Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

El Conde (2023)

Margaret: It's said that when one samples the

succulent muscle of a still-palpitating heart,

it's hard to go back to being a normal person.

A happy 49th birthday to the brilliant Chilean writer-director Pablo Larraín -- okay so his Maria bio-pic with Angelina Jolie left me a little cold too but lest we forget he put out El Conde just one year earlier and that movie slaps ass. ("Slapping ass" is good right? Well it is when I do it anyway.) Name me another movie that revolves around a third act reveal of Margaret Thatcher, Flying Bloodsucker -- I'm waiting! Anyway looking ahead at what Pablo's got planned for the future he's an exectuive producer on that incredible-looking Mussolini biopic from Joe Wright that I shared the trailer for yesterday. But that's not the coolest thing -- last month it was announced that he's writing and directing a four-part horror miniseries for Netflix called My Sad Dead, which is based on several short stories by Argentinian writer Mariana Enríquez; here's how it's described:

"Ema, a 60-year-old doctor, can see and hear the dead. She calls them ‘presences’ and has lived her entire life avoiding letting this gift connect her with the suffering of others. But when her niece Julie, a disturbed young woman who can also communicate with the dead, but in a much more intense and sexual manner, arrives at her house, Ema is forced to get involved. What begins as a family reunion turns into a disturbing chain of events that alters the balance between the world of the living and the dead, infecting an entire neighborhood with voices from beyond. As the borders between life, death and desire blur, Ema will have to confront her past, her daughter and the ghosts she never let go.."

It stars a bunch of Argentian actors who'll probably seem somewhat familiar to me when I see them even if I don't recognize their names -- if anybody wants to slap me upside the head with a "Duhh, you know this person from this thing!" comment please have at it. Anyway IMDb lists the series as currently in production so hopefully we'll see that next year. Happy birthday, Pablo!

Ballad of a Showering Colin Farrell

The second thing I did after watching this trailer for Ballad of a Small Player, Conclave director Edward Berger's new gambling film starring Colin Farrell and Tilda Swinton, was make the gifs of Colin naked in the shower that you see here, intended to lure you in by me much the same as the shots were included in the trailer by Netflix to lure people like me into posting about the trailer. "Gotcha?" More like "Gotch-us!" We all got good. 

The first thing I did though, even before the gifs, and this one was a surprise, was run to IMDb to make sure that Berger was again working with his usual composer Volker Bertelmann, whose scores for Conclave and All Quiet on the Western Front have been two of my favorite movie scores of recent years. And they are working together again! Yay! So even...

... with Tilda Swinton looking like that (we do love it when she cartoons herself up to eleven) and with naked Colin Farrell, our first priority was the film's music. I feel as if this shows some personal growth? Maybe by the time I'm 90 I'll somewhat resemble an adult. Anyway here's the trailer:

Ballad of a Small Player lands on Netflix on October 15th.

Austin Butler's a Healthy Man

A gratuitous Men's Health photoshoot is the ultimate test of my willpower and so I I think I can finally say with full throated truth today that -- Austin Butler? Does absolutely nothing for me. I've been saying that for the past few years but these sweaty half-naked gray-sweatpanted photos really seal that deal -- he's never gonna do anything for me if these photos are stirring jackshit this morning.

I mean clearly his body is ripped. Shredded, even! I'd give anything to be in this kind of shape just once in my life. But it's not jealousy. It's more... bafflement. I just don't get the appeal. I saw someone on social media say something the other day about him emitting this crazy charisma in person and... okay? I find his entire persona off-putting if we're being honest, which is why I found Ari Aster casting him as a cult leader in Eddington very funny. Because what an empty vacuum to find one's self sucked into.

Which is to say I think he was used well by that movie; I also think Jeff Nichols used him well in The Bikeriders, where his macho man-of-few-words posturing concealed absolutely nothing -- a child. That's also why I don't think he was good in Elvis or Dune Part Two -- those characters needed to actually be more than a blank facade. (Then again with Baz who knows.) Feyd-Rautha though needs to transmit insanity and menace and Butler always felt like a kid playing dress-up. To me. (That said -- Sting wasn't much better. That role has never been cast right.) Anyway! This is all stuff I've said before and I don't mean to stop anyone from enjoying these photos if he stirs something in you. I'm seeing Darren Aronofsky's Caught Stealing next week so maybe... something will stir there. For now hit the jump for what we've got so far...

Five Frames From ?

What movie is this?

 

Good Morning, World

This Tuesday morning's greetings are brought to us by I Know What You Did Last Summer and Him it-boy-to-be Tyriq Withers (via), whose attributes we've extolled a couple times now. But you don't need me to tell you that -- presumably you're looking at the above picture and discovering it for yourself. Discovering all sorts of things about yourself, maybe. So let's keep with the "show not tell" vibe and hit the jump for four more pictures...

Honeymoon With Hairy

Things have been relatively quiet on the Jake Gyllenhaal front since his overpriced run on Broadway with Denzel Washington ended (who me bitter), save lots and lots of relatively boring pap-snaps on him on the Rhode Island set of M. Night Shyamalan's next movie. But today -- hark, a new project! He's going to star opposite Kevin Costner in the new movie from directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, aka the dudes behind Crazy Stupid Love and the surprisingly wonderful I Love You, Phillip Morris. It's called Honeymoon With Harry and apparently this script has been bouncing around Hollywood for two decades trying to get made -- it's about a a man whose fiancee dies right before their wedding, so he decides to go on their honeymoon... with her father. This is a weird idea for a movie y'all. It's also weirdly close to the plot of Moonlight Mile, Jake's 2002 movie with Dustin Hoffmann and Susan Sarandon that gifted us with a set of pictures like this:

Anyway I assume they're going for a heart-tugging dramedy "guys feeling their feelings" kind of thing but... I don't know. Sounds weird to me! Anyway once upon a time Mike Figgis was going to direct Vince Vaughn and Jack Nicholson in HWH; after that Bradley Cooper and Robert De Niro were attached while Jonathan Demme almost directed it. Lots of talented people circling this, so I guess they all say / see something in it! Meanwhile, me being a very serious person who also feels all of his feelings, all I can picture is this:

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

What's the Matter With Helen? (1971)

Helen: Men can be quite a bit lower than the angels.

The legend Shelley Winters was born 105 years ago today.

Name your favorite performance of her in the comments!

Kubrick Knew All About the Burden of Dreams

The October slate of Criterion releases is always my favorite bunch of the year because they always drop lots of horror for Halloween-time -- we discussed those a month ago right here -- but the November batch is always great too because they're gearing up for holiday shopping and wanna entice those of us who're still smartly on the physical media train. And so you get a wham-bam drop like this first one here -- Stanley Kubrick's final masterpiece Eyes Wide Shut from 1999 hitting 4K huzzah! Correct me if I'm wrong (it happens often) but I don't think EWS even got much of a blu-ray release, so this is a huge step forward for a movie that was woefully misunderstood and under-appreciated at the time of its release but which I think most sane folks have come around on. I've always loved it even if my ability to take Tom Cruise has vacillated wildly over the years -- he's used perfectly by Kubrick, and Kidman is per usual brilliant, and I fucking love this movie. One of 1999's many many many masterpieces. And yeah okay Kubrick died before it was finished so calling it "his" movie always has an asterisk beside it, but it sure as hell feels like a Kubrick movie to me so I allow it. As an aside I finally got the soundtrack on vinyl recently with a re-release as well and I really recommend that shit too. Brilliance. 

Next on the list of November Must Haves are Luis Buñuel’s 1963 romantic thriller Él, which is a Buñuel I don't believe I've ever seen? My Buñuel viewings have been all over the place over the years -- we watched a lot of him in film school and obviously I've seen lots since, but there are still plenty of titles I've missed and this is one of them. Which is wild because it sounds right up my alley since Criterion calls it "perverse and unsettling" aka "my alley." And then there's Les Blank's brilliant doc Burden of Dreams, which follows Werner Herzog's deranged quest to make a movie about a deranged quest, Fitzcarraldo. One of the greatest docs about movie-making -- if not the greatest. Not to be missed.

At the absolute opposite end of the cinematic spectrum they're dropping the 1990 Kid 'n Play comedy House Party, which is delightful -- meaning the comedy itself and the fact that House Party is now in the Criterion Collection. To be honest I haven't seen this since the 90s but I look forward to a revisit -- I remember digging it back in the day. 1990 was a pretty formative year in my movie obsession and I probably saw this a dozen times on video. Oh and my favorite John Hughes movie The Breakfast Club is  getting a 4K upgrade as well. No it maybe doesn't have the magnificence of JAKE RYAN to stare at, but it also doesn't have Sixteen Candles' horrific racism and sexism either so you work with what you can!

Gazillionaire turned moviemaker turned reclusive pee-hoarding maniac Howard Hughes' legendary 1930 WWI fighter-pilot epic Hell's Angels is getting a 4K drop on November 18th (love the cover art) -- I have never seen it (save some of the flying sequences that are rightly acclaimed for their place in action filmmaking) so all I really know about this movie I learned from Martin Scorsese's film The Aviator. It'll be good to finally check it off. And then finally to finish November off we've got the reawakening of Criterion's wonderful "Eclipse" series of box-sets, which gather together collections of more obscure works by world-class filmmakers -- this time out it's the genius Abbas Kiarostami's "Early Shorts and Features" which really appears to be absolutely stacked with content I cannot wait to dig into. I admit Kiarostami is a filmmaker I've got a lot of catching up to do with but I've deeply loved everything I have seen to date. In summation, "Fuck."

Trap Her, Keeper

The teaser trailer for the new movie from The Monkey and Longlegs director Osgood Perkins is here -- the movie is called Keeper and it stars Tatiana Maslany and Rossif Sutherland (yes, of The Sutherland Acting Family) as a couple in a cabin in the woods... I don't know, maybe they just have a nice time? They sit around reading books, enjoying their beautiful cabin in the woods, the end. Haha of course not. Cabins gets such a bad rap y'all! I have had many fine times at cabins and never been murdered or had a fit of existential torment. Existential smores, maybe. But no torment. Oh well! Hollyweird strikes again! Here's the teaser:

Keeper is out on November 14th. I'm not fully Team Perkins yet -- I mean he seems neat as a human being. I didn't love Longlegs though, but I did enjoy The Monkey a lot. So we'll have to see where this one falls. I love that he's churning these things out so rapidfire though -- we love a prolific filmmaker! Don't dilly dally around. Get 'er done!

Infinite Scorn in Our Hearts

Disgustingly gorgeous and repusively talented Italian actor Luca Marinelli is the star of Atonement and Hanna director Joe Wright's upcoming Benito Mussolini eight-part miniseries Mussolini: Son of the Century, and it looks like he subsumed the former (his handsomeness) to serve the latter (his performance) if the below trailer's anything to go by -- if this wasn't a series I'd say this was red meat for Oscar voters so we'll have to see if this is too arty and out there for the Emmys. "Arty and out there" is my bread and butter though so if I have to take an uglied up Luca for eight hours while he acts the shit out of a role I suppose I'll manage. I can always go watch Martin Eden or The Eight Mountains or go stroll through our archives of photoshoots of him if need be. Anyway this looks absolutely glorious, which is no less than I'd expect from Wright. Watch:

Mussolini: Son of the Century drops on Mubi on September 10th!

Actually, Another Choice

I prefered the artistic simplicity of the first poster that we got for Park Chan-wook's No Other Choice -- see that one here -- but in the interest of trying to cover all our bases and get a handle on what this movie's tone will be I do want to share this much busier poster for the Korean market that got dropped a few days back and which showcases all of the actors and characters involved. This makes it feel a bit whackier than that first restrained poster? I suppose we'll know soon enough since this is screening in a month or so at NYFF! (It still doesn't have a proper U.S. release date beyond that.) Speaking of NYFF though I had trouble narrowing down the movies I most want to see at that fest to just 10 (which I did do, right here) but I still think it's safe to say that if I did a list of let's say my five most anticipated 2025 movies left to see this would definitely be on it. (One of the remaining movies from that top five I'm seeing on Thursday! I won't name which one but you'll know when you know...) Anyway Neon dropped three more stills from Master Park's film today as well, so let's take a gander after the jump at those...

Five Frames From ?

What movie is this?

 

Only Monsters Play God

Netflix just dropped these two teaser posters for Guillermo Del Toro's upcoming film of Frankenstein, which stars Oscar Isaac, Mia Goth, and Jacob Elordi as the Monster. (Love that the poster below centers Oscar's patented Chunky Bum, although it's a little shadowy, Guillermo. You'd best give it the spotlight treatment at some point in your movie!) We also have the official release dates -- Frankenstein is playing in "Select Theaters" on October 17th and then it hits Netflix on November 7th. This being Netflix you might want to side-eye that "select theaters" thing -- it will definitely play the Paris Theater here in NYC since that place is owned by Netflix, but beyond that? Definitely somewhere in L.A. one assumes but who knows how wide they'll go. I think most people will sadly be seeing this on a small screen. Who are the real monsters, then? They're playing God with Movies!

Good Morning, World

Actor and hot homosexual theatrical chanteuse Claybourne Elder reporting for duty from Fire Island this past weekend (via) -- somebody got angry at me last week for dropping a Gilded Age spoiler so I'll just shut my mouth and say "Hey Clay, good to see you looking fine and not at all trampled by any horses..." Oh damn. I can't help myself. In all honesty fuck Julian Fellowes for burying more gays so I care not. Not after the week we gays had last week. It's my job to celebrate the sexy and living dammit. So here's several more photos of an 100% hoof-free Claybourne after the jump...

Chain Reactions in 250 Words or Less

Anybody smart enough to sit Karyn Kusama down in a chair and have the Jennifer's Body / The Invitation director talk about horror movies is ace in my book. And cinematic documentarian Alexandre O. Philippe has now done it twice -- first in the terrific Lynch/Oz doc (where she was the stand-out) and now in Chain Reactions, which is about the towering legacy of Tobe Hooper's horror masterpiece The Texas Chain Saw Massacre here in the 50th year since its making. (For the record Kusama was also a talking head in Queer for Fear. Bryan Fuller's perfect docu-series.) 

Kusama is once again brilliant to listen to here, but it turns out that everybody Philippe assembled for this film is top notch and, even better, all of them are coming at the movie from totally different directions. Patton Oswalt's the fanboy, the great Alexandra Heller-Nicholas's the critic, Stephen King was Hooper's friend, and Takashi Miike is... Takashi fucking Miike! (Turns out he's an incredibly thoughtful man for being such a maniac.) Fifty years on it's damned near impossible to find new things to say about a film as discussed & dissected as TCM has been, but the terrific Chain Reactions does a bang-up job doing just that. And Philippe's very much got a very specific thing going on with these essay movies, but this is truly his best one to date. I look forward to whatever blast of nastiness finds itself under his microscope next.

Chain Reactions is screening as part of the "Scary Movies" series 

here in NYC this weekend. Check the entire line-up right here.

5 Off My Head -- Scary Movies To Swallow Us Up

To my fellow horror-hounds of the Big Apple, a heads-up -- FLC has brought back their much beloved "Scary Movies" series this year and it kicks off tomorrow!, running through the 21st. You can check the entire line-up at this link but I thought I'd highlight some, uhh, highlights in case you're overwhelmed by the week's worth of creepy cool choices that they've curated -- for real out of the ones I've already seen there's not a bad bugger in the bunch. They do such good work with this series every time. Now some of these I'm planning on reviewing in the next week so I'm going to keep it mostly brief for now. But I give you...

5 Movies Not To Miss At "Scary Movies XIII"

The Wailing (dir. Pedro Martín-Calero) -- A tremendously accomplished and stylish scare flick from Spain (the director's very first feature!) that I saw at Fantasia earlier this month and reviewed right here. It fucking rules. And when I tell you something reminds me of Luca Guadanino's Suspiria you should listen! (And obviously take it as a good thing since Luca Guadanino's Suspiria is revelatory, of course.)

Rabbit Trap (dir. Bryn Chainey) -- a Folk Horror flick from the UK starring Dev Patel? Who's gonna miss that? Nobody wants to miss that. If you're not in NYC for this series you don't have to wait long for this movie though as it's being released in theaters on September 12th. But if you are in NYC treat yourself and see it ASAP. I'll be reviewing it for its theatrical release but it's a definite rec.

Good Boy (dir. Ben Leonberg ) -- Another one I saw at Fantasia and reviewed (right here). My feelings were mixed, it's true, but it's a horror movie starring an adorable doggy -- everyone should still see it even if I don't think it quite entirely works. And I'm fairly lonesome on that island as most people seem to've adored it. Make up your own minds! Support Doggy Cinema!

Chain Reactions (dir. Alexandre O. Philippe) -- The latest essay film from the director behind Lynch/Oz and Leap of Faith: William Friedkin on The Exorcist and several other single subject cinematic studies of note, Chain Reactions is all about Tobe Hooper's masterpiece The Texas Chain Saw Massacre here for that film's 50th anniversary. I will also be reviewing this soon so mum's my word til then but, uhh, do go see it. Really superior group of voices gathered.

It Ends (dir. Alexander Ullom) -- This is tomorrow night's Opening Night movie and it's already sold out so just put a pin in this one! Likewise any more thoughts from me on it since I'm planning on reviewing it. But I will say that it's about a group of teenage friends who find themselves trapped on an endless road that winds through the forest forever and god I felt that. 

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They're also screening a couple of classic horror movies like m-f'ing Daughters of Darkness which is never to be missed on the big screen, so make sure you peruse the entire line-up. I'm hoping to check out a couple of the other titles that I haven't myself been able to see, so maybe I'll see you there! Or maybe not! I'm a shy hermit who barely leaves the house, so

Jesse Williams Four Times

Y'all know that big distracting typography irritates my OCD so I usually wouldn't put a cover image up top and first in one of these posts. But I am making an understandable exception for this image of Jesse Williams on the cover of Vanity Fair Italia (via) for reasons that are clear to any person with working sight. But even if you've got great sight  let's zoom in...

... and appreciate him in close-up. What a babe. I'm tempted to type out the entire Wayne's World "babe" puns scene here ("Baberaham Lincoln") honestly. He's worthy! He's worthy! Weird why the hell is all this Wayne's World nonsense stuck in my head? Did I have a stroke? WTF. Aaaanyway the link to VFI isn't actually working for me right now so I had to do some sideways scrounging to come up with these photos; there might be more? If there are I'll add them but for now hit the jump for the babe we got...