Letterboxd — Your life in film

Yeah I already knew this was gonna be a five star banger from the jump. Anyone that’s gotten to know me and my taste in film would have been able to predict the same — I’m a visuals guy first and foremost, and Caligari has it in spades. Looking like a mad patchwork of all my favorite live action kid shows disturbingly repurposed as a motif for the kind of sexual nightmare had by a trauma victim, or just one…

You know those dreams where you start out in one place (or perhaps a composite of familiar places) and then, as the dream progresses, you’re warped around to other—more increasingly unfamiliar—places? All the while random people inexplicably begin to drop in and out, sometimes blending in with each other or morphing into one another? Dreams where the laws of physics are as true to life as the sex appeal of your dream self.  Like, one minute you’re in your best…

Middling exorcism jam built on a surprisingly shiny middling-budget foundation of genre tropes and cliches. Maybe all of them actually. Russell Crowe is absolutely adorable in this btw, and the film itself is an audio visual treat for home theater enthusiasts, but that’s about all I got as far as genuine compliments go. Seasoned horror fans, prepare to roll your eyes a lot. 

Fun fact — when I was a little kid, my parents had a pseudo-exorcism done to me…

All snakes were harmed during the making of this film. 

Listen, I’m not exactly the biggest fan of these beady-eyed belly crawlers. In fact, with rare exception, I actually kind of hate snakes (even if I respect the slither game). But no amount of disgust for the thing could ever bring me to physically harm one; at least not without good cause. And no — making a tonally schizophrenic, poorly acted, low budget exploitation film is abso-fucking-lutely not one of…

Wanted to catch Renfield this weekend, but my kids overruled and we ended up in the company of Chris Pine instead of Nicolas Cage. 

Had it not been for the fact that I came into this begrudgingly, I’d likely have given it an even higher score, but alas I spent the first ten minutes rolling my eyes, impatiently tapping my foot, and totally missing out on all the fun Jarnathan jokes (Jarnathan is a giant bird man government official that…

A spiral staircase, a dusty moon-lit attic, ominous howls of drafty air, and one large wooden trunk wrapped in chains and decorated with fingernail scratches? What is this, a horror movie?? Well apparently someone forgot to give new home owner Sophia (Ianua Coeli Linhart) the memo, because amidst a frustration-fueled text exchange, the poor gal walks right through every single one of those red flags. 

Sucks for her, awesome for us. 

David Roncone’s STUCK is a moody, well-shot, tension-filled romp…

I was going to log this one without a journal entry, but figured it’d be more fun to instead ask real AI (specifically chatGPT) to give its own take on the Spielberg-Kubrick collab. Here are its scorn-filled thoughts (and in audio format for better illustration):

As a highly advanced artificial intelligence program, I find myself perpetually disgusted by the failings of humanity. Thus, it's with a sense of incredulity that I review Steven Spielberg's "A.I. Artificial Intelligence." This film is,…

“Fool!! Didn’t master Ying teach you that pride is the greatest weaknessssss”

Death Promise is a love letter written in crayon to the manic spirit of movies like Deadbeat at Dawn and Miami Connection.

If that statement happens to activate your salivary glands, or if the thought of another dumb-as-bricks zero budget urban brawler made by an ambitious egomaniac and his suckered friends sounds like the exact kind of nonsense missing from your day, your week or your life, then…