She's All That (1999)

 File this under high school movies of my high school years that I didn't see while in high school. An "ugly duckling" story, Rachael Leigh Cook is adorable and Freddie Prinze Jr surprisingly likeable; Rory Culkin is in this too. Rather basic in story, but reasonably well handled in execution. **1/2

Electrick Children (2012)

 15 year old Julia Garner is growing up in a polygamist family in contemporary southern Utah, when she becomes convinced that she has become miraculously impregnated after listing to rock and roll music for the first time on a blue cassette tape she found. Spurning a hastily arranged marriage Julia steals her father's pick up truck and heads for Las Vegas with the goal of finding the voice on the tape, who she believes to be the true father of her baby. While in sin city Julia falls in with Rory Culkin and a small group of music lovers. Strange and uneven, the film is carried by the performances of the two leads as well as Liam Aiken as Julia's half brother. **1/2 

The scenes at the polygamist community were filmed at the famously cinematic ghost town of Grafton, Utah.

The Last Seduction' (1994)

 'The Last Seduction' is an erotic thriller / neo-noir that shows Linda Fiorentino has more range then I would have expected. After stealing close to a million dollars from her crooked doctor husband (Bill Pullman), Linda takes on an assumed name and settles in a small upstate New York town to let temperatures cool down and gain a divorce. While there Linda is romanticly persued by a local insurance claims adjuster (Peter Berg) of limited prospects. However, Linda enjoys him sexually and gradually formulates other ways he could be useful to her. Unusual in haveing the Fem Fatal as the lead character, Fiorentino gives what is probably a career best performance; the film is consistently interesting and leaves you guessing. Going in I suspected there was a good chance I wouldn't finish it, but I just had to stick around and find out how it ended, I'm glad I did. Roger Ebert's 5th favorite film of 1994. ***1/2

Mother of Tears (2007)

 'Mother of Tears' is the final entry in director Dario Argento's 'Three Mothers trilogy, after 'Suspiria' (1977) and 'Inferno' (1980). 'Suspiria' is a masterpiece and 'Inferno' is strong, but 'Mother of Tears' was made 20 years too late. There are some interesting things in it but the execution feels low energy, it lacks the bite it needed and is a let down. For completists only I suspect. **

Feels Good Man (2020)

 San Francisco based artist Matt Furie created his "peaceful frog dude" character Pepe in the mid aughts and featured the stoner amphibian in his underground 'Boys Club' comics. Furie was mortified when his character was appropriated as a mascot for the alt right. This documentary covers Furie's creation and sanctioned uses of Pepe, the unlikely story of his characters use by the alt right and the legal actions he took to try and reclaim his creation. This documentary will forever be a useful media text for future generations to understand the very strange time in which we are now living. ***

Kinds of Kindness (2024)

Yorgos Lanthimos's (The Favorite; Poor Things) black comedy-drama anthology film about dysfunctional relationships, uses the same small cast including Emma Stone, William Dafoe and Jesse Plemons in all 3 of its stories. 

Story one has Plemons as an employee who let's his boss make all the decisions in his life, including the car he drives, the food he eats and the woman her marries. When after a decade Plemons refuses to carry out an order because it might kill someone, he quickly finds himself unable to function in life without boss Defoe's guidance. 

In story 2 Plemons is a cop whose wife Stone is lost at sea. When she is miraculously rescued Plemons becomes convinced she is an imposter and forces her to perform increasingly self destructive acts to prove her love. 

In story three Plemons and Stone are cult members tasked with seeking out their groups promised messiah. Stone, who left her husband and daughter to join the group, finds she can't keep herself from checking in on her loved ones. This threatens her good standing in the cult and her very sense of identity. 

These are kinds of narratives that seem more naturally suited to being short stories then a film, but they make for intriguing and at times unsettling viewing. Director Lanthimos cameos as the same minor character in all three stories. ***1/2 

Joker: Folie à Deux (2024)

 Critics and audiences loved Todd Phillips first Joker movie back in 2019; It's semi musical sequel was not well received. Centered around Arthur Flecks criminal trial for events in the first film, it is in essence a feature length critical deconstruction of its predecessor. It is the Seinfeld finale of DC movies, a surprisingly thoughtful troll. I had to watch it twice to digest it, but I'm coming out for it. ***

The Blair Witch Project (1999)

 The extremely low budget horror film which is largely credited with establishing the now ubiquitous "found footage" style of film making, 'The Blair Witch Project' became perhaps the greatest return on investment in the history of cinema, $248 million box office off a production cost of $60,000. Presented as a compliation of the "found" video footage of a team of three twenty-something film makers who.went missing in the Maryland woods in 1994 while making a short documentary on a (made up) local legend about a malevolent witch. This is a movie where seeing it now, a quarter century after it's release, one gets only a limited sense of the effect it had on Clinton era theater goers for whom this was something noval and new. It's still scary, or more accurately disconcerting now, the story is well told and the terror well solid, though we see really next to nothing. The mind is better at imaging horror then a made up film could ever be. ***1/2

Joe (1970)

 Rick Perlstein's book Nixonland makes extended reference to the 1970 film 'Joe' as a movie that avatars a kind of white rage at the culture change occurring in America at this time. Upper class Dennis Patrick's only child, played by Susan Sarandon in her film debut, lands in the hospital from a drug overdose courtesy of her drug pushing boyfriend Patrick McDermott. Dennis goes to the urban slum where his daughter lived with her boyfriend to collect her stuff, there he has a confrontation with the boyfriend and accidentally kills him. A panicked Dennis does a pretty good job covering his tracks the heads to a nearby bar for a drink and to collect his bearings.

At the bar Dennis meets Joe, played memorably by Peter Boyle. Joe is an angry and resentful blue collar type who enjoys monologeing about his disgust at the state of the world. In there conversation Dennis let's slip what he had done, then trys to pass it off as a joke. Later when he sees a report on TV about the death of a young drug pusher in the area and reads more about it in the newspaper, Joe puts together that Dennis was the killer. He then tracks down Dennis who finds Joe dosen't want to blackmail him for money, but rather force him to become his friend. Dennis's wife and daughter also figure out what he has done, and while the wife is content to keep quite about it the daughter runs away. Joe then joins Dennis as they comb the city looking for Susan and have encounters with the subculture that they to varrying degrees despise. It dosen't end well.

A strong eviction of Nixon era culture war, I'm a little surprised that this film is largely forgotten, it's basic thesis taken up and subsumed by the better known Deathwish that came out a full four years later. ***1/2

Sinners (2025)

 Writer/director Ryan Coogler, best known for Black Panther and Creed, finally got big bucks for a wholly original project, and so far it's 2025's biggest hit not based on any existing IP. 'Sinners' takes structural que from Hitchcock's The Birds as its one kind of movie that is crashed into by another kind of movie mid way through. Set in the deep south of the 1930's the film starts as an ensemble melodrama in which Coogler muse Micheal B. Jordan plays twin brothers returning from working for Al Capon in the north to start a rural speakeasy for a black clientele. Various storylines are set up for roughly a dozen characters, then on opening night the club is besieged by vampires. And this works. Creatively reshuffling the story deck and used as means of commenting on the black experience in America. Nor is it particularly preachy in doing so. This is the kind of movie that raises hope that American films can still do unique and meaningful work in a crowed pleasing and money making manner. ***1/2