPR training? Well, this guy alternating breaths, chest compressions, and a defibrillator tells me….No.
—-Andy Serkis? Noooo. Way out of their league. But they got a guy who could do a half decent Gollum voice. And I bet he just worked for a couple day’s access to craft services.
—-CGI? It’s stuffed into every conceivable corner. Corners which, incidentally, none of these characters can see as they all seem to lack peripheral vision. Lowest bidder, sure, but somebody got paid.
—-Cover art? Okay, THIS could be it. Somebody took their time with the cover art. We may have cracked it.
TLDR: Mirrors 2, check out that sharp cover art. Spooky.

Richard E Berlin was the chairman of the Hearst Corporation and personal friend of Richard Nixon. His eldest daughter turned out to be a Warhol superstar who painted with her tits. It turns out, if you breed the wildly rich and effete amongst themselves for enough generations, that family tree will throw up a monster. For American high society that monster’s name is Brigid Berlin. And she’s fucking incredible.
She’s appeared in the films of Andy Warhol, Paul Morrissey, and John Waters.
Brigid is the forever queen of us obsessives. She collects, records, repeats, and eats. She’s insanely articulate and sharp as a paper cut. She pioneered Polaroids, trip books, pug ownership, confrontational nudity, and telling the entire world to fuck off. This documentary straddles the obsessions of her past and those fueling her present.
At the time I write this there are no links for this film. But Brigid Berlin is good enough to write about without links.

If you only know one Lou Reed song it’s probably “Walk on the Wild Side.” It’s essentially a song about characters surrounding the scene at Andy Warhol’s Factory. Little Joe (Dallesandro) is real, the Sugar Plum Fairy is only partially so. But the big three are Holly, Candy, and Jackie. Holly Woodlawn was the funny one. Candy Darling was the pretty one. And Jackie Curtis? Well, Jackie was the SMART one.
In this documentary, Jackie’s friend Craig Highberger crafts a comprehensive portrait of a person beyond any single discipline, beyond gender, beyond time. If you’re into 1970s music, art, avant guarde theater, drag, culture, poetry, chaos, quips, or glitter you WILL recognize famous faces in this doc. Poet Taylor Mead, raconteur and Bowie manager (my favorite) Leee Black Childers, drag pioneer Holly Woodlawn, trans trailblazer Jayne County, beacon of gay theater Harvey Fierstein, indie darling Sylvia Miles, director Paul Morrissey, general treasure of a human Lily Tomlin, and on and on and on.

At the time I write this there is no link here for this film. But I’ll write about it anyway, I love it THAT much.

But I’m A Cheerleader immediately flashes its indie cred by casting Bud Cort (Harold and Maude) and Mink Stole (everything John Waters has ever done) as Natasha Lyonne’s parents.
….Speaking of John Waters, this film draws directly from his sense of inclusive world-building. If you haven’t, or haven’t recently, watched Desperate Living, stop reading this and go do that right now….
It’s rare to find hyper colored camp with a heart this human, especially set in something as vile as conversion therapy. The visuals are sublimely surreal and the humor is plenty dark. Oh, and April March was used perfectly on this soundtrack seven years before Tarantino got a hold of her. So there.

This movie went straight to DVD and was meant to pioneer a technology called Navigational Cinema, wherein the viewer could chose options at certain points in the story where the narrative could fork. Ultimately, 96 different stories were possible. Guess what never caught on?…
Now. I don’t know what the hell happened, but the cut of this film I saw didn’t even break the 90 minute mark. You’re left with something that reads like you turned the pages of a Choose Your Own Adventure book into blotter acid and then ate the whole thing.
Keeping in mind that this scenario reduces characters to speaking ONLY in quips and exposition, this movie includes (but is not limited to) the following:
—-several British actors trying their hardest to maintain American accents
—-so many underdeveloped “characters” that you know they’re going to get picked off before you learn most of their names
—-a leather-clad, I dunno…bounty hunter? dressed like an off the rack Lara Croft invovled in an all lady 3 way with a couple of phantom mental patients dressed in sexy sexy straight jackets
—-some woman’s face sliding off the front of her head and splatting on the ground
—-a man drawn and quartered by sheets. Yeah. SHEETS.
—-everyone having a gun for no good reason
—-guns shot at people, walls, statues, big machines, everything
—-people totally taken aback when the shooting thing doesn’t “work”
—-everyone’s flip phones ringing at once, played for scares AND for laughs
—-everyone answering said flip phones only to hear the screams of a man dying, tied to a wheelchair by a haunted house extra in a nurse’s uniform
—-someone saying “it belongs in a museum” like Indiana Jones wasn’t gonna notice
—-a “hydrotherapy” tank that you could sink an SUV in
—-a woman who, I’m CONVINCED, has nipples that can sense danger
—-that woman being in danger for an hour straight, so her nips are up the whole time
—-a scary room that rains chairs. You read that right. It rains chairs.
—-the “heart of the house” LITERALLY being the heart of the house
—-some more gun stuff
—-a death-by-lowest-bidder-CGI
—-functioning shower heads that come out of nowhere, just so everybody’s shirts stay wet
—-and more, a lot more, so much more. I can’t express how much more. Pure. Insanity.

How are you still reading this? Haven’t you started watching it yet?! This is award winning cinema. Okay, so the award was a Golden Reel Award for best sound editing in a direct to video release. But still.
HOW ARE YOU STILL READING THIS?!

Based on the book Red Dragon, Manhunter is more subtle than its Hollywood siblings. It’s not Silence of the Lambs, I know. But the world hadn’t quite acquired its taste for psychopaths in 1986 as it did after 1991. And it certainly hadn’t reached the flashy bloodlust that Red Dragon enjoyed in 2002.
What I like about this one is more delicate. We can see it in the colors. While he ultimately belongs to author Thomas Harris, Jonathan Demme and Michael Mann treat their Hannibal Lecters very differently. Demme’s is a snake, head raised and swaying in a richly dark cell. Mann’s is locked in a world without color. Seriously everything, but everything, is white. He’s a psychopathic songbird in a cage, and he’d slit your throat just to see that shade of red.
What I would liked to have seen in Manhunter (that was pulled off well in Red Dragon) is to see Francis Dolarhyde depicted in a world of darkness, opposite to Lecter’s lights that he can never turn off.
It’s a privilege to see characters as nuanced and well-fleshed as Harris’ handled by two excellent directors. It’s almost like drawing the nude, every good art student should have a crack at it. It’s fundamental.

Now…. here’s the game. Two prolific character actors are in both Manhunter and Silence of the Lambs. Two. Now…if you can point them out without resorting to IMDB I’ll give you a cookie.

Between the first and fifth centuries of the common era, Rome had nearly 100 rulers. And it’s said that only 4 of them died of natural causes. Emperors don’t die. Emperors are murdered.
Tony Soprano is an emperor, or at least he’d like to be. He’s acquired all the necessary attributes: palatial villa, clever wife, genetic successors, a Praetorian Guard (misfits though they may be). He has money, power, ambition, and a taste for both banter and blood.
Over the course of six impeccable seasons watch a man nurture and grow his own psychopathy until everyone he knows has either been encompassed by it or has succumbed to it. I say ‘knows’ and not ‘loves’ because Soprano does not possess the capacity for an emotion as genuine as that. Everything is negotiable. Every table can turn. Sure, he can play the part of a human who loves, who is loyal and maybe even kind. But if you outlive your usefulness, you’re as fair a game as a clay skeet in the sky. And he’ll care about that much for you when he’s broken you.
Follow the emperor. Respect the emperor. Commend him if he ever shows you mercy, but never ever forget what he is.

First thing’s first: Linda Hunt. She’s 4’9”, she’s got an Oscar, and she was in frigging Dune. She’s in this too, and maybe that should be enough for any of us.
But if you need more…Meryl Streep in her prime.
The first half hour is basically John Waters’ Polyester with a bigger budget and without Divine. But then things really get going. Basically, a woman is cheated on by her husband, in every sense of that phrase, and then she repays him by taking his life apart.
If you watched First Wives Club and wished that there had been more arson, this one’s for you. And where else are you going to see Rosanne Barr and Ed Begley Jr as a married couple?

If you know anything about the phenomena known as Satanic Ritual Abuse around the 1980s in the US, then the card at the beginning of this movie is going to get you excited. Calm down, there isn’t a lot of payoff there.
But stick with it and you’ll see a well paced horror film that slowly imbues you with creeping discomfort of a girl left alone in a house, in the middle of nowhere, without a ride home. Like said girl you’ll think that those sounds could be something sinister, or maybe nothing at all. Maybe you’re reading too far into things.
And then, all at once, they’re on you. The pentagrams are out and about and somebody’s gotta die.
Horror fans will get a kick out of Mary Woronov and Tom Noonan. And maybe also the appearance of someone eating a Sky Bar.

Ostensibly this is a film about the daughter of a murdered family joining forces with the Devil in the body of a murdered man and wreaking vengeance over some soldiers in the snow. In practice it’s nowhere near as interesting as all that.
This movie is choking on its own voice over. It starts out well enough. Perhaps a little esoteric, but one may expect that from a film that talks about the Devil this much. But it never lets up. The voice over smothers anything that might be mistaken for tact, plot, or decent storytelling. It won’t let itself breathe. It just keeps explaining itself rather that actually doing anything.
There’s no evidence of the Devil in his film. There’s a man you see hanged, and the same man walking around again afterward. No ceremony, no real dogma or folklore, nothing tangible apart from the voice over.
You’re going to wait around thinking “This has to get better, right? The premise seems good.” It doesn’t. So don’t.
TLDR: a girl that looks like the daughter from Bosch runs around in the snow dressed like George Harrison in the skiing scenes from ‘Help!’…and she’s got a gun.

A few scenes into this movie, when you realize that there’s no church in that town, it’s over. OVER. Illusion shattered and you’re left waiting over an hour for the other shoe to drop.
The second of those two stars was for the colors. Those were pretty.

While every writer working with a subject from distant history attempts to remove the cultural relativism brought on by the passage of time, Amy Jump may have actually done it.
The English Civil War seems pretty dull, doesn’t it? Cavaliers and Roundheads screaming at each other about Kings and Parliament, Catholics and Protestants, Charles and Oliver. But that’s only if you look at it through modern eyes. See, back then, everything was (what would today be considered) insane. Lives changed with the weather, people hunted each other down based on bizarre moralities, and magic was absolutely real.
Plus, everyone was high as a kite. All the time. Beer and wine were safer than water, grain had ergot growing in it, and any old mushroom went right down your throat. The modern mind can hardly fathom trying to manage basic agricultural practices through a dense fog of psychotropic substances, let alone pack a rifle barrel and wage war.
A Field in England uses pitch perfect dialogue and some fabulous camera work (at times with some really lo-fi lenses) to take you about as close to this version of reality as you’re likely to get.

Plus, you get to hear Julian Barratt use the word “mummery” in anger.
That one’s just me? Okay.

Simon Schama is one of those teachers you never forget, one of the difficult ones that you work really hard to impress. Power of Art is that class you took where it finally clicked, you got why it all mattered. He wrenches these artists from the pages of books by sheer force of will alone. He stands them in front of you and you can’t look away. They’re flesh and so SO much blood.
Playing the most raw version of Van Gogh you’re ever likely to see, Andy Serkis sucks down tubes of yellow paint. And if you don’t want to see that, just don’t talk to me.

Jason had a hockey mask. Freddy had those claws. Pinhead had a grid of nails.
Joan Crawford had those goddamn eyebrows.
Sure this movie was based on a book by Joan’s adopted daughter Christina that was later thought of as a hatchet job. But if a half of a half of a half of this stuff is true, that woman was a monster. Watch as Joan Crawford mentally and physically tortures men, women, employees, studio bosses, and her own children in brilliant technicolor. She’s a heinous bitch and she doesn’t give a fraction of a fuck.
And if you’re a gay man and you HAVEN’T seen Mommie Dearest… bro, do your homework.

This one is smacks of “final project in art school.” Complete with friends called in from the drama department and some silly dance sequences.
Anton LeVay is finally clearly seen for the mix of serious cultural figure and cartoon mischief maker that he is. Jayne Mansfield is finally presented as equal parts hyper-fictional bombastic pin-up and astute violin-playing media sorceress. This is the tale of two smart people having more fun with eachother than anyone realized at the time.
And where else are you going to see an animated baby Mariska Hargitay watch her big brother Zoltan get mauled by a lion?

Jim Jarmusch put his two main characters in long hair, matted into locks. He said he wanted this to always remember that they were animals. And they are.
Two vampires, millennia old, are sophisticated and elegant predators. Those lions you see on a royal seal or coat of arms. Rearing, teeth bared, always in total control, but nevertheless deadly. They’ve spent their years learning, reading, playing music, nurturing artists and scientists, mastering languages.
As our story opens we find them half a world apart, the pleasures they derive from human kind are starting to sour. Returning to their most elemental state means returning to each other. Their exchanges of tenderness and respect surface in dark humor and genuine expressions of affection. Exactly what you came to Jarmusch for, face it.
And, yeah yeah, there’s a central conflict that stumbles into town. And maybe some heraldic lions are ripped from their gilded perches and back into a more real world. But you can go find out about that yourself.

It took me a while to figure out why this series left such a strange taste in my mouth. I can see what the producers were trying to do, narrow the focus on Bundy and come away with a new view on an old and infamous case. But let’s talk about how that has the potential to go so wrong.
This series falls to its knees in awe and wonder at what Bundy was able to “accomplish.” It focuses on his manipulations, his cunning, his charm, his good looks, his daring escapes. And that part is undeniably fascinating. And I understand the urge to pull back before getting to the real nitty gritty gore at the climax of this narrative, which this series does. We’re left holding the receiver and listening to a dial tone just before the devil picks up the phone. If this is the only thing you ever watch about this case, you’re going to come away from it thinking that Ted Bundy might just be Batman.
This man killed more than 30 women. He was a violent and sadistic rapist. This man killed more than 30 women. He escaped from jail. Twice. So that he could kill again. Read that once more. This man killed more than 30 women.
This shouldn’t be the first, and should never be the only, thing that someone watches about Ted Bundy. Watch it. Enjoy it. But read or watch more about this case, please.

Hold on. I mean it. Strap yourself to something, get out the duct tape, whatever you’ve got to do. The twists and turns on this one would prepare you for the G-forces of space travel. If your brain doesn’t turn into a warm slurry, you might be able to mutter “what the hell is going on?” a few more times than you’d previously thought prudent in a 90 minute time span.
Oh, you think we’re done here? Nope. Guzzle down some water as fast as you can, ‘cause we’re going again. And then maybe again after that.

Would have been better titled You Can Tell Mormons Anything: Volume One.

Stay hydrated.

Whatever you’ve heard about this movie, it’s so much more. Heard the colors are loud? They’re louder. Heard the plot is oddly contrived and overly complicated? It’s positively irrational. Heard there were boobs? Yeah, and they’re all huge.
After this film was sent to the ratings board and returned with an X rating, rather than the R that was expected, Meyer wanted to go back and put in even more sex. Ebert talked him out of it. Maybe that’s for the best, as this one is basically perfect as it is.
If you’ve never seen this movie, prepare to discover the origins of pop culture references that have been staring you in the face for 50 years, including the immortal “it’s my happening and it freaks me out!” and “what I see is beyond your dreaming.” You’ve heard bits of this movie in songs, in samples, and yes, in the first Austin Powers movie.
If you love 60s kitsch, watch this. If you love John Waters, watch this. If you can’t afford drugs but want to feel totally out of your mind, watch this.