This Used To Be My Slayground

The fine folks at A24 just dropped this surprise teaser poster on us today (via) with word that a trailer is coming tomorrow -- Slayground is from director Jeremy Saulnier, who has only made one movie that was "just okay" (that would be Hold the Dark with Alexander Skarsgard) while everything else he's made is "fucking fantastic." That would be Green Room, Blue Ruin, Rebel Ridge (with Aaron Pierre!), and even his first film Murder Party which I recall liking a lot back in the day. ("The day" being "2007.") We don't have a lot of info on Slayground (previously titled October) right now so perhaps it'd be smart for me to wait until the trailer drops tomorrow to post this, but I... am not doing that. So what do we know? We know it stars Cory Michael Smith which honestly is enough for me...

... he's a terrific actor (and a gay!) who's usually relegated to supporting roles where he steals the entire movie, (remember how good he was in May December?) save small films like 1985 he is absolutely incredible in (my review here). But Smith ain't all -- the movie also co-stars Stephen Root and James Badge Dale (mmm James Badge Dale) and Young Mazino (mmm Young Mazino) and Sophie Wilde and Imogen Poots (Green Room reunion!) and Chase Sui Wonders -- that's a tremendously-appealing-to-me cast already. Also Wikipedia labels the film as "a Halloween-set action thriller film" so that, along with the teaser poster, gives us more of a clue where this is headed. I'm getting Onslaught vibes but hopefully it's better than Onslaught. So... stay tuned! Watch this space! Tomorrow, a trailer! Here is a favorite James Badge Dale gif to get us there (more here):

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Polyester (1981)

Francine Fishpaw: I wish I could be more like you, Cuddles:
always optimistic. I look into my future, and all I see is a long,
dark highway, filled with endless toll booths and... no exits.

The divine Divine aka Harris Glen Milstead was born on this day 81 years ago. This should be an international holiday goddammit.

Five Frames From ?

What movie is this?

Since no one has guessed here are five more:

So what movie is it?

Good Morning, World

How nice of Alexander Skarsgard to take last Friday's post title to heart -- yes these are more photos from the same photoshoot (via), and thank goodness there were more. And of such fine quality too! The man, he knows how to serve. In related news -- Wicker is out this week! More on that later. Like, later later this week. I am not a machine. For now we just sat down at our desk and our wherewithal seems to have stayed on the subway + joyrided (joyrode?) it outta here -- lemme drink my coffee and get back to you. Happy Monday! Hit the jump for more Alex bein' Alex...

Take Off Your Clothes & Go

I had just a couple of small plans this week -- mainly to wrap up my NYFF coverage -- but when I wasn't skittering off to press screenings I was feeling so burned out I could barely type the word "gratuitous." And we all know when that's the case it's shit's creek for us. And here we are, and it looks like Alexander Skarsgard -- this isn't actually so bad? Huh. Anyway I am done finito over fucked for the week -- I cannot possibly do any more work until I go home and collapse for a bit. I have been drained dry yo! (And not by Alex, unfortunately.) Coming next week -- supposedly a NYFF wrap-up, plus brand new reviews of the films La Bola Negra and Wicker and Wildwood, supposedly! (I only haven't seen the latter yet so these are all a work-in-progress.) Until then, collapse with me! Bye!

Crawlers in 150 Words or Less

Coming from your favorite noted arachnophobe it means something when I say that Crawlers is creepy crawly dumb fun -- it's basically an unofficial  remake of Sébastien Vanicek's far superior 2023 flick Infested, but really the logline "apartment building full of killer spiders gets quarantined and the residents must try to survive" is a logline that belongs to us all. This movie is dumber and sillier than Infested was and it really casts a wide net to catch up all of the "unlikeable slasher movie archetypes" it can for feeding to its eight-legged lil' freaks, but I slept very poorly after watching Crawlers all the same, and isn't that the point? To make you want to scratch your own skin off? As such, success.

Jesse Williams Twelve Times

This post is an amalgam of a few different photoshoots of Jesse Williams that I somehow missed over the past couple of years, all of which I gathered up just now to try and staunch the bleeding from the self-inflicted wound of something else I missed that's even more egregious -- the news that the legend Gregg Araki not only announced he's working on a new movie so quickly after I Want Your Sex broke a decade-long dry-spell, but... the bastard's already done filming the thing! And yes it co-stars the forever-dreamy Jesse here, but it's harkening back to his old-school gargantuan cast days a la Nowhere and so it also stars (deep breath)...

... Kal Penn, Michael Chiklis, David Koechner, Steve Guttenberg, Colleen Camp, Giovanni Ribisi, Judy Greer, Margaret Cho, Ashton Kutcher, Wendi McLendon-Covey, and Alison Brie! Good grief. The movie is titled for the moment The Decline Of Fucking Western Civilization (taken from a title-card in his movie Totally F*cked Up) but we don't know anything about the scenario other than that. Thank goodness he's pounding out movies again! And surely he will exploit how ridiculously hot Mr. Williams is, which is even more important. (I daren't dream of my front-row Take Me Out shower scene experience, but I do. I do!!!) Anyway until we get more info about this movie feel free to hit the jump for the Jesse snaps...

Deliver Us To Criterion

While we're still recovering from the swollen holiday schedule robbing us blind, the January load from Criterion usually runs light -- and it's no different for 2027, as they've just announced their releases and it's a small batch indeed. One third of it is 4K upgrades -- those would be John Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy and Bong Joon-ho's Parasite (kind of surprised the latter wasn't already 4K, I hadn't noticed) -- and then there's a new set of Martin Scorsese's long running "World Cinema Project" series, including...

Finally! Very happy to see this appear in Criterion's January announcements as part of Volume 6 of Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project, three years after I caught the restoration at the London Film Festival, excellent 👌...

[image or embed]

— Richard Wells (@slipperyjack.bsky.social) October 16, 2026 at 2:05 PM

That leaves just three standalone releases for the month, but they're pretty darn exciting -- first up there is John Boorman's masculinity thriller Deliverance with Jon Voight, Ned Beatty, and Burt Reynolds at his highest Sex God peak. Great movie (now squeal, piggy.) Then second is Mike Leigh's Career Girls, one of the Leigh movies I've never seen -- any fans? It's Mike Leigh so obviously I'll see it at some point -- now that he's retiring I can finally catch up! (I'd gladly remain behind if he wanted to keep working though.) Anyway the final title for Criterion's January haul is another one I haven't seen, Claire Denis' debut film Chocolat starring the great and gorgeous Isaach de Bankolé. Look how pretty he is on the cover below! Good grief.

Good Morning, World

Aussie actor Stacy Clausen, who you should recognize from his role in the "immediate queer horror classic" Leviticus, has gifted us with a slutty little photoshoot this morning for something called Interloper magazine (via) -- every time I turn around there's a new magazine filled with slutty little twink photoshoots, it's truly a golden age. Anyway I'm curious to see if either of the Leviticus boys can ride that movie's modest success (and I mean "modest" as in financially and culturally -- creatively that movie is a resounding success) to more international work; Stacy here is in the next Wolf Creek movie (yes a new Wolf Creek movie, huzzah!) so that's helpful. And posing in your tighty-whities isn't the worst way to keep your name out there either! Certainly worked on me. Happy Friday and hit the jump for the entire shoot...

Good Afternoon, World

Much like the above gif of Austin Nichols here I am, rolling back into your lives this afternoon -- forgot I had a screening this morning. (If you'd like to know what it was and a brief snippet of what I thought of it check out Bluesky here.) Anyway on top of that it's also the Opening Day of both NewFest and the Brooklyn Horror Fest and so it might be a little quiet, this post besides. October is always a lot! Let's see how it goes...

Five Frames From ?

What movie is this?

The Snow Men

I'm not just saying this because I am me and it's so me to say this, but I'm actually pretty shocked that the shot in Andrew Haigh's A Long Winter where Fred Hechinger and Kit Connor are getting dressed for bed and stand beside each other shirtless with their extremely different physiques on display is not included in the just released trailer for the movie -- the moment does serve a meaningful purpose in the movie, even if it's also just a little gratuitous in the sense that Andrew Haigh knows who his audience is, and when I saw the movie at NYFF I was likie, "Ooh trailer shot." But no they slapped me right across the face and said "Boo Whore" instead, and I am fine with that -- it's not that kind of movie. (Although any Ebon Moss-Bachrach fans might want to get in line and stay in line, just saying.) 

Anyway I didn't get to review this out of NYFF because it'd already been reviewed at Pajiba out of TIFF, but if I had reviewed it I would have been Team This Movie -- it's very quiet and gentle, it's like snow falling, but if you can get on its wavelength it's a terrific addition to the canon of Sad Mom Cinema. (Indeed I have a feeling it might wreck my partner, who vibes hard with such.) Fred Hechinger is wonderful in it, giving a real surprise of a performance -- not that I am surprised he's good, Fred is always good. But you don't at all expect his character to be such a beacon of light given his circumstances and yet Fred plays everything with a little more wonder and kindness than you expect . And it really took me off-guard, in a good way. And it's not going to happen (this movie is shamefully going to slip through the cracks of the next few months, I can already tell) but the best performance in it belongs to Bachrach, and he really deserves some awards-season appreciation. A Best Supporting Actor nomination at the Oscars would be richly deserved but I won't be holding my breath. Anyway the movie hits NYC on December 4th and then exapands outward on January 22nd and as with anything made by Andrew Haigh you should see it.

Five Frames From ?

What movie is this?

Good Morning, World

Listen -- if they wanna drop one photograph from this photoshoot of Dino Fetscher per day for as long as I live and blog well then we'll be getting a "Good Morning, World" post that is Dino Fetscher every damned day. I do not just take this bait -- I revel in it, I roll around in it like a low-down dirty dog, I do. Good morning! I'm feeling better than I was yesterday. Passed out early, got up late -- I really do think there should be an entire week of rest per year where everything shuts down and everyone just lays around. It would do our brains good dammit. (click to embiggen) 

 

Calling In Exhausted

Hey, you. So I got back to my desk this afternoon after a wonderful (early, early) morning spent in the presence of Greta Gerwig and Stephen Colbert talking about the new Narnia movie (see below) and I immediately hit a wall. It's been a long month y'all. Anyway I wasn't going to post anything at all but then I remembered that the above old photo of Daniel Craig exists and I decided to give us something to look at until tomorrow. Well besides my noted Bluesky braggadocio:

Here's the trailer! MOTHERFUCKING ZEPPELIN, MAN

[image or embed]

— Jason Takes Man-Adams (@jamnpp.bsky.social) October 13, 2026 at 2:14 PM

Sudden-ly, See More Hamaguchi

I will do a round-up of my New York Film Festival reviews some time this week now that the fest has ended -- it was one of the best years I've had at the fest in the decades I've been going, with so many incredible movies that I couldn't even get to writing about, so I actually have a second post in mind as well; we'll see if I have time what with both NewFest and Brooklyn Horror Fest starting in a couple of days, but I hope I do so I can give all the great movies their due credit. But for now I've finally written up a few, deeply inadequate thoughts on what is my favorite movie coming out of the fest (and I don't just mean NYFF, I mean "the year" at this point), Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s All of a Sudden -- read my review right here. Even after I named his previous movie Evil Does Not Exist my favorite film of 2024 I somehow keep underestimating Hamaguchi (I almost missed seeing this new one entirely) but that ends now -- what an absolute thing of beauty, this film. I haven't stopped thinking about it for weeks. Neon is releasing it on November 25th and you have to go; here is the trailer:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Bespoke Post (@bespokepost)

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

The Phoenician Scheme (2025)

Sister Liesl: When I pray no one answers. 

I only pretend he does. Then I do whatever 

I think god probably would've suggested. 

Usually, it's obvious.

A happy birthday to actor Mia Threapleton today -- yes yes she's high-nepo being Kate Winslet's daughter but she was so wonderful in this wonderful movie that I can't hold it against her. Actually it's kind of weird that Kate Winslet has never been in a Wes Anderson project isn't it? I could see her excelling with his tone -- whenever she leans into comedy she's grand at it. (The Regime had a semi-Andersonian tone to it actually.) Maybe this was Wes trying to get at Kate. I could picture an entire film by Wes Anderson starring nepo-babies though -- they'd all have that slightly familiar air of their parents but a little off-kilter, which is what Wes Anderson Movies are in a nutshell basically. They always feel like things that previously existed, unearthed tchotchkes from the past made new through his weird and wonderful sensibility. Anyway this is just reminding me how deeply underappreciated The Phoenician Scheme was in 2025 -- how the Oscars keep existing when Wes Anderson movies don't get nominated for at the very least Best Production Design every single time he has a new movie out is to their eternal shame. I did my part, it was in my Top 20 movies of last year!

Five Frames From ?

What movie is this?

Since nobody guessed here are five more!

What movie is this?