Shit A Trundles
Shit Ad Runlets
Shit Lead Turns
Shit Lead Runts
Shit Dale Turns
Shit Dale Runts
Shit Lade Turns
Shit Lade Runts
Shit Deal Turns
Shit Deal Runts (more…)

I rented this almost out of obligation — oh, critical acclaim, some kind of prominent artist behind it all, the Troubles, Bobby Sands. Yes, sure, sounds good for me, let’s scan through it quickly. But I found this film astonishing, powerful and beautiful and brutal and unexpected in its force and aesthetics. I can’t recommend it more highly.

And, yes, it is about the group of Irish prisoners leading the blanket [no uniforms accepted, prisoners naked but for woolen blankets] and dirty [urine spilled into the halls, shit smeared all over the walls] protests, demanding political status from Thatcher’s government, and about Bobby Sands, more centrally, deciding upon a hunger strike and then slowly, painfully whittled away. But Steve McQueen’s focus is on the body, as a complex site of political and aesthetic will. (more…)

let me start by decrying the coy suggestion of intimacy/conspiracy/closeness effected by the ampersand. and by decrying, also, that the author of of the book that inspired this movie is called julie. seriously, she could have been called anything. it’s very sad for all of us that she was called julie.

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Wow. I’m not even sure how to describe this psychedelic circus ride of a biopic about Michael Peterson (aka Charles Bronson, his “fighting name”), a violent sociopath who hurls himself into an anarchic “mission of madness” to become something of a national celebrity–a penal performance artist whose numerous hostage incidents have led him to be proclaimed Britain’s most violent prisoner ever. Incarcerated for armed robbery at age twenty-two in 1974, Peterson, at the time of the film’s release, had served thirty-four years behind bars (thirty of those years in solitary confinement). He’s still locked up and I think that’s probably a good thing. (more…)

No matter what the genre, there’s something wonderful about watching a filmmaker so absolutely certain of her methods, so attuned to generic conventions, so confident in his every shot and edit. Ti West has been making low-budget horror films for a couple years, and each was good (the very low-budget The Roost an effective sort-of-meta creature feature, the equally low-budget Trigger Man an even more idiosyncratic and utterly unnerving sniper film). But with House of the Devil, West pulls out his old video library of late-’70s/early-’80s horror films and doesn’t just wholly inhabit their tricks and tone, he recreates and exceeds their pleasures. Manna from horror-fan heaven.

Set in that time period, House gets all the details right: walkman and cheesy AOR rockpop songs, feathered hair, the elaborate teasing exploration of a big old small-town Edwardian home. College student (Jocelin Donahue) strapped for cash, takes against her best friend’s advice (Greta Gerwig) a babysitting gig with Tom Noonan and Mary Woronov. Shit, even *I* know never to take a babysitting gig with Tom Noonan (in full eccentric creep mode, and PERFECT).
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