Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Boys Meets Girl (1984)

Alex: I'm going to wind up a loser. Yet I 

stood a chance. I wanted to be someone outstanding: 

flyer, traveler, musician... Can't I be reborn?

A banner day for Criterion lovers as they've just dropped a beautiful box-set of three Leos Carax movies -- the above alongside the also-stellar Mauvais sang and The Lovers on the Bridge. All of them great and worth seeing -- especially if you love Denis Lavant and/or Juliette Binoche. I mean if you say that you love Denis Lavant and/or Juliette Binoche I don't know how you couldn't have already seen these three movies, but crazy things happen. Anything's possible! Anyway what I am going to need next is for Criterion to give us a 4K of my favorite Carax movie Holy Motors, that's what I am going to need next.

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

The Favourite (2018)

Queen Anne: Some wounds do not close; 

I have many such. One just walks around with them 

and sometimes one can feel them filling with blood.

A happy 53rd birthday to the great Yorgos Lanthimos! Our favorite Greek pervert (director edition) is supposedly off recharging his batteries post-Bugonia -- we can't say we blame him since he'd been working at one hell of a clip since The Lobster -- six movies in ten years is a feat! And even more impressive -- every single one of them rules. As do all of the ones before The Lobster. Basically -- our man earned a break. But let's hope it's not too too long. We'll give him til next year to announce something. If it gets into 2028 territory and we still haven't heard anything we're gonna get real antsy. I mean -- he's one of the great documentarians of our current mad era. We need his voice. Not to mention his sexy bearish presence. 

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Scenes of a Sexual Nature (2006)

Noel: So, wait, what are you saying? 

All these lines that I... 

those crap lines... they actually worked?

Anna: No, they were shit.

Noel: Oh.

Anna: In fact if you'd said nothing 

I might have fucked you earlier.

Saying nothing is usually the way to go, I have found. 

Anyway a happy 49th birthday to Tom Hardy today!

Figured I'd make some love to his pre-Bronson work...

... and it had nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with this gif.

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

The Fury (1978)

Cheryl: Good lord, Pam, if you're 

that nervous, why don't you masturbate.

A happy 86 to the legend Brian De Palma today.

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Totally F***ed Up (1993)

Steven: Shit, it's hot!

Andy: Greenhouse effect. Acid rain, nuclear dumping,

no ozone left, the whole planet's a goner.
I give it another five years max.

A very happy birthday to the icon James Duval today!

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974)

Kaspar: Nothing lives less in me than my life.

Werner Herzog's new movie titled Bucking Fastard is premiering at the Venice Film Festival today and if you go looking you can find the first critics reviews dropping for it in the usual places. I've read no further than the headlines because I'm seeing it in just a couple of weeks at NYFF but the general vibe seems positive, and given what little I've allowed myself to know about the film -- it stars Rooney & Kate Mara as sisters who constantly speak and behave in eerie unison -- I couldn't be more excited for it. This is shit right up my alley yo. Like that scene where Luke Skywalker fires his laser into that tiny hole and blows up the Death Star? That's how this movie's coming at me. Anyway it's also Werner's 84th birthday on Saturday so taking a moment to celebrate one of the most staggeringly important and unique and talented filmmakers of our age seems, you know, the least we can do. Unlike some people: 

I don't know that there is a more disgusting factoid around

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— Jason Adams (@jamnpp.bsky.social) September 3, 2026 at 11:14 AM

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

The Neon Demon (2016)

Jesse: Something's in my room!

Hank: What do you mean something's in your room?

Jesse: I saw something in my room!

Hank: Are you high?

I love it when Keanu plays lowlife scumbags (a la Sam Raimi's The Gift) so it's always a treat when I'm reminded that he pops up for a couple of scenes to be a vulgar creep in Nicolas Winding Refn's 2016 masterpiece The Neon Demon -- I wish Refn and Keanu had worked together again! And I am kind of shocked they didn't. Give Refn a John Wick movie to direct! I don't like that franchise at all but NWR would make me watch it. And probably love it too -- he'd know how to make its beautiful neon-lit love of violence truly gratuitous to the point of sick-making instead of just pornographic like it's been in that franchise to date. Anyway it's Keanu's birthday and I gotta say...

Keanu being 62 is something I literally cannot deal with right now

— Jason Adams (@jamnpp.bsky.social) September 2, 2026 at 10:20 AM

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Pee-wee's Big Holiday (2016)

Pee-wee: You know I don't want to go 

anywhere, or try anything new.

Not to pile on extra sad with all of our queer legends dying this week but today would've been the one and only Paul Reubens 74th birthday and good god I miss him. It's been three years since he passed but I still think about him all the time -- it probably helps that Pee-wee memorabilia is scattered all over my home. including the holiday cards that I got every year from the man himself in the wake of him reaching out to me after I said some nice things on this very site regarding the above movie. (I don't care if I bring this up too much -- it's the great highlight of my "professional" life.) And his birthday and my birthday especially I think about Paul, because we'd also text each other on those days -- he'd send funny little gifs to me on mine and I'd send him one on his day. I was always too starstruck to be too chatty but he always replied, sincere and grateful. Since Dolly passed this week he's been on my mind too -- not just because of the below photo that made the rounds, but because they were both paragons of decency and humor from my childhood who taught me as much about how to be a good person as any actual human being in my orbit. I fail every day at living up to the standard they set but you know both of them would just giggle and say well get on with it. Being good is an every day effort, but look at the legacies of joy they left. What's better?

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Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Pillion (2025)

Colin: You know I love you, right?

Ray: ... Yeah.

Colin: But what?

Ray: That's not what this is, Colin. 

That's not the point.

Colin: Isn't... love the whole point?

Ray: Of what?

Colin: Everything.

It didn't feel right to've not wished Alexander Skarsgård a happy 50th birthday yesterday, but (again) we got all overwhelmed by Dolly's passing and everything else fell to the wayside -- thankfully that never-before-seen photo from Pillion's set popped up today (via) and reminded me to step back to our favorite Swedish sex-bot and wish him the best. (If you missed my forever-ago Pillion review click here. Phenomonal movie.) Did y'all see the list of people joining Muderbot for its second season? Everybody's running to rub on Alex's Ken crotch and we get it! 

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Christine (2016)

George: We all have these different versions 

of ourselves competing to be the real us.

This brilliant and disturbing movie, featuring what remains probably still the best work by actor Rebecca Hall, is turning ten in a couple of months -- but that's not why we're here! We're here because it's the birthday of this film's brilliant (and possibly disturbed) director Antonio Campos, of whom I am a big ol' fan. This movie alone would've made that the case but he's also gifted us with the movies Simon Killer and Afterschool as well as the true-crime series The Staircase... I only saw Afterschool recently when Vinegar Syndrome put it out on blu-ray and if you can get past the Ezra Miller of it you'll discover a harrowing little thing that claws at some of the same lurid media-adjacent impulses that both Christine and The Staircase do -- you can see that fascination threading through all of his best work, actually. Hell...

... it's not impossible to believe that the same man who made Christine also directed a whole bunch of The Punisher episodes. As well as the uneven Pentecostal theatrics in The Devil All the Time -- Hary Melling pouring a jar of spiders on himself to delight a bunch of churchgoers fits right in among all of this work. That Campos produced Martha Marcy May Marlene also makes so very much sense, and one supposes that he would have brought the same level of enchantment with humanity's pathologies to the canned Batman spin-off series Arkham, a woulda-been perfect fit. None of his characters are calm in the head, but man can Campos ever laser in on the ineffable sloppiness of our worst instincts. He's not someone I've seen people make a case for as an auteur with the same fascinations bubbling up over and over again, yet it's very much there -- anyway he's a very underrated filmmaker and you seek his all of his work out if you haven't already.

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Scream 4 (2011)

Ghostface: Name the movie that started the 

slasher craze: Halloween, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, 

Last House on the Left, or Psycho?

Kirby: Psycho.

Ghostface: None of the above! Peeping Tom, 

1960, directed by Michael Powell. First movie 

to ever put the audience in the killer's POV.

Kirby: Wait. No, no, no. Please, just 

ask me one more question. Just one more.

Ghostface: Alright, Kirby, then it's time for your 

last-chance question. Name the remake of the 

groundbreaking horror movie in which the vill...

Kirby: Halloween, uh, Texas Chainsaw, Dawn of the Dead, The Hills Have Eyes, Amityville Horror, uh, Last House on the Left, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare On Elm Street, My Bloody Valentine, When A Stranger Calls, Prom Night, Black Christmas, House of Wax, The Fog, Piranha. It's one of those, right? Right? [silence] I got it right. I was fucking right.

Terribly sad to hear about the death of Hayden Panettiere yesterday -- Heroes was tremendous for a brief moment in time mostly thanks to her (and our pal Bryan Fuller's writing of her character) and she basically stole Scream 4 from every other person, so much so that they were forced by fan outcry to bring her back from Scream VI; nevermind the weird stuff they did with her character in that one, Hayden ruled in the role. 36 is far far far too young to lose her, especially after how badly the business treated her as a child actor -- she should've had a long life and career to enjoy after surviving all of that bullshit. Might re-watch Scream 4 tonight in her honor. What a great turn that was. (Also it's bullshit that Ghostface pulled the Peeping Tom card -- Powell's movie might've come out a few months earlier but Psycho was obviously far more responsible for "the slasher craze" and I say that as a Peeping Tom fanatic. That's just Ghostface being an asshole which, yeah okay he is about to stab her.)

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday (1993)

Robert Campbell: I'm going to say a couple 

of words to you and I want you to say the 

first thing that comes into your mind. 

Creighton Duke: Okay. 

Robert Campbell: Jason Voorhees. 

Creighton Duke: That makes me think of a little girl 

in a pink dress sticking a hot dog through a doughnut.

Happy 33 to Jason Goes To Hell today! Yes indeed arguably the worst Friday the 13th movie is celebrating its "Jesus Year" as of today and it couldn't have happened to a better worse movie. Okay, truth-time: I haven't re-watched this movie in at least a decade. It's so fucking bad y'all. And yet, on the other hand -- it's also got the best male nudity of the entire series thanks to the exquisite Michael Silver. So, you know, two hands in the bush or whatever.

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Wild Rose (2018)

Susannah: Why country?

Rose: Cuz it's three chords and the truth.

A happy birthday to the tremendously talented Sophie Okonedo, always a totally riveting presence on-screen, today -- when she popped up in Janet Planet a couple of years ago I felt like I hadn't seen her in ages. (And weirdly this is the second time Janet Planet has come up today -- guess iut's time for a Janet Planet rewatch!) But seriously why aren't I seeing Sophie Okonedo in everything all of the time?? So that's my birthday wish for her -- work more! Get with it, Hollyweird! Get her all up in my business, please.

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

After the Hunt (2025)

Alma: I feel like deep inside I always expected this. 

I expected the rottenness in me to be seen by other people 

right before I managed to expunge it.

Hank: Spoken like a true woman... 

I never felt myself be rotten at all.

Alma: Spoken like a true man.

A happiest of happy birthday to the great and legendary Luca Guadagnino, who is turning 55 today! If you've been on this here site for longer than an hour you know our feelings about Luca, who speaks deep to us in a way that not many other filmmakers do these days -- not just in the obvious one (Call me By Your Name, which I wrote about just a little bit back circa 2017) but everything from his superior Suspiria to Bones and All to yes this one here After the Hunt, a movie which really didn't get a fair shake when it came out. (At least I knew it was good though.) I actually just re-watched it a few weeks ago and it's  shown itself to be even wilier about where the world was headed -- like all his films they're ever so slightly ahead of their time. We'll see what happens with his Sam Altman biopic Artificial soon enough -- I remain convinced he'lll be ten steps ahead of the current conversation -- but for today, let's just show the genius some love! My gift to him & us is this Andy Garfield gif:

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Safe (1995)

Carol: I'm sorry. I know 

it's not normal but I can't help it.

This week Criterion dropped their 4K of Todd Haynes' 1995 masterpiece Safe -- or do I type it as [safe], I am never sure -- and I plan on re-watching the movie for the gazillionth time via this upgrade this weekend; I find something new every single time I revisit it, as all the greatest films manage. Thinking about what it will look like in 4K though has me thinking about what an astonishingly good looking film it is -- I wonder why it's the only movie Haynes ever shot with DP Alex Nepomniaschy? They accomplished something so spectacular together! -- and so I looked up the movie's budget and they made Safe for one million dollars. One million dollars! I know we're thirty years removed but that's incredible -- I looked up what that works out to in 2026 dollars and it's only about two and a half million now; Safe could not be made for 2.5 million in 2026, that's for sure. 

That's an odd tangent for me to spin off on -- the point is they made a film for one million dollars in 1995 that will look better than 99% of the movies released in 2026, and even assuming one percent might beat Safe in beauty and visual extravagance seems an enormous caveat to make. How we're thirty years removed from this movie and Todd Haynes still remains underappreciated I cannot fathom -- Safe is as far as I'm concerned a Top 5 movie about America. It should be bouncing around at the top of Sight & Sound polls. The original poster for this movie that I own is one of my greatest possessions. Sing a song of Safe y'all! Oh and I really recommend you all go read Walter Chaw's fantastic piece on the film at Roger Ebert today -- when he finds the thoughline to The Birds I just about wept at the perfection of it. 

Everybody is incredible in this movie but it really is a Toni Collette Picture when it comes down to it

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— Jason Adams (@jamnpp.bsky.social) August 4, 2026 at 8:41 PM

And in related news -- Velvet Goldmine is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel so I re-watched it two nights ago and good god what a movie. That's another one that I find new things with every single view. So besides watching Safe this weekend I will be spending most of my time in a prayer circle, dragging a dagger down the middle of my palm, in hopes we can get that movie a 4K from Criterion soon. I'm basically just counting the days until De Noche, Haynes' gay movie with Pedro Pascal and Danny Ramirez will come out. Please please please be next year. In summation the following randomness made me laugh for a very long time this morning:

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Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

True History of the Kelly Gang (2019)

Ned Kelly: My wish for you, my dearest child, is that all the coarse words and cruelty I have related in these pages seem queer and foreign to you, like some strange tale from an ancient world. But if they do not, and you, like I, have suffered from injustice at the hand of oppressors, remember that you are a Kelly, and never forget that you were mine and that you were loved. Whatever they write about me, whatever names I am given or whatever falsehoods are attributed to me, know that much is true. So go out into the world and make of it what you wish. Write your own history. For you are my future now.

A very happy birthday to Mr. Essie Davis himself, the great Aussie writer-director Justin Kurzel -- we're huge fans of his movies which have been non-stop dissections of modern masculinity and its various elaborate grotesqueries. I am ashamed to admit that I still haven't watched his Jacob Elordi series The Long Narrow Road to the North -- have any of you? I mean...

... how have I not watched this yet? Between that and Kelly Gang and Fassbender in Macbeth -- our man knows how to make men look gorgeous when he wants to, and disgusting (Snowtown, Nitram... also the Kelly Gang) also when necesarry. That should wor well if his next project ever starts filming -- I told you about Burning Rainbow Farm all the way in January 2025 but it still hasn't filmed; not sure what's up with that. It will tell the true story of a gay couple who boult a stoner utopia in Michigan in the 90s which became embroiled in a war with the government, and it was set to star Sebastian Stan and Leo Woodall. The people demand this movie happen dammit!

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

The Green Knight (2021)

The Lady: Why is he Green, do you think?

Gawain: The Knight?

The Lady: Yes. Was he born that way?

The Lord: Maybe it is the color of 

his blood when he blushes.

The Lady: But why green? Why not blue? Or red?

Gawain: Because he is not of this earth.

The Lady: But green is the color of the earth. 

Of living things. Of life.

Gawain: And of rot.

The Lady: Yes. We deck our halls with it, dye our linens, but should it come creeping up the cobbles, we scrub it out, fast as we can. When it blooms beneath our skin, we bleed it out. And when we, together all, find that our reach has exceeded our grasp, we cut it down, we stamp it out, we spread ourselves atop it and smother it beneath our bellies. But it comes back. It does not dally; nor does it wait to plot or conspire. Pull it out by its roots one day, and the next there it is, creeping in around the edges. Whilst we're off looking for red, in comes green. Red is the color of lust, but green is what lust leaves behind--in heart, in womb. Green is what is left when ardor fades, when passion dies, when we die, too. When you go your footprints will fill with grass; moss will cover over your tombstone. And as the sun rises, green shall spread over all, in all its shades and hues. The verdigris will overtake your swords and your coins and your battlements, and, try as you might, all you hold dear will succumb to it. Your skin, your bones. Your virtue.

Happy 5 to David Lowery's The Green Knight! 

Now there was a movie that knew how 

to turn an epic poem into a great movie. 

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Paris, Texas (1984)

Walt: I thought you were afraid of heights.

Travis: I'm not afraid of heights. I'm afraid of fallin'.

The lo-fi legend Harry Dean Stanton was born 100 years ago this day. When I picture HDS I picture his small and heartbreaking role as Carl Rodd, often seen sitting on a bench and staring the clouds beside the Fat Trout trailer park, in Twin Peaks (both Fire Walk With Me and The Return) immediately, but that's just because I'm such a Peaks fanatic -- there are more treasures and pleasures to be had across the man's incredible and lengthy CV than I could even begin to list here. Paris Texas is a pretty biggun though, so I feel fine celebrating via it. What are your favorite Harry Dean moments across the decades? Like -- did anybody do more in Alien to make that crew feel immediately down-to-earth than him? He was such a VIBE, man.

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Jurassic Park (1993)

Dr. Alan Grant: Life found a way.

You'd think a person would reach a certain age, one where they've gone through enough of these to have an inkling that everyone dies and most of the people older than yourself who you worshipped as a kid, you're gonna have to say goodbye to them. But even with his openness about the cancer he'd been battling for years I wasn't prepared for my boyfriend to wake me up this morning with the news that Sam Neill had died. I'm sure I'd seen him in something before Jurassic Park -- I'd probably seen The Hunt For Red October; I doiubt I'd seen The Piano -- but he became, from the moment that movie opened, Dr. Grant to me. I actually have a vivid memory of not liking him having been cast in the role since I'd read the book and I'm sure the Dr. Grant that was swimming around in my hormonal 15-year-old head was hunkier. But the child-like (yes, Spielbergian) wonder under a faux-gruff exterior that he brought to the role was undeniable, and without it the movie wouldn't have worked. And it did work -- I went back and saw the movie twenty damn times in the theater, after all!

It took a long time for me to be able to see Neill as anything else -- and I'm sure, even though he more than anyone else in the franchise capitalized on the bank the role brought him, that single-role identification was a little harmful to his career -- but decades on when I finally got around to catching Andrzej Żuławski's Possession, well, if you've seen that movie you know it'll slap the spell off of anybody's face. I think I really only came to appreciate what a fine and versatile actor he was once that happened. So of course I'll find time to re-watch Jurassic Park for the ten billionth time this week but I'm gonna make space for The Piano, Dead Calm, In the Mouth of Madness, Hunt For the Wilderpeople, as well.

Thank you for everything. Sam Neill.

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

The History of Sound (2025)

Lionel: I feel I've missed something. How to put this? It's not nostalgia, it's not grief. It's the... hardness of a fact that I should've stayed in Maine. Would I feel differently if we hadn't met? Would I feel now, that I had missed something? But we did meet. And what do I want now? I want the sound of my life, I think. What happens to it all, all the sounds released into the world, never captured? I want all of it. The history of sound.

I always feel bad for actors who've been tasked with speaking the title of the film -- how do you deliver it without it being distracting? It's kind of an impossible task and I think Chris Cooper -- who's celebrating his 75th birthday today, everybody send this treasure a happy one -- was smart to just lean into it since he wasn't just speaking the film's title, he was also delivering the film's final words. Yes the movie ends with its own title which should earn it a groan, but I find this entire timeline jump so moving thanks to Cooper's work that it doesn't. Not from me anyway. I love this movie so dearly. (Here is my review.) Have you gone back and watched it since its release? I think now, without all those annoying "awards bait" expectations crushing in on its slight frame, it breathes even more beautifully than before. It'll have a long, lovely shelf-life. What a beautiful heartbreaker.