Category: 2022

Movie Review – Blonde

Blonde (2022)
Written & Directed by Andrew Dominik

I knew this would be one of those movies where social media would have the stupidest takes on either side of loving or hating it. The criticism, of course, lacks as much nuance as the film itself. But that’s how most Americans engage with art; in a completely shallow way. They have been trained so they don’t get pesky ideas or start understanding how complex existence can be. Blonde is a bad movie, but it is not misogynistic out of malice but rather from completely vapid stupidity. Andrew Dominik’s failure is not that he did not accurately represent Marilyn Monroe’s life but that he made a terrible adaptation of a novel. It has no narrative threads or thematic consistency to tie everything together and comes off as an incoherently angry waste of time. 

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Movie Review – Nitram

Nitram (2022)
Written by Shaun Grant
Directed by Justin Kunzel

There is no horror that man can imagine worse than what he does to his own kind. It can feel like this moment in history is the worst it’s ever been, but that’s simply because we think things most powerfully as we experience them. Memory has been proven to be one of the most fail-ridden human functions, and imagination is always based on present anxieties. We still have such a limited understanding of the human mind, and people with severe mental disabilities can be frightening because we lack that comprehension. When someone does something genuinely horrible or commits an atrocity, we want to reduce things down to concepts of “good” and “evil,” but if we are honest violent individual acts are rarely able to be defined in such terms. There is a justified fear of looking into the eyes of someone who could apparently kill dozens without cracking, but only through understanding can we ever hope to prevent these things from repeating themselves.

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Patron Pick – Funny Pages

Make sure to reply to our poll for the podcast: Which is the best Alexander Payne movie?

This is a special reward available to Patreon patrons who pledge at the $10 or $20 a month levels. Each month those patrons will pick a film for me to review. If they choose, they also get to include some of their thoughts about the movie. This Pick comes from Matt Harris.

Funny Pages (2022)
Written & Directed by Owen Kline

The United States is a grimy, skeevy place. It’s often easy for people who live in dense urban environs to mock those in “red states” when climate collapse strikes and causes devastation. They dunk on people who are ruled over by neo-fascist political figures yet fail to realize the whole damn thing is coming down on top of everybody. You wouldn’t think such an insight would be found in a New York/Hollywood nepotism baby but America is full of surprises. Owen Kline, the son of actors Kevin Kline & Phoebe Cates, makes his feature film debut as writer-director of this picture. Much like the dirtbag Left (see Chapo Trap House, Cumtown, etc.) I feel conflicted as to how much I trust these privileged motherfuckers but for now we’ll give them a pass, just keep your eyes on them. Kline appears to be forging the love child of Terry Zwigoff & The Safdie Brothers and it sort of works.

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