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Longlegs (2024)
I just saw Longlegs and it was really good. It has one of the best minimalist prologues that I’ve seen in a while, ruthlessly exploiting the child’s POV to create a haunting moment without any violence at all. It also begins with a quote from the classic rock band T-Rex that informs both the prologue…
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MaXXXine (2024)
I just saw MaXXXine and it was somewhat disappointing, sadly. The terminus of what until now had been a pretty great trilogy, starting with ‘70s-set slasher pastiche X (2022) and then World War I-set prequel Pearl (2022) – the latter shot back to back with its predecessor and starring writer/director Ti West’s collaborator Mia Goth…
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In a Violent Nature (2024)
I just saw In a Violent Nature and it was really good. I would have thought that there were no more places to take the slasher film, a subgenre that’s been played both straight and ironically in just about every permutation imaginable. But this Canadian entry manages it, pitching somewhere between (very) black humour and…
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Kinds of Kindness (2024)
I just saw Kinds of Kindness and it was certainly an experience. A trilogy of short stories themed around sex, relationships, abuse, and power, it may be director/co-writer Yorgos Lanthimos’ coldest and most contemptuous film, with a title as playfully un-apt on a surface level as Todd Solondz’s Happiness (1998), another film about sad and…
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The Evil of Frankenstein (1964)
Somewhat dismissed as a weak entry in the Hammer canon of horror and monster movies, including by AllMovie as the worst of the studio’s Frankenstein strand, The Evil of Frankenstein, the 1964 continuation of Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, actually isn’t bad at all, really. It stars Peter Cushing as Dr Frankenstein, this time assisted by…
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Leave Her to Heaven (1945)
“There’s nothing wrong with Ellen. It’s just that she loves too much.” Oh, there’s something wrong with Ellen, all right. Possibly the first and probably the best of the “psycho girlfriend” genre in cinema, made famous by Glenn Close’s and Michael Douglas’ sleazy Fatal Attraction (1987) – and Clint Eastwood’s directorial debut Play Misty for Me…
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The Dead Don’t Hurt (2024)
I just saw The Dead Don’t Hurt, a western written, directed, composed by, and starring Viggo Mortensen, and it was the dullest, most poorly constructed piece of loose grouting that I’ve seen in a cinema for… a while. 0/4. I rarely give a film a zero score because my rule normally is that if I…
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Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024)
I just saw Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga and it was good. It’s certainly better than any of the recent Star Wars “sagas”. A prequel to 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road, it tells the story of that film’s female lead, Furiosa, who in this one begins as a little girl in the Green Place of…
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Motel Hell (1980)
All the way back in 1980, over 15 years before Scream (1996), slasher films were still being parodied. Back then, movies like Motel Hell were referred to as “sleazoids” and “geek shows” by unimpressed critics including Roger Ebert, who nonetheless gave this film a rare-for-the-genre 3/4 for bringing laughter to the formula. A sun-scorched and…
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The Strangers: Chapter 1 (2024)
So I just saw Da Strange Peeps: Chatper Wun, and surprise surprise, it was a colossal mound of turd. Full disclosure: I’m not really the person to review this movie because I hate the Strangers franchise and concept. The first film, written and directed by then-newbie Bryan Bertino in 2008, was in his words loosely…
I Just Saw
Telling you about movies I just saw
I Just Saw 