In Spaceships They Won't Understand

Ever since it was announced a month ago that Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross's fantastic score for Luca Guadagnino's film Queer is getting a vinyl release -- out in nine days, pre-order it right here! --  I've been nursing a hankering to re-watch the movie. (Read my review here.) And now my hanker has gotten itself goosed because the film's supporting sexpot Drew Starkey has just lined up a new killer role -- he'll be starring Deep Cuts, in the new movie from Martha Marcy May Marlene and The Nest director Sean Durkin! (Yes I ignore The Iron Claw, as it deserves.) And just as exciting -- his co-star is Cailee Spaeny, who I have loved in everything to date, but most especially Priscilla. (She's ace in the new Knives Out movie too, by theway.) 

Deep Cuts is an adaptation of a bestseller by Holly Brickley (which came out at the start of this year) that sounds a lot like it's trying to be for the Aughts what (oh let's just go with the classic example) American Graffiti was for the 1960s -- a nostalgic encapsulation of a recent time period, or as Deadline puts it "a love story about two music- obsessed twenty- somethings navigating the messy realities of ambition, belonging and adulthood over the course of an era-defining decade." I guess it was formerly supposed to star Saoirsie Ronan and Austin Butler, but no more. I find it much easier to picture Drew as an "Indie Sleaze" sex-god -- he's basically been having photos of himself taken in that drag for the past few years! See that photo above for proof. Anyway this'll be especially interesting to me since it'll be aiming to capture (at least in part) the Brooklyn music scene in the 2000s, which I very much partook in -- it's always a hoot to see a time and place you walked through turned into a rose-colored memory, and yes by "hoot" I do mean "yet another nail in my coffin."

Jack Lowden Eight Times

Loverboy Jack Lowden was on the cover of The Times over the weekend and we were gifted with this new photoshoot -- there's also an interview right here which no I haven't read yet. I'm sure it's all Saoirse this and Saoirse that because don't they just make the world's most talented and hot Irish-Scottish actor couple who ever lived and blah blah blah.  Okay it's probably about his work more likely, whatever. I'm feeling snotty for no reason having to do with these people today. I love you, Jack! Don't hold it against me. (And that's the only time I'll ever use that turn of phrase with respect to Jack.) Hit the jump for all of the adorable photos... 

Jack Lowden Three Times

Obviously we're hoping that there turn out to be more than three of these photos of Jack Lowden in the new issue of Man About Town magazine (via) because one, we adore Jack -- so talented, so pretty, so Saoirse approved. But two -- this shoot so far (shot by Matt Easton) is a hot hot hot especially hot one and they gotta be more generous with these. We've been through a hell of a week (slash decade) -- prop us up, Man About Town, please!

It's Blitz!

I am not sure yet if this is my final NYFF 2024 review or not -- we'll see if inspiration keeps raging over the weekend and into next week or not but I am on a little bit of a roll if I do say so myself -- but today my thoughts on Steve McQueen's upcoming WWII drama Blitz, which closed NYFF this year, landed on Pajiba -- click here to read them. I appear to've dug the movie more than many critics I've read -- it's lean into melodrama suited me just fine, thank you very much -- but it's not without its issues in that it feels like it would've made a better miniseries than movie. I wanted more, basically! Anyway you don't have long to wait for this one -- it's hitting theaters on November 1st and then Apple will drop it on their streaming platform around Thanksgiving. Here is the trailer if you haven't seen it already:

NYFF Ahoy!

Although it seems nuts to be onto the fall festivals already (not that I will miss this hellfire summer in the slightest, mind you) it is indeed the perfect moment for me to take stock of my hometown beloved, the New York Film Festival, since they've officially announced all three of their Gala films now. We'll start with the end, or is that the middle -- today they announced their Centerpiece film screening and it will indeed be Pedro Almodóvar’s first English-language full-length film The Room Next Door starring Tilda Swinton, Julianne Moore, John Turturro, and Alessandro Nivola. See all my previous posts on this one here -- we've been rather excited about this for some time, because of course we have. 

This will be its U.S. premiere -- it's premiere-premiering in Venice in September. The NYFF screening is October 4th, right in the middle of the fest -- hence it being the "Centerpiece film" duh -- which runs from September 27–October 14. And speaking of those dates -- the Opening Night film that they announced a couple of weeks ago is Nickel Boys from Hale County This Morning, This Evening (a truly spectacular movie, that) director RaMell Ross -- an adaptation of Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer-winning novel, Nickel Boys stars Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Hamish Linklater, Daveed Diggs, Fred Hechinger, and two young actors named  Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson in the leads; it's about "two Black teenagers who become wards of a barbaric juvenile reformatory in Jim Crow–era Florida." Anybody read the book? 

And then there's our Closing Night movie -- Steve McQueen's Blitz! I've been jonesing for this ever since I first heard about it -- the Hunger and Shame and 12 Years a Slave director is tackling the World War II bombings that devastated London from the ground level, with Saiorse Ronan playing a working-class mum who gets seperated from her little boy in the underground. Blitz also stars, among many others, Harris Dickinson, Stephen Graham, and Hayley Squires -- I have been a massive fan of Squires ever since she wowed in Ken Loach's 2016 film I, Daniel Blake, so I hope her role is juicy too. A lot of people think this might be the movie to finally get Saoirse her Best Actress Oscar, but I don't think enough people have actually seen it yet to know that much. (Having seen her in The Outrun at Sundance though I can already tell you that this is going to be a very good fall for her.)

Anyway that's three films down, dozens more to come -- I daren't even conjecture, they always surprise me, but I find myself getting giddy thinking about it already. If you're planning on attending you can buy packages right here right now; single tickets go on sale in the middle of September. 

Jack Lowden Twelve Times

I am normally depressed when beautiful young actors that I crush on hard go off and get married to Some Woman, but Saoirse Ronan is not just "some woman" so I will not only allow it, Jack Lowden, I will give you both a hearty congratulations. They're one of my favorite celebrity couples, and I love the fact that they didn't announce their marriage at all -- the only reason we know it happened is that a newspaper went snooping in Scotland's govermental wedding registries (thx Mac). I don't love the invasion of privacy, mind you -- I just love that they, with typical loveliness, didn't seek out press. They seem like good true folk! And yes I am a legendarily terrible judge of character, but I still believe this to be true! 

I mean they met making a movie where Jack fucks hot boys on the side -- if that ain't romance I don't know what is. In all seriousness they are two of the finest moving-picture actors we have -- Saoirse has had multiple opportunities to prove this (and Jack produced her next, the Sundance stunned The Outrun, which very well might finally and deservedly win her an Oscar) but Jack remains deeply under-appreciated. Why nobody is plumbing his depths like Terence Davies did in Benediction I admit I remain baffled. That's truly one of the decade's best turns -- so where the hell are all of his big roles dammit? The movies are broken. 

Anyway I was just going to point you to my long-running Jack Lowden Appreciation Thread on Twitter with this here congratulations to the newlyweds, but then I stumbled upon a 2022 photoshoot of him from the magazine The Laterals that I've inexplicably never posted, and so I shall now do just that. How I missed these gorgeous photos I'll never! So go on and hit the jump and celebrate the boy (and his lady too, by way of the boy)...

Two Perfect Strangers

Blessings be unto us all today -- Flaunt magazine has put All of Us Strangers co-stars Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal together for a cover-shoot and a chat, with Saoirse Ronan even! Read that here -- it's a long one and I am only halfway through it but I figured I best come post these photos before everyone on Earth has already beheld them. 

The movie is out in a few theaters this Friday (see release info here) and then slowly rolling out from there -- here's my review. But you've probably read that already since I've been psuhing it for months -- what we're here for are these piping hot new pictures! Hit the jump for the full load...

Good Morning, World

Good Morning, there is a naked Paul Mescal being helped into the bath tub by Saoirse Ronan, world's luckiest woman, in the new movie Foe which you can rent right now on Amazon for twenty dollars. Is it worth twenty dollars? Well that butt certainly is. But the movie? Probably not. It might be better to wait until it's streaming on Prime for free, which will be soon enough. That said I don't think Foe is the disaster its reviews imply -- there are some truly stunning images and both Mescal & Ronan are good. It just never really comes together, which is sad considering all of the fine talent involved (which includes director Garth Davis). I definitely hope Paul & Saoirse try and make another movie together because they have fine chemistry. 

Anyway I do indeed have a few more gifs to share -- this isn't everything from the movie because Paul spends a lot of time in this movie without clothes on and being lightly homoerotic with Aaron Pierre and  uhhhh wait did I just say this movie isn't worth twenty dollars? Yeah never listen to me. Never listen to a single word I say. Just hit the jump for the gifs...

Everything is the Devil

There are two good movies out this weekend -- the horror flick When Evil Lurks which I reviewed right here, and The Royal Hotel with Julia Garner which I have not had the time to review due to NYFF duties but which is very fine and worth seeing. And there are two bad movies out this weekend -- There is the new Exorcist which made me so angry I could even talk about it, and there is Foe with Saoirse Ronan & Paul Mescal which is a mess (but it is a pretty mess and Paul gets naked a lot, so, you know, watch it sometime anyway). But none of those are my weekend recommendation -- I say go watch the Francis Bacon biopic Love is the Devil, which is turning 25 tomorrow. You can rent it on Amazon or other places. It stars Derek Jacobi and Daniel Craig and Tilda Swinton and it's one of my favorite artist biopics and not just (not just) because Daniel Craig spends much of it naked and gay. Any fans?  

My brain has fully hit a wall but I have another NYFF review hitting over the weekend, and I'll be pounding out more to come, so stay tuned. I'm reportedly seeing two more movies over the weekend -- if I can go home tonight and stare at a wall and be very very still, I might even make it to both of them. We'll see. Anyway! My NYFF screening schedule is much lighter next week, so you'll have more of me! That sounds like such a threat, and perhaps it is. I don't know you. Have a good weekend and we'll talk. Bye.

One Two Mescal's Coming For You

There is a nice photo of Paul Mescal to tide y'all over -- I'm about to head off to another great big batch of NYFF screenings, including Mescal's other film showing at the fest Foe with Saoirse Ronan. I am seeing that tonight (I will include the trailer down below) and tomorrow I have the great big double whammy of Todd Haynes' May December (NYFF's Opening Night film) alongside Yorgos Lanthimos' Poor Things! And both of those movies are having press conferences since tomorrow is the official start of the fest, so I say you should follow me on Instagram if you don't already because I will most definitely be posting photos from those. I don't know who will be in attendance given the ongoing actor's strike, but Todd Haynes & Yorgos Lanthimos ain't chopped liver! Anyway that's where I will be all day tomorrow, meaning I won't be here blogging. But my first NYFF review will be landing at Pajiba tomorrow, so stay tuned for that. It's for a movie that also stars Paul Mescal, one that we were just talking about this morning! Imagine that. Anyway looking ahead -- next week is an even busier NYFF week of screenings, so expect posting to be even more sporadic. But reviews will be coming. That's something? Like, the thing I do that I legitimately care about? So stay tuned, and stuff. And have a good weekend!

A Good Mescally Morning

Blessings be unto us all this Thursday morning, there's a new Paul Mescal photo-shoot for Esquire UK magazine -- an interview too, but I just sat down at my desk and haven't read that just yet. Gimme a damn minute, yeesh. Figured I'd do the important part first, which was stare into Paul's dreamy eyes and help y'all do the same. On that note...

... there is the trailer for Foe (until this morning I thought this movie was called Poe, huh), Paul's forthcoming movie with Saorsie Ronan -- and no I haven't had time to watch that either. I'm rushing here.  But this was obviously the moment to share that. That movie's out October 6th. Now for the Esquire photos! Hit thee jump...

Small Axe is Here to Stay

And speaking of "my favorite directors" I saw this new photo of Steve McQueen the other day and it took me a moment to even recognize him -- dude is hella skinny! Anyway that aside it's a big day for those of us who love his work -- his series of 2020 short-films titled Small Axe are hitting Criterion in box-set form today! You can buy the set right here -- and Amazon has it cheap too, just 70 bucks right now. I somehow still haven't done a list of my favorite movies for 2020 but I'd have to figure out how to fit Small Axe in there if/when I did/do -- whether it be by individual film or all in one big chunk, it belongs. An absolute masterpiece.

In related news -- have any of you watched Uprising, his three-part  documentary series about three different events in 1981 London, yet? Shamefully I keep forgetting to watch even though it's on Prime Video. Gonna send myself a reminder for this weekend. Next up for McQueen is the film Blitz, about you guessed it the blitz bombings of London during WWII -- it stars Saorsie Ronan and Harris Dickinson, among many others (no Michael Fassbender though, which makes me sad -- I feel like they must've had a falling out). And McQueen also has a WWII doc called Occupied City coming out soon as well, about Amsterdam's Nazi occupation. I guess he really got into World War II during the pandemic. Here's a photo of Saorsie looking killer in period garb on the set of Blitz:

It's Timmy Time!

That there is an outtake from that 2019 photo-shoot Timmy did alongside Saoirse Ronan for Entertainment Weekly when Little Women was about to open -- thanks to this Timmy fan-site here for sharing; you can see the entire shoot at that link. Aaanyway maybe you remember how I told you a few weeks back that the Paris Theater here in NYC was going to be screening my beloved Call Me By Your Name twice in August? Well both of those screenings are tomorrow and yes indeed I am a big enough spazz about it that I have taken the whole damned day off and just plan on camping out in the theater for several hours. So that's where my Tuesday will be spent! It will not be spent online posting nonsense for you, my apologies. Well... I'll probably tweet some. But blog not! I think you'll make due! To help you out a wee bit here's a poll you can vote in, regarding this brand new photo (click to embiggen) from The Dune Movie:

bike trail guide

The Devil's Own Country

The news that Josh O'Connor is going to star in the next movie from his God's Own Country director Francis Lee doesn't feel like news at all -- not just because it seems inevitable, given how publicly and vociferously the two have expressed a deep affection for one another ever since that 2017 film, but because I could have sworn I had actually heard tell of this project, and Josh's participation in it, before. But a quick scan came up with no post so let's just say it now, possibly again, because it bears saying once or twice or twenty-two times -- Francis Lee's next film is going to be a horror movie, an adaptation of a book, that will star Josh O'Connor. What book? We don't know. But all of this, with a little more information, is referenced in a passage from a recent interview with Mr. Lee in Esquire magazine:

"Also on the table was Lee’s laptop and a copy of the novel he has almost finished adapting for his third film, about which I am sworn to secrecy. (It’s a horror movie with strong elements of “class and queerness”, about a sad young man alone in an epic wilderness; Josh O’Connor will star.)"

Class and queerness? In this economy? In all seriousness a Sad Gay Boy Horror Movie involving these two is entirely my heroin, so inject it, inject it deep into me, baby. All that said the interview with Lee at Esquire is worth your time, that news aside -- it gives a terrific window into a very closed-off and, by Kate Winslet's loving summation, "odd" man. I think he's one of the best new filmmakers we've got, and that soon people will also appreciate Ammonite for its brilliance, because I think it's stark-raving brilliant. It'll be one of those movies that people will revisit once they've got more of a handle on his way of telling stories, once he's told more stories, and be like, "Oh right, that's actually amazing." That's what I say anyway! God I love Ammonite. In case you missed my review it's right here. 

And Show a Further Sea

Mary Anning (Kate Winslet) spends her days fastidiously whittling down blocks of earth and stone to reveal the gorgeous curlicues of ancient life trapped within. Cephalopods and Nautilus, the spines and underbellies of once-upon soft-things long ago turned to glass -- here is a source of wonder. Mystery and past. The first sounds we hear in Francis Lee's Ammonite are of wetness -- in this case it's some floor-boards being scrubbed clean -- but we'll return again and again to the shore and its sounds, to the place where water does its own work of polishing old rough things down to a perfect glittering sheen. There's a hard beauty waiting for those willing to do some painstaking and intensive, focused work.

That's as much about the movie as anything, and it's the perfect setting and occupation for Lee's glorious introvert's love story -- his second glorious introvert's love story, it should be said. There might not be another filmmaker working today who understands better what it's like to find something wet and warm and terrifyingly invasive suddenly maneuvering its way deep down into the heart of a person who wasn't much looking for that particular invasion -- tremendous rock formations have been split to ruin by such weathering, and Lee sees the danger, the earthquake, of romance for us shy folk as crisp as science. 

For Mary Anning it's the arrival nee intrusion of the high-class Charlotte (Saoirse Ronan), a delicate and winsome thing you might see folded and dried in a book between two pages -- her hair, lightly golden, tumbles about her like holiday ornamentation. Charlotte feels decorative -- a shift of lace on an armchair -- while Mary is elbow grease and washing her armpits at the kitchen table. And yet in each other's company they uncover common ground -- before you know it Charlotte's hems are muck heavy and brown, and the beach-shells Mary's glued to a cheap mirror for tourist tuppence are announcing themselves as something, something worth hanging on a wall instead. Beauty begins insisting upon itself once you have a reason to actually look for it. Fuck, it's everywhere.

Mary and Charlotte become each other's reasons, slowly and insidious, but Lee isn't okay with resting on those laurels, as nice as that sun might feel finally in our bones -- falling in love might make us want to be better people but it doesn't automatically do that work for us. Mary, trapped for so long under her thin scrim of brine, can't just upend her chosen life of solitude and splash off to the big city, and she might not even want to. There is being afraid of love on the one hand but there's also just who we are on the other -- the weather might wash us down to something pretty that could be hung up in a museum but the original mass, our buried substance, still has weight and matter and worth in itself. 

Ammonite, like God's Own Country before it, knows deeply of the turbulent tug of the waves inside an introvert's heart -- the endless struggle to crack open our shells without killing ourselves in the process. We want and need to be known, but our personalities are stone set against it -- it takes time and it takes patience, uncovering those beautiful, buried things. But my god, when you do, watch out.

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

God's Own Country (2017)

Gheorghe: My country is dead. 

You can't throw a rock in most towns 

without hitting an old lady crying

for her children who have gone.

I am sure one of you will know what I am talking about and can correct me as to the specifics, but I want to write this out without googling those exact specifics because the way our memories twist things are usually more interesting than the flat realities of them. So anyway way back in the day during its first few seasons I used to watch American's Next Top Model, and there was this one model contestant one year who was from some very poor Eastern European country and as she listened to the spoiled princesses around her whine about nonsense she cut them off and in her thick Dracula-tinged accent said, and I quote (or perhaps paraphrase), "In other people's country there is war." 

Is that actually what that girl said? I don't know. But that is what has become a catchphrase in my household all the same -- my boyfriend and I use it to amusingly stop the other's bullshit in its tracks. And to bring this back to the start that phrase, "In other people's country there is war," is what popped into my head as I read that quote above from Gheorghe in God's Own Country just now. Same vibe!

Anyway! There are two reasons I am bringing up Francis Lee's film God's Own Country today -- one is that today is the birthday of the actor Alec Secareanu who so memorably played Gheorghe in that film, winning our hearts for a lifetime. He's turning 36! We adore him. Put him in everything, world! (Me included.)

The second reason I am bringing up God's Own Country is Francis Lee's second movie is out online this very day! Ammonite, a lesbian romance starring Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan, is now online -- you can rent it in many places, including right over here on Amazon. I have every intention of having a full Ammonite review up before today is over so stay tuned for that, but for now let me just say I adore the film way more than the general consensus that seems to be forming, and also birthday boy Alec Secareanu is actually in it! He plays a doctor, and he looks REAL GOOD you guys. 

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Lady Bird (2017)

Sister Sarah Joan: You clearly love Sacramento. 

Lady Bird: I do? 

Sister Sarah Joan: You write about Sacramento 

so affectionately and with such care. 

Lady Bird: I was just describing it. 

Sister Sarah Joan: Well it comes across as love. 

Lady Bird: Sure, I guess I pay attention. 

Sister Sarah Joan: Don't you think maybe they 

are the same thing? Love and attention?

A very happy 90th birthday to the great Lois Smith!

What role do you think of when you think of her?

This is the one I see immediately:

Invasion of the Ginger Snatchers

First things first it seems important to share the above photo of former Dunkirk twink and current Saoirse squeeze Jack Lowden hanging out with his bearded ballet-dancing brother Calum -- you know. Important. Jack's Instagram has been fun over quarantine -- I advocate following him for your recommended daily dosage of ginger goodness. Sometimes doubled! You can't OD on Ginger!

Moving on! Jack is the co-star of a very fine horror movie that's coming out very soon! And yes that is The Great And Honorable Fiona Shaw you see in the above gif alongside him. The movie is called Kindred and IFC is dropping it on November 6th -- it stars Tamara Lawrance (a British actress seen in several TV series over there; she's also featured in one of Steve McQueen's upcoming "Small Axe" series of films) as a young woman in love with our boy Edward Holcroft...

... which marks any character automatically as "smart." Anyway they go to the country to visit his mother (Shaw) and... things get scary. I have indeed already seen this and will review it closer to its release date but I recommend you put Kindred in your calendars, is what I am saying for now. November 6th. That being said this trailer gives away too much, and you maybe shouldn't watch it. I enjoyed knowing nothing going in. But you're an adult and can make your own damn decisions, so here. Choose wisely...

What's New NewFest

During my day off yesterday NewFest 2020 went and dropped their full line-up for this year's mostly virtual fest, so today I play catch up! If you've heard all of this already, well you can go to hell. This is for the rest of us. (Not really, I love you!) (Unless you want to go to hell, in which case have at it. I prefer a cooler climate personally.) Anyway NewFest runs this year from October 16th through 27th and we already knew the big Opening Night film was Francis Lee's Ammonite -- see that post here -- so we'll focus in on some smaller but no less exciting stuff! But first, their trailer:

As you see there... hella gay. Right? So gay! I mean I know that's the idea but why they gotta rub all that gay in our faces? I mean when they could be rubbing the gay in our other places, obviously. Don't give my face all the attention, NewFest! That reminds me -- one year ago at NewFest I turned around to talk to my boyfriend at an after-party for one of their screenings and my boyfriend had literally been replaced by Chris Evans. No seriously -- that happened. If only I'd known then what I knew now! By which I mean Chris Evans definitively has a penis and I was about to be locked inside my apartment for eight months. 

Sorry I am really getting off track here. NewFest! We love NewFest! You can see their entire line-up on their website, I'm not gonna go through the whole thing because per usual they have an extensive line-up covering all the queer bases. But the titles that leapt right out at me are Alan Ball's Uncle Frank...

... which I've already posted about previously because it stars Paul Bettany and we love Paul Bettany, especially when he's not under all of that Vision make-up and wearing a mustache. That one is screening at the Queens Drive-in, what a thrill, outdoors and shit. And another one that leapt out at me was...

... Francois Ozon's Summer of 85, aka another one I've posted about before. Several times actually, as I tend to love Ozon films and this one looks like he took a lot of inspiration from Call Me By Your Name. See my previous posts, including its trailer, at this link. Oh and they're also showing Monsoon...

... aka The "Henry Golding plays gay" movie, previously posted about here -- this is from the writer-director of the lovely Lilting with Ben Whishaw. And I've already seen Monsoon and I'll have more to say about that closer to... not right now. Monsoon is getting a release in early November. Of course those are just some big titles -- there are loads more, including some fascinating looking docs (NewFest always has killer docs), one about Keith Haring and one about Truman Capote & Tennessee Williams, among many many others. Again check them at NewFest's website -- tickets are on sale right now!