#filmblr
↳BEST MOVIES OF 2011
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2011) dir. Stephen Daldry
Bridesmaids (2011) dir. Paul Feig
The Help (2011) dir. Tate Taylor
Super 8 (2011) dir. J.J. Abrams
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Y’all
Our pilot is officially out!! Give it a watch, comment your thoughts, and share it with your friends!! The way you can help us win the festival is by viewing our full pilot, sharing it and telling others, and engaging with the page itself ❤️❤️✨
YA GIRL HAS WRITTEN AND BROUGHT THIS BABY TO LIFE!!! Now go watch plz
Kill Me Again (1989)
Directed by John Dahl
Doomsy’s Rating: 67/100
A memorable debut, Kill Me Again is a sexy, spicy desert noir by John Dahl, who would later make something of a career in the neo-noir genre. Joanne Whalley is a criminal femme fatale with a dangerous and psychopathic boyfriend named Vince (Michael Madsen). She decides enough is enough and breaks free from both Vince, the mob, and the cops on their tail and hires burnt-out private investigator Jack Andrews (Val Kilmer) to fake her death. What then transpires is a thoroughly entertaining blend of erotic thriller and desert noir that invokes classical images of both genres and deposits them into a synth-heavy 80s package. Also, while I’m not a huge car nerd, this movie boasts some of the coolest cars of the decade (for example the above image of Vince’s Cadillac). The real standout in the film, however, is Michael Madsen, ripping up a sizeable chunk of the film as the ice-cold madman Vince (one scene of him slitting a man’s throat must have been the inspiration for his more iconic role in Reservoir Dogs). He is so convincing in his role, able to be both menacing and attractive at the same time. Give this a watch just for his performance, because god damn, is he terrific. Otherwise, check this out if you’re in the mood for a good little noir.
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The Color of Pomegranates (1969)
Directed by Sergei Parajanov
Doomsy’s Rating: 92/100 (on my Great Films list!)
Serving as an amazing double feature with Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, Sergei Parajanov’s untouchable art-house masterwork The Color of Pomegranates is a one-of-a-kind experience that is an absolute visual feast from start to finish. The film is based on the life of Armenian poet Sayat-Nova, and is told through in a series of tableau set-pieces of rich symbolism and psychedelic mise-en-scene manipulation. A clear influence on several prominent pieces of modern media (namely the music videos for R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion” and Lady Gaga’s “911″), this is a spoonfeeding of the Armenian oral tradition and its glorious cultural history. Although heavily censored by the Soviet Union against the wishes of Parajanov, likely for its less-than-flattering subtext about the occupation of the Soviets, the film remains a transcendent and enchanting journey through a culture never seen before on film. The use of color, so exquisite in its breadth, is nearly kaleidoscopic and wholly unforgettable. There is a certain patience required for a film like this, as its not a film that is best served in narrative terms, but that should not deter anyone from such an enigmatic and beautiful work. If you like your films a little impenetrable and mysterious, this is a tone poem for the ages.
Watched on Criterion Channel.
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Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970)
Directed by Jaromil Jires
Doomsy’s Rating: 97/100 (on my Great Films list!)
Easily the best film I’ve seen this year, Valerie and Her Week of Wonders is a magical and spellbinding surrealist steampunk-goth horror film that will stay with you long after it’s done. Through each phenomenally-staged scene, we follow Valerie, a 13-year-old girl who starts the film Carrie-style with the arrival of her first period. We then watch as her entire world collapses and becomes a psychedelic fantasy land of predatory vampires, salacious fire-and-brimstone priests and the benign witches she befriends to save her from the demons that represent the evils of men. The setting, as oblique as its imagery, is a medieval-inflected Earth of arcane architecture, sinister machines and devils and gods around every corner. The haunting, trippy visuals clash against the peaceful, melodic baroque music to further distort Valerie’s perceptions of herself and the people around her as they literally transform into archetypal objects of Nietzschean and Jungian origin. Good becomes Evil, parents become incestuous beings of carnal lust and boys become monsters capable of heinous lechery. In the same way that puberty is the end of innocence, it also marks the shift in adults from trustworthy caretakers to figures of abandonment and solipsism. If you have any interest in the Czech New Wave, surrealism, or goth shit in general, this is an absolutely stunning piece of work and deserves all the plaudits in the world for being such a singular experience. Wow!
Watched on Criterion Channel.
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Black Sun (1964)
Directed by Koreyoshi Kurahara
Doomsy’s Rating: 81/100
One of the areas of history that is so underrepresented on screen was the relationship between the Japanese and the American GIs still stationed in Japan after the conclusion of WWII. Black Sun, The first film I’ve viewed by underground filmmaker Koreyoshi Kurahara, has a STARTLINGLY progressive agenda of tolerance given its time of release and the country it originates from. The story concerns Akira, a young squatter and anarchist who can’t stop getting into trouble with the law and a black GI named Gill, who wields a very large gun and is on the run from both his racist American commanding officers and the Japanese police. These two men team up to protect each other from their pursuers and develop something of an understanding despite the fact they cannot communicate. The film then becomes a wacky blend of off-color humor, revolutionary political posturing and ultimately tragedy.
There is so much to admire here. One is the highly unorthodox, borderline guerilla cinematography, so emblematic of the punk-oriented style of independent filmmaking present in the Japanese New Wave. Much like Toshio Matsumoto’s Funeral Parade of Roses,Black Sun has aged so well because it’s not merely a “message” film, but a fascinating story of a friendship that transcends language and race. Gill is also no caricature. He is a complex man and his background is largely left to the imagination, but it is very clear that he is all alone. Not just linguistically, but also because the empathy of others in this world seems totally foreign. The fact that a film makes this much effort to give a POC so much character development (and four years before Night of the Living Dead) alone makes this essential viewing for its oddity status, but the fantastic jazz score is highly worthy of praise.
Watched on Criterion Channel.
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I Never Promised You a Rose Garden (1977)
Directed by Anthony Page
Doomsy’s Rating: 63/100
I’ve praised the production talents of Roger Corman, the exploitation film maestro who single-handedly invented the grindhouse genre, many times before on this blog. Well, I never thought I’d see him go so far as to make a sleazy film set in a mental hospital with ambitions well beyond its genre. This is one strangefilm. In fact, I can’t say I’ve seen many like it. Kathleen Quinlan, who would later become a character actress of quite some brilliance (in films such as Event Horizon andThe Hills Have Eyes remake) plays a girl named Deborah who by the looks of modern psychiatry, seems to suffer from a psychotic and dissociative disorder. She spends most of this film’s 90 minutes strapped to a bed in a mental institution, lost in a haze of delusion and suicidal ideation. Bibi Andersson, best known as Ingmar Bergman’s muse, is her sympathetic doctor (hilariously named Dr. Fried) and together they must help poor Deborah out of her psychoses. And honestly, that’s pretty much it.
First thing to say is, from a present-day perspective this is one seriously depraved affair. I couldn’t help but wonder if this was made by Corman as a quick cash-in on the heels of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and while that certainly is likely, I Never Promised You a Rose Garden is an entirely different beast. While Forman’s film was concerned with the tragic nature of the McMurphy character and his battle with Nurse Ratched, director Page and Corman seem less concerned with narrative and more with histrionic art-house surrealism in the vein of Ken Russell. And boy, is this sordid tale trippy. The hallucinatory scenes are jarring and often-times overwhelming, calling to mind certain scenes from Dennis Hopper’s The Trip and Bergman’s The Seventh Seal. I’d also be remiss if I didn’t call attention to the bizarre casting. In supporting roles, we find Danny Elfman (!) leading some weird Monty Pythonesque knights haunting the protagonist, Mel Gibson and Dennis Quaid as baseball players in dream sequences, and Lorraine Gary (Mrs. Brody from Jaws)playing the main character’s self-absorbed mother. Oh, and Reni Santoni (RIP) as one of the most evil orderlies this side of Ben Stiller in Happy Gilmore.
Beyond the simplistic narrative, there’s a not-so-surprising amount of exploitation content in the film’s mental hospital setting, some of which is inappropriately played for laughs, but most of the rest is relegated to frankly disturbing scenes of human suffering. Most of the time, when Hollywood tackles subjects like severe mental illness and long-term hospitalizations, there is a certain artifice only possible when audience attention spans are in the forefront of the producer’s minds. Most viewers who view this will be stunned to find the lack of characterization and narrative more indicative of a documentary, the camera merely observational and the message being one of understanding and empathy.
The film this reminds me most of is Allan King’s docudrama Warrendale, which at ten years older, had the benefit of being a much more shocking experience. What Page and Corman bring to the catalog of suffering is more up-close-and-personal and exhausting than King, who brought a more detached filmmaking style. I think beyond the hysteria and shrill insanity that pervades most of this film’s runtime, there is something interesting going on here. I’m just not sure what it is. I did have a bit of a headache after finishing this, but that could have just been the copious amount of weed and vodka I had just consumed. Who knows.
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Thief (1981)
Directed by Michael Mann
Doomsy’s Rating: 94/100 (on my Great Films list!)
Thiefis one of the loneliest films ever made. The peak of Michael Mann’s pulsating vaporwave crime thrillers, it’s a film of longing, trances, and nights on the edge of the word. Frank (James Caan) is a thief, and like all Mann protagonists to come, is a wounded, emotionally unavailable dreamer crushed by a cynical world kicking him out and forcing him to adapt to a life of crime. His luck is poor, but his aim is unmatched as he attempts to blow his way out and finally be free of this dangerous profession. The thunderous, reverb-drenched Tangerine Dream score dictates the mood of every scene, letting Frank’s world come to life, as his own demise will eventually follow. Caan’s performance is extraordinary, but the real shining star of the piece is Willie Nelson (!) as a prison-bound lifer with a moral compass and a heartbreaking subplot. He gets a handful of scenes but makes his mark in a pathos-laden part right from the school of Greek tragedy. Mann’s color palette is dark blue in almost every scene, as Frank wanders through car parks, diners, and rainy Chicago skies that proffer the washing away of his many sins. There’s not too much plot at work here, and modern viewers will be reminded of the tone and style of Refn’s Drive, but this is an absolute masterpiece of a tone poem and it’s hard to believe this is Mann’s debut! A beautiful gem in the crime genre.
Watched on Criterion Channel.
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21 Grams (2003)
Directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
Doomsy’s Rating: 21/100
21 Grams is one of the most irritating, self-important films I’ve seen in a long time, and the depressing fact remains, its near-universal laudatory plaudits are baffling to me. What on earth were the critics smoking giving this abysmal trainwreck such high marks? Jesus Christ, watching this I was suddenly reminded what a masterpiece Pulp Fiction was that so many films (including this one) started copping the nonlinear narrative bullshit just for the sake of obfuscating very simple stories under the guise of being “cool”.
Where do we begin here? Well, we start with gruff, miserable-looking Sean Penn as some kind of pathetic failed academic whose stupidly earnest attempts at explaining the universe in numbers are haphazardly thrown into this toilet-paper script. He needs a heart transplant and his self-righteous, borderline wife Mary (Charlotte Gainsbourg, warming up for similar roles in Lars von Trier’s AntichristandMelancholia)wants his sperm so she can raise his kid after he’s dead. Great noble sacrifices, Typhoid Mary? Any of this ringing the bells of cinematic misogyny? Of course, but hold Andrea Dworkin’s beer, because the real sexism of the piece comes from Naomi Watts’ histrionic banshee role as a grieving wife whose sole purpose in the film is to be unhinged and shout at Penn’s character. In fact, every single woman depicted herein shouts at men and manipulates them, then abandons them. Wow. Such a revolutionary concept!
Riding into this inane, trite affair with an admittedly-beautiful hairline is Benicio Del Toro as a born-again Christian (oh god, here we go…) with a tortured past and a penchant for child abuse (condoned by the story, no less). His arc, so laughably contrived and misguided, seems to be “oh, religion bad, now go die because you suck”. Adding into this blockbuster film is the atrocious visual style, with the colors saturated to such an extreme level that I thought my television was malfunctioning. Turns out it’s not, and I was really being subjected to such a noisy, shouty experience under the pretense of “art”. Inarritu can frankly eat my fuck with such a boring piece of shit. “What is the weight of life,” Penn’s character snoringly muses in voiceover near the end of the film. Yawn. This director should strongly consider the weight of his own talent (or lack thereof) because Terrence Malick he’s fucking not.
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A Visitor to a Museum (1989)
Directed by Konstantin Lopushanksiy
Doomsy’s Rating: 86/100
A gargantuan and enigmatic Russian sci-fi drone film, Visitor to a Museum is a nightmare of catastrophe and a fever dream of things to come. Lopushanskiy, the brilliant filmmaker behind such other dread-heavy mood tomes such as Dead Men’s Letters andRussian Symphony, creates a brooding and often-times oppressive atmosphere that suffocates the viewer whilst simultaneously hypnotizing them. A simple story of a post-cataclysmic society where the deformed are locked up like animals and intellectuals keep the world stagnated, we follow our lonely protagonist through scorched landscapes, decayed buildings, and tortured, monolithic mountains on the way to discovering the truth of the world before. Stark, unforgiving, and extraordinary, this is a terrifying cautionary tale about humankind’s fragile existence. Not for everyone, but sure as hell for the cynic inside me.
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I’ve seen a fair amount of confusion regarding his coming out, arguably more so than any other prominent celebrity coming out as trans. I think it boils down to the fact that with there is a startling lack of visibility for trans men in media and in society in general. Some would argue that it’s due to trans men going stealth, or that their identities are rarely brought up because of how “easier” it is for them to blend in. Frankly, a lot of this rhetoric doesn’t help to address the problem. I think Elliot’s coming out will mean a great deal going forward because in my mind aside from Chaz Bono (who was at best famous for his family as opposed to his own identity), there really hasn’t been a major star with a career this successful doing this. I mean, as a massive cinephile and connoisseur of queer films and media, there are probably this many films out there with prominent transmasc characters:
Boys Don’t Cry (1999): While a trailblazing and brilliantly-made film, the fact remains that being transmale was so poorly-discussed at the time (transwomen were more visible in media then too, with films like The World According to Garp andDog Day Afternoon), that most people viewed Brandon Teena as a lesbian than a trans man. The film treats him as male and is fairly respectful, but it still deadnames him at the end (after a fairly depressing conclusion) and used a real-life hatecrime to call attention to something rather than an earnest attempt to understand it.
Southern Comfort (2001): A documentary about the last year in the life of Robert Eads, a trans man with terminal breast cancer. Very sad, very moving and honest, but sadly extremelylittle seen. Find this if you can.
Predestination (2014): A sci-fi time traveling film which I won’t reveal too much about because the labyrinthian narrative is rather unique and clever; it features a transmale character as one of the two leads (the other being Ethan Hawke) and actually makes (without spoiling) a fairly compelling “fantastical” argument about how gender dysphoria manifests itself in a linear timeline of one’s life, which I found interesting. Unfortunately, the fact that the character is trans is largely used for plot reasons as opposed to an exploration of identity. Probably the most visible trans male character in a major film in the past decade though, so props.
Strange Circus (2001): Sion Sono and gender issues seem to go hand in hand. He’s addressed them in numerous films (such as Love Exposure, Noriko’s Dinner Table, and more recently The Forest of Love) and here I can’t really reveal how a trans male character fits into it (used as a very corny plot revelation) but needless to say a character is shown to be transmale in an archetypally irritating way that does nothing for the plot. Also a fairly-little seen movie even in Sono’s eclectic catalogue.
3 Generations (2016): Fairly banal and borderline-unwatchable platitude fest about a trans male teen’s struggle to get on hormones, told not from his point of view but from that of his confused mother and TERF lesbian grandmother. Stupid, cis-gaze bullshit.
Romeos (2011) andTomboy (2011): Both are films abut being stealth and/or in the closet at young ages, and both are again, little seen outside art house/cinephile/film festival circles.
And the list goes on and on. Truth is, because of lack of understanding and visibility, society views Elliot as who he was before in such a stupid way (Guys I work with would talk about how hot he was in a typical toxically masculine way that made me sick) that who he was before is how so many people will forever see him. They watch films like Juno orInception and to them, that person is inextricably linked with him forever. As a trans person, it’s hard for me to say how I feel about myself before. While that person is a part of me, it’s a part of me I’ve spent years burying and running from. And even then, sometimes, it’s hard not to see something of that person when I look in the mirror. I detested that person and it was somebody I’m not, but at least I don’t have to deal with reminders of them except when around family or mementoes from my past.
I can’t even begin to imagine how Elliot must feel with being an A-list celebrity and having an entire film career as someone you aren’t anymore. But risking your entire career to be yourself is the most noble and admirable thing one can do. My fiance is a minor celebrity who achieved some fame before her own transition, and she put it in the best way:
“In my mind, the things I did before transition were still things I did. To credit them to my old name does make it seem as though I was not the one who did them. Yes, the person by my old name did them, but that person is me.”
And so, the point I want to make is this: Everyone’s identity is their own, and everyone has their own views on their pasts. What Elliot is doing is amazing. What news to wake up to. Just when I thought COVID killed the dreamy magic of the movies that bring me joy, something else came along to put a smile on my face. Fantastic.
Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets (1971)
Directed by Shuji Terayama
Doomsy’s Rating: 98/100 (on my Great Films list!)
An undying punk manifesto: The faces spit on, burned onto celluloid forever. Terayama’s magnum opus, a scathing and incendiary battle cry for the disenfranchised and downtrodden. Never lost, never forgotten, these are the words spoken by those too obscure to hear. But here, and if only here, can they be heard with every desperate plea for change. The anger in this film could burn down the world, so full of resentment towards adults, towards authority, and towards oppression it will likely never be matched. The incomparable visual aesthetic is guerrilla, gutsy, and unapologetic, so steadfastly eager to capture the justifiable rage of the loners, the losers, the punks, the LGBT community, all those society has shit upon for far too long. Makes an excellent trilogy of the Japanese underground with Toshio Matsumoto’s Funeral Parade of Roses and Yoshihiko Matsui’s Noisy Requiem. Essential viewing for outsiders everywhere.
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Red Shoe Diaries (1992)
Directed by Zalman King
Doomsy’s Rating: 57/100
I’ve said it before, but I just love 90s erotic thrillers. They’re so stupid and so Freudian, and so completely blunt in their admittedly conscientious sexual politics, they’re impossible to dislike. Red Shoe Diaries is no exception, and it’s helmed by the great Zalman King who was, was wait for it, king of this genre. Between him and Greg Dark, there were dozens of nearly identical, dumb as hell but entertaining Skinemax flicks with pre-X Files David Duchovny just chewing the scenery. This film is definitely a time capsule to an era where cable TV was not a capitalist enterprise, but an edgy, subversive area where adults could watch other adults fuck with goofy scores and over-the-top orgasms. This is definitely worth a watch if you’re a fan of erotic thrillers and/or Duchovny. Oh, and keep an eye out for Matt LeBlanc in an early role as a burly bloke with a coif and a leather vest (No, he does not get naked)
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