Dan Stevens Gives Labor (Day)

Remember how everybody yelled "David Caruso! David Caruso!" at Dan Stevens when he ditched Downton Abbey after its third season to try and become a movie star? Well joke's on those psychopaths  -- I mean who yells "David Caruso!" out like that? Positively unseemly! -- because little Danny-boy's aquitted himself quite nicely, ekeing out a surprising little niche among today's most interesting weirdo character actors. I sure didn't see it coming since I hated him on Downton and was happy when Matthew Crawley's car veered off that damn road! Sorry not sorry, Lady Mary. But then he got hot for The Guest and all ill will was forgotten. Yes I am that easy. You know I am that easy. We all know I am that easy! But speaking of The Guest, Dan has gone and reunited with that film's director Adam Wingard for this weekend's fresh release Onslaught -- and I am reviewing it! But nnnnnnot jusssst yet. Consider this post a place-holder until the review goes up at Pajiba in the next couple days. I'm seeing the movie a second time tonight -- with Mr. Stevens in attendance, even! -- so this post will be updated once my review is live. For now I'm just saying my (semi) goodbye for the long weekend -- we'll be closed up til Tuesday. Everybody have a good Labor Day weekend -- make it even better by donating to (or joining!) a local union. Fuck the billionaire pigs! Bye!

Fra Fee Four Times

Big thanks to photographer Charles Moriarty for sharing these gorgeous photos of out actor Fra Fee on his Instagram earlier today -- click 'em to embiggen! They're giving me Walt Whitman via James Bidgood feels. What's the word? Bucolic. That's the word. Anyway on Tuesday we shared the trailer for director Zack Snyder's movie The Last Photograph which co-stars Fra in its lead opposite an extremely buff and oft-naked Stuart Martin. You might recognize Fra from previous turns on the Hawkeye series or from the Rebel Moon movies or from all his hot sexy times with Leo Woodall on Prime Target. Or maybe just from the several times I've posted about him now. I do sometimes tend to get fixated!

Thursday's Ways Not To Die

Scanner Cop (1994)

Kind of can't believe it took me until this week to watch one of the Scanner Cop movies, given I'm such a big fan of the original Scanners film (aka anything David Cronenberg ever touched) -- I suppose its status as a property only nominally related  to his classic 1981 film (it's set in the same world but nobody involved with the original had shit to do with this) was enough for me to shrug it off and you know what? I wasn't wrong to -- it's fairly awful. But it does have a few moments so ridiculous in their badness...

LOL I forgot the drug in Scanners is called "Ephemerol" David Cronenberg really is the greatest to ever do it

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— Jason Adams (@jamnpp.bsky.social) September 1, 2026 at 8:42 PM

... that it's not an entirely fetid experience, and the one up top really made me howl. The story is that ordinary people are being brainwashed to kill cops, and in this moment a cop's wife for some reasons is made to envision a gigantic devil cockroach when her husband playfully shows off his badge. I don't know but the devil cockroach got me. Also her chopping of a head of lettuce made me think about the head of lettuce scene in 1988's Slugs and anything that makes me think of Slugs is worthwhile. Viva Slugs! But not so viva Scanner Cop. If any of you have seen any of the other sequels tell me if there's any reason to watch anything else. Otherwise I'm probably bailing while I'm, uhh, behind. Until I get the urge to watch a bad movie again anyway. So... tomorrow? Probably tomorrow. Hit the jump for links to all of the previous Ways Not To Die....

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974)

Kaspar: Nothing lives less in me than my life.

Werner Herzog's new movie titled Bucking Fastard is premiering at the Venice Film Festival today and if you go looking you can find the first critics reviews dropping for it in the usual places. I've read no further than the headlines because I'm seeing it in just a couple of weeks at NYFF but the general vibe seems positive, and given what little I've allowed myself to know about the film -- it stars Rooney & Kate Mara as sisters who constantly speak and behave in eerie unison -- I couldn't be more excited for it. This is shit right up my alley yo. Like that scene where Luke Skywalker fires his laser into that tiny hole and blows up the Death Star? That's how this movie's coming at me. Anyway it's also Werner's 84th birthday on Saturday so taking a moment to celebrate one of the most staggeringly important and unique and talented filmmakers of our age seems, you know, the least we can do. Unlike some people: 

I don't know that there is a more disgusting factoid around

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— Jason Adams (@jamnpp.bsky.social) September 3, 2026 at 11:14 AM

Five Frames From ?

What movie is this?

Good Morning, World

I've had the below brief but deeply beefcake-y behind-the-scenes video of Breet Goldstein shooting his Men's Health cover for a week now and I keep forgetting to post it -- thankfully for you all I am feeling massively lazy this morning and voila, easy post and done. See the photos from the finished shoot over here if you missed them last week. Now let me drink my coffee and get my mind in the game -- the game of making the next ten hours fly by as quickly as possible so I can have my last long weekend of the summer. Sigh.

Gabriel Leone Five Times

Brazilian actor Gabriel Leone, who was so distractingly handsome as a cold-blooded killer in Kleber Mendonça Filho's The Secret Agent last year that I might've wandered off mentally a couple of times to imagine a movie where him and Wagner Moura were making love not war, has a new photoshoot in Numero Netherlands magazine, and I am here for it. Click here to read the chat with him and see a few extra photos, but I narrowed the shoot down to its five essentials after the jump...

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

The Neon Demon (2016)

Jesse: Something's in my room!

Hank: What do you mean something's in your room?

Jesse: I saw something in my room!

Hank: Are you high?

I love it when Keanu plays lowlife scumbags (a la Sam Raimi's The Gift) so it's always a treat when I'm reminded that he pops up for a couple of scenes to be a vulgar creep in Nicolas Winding Refn's 2016 masterpiece The Neon Demon -- I wish Refn and Keanu had worked together again! And I am kind of shocked they didn't. Give Refn a John Wick movie to direct! I don't like that franchise at all but NWR would make me watch it. And probably love it too -- he'd know how to make its beautiful neon-lit love of violence truly gratuitous to the point of sick-making instead of just pornographic like it's been in that franchise to date. Anyway it's Keanu's birthday and I gotta say...

Keanu being 62 is something I literally cannot deal with right now

— Jason Adams (@jamnpp.bsky.social) September 2, 2026 at 10:20 AM

Five Frames From ?

What movie is this?

Good Morning, World

Team Ruffalo, of course. Not because

 he's hot. Because he's right. Hot is bonus.

The Two Faces of Cooper Hoffman

As I prepared this post -- yes, I do the work! -- I realized I kept typing "I Want Your Sex Movie" into Amazon and I think this may've been Gregg Araki's long game. He's going after our algorithms. I mean it's not like my algorithm needed much dirtying up -- lol as if -- but for those of Gen Z who the movie has words for re: a fear of sex, this one's for you. Anyway -- Gregg Araki's I Want Your Sex movie has landed on VOD today! You can rent it right here, although you might want to wait for that price to come down -- 25 bucks is aggressive for a digital rental, yo. (The blu-ray, a format I much prefer, is out in October and you can pre-order that right here.) Not that the movie isn't worth all the money however you manage to see it -- click here if you never read my review. This movie is pure pop silliness and I had so much fun with it. And it also finally landed me a Cooper Hoffman crush -- he's the best of the latest crop of nepo-babies by far. Look at that face! Aww!

Superhero, Gay Monk, What Can't Kit Do

Everything really is coming up Kit Connor -- having just been cast to play Cyclops in Marvel's new X-Men line-up, the Heartstopper star has got two projects clamoring for my attention in particular. (And that's besides Andrew Haigh's A Long Winter, which I'll be seeing at NYFF.) First up today comes news that he will star as the real life 1980s murderer and tabloid sensation Robert Chambers in PRƎPPY from (drumroll please) Zola director Janicza Bravo. As massive Zola-heads we're already buying our tickets -- Diana Silvers from Ma and Booksmart will be playing Chambers' victim Jennifer Levin; if you google what Chambers looked like you'll see Kit's casting is extraordinarily generous but then what's new. 

The second project of Kit's that I cannot believe I haven't given any updates on since we first heard rumors of it in May, since there have indeed been updates -- the movie is called Rapture and it's about mediveal monks battling the undead, killed by a plague that makes their corpses rise, and it is going to shoot this fall. And as mentioned before it will also star Kit's Warfare pally Will Poulter as well as MNPP fave Manu Rios. Oh and it's gay -- two of the monks, who grew up together, share a "deep, passionate relationship." I'm assuming that the monk-boys in love will be Connor & Rios since they're the same age while Poulter is a decade older, but if they all want to have a threesome while the zombies bang on the door I wouldn't complain. Quite the opposite, actually!

I Love Black Balls

I keep meaning to at the very least make myself a mental list of the movies set to come out this fall that I personally am most excited to see -- because of course me me and more me -- cuz otherwise it's chaos and white noise and I have no idea what's happening half the time. Even better would be a list here on the site but that would take me being able to focus for longer than ten minutes and... that's just not been possible lately. (Have you SEEN the state of the world? My god.) 

(Julio!) Anyway I bring this up because two of the movies that would make it onto said list have come up this morning -- the first was Luca Guadagnino's Artificial which just dropped news of its world premiete at NYFF on October 5th. And here's the second -- the teaser trailer for La bola negra (The Black Ball), the extremely gay sounding new film from Spanish directors  Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi which grabbed our attention first when it premiered at Cannes to extremely gay notices. Here I'll just let you watch the trailer and see for yourselves:

I've never seen any of  Javier Calvo & Javier Ambrossi's Spanish T.V. series (Paquita Salas and Veneno) but from what I understand they're popular and extremely queer, kind of heirs to Almodovar -- the fact that Penelope Cruz is in their new movie only seems to cement that status for me, but if y'all who know of their work wanna enlighten me more have at it. I'm purposefully keeping myself ignorant (full stop, what's new) of specifics on La bola negra as I do with most movies I know I want to see these days -- I look forward to going in empty-brained and being surprised. But even in my ignorance I'm extremely excited about this one. (The fact that I do know that Cruz and Glenn Close and my beloved Julio Torres are in it, alongside a swath of extremely hot Spanish guys, isn't hurting.) So when will we all be able to see it? It is playing TIFF but I'm not going to TIFF -- thankfully Netflix is dropping the film ("theatrically") on October 16th. Gimme!

Five Frames From ?

What movie is this?