The Coffee Table (Caye Casas, 2022)

Black, no sugar 

Watching The Coffee Table-- picture the ugliest piece of furniture on the face of the earth, a pair of gilt nymphs loosely screwed to a gilt base arcing unsteadily towards each other (every time someone walks around, actually every time someone makes an emphatic move anywhere near, the furniture shudders as if flinching), supporting a reportedly unbreakable glasstop. Picture a chubby mustachioed salesman (Eduardo Antuna) looking up at his prospective customers, meekly if gamely trying to sell them on the table's virtues. Facing him on either side are Maria (Estafania de los Santos) and Jesus (David Pareja) and for the next five minutes they bicker-- Maria about how expensive and godawful tacky the furniture is (she's not wrong), Jesus on how he's spent the day following her and doing what she wants and their whole life-- insisting on having a child, naming the child (Cayetano, which he hates) has been devoted to making her happy. Now he wants a table, this table, for himself alone, just because.

Longlegs (Osgood Perkins, 2024)

Three godfathers

Longlegs is haunted by three ghosts-- the eponymous serial killer (Nicholas Cage) who possesses the supernatural ability to pop up inside family's homes and end them; Anthony Perkins (father of the film's writer-director Osgood Perkins), who portrayed perhaps the most famed killer in all of cinema); and director Alfred Hitchcock, whose tremendous success with said film condemned Perkins Senior to a lifelong career of cheap knockoffs and increasingly inferior sequels. 

MaXXXine (Ti West, 2024)

Maxie goes to Hollywood

X had Mia Goth's Maxine shooting a porn flick on a farm owned by elderly Pearl (also Mia Goth) the same time she's being stalked by a serial killer; Pearl as prequel to X sketches the eponymous woman's life as a young farmer's spouse in 1918, uncovering her dreams and frustrations and why Maxine's barebones film production outfit fascinates her so. 

Superhero movies

Ubermensch

You could start a discussion on superhero movies at any point-- from the first Zorro movie in the '20s to Marvel Studios' 2011 Captain America-- but in my book the genre properly began in 1933, with a superpowered vegetarian.

Planet Hong Kong

Cinema of the Overdose

Reading the introduction to David Bordwell’s Planet Hong Kong is like reading a friend’s letter on a rarely seen but fondly remembered common acquaintance. I’ve landed in the old Hong Kong International Airport (not all that terrifying if you’re fond of rollercoasters); I’ve walked down Nathan Road with its countless flashing neons and rushing pedestrians and clacking traffic lights (for the benefit of the visually impaired: slow beat when red, rapid tattoo when green). I’ve seen the Cultural Centre, a graceful hulk of maroon bathroom tiles that always ends up as photo background for every just-married couple to walk out of the Civil Registry. And walking to the back of the Centre, I always pause and take in the view-- the one and only breathtaking panorama of Hong Kong harbor with its choppy waves, toy ferryboats bobbing up and down, glass-and-steel towers raking the bellies of clouds.

Oh and yes I too have eaten in Chungking Mansion. Cheap food, and quite good--recommend the roast duck on rice with hot broth on the side.

Inside Out 2 (Kelsey Mann, 2024)

Public hair

Aaaand just because it's summer and we're all entitled to a bit of fun, thought I'd drop in and check out how Pixar's doing.

In A Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray, 1950, from the book by Dorothy B. Hughes)

Killer inside me

(Warning: details from the novel and film discussed in explicit detail)

Reading Dorothy B. Hughes' 1947 novel In a Lonely Place and watching Nicholas Ray's 1950 adaptation is like experiencing the difference between night and day: Hughes' novel takes place mostly at night it seems, in dense fog; you often confuse the misty Los Angeles evenings for Dix Steele's twilight view-- occasionally there's the glare of a passing streetlamp, but it quickly fades into the haze. 

Ray's film feels as if it takes place mostly in sunlight; even its interiors radiate the glow of studio kliegs-- the film is described as a noir but if we adhere to strict definitions it breaks one rule of noir: not a lot of shadows onscreen. The look of Ray's films can diverge from the norm (see his debut work They Live By Night) but in this case he opts for the standard-issue brightness of a Hollywood production-- why?