"Down In Front!" - November 2o24

Down Low (2023) - dir. Rightor Doyle  [the TL;DR version: cringe school gay hijinx for fans of 'The Hangover'.  because who tires of stories about babysitting idiots who can't handle their drugs?  more of those.  lest i sound like a terminal hater there's a genius edit in the 2nd act, just an old woman moaning in horror in a closet, that's absolutely clutch.  overall?  movie made all the choices-- opening with relentless Gilmore Girls quippiness, filling in the center with a joke writer's steamer trunk of gay generation gap gags, & ending (natch) at murder husbands.  having made all these choices, the director chose to not cut ANY, resulting in a paint-by numbers third act which left me distracted & wondering how obsessively the director studied the underwater photography of 'Under The Skin', 'You Were Never Really Here' & Hannibal s3, considering the payoff.  not sure the punchline makes any visual sense, because it sure fails to emotionally.  but what the fuck.  netflix, right?]

Evolution (2015) - dir. Lucile Hadžihalilović  [uncomfortably bizarre]

Willy's Wonderland (2021) - dir. Kevin Lewis  [not the cage i screened it for.  neither 'mom + dad' nor a 'colour out of space', definitely not a 'mandy' or a 'longlegs', this is a one gimmick flick, and that note was politely lifted from cosmatos: make cage grimace & grunt, throw some lens flare, judder the camera & hose nick down with dark gorp.  instant cinema.  my most-cagehead mate talked this up, and sure, it's servicably straight-to-video, but...  miles to go.  still haven't done 'joe', 'unbearable weight of massive talent', 'renfield' or 'pig'.  c'mon, let a brotha catch up with all this late stage cage!]

The Monster Squad (1987) - dir. Fred Dekker  [quick fun flick to watch with your husband]

Chime (2024) - dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa  [HOT DAMN, in the line of 'cure' & 'retribution'.  nobody does movies about being haunted like kiyoshi kurosawa. most refined essence of k.k.: simply staging, lighting, & actors reacting to horrors beyond the frame. great stuff.  extraordinary sound design + scientifically applied sensory overload.  unnerving from end to end to end, and only 45 minutes.]

Longlegs (2024) - dir. Osgood Perkins  [second viewing, in ingles this time.  definitely worth viewing twice, in any language.  beautifully paranoid cinematography.  as for the queer read of this thing, written & directed by the child of a gay icon of stage & screen, well.  it's got issues?  because i'm not sure about the subtext involving mothers & secrets & satanic inversions-- a failed musical pervert living in the basement, destroying christian families & beating his brains out in front of everyone?  it's... not a charitable take on sweet, sorrowful norman bates.  but cage was paid to kill it.  and does]

 

Serpent's Path (1998) - dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa  [taps that sweet V-cinema spot. 90s indy thrillah quality. good hardboiled crime notes with some goofy music cues.  fantastic use of found sets; the staging & blocking is 50s noir quality.  no visual confusion ever.  some extraordinarily grotesque shots.  helluva yakuza film.  wish i hadn't wasted so much time chasing miike back in the day, when this was the True Goods]

Eyes of the Spider (1998) - dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa  [from the very earliest days, kiyoshi's movies were in dialogue with one another.  this is as much a companion piece to Serpent's Path as Kyua is to Retribution, or Seance is to Doppleganger.  k.k. is a magician with mundane materials:  the stories & the sets transform altogether however he sets his mind & lens to them.  in this instance the main inspiration seems to be... Godard!?  unexpected.  whimsical existential comedy about life after revenge]

MadS (2024) - dir. David Moreau [la nouvelle nouvelle extrémité française est de la merde!]

Deadpool & Wolverine (2024) - dir. Sean Levy [lest someone accuse me of taste or discretion.  i don't care about deadpool. the movies make sense, as movies, more than the x-flix do. the x-flix are just fuckin' awful, all of them. so weird looking at this stuff now. i wasn't into an x-man movie by the time it was happening because i'd been hearing about an x-movie all through the 80s & most of the 90s. i was past being the audience. jackman fit the suit, but so what? it's so decadent how they've given him basically two "happy retirement" movies in a row. + that deadpool had to co-opt wolverine to get disney to finance a third movie. i think disney did it just to claim street cred. don't know that we'll see any more of this exact thing. i think avengers: endgame wasn't the final phase of the old marvel. this was. it nods to that, esp. w/ the inclusion of snipes. wesley looked good. completely unnecessary... but the entire film is a paen to how fox is making a movie about being superfluous, consumed, & re-imagineered. the script swipes meta monkeywrenches from Walt Simonson & Grant Morrison (respectively) to overexplain to a jaded & weary audience how Comic Book Movies Are Perpetual Money, and no corporate "firewalls" exist to stop the endless tentacled churning in your skulls where your fantasies were always ours, darling]

Loft (2005) - dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa [meanwhile, back at le cinema]

Buffalo '66 (1998) - dir. Vincent Gallo [strictly the finale]

Mars Express (2023) - dir. Jérémie Périn [ghost in the shell + blade runner + 2001 + o.g. dune = absolutely glorious.  stunning, humane, transcendant.  i was crying for the robots.  fuck mankind]