I get the influence of All the President’s Men and it just sort of glided over me. There’s a lot I can appreciate about it but I was mostly bored by the repetition. I was hoping for more. As for Cairo Station, I liked it! Just didn’t blow me away or anything. Felt like a pretty straightforward Hitchcockian Egyptian film.
Oh I think it's got a lot more going on than that, personally. It's got some of the Italian neo-realism and what guys like Satjayit Ray were doing in its wake while also having the really full frames of like Casablanca or a von Sternberg, plus the Hitchcock-ish elements.
That’s interesting! I definitely want to see more of Chahine’s films. Maybe the next one will click more for me.
Slither - 8/10 Paul Blart: Mall Cop - 2/10 Marlowe (1969) - 8/10 Time Limit (1957) - 8/10 Masters of the Universe (1987) - 6/10
I love Paul Blart, but man, the second one really is unwatchable. You might have to dip into the negatives if you watch that one.
Well, at least one person has to, but if it wasn't for some of the soundtrack, I'd have been pulling my eyes out from boredom.
Yes, when I got my tonsils out, I watched the dvd 2-3 times a day while I recovered. It's not my all-time favorite movie or anything but I'm also a sick fuck with an Adam Sandler movie podcast so I obviously like shitty movies.
I finally got to see The Sheep Detectives over the weekend and it's like the biggest suprise of the year for me movie wise.. it's absolutely brilliant!!
Faces of Death (2026) - 8/10 a plus-size model addicted to adderall goes down a Reddit-hole to stop Billy of Stranger Things fame from recreating the deaths from an infamous horror film that actually exists?? uhhhhh fucking yes please A Bucket of Blood (1959) - 10/10 Hosted for Reel Rituals' first outdoor screening (and second overall) at Grounded Printshop :') Cuddly Toys - 8.5/10 Kind of unbelievable how this pulls off the tone it does - from parody to genuinely upsetting depictions of events that obviously do happen and all the way back without any whiplash. I haven't been able to stop thinking about how I've never seen a modern mondo(?) film quite like this and how I wish there was more out there. The aesthetic is perfect. Kansas Bowling has a bright future if she can avoid the modern exploitation to trad cath pipeline (as demonstrated by Red Scare). Lost Highway - 8.5/10 Likely my favorite Lynch on second viewing, or at least my favorite "weird" Lynch (The Elephant Man has a special place in my heart). This was the key to "getting" him for me and also the tipping point where nothing after has scratched quite the same itch. (I still haven't seen The Return, to be fair.) Backrooms - 10/10 So much restraint from folks because "the plot was a little thin" or the hype was too high because gaggles of 12-year-oles are inflating the box office numbers but idk man...seemed like the perfect amount of depth for a movie about a 4chan post if I'm being real. I don't need it to burrow deeper into a trauma allegory. Give me enough to chew on while showing me the insane practical sets and entities trapped in this fucked-up psuedo-dimension and I'm a happy man. This gives you that in spades without ever taking itself too seriously. No one should be shocked that a guy who has directed years of high-quality shorts was able to knock his directorial debut out of the park, and maybe some of those kids leaving the theatre will be inspired to film their own shit. Five stars, a great time at the movies. (And that Caretaker needle-drop blew my mind lol) Beyond the Black Rainbow - 7.5/10 As really unique and undeniably impressive visual experience that just happens to be missing the connective tissue Cosmatos would later find for Mandy. On the dryer side, but perfect if you're looking to scratch that Cronenbergian 70s retrofuturism itch. They Will Kill You - 7.5/10 Everyone said this was a Tarantino ripoff but then eyeballs started crawling around on their own and Satan was represented as a talking severed pig's head and I don't know man...it may have the stylized fun of a 2009s music video (complimentary), but I think Tarantino is too much of a dork to let himself have THIS much fun with so many horror and dark fantasy elements. So pleasantly surprised by this compared to Ready or Not 2...a true hoot. Ready or Not 2: Here I Come - 6/10 Somehow fumbles a movie that really only needed to be, and mostly is, more of the same. Fun enough but the sense of humor already feels like a stale reflection of Knives Out-style writing, and absolutely NONE of the emotional stuff between the siblings worked for me, especially considering how much of that same dynamic DOES work in They Will Kill You. The last 20 minutes is legitimately so good and so much more fun that it makes me want to bump up the score here, but man, it's hard to see Elijah Wood and Daddy Cronenberg in the sequel to one of the freshest horror flicks of the 2010s and still have it land with a thud. Three-star movie with a five-star ending. Spider Baby - 8/10 Gritty and grimy and a product of the summer heat, like a proto-Texas Chainsaw Massacre by way of The House on Haunted Hill. I'm so grateful something like this exists in the public domain. Real American nightmare shit. The Brood - 10/10 Simply the best. Infinity Pool - 8.5/10 Very close to being great. The Cronenberg lad picks up his dad's scary-horny blueprint and injects some humor and even more weird shit to truly Frankenstein together a new vision of tourism humor. This is what I assume Hedonism II is like.
It's subjective. My five-star scale is that a four "could be great" and a 4.5 "is great," so this landed right in between for me. Again, I also just really like movies and watching them, so even something I didn't love like Ready or Not 2 is a three star-flick compared to the original. I know what I like and I'm relatively easy to please.
Huh, I ranked Ready or Not 2 slightly higher than They Will Kill You because some of the goofier elements of the latter didn't land for me. Had a lot of fun with both tho
They are definitely two sides of the same coin...I just wish they did a little more with Ready or Not 2 because I love the first film.