There are films that entertain. There are films that inspire. And then there’s Fitzcarraldo, Werner Herzog’s 1982 cinematic circus where inspiration gets duct-taped to a cannonball and fired into the jungle, shirtless and howling. It’s not just a film — it’s a stubborn hallucination. A symphony of mud, madness, and maniacal ambition, conducted by a … Read More “Fitzcarraldo (1982): Werner Herzog’s Beautiful, Batshit Opera of Madness and Mud” »
Werner Herzog once dragged a ship over a mountain. He filmed it. He made Klaus Kinski wear wigs in the jungle. He’s cooked and eaten his own shoe. The man does not make movies — he commits cinematic fever dreams. And Heart of Glass, his 1976 Bavarian brain-bender, is Herzog at his most deranged and … Read More ““Heart of Glass” (1976): Werner Herzog Hypnotizes a Village, Captures the End of the World” »
There’s a special kind of suffering reserved for people who wander into a film like Saint Maud expecting horror and walk out feeling like they’ve been exorcised by an art school thesis. Directed by Rose Glass and hailed by critics as a “slow-burn masterpiece,” this 2019 exercise in misery masquerading as meaning is what happens … Read More ““Saint Maud” (2019): The God Complex Nobody Ordered” »
Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest wants to be profound. It wants to chill your soul. It wants to make you sit silently in your seat afterward, contemplating the banality of evil and the horror of human detachment. And maybe it does all of that—for film students and arthouse masochists who enjoy being pummeled with … Read More ““The Zone of Interest” (2023) – A Portrait of Evil, Told by a Boring Wallpaper Salesman” »
Birth, Jonathan Glazer’s glossy trainwreck of a film, wants so badly to be haunting, thought-provoking, and unnerving. It succeeds only in being weird, dull, and about as erotic as a funeral. Actually, scratch that—funerals have more energy. At least there’s crying and catered food. This thing just stares at you for 100 minutes and whispers, … Read More ““Birth” (2004) – Nicole Kidman Marries a Man, Then Gets Emotionally Stalked by a Child. And That’s the Normal Part.” »
Every few years, a film shows up that critics fall in love with not because it’s good, but because it dares to be different — different in that cold, joyless, IKEA showroom kind of way. Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin is one of those movies. It’s the cinematic equivalent of being seduced by an alien … Read More ““Under the Skin” (2013): The Art-House Ice Bath for People Who Hate Themselves Just Enough” »
Every now and then, a movie comes along that critics adore like it just bought them all a round at the pub. Sexy Beast is one of those films — a 2000 British crime drama that shuffles into the room in a banana hammock and starts screaming about the existential nature of man’s choices. It … Read More ““Sexy Beast” (2000): A British Crime Flick That Thinks It’s a Shakespearean Tragedy in Speedos” »
If Clue, Spring Breakers, and a TikTok comment section had a baby and left it unsupervised in a hurricane, you’d get Bodies Bodies Bodies—a neon-drenched horror satire that thinks it’s clever, but mostly just reminds you why group texts should be outlawed. Directed by Halina Reijn, this 2022 film fancies itself a modern take on … Read More ““Bodies Bodies Bodies” – A Gen Z Slasher That Makes You Wish for a Real Apocalypse” »
There’s a certain brand of European cinema that fancies itself immune to subtlety, allergic to plot, and utterly obsessed with the human psyche in distress — like Bergman dropped his camera into a sewer and handed it to a horny grad student. Instinct (2019), the directorial debut of Dutch actress Halina Reijn, is that film. … Read More ““Instinct” (2019): A Prison of Lust, Power, and Pseudo-Psychology Dressed in Euro-Grit” »
Ti West’s X is the kind of horror movie that reminds you the ‘70s were not just disco and platform shoes—they were sweaty, horny, dangerous, and soaked in the smell of cheap beer, Vaseline, and poor decisions. And bless him, West dives headfirst into that aesthetic with all the elegance of a stripper doing cannonballs … Read More ““X” (2022) – Sex, Death, and Shotguns at Sunset: Ti West’s Sleazy Grindhouse Resurrection” »