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Tuesday, August 05, 2025
NYFF Make My Dreams Come True
Just a couple of weeks ago I shared the poster and a teaser trailer for Park Chan-wook's new movie No Other Choice starring his ol' pal Byung-hun Lee and I said therein, and I quote, "This movie's premiering at Venice and I am keeping all of my assorted limbs knotted up in hope that it'll head to NYFF from there." Well unknot me cuz it came true! NYFF just announced their Main Slate this morning for their 2025 edition and Master Park's movie is up in its business -- as are several other movies I am champing at me bit to gnaw right into. So why not a list? Not counting the Opening Night film (which is Luca Guadagnino's After the Hunt and so obviously my jam) here are the 10 movies out of the Main Slate that I'm the most anticipating...
My 10 Most Anitipcated NYFF63 Main Slate Movies
No Other Choice -- dir. Park Chan-wook
There's really nothing I can shriek in enthusiasm about this movie that I haven't been shrieking since it was announced. Park Chan-wook is a god, period, the end.
Jay Kelly -- dir. Noah Baumbach
Normally I try to steer clear of George Clooney vehicles but I tend to love Baumbach movies whatever he throws at me and most importantly he got his gal pal Greta Gerwig acting again. Gerwig seals the deal every time. Plus Patrick WIlson, Laura Dern, Riley Keough, Jim Broadbent, Emily Mortimer, Billy Crudup and Isla Fisher! Also Emily Mortimer co-wrote this!
The Mastermind -- dir. Kelly Reichardt
Not only is it the never-steers-me-wrong Reichardt behind the camera and not only does the movie star Josh O'Connor but the movie stars Josh o'Connor looking like the raffish lit professor everybody, including the other teachers and parents, are all trying to fuck.
Wagner Moura is one of the greatest (and come on, look at the picture, sexiest) on the world stage right now, and his teaming up withthe genius behind Bacurau is white hot shit. Plus Moura won Best Actor at Cannes and Mendonça Filho won Best Director so hopes are obviously big.
And speaking of Cannes this follow-up from the director and star of the masterpiece The Worst Person in the World won the Grand Prix at that fest. I will follow these two anywhere, together or seperately, but together tastes best!
It's Ben fucking Whishaw playing Peter fucking Hujar -- you think I'm not all over this? Anyway I was extremely annoyed I couldn't see it at Sundance so I'm happy to have been given this second shot, even if I wasted months -- months!!! -- of my life without it. I won't hold it against you, Ben!
Since 2012 Christian Petzold has made five straight up masterpieces in a row with Barbara, Phoenix, Transit, Undine, and Afire -- I'm hoping he hasn't broken that streak by daring to make a movie with a title that has more than a single word in it, but I think we might be in safe hands. I mean he's reunited with actress Paula Beer yet again. We're gonna be fine.
I tend to swing wildly on my opinion of Denis movies, but the main thrust seems to be I like her more recent work while her earlier, typically more lauded works have left me cold. I'm such a maverick! Anyway Denis regular Isaach De Bankolé is her leading man this time, which is always a good sign, but this also co-stars Matt Dillon and Tom Blyth? Mkay.
Yeah yeah okay it stars Callum Turner and George MacKay
as fisherman, obviously it was gonna make my list.
That's literally all I know or need to know. Fish me good, fellas!
Since The Headless Woman in 2008
I've been a Lucretia ride-or-die-for-lifer.
Not even reading what this is about. Sign me up.
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Runners-up: It Was Just an Accident (dir. Jafar Panahi), A House of Dynamite (dir. Kathryn Bigelow), Resurrection (dir. Bi Gan), Romería (dir. Carla Simón), Kontinental ’25 (dir. Radu Jude), If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (dir. Mary Bronstein), Duse (dir. Pietro Marcello)
Just a footnote on the concept of "Runners-up" here -- I literally could have listed every single other movie that didn't make my top ten. The only reason there are runners-up at all is I limited myself to a list of ten. As happens with every NYFF there are titles that come out of nowhere to slam me onto the floor in the best of way, and sometimes the ones I'm most excited about don't totally land. Usually though I always leave NYFF happy, because as I've said before they might not get all of the big exciting world premieres but year after year they do an incredible job curating the movies from around the globe that are the most worth seeing. I love my hometown fest! Click here to buy passes -- general tickets go on sale on September 18th (and earlier for FLC members). The fest runs from September 26 through October 13, 2025.
Good Morning, World
Don't expect some moving eulogy from me on the end of the Sex and the City spin-off And Just Like That -- I only sort of half watched the first series and had to interest in AJLT at all until people were saying it was a fun hate-watch. So I tried to hate-watch it but I couldn't even do that. Not my cuppa! But one thing the show was always good for was slapping the beefcake in our faces and I definitely took mental note of Logan Marshall-Green's appearance here on what's turning out to be Carrie Bradshaw's last spin around her self-centered globe. (Until Sarah Jessica Parker needs a fourth house probably.) Anyway that's the only reason I'm here -- keep your eulogies to yourselves and hit the jump for a couple of truly spectacular views of Logan's rear (among other assets)...
Monday, August 04, 2025
Wail On
There's a good chance that some of you International Readers outside of the U.S. have already seen the movie I'm about to link my review to -- Spanish director Pedro Martín-Calero's film The Wailing came out in his home country last year and it's traveled around from there. But it hasn't gotten any release in North America save a few festivals and I'm hoping the good word of mouth changes that quickly, cuz this movie rules. Click here to read my review at Pajiba -- I saw it up in Montreal at Fantasia a couple of weeks ago and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since. It's very good! And it's Martín-Calero's very first movie so let's hope we hear more from him. Once we're able to hear this from him, anyway. One movie that kept coming to mind, although I didn't mention it in my review, was Luca Guadagnino's Suspiria -- so that tells you something about how impressive I found it!
Good Morning, World
(via) Russell Tovey wearing Luke Evans' speedo?
These bros out here trying to straight up murder us.
These bros out here trying to straight up murder us.
Thursday, July 31, 2025
Race With the Glusman
Some movies just feel like they were made very specifically for me first. Like it'll be nice if everybody else likes them but first and foremost somebody was like, "Let's give Jason Adams a nice day. He's earned it." Needless to say, narcissist that I am, I approve of these rare but ocassional efforts to up my mood. I need 'em. And weirdly many of them star Karl Glusman, who I'm pretty sure I might just be the world's biggest, or at least most vocal, fan of. I have no idea if anybody else cares about him but one look through our archives on the Please Baby Please and Neon Demon star -- we have documented every goddamned moment since he caught first our eye in Gaspar Noé's 3D sex-and-misery-capade Love... and hey, I just realized that movie came out 10 years ago! And weirdly, as if continuing the bizarre theme of Karl Glusman being made for me that I'm insisting on here, Love was released in most places (not the U.S.) on July 15th, aka my birthday. I'm telling you. Kismet.
Anyway that all means that I've posted about Karls' upcoming action-comedy Eenie Meanie several times already -- it's from a dude who worked on some John Wick stuff and it also stars Samara Weaving, aka one of my favorite actresses working today -- she just keeps being awesome in everything, even nonsense like the last Scream movie and Babylon. Always on poiunt, that one! And so many of the images released from this movie have been of Karl half-naked, which helps as well. Well now that we've got a trailer (thanks Mac) we know why -- he spends a chunk of the movie half-naked! Hashtag blessed et cetera. Watch:
Eeenie Meanie is going straight to Hulu on August 22nd, which is a little bit annoying -- I'd like to see this on a big screen! But whatever gets it in my eyes the fastest is good. And I think the trailer looks like a whole lot of fun! But with Karl I'm probably just brainwashed at this point. Okay brainwashed is generous. I think the word I'm looking for is "dickmatized." Whatever! If the rubber fits. Ahem. Hit the jump for a couple more Karl gifs...
The Life of Chuck in 200 Words or Less
Flat visuals, costumes, and some of the most truly inane messaging this side of a dollar store greeting card -- this movie is like somebody wrote a full length screenplay for one of those prescription drug commercials where everybody's wearing solid knits and drinking margaritas on sunny terraces as their depression turns to ash in their mouths. Truth be told The Life of Chuck may induce a cold sweat, nausea, vomiting, seizures, more vomiting, testicular regression, fire and brimstone, dry eyes, an online gambling addiction, Akathisia, simultaneous constipation and diarrhea, chest pain, heart attack, your full torso spontaneously turning into those big snapping jaws of teeth like that dude in John Carpenter's The Thing, drowsiness, coma, tinnitus, voluntary Tourettes, necrophilia, proptosis, an outburst of immediate and unrelenting misanthopy, rashes, hives, leprosy, all ten Biblical Plagues plus a few more plagues that god couldn't have even thought of at the time, sugar spikes, dry mouth, vanishing fingerprints, vanishing fingers, your image disappearing from all known photographs because this movie went back in time and stopped your parents from ever having sex, night sweats, night terrors, day sweats, day terrors, headaches, and so, so, so much suicidal ideation. Also death.
Good Morning, Gratuitous Anirudh Pisharody
It's been a hell of an annoying morning (slash 24 hours) (slash 9 years) so let's just jump right into this one -- Anirudh Pisharody is one of those actors that I've never seen in anything, but who I started following him on Instagram for reasons this post will make very very clear. I guess he's on 9-1-1 and I've seen a few episodes of that. And he was on Never Have I Ever and I've at least heard of that, But that's all we got.
Visually though, we have lots of reasons -- especially since he has spent the past couple of days unloading twenty-two photos from a single shirtless gray-sweatpanted photoshoot that caught or attention once twice and third time's a charm. Thanks so much, Anirudh! Now I can put this morning's nightmare commute behind me and focus on something far sweeter after the jump...
Wednesday, July 30, 2025
Quote of the Day
"[Verhoeven]’s always risking being misconstrued. He has this really impish, ironic sensibility where he genuinely loves the genres that he’s working in. So he’s making these films that function absolutely as just straight genre films, and then at the same time they’re incredibly politically subversive. Satire is harder and harder to come by because people don’t really have the nerve for it. They end up wanting to just explain themselves to make sure that they’re understood, which is not how satire should work. It should risk being misunderstood. There have been a lot of films of his that were not understood upon release, and that must have been painful for him. But he never learned the wrong lesson from that. If anything, he doubled down."
As I off-handedly admitted in my review of Eddington I had to go back the movie a second time before writing my review because I could tell it was going to be an entirely different movie a second time through, and sure enough the tone that was knocking me off balance the first time fell completely into place on view two. After the above quote Aster brings up the confused initial reception to Starship Troopers, and I think that's a perfect comparison for Eddington -- basically I think people are going to be embarassed in twenty years for not seeing Eddington's brilliance, and I'm glad I squeezed myself through to the right side of history!
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