Ever wanted to hear a character’s name repeated over 100 times during the course of a movie? Well, I hope you like the name Michael, because Lost Boys is going to let you hear it approximately 118 times. Plus you get some fun Goonies-type adventures with Coreys, both Feldman and Haim, in their first feature together. And if you’ve ever wanted to see Kiefer Sutherland eat worms, that’s in here too.
A solid 80s horror/teen flick with some heart. It’s a classic of the genre for good reason. And YES the dogs are credited by name at the end. Finally. (I’m looking at you, James Cameron. Pugsley deserved better.)

Have you got short term memory loss? The Room will remind you of everything. Everything is repeated; names, motivations, exposition, over and over.
But what about that short term memory loss? You should watch The Room, it will remind you of everything. Names, motivations, and exposition are all repeated, over and over.
Living with short term memory loss? May I recommend The Room, as it reminds you of everything. It repeats names, motivations, and exposition. Over and over!

Sorry to everyone who likes this program, but I have to ask is america the only country that has vicious crimes, or is it they love to sensationalize sick people, we don’t see movies or series coming from the subcontinent highlighting their rape culture or child sex trade or the amount of people who just dissapear in russia every year, it’s like how america has the only openings to the hellmouth even though america is a young country for white settlement and how america seems to has the monopoly on haunted houses etc, death cults it’s as if nowhere else on the planet has any fun things to play with, or is it that america is just so self obsessed.

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.

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.

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.

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.

After its initial airing, Ghostwatch was banned from being broadcast on the BBC for ten years. What was supposed to be a bit of a Halloween prank ended up with 30,000 calls to the BBC switchboard in an hour. In an ill-fated attempt to straddle fiction and documentary, the network failed to properly warn the viewing audience that what they were watching was definitely not real. Cut to thousands of British children watching a beloved kids’ TV presenter, Lesley Manning, being possessed by a ghost called Pipes.
In the wake of Ghostwatch an intellectually challenged young man killed himself after the pipes in his house began to knock like those in the show. There was even a medical journal report, with dubious validity, about kids showing symptoms of PTSD after watching the program.
Viewing Ghostwatch now you could never fully grasp the effect it had on a nation. It would look hokey and stupid. But before all of our minds were trained, by reality television and social media, to watch with a more skeptical eye, stuff like this could really do some damage. (Go find a British person between their mid 30s and mid 40s. Ask them about Pipes.)

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?

This is basically a guided tour of “why we can’t have nice things.” How Matt Furie is still so kind and understanding after having his art taken and twisted by these monsters, I’ll never understand.

This probably would have been more suspenseful without a basic knowledge of runes. Anyone who has seen Midsommar, certain Waffen SS insignias, or particular people in mosh pits knows that when one comes upon an othala rune one has also come upon a people who are far too concerned with some mythical “heritage” and it’s best to not stick around. Here be monsters.

Disclaimer: I actually watched this movie. Yes, the whole thing.

Cuties is the story of girls who are going to be women. Sometimes they look forward to this passage, sometimes they dread it. The problem lies in the fact that they don’t know what being a woman means. They don’t understand sex, consent, sexuality. One is mocked for picking up a discarded condom thinking it to be a balloon. They don’t understand the media being fed to them, neither mass nor social. They certainly don’t grasp its permanency or influence over them.
These girls glean information from the women in their lives, but gain little direction. The central character deals with her father traveling back to his native Senegal and returning with a second wife who will supplant the position of her own mother in the family. She’s left alone with her feelings. She doesn’t know how to handle sorrow, betrayal, anger. She lashes out. The same sorts of episodes are played out with her sexuality. People will complain about the dancing, but it’s very clearly the fumbling of young girls who don’t understand what they’re doing, they just understand that when women move that way everyone pays them attention.
If you choose not to take any time to try and understand what these young women are going through, you’re betraying them in all the ways that led to the predicaments they find themselves in in the film. If you choose to watch ‘coming of age’ stories featuring young boys figuring out their sexuality, and find pathos or even humor in it, and then don’t afford the same to these girls, you’re part of the problem. If you can watch upper middle class white girls on Dance Moms and Tik Tok do these same moves and you don’t have the same ‘outrage’ towards them that you may express towards these girls, you need to take a long hard look at why.
This film was beautifully made and will surely stand as a lasting, if controversial, testament to what pubescent girls the world over experience and endure on a daily basis. Maïmouna Doucouré has bravely told a story with Cuties that may be hard to watch at times, but I guarantee you, it’s much harder to live.

Very young, very smart people comically refusing to be tools of the military industrial complex eventually leads to a man swimming in popcorn because he thought he heard the voice of god.

This movie contains, quite possibly, the dumbest line I’ve ever heard an actor say on screen.  I’ve been thinking about it for weeks after trying to watch this train wreck, and I can’t get it out of my head.
Bryce Dallas Howard has decided to quit the extreme PETA for puppy-eyed dinosaurs organization that she seems to have joined simply to shoehorn a car chase into the plot.  The uniform of said organization is, naturally, a black turtleneck, black pants of some sort, and a black knit cap.  She feels the need to burn these things so that no one will find out about her involvement.  Because you know what gives one away as being part of a clandestine dino-saving band of do-gooders?  A black turtleneck.
Anyway…
The McGuffin reluctant clone teenager arrives back to the cabin that Bryce Dallas Howard is sharing with her and Chris Pratt, who is currently away “training” dinosaurs by showing them his right palm.  Naturally.  The teenager, upon seeing Howard burning some things in a 55 gallon drum outside, asks what she is doing.
And here’s that line.
“I’m just burning some old blankets.”
What.
I’m just burning…some old…blankets.  Do they have small pox?  Do they have an expiration date?  Is there no use for an “old blanket” as you live with your proto-nuclear family in hiding in the woods?
Burning. Some. Old. Blankets.
I…  I can’t.   Nevermind that they did my darling Sam Neill dirty in this one, this line is the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen a character utter on film. 

The gang behind Horrible Histories delves into the territory of both the Muppets and Monty Python and manages not to drown in a pool that deep. Humor on several levels makes for a great watch for both children and adults who have managed not to become total bores. Made with the genius-level crew at Jim Henson Studios. If you can’t find genuine joy in this show, lose my number.

What is a Wonder?  It’s a fiction we use to comfort ourselves.  Nurse Wright is called to a remote Irish village to watch a girl who doesn’t eat.  She’s a Wonder. 
Why did her parents promise not to feed her?  Where is the faith of an 11-year-old seemingly from?
Nurse Wright tells herself a story that it’s easier that her husband is dead.  The village priest and the local doctor tell themselves a girl really hasn’t eaten in four months.  The girl’s parents tell themselves it’s real and it’s all for the best.  The local journalist tells himself his family wouldn’t have starved if he hadn’t left home.
But how thick a shield can fiction lay over a life?  Can a story be told well enough to save one?
With opening and closing sequences wonderfully wound in artifice and myth making, this is a film that holds a more meta commentary on filmmaking and it’s abilities than anything I’ve seen in years.

Mary Beard manages, in two short hours, to present a program encompassing art history, feminism, gender, the male gaze, the early quest for anatomical knowledge, censorship, human sexuality, museum ethics, and the politics of aging. She uses pieces of art from the ancient world through to contemporary works. She even talks to Marc Quinn. All of this leads me to ask, can Mary Beard see inside my brain? Possibly. Very possibly.

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?

Lily didn’t listen and now the world is dying and she might have to marry Satan. So the next time your Forest Folk (boy)friend tells you not to touch something, maybe don’t touch it. 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.

By now you’ve heard plenty of filmmakers say it, “we wanted to make it look like the comic book.” Warren Beatty directing, and staring in, this movie may have been the first to really pull it off. The colors are fantastic, the angles are dynamic, the roster of actors is killer. Beatty clearly called in a career’s worth of favors to get this thing cast. Unfortunately, the comic book all this was based on had to be Dick Tracy. And Dick Tracy’s extensive cast of mobster villains was, for lack of a better word, grotesque. This film got an Oscar for the makeup effects done to achieve the looks of gangsters like Small Face (who has a head that’s about 3 feet wide), Flat Top (who has a head you could serve drinks off of), and Lips (who is Al Pacino with a giant mouth and a ridiculous chin, screaming about 90% of the time). But if you can look past the caricature prosthetics, and maybe you’d like to see Madonna with her real face again, give Dick Tracy about an hour and 40 of your time.

In a classic campy camp movie the campers’ thick New York accents are the campiest thing by far.

Do you remember that part of the video game in which the former king is ‘de-evolved’ into a sentient fungus that can catch a stolen police car as it drives over a cliff and dangle it in the air like a bungee jumper? Yeah, me neither.
But I do feel like Chuck Tingle’s writing has really improved since 1993. Too bad Dennis Hopper didn’t live to see his renaissance.

This movie is like a slow tram ride through a wax museum of 80s movie tropes. On your left you’ll see cartoon gangsters, early break dancing, a gang of children in edgy denim vests. On your right you’ll have a great view of a televised dance show, kung fu, and even more racial stereotypes that wouldn’t fly today.
And all of this to a Motown soundtrack ordered by the right hand of Berry Gordy himself. Make sure the safety belt is low and tight across your lap. Hang on to the metal bar. Here we go.

The State is truly seminal to comedy of the last 25 years. Not only is the show itself really really good, but members of the State (in various combinations) went on to create Reno 911, Stella, Wet Hot American Summer, Viva Variety, Michael and Michael Have Issues, and Children’s Hospital. Members of the State have been on, basically, every comedy show you’ve loved in the past two decades…Always Sunny, Bob’s Burgers, Drunk History, Archer, Veep, Party Down, Another Period, Burning Love, and on and on and on.

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.

Tom Cruise plays to type as a vain main who is becoming more and more unhinged.
Penelope Cruz plays to type as a disarmingly pleasant pixie person.
Cameron Diaz plays to type as a manic blonde that takes things too far.
Tilda Swinton plays to type as a conduit between the real and the surreal.
Blossom plays to type as a dog.

When my brain finally dies, as they keep promising me it will, the mix of euphoria and terror will not be foreign to me. An electrical imbalance between the cells will wade through neurons filling themselves with charged ions as the electromagnetic forces try to wipe clear the charge imbalance and maintain a hold on the ions. As the systems panic, the serotonin sets in. My eyes glaze.
And how is none of this entirely unfamiliar? Because I have already seen Too Many Cooks.

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?!