Chris: I'm never gonna get out ofthis town am I, Gordie?Gordie: You can do anything you want, man.Chris: Yeah, sure. Give me some skin.Gordie: I'll see ya.Chris: Not if I see you first.
Kusama is once again brilliant to listen to here, but it turns out that everybody Philippe assembled for this film is top notch and, even better, all of them are coming at the movie from totally different directions. Patton Oswalt's the fanboy, the great Alexandra Heller-Nicholas's the critic, Stephen King was Hooper's friend, and Takashi Miike is... Takashi fucking Miike! (Turns out he's an incredibly thoughtful man for being such a maniac.) Fifty years on it's damned near impossible to find new things to say about a film as discussed & dissected as TCM has been, but the terrific Chain Reactions does a bang-up job doing just that. And Philippe's very much got a very specific thing going on with these essay movies, but this is truly his best one to date. I look forward to whatever blast of nastiness finds itself under his microscope next.
The Running Man (2025 edition) is out on November 7th.
How the hell is this not a summer movie???
Like I said -- I don't know him. And yet knowing what I do -- having watched him speak eloquently in Bryan Fuller's horror doc Queer For Fear about his closeted father's tumultuous relationship with the character of Norman Bates and his death from AIDS, and also knowing that Osgood's mother, the actress Berry Berenson, was killed in one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center on 9/11 -- the thematic threads of cursed familial chaos passed down patriarchally that thrum though The Monkey feel, you know, fairly pointed! Notable. Of note. Resonant. And then when planes on fire start falling out of the sky? Can you blame me? These thoughts are right there for the taking.
It also might be, all due apologies to Gretel, my new favorite movie of Oz's. It'll definitely take a second viewing to decide that because The Monkey is so tonally erratic and balls deep wackadoo that it's hard to decide from moment to moment if this shit's anarchic genius or gallumphing mess. Hell maybe it's both! But in a world of so much personality-free I.P.-driven "content", The Monkey feels so bloody particular, so preposterously gonzo, that I must slow-clap it for audacity alone. (If you liked last year's Cuckoo, which I've come to appreciate more and more with distance for how by-its-own-rules it flew, this should also be your cuppa.)
... you can learn from:
Carrie (1977)
Margaret: I can see your dirty pillows. Everyone will.Carrie: Breasts, Mama. They're called breasts,and every woman has them.
It is with great sadness that we inform you of the passing of Jimmy on the evening of July 6.
— James Caan (@James_Caan) July 7, 2022
The family appreciates the outpouring of love and heartfelt condolences and asks that you continue to respect their privacy during this difficult time.
End of tweet
... that 1982 short film (which I have never seen myself and which I was surprised to see sitting there on YouTube when I looked) but that doesn't entirely count. Here is how Deadline summarizes the story:
"The original short was truly scary and dealt with a man’s visit to a psychiatrist where he recounted how his children were each killed by the title character. The story follows a teenage girl who’s still reeling from the tragic death of their mother and finds herself and her brother plagued by a sadistic presence in their house and struggle to get their grieving father to pay attention before it’s too late."
So anyway that's all good news -- the not-so-great part is that the film's going to be directed by Rob Savage, who made a fun horror movie called Host at the start of the pandemic and then made a horror movie a year after that called Dashcam that was so fucking terrible and obnoxious that it not only wiped out every inch of goodwill Host had accumulated it shifted the concept of "goodwill" into its direct inverse, obliterating all goodness and will in all of the world. (Man did I not like Dashcam!) Anyway maybe Savage learned something useful from that experience and he's not actually a negative on the project -- I promise to keep an open mind from here on out. I'd love for this creepy-ass story to get the proper big screen treatment it deserves. This cast is a good step in the good direction.
"I too quit smoking (2013) AND find this type of pictures cool. Also, PSA: if you're feeling like you want to start smoking again, just remind yourself "I do not want my body and house to stink like stale horseshit", then go drink one more glass of water to entertain your hands and lips. Congrats, btw."--- Anonymous congratulates us on another year of not smoking, which we celebrated with an enormous photo-dump of sexy smoking pictures as we're wont to do, annually. .