Drew Starkey in Our Sights

Per usual I liked last week when I said I'd update my last post before the long weekend with a link to my review of Onslaught -- one I got fully settled into my puddle of laziness there just weren't no shaking it off. But this is a net good for you because now you get to stare at that sexy bonus photo of Drew Starkey while I play catch-up -- win win and winnnn. Click here to read my thoughts on Onslaught, which are... mixed, to put it mildly. I even went to see it a second time to see if my expectations had been to high the first time, to see if I might be able to enjoy it more on its own terms as a dumb thing, and nope -- it was even less fun on a second watch. (Except for Drew, who I think walks away with the movie -- yes even more than Dan Stevens doing his own weirdo thing.) Shrug. A shame.

Dan Stevens Gives Labor (Day)

Remember how everybody yelled "David Caruso! David Caruso!" at Dan Stevens when he ditched Downton Abbey after its third season to try and become a movie star? Well joke's on those psychopaths  -- I mean who yells "David Caruso!" out like that? Positively unseemly! -- because little Danny-boy's aquitted himself quite nicely, ekeing out a surprising little niche among today's most interesting weirdo character actors. I sure didn't see it coming since I hated him on Downton and was happy when Matthew Crawley's car veered off that damn road! Sorry not sorry, Lady Mary. But then he got hot for The Guest and all ill will was forgotten. Yes I am that easy. You know I am that easy. We all know I am that easy! But speaking of The Guest, Dan has gone and reunited with that film's director Adam Wingard for this weekend's fresh release Onslaught -- and I am reviewing it! But nnnnnnot jusssst yet. Consider this post a place-holder until the review goes up at Pajiba in the next couple days. I'm seeing the movie a second time tonight -- with Mr. Stevens in attendance, even! -- so this post will be updated once my review is live. For now I'm just saying my (semi) goodbye for the long weekend -- we'll be closed up til Tuesday. Everybody have a good Labor Day weekend -- make it even better by donating to (or joining!) a local union. Fuck the billionaire pigs! Bye!

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.

Criterion Brings the Heat to May

I feel as if Lawrence Kasdan's Body Heat should be a July or August release, but Criterion has deemed it for this May and who am I to argue -- that's the first title in their May line-up which has just been revealed today and I'm already sweating with antici.... pation. That scorching neo-noir is perfection and I can't wait to see every bead of sweat dripping from William Hurt's mustache in gorgeous 4K. Gimme! 

 

It's a truly stellar roster for the month though -- also included are two of last year's absolute best movies (both of them figured into my favorites of 2025 list) with Joachim Trier's Oscar-nominated Sentimental Value (and I am obsessed with that Chris Ware cover art-work!) and Ira Sachs' Peter Hujar's Day (read my review of that one here). And speaking of Ira Sachs...

... his first film 1996's The Delta is also getting a drop, which rules. It's a lovely intimate little gay drama that showed we were in for a real one with Sachs. Sachs has never made a bad film that I've seen and I've seen I think like 90% of what he's done? I've never seen Married Life or Forty Shades of Blue but everything else is top-tier stellar.

As for classics getting their deserved 4K upgrades there is Bob Fosse's Lenny, the 1974 black-and-white bio-pic of the comedian Lenny Bruce starring Dustin Hoffman, and Kurosawa's 1949 crime thriller masterpiece Stray Dog starring, as ever, Toshiro Mifune. Did somebody say Toshiro Mifune? Toshiro Mifune break!

Ahhhhh I needed that. The final title for Criterion's May slate is the only one I've never seen -- Shu Lea Cheang's 1994 lesbian "cyber punk fantasia" Fresh Kill, but it's been on my list for a good long while now. Anybody ever seen it? It sounds like a trip.

A Head Full of Harbour

I didn't pay a ton of attention to the whole "David Harbour is sex addict" thing that came out recently thanks to his ex Lily Allen writing an album about him being shitty because that sort of gossip always feels invasive and shitty in itself to me -- I am not their friend, I don't need to be involved in their dirty laundry. When fans get all worked up about somebody cheating on their partner, if everybody involved are adults, I just don't think it's my business. Anyway that whole mess seemed like it fell into that camp so I didn't pay attention to it, so if I missed a legitimate reason that David Harbour got canceled feel free to yell at me. All I allowed myself to take from it is a few images of David Harbour being a freak and I was happy with those. Because hot. 

Anyway none of that is why we're here -- we're here because Mr. Harbour has booked a new movie which sounds hella rad on paper. It's an adaptation of Paul Tremblay's book A Head Full of Ghosts and it will co-star scream queen Rebecca Hall and it will be directed by Veronika Franz and Severin Fial, the filmmakers behind the original Goodnight Mommy and The Lodge, both of which rock. Anybody read the book? I have not but it's about the parents of a teen girl whose descent into schizophrenia is documented by an exploitative reality show, and the aftermath fifteen years later of that. I don't know who's playing who (if Harbour and Hall are the parents or if they play people in the flash-forward portion) but that sounds like a killer on-point concept for a movie, and I generally trust Rebecca Hall's instincts when it comes to horror -- she has done very well for herself in the genre. 

On that note: anybody watching The Beauty? I am and I was sort of enjoying it at first but I find myself increasingly annoyed by the idea that there could be a hotter version of Rebecca Hall that's not Rebecca Hall. I call bullshit! Also Ashton Kutcher sucks and annoys me, and I find the entire Anthony Ramos / Jeremy Pope storyline increasingly dumb as well. I like all the hot naked guys though (hello Isaac Cole Powell rolling around naked and wet on top of Evan Peters) so obviously I'll keep watching.

Talk To Me, Ben Whishaw

This one won't be for everyone but I quite liked Peter Hujar's Day, Ira Sachs' new film starring Ben Whishaw & Rebecca Hall, at NYFF -- click over to Pajiba to read my review today! It's a hangout movie where a lot of the hanging out is banal but I think that's part of its point? Anyway as I say over there -- who the hell wouldn't want to just hang out with Ben Whishaw & Rebecca Hall for 76 minutes? It was like heaven to me. (I previously shared the trailer right here.)

Peter Hujar's Day is Coming

It's turning out to be a very gay day today and I wouldn't have it any other way -- I just shared the news that the leather love story Pillion is screening at NYFF and I believe that the closested cop drama Plainclothes (which I reviewed right here) is supposed to get a trailer at some point today. But first we've got the poster and the trailer for Ira Sachs' new movie Peter Hujar's Day, which stars Ben Whishaw as the titular gay photographer alongside Rebecca Hall as Hujar's good friend, journalist Linda Rosenkrantz. The two spent a day talking on the record in 1974 and this film documents that day and conversation. Couldn't be more excited -- it hits theaters on November 7th! Watch:

Quote of the Day

As we put 2024 behind us officially and move on to the year's first film festival with Sundance kicking off today, let's look at one of our most anticipated titles premiering in the next two weeks there -- Plainclothes, Carmen Emmi's film about a closeted police officer (Tom Blyth, seen above for V Man magazine -- more photos here) falling for a hot dude (Russell Tovey) he arrests for cruising a Syracuse restroom. 

It's got everything! Hot men! Gay sex! Upstate New York! It's like my autobiography y'all. In all seriousness I posted about this movie the second it was announced and I'm extremely happy it's one of the few titles on my most-wanted Sundance list that's doing virtual screenings so I will actually be able to see it! (Pour one out for Ira Sachs' new movie with Ben Whishaw and Rebecca Hall which I will not be able to see -- SIGH). Anyway there's a chat with Blyth about the movie in Variety today and because sex scenes get all the clicks they talked Plainclothes' sex scenes between the two fellas and here's what he had to say:

"We had an amazing intimacy coordinator, Joey Massa. I’ve worked with a lot of intimacy coordinators and they’re always amazing. Sometimes I feel they’re called in when the scene isn’t even that intimate just because everyone these days is rightfully trying to correct the course and make sure that everyone’s protected. Sometimes you’ll have a kissing scene and you go, “We probably know how to do this.” But this was genuinely intimate stuff. It was really intimate, really vivid, and Joey was incredible. It felt very organic. It felt like we rehearsed it in a way where I think Russell and I both were made to feel confident and comfortable enough that we could lead it. I think it works best when the actors feel emboldened to be able to take control of the choreography and make it feel organic."

I do like the sound of "really intimate" don't you? Those are the kinds of phrases that make my happy places get happy in the first place. Anyway stay tuned for my thoughts on Plainclothes in a couple of weeks -- the virtual screeners don't drop until the end of the fest so it'll be a bit but there's no way I won't have thoughts on this!

Baron Daddy

I don't have a proper link or scan of this photo yet but I think you'll agree with me that it's the kind of thing that needs to be shared immediately, and we'll update those specifics later -- this photo of The Gilded Age's baron-daddy Morgan Spector is in the new issue of New York Magazine, but they haven't uploaded it online yet -- I got this off their Insta stories, reshared by Morgan himself (ever the good sport, ready to self-exploit at a moment's notice). Goddamn he makes me feel things. And not just deep jealousy of Rebecca Hall, although that's inextricable from the rest for certain! 

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Resurrection (2019)

Margaret: Fucking men. Can’t put your dick in anything 

without deciding you hate it or you love it.

A happy 42 to the queen Rebecca Hall today!
Hope her man Morgan Spector is treating her right.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Morgan Spector (@epluribusyourmom)

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Professor Marston & the Wonder Women (2017)

Josette: You don't even deny 

that these images are overtly sexual. 

William Marston: An erotic component is necessary. How else is submission supposed to be pleasurable? I am teaching readers to submit to a loving authority, and that submission is pleasurable. Young boys must learn this most of all if they are to grow up respecting powerful women. 

Josette: What is powerful about a woman 

running around in a bathing suit?

A happy 45 to Luke Evans today.

This is such an underrated movie.

Morgan Spector Thirteen Times

I am starting to think that Morgan Spector has been sent to Earth specifically to torment me. How else to explain the way the obscene way that they tailored his suit on last night's The Gilded Age finale? (Click here for gifs.)  Or how else to explain this new photoshoot for The Laterals magazine?

Not that this is new territory -- we've been slobbering all over him for years now as our extensive archives indicate. Since he played gay (and had an incredibly hot gay sex scene) in the 2017 movie Permission specifically -- that was when I posted my great big "Gratuitous Morgan Spector" post (and if you click any link today, click that one, you will be surprised and not disappointed) and...

... that was when this all began. Anyway I am happy that The Gilded Age is finally allowing us to see the body that our favorite robber baron has hidden under those suits -- anachronistic obviously but who cares, it's 2023 and Mr. Rebecca Hall looks like this! Show it off! And speaking of hit the jump for the rest of this photoshoot...

My Man Morgan

On Friday night Gilded Age actor, Rebecca Hall partner, and MNPP fave hot-piece-of-meat Morgan Spector went to some event at the Met Opera here in NYC and he dressed ridiculously, and you can see my tweet about that sartorial debacle below. But one far better thing came out of it -- Interview Magazine was there when Spector was getting ready for the party and they have been kind enough to share the above photo of him before he put the unfortunate suit on. And that is the shit that makes everything else worthwhile y'all.

Is he pulling this off or do I just find him extremely extremely hot pic.twitter.com/R58xlYIsK9

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) December 2, 2023

ETA I posted too quickly! 

I clearly should've waited for this video! 

(via) And the gifs I made from it after the jump... 

Happy 5 To Permission

Today we celebrate the 5th anniversary of the release of director Brian Crano's delightful rom-com Permission, which stars Rebecca Hall and Dan Stevens as a couple who've been together since high school who decide to give each other "permission" (ooh there's the title!) to sleep around for a minute before they get married and never have the chance again. Dan Stevens ends up having a fling with a very very very funny Gina Gershon, while Becky ends up boning hot perfect François Arnaud, whose nudity in the film we're posting today as our form of celebration. I did post this once before but what the hell, when in Rome (and yes in this instance "Rome" is "inside of François Arnaud's underpants"). Oh and this movie also stars Rebecca Hall's ridiculously hot husband (and Gilded Age star) Morgan Spector as a gay and he has a hot gay sex scene in it too?

In other words this movie has everything you need and I don't know why it doesn't get more love. How has Crano not made another movie since??? Granted I'm slightly biased when it comes to the movie for selfish reasons as it marked the very first time I got blurbed in a trailer -- they took a little nugget from my review at The Film Experience when I saw it at the Tribeca fest that year. Anyway the movie got a very small physical media release in the US (DVDs of it are going for a hundred bucks!) but you can watch it on Tubi right now, as well as on Prime, and I recommend you do. It's a sweet and terrifically-acted way to spend a couple of hours. And you get to stare at François Arnaud's dick. If that ain't cinema!!! And speaking of, hit the jump for more gifs...

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Christine (2016)

Christine: Is it paranoia if, indeed, 

everyone is coming after you?

Having now watched Antonio Campos' film a couple of times I think I can pretty easily state with real conviction that, as I suspected on my first watch back in 2016, this movie is a masterpiece and Rebecca Hall's performance in it is one of the all-time greats. This is one of the ones that proves the rule that the Oscars are fuck-witted numbskulls who wouldn't know a great performance if it slapped them in the face.

And I was tempted here on Hall's 40th birthday to do a big list of all my favorite performances from her -- of which there are at least a dozen, maybe more, at this point -- but I just kept coming back to that cold hard fact. This performance. This one. This one deserved all the marbles and all the pies and yet here we are six years later and this woman's writing and directing a truly great movie like Passing and she couldn't even score an Oscar nomination for that? Fuck the Oscars, man. Rebecca Hall is everything. Okay fuck it, talking about her awesomness has gotten me all worked up! I gotta do a damn list! Here are...

My 5 Fave Rebecca Hall Perfs Besides Christine

Beth, The Night House

"You were right. There is nothing.

Nothing is after you."

Loretta, Tales From the Loop

"See, there's nothing to be afraid of. 

It's just different."

Elizabeth Marston, Professor Marston...

"When are you going to stop justifying

 the whims of your cock with science?"

Anna, Permission

"It was different... different different."

Vicky, Vicky Christina Barcelona

"You're using me to rewrite your own history."

Runners-up: The Gift, The Prestige,

Godzilla vs Kong, Please Give, Red Riding: 1974...

And stay tuned for her movie Resurrection, coming in 2022!

I reviewed it right here. It is further proof of her rule.

----------------------------------

What are your favorite Rebecca Hall performances?

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Professor Marston and the Wonder Women (2017)

Josette: You don't even deny that

these images are overtly sexual.

Marston: An erotic component is necessary. How else

is submission supposed to be pleasurable? I am teaching

readers to submit to a loving authority, and that submission

is pleasurable. Young boys must learn this most of all

if they are to grow up respecting powerful women.

Josette: What is powerful about a woman

running around in a bathing suit?

A happy 43 to Luke Evans today!

This movie's still wildly underrated, huh?

By This Robber Baron's Beard

Okay so who's watching The Gilded Age? I know some of you are watching The Gilded Age. I am watching The Gilded Age and I'm not even the typical audience for such a thing -- I watched some Downton but lost interest fairly fast, and all of the Broadway legends on Gilded are mainly lost on me, given I'm not a big Broadway person. I am a big Carrie Coon & Morgan Specter person though, so Julian Fellowes got me with them, and I've found these two episodes of The Gilded Age that have aired so far perfectly acceptable escapist entertainment. Downton was never anything more than an expensive soap opera and this seems to be the same -- some of the negative reactions to this new series seem beamed in from some other planet with their expectations to me! 

Anyway this is the long way around to me linking to this chat in W Magazine with Mr. Spector there, talking about the show, talking about working with Carrie Coon, talking about being married to Rebecca Hall, et cetera et cetera. I recommend reading that, and then coming back and looking at my great big "Gratuitous Morgan Spector" post right after as the mint on your pillow. Oh and one last thing, Gilded Age needs more of the gay stuff. The lack of that was Downton's true undoing! Them's my two nickels!

10 Off My Head: My Sundance 2022 Round-up

Okay! Here this is! I promised it on Friday and then pulled a "me" and didn't do shit except google photos of Andrew Garfield lifting his arms above his head. That's so Me, to the tune of That's So Raven. I used the excuse that I might have more Sundance content coming out and... well I still might? I haven't decided. But the fest is now over and done -- here are the films that won awards -- and for as of right now I have written ten reviews, and I shall link to them! More than that! I shall link to them in order of preference. Starting with my least favorite reviewed and working up to my most (although the only two that I'd say were actually actively bad are the ones I have ranked at #10 and #9 here). Also mind you I saw around 40 films (that includes short films) so this list, of just the ten that I have reviewed, is hardly the complete picture. And I might write up more? I might not? Today I don't have that answer, but I do have these ten...

Reviewed Sundance Films Ranked Least To Fave

10. Babysitter (dir. Monia Chokri) -- reviewed at TFE

"If the intention is to induce queasiness to go along with the drunken asshole antics then Mission Accomplished, but to what end? I know what it's like to be fall-down drunk and nobody is signing up for that experience in 4DX."

9. Alice (dir. Krystin Ver Linden) -- reviewed at The Film Experience

"We've seen this same traumatic slave narrative hundreds of times by now, and the only thing that kept me plowing through it this time was Keke Palmer, giving every expected beat her all."

8. You Won't Be Alone (dir. Goran Stolevski) -- reviewed at Pajiba 

"It’s actually rather lovely. Most especially in the film’s Orlando-esque second half as Nevena discovers her ability to shape-shift into other forms so she can experience life from their vantage. As “lovely’ as something that involves tearing out the original owner’s organs can be anyway, but the metaphysical-ness of it, which Stolevski leans hard into, strangely manages the feat."

7. Dual (dir. Riley Stearns) -- reviewed at The Film Experience

"Here too Dual, as deadpan inclined as its disposition might be, feels fiery in its back-end convictions -- what is the modern state of the law besides some way to keep us at war with ourselves unto infinity, wiping out the expiration dates on such mediocre substance as flesh, identity, selfhood"

6. Watcher (dir. Chloe Okuno) -- reviewed at Pajiba

"The silky cinematography from Benjamin Kirk Nielsen, muted creams and grays just screaming out for the splashes of crimson we know will come eventually, is to die for, leaving just the right amount of fuzzy out-of-focus at frame’s edges to make us lean forward. There’s an absolutely chilling sequence on a subway train at night that deserves to be studied under the banner of “how to film suspense”..."

5. Speak No Evil (dir.Christian Tafdrup) -- reviewed at The Film Experience

"The gay reading is there for those looking, and becomes moreso as the movie plows along. It's baked right into the eventual tragedy of the thing. Because yes, Speak No Evil gets dark -- so dark you can hardly stand it eventually."

4. Resurrection (dir. Andrew Semans) -- reviewed at TFE

"Anybody who doesn't want to watch the hell out of a movie about Rebecca Hall losing her mind over Tim Roth is not anybody I wanna know."

3. FRESH (dir. Mimi Cave) -- reviewed at Pajiba

"If you ever wondered what might happen if Promising Young Woman met cute with Patrick Bateman then have I got the movie for you!"

2. Brian and Charles (dir. Jim Archer) -- reviewed at Pajiba

"We’ve seen the “boy and his dog” story a million times and there’s a reason for that—the story works, and Brian and Charles, a shaggy goofy lo-fi Brit-wit spin on the thing, works as well as it ever has."

1. Living (dir. Oliver Hermanus) -- reviewed at Pajiba

"Not that Nighy over-plays it—his unshowy work, expertly maneuvered, remains so dialed back and oft-closed-off you become tuned into the slightest shifts in temperature; he makes you lean in so close you begin noticing half- and quarter-degrees. All the better to devastate you when the time comes for devastation, of course. And come does it ever."