Anatomy of a Peeping Tom

Michael Powell's controversial 1960 masterpiece Peeping Tom is hitting the Criterion collection on May 14th of 2024  -- and in 4K no less! Of course I'd already snatched up a copy of Studio Canal's UK edition that came out a few weeks ago, but it's not like this isn't a movie I won't triple or quadruple dip on. It's one of the greatest movies ever made! And Criterion is bringing their own round of special features  for their disc, including (no surprise here) an intro by Martin Scorsese and an interview with Powell's wife slash Marty's editor Thelma Schoonmaker. This movie was too hard to see properly for far far far too long -- this is only right. Slide this sucker into the tippy top of the canon already!

Anyway yes indeed it's that time again -- our monthly Criterion Announcement Day! Today's news is for May and they're dropping an absolute banger of a global line-up, including two mini-sets from two  international masters: the two Floating Weeds films from Yasujiro Ozu (made two decades apart cuz that's how Ozu rolled) and a trilogy of movies from Senegalese auteur Ousmane Sembène; specifcally the movies Emitaï, Xala, and Ceddo, which were all made across the 1970s. 

But wait that's not it! We're also getting the great Karyn Kusama's 2000 lady-boxer masterpiece Girlfight on May 28th (which introduced the world to the stylings of Michi Rodriguez), as well as this year's big Oscar whodunit Anatomy of a Fall starring our queen Sandra Hüller as a bisexual writer whose husband ends up on the wrong side of a balcony. I admit I'm a little annoyed Anatomy isn't being released in 4K right off the bat -- I wanna see all of that beautiful Swiss mountain scenery looking its best! Not to mention that lawyer's beautiful hair!

Twice the Weisz, Twice as Nice

When I posted in August 2020 that Rachel Weisz was going to star in a series adaptation remake of David Cronenberg's twin gynecologist masterpiece Dead Ringers I didn't yet have any information on who was making the darn thing, and so I expressed some antipathy. As one should! Not because of Weisz -- we think she's killer! -- but because remaking David Cronenberg seems a fool's errand, as his movies are so very Him that Him has become an adjective. But today we have an image via IndieWire along with the news that the series is coming from some notable names, ones which make my apprehension a little (a little, mind you) lessened. Alice Birch, the woman behind the Paul Mescal introductory series Normal People and the Florence Pugh introductory movie Lady Macbeth wrote the scripts for the show, while Martha Marcy May Marlene director Sean Durkin and The Invitation director Karyn Kusama will be directing some of the episodes. Oh and the ace Jennifer Ehle is also in the cast. I like all of these people very much, but even more than that I respect their intelligence. And as I said in my 2020 post, telling the story about mutated female anatomy with a female lead(s) this time is probably a change we should welcome? We'lls ee -- the series is set to bow in April on Amazon Prime.

Nights Of Frights

It's October! We should be getting our bodies ready for Halloween, shouldn't we? The second I'm done with NYFF (in about a week) I'll feel better situated to get myself spooky (and the Brooklyn Horror Fest kicking off this weekend should help) but for now I do have some spookiness to share -- for Mashable I made a list of "The 11 Scariest Movies Streaming For Free," go check it out right here. I went through all of the streaming sites and found the scariest titles and lemme tell you what -- narrowing it down to 11 from the over 100 titles I started with was a chore. But I did it. I cut off slivers of flesh like some Seven shit and I did it. I mixed genre classics with personal faves -- they just had to be movies that legitimately scared me. Lord knows different things scare different people but I made this list so these scared me! I think it's a good list though, if I do say so myself, so go check it out.

Lions and Tigers and Pabst Blue Ribbons, Oh My

Another day, another Tribeca review -- well there will probably be more than one that I will be linking to, but for now just the one. The one being for the new documentary called Lynch / Oz, which is about... what if I said it was about, like, watermelon salad? Wouldn't that be weird? No no it's about the director David Lynch and his obsession with the movie The Wizard of Oz. It is not about watermelon salad. Click on over to The Film Experience to read my thoughts on Lynch / Oz. Stay here if you want to read nine thousand words on watermelon salad! So... have I written nine thousand yet? I feel like I must be close. The end!

Bad Week For Bloodsuckers

This afternoon I took a brief break from screaming, "KISS! KISS!!!!!" at the above photo of The Northman director Robert Eggers and The Northman star Alexander Skarsgard to write up the news that things are not looking good for Eggers' long-hoped-for remake of Nosferatu, along with the bad word on Kayrn Kusama's Dracula movie too, over at The Film Experience, read it at the link. This shit news sandwich has got me like...

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

The Invitation (2015)

David: It's okay, I'm not offended. A lot of people think 

we're crazy. But I doubt they're as happy as we are.

Happy birthday to director Karyn Kusama today! I hope she comes back and directs more episodes of Yellowjackets next season! She only did the pilot, but I'd love more of her golden touch in season two. (Whatever the case if Melanie Lynskey's there we'll be in good hands.) Stepping back to The Invitation (masterpiece!) which is to say more specifically Michiel Huisman news though, did y'all see this photo of Luke Evans teased us with on his Insta last week?

The two of them recently filmed Echo 3, an upcoming Apple+ series from Mark Boal, screenwriter of Triple Frontier and Zero Dark Thirty -- here's my post about that announcement. One assumes this photo was taken during the time of that shoot, or maybe they just couldn't get enough of each other's half-naked company. And if it's the latter we need to take to the streets to demand more proof. 

From Yellowjackets To Yorick We Go

I have to big important and exciting trailers to share with you and you today! Above is the first (clearly), for the forthcoming Showtime series called Yellowjackets. What is Yellowjackets, you ask? I am glad you asked, here's what Yellowjackets is -- Yellowjackets is a series that stars Melanie Lynskey, Juliette Lewis, and Christina Ricci, with a pilot directed by Karyn Kusama. What, you need other information? Fuck your other information. Watch the trailer, that'll give you your precious "other information" -- me, I know what I need to know to rearrange my entire life around that thing, thank you very much. Yellowjackets premieres on Showtime sometime this fall.

And then we have the first trailer for the long and I do mean long gestating Y: The Last Man adaptation, which I have been documenting basically since I began posting on this site 15 years ago. (Chart all of our coverage at this link.) It's been some time in the making! It was supposed to be a movie, or two, at one point -- it almost got made with Shia LaBeouf. But now, eighteen years after comics writer Brian K. Vaughn first introduced Yorick Brown, the sexy regular-guy last male on Earth after a plague wiped out all of the menfolk leaving a world of pissed-off and free women to pick up the pieces, we've got an FX series. And it premieres soon! On September 12th! I gotta go see about screeners, yo.

Take a Bite Outta Nicky

Universal might have embarrassed themselves a few years back with their original concept of a so-called "shared Monsters universe" after Tom Cruise's Mummy movie bit the big one, but after the success of Elisabeth Moss and The Invisible Man movie they've been working at rebooting the concept -- Leigh Whannell, who helmed that Invisible Man, is currently working on a Wolfman film with Ryan Gosling, and the great Karyn Kusama is making yet another Dracula flick. (Also Paul Feig has talked about a Bride idea!) Well today comes word that the character of Renfield from Dracula is getting his very own film, and it will star the gorgeous and perfect Nicholas Hoult in the lead. This ain't yo momma's Tom Waits!

It's been a very long time since I've read Bram Stoker's book so I don't remember how Renfield, the man driven mad with obsequience to his vampire master, is described therein, but it's not like anybody has paid any attention to "the text" in a century as far as this particular tale goes... point being sure, make Renfield a hot piece, why not? I just hope they follow through on the homoerotic implications here -- that Count Dracula choosing a slave boy as beautiful as Nicky has... connotations, ones that would be best followed through here in the year of our Dark Lord 2021. That said the super straight crew making this project -- Chris McKay of the Lego movies, from a story by Walking Dead comics-creator Robert Kirkman -- doesn't give me a lotta hope on that front Dammit, Renfield should be kinda gay. Or really really gay. Like, really. I mean give this movie to Xavier Dolan -- I wanna see that.

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

The Invitation (2015)

Will: You look different, Edie. 

Eden: I am different. I'm free. All that useless pain, 

it's gone. It's something anyone can have, Will, 

and I want you to have it too.

Happy 5 to one of the greatest horror films of our age, Karyn Kusama's masterpiece of resolute tension The Invitation -- I don't think we really appreciated at the time how great it was, or how great it would be; talk about prescience. It saw QAnon coming, that's for damn sure. The feeling that the people we love have been co-opted by illogic, their traumas weaponized by outside forces, their happy smiling faces turned to terrifying masks. I can't remember if I've mentioned it here on the site proper or just tweeted about it but I have an old, good friend who I lost to the Q-cult and this movie in retrospect nails everything about the experience -- the sense of confusion and betrayal, of slamming your head up against an impenetrable place. It's weird now going back and re-reading my original very positive review of the film, how innocent that review seems now. How could we have known what was coming? Well The Invitation did. It put out the red lanterns lighting the way.

25 Off My Head: Siri Says 2016

I guess this website you're on is nursing some separation anxiety today after two weeks of holiday silence, because my intention to do a new entry in our "Siri Says" series -- where I ask my phone to choose a number between 1 and 100 and then choose my favorite movies from the corresponding year -- came at me with a huge ask this afternoon. One I had been dreading for awhile. See, Siri came back at me with the number "16", forcing me to choose my favorites from The Movies of 2016, and... 

... well I don't know if you remember 2016, but there was a lot happening in 2016. Especially at its stinger of a tail-end. The bottom dropped out, a nightmare swallowed us up, and I couldn't focus on making silly little lists. Or much of anything. It's been four years of this so maybe you can't recall how we all died, a lot, inside right around then... but we did. And so I never awarded my annual "Golden Trousers" awards for the movies of 2016. They just got lost in the mix of sturm und drang and shit. 

And I have regretted this gaping absence ever since, but... well politics aside, 2016 was actually a wonderful, seriously wonderful, year for the movies. Insanely good! (I mean it's even the year where I first heard about Call Me By Your Name, for goodness' sake!) And so the task of actually mounting this list always seemed daunting. Super massive daunting, really. And if there's one thing you know about me it's that I love Jake Gyllenhaal. But if there are two things you know about me there's that I love Jake Gyllenhaal and I am lazy. So this list just kept being put off, and off, and off. 

But now, well, why not? This is one way to put a cap on the past four awful years. And... also I'm just sitting here, trying to get myself back into the blogging frame of mind after two weeks off. Why not set myself a massive task? So usually when I do these "Siri Says" lists I just give you five movies in no particular order from the year in question, but this will not do. It doesn't seem to meet the demand of this moment, this year of movies. So not only am I ranking the films, but I'm giving you a Top 25. 2016 was too good for any less than too much, man!

My 25 Favorite Movies of 2016

25. Pee-wee's Big Holiday

(dir. John Lee)

24. Silence

(dir. Martin Scorsese)

23. The Love Witch

(dir. Anna Biller)

22. The Ornithologist

(dir. João Pedro Rodrigues)

21. Always Shine

(dir. Sofia Takal)

20. Arrival

(dir. Denis Villeneuve)

19. Neon Bull

(dir. Gabriel Mascaro)

18. Green Room

(dir. Jeremy Saulnier)

17. Wiener-dog

(dir. Todd Solondz)

16. Julieta

(dir. Pedro Almodovar)

15. Certain Women

(dir. Kelly Reichardt)

14. Aquarius

(dir. Kleber Mendonça Filho)

13. Christine

(dir. Antonio Campos)

12. A Monster Calls

(dir. J.A. Bayona)

11. Jackie

(dir. Pablo Larrain)

10. The Invitation

(dir. Karyn Kusama)

9. Kubo and the Two Strings

(dir. Travis Knight)

8. Elle

(dir. Paul Verhoeven)

7. A Bigger Splash

(dir. Luca Guadagnino)

6. The Neon Demon

(dir. Nicolas Winding Refn)

5. Moonlight

(dir. Barry Jenkins)

4. The Witch

(dir. Robert Eggers)

3. The Handmaiden

(dir. Park Chan-wook)

2. 20th Century Women

(dir. Mike Mills)

1. American Honey 

(dir. Andrea Arnold) 

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

Runners-up: The Autopsy of Jane Doe (dir. André Øvredal), Train to Busan (dir. Sang-ho Yeon), Hail Caesar! (dir. Coens), The Light Between Oceans (dir. Derek Cianfrance), High-Rise (dir. Ben Wheatley), The Eyes of My Mother (dir. Nicolas Pesce), Demolition (Jean-Marc Vallee), Nocturnal Animals (dir. Tom Ford)...

... Nocturama (dir. Bertrand Bonello), Under the Shadow (dir. Babak Anvari), I, Daniel Blake (dir. Ken Loach), Things To Come (dir. Mia Hansen-Løve), Shin Godzilla (dir. Cris George), The Shallows (dir. Jaume Collet-Serra), Captain America: Civil War (dir. Russos), Swiss Army Man (dir. Daniel Scheinert), Spa Night (dir. Andrew Ahn)

Never seen: Sausage Party (dir. Conrad Vernon), Dirty Grandpa (dir. Dan Mazer), Handsome Devil (dir. John Butler), My Life as a Zucchini (dir. Claude Barras), Fire At Sea (dir. Gianfranco Rosi), Snowden (dir. Oliver Stone), Sully (dir. Clint Eastwood), Pete's Dragon (dir. David Lowery), The B.F.G. (dir. Steven Spielberg), Eddie the Eagle (dir. Dexter Fletcher)

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

What are your favorite movies of 2016?

Take a Bite Outta Count

.

Okay so sure here in 2020 we've seen the Carpathian Count more times than we can, you know, count, but I'm forcing myself to shrug off my shrugs about a new movie version of Dracula this morning because of who's been hired -- The Invitation and Jennifer's Body director Karyn "fuckin'" Kusama, that's who. She's a big who! We love her! Maybe we didn't love her last movie so much -- that'd be Destroyer with Nicole Kidman -- but everybody's allowed a whiff now and then, and it's not like Destroyer's not an interesting experiment with structure and tone even if I don't think it ultimately worked. 

.

Okay but hear me out what if Karyn Kusama made a Lesbian Vampire Movie instead

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) March 11, 2020

Anyway back to the bloody business at hand -- this is the studio called Blumhouse doing this, who just let Leigh Whannell reimagine The Invisible Man in a way that really worked and made that nearly hundred year old franchise feel fresh, so let's keep hope alive. (Also props to Jason Blum for hiring another female filmmaker after his jackass comments from a couple of years back.) And I mean after all it's not like Plague Times aren't the exact right time for a Dracula resurgence...

Oh I seriously might have to watch Werner Herzog's Nosferatu the Vampyre tonight, I might. That sounds perfect. (And it's on Amazon Prime to boot!) Anyway the conversation now of course turns towards the casting department. I personally think they need to stay far far away from the Count being played by a white man with black hair, as that's been done to literal death at this point -- there's one on Netflix right now, and Claes Bang is pretty damn good at it too. That said I don't know what ideas Kusama & Co. have got in mind for their take -- they could go the route of The Invisible Man and make Dracula a supporting character in his own story, focus on Mina or Lucy, who knows. Thoughts from y'all?