Two Trailers of Sheer Terror!

My head's been all over the place today -- blame those Jeremy Allen White underwear pictures that exploded off my screen like fireworks when I first turned on my computer this morning -- and so I haven't gotten to a couple of important things worth sharing yet. So let's do it rat-a-tat style, a fast drop of too much information and then whoosh I'm gone again like I was never here. First up! There is a docuemtnary about horror master Dario Argento hitting Shudder on February 2nd! (It's coinciding with a screening series here in NYC at the IFC Center.) Titled Dario Argento Panico and from filmmaker Simone Scafidi the doc features interviews with people like Gaspar Noé, Guillermo Del Toro, and Nicolas Winding Refn, aka the hottest nerd-fest in town. Also a bunch of his actors and Mr. Argento himself. Here's the trailer!

Next up we got the full trailer for Diablo Cody's next horror film called Lisa Frankenstein -- I shared the teaser all the way back in October; watch that here if you're like me and don't want too much given away. Which means that no, I haven't watched this full trailer myself. But I have heard good stuff about this movie from people who've already seen it, and I love love loved that teaser, so I don't need to. Maybe you're not me, who knows! Anyway Lisa Frankenstein hits theaters on February 9th, and here's that trailer:

Wait Nicolas What?

If you'd told me right after Nicolas Winding Refn had delivered unto us the masterful Netflix series Copenhagen Cowboy (about prostitutes and criminals and psychopaths and all his usual jazz) that he'd next turn to adapting a series of vintage kid's adventure books, I'd have given birth to a shoe. Right then and there. A shoe would have fallen out of me. From where? Don't ask. But it would have happened. So I am glad they waited a little bit to tell me this news, is my point. I don't need shoes falling out of places. Anyway Deadline is reporting today that Refn is indeed turning Enid Blyton's series of The Famous Five books into a miniseries for the BBC -- are any of you familiar with these books? Because I sure as hell am not.

They were published from the 1940s until the 1960s (you can buy a reasonably priced box-set of all 22 books right here) and they sound very Hardy Boys -- they're about four children named Julian, Dick, Anne, George, plus their dog Timmy (love that the dog gets included!) who go on big adventures during their school holidays. They've apparently been adapted several times over the years, but I've still never heard of them -- that said I think I have a pretty good idea of what they consist of in my head. That that said I still cannot for the life of me picture what Nicolas Winding Refn taking on this project will look like in the end. I guess he felt like mixing it up!

Calling All Cowboys

I can't take another disappointment like Amazon burying Nicolas Winding Refn's masterpiece of a 2019 series Too Old To Die Young -- although I suppose I should be grateful that it's still there available for streaming after the year that sort of thing has had -- so please please please go watch Refn's new series Copenhagen Cowboy on Netflix if you haven't yet! I admit I dropped the ball on alerting y'all beforehand (tbh I was a little annoyed that Netflix ghosted me on screeners) so I never shared the trailer, but I am righting that now: 



I binged the show this past week -- although "binged" might be overstating it, as I didn't allow myself more than one episode a night -- and it's fan-fucking-tastic. Weird and gorgeous, funny and haunting -- it's pure undiluted Refn, and I love that he got somebody to say yes again. It's sliiiightly more accessible than TOTDY ended up being, but it's still a series where a possibly vampire serial killer has his penis eaten by pigs; ain't nobody mistaking this for Two and a Half Men. Anyway it ends on a note that very much begs for another season, which honestly might've just been a cruel joke on Refn's part -- crafting an absurdist cliffhanger with no resolution would fit into this Dada puzzle perfect. That said if you have watched the show tell me what you thought in the comments (and also go read our pal Sean's recaps at Decider, he gets it!)

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Pusher (1996)

Tonny: I once ejaculated a girl in the face,

and she wanted me to piss it off.

Frank: Wait a minute, wait a minute.

You ejaculated a girl in the face,

and she wanted you to piss it off?

Tonny: Yeah.

Frank: [laughing] Pervert! That's fucking sick!

Tonny: It is not?

Frank: It's fucking sick, man. Who was she?

Tonny: Your mother.

Oh, do we love a good "your mama" joke. And

Nicolas Winding Refn's Pusher trilogy is full of them. 

A happy birthday to Mads Mikkelsen today! I love

that Hannibal Lecter's birthday's so close to Thanksgiving.

Who Wants To Watch Karl Glusman?

These photos of actor and MNPP-fave Karl Glusman at the beach are actual eons old -- they're from 2016 right around the time he was co-starring in Nicolas Winding Refn's (brilliant) The Neon Demon! And yet I've never posted them before? God, I suck. Six years of documented sucking, and that's being generous. Anyway here they are in the year 2022 on the occasion of Karl's latest horror flick, called Watcher, getting reviewed by yours truly over at Pajiba after premiering at Sundance earlier this week. Read my review right here! The movie isn't perfect but it scratches the itches of many, many things I love...

Good lorddd pic.twitter.com/NOLu7wtXQC

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) January 22, 2022

... including yes Karl Glusman looking hella suave in a black suit. And so I gave it a mostly good review despite some issues you can probably chalk up to the movie being from a first-time feature filmmaker, one named Chloe Okuno. And if this atmospheric sleek thing is Okuno's first film it's reason enough to be excited about what's to come. Anyway that's that, and this is this, if this is a couple dozen photos of Karl Glusman at the beach six years ago with his ex-wife mostly edited out as best I could. Hit the jump for this...   

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

The Neon Demon (2016)

Gigi: You wanna know what I had done, don't you? Well I thought I'd get more work if I went down a cup size. So I'd look like a hanger, ya know? But then my surgeon, Dr. Andrew, he pointed out a lot of other problems with my body. So I had them: shave my jaw, I had a slight eyebrow lift, new nose, cheeks, inner and outer lipo... oh, and they pinned my ears. 

Jesse: Why?

Gigi: So I could wear a ponytail?

Happy 5 to Nicholas Winding Refn's fantabulous and darkly gorgeous The Neon Demon! This movie has been out five years as of today, and also as of today I have done exactly five posts telling you how "Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life you can learn from The Neon Demon." Who knew? This film is stacked with Life Lessons. Important things, like how to get a ponytail through plastic surgery. I plan on re-watching the film over the weekend (it's been a couple of years) but for now why don't y'all go read this fine piece by our pal Fiona at MovieJawn that's celebrating this anniversary and says anything I might want to say without me having to expend any effort. I love it when that happens!

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Personal Shopper (2016)

Maureen: I mean there are invisible... presences... around us. Always. I mean whether or not they're the souls of the dead, I don't know, but... You know when you're a medium you just are attuned to some sort of... vibe.
Ingo: What do you mean by- by vibe?
Maureen: It's an intuition thing; it's a feeling. You... You see this door... That's only like slightly, ajar.

An actor I always want to talk more about but never find the time to is the great German actor Lars Eidinger, who's been in so many things over the past dozen years that I've been a fan of -- besides the above-mentioned one he's also got a vital role in Olivier Assasyas' Clouds of Sils Maria; he was on both Sense8 and Babylon Berlin (!!!) and in Claire Denis' sci-fi wackery High Life; then in just the past few months he had a lovely turn opposite Eva Green in Alice Winocour's lovely lady astronaut flick Proxima. He's really become somebody I perk up at whenever he shows up on-screen...

... oh and I'm absolutely dyyyyying to see My Little Sister, the Swiss film starring him and the queen Nina Hoss that's currently playing virtually, but haven't gotten around to it yet. You can already tell that Eidinger is one of the greats. All we need is one great fearless director (somebody like Lars von Trier or Nicolas Winding Refn maybe?) to give him a great fearless role, because he's also...

... I must add, because of course I must, a wildly underrated hot piece and total exhibitionist super-freak who's proven to be wildly unreserved when it comes to nudity. (There's some stuff even I couldn't post down below.) Gosh bless the Europeans! For example just two days ago a NSFW short art-film in which he's turned into a nude human paint-brush was brought to my attention, and...

... you see what I mean? You see what I mean. Anyway today is Lars' 45th birthday and I have this big folder on my computer of Lars Photos that I haven't found an excuse to post before, so what better time than the present? Hit the jump, it's a little NSFW but also totally worth losing your job over, believe me...

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?

5 Off My Head: What's Good For the Gosling

Old Man Ryan Gosling is turning 40 today, and I suppose that calls for an assessment of the state of the Gosling. The past few years have felt sort of quiet, haven't they? He's only had one film -- the very fine First Man -- come out since 2017. He's supposedly been off enjoying being a big papa, and good for him, I say. Anybody's lucky to call Ryan Gosling "Daddy" I say. 

But that quietude's about to howl its hairy ass off because as we told you in June he's lined up his next thing and it's a re-do of The Wolfman, with recent Invisible Man re-do director Leigh Whannell again taking a silver-plated stab at updating a dusty Univeral Monster property. We wish all of that well! Especially if they go the American Werewolf route and Ryan does lots of running around in the altogether. Stamp of approval, that. Anyway as we did for his Blue Valentine co-star Michelle Williams when she turned forty two months back we will now list for you, our beloved readership, our favorite performances of Mr. Gosling, for you to yay or nay all over.

My 5 Favorite Ryan Gosling Performances

Dean, Blue Valentine

Luke, The Place Beyond the Pines

Driver, Drive

Lars, Lars and the Real Girl

Dan, Half Nelson

Runners-up: The Believer, The Notebook, Crazy Sexy Love, 

All Good Things, Murder By Numbers, First Man

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What are your favorite Ryan Gosling performances?