May all your dreams come true.
Friday, October 31, 2025
Don't You Forget About Bugonia
Yes this review went up last week when the film opened in limited release but now that it's in wide release I thought I'd remind you that you can read my thoughts on Yorgos Lanthimos' latest film Bugonia at this link if you're so inclined. It's another banger from the Dogtooth man and I hope y'all feel the same. I mean you won't change my mind but it would be nice if we didn't have to be all awkward about it around the Thanksgiving turkey when the time comes. Anyway I hope somebody dresses up as Emma Stone in it for Halloween tonight! I was going to say that "I hope I see" somebody dressed up as her but who am I kidding -- I'm not going out. I am going straight home from work and watching a couple of horror movies and going to bed at a reasonable hour like the pile of dust that I am. In related news -- Jerskin Fendrix's score for Bugonia, also a banger, is now available for pre-order on vinyl thanks to Waxwork Records, you can buy that over here. I heftily recommend, it's killer stuff. I mean Jonny Greenwood should still win the Oscar for his One Battle After Another music -- which you can also pre-order right here if you're so inclined -- but Bugonia is my number two score of 2025 as of right this minute. What scores have you loved this year?
Russell Tovey Six Times
If a few of these photos of Russell Tovey look a bit odd to your eye you're not growing cataracts -- these are apparently 3D scans that've been manipulated by the artist Alex Margo Arden for King Kong magazine, although the info included on the Instagram post where they come from isn't too in-depth on the process and I'm not waiting to buy the magazine, get the magazine, and read the article to figure all of those details out. I'm sure you'll hear all about it if you listen to Tovey's art podcast. For our purposes we're just focusing on the fuckability quotient, and that remains typically high for our favorite pair of ears attached to a slamming bod and horned-up demeanor. Hit the jump for them all...
Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...
... you can learn from:
Bad Taste (1987)
Frank: Just remember, we're only authorizedto use violence when protecting the planet.Barry: And the moon.Frank: Yeah, and the moon.
A very happy 64th birthday to Peter Jackson today -- coincidentally I just saw Bad Taste for the very first time two nights ago. And it is, true to its title, in very bad taste. Fun though, if seriously rough around the edges. Not sure why I hadn't seen this one before -- I've seen Dead Alive approximately five thousand times at this point. Anyway supposedly Jackson has been off re-working his early films for 4K re-release for the past few years (if you've been wondering wtf he's been up to yeah, join the club) but the clock is ticking, Petey! And as desperate as we all are to see the exploding felt pustules of the Feebles in high-res I think what we really need is a proper copy of Heavenly Creatures at this point. Here's to hoping that 2026 is the year this finally happens.
Good Morning, Lukas Gage
I haven't been paying much attention to the whole press onslaught that The White Lotus and Smile 2 actor Lukas Gage has been, you know, onslaughting, due to his recently dropped memoir because... I don't know why I am supposed to know or care about that. I have nothing against him! I've liked him when I've seen him in things on-screen and we are contractually obligated to love any hot young actor who is an out homosexual. He also had Murray Bartlett's face up his butt once (that we know of) so he's royalty, practically. But a memoir? In this eocnomy? All that said he wore a jockstrap in his new photoshoot for Paper magazine ...
... and I don't care how much of a stereotype this makes me -- it will always work on me. I can't help it! I saw Rob Lowe in Youngblood at an extremely formative moment y'all! Anyway have any of you read the book? I would love to hear your thoughts if so. What a time to be alive. Anyway just like the last time I posted a Lukas Gage photoshoot this is a photoshoot geared at my preppy jock fetish sweet-spot so I'm putty in his paws. Hit the jump for the rest...
Thursday, October 30, 2025
The Monster Demanded a Mate!
I've talked about the poster artist Akiko Stehrenberger here on the site several times as she's one of my favorites, and today the fine folks at Coda dropped her latest, a spin on The Bride of Frankenstein, and per usual I love it. She always comes up with such succinct and surprising images for her designs. (Who could forget those flames for Portrait of a Lady on Fire?) Anyway tomorrow's Halloween and our "Ways Not To Die" post previous to this one aside we haven't been dropping nearly enough horror-related stuff on the site this month dammit! I've been trying to get myself into the mood but it hasn't quite been landing. So y'all tell me what your plans are for the greatest holiday in the comments please! I wanna hear if you're dressing up, what movies you're watching -- all of it! I need mood inspiration. So rattle your bones at me, I beg of you!
Thursday's Ways Not To Die
It's always a shame when David Corenswet has to go but we do sure like watching him walk away. Hit the jump for the rest...
Jake Lacy Twelve Times
What a nice surprise treat -- Jake Lacy content! The White Lotus and Carol actor is in a new streaming series called All Her Fault opposite Succession star Sarah Snook and so he's now being featured as Bustle magazine's cover-boy this month -- there's an interview with him that I have not read right here,. But there are also twelve photos of him to go along with the unread interview and those, those I have stared at. Stared at and gathered up for our communal lunch-time consumption. So hit the jump for those...
Scares Ahoy
Let's just go all in on the horror trailers today, shall we? I shared the trailer for Scream 7 earlier, which is a biggie obviously -- let's turn our eyes towards some lower budget but extra promising stuff now with Man Finds Tape. From first-time filmmakers Peter Hall and Paul Gandersman this has played several fests (somehow I missed it at Tribeca in the spring) and gotten good notices and now Magnet is dropping it in theaters and online on December 5th. This plot actually sounds similar to the plot for Shelby Oaks (which came out last week and which I reviewed right here) in that it's about YouTube paranormal investigators getting wrapped up in real-world horrors, mixing found-footage and not-found-footage. Basically it feels as if the world finally caught onto Lake Mungo (which I mentioned yesterday among my favorite films of 2008) and that movie's influence is spreading at loast, as well it oughta. Anyway unlike the trailer for Scream 7, which I admitted to watching, I have not watched this here trailer for Man Finds Tape -- this one I wanna go into cold. But you can watch it if you want because here it is!
Amd what the hell since we're here, why not -- I'll also share the trailer for the fifth and final season of Stranger Things since it also dropped this morning -- I don't really talk about this show on here much but I'm a pretty big fan of it and I'm very excited for this stretch of mega-budget mega-length episodes that they're promising to close things out on. (The release date for the first four episodes is November 26th, then the next three on Christmas Day, and then the finale on New Years Eve.) Have they gotten too big for their 80s britches? I guess. we'll see. I mean literally they all have since they're all like 40 with smoker's voices now and still playing 12. Anyway all I ask is for one more shower scene with Joe Keery please. Give us a furry lil' treat before you go!
Hello, Sydney... Again? Again
The trailer and poster for Scream 7 -- I guess they're just calling it that? Okay -- dropped this morning and here I am, sharing it with you. Now normally I tell y'all I don't watch trailers and I especially don't watch horror movie trailers because they always give away too much. But I couldn't help myself today so I actually watched this trailer. I was too curious, given the mangled-up route this one took to making (what with half of the reboot actors peacing-out), along with those bizarre casting announcements -- Matthew Lillard??? I couldn't help myself. But this trailer is extremely straightforward -- Sidney Prescott and her daughter are hunted by a Ghostface, the end. I feel as if Kevin Williamson (who wrote AND directed this one) has to have more up his sleeve than this -- right? But I guess we'll have to wait until February to find out. Watch:
Scream 7 drops on February 27th.
(I'm going to form a prayer circle that they shock us all
and Melissa Berrera & Jenna Ortega are the killers.)
(Or Parker Posey. Justice for Jennifer Jolie!)
Good Morning, World
When I shared a handful of Louis Garrel photos last Friday I said I'd found them on a photographer's Instagram but I never mentioned the name of the photographer because I hadn't written it down and couldn't remember it. Well last night this batch of outtakes from that earlier shoot popped up in my timeline, thereby letting me on to their maker's name -- his name is Nicolas Valois and you can and should follow him right here. Especially if you like to stare at beautiful French men being photographed beautifully. And who doesn't like such things? Show them to me so I may smack them twice about the face. And now, the Louis outtakes, hit the jump...
Wednesday, October 29, 2025
Must Be Funny in a Rich Man's World
Well it only took me two weeks and one day from the fest's last day but I have finally dropped my last review out of this year's New York Film Festival -- please clap! It normally doesn't take me this long but you try to write about Park Chan-wook's gleefully deranged satire of capitalism while on an entire fistful of cold pills and tell me how you fare mkay? Anyway I did finally birth something, and that something is a review of director Park Chan-wook's latest movie No Other Choice at Pajiba, and you can read it right here at this link. I was incredibly lucky to be able to see the movie a second time last week, which brushed aside some of those sick day cobwebs and affirmed some ideas I had had way back when I'd seen it weeks earlier. Shorter version: terrific movie! See it!
Pierre Niney Fifteen Times
It's a day of the week that ends in "day" and so that means I've got another photoshoot of some random French boy to share! This began last Friday with Louis Garrel right here, then continued with actor Niels Schneider right here. And now it's moved on to our favorite cartoon person Pierre Niney looking like he stumbled right out of The Triplets of Belleville and into a fashion magazine. Hit the jump for 'em all...
5 Off My Head: Siri Says 2008
Now that the festival rush of Fall 2025 is behind me I've been feeling the nagging sensation to check back into our long long too-long running series of "Siri Says" posts -- the last one I did was back in January! These posts have gotten increasingly sporadic as the remaining years have dwindled -- when I checked what's left this morning I saw there were only five years out of one hundred left for us to do. Do what, you ask since it's been so long since I've done one? Well the idea is that I had my phone choose a random number between 1 and 100 and then I picked my five favorite movies from the year that corresponds. Once we got down to the teens the process changed a little because it took too long for Siri to get to a number I hadn't already done, so I wrote the remaining years on slips of paper and picked one with my eyes shut. And that's how we ended up with the year 2008 today.
It's the last year of the Aughts we had left to do -- another decade crossed off! And this is another year when I was actively blogging here at MNPP so there's documentation of my thoughts on 2008's movies already -- click here to see what my favorite movies were at that moment. My list now, seventeen years later, has changed a little! Not entirely, but some. So let's get to it. I give you...
My 5 Favorite Movies of 2008
(dir. Charlie Kaufman)
-- released on October 24th 2008 --
(dir. Tomas Alfredson)
-- released on December 12th 2008 --
(dir. Martin McDonagh)
-- released on February 29th 2008 --
(dir. Tarsem Singh)
-- released on May 30th 2008
(dir. Joel Anderson)
-- released on June 18th 2008 --
-----------------------------------------
Runners-up: Wall*E (dir. Andrew Snanton), The Wrestler (dir. Darren Aronofsky), Wendy & Lucy (dir. Kelly Reichardt), Mister Lonely (dir. Harmony Korine), Funny Games U.S. (dir. Michael Haneke), The Chaser (dir. Na Hong-jin), Timecrimes (dir. Nacho Vigalondo), Happy-Go-Lucky (dir. Mike Leigh), [REC] (dir. Jaume Balagueró & Paco Plaza)...
... Teeth (dir. Mitchell Lichtenstein), Encounters at the End of the World (dir. Werner Herzog), The House Bunny (dir. Fred Wolf), The Ruins (dir. Carter Smith), Doomsday (dir. Neil Marshall), Cloverfield (dir. Matt Reeves), Hunger (dir. Steve McQueen), Reprise (dir. Joachim Trier)
What are your favorite movies of 2008?
Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...
... you can learn from:
Nightmare Alley (2021)
Pete: When a man believes his own lies, starts believing that he has the power, he's got shuteye. Because now he believes it's all true. And people get hurt. Good, God-fearing people. And then you lie. You lie. And when the lies end, there it is. The face of God, staring at you straight. No matter where you turn. No man can outrun God, Stan.
Guillermo Del Toro's Nightmare Alley landed in the Criterion Collection this week on glorious 4K, where this gorgeous and deeply under-appreciated gem belongs -- I hope that people will go back and realize they were incorrect in their negative critical asessments now, mainly to prove that I was right and this movie rules. But for other reasons too! Bradley Cooper gives his best performance to date in the film for one, but it's also (as the above quote suggests) a savvy dissection of our poisoned modern-day political situation without ever being too on-the-nose about it. It's like Luca Guadagnino's Suspiria in that way. It diagnoses the rot. Anyway we also see Bradley Cooper's dick so what have you got to lose? Go watch it! (Looking forward to an upgrade on the gif below with the 4K edition, you best believe it.)
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