Letterboxd — Your life in film

abysmal. not sure why so many blockbusters these days are committed to posing as political thrillers when it's so hard to take a movie seriously where the term "Supreme Mugwump" is tossed around casually. actually kind of impressive how committed Warner Bros. is to financing that transphobe so she can keep churning out scripts that somehow get more and more hilariously pointless as the narrative stakes supposedly get higher. just throwing in a new character named Boiley McFudgersnutch or some…

At its core, Mortal Thoughts has a strong concept and a compelling narrative, even if it doesn't quite have the finesse and style of other 90s noir/ crime flicks.

Demi Moore and Bruce Willis are ace, but I cannot be convinced that Glenne Headly was ever particularly convincing in this role. She has a lot of weigh to carry in each scene and I don't think she measures up to her contemporaries.

I appreciate how the narrative twists and turns.…

75

I've been seeing plenty of Halloween (2018) comparisons in the discourse surrounding Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and while it certainly fits snug in the lineage of recent legacy sequels, this feels closer to the gnarly studio horror of the 2000s. It reminded me of films like Jaume Collet-Serra's House of Wax or the first Wrong Turn. This is less of an overt Tobe Hooper pastiche (thankfully) and more of a riff on the commercial horror he inspired. The trauma angle…

Yasuzo Masumura's Irezumi crawls through a lurid tale that is as bleak as it is bizarre. 
Surprisingly much like a pulpy noir, we follow these two doomed lovers Otsuya and Shinsuke as they try to reconcile their parents' disapproval of their relationship. A series of betrayals sets this murky plot in motion, as Otsuya is soon kidnapped and forced into becoming a geisha. She's also tattooed against her will a giant thirsty spider with a woman's face. Meanwhile, Shinsuke has killed…

Hoop-Tober 2.0, Film 22 of 31:

A film so meta, ahead of its time (with regard to the horror-comedy/slasher-parody genre that would gradually emerge in the coming decades) and referential that I'm hesitant to say you'd enjoy it as much as I did unless you've seen a great deal of horror films from the 1970s and '80s (specifically slasher flicks). I'm almost tentative to call this a horror-comedy because it's so much more the latter than the former that I…

My first Takeshi Kitano flick is one implosive crime thriller, a moody and misanthropic drop into complete grim destruction.
Like a poliziotesschi with all of the electricity drained out, this bleak pummeler follows ruthless cop Azumi, played by Takeshi Kitano, as he infiltrates a drug ring that leads to excessive violence, betrayals, and evocative sax melodies that drench the quiet moments in damaged sorrow.

Full of unflinching brutality, the slow pace and stoic nature of these characters makes every "breather"…