I'm Reviewing Here!

2 0 2 4! Happy New Year! 'Tis a new year and yes, I have a lot to explain. Basically, what the hell happened? Why did I get to 50 episodes and then stop? No explanation or anything?! AM I EVIL?! I do apologize if people were, like, seriously addicted to this and mad that I didn't say anything. Listen here for what happened. And yes, I have some news.... I'M COMING BACK. :) :) :) (Jesus, those emot...

Michael Snow’s cardinal avant-garde short WAVELENGTH is a 45-minute zoom in on a photograph on a wall in a dank domestic space, interspersed with an occasional foray into a crime scene (or is it just a death?) that occurs immaterially inside of the room. (Description from Mubi.) LUX ÆTERNA Trailer (*It's a long story. Listen to the episode and you'll realize why I'm including this.) : https://yout...

Considered by many to be the finest British film ever made, THE LIFE AND DEATH OF COLONEL BLIMP , by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, is a stirring masterpiece like no other. Roger Livesey dynamically embodies outmoded English militarism as the indelible General Clive Candy, who barely survives four decades of tumultuous British history, 1902 to 1942, only to see the world change irrevocably...

An astonishing creation, LIMITE is the only feature by the Brazilian director and author Mário Peixoto, made when he was just twenty-two years old. Inspired by a haunting André Kertész photograph on the cover of a French magazine, this avant-garde silent master­piece centers on a man and two women lost at sea, their pasts unfolding through flashbacks propelled by the music of Erik Satie, Claude De...

It's 1936, and archaeologist Indiana Jones is tasked by Army Intelligence to help locate a legendary ancient power, the Ark of Covenant, before the Nazis get there first. Directed by Steven Spielberg, this first installment of the "Indiana Jones" franchise was the winner of four Academy Awards, including Best Effects. (Description from Disney+.) RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK is now available to stream o...

John Waters made bad taste perversely transcendent with the forever shocking counterculture sensation PINK FLAMINGOS , his most infamous and daring cinematic transgression. Outré diva Divine is iconic as the wanted criminal hiding out with her family of degenerates in a trailer outside Baltimore while reveling in her tabloid notoriety as the “Filthiest Person Alive.” When a pair of sociopaths (Min...

In the town of Twin Peaks, everybody has their secrets, but no one more than Laura Palmer. In this prequel to his groundbreaking 1990s television series, David Lynch resurrects the teenager found wrapped in plastic at the beginning of the show, following her through the last week of her life and teasing out the enigmas that surround her murder. Homecoming queen by day and drug-addicted thrill seek...

In this beautiful movie about the end of the world, Justine (Kirsten Dunst) and Michael (Alexander Skarsgård) are celebrating their marriage at a sumptuous party in the home of her sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg), and brother-in-law John (Kiefer Sutherland). Despite Claire’s best efforts, the wedding is a fiasco, with family tensions mounting and relationships fraying. Meanwhile, a planet cal...

The most personal film by the underworld poet Jean-Pierre Melville, who had participated in the French Resistance himself, this tragic masterpiece, based on a novel by Joseph Kessel, recounts the struggles and sacrifices of those who fought in the Resistance. Lino Ventura, Paul Meurisse, Jean-Pierre Cassel, and the incomparable Simone Signoret star as intrepid underground fighters who must grapple...

An in-depth examination of the ways in which the Vietnam War impacts and disrupts the lives of several friends in a small steel mill town in Pennsylvania. This American classic grabs you by the throat and forces you to endure the reality of PAIN. In particular, the pain of war. THE DEER HUNTER is less of a war movie and more of an emotional drama about the sensitivity of man. And it also makes me...

A potentially violent screenwriter is a murder suspect until his lovely neighbor clears him. However, she soon starts to have her doubts. DUH DUH DUH!!!! I LOVED IN A LONELY PLACE . This is just a fun movie with a great plot. Period. You don't even have to love noirs/thrillers to enjoy it. It also features a PERFECT performance by the legend himself, Humphrey Bogart ("Bogie"). Such a carefully nua...

An American newcomer to a prestigious German ballet academy comes to realize that the school is a front for something sinister amid a series of grisly murders. If you're a horror buff like me, you know SUSPIRIA ....and you know how positively, beautifully, amazingly A.W.E.S.O.M.E. it is!!! WOW. If you don't love horror movies, I do apologize by saying that Dario Argento's classic is VERY bloody. I...

Meeting a stranger in a railway station, a woman is tempted to cheat on her husband. Before he was directing epics like The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) and Lawrence of Arabia (1962), David Lean made a very intimate, super old-fashioned British romance called BRIEF ENCOUNTER , based on the play, Still Life , by Noël Coward. The film is a little too stagey for me, but it's intelligently written...

A seemingly timid but secretly ruthless ingénue insinuates herself into the lives of an aging Broadway star and her circle of theater friends. ALL ABOUT EVE is still one of the most famous Hollywood movies of all time, nominated for 14 Oscars. 14! Damn. It's a great tale of stardom and conniving people manipulating other equally conniving people. Do I love it? Ugh..... I.... Just listen. Hear me o...

Rufus T. Firefly is named the dictator of bankrupt Freedonia and declares war on neighboring Sylvania over the love of his wealthy backer Mrs. Teasdale, contending with two inept spies who can't seem to keep straight which side they're on. What is "duck soup" exactly? Two turkeys, one goose, and four cabbages. What's the joke? How does this relate to the movie, DUCK SOUP ? I don't know! And that's...

Two best friends shipwreck on an island in the Caspian Sea and fall in love with the same woman while helping the villagers of their new home. Boris Barnet's romantic comedy is just....it's just.....VERY frivolous. Very silly and slapsticky and kinda uneven, but always a delight. Gorgeous cinematography. A cool mix of silent and talky cinema. It's impossible to not fall for this pleasant little mo...

It's July, and Delphine has nowhere to go for the summer. She feels very bored and "empty," but this won't last. One day, she accidentally meets someone who seems to be totally made for her. A very late film from the French New Wave (La Nouvelle Vague), THE GREEN RAY has all the looks and feel and writing of a film from that movement. Although it's very redundant and the lead character is likable...

A young boy and his little sister struggle to survive in Japan during World War II. Produced by Studio Ghibli, this is one of the saddest films of all time. A breathtaking, magical, positively gut-wrenching semi-autobiographical story of a teenage boy and his baby sister trying to survive a war with all they can. Yes, it's a downer, but an UNFORGETTABLE downer. Really powerful stuff. GRAVE OF THE...

In his final - and most daring - cinematic statement, Derek Jarman the romantic meets Derek Jarman the iconoclast in a lush soundscape pulsing against a purely blue screen, laying bare his physical and spiritual state. OK, I get it. BLUE is VERY experimental, but in its short running time and minimalist style, it punches you in the test. This is abstract but deeply personal, intimate, gut-wrenchin...

After getting into a serious car accident, a TV director discovers an underground sub-culture of scarred, omnisexual car-crash victims who use car accidents and the raw sexual energy they produce to try to rejuvenate his sex life with his wife. I am..... I am..... BEYOND DISTURBED by CRASH . (No, not the Oscar-winning movie about racism in Los Angeles but the NC-17 movie about people who get turne...

A couple take a trip to Argentina but both men find their lives drifting apart in opposite directions. In HAPPY TOGETHER , director Wong Kar-Wai has made a simple love story without overdramatizing that the characters are gay. They are HUMANLY portrayed, the same way any and every LGBTQ+A should be portrayed onscreen. No jokes about their sexuality. No jokes about them in general. I LOVED this mov...

In the "flower houses" (upscale brothels) of Shanghai, various interweaving stories of love, loyalty, and deceit play out subtly. Ugh man. FLOWERS OF SHANGHAI is gorgeously, exquisitely shot from start to finish, but I had some issues with it. I do love Tony Leung though. Phenomenal actor. I think there's a good movie somewhere in this. It just wasn't for me. FLOWERS OF SHANGHAI is available to st...

Nelly has just lost her grandmother and is helping her parents clean out her mother's childhood home. She explores the house and the surrounding woods. One day she meets a girl her age building a tree-house. PETITE MAMAN , I want to EAT THIS MOVIEEEEEE. It is PERFECT. Beautiful. Heartwarming. Emotional. Gentle. Soft. FRENCH. UGH. It's also the perfect movie to watch just in time for Mother's Day....

'Je' is a girl voluntarily lock up in a room. 'Tu' is the script. 'Il' is a lorry driver. 'Elle' is the girlfriend. JE TU IL ELLE is....huh. Yeah. It's a movie that perplexed me in a strange way because I seemed to have missed what it's trying to say. I mean, I think I understood it, but if I'm right, then....huh? Yeah. (Sorry, I keep saying "yeah.") Anyway! Kudos to historic director (and star) C...

A lady fugitive on the run from corrupt government officials is joined in her endeavors by an unambitious painter and skilled Buddhist monks. OH MY GOD, this movie. This is 100% one of the most badass films I've ever seen in my life. Don't let its running time worry you. This is entertaining from start to finish. A feast for the eyes. Wuxia (pronounced like "woo-shah") is.... well, listen and you'...