Being Film #8 for Hooptober 2023 This wasn’t part of the plan. The plan was to stick to the films I needed to get through Hooptober in one piece. But if a high level concept was going to grab me and not let go, it’s the one for No One Will Save You: what if a home invasion but aliens? I doubt that’s a spoiler … Continue reading Hooptober 10.0 – No One Will Save You (2023)
Being Film #7 for Hooptober 2023 I’ve always been an advocate for the Ebert adage “It’s not what a movie’s about, but how it’s about it.” I still believe it, and on paper what The Last Voyage of the Demeter is about is pretty cool: adapting the chapter from Bram Stoker’s Dracula about the wreck of the Demeter, the ship carrying the vampire and his … Continue reading Hooptober 10.0 – The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023)
The 2020 Russian film Sputnik starts off in a manner familiar to anyone who has watched a movie in a post-Alien world. Two cosmonauts in 1984 sit in a capsule ready to return home to the Soviet Union. They talk about what they’re going to do once they land. As they begin their descent, the systems fail on their capsule. One of the cosmonauts looks … Continue reading Hooptober X #3: Sputnik
Towards the end of Claire Denis’s Stars At Noon, Benny Safdie’s CIA agent describes Central America as a “gambler’s paradise”. He says this with a smile and unconcerned attitude. Margaret Qualley’s journalist Trish looks at him with scorn. These two individuals know enough about this region that if it is a “gambler’s paradise”, then the house is rigged. History shows outside interests always control events … Continue reading The Films of Claire Denis: Stars At Noon (2002)
Watching a film like Amanda Kramer’s Please Baby Please feels like looking into a window of the past. Not so much because it’s a period piece though that is a window into the past. No, it seems like a film that would fit alongside independent films made in the 1980s like Blue Velvet or Stranger Than Paradise. This was the heyday of filmmakers working outside … Continue reading Please Baby Please (2022)
Right now, there’s a bit of slasher revival happening. There’s been enough time since the end of the last slasher cycle that folks can come back to the genre with new eyes. It also allows for new perspectives. The feature debut of screenwriter John Logan (Skyfall, Alien: Covenant), They/Them brings a queer perspective to a more traditional slasher. Now, queerness isn’t unique to this film. … Continue reading They/Them (2022)
Cinema Dual (TEST SITE) 