Piaffe, Ann Oren’s lusty ASMR-laden debut feature in 16mm, pivots around a timid young woman named Eva (Simone Bucio) having to play substitute Foley artist to Zara (Simon(è) Jaikiriuma Paetau), her troubled sibling holed up in a psych ward. Their shared apartment is a ready-to-go sound studio, where pairs of brogues and boots are purposefully … Continue reading
I’ve recently been suffering from a bad case of documentary intolerance. If I see another talking head, I’m going to puke! This sudden allergy to all things doc is a condition I developed as every streaming service has become bent on churning out an endless excess of hashed-out, shoddily produced documentary films or docuseries on … Continue reading
I can’t be the only one who has come to dread Pride month. Every year when that calendar turns to June 1, I feel a looming sense of trepidation. What will it be THIS year? What will set off the online gladiator battle now? Kink at Pride? Puppy play in front of the kiddos in … Continue reading
“A career-killing film, Ari Aster’s Beau Is Afraid is what happens when studios cede full creative freedom to directors with reckless disregard for audiences outside themselves, Joaquin’s stellar performance goes to waste in this dumpster fire that A24 needs to answer for–0/10,” tweeted Erick Weber. Fellow tweeter Drew Landry disagreed with a twist, “Just saw … Continue reading
“Narcissists are the ones who make it,” declares Signe (Kristine Kujath Thorp) at a house party she attends with her budding art star boyfriend Thomas (Eirik Sæther) in Kristoffer Borgli’s Sick of Myself. This statement, tossed off with a cigarette, lays out both Thomas and Signe’s modus operandi, as well as the point of the … Continue reading
“He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.” This quote by 18th-century English writer Samuel Johnson opens the Good Doctor Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas as an epigraph. There, it foreshadows a number of essential elements that make up Hunter’s classic manic eulogy … Continue reading
“Everywhere I seem to go on this island seems to me I find degeneracy. There is brawling in bars. There is indecency in public places. And there is the corruption of the young. And now I see it all stems from here—it stems from the FILTH taught here in this very school room!” So spits … Continue reading
K8 Hardy’s Outfitumentary should be a mind-numbing watch. About an hour and twenty minutes of the artist and filmmaker showing off her eccentric outfits in head-to-toe shots almost daily for over a decade on a crappy lo-fi mini-DV camera, the delightfully and perfectly titled 2016 film, directed, produced, photographed, and edited by Hardy, could easily … Continue reading
Why hello there, Filthy Dreams ghosties, ghouls, and goblins! Happy Halloween! What’s that? What am I doing? Oh, just cutting all our Halloween candy in half to make sure there aren’t any razors in there! Remember those old trusty scare tactics from trick-or-treating days of yore? Did YOU ever find a razor? Or better yet … Continue reading
“Please come. Don’t abandon me. Please.” Ana de Armas as Norma Jeane Baker as becoming-Marilyn Monroe prays to a mirror; her hands clasped together in desperate supplication. She’s begging for, as Joyce Carol Oates describes in her novel Blonde, “her Friend-in-the-Mirror.” Tears stream down her face as she pleads to the bulb-ringed three-way mirror. Her … Continue reading