tremour

An incredible collaboration between Wally Shawn, Andre Gregory, and Louis Malle. The inner turmoil and antipathy of Shawn is reminiscent of Bernhard and Gaddis (two writers who were obsessed with authenticity and disgusted by modernity in the same way) and Andre's stories, centering around themes of performance and improvisation as well as continually preoccupation with the Holocaust make him seem like Artaud with ego death. As the two go back and forth in a kind of historic sacrament.

66 _0%

Possessor (2020) - Rated 27 Aug 2020

There's too much at work here that invokes the juxtaposition of inner and outer landscapes explored by papa Cronenberg but the sleek brutality of the film as well as the anchored, meditative repoire between Riseborough and Jennifer Jason Leigh give the film a bitter undercurrent as the screen is doused in blood. The same sort of disquiet that Brandon Cronenberg is after here has already been done better and with less reliance on gore by Almodavar, et al

94 _0%

First Reformed (2018) - Rated 27 Aug 2020

Such unrelenting bleakness is bound to make those looking to film as an escape offended or even physically ill but nonetheless Paul Schrader and Ethan Hawke's country priest persist, offering no answers, no progressive meditation, no portrait of post-industrial life that gives any shred of hope or respite, and does nothing less than tell the horrifying truth that we as the human race and as solitary beings must live with our decisions-even if the consequence is moral torpor and spirtual vacuity

85 _0%

Out of the Blue (1980) - Rated 27 Aug 2020

Dennis Hopper's towering companion film to the landmark Easy Rider is both turbulent and aimless, invoking the machinations of Yasujiro Ozu while at the same time forging the generational rage that would define the youth of the Reagan Era. Manz steals the film with the single most torpid and lovelable adolescent performance ever put to celluloid as it slouches like some nightmare Last Picture Show towards its nihilistic denouement.