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  • Showgirls

    Showgirls 1995

    ★★★★★ Rewatched by Justin 07 Aug 2022

    debasement, subordination, selling body and soul, destroying other people for a game you’re hardly a player in.

    berkeley is verhoven’s sacrificial lamb, her demise as an actress completes the arc. she is the casualty of verhoven’s concept. the final shot is the smoking gun.

    berkeley, however, does not die in vain. she is a whirlwind from beginning to end, leaving a trail of decimation in her wake. her high octane, purgative performance is perfectly distilled, cocaine fueled, camp maximalism. its…

  • Truck Turner

    Truck Turner 1974

    ★★★★ Watched by Justin 04 Aug 2022

    very romantic

  • The Brown Bunny

    The Brown Bunny 2003

    ★★★★ Watched by Justin 30 Jul 2022

    it’s like gallo peeled the warm flesh from buffalo 66’ bones. this is the cold, hollowed skeleton.

  • Scarface

    Scarface 1983

    ★★★★★ Watched by Justin 03 Aug 2022

    so tragic it hurts to watch. the parade of hairy chests throughout made it easier.

  • The Big Short

    The Big Short 2015

    ★★ Watched by Justin 21 Jul 2022

    very very very annoying. i’m not sold on the adam mckay wink wink nudge nudge-isms because they do nothing to offset just how preachy this movie is.

  • Beverly Hills Cop

    Beverly Hills Cop 1984

    ★★★★ Watched by Justin 19 Jul 2022

    serge <3

  • The Black Phone

    The Black Phone 2021

    ★ Watched by Justin 07 Jul 2022

    boring, runoff from years of stranger things and it, score sounds like farts.

  • Birth

    Birth 2004

    ★★★★★ Watched by Justin 07 Jul 2022

    spellbinding. positions itself as a fairytale in a logical world. what takes hold of these people is a force beyond the rational. science cannot explain what is beyond its reach: a miracle.

    this film has a snowy, funerary aesthetic that is so rich and beautifully art designed. it’s cozy but dreary, even menacing. autumn is long gone, the screen fills with the blackest shadows, like the tightening grip of cold winter night. movies are not this immersive anymore. 

    also has…

  • Sliding Doors

    Sliding Doors 1998

    ★★★★ Watched by Justin 02 Jul 2022

    almost perfect. it’s like if the moma design store put out a romcom. they should’ve reshot that one scene.

  • Elvis

    Elvis 2022

    ★★★★ Watched by Justin 02 Jul 2022

    heartbreaking movie.

    this evokes the massive panoramic hardcover biographies i see in the bookstore, always too intimidated to buy. the title, a single word outlined in gold, stretched across the glossy slip cover: ELVIS.

    every time i pass one of these tomes in the bookstore i wonder how intimate a project of that size can really be, how much of it is record and how much of it is just an editorialization, an art piece. this walks that line beautifully, it’s everything a big biopic should be. luhrmann’s maximalist psychedelic ouvre fits a project like this very well. 

    i hope movies as events are back.

  • Topper

    Topper 1937

    ★★★★★ Rewatched by Justin 25 Jun 2022

    so much fantastic mischief i can hardly stand it. constance bennett is too cool for school. i also love that song they kept singing.

  • Everything Everywhere All at Once

    Everything Everywhere All at Once 2022

    ★★ Watched by Justin 10 Jun 2022 1

    i kept flipping between being entertained and annoyed by this movie, constantly tossing around potentially interesting ideas only to flatten them with its cloying twee absurdism. there is an emotional arc in there, but it’s executed in a way that i find too schmaltzy and too self reflexively preposterous. the bagel? the hot dog hands? the butt plug fight? such crap! 

    also, this movie looks like shit. ugly sets, ugly costumes, ugly props, ugly cinematography, ugly lighting, ugly colors, ugly…