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Beau Travail (1999)
Beautiful, beautiful women, beautiful color palette, beautiful motion. Most unhurried movie I’ve ever seen. It’s like that saying idle hands are something something about the devil. If Galoup had Grindr or a war to fight he wouldn’t be needing to resort to murder, which I suppose u can say about most men. I almost envy Galoup for his…not blindness or ignorance to his attraction but like complete inability to even fathom it. It’s like a dog chasing it’s own tail. What can I say I love the way men love.
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Hausu (1977)
At the request of Angel I went into this viewing completely blind. It was a gorgeous and goofy and dreamlike (nightmarish?) experience. The set design and lighting reminded me a lot of James Bidgood's work. It's a big jump into the fantastical; the actors are all paperdolls of people, and the backdrops are lavish with every prop precisely placed. The friendship of the girls really tugged on my heart; I miss being blissful and beautiful and surrounded by the ones I love. And of course I loved the chaos of it all, I loved that white chiffon scarf writhing in the wind, I loved that dusk-lit sky blazing in the background, I loved that sea of red and its tumbling bodies.
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Trolls 3 (2023)
Not ashamed to say this was my best viewing experience of 2023. I vaguely knew Trolls was really popular with kids but my god did I underestimate it. Watched 3 and 2 in that order with my sister. I can say within the first 5 minutes I was hooked. Took us twice as long to get through the movie because we had to pause and rewind to rave and giggle and look up the VAs. Everyone touts Puss and Spiderverse as the pinnacle of modern animation but Trolls deserves its flowers too!! There were so many brain/tingling textures and compositions and experimental mixed media scenes it was so fucking cool. And the music- god the music. I’ve been playing the soundtrack to both nonstop. You can tell so much love and effort and detail was put into every aspect musically and visually. I really with I was a five year old so I could stim to these movies everyday. Side note: it’s kinda funny how you can tell what micro-era Trolls 2 belongs to because of the super intense bokeh effects. It falls into the same group with Soul and Toy Story 4. You can tell that was the big new development in animation tech from how loaded these films are with it. AND MR. DINKLES. FAVORITE LITTLE THING OF ALL TIME HE’S MY NEW GOD.
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Fallen Angels (1995)
It’s been a while since I’ve Wong Kar Wai-ed. This is the second time I’ve seen a movie in an artsy theatre (first was Skinamarink: banger). I haven’t seen this movie since middle school so I have no memory of it really. I’m going to assume Angels came after Chungking because it’s a lot more experimental - honestly a little too much for my taste. I’ve been trying to watch more art house but honestly there’s only so long I can look at swirling colors and slow pans before my brain needs plot stimuli. But the gritty Hong Kongian aesthetic so appeals to me so it wasn’t a slog to watch (and I could stare at Takeshi Kaneshiro’s face for millennia, thought he's cuter in Chungking imo). The assistant’s scenes felt like one long perfume commercial; that is neither a positive nor negative. I’ve noticed that WKW likes to use the ships passing in the night motif: two characters in the same place at different times. And really that represents what much of his work is about : missed and lost and mourned connections, isolation in the maddening crowd. And god the setting is a character in and of itself. You wouldn’t be able to have these films in bumfuck Iowa; there needs to be the bustle and the grime and the feeling of grazing someone’s shoulder on a busy street. Game that will get your stomach pumped: Drink everytime someone smokes a cigarette.
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Bottom (2012)
Why did I subject myself to this...
Amazingly my sister told me about this documentary and its premise immediately enthralled me: a look through the eyes of NYC blogger "Confessions of a Bareback Cunt". It was hilarious to me how the movie opens up with not one, not two, but three hard-hitting quotes to frame what is essentially a hardcore porno.
As I expected I was more fascinated than disgusted by the cumdump's lifestyle. It was interesting to me how jaded he was. You'd think living this far-spectrum hedonist lifestyle would make a guy more happy-go-lucky.
Christ I would've really benefitted from some subtitles. Whatever voice modulator the director used made everyone sound like aliens on siliconcrystalline meth. During the long fuck scenes I discovered playing it 2x speed was super funny.
I'll never fully understand the mind of a cumdump but I admire their commitment to the bit. -
Tropic Thunder (2008)
Why did we as a society abandon Tropic Thunder. I get that “full retard” has knocked it down a peg or two in the annals of history but really it deserves to be on the same level of cultural reverence as 21 Jumpstreet at least. They really don’t make all out blockbuster comedies anymore. In fact they don’t even make parodic comedies anymore. Hollywood just takes itself too seriously now I guess. Actually I'm not putting this all on Hollywood because audiences have gotten too pretentious to enjoy lowbrow comedy. I’m not even a fan of the genre but I’ve noticed the difference from the 2000s to now. It’s gotten wittier, less referential; we’ve lost the art of the fart joke.
Onto the movie itself: They really went full throttle with this one. Decked out cast, explosions and shootouts, racistly exotic setting, blackface, insane plot, and balls to the wall performances. Like they were really going for blockbuster here.
I love movies of angry men shouting at each other. Everyone is caked in shit and blood and glycerin and swinging their tiny dicks around and screaming their heads off; it’s like watching a men zoo. And of course the inherent homoeroticism of being war brothers. I actually wished they pushed the gay element harder in those scenes.
I genuinely think this is the best performance of RDJ’s career. At one point he was an American actor playing an Australian one playing a black man playing a Chinese peasant farmer. That’s a four tier acting inception. Side note: did they get Toby Maguire to play his gay lover because they already had a movie where they fucked?
Tom Cruise on the other hand I think was miscast. The novelty alone of Tom Cruise being there was funny enough but it faded quick. I don’t think he had the comedic chops for that roll. -
Guinea Pig 6: Mermaid in a Manhole (1988)
Big credits to whoever did the sfx that was fuck nasty. That neighbor woman is one of the most annoying personalities I've ever seen on screen. I couldn't figure out if she was a woman with short hair on an extremely effeminate man and that just irked me even more. The casting of the artist was spot on he seemed like such a timid soul. Surprisingly touching and romantic story. Combined with all the errotically grotesque writhing and seeping its a fun flick.
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Carrie (1776)
Oh fuck I forgot how good this movie is. Its greatness brought into further contrast by how ass the remake (2013) is - which I watched immediately after. They say we live in a freer, more sexually open society than the days of yore but which version had a steamy room of "teenage" girls with their tits hanging out? Yeah I thought so. I haven't read the book so I don't know if the addition of Carrie practicing her powers is in there but it feels so contrived. Takes away all the terror when she's stupidly miming like the Scarlett Witch. Also no fucking subtlety in Mortez's performance. Her weird mouth quivering got grating quick. And the way she played Carrie with such malice in the end... no subtlety....
Anyways getting sidetracked this is about 1976. I saw it years ago before I could truly appreciate it but now.... I think I have a crush on Sissy Spacek. She's my Shelley Duvall. My true scream queen. This is one of the few times a botched nose job actually elevated a performance. Her face is so ethereal and uncanny I'm in love. Combined with her performance it felt like Carrie was a second away from fading into the ether - just a pale wisp barely on the corporeal plane.
What I feel comparing classics to their remakes is similar to how I feel about retro(1970-2000s) vs modern porn. There's just no heart in media nowadays, no rawness, no spit and sweat and semen.