Housekeeping (1987)

 'Housekeeping' is based on the award winning 1980 Marilynne Robinson novel of the name same and both adapted and directed by Bill Forsyth, a master of both melancholy and whimsy and my favorite Scottish director. Set in northern Idaho during the 1950's, the story follows sisters Ruth and Lucille (played as teenagers by Sarah Walker and Andrea Burchill, both give impressive and understated performances).

The two girls are deposited in a small mountian town with a grandmother they don't know, just before their mother abandons them to commit suicide. The two are raised by this loving grandmother until she dies, then briefly taken care of by two great aunts, before their mother's sister Sylvie (Christine Lahti (I'm always happy to see her)) is more or less forced to take over their care.

Sylvie is a kind, pleasant woman, but deeply eccentric, a horder, with little sense of time and decorum, she is cagey about her past and no doubt suffers from various mental illnesses. The whole movie is about growing up in a family that is haunted by the specter of mental illness, and how the two girls very different reactions to their aunt eventually drives them apart. The film is beautiful and muted, contrasting the gorgeous exteriors of the mountians with the troubled interiors of people with deeply held feelings they don't know how to process. ***1/2

Disclosure Day (2026)

 'Disclosure Day' is (hopefully the final iteration) of "That movie" that Spielberg has been making off and on for nearly 50 years. It is the spiritual successor of 1977's 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' and a highly condensed version of 'Taken', a generation spanning mini series about alien abduction produced by Spielberg that came out in 2002. The film principly follows two likable protagonists, an on the run former government tech expert played by (newish commer) Josh O'Connor, and a Kansas City weather lady played by Emily Blunt. These two are central players in a plot by renagade government agents, and extraterrestrials, to reveal the presence of aliens on Earth going back at least 79 years, which has been covered up by the United States government, quasi governmental agencies and even....

It's a tight, efficient movie, with some good set pieces, good mood pieces, and some time spent contemplating the implications of extraterrestrial existence on organized religion and other matters. Our current "post-truth zeitgeist" is a theme running under the film, but not as explicitly as the post 9/11 imagery in Spielberg's 2005 remake of 'The War of The Worlds'.

The movie has it weaker/shakeir bits, not everything lands and it's somewhat uneven, but it's truely Spielbergian moments and flirting with wonder made it an enjoyable watch and kept me with it throughout. I do wonder however, how well it will fair on a rewatch. The movie felt like it came out about a decade too late, if this had been released close to as is during the Obama years, I think it would have been widley embraced. The movie is getting alot of crap on YouTube, but I'd still recommend it. This is the weakest of the directors four films about aliens, but even a meh Spielberg movie is better then most theatrical releases of today. ***

Sins of Youth (1975)

Also known as "So Young, So Lovely, So Vicious", this Italin explotation film is essentially a meaner and more graphic, unauthorized remake of the 1958 Otto Preminger film 'Bonjour Tristesse'. Both films are set in Europe and concern a love triangle between a wealthy older man, his 20ish blond daughter, and the middle aged red head he wants to marry. Heck, Dagmar Lassander even looks a bit like Deborah Kerr, and both movies have the same ending. 

Getting to that ending their are some noticeable differences, including that the perspective step-mother/ step-daughter pair seem to want to fuck each other. There are some artie stylistic elements, but this is still Euro-trash, soft core stuff. At an hour and 16 minutes it's about the perfect length for what it is. **

Demonoid (1981)

  I heard Quentin Tarantino recommended this on a podcast as one of the better entries in the "crawling hand" sub genra of horror movies. Samantha Eggers travels to Mexico where her husband Roy Jensen has invested most of his money in a 300 year old silver mine, but is having trouble getting his superstitious local workers to go very far inside.

 Jensen and Eggers go down deep to prove to the workers that it's safe, they find what looks like a hidden temple inside and take a hand shapped silver container out with them. They were not able to open the container but that night the cursed hand inside gets out, it attacks Roy and possesses him and then the old hand crumbles into dust.

The next day Jensen goes to the mine, hurrangs most of the workers to go inside, then detonates explosives killing and trapping miners inside, he then flees the country. Eggers eventually catches up with him in Las Vegas where a seemingly magical betting streak has attracted a lot of attention. Jensen soon ends up dead, but the spirit of the evil hand proceeds to jump bodies in an effort to get back to and punish Samantha, as she was one of the people who released it from the cave.

Jensen's body is shipped home to California and buried. Eggers tries to convince a skeptical old priest played by Stuart Whitman (who principly worked in Westerns and low budget horror fare) of the reality of the cursed hand. It takes a bit, but Whitman becomes convinced and it's up to him and Samantha to defeat the hand for good. And they do... or do they?

Odd but fun, both tight and all over the place at 92 minutes. **

Weird: The Al Yankovich Story (2022)

 This is a satirical, faux bio-pic of "Weird" Al Yankovich made by Funny or Die for Roku and starting Daniel Radcliff in the lead; the real Al Yankovich was also involved in the production and plays a record producer. There are many recognizable faces in cameo parts throughout, it is essentially one long skit but holds together remarkably well. Reminiscent of a personal favorite of mine: "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story". Evan Rachel Wood does a very good Madonna. **1/2

Golden Exits (2017)

 After a bad breakup, Emily Browning travels from Australia to New York City to work as an intern for archivist Adam Horovitz. Adam Horivitz's current project is archiving the papers of his recently departed father in law (notably the film never tells us what the father in law did for a living, other then that he was apparently a reasonably significant figure in that field, at least in the NYC area). 

Chloe Sevigny is Adam Horovitz's wife, Adam Horovitz cheated on Chloe years ago, he's been pretty contrite since, but Chloe is having trouble fully letting it go. Chloe's sister Mary-Louise Parker low level hates Adam, Adam thinks she's a bitch, a sentiment shared by Mary-Louise Parker's personal assistant Lily Rabe. Lily Rabe in turn vents about this to her sister Lio Tipton, who is married to Jason Schwartzman who is the son of a friend of Emily Browning's mother, and Emily Browning has had a crush on him since she was little and is hoping to reconnect now that she is in New York working for Adam Horovitz, whose good friend Craig Butta is also friends with Jason Schwartzman.

You get the picture, a spidersweb network of soap opera style inter relationships. On occasion the film flirts with semi profound themes. It also makes most of its characters pretty unlikable, trys to shed new contextual light on some of them late in the film, but it dosen't quite work since they've been so unlikable. It has a few moments, but never quite congeals into anything of lasting substance. **

Backrooms (2026)

 Backrooms: Directed by the 20 year old Kane Parsons and based on his web series of the same name, which in turn was inspired by... a meme? The concept of liminal space? The fact that furniture store basements can be creepy? (For this last one I recommend a visit to the Sterling Furniture Comapny in Sugarhouse Utah.)

In San Jose, California in the year 1990, furniture store owner Chiwetel Ejiofor, while investigating the cause of a power drain that has been impacting his utilities bill, discovers a portal to a vast labyrinth that is a kind of Bizaro version of his store. He becomes obsessed with this and eventually convinces some of his employees, as well as his therapist Renate Reinsve to go inside. That experience proves to be something that can not be recommend.

I do however recommend this film. It very successfully balances the surreal discomforts of its horror movie plot, with the psychological discomforts of its two very flawed protagonists. On a budget of only $10 million it has already grossed over $221 million at the box office, making it one of the stand out successes of yet another lackluster year at the movies (It's June and this is the first 2026 release that made me want to actually go to the theater) and makes Kane Parsons the youngest person to have ever directed a blockbuster film. ***