Mentaculus
Celluloid Junkie - 3438 Film Ratings
Member Since: Jun 30, 2007
Location: Los Angeles, California, USA
Bio: After a fairly Lynchian childhood in an American suburb, I moved to Japan at 13, saw foreign film, and it destroyed my fragile little mind. Now forever damaged, I live in LA, have degrees in Cinema and Religion, a Masters in Information Science, and watch too many films in between writing projects. Life goals: direct a film, and see a UFO.
Recent Ratings
Check out Mentaculus's...
| 60 T4 | Enys Men (2022) - Apr 29, 2023
"Shows the through-line from Epstein’s LE TEMPESTAIRE to those BBC folk boil classics, evoking Gordon Clark’s STIGMA the most. Its assurance in approach keeps you invested through a main character who basically only speaks through action and hesitation. The many threads, though, don’t find needed satisfaction - even that oblique art-house kind. ENYS MEN looks just like its ilk from 50 years ago, and if it came out then, it’d be a whispered oddity. Now it’s just odd."
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| 68 T5 | Beau Is Afraid (2023) - Apr 24, 2023
"O Mother, Where Art Thou? This Odyssey of the mind plays on the same vaulted fantasy-reality as BRAZIL, but tuned to the wavelength of a malignant narcissist. Every detail leans in to Beau’s constant victimization, ultimately all vanity, an attempt to find agency and identity outside his somehow vainer and victimier and bitchier mother. I bet there will be lives saved by viewers realizing their own immolation by “loved ones”’ gaslighting. In the meantime, will someone please give Aster a hug?"
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| 75 T7 | Evil Dead Rise (2023) - Apr 20, 2023
"The setup in a shitty warehouse apartment is a proper throwback, and the characters are realized just enough to start caring, because once the Deadites drop, it really does not stop: The last hour is just unrelenting, bloody, chaotic carnage. I hazard I can't recall a recent American horror film putting children in so much harm's way, but IMO, that makes it better. The last 20 minutes is the most twisted and fucked up Mommy-issues horror since Alien: Resurrection, and better."
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| 73 T6 | House of 1000 Corpses (2003) - Apr 14, 2023
"Rob said Universal pulled the plug on the film when a test audience cheered at the execution of Walton Goggins and I think we all need to sit with that. Oh good we didn’t because this movie keeps throwing all manner of shit at the wall to see which colors stick. It inhabits the language of past-midnight The Ghoul Show if he got to burp over a snuff film. The style IS the substance, a menagerie of beatnik roadside AM Americana, but lofi heretical."
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| 74 T7 | Flesh and Fantasy (1943) - Apr 10, 2023
"A very effective portmanteau, the narrative linkage the stress between expecting one's fate, and one's willing to change it; the thematic linkage hypnagogia - psychic phantasms breaching the physical. Of course it's aged (no one buys Betty Field as an ugly hag for a second) but still a top shelf production. Duvivier adds romantic darkness, Cortez' DP work is unrivaled, with Wilde's sardonic wit, and the actors!: Dame May Whitty, C. Aubrey Smith, Mitchell, Lee, on top of the already stacked bill."
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| 77 T7 | Burning Paradise (1994) - Apr 07, 2023
"Pretty brutal even by Ringo Lam standards. It plays liberally with the Buddhist tropes for hell, but even then, it’s not often you see a statue of Buddha mow down his disciples with machine guns. The prison warden got the memo about pulling a Cool Hand Luke, but he also gets to be a necrophiliac and rapist making deadly kung fu paintings. There are like 20 minute fight sequences over flames and spikes. I’d double this with Mindwarp for pure hellscape immersion."
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| 51 T3 | Renfield (2023) - Apr 05, 2023
"I had suspicions throughout the film - a lot of voiceover, first-draftish exposition dialogue, a miscast Awkwafina (!!) - that there was meddling, and the end credits confirmed it, showing an abandoned dance sequence, a Frank Langella reference, and Renfield ripping the skin off a dude’s hand. The final edit approaches the kind of weird that could breed a classic, but doesn’t embrace it. It backs off when it should bite. Except Cage. His Dracula is a thing of beauty and mania and grotesquerie."
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| 69 T6 | Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023) - Apr 05, 2023
"There simply needs to be more fantasy adventure films. These films, generally, are awesome. Even when it’s just the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie in Renn Faire cosplay. This series shows a lot of promise otherwise, especially when this one rolls a… 15 for initiative, a… hey! 18 for practical effects and… perfect 20 for a cameo that makes it a mature arthouse chamber drama for 3 minutes. But anything goes, because it’s a fantasy adventure film, and even the weird ones are welcome."
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| 71 T6 | Les cinq diables (2022) - Mar 28, 2023
"Not at all a horror but more of a magical realism piece, a queer Back to the Future girlmance with the Biff character actually being the needed karmic hookup, who’s also your Dad’s sister. Wait, I lost the plot somewhere in there. What’s too obvious (if I sent that Christmas card, my in-laws would send back funds for marriage counseling) is easily offset by the tremendous performance from 10-year-old Sally Dramé, a revelation as a young soul who slowly realizes she shouldn’t exist."
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| 32 T1 | The Amityville Horror (1979) - Mar 25, 2023
"I was shocked at how poorly this held up (if it ever did). Rod Steiger’s bits are the best (a prayer to an empty church leaves him blind - he doesn’t even need an audience to careen off the rails) but the rest is empty dialogue masquerading as suspense. It’s too bad I just saw The Shining again, it makes the plagiarism worse."
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