Among the dumbest movies of all time, this “satirical” “exploration” of the rise of American authoritarianism could only have been made by a European in the most smug and finger-pointy way. A family of centrist neoliberals with political connections faces its downfall at the hands of their failson’s new girlfriend after her book about uniting the country (in the vaguest sense) goes turbo-viral, kickstarting a political revolution that dismantles the existing two-party system for a totalitarian state (once again in the vaguest sense). All the archetypes are here, from the tough-but-fair patriarch, to the barren eldest daughter, to the “silence this!” queer comedy firebrand, to the uwu 👉👈 “trust the science” Zoomer youngest who, I shit you not—and this spoils nothing, this movie is a car crash—suicide bombs the office of the D.C. think tank responsible for ~vaguely gesturing~ all of this. Asinine doesn’t begin to cover it, see for yourself—it’s on Hulu.
The idea of the Backrooms is cool, always has been, but the idea of James Wan and A24 putting some young kid’s imagination in the fucking juicer for all its worth, is not.
Big month for hypnotically stupid movies on Hulu, this pseudo-ethnographic drama about a father searching for his lost daughter amidst the rave hedonists of Morocco starts off strong, with a propulsive minimal techno score and a cast of desert pirates who are compelling in-movement. Rather than be satisfied simply exploring these characters and their world (ugh!), how they came to this lifestyle and if they can sustain it—more than enough for a movie—this settles into a belabored road trip of explosively diminishing returns. The comically violent ending would make for a great gag if it were one, but photos and interviews with writer-director Oliver Laxe suggest that he is deadly serious. Arguably, even funnier.
On the other end of the spectrum is a film with a profoundly funny premise that fails itself and the great performance of its lead by not playing it straight. Imagine the dirtiest shaggy-dog joke, say Bob Saget’s take on “The Aristocrats,” delivered red-faced with distracting outbursts of laughter all the way through… It still pisses me off thinking of the wasted potential.
One of those in-betweeners I found on Tubi with a great title and cover art and nothing all that consistent in the rest: a story about a lady cop who tries to help two at-risk teens that finds itself halfway between exploitationer and after-school special. Other than “to make a movie,” I wondered why anyone wanted to make this one, because it doesn’t seem to want to transcend the limits of its budget, its characters, or its story. At the same time, perhaps the unfairly maligned “TV movie” is the closest we get to a canon of what we might call American Realism? I dunno, but I did watch it.
I expected a lot less, especially when it trots out a trigger warning as a kind of epigraph, but when it turned into true (if higher-budget) example of an American Giallo, the trigger warning took on the advertorial tone of “based on the shocking true story!” which I really liked, in a neo-Corman way. The story is lurid, the setting transportive, and the acting is good, rating this unfairly maligned by both the Letterboxd Literalists and whoever else may not want you seeing a movie set on an élite rape island. Pretty impressive for a feature debut, too. But one thing I am not exaggerating is that I would have knocked a final draft out of the fucking stadium. Zoë, I’m right here.
The Department of Defense has got to hire a new Film Liaison because this current guy can’t even cut a convincing First Act.
If you like Johnny Ryan’s work, you’ll love this movie. Nothing else to say.
Was writing a film largely set in East Germany so I decided to return to a film I myself had unfairly written off as a subpar and unnecessary reboot. Reader, I am not ashamed to eat humble pie: this is as good as it gets when it comes to serious, studio horror for adults. (Shit, it might be all we get when it comes to serious studio horror for adults!) Some of the most stylish production design and deeply researched background of a film made this century, in fact I’m inclined to put this up there with the best horror movies of the 21st century. Now I want to see Guadagnino’s take on Inferno.
I thought this looked great, a testament to how far food photography and styling has come. It’s in that way this movie fails, though, because its world of haute cuisine is itself more interesting than its high-concept conceit of a crazy chef getting revenge, you know? Something we all knew from the trailer.
Now THIS is stupid. I decided to follow-up the watchable Menu with another recent high-concept thriller, this one about a crazy pop star getting revenge. Looks bad, story is unfinished, characters are uninteresting and there’s nary even an infographic-worthy critical message to be found. At least Malkovich seems to be having fun.
Yup, this is the best horror movie of the 21st Century. Change my mind!
I used to have a bone to pick with the sort of “style over substance” approach most boldly embodied by Refn’s oeuvre. Perhaps I’m softening in my old age, but this time around, courtesy of Autoplay, I didn’t have a problem with the terse, cool guy dialogue, the Tumblr-or-the-egg compositions, or the fact that its nearly two-hour runtime is all in service of a single gag. I like Elle Fanning, I enjoyed Keanu Reeves as a lowest-of-the-low LA motelier, appreciated the glacial pacing and elaborate visual tableaus, and even if I remained un-wowed, Refn’s commitment to his vision is commendable. All the public shit-talk about Her Private Smell makes me want to see it more.
Obviously this is a benchmark for cultpop iconography, but after watching and rewatching the ways in which Guadagnino and screenwriter David Kagjanich develop and utilize the dance school premise in service of Argento and Nicolodi’s lore, I can’t help but see this as the 1.0: pregnant with ideas but inherently limited in scope and execution. I do think Argento and co. do a lot of this better with Inferno, though.
Living in the East Village, I, like many others, had the uncanny experience of walking down a block that had been arted to look like it did in the early 90s. One night, my street was all but filled with picture cars, lending a kind of Dickian time-collapse to an already strange evening. Clearly this was an expensive movie and Darren Aronofsky would be getting everything he wanted. And all of that, for what, exactly? This is sub-sub-Coen Bros. fare, full of forgettable stereotypes and nerd rage that, you guessed it, manifests itself in gendered violence. The talented Austin Butler tries, but there’s nothing for him to work with. There’s nothing here! Profoundly loser-shit ego-stroking with a mean-streak, from the visionary who brought you The Whale.
Look I am always keen to watch Good Actors work through Bad Material, see? But it’s a mixed bag, see? A pocket full of marbles and jacks, see? With nary a shingle of Bazooka bubblegum, say, Toots.
The central conceit is great: a mysterious rich guy hires a porn couple who make custom vidz to do some weird shit, which turns out to be a ritual. Love that. The visuals and performances, done on a budget, are satisfying enough too. Two problems: the art-goth world of the characters doesn’t match up with the custom-vidz porn couple world of reality (and if it did, it would be much more bodily extreme), and yet again, this is a movie that would have been better served by featuring actual fucking. And I don’t just say that because I’m always saying that; central to the film is the characters’ failing relationship, and no better expression of their disconnect could be put on display than having to make love when there’s no love left. Guys, I know it sounds crazy, but we are not going to get anywhere new in the fringe-cultures movie space until our actors start to fuck for real (again).
Another one from the Annals of Autoplay, I laughed a lot! This one is about a horny couple who can’t seem to fuck, and also, their house is haunted by a ghost (who definitely wants to fuck). The best parts, easily, were the committed performances by the two leads: they had genuine chemistry and were willing to commit themselves fully to the increasingly harebrained scenarios. Anything “bad” you could say about this movie would come simply from the facts that it’s dumb and pornbrained or whatever—which it is—but it’s got a Tiger Woods lookalike getting diarrhea while flipping through a a gay porno mag. You expect me to not laugh? I’m only human!
…In which Eric Andre takes the throne as current-day king of physical comedy, oozing pathos, while John Cena continues to be the most poised leading man in Hollywood, and my beautiful wife Lauren Servideo makes a brief cameo appearance as Rebecca “Chyna” O’Shaughnessy, a character whose name she came up with and the commendable director Matt Spicer included in the film’s credits. Also a great pitch for Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, an organization with a complicated history but a nevertheless capital G-Good aim.
Not to make this about me, but can we chill on the Jew stuff? One of us needs to send out The Email that says Look, I know things are complicated right now, but maybe it isn’t helping that we keep putting ourselves front and center in… everything. Case in point: okay, sure, the piano tuning guru our hero learns from is a Member of the Tribe. Oh, what?, Dustin Hoffman plays him in his first big appearance since his cancellation for allegedly opening his robe to an underage actress? And his character is a lovable sex pest? Whose biggest laugh comes when a beautiful woman “accidentally” opens her robe to him? And the “bad guys” are Israeli ex-army thieves who coerce our hero into safe-cracking but, at the very end, do the right thing because—I shit you not—they feel bad about the Holocaust? (Nevermind how Holocaust survivors are treated in Israel, btw…) And all of this could have been avoided with even the tiniest bit of discernment, in favor of an entertaining-enough high-concepter about an autistic-savant piano tuner with super-ears (whatever) played by the Very Hot Leo Woodall (who is about to be in everything) who learns to crack safes, feat. Very Good editing and sound design. Unfortunately, the Guy Who Directed Navalny (shocker) had to make it about us. Again.
I solved this movie in a way that would have made >$1 Billion at the box office and made everyone happy: reveal that it’s the long-awaited sequel to E.T. Alas, they didn’t do that. Yet another reason why the business needs me.
Started off like your classic 90s/00s indie drama, before it became a Yuppie Fight Club parody with Denis Leary in the Durden role, before becoming the most harrowing depiction of parenthood I’ve seen since If I Had Legs I’d Kick You. All three things I would have liked as individual movies, but put them all together and they cancel each other out. Couldn’t tell you what this is really about, but it isn’t Dentists.
It’s weird when somebody who made something good gets older and makes something bad. One likes to believe in steady, if nonlinear artistic growth. Nothing can take away from the fact that Andrew Kevin Walker wrote Seven, but this dorky Satanic slasher isn’t a high mark in his storied trajectory. It’s haphazard but predictable, glum with no emotional basis, thematically unsure of itself, and the worst part is, it doesn’t feel like anybody worked all that hard to make it good. I heard bad reviews from “the experts” going in, so I assumed I’d love it. Nah, this is LA edgelordism at its laziest.
I can already tell you that this will be my most-watched movie of 2026. It’s like a warm robe to me.
More of a clip show than a new Jackass movie, but having interviewed Johnny Knoxville twice, I get it: the team have given their bodies up for the gags for nearly 30 years now. You expect them to die for this? Hell, they still might. For its contributions to American cinema and culture, I nominated Jackass to be included in the National Archives at the Library of Congress. You should sign my petition if you haven’t yet.
What’d you watch last month? What’d you love? Any recommendations from me? Drop a comment—especially if you end up watching one of these—and follow me on Letterboxd for reviews on the fly.
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