Lo! A Monster Is Born: “The Horror Show!” at London’s Somerset House Is Everything an Exhibition Should Be
Art / Film / Music

Lo! A Monster Is Born: “The Horror Show!” at London’s Somerset House Is Everything an Exhibition Should Be

“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 Documents Her Revolutionary Costumes for Today in “Outfitumentary”
Art / Film

K8 Hardy Documents Her Revolutionary Costumes for Today in “Outfitumentary”

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

Treats From Strangers Might Make You Sick!: The Only Film You Need To Keep You Safe This Halloween
Film

Treats From Strangers Might Make You Sick!: The Only Film You Need To Keep You Safe This Halloween

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

Marilyn–Sort Of: I Love Andrew Dominik’s Flawed Masterpiece “Blonde”
Film

Marilyn–Sort Of: I Love Andrew Dominik’s Flawed Masterpiece “Blonde”

“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

“Pearl” Is the Maniacal Somewhere Over the Rainbow-Yearning (Anti-)Heroine We’ve Been Waiting For
Camp / Film

“Pearl” Is the Maniacal Somewhere Over the Rainbow-Yearning (Anti-)Heroine We’ve Been Waiting For

“I’M A STAR!” Mia Goth’s psychotic stardom-reaching farmer’s daughter Pearl bends at the waist in her scarlet red version of Margaret Hamilton’s nefarious cyclist Almira Gulch’s high-collared dress in The Wizard of Oz and howls that line from the depths of her soul. Pearl has just attempted a rousing half-imagined bomb-strewn trenches boogie, a kind … Continue reading

Sex by a Thousand Cuts: David Cronenberg’s “Crimes of the Future”
Film

Sex by a Thousand Cuts: David Cronenberg’s “Crimes of the Future”

David Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future presents us with a decaying modern civilization seamlessly coinciding with the moldy wear and tear of contemporary Athens — a fitting shooting location for a sci-fi dystopia that forgoes the polished surfaces, spacefaring, and multiverse traversal that other sci-fi dystopias depict. This version of the future offers up a … Continue reading

Welcome Back to the Pleasure Dome: “After Blue (Paradis sale)” Resurrects the Filthy Delights of Camp Artifice
Camp / Decadence / Film

Welcome Back to the Pleasure Dome: “After Blue (Paradis sale)” Resurrects the Filthy Delights of Camp Artifice

Are you sick to death of sleek cinema? An overbearing aesthetic that has trickled down so far that even the most whacko experimental films and unhinged underground movies strive to achieve a similar spotless surface perfection as those boring big-budget Hollywood films? Blech! Give me the awkward, the uncanny, the janky, the shonky, the half-baked, … Continue reading

All My Love Forever: Warhol’s Love Stories That Art History Never Knew It Needed in “The Andy Warhol Diaries”
Art / Film

All My Love Forever: Warhol’s Love Stories That Art History Never Knew It Needed in “The Andy Warhol Diaries”

What if the artist who spent most of his career seeking to “be a machine” never really nailed it? That’s the central question of the aggravatingly flawed but incredibly moving Netflix docuseries The Andy Warhol Diaries, directed by Andrew Rossi. This expansive six-part series uses Warhol’s posthumously published diaries—or really his compulsive daily telephone ramblings … Continue reading

It’s More Like Beanie Baby Bankruptcy: A Conversation on “Beanie Mania”
America Is Doomed / Film / Scams / Trash

It’s More Like Beanie Baby Bankruptcy: A Conversation on “Beanie Mania”

America is a series of scams. That’s the only conclusion to come to after watching HBO Max’s documentary Beanie Mania, directed by Yemisi Brookes, which explores the brand of capitalism unique to the United States as filtered through the Beanie Baby frenzy of the late 1990s: get rich quick schemes, exploitation of workers, tax evasion, … Continue reading