Lifeless romanticism

Can you even begin to imagine if man were capable of bringing a rotting lifeless lump to life? I can’t either because Guillermo del Toro sure couldn’t. Frankenstein (2025, del Toro) is a remake no one asked for dull trite adaptation with yet another daddy issues backstory and adds new characters that add nothing to the story why? To pad its run time? To help modern audiences find one of the oldest most enduring classic easiest to read not even that long of a novel written by an eighteen year old girl’s story easier to comprehend? Because striving impossibly to please his dead father explains Victor Frankenstein better? 

     Around midway through the movie Victor goes to a battlefield to scavenge cadavers for his reanimation experiment when he remarks to his assistant to only be concerned with looking for taller specimens because “larger limbs are easier to work with.” Bigger is not always better. That sums up del Toro’s problem—throwing a lavish budget full of stupid CG effects two and a half hours long into a prestige pic unnecessarily on source material already brilliantly handled in 1990 by no less than Frank Henelotter and Tim Burton respectively. 
     But the worst is the moralizing. The Elordi Creature is this altruistic peaceful zen compassionate empath who befriends rats and even has a scene where he’s bonding with Bambi when some hunters show up and gun him down. That’s del Toro’s other problem. Queerbaiting. He paints evil heteronormative coded villains against other coded as The Elordi Creature says “the way of the world it will hunt you and kill you just for being the way you are” heroes. But it’s all so watered down generic one wonders at the mind that would think even a child needs to be taught it’s wrong to hate a sweet kind friendly generous charismatic innocent person for being themselves. Fomenting the cult of oppression. If it were woven into the subtext it’d be rad. Might even be beautiful. But not this way. Not as desperately contrived underdeveloped as it is here.
     Mia Goth plays a nun who’s been in a convent her whole life and is engaged to be married only a week after entering the outside world then encounters The Elordi Creature chained up in the basement unable to articulate any semblance of language and she instantly falls madly in love with him. Because del Toro’s trying to sell this star-crossed beautiful movie star teen romance between a virgin saint and a martyr who’s persecuted for being smartquotes different is too vague to mean anything. Del Toro doesn’t even bother to take the time to establish any chemistry between them. Nor that society can’t accept The Elordi Creature’s otherness. Just because some random hunters freaked out and shot at him doesn’t mean the world hates him and denies his right to exist. But that’s what this movie wants. What it expects us to believe. So sure. Why not?
     Also in del Toros’ version The Elordi Creature has superhero powers and saves everyone and doesn’t regret anything and goes on to fall in love and save the world because everyone deserves to be themselves and in doing so are humanity’s only hope. Okay yes reading identity politics into movies is annoying I promise not to do it anymore except this one time. The moral of the story then is probably I’m the real monster. 
 
10/24/2025 Landmark Midtown Art Cinema
Atlanta, GA

Emergency cinema

So me I’m a middle aged white male. A demographic that’s excluded from the our voices need to be heard or our stories must be told category of movies. I hate the whole notion of that. I’m more of a if you have what it takes make your movie. I decide what movies I’m going to like before I watch them. And it has nothing to do with the race sex gender or age of the person making it. 

     I don’t seek out queer black or female as subjects. But when I see a film that I get something out of and it also makes me feel like I’ve gained a newfound insight empathy affinity understanding shock surprise laugh scare tear or story from someone that just so happens to be because of an aspect signifier of their identity in a way I can access it means a little more because it’s not merely artifice. Truth is a slippery word to throw around when talking about film. I tend to avoid it. In life too. 
     Obviously there are films I’ve watched by people who check different boxes than myself that doesn’t have anything to do with the films they make. Sometimes they do sometimes they don’t. Cool. But it’s a balance. I can’t even think of that many off the top of my head. Films that are vital cinematically while also containing an element of representation that neither detracts from nor becomes the reason for its being. I could see how that might sound harshly selfish. Hey I go to the movies for the experience I get out of it not to be charitable.
     If that was all incomprehensible tedious garble what I’m trying to say is Mary Bronstein is a woman who makes movies about women and I enjoy love applaud stan worship her style of filmmaking. I’d seen Yeast (2008, Mary Bronstein) a few times and could’ve sworn or forgotten or given up the hope that we’d ever get to see a follow up by her. Until now.

 
If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (2025, Bronstein) is a Rose Byrne vehicle mumblecore thriller character delve of a narrative that sweeps you up you’re drowning in its brilliance never knowing where its taking you and if you can ever manage every once in a while to come up for air for a moment ceasing to be distracted by how amazing Rose Byrne’s performance is you might remember this is what offbeat indie filmmaking promised before you forgot about it. 
     It reminded me of why I once long ago became smitten enraptured embraced with the woman’s picture. Most men can only make films that express feelings like this is what it cost me to get what I wanted. But women can make films that you walk in their shoes and they show you make you feel this is what it’s like being me and it’s not easy and I’m trying and I’m vulnerable and I’m not perfect and I want someone to love me and someone to listen to me and someone to tell me what to do how to do what do I do mother wife therapist I need help you need help I want to help I do help I’ll do better I’m doing my best here I’ve given so much of my love and I’m failing I know but I won’t give up.
     Sorry things got a little cathartic in there. Mary Bronstein is a real one. She’s tough. Her characters provoke insight instigate castigate wreak havoc. Misanthropes. Gen-X ne’er-do-wells. Ah the beauty in such. It’s a character driven motor that speeds us along. And I hate movies that make you feel like they’re just trying to go as far as they can to put their protagonist through torture how much can they take but If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is not that. I never felt like it was more than I could take. It felt like LINDA’S (Byrne) stumbling was expressionistic. Stylized for emotional undertone not gratuitous substitute for dramatic structure. 
     Slightly not quite reality also achieved through this crisis culture. Therapy culture. The cool blue building calm offices with therapists treating therapists treating patients. Emergency culture. Everything’s an emergency. Notice how often that word is used. Especially followed by this isn’t an emergency. (In contrast to Linda’s daugher’s room at home red for aggravating.) A theme I’m whittling might be like society as a bunch of self-centered nuisances trying to live together although not really liking each other or wanting to so blaming but underneath it all just wanting to make it work. 
 
Cinematic flourish aptitude for Bronstein only depicting the daughter and husband as disembodied voices. And the daughter is in like the whole thing. God I love that kid. Her panicking. Her fear. Her hyper. Her desperate need for a hamster to love her so she can control it and make it do tricks for her.
     Also almost the whole entire movie is shot on a long lens. My guess is a 75mm. Close-ups of Rose Byrne literally ninety-nine percent of the film. Intense. Felt like I was watching a Cassavetes movie if I didn’t think Cassavetes’ movies were so lame. Also literally the first time I’ve seen Ivy Wolk in a movie where the quality of her personality style of attitude schtick wasn’t lost in translation. She’s rowdy perfect for Mary Bronstein. 
     There’s no way for me to know or care how much or if If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is autobiographical but I feel like the Linda character brought more life genuine effect of following a human being along a story that wasn’t manipulative uninspired calculated compromised lifeless dull Academy Award prediction Rose Byrne Actress in a Leading Role.
 
10/23/2025 AMC Phipps Plaza 14
Atlanta, GA

The director's cut vibes so hard

The late works of Sir Ridley Scott mock the mass going movie public. Ridicule their lack of sophistication. Their incapability of possessing discerning taste. The result is a joy to behold. Taking my cue off the 205 minute director’s cut as an excuse to write a new piece about Napoleon (2023, Ridley Scott) it might be something like the most perfect film I’ve ever seen. It’s everything wrong with Hollywood. And it works so well.

     First of all historical subjects who took over the world are way more accessible to root for than comic book characters. Napoleon especially. And when I speak of men who took over the world I’m talkin big 3. We already got Oliver Stone’s polyamorous boy rockstar with long blond hair Alexander (2004, Stone). I’m a fan of the film. Mostly because of its scale. And its military scenes. Battle scenes. Testosterone hubris feuds. Napoleon’s in the middle. And the romantic epic nobody asked for about the life of Hitler ain’t gonna happen.
     Napoleon in terms of Goldilocks selection has a darker side than Alexander and not quite as evil as Hitler. He’s a nasty little tyrant. Hell they even named the Napoleon complex after him. Is that in the DSM? I’m not actually curious enough to research it. Anyway as far as antiheroes go I love this guy as played by Phoenix. If you’ll allow me to spoiler skip to the ending my refined reading of Napoleon ultimately rests on some of the scenes from the very end of the film. When he’s talking to children. First when the little boys are granting him audience and he says those lines of dialogue that he’s the first to admit when he makes a mistake but he never does; it’s simple geometry where he puts the [camera] is Ridley Scott breaking through. And finally when Napoleon’s teaching those two little girls to fence and he asks the one who burned Moscow and she doesn’t know he points to himself to say he did but the other says “I believe the Russians burned it sir. To get rid of the French,” Bonaparte cooly inquires “Who told you that?” “It’s common knowledge sir.” Napoleon having little regard for the facts of history is Ridley Scott not caring either. Screw accuracy. This isn’t a documentary. I whole heartedly applaud and support Scott’s reasoning. His reckoning with the material. If you want a detached from the action and drama of Hollywood spectacle documentary with a neutral robot faux British cultured educational narrator over instructive images get lost. 
 
Everybody knows the cinema feeds off of our salacious voracious appetites for sex and death (alt. violence). And that’s what Napoleon gives us instead of history. The violence is Scott’s talent. Large scaled battle. And he lives for it as does Bonaparte. When Napoleon returns from exile and asks his Fifth Army to join him they do because they love to fight. And miss it. Side note why does Gen. Wellington tell that conscript who asks if he can shoot Napoleon no and if he does it will be punishable by death later take his shot anyway? It doesn’t really make sense. But we get to see him miss and blow that hole through Napoleon’s hat. That’s what I get excited about. Emotion over logic. In this case specifically in the context of a war movie escapist entertaining cartoon genre film okay. There’s a time and a place for everything. 
     But the love story is its own beast. Josephine is one of the worst characters written for women ever made. Yet despite this I love her so. The forbidden fruit of archetypes. As in we're not supposed to write this kind of character as in we're not supposed to like this kind of character as in it's wrong to. She’s a slut whore who only exists to serve Napoleon’s objectification of her. The letters we hear through her voiceover are product of Napoleon’s obsessive delusion. She haunts him like she haunts me which effectively depicts the pain of memory. The peril of looking back. The allure of regret. Amorphous infatuation.
     Josephine is introduced as a prostitute Barras is involved with whom he procures for Napoleon. Politics. Josephine’s life is bleak. You know. She’s lost her husband her kids she’s in prison awaiting the guillotine having sex with men just because pregnant women aren’t executed until they have their child. So she’s only into Napoleon out of convenience. Necessity. Desperation. Vanessa Kirby in the sex scenes plays them so bored it’s sad tragic hilarious matter of fact definitive. But she finds her satisfaction with other men. The anachronistic language of the tabloid papers make headlines of her doing so. Okay I can’t prove that the papers weren’t in fact as depicted in the film. Either way I think they’re great. 
     But yeah I’m a man who would rather be known as a cuckold than a fool too. Not Napoleon. The vindictive spite she induces in him fuels his ambition. He’s such an infant. He only lives to take over the world and have sex with Josephine. The man knows his passions. Can I blame him? Josephine’s line “If you look down you’ll see a surprise and once you see it you’ll always want it” made the trailers. This goes to my heart. It’s the meaning of life. But what makes it so particularly compelling in Napoleon and for me is of the utmost romantic sentiment. She never wants him to leave her. My mind knows the fatal codependent relationship is toxic but my heart yearns for its survival. In movies anyway. Its passion lies in its resilience. 
 
This film takes the unashamedly pop repurposing of period French culture pioneered by Marie Antoinette (2006, Sofia Coppola) and gives it the Scott veneer of luxury goods. I prefer the baroque piano passages that sound like some inventions by Bach. I haven’t bothered to research which composers are attributed to which pieces and which are original yet but it’s one of the biggest factors contributing to my enjoyment of the large canvas of it all. 
    And like Coppola’s pop dessert Napoleon above all hones its anachronistic setting through its dialogue. Its attitude. Like right before the coup Lucien is talking mad shit and when Napoleon mentions those ladies in waiting lines about Sieyes and Ducos Lucien says something like “those fucking idiots can tend my balls. Tongue bath? Only for me to let them wipe my ass.” But I’ve probably got it wrong. Whatever he says it's funny baffles me. 
     The director’s cut indulges in Ridley Scott’s madcap riffing in the way House of Gucci (2021, Scott) allowed with Jared Leto. It’s shockingly questionable regarding taste. Like most of all Napoleon's bashful whimper mumble signal to Josephine another mounting invasion is imminent and her keen sense of deciphering it. What were they thinking? Finally. Ridley Scott has gone completely nuts and I think it’s the best thing to happen to his style. From House of Gucci through as of this writing Gladiator II (2024, Scott) gimme more. Rewatchability activated.

In memoriam Woody Allen

It began in my early 20s. Deciding who my favorite director was. Anticipating the question to come along throughout the rest of my life. I chose Woody Allen. And committed. Like a loyal sports fan never to waver. And I never have. Never will.

In the context of modern cinema I’d almost forgotten about Woody Allen. Accepted that we won’t see another film from him for the rest of our lives. That is until earlier this evening. After the Hunt (2025, Luca Guadagnino) doesn’t directly address the subject of either the life of nor the films of Woody Allen. Yet their presence underlies its subject matter.
     Set amongst the faculty and students of an Ivy League campus—it happened at Yale—wealthy people in affluent spaces adorned with intellectual dialogue After the Hunt opens with the unmistakable condensed Windsor typeface opening credits that Allen used for all of his films. But more importantly I see the film as an allegory of the #metoo witch hunt via a power struggle between that angry little mob of culture police it created and yeah the films of Woody Allen.
     Needless to say as a reminder the journalist credited for exposing Weinstein and starting the #metoo movement is Yale alumnus Ronan Farrow or uh Woody Allen’s son. Oh and as a bonus capper Amazon is distributing this as in the same Amazon that canceled Allen amidst a four picture deal they had with him during the height of #metoo.
 
Okay but seriously about the film itself. I feel like MAGGIE (Ayo Edebiri) is meant to get under our skin. And she’s perfect. Her youthful vibrancy. Her excruciating youthfulness. Her nervous awkward stubbornly accusatory shallow ambitious entitled setting of traps to persecute and ridicule culture writ large for her own confused haphazard meaningless agenda. The way we see through her phony impulsive convictions is to know the fear of the threat of its authenticity its power while being baited to also at the same time indulge our contempt of the vitriol which it bestows in kind. It’s cyclical. Mutually aggressive.
     ALMA (Julia Roberts) represents the films of the artist of the man of the idea of Woody Allen. I’m going to avoid spoilers. But I don’t really care to bother with this reading anyway because I doubt anyone will agree with me about it. But I can say After the Hunt digs into the topic of a person’s privacy and the conflicting standards within society attempting to morally judge aspects of compromising behaviors that not only are unable to have a clear resolution but also aren’t necessarily anyone else’s business; much less society as a whole; much less a matter for strangers to decide upon. But of course they do. And what of those affected most by this?
      I’m talking about themes in the film. What do I care about society’s morals? Like it matters. Like I give a shit. But in a dark theater yes I feel like that angry little mob are mocked for our own—or some of us—to deride as entertainment. Should I be ashamed or afraid to admit that? Because I am. Although in my own defense I feel like myself including everything I live for stand for if I can’t laugh at it. At them. Or at me. Something’s wrong. But think about how in After the Hunt direct reverses are used.
     When Alma is confronted by HANK (Andrew Garfield) and he looks into the lens he’s talking to society. Then when Alma confronts Maggie it’s another direct reverse shot. And Alma’s looking into the lens. She’s condemning society. This movie has a message. This movie has a voice. It takes sides. Why not? Above all the horror of it all really gets to me. And the unsettling piano cues underscoring deliberate scenes heightens it all the more. I think we all should know what’s right and wrong morally after it’s all said and done. There are tragic victims of assault. No one condones that. But what happens when allegations are unfounded? It’s a tough question. And it leads to worse. But I’ll leave that to your speculation imagination.
 
10/15/2025 AMC Phipps Plaza 14
Atlanta, GA

The apocalypse angel

Plays like the apocalypse. Fassbinder’s final film. Expressionist character sexual safari. The thought of murder often evokes thoughts of the sea and sailors. Querelle (1982, Rainer Werner Fassbinder) is part entry into the filthy uninhibited sex drive of one man part processing his psychology his feelings his desires. These aren’t to be reconciled. The accounting isn’t neat or tidy. But volatile. Impulsive. Esoteric. Personal. Individual.

     I wanna say Querelle seems to constantly attempt constructing his own identity based on other men around him. Finding someone like you. The search to connect contrasted with masculine passivity. As a character he embodies freedom. His attitude confidence sly guile wily provocative defiantly content with himself on the outside. Tempestuous interior. 
     His perpetuating cycle of enacting his own destruction as both means and end is the end of the world. Revelations. Or atonement once again? Or both? Fighting his brother is fighting himself and he has no brother.
 
How cool is it that we get a return to the offputting wooden line readings with languorous pauses as characters look of into the distance their eyeline nowhere aimed at the character they’re talking to? And Xaver Schwarzenberger’s full on artificial color palette throughout the entirety of the film’s runtime? Amazing. Candy corn sky as source casting molten movie popcorn butter hue over all. Blue silver accents.
     Drone. Chanting. The air of a funeral elegy. Exalted mourning. All with the dispassionate disaffected defiance of a singular voice the likes of which we’ll never see again.

Light and shadow the two secrets of motion pictures

Lucid deathmarch. Drug addiction. Junk. Dope. Needle. Pills. Escape from the pain. Veronika Voss (1982, Rainer Werner Fassbinder) is in terms of its aesthetic values a parody of a 40’s Hollywood schlocky B (yes I know that’s redundant) melodrama. But at its very core is genius. An interior portrayed through stark high contrast black and white imagery conspiracy plot that emerges as one of the few if not only original druggie films to say something new about substance abuse.

     It’s always bugged me how every drug abuse movie I can think of having seen always follows the same general plot. Rise and fall. Someone with everything loses it all. Loss of dignity. Loss of self. Rock bottom pasty sweaty desperate begging for another fix. And always so bombastic. The plot of Veronika Voss pits an aging former UFA star against her primary care physician DR KATZ. Veronika goes to this magnificent spa clinic brilliantly art designed all white complete with white plaster statues sculptures and any and all other decorative items likewhite. What is this place? Rehab? A methadone clinic? Worse.
     The doctor is her dealer. Man I am taken with this screenplay. The dealer is selling her patients dope that they in return sign their possessions home life over to her for. And there’s later some bureaucrat who’s on the take with them overseeing scrips for the state corrupt covering up anything that could compromise their racket. That’s it. There’s no resolution. No way to save Veronika. Dope costs a fortune. When she runs out of money she’s no good to the dealer so let her die.
 
Thematically I gotta say this but Veronika Voss feels like it in some way I can’t prove or describe link drug addiction with the Holocaust. There’s that one elderly couple that Robert’s gf goes to to try to pawn some priceless vase so Veronika can buy more dope who refuse to accept it. 
     Veronika lives in a house where all of the furniture is draped in cloth. Like someone who knows they’re going to die and has to take care of every loose end before they go. The elderly man has the concentration camp tattoo on his forearm. He was at Treblinka. The couple and Veronika are all trying to escape their pain. The mysterious question to ask is why won’t he giver the young woman money? “Do you see now why I want nothing to do with your world?” 
     Someone mentions that Goebbels blacklisted Veronika but it’s not confirmed. Which could mean only that she’s Jewish. There doesn’t seem to be enough to put together what I’m trying to say but the vase feels like precious artifacts stolen from Jewish people by the Nazis. I’m probably wrong. But the feeling is we know the elderly couple and Veronika both get their dope from Dr. Katz. They’re being sent to die. They are suffering their own pain.
     Veronika is a has been. Younger actresses are getting the parts she used to. We even see one fresh off the casting couch. This whole dark sordid blackmarket exchange of flesh and shooting up become indistinguishable. When Veronika runs out of money and Dr. Katz plans her demise after the farewell party locked in her apartment with no more morphine only pills she’ll od. And she does. And what day does that happen on? Good Friday. The day of Christ’s Crucifixion. Lamb of God. Veronika sacrificed by overdose.
 
Such an effective portrayal of addiction at the end Veronika in her apartment room in disarray. Fidgeting. Lipstick. Mirror. Country western music mournful sad on the radio way more powerful than any other loud obnoxious run amok shenanigans Hollywood’s done elsewhere. Xaver Schwarzenberger’s star filter takes on secondary meaning. Distorted reality.
     The expressionist black and white world of Veronika Voss is artifice awareness transport beauty by art. Don’t you dare say German Expressionism. There’s more to life than Caligari. This film is cold. Clinical. Controlled. Balanced. Death.
 
The film opens with again with Fassbinder a movie within a movie that foreshadows the extent of the meaning we’re about to get. One of Veronika’s old movies. She plays a drug addict. Her character deteriorating from drug dependency. “I’ll give you everything I possess. Everything I am. Now I belong to you. Everything I have belongs to you.” She’s talking to her addiction. To her dealer.
     And in the theater she watches full of fear. And at the end of the film she’ll finally add “all I have left to give you is my death.” The earlier scene is her watching a premonition of her deathmarch. And Fassbinder is there right next to her in the theater not saying anything. Just watching. And he’ll die in real life from drugs the same year this film was released. An actress playing an actress watching an actress. An addict can become different people on a whim invariably to manipulate gain sympathy confide confess subterfuge withhold intimacy for protection. Confusion. Despair. Death.

The pink angel

Embrace the cuck. Accept it. Surface veneer (I know that’s redundant) of a 50’s Technicolor melodrama. Lola (1981, Rainer Werner Fassbinder) cuts too deep. So deep it angers me. Were I to judge it based on a film’s impact its ability to stay with you then this thing wins the award.

     Jumping to the end. Do you find this narrative credible once VON BOHM (Armin Mueller-Stahl) marries LOLA (Sukowa)? That’s what I wrestle with. This old fashioned strictly by the book bureaucrat middle-aged romantic lured away by his own lust taking the biggest whore in town as his bride knowing full well that she’s owned and operated by his most detested employee. That’s his arc. Inevitable. The only way this narrative could end. That I hate it so much means it works so well. Like the pathetic schlub he is I also fell for it.
     Because Sukowa is amazing. She makes it work. Her ebullient effervescence. Her raucous rowdy laughter and that squeak ever so often that’s an octave higher. I was so into this thing I missed the Fassbinder bubble coalescing right before my eyes. Lola wanting this respectable acceptable they say she can’t have. To legitimize her own reputation? No to conquer him for her own gain. When she dresses up as a bookworm. Their first date going to that church they have all to themselves singing hymns together. Her dalmatian dotted hoop dress. All the better to destroy you with.
     She even warns him. Leave town. I’m corrupt. He’s a frumpy age gap with what to offer her though? Her playing him I get. But marrying her? And Schuckert’s wedding present a trustfund whorehouse left to his illegitimate daughter Lola is to rear with von Bohm is further than I’ve seen Fassbinder or anyone else satirize the legacy of tradwife as secret prostie. The twist is von Bohm doesn’t wind up a geek in a catatonic stupor. He seems content. And that’s what’s truly chilling. I’ll save the final ending for you to experience yourself.
 
Being deceived is one thing. That’s a cuckold. But to know what you’re walking into is the stuff of tragedy. This is one of Fassbinder’s bleakest plots. One of the most transactional of all time. But that’s the point. Pussy is a line item of the town’s budget and integral to its infrastructure. Lola leverages it to her own advantage. And furthermore that of her daughter’s. Are they victim or survivor?
     Anyway Xaver Schwarzenberger’s color cinematography here is what I’ve always considered the most colorful movie ever. Except in terms of primary hues and saturation it’s beat by Speed Racer (2008, Wachowskis). In Lola the brothel is sumptuously lit with gels that give it this robust palette of mostly pinks with reds oranges purples baby blue and occasionally a burst of lime. Have you ever noticed how many of the sources in this film are unmotivated? The real outrage is how come there’s never been more of it? Think Bob Richadson. Natural Born Killers (1994, Oliver Stone). That’s my cause. My protest. More unmotivated light sources. Yeah early morning at von Bohm’s office where does that blast of lime bursting in come from? Exactly. This film is a monument to gels. When von Bohm is brought to the brothel the first time and he’s hit with that baby blue cast and the reverse of Lola on stage in pink then switches her to matching blue and pushes in is expressionist code for us to feel. There’s not another movie I can think of that compares to Lola in terms of lighting.