She was shakin'

THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE

2025

Directed by Mona Fastvold

Written by Brady Corbet and Mona Fastvold

Spoilers: inapplicable

Better a thousand times to die than for to live so tormented: dear, but remember it was I who for thy sake did die contented

THE PRIVATE LIVES OF ELIZABETH AND ESSEX

1939

Directed by Michael Curtiz

Written by Norman Reilly Raine and Aeneas MacKenzie (based on the play Elizabeth the Queen by Maxwell Anderson)

Spoilers: welllll, how familiar are you with the reign of Elizabeth I?

Groovy, baby. Yeah.

LAST NIGHT IN SOHO

2021

Directed by Edgar Wright

Written by Krysty Wilson-Cairns and Edgar Wright

Spoilers: severe

mother!

DIE MY LOVE

2025

Directed by Lynne Ramsay

Written by Enda Walsh, Alice Birch, and Lynne Ramsay (based on the novel Die, My Love by Ariana Harwicz) 

Spoilers: moderate

Census Bloodbath: Hello, nurse

VISITING HOURS

It's Halloween again, and for our 12th annual Switcheroo with Brennan Klein of Popcorn Culture, we're doing what we always do this time of year when we turn the tables on one another: he takes over my Cardboard Science feature and reviews some of those corny mid-century sci-fi movies, and I do some fieldwork for Brennan's Census Bloodbath, as he gives me a slate of sick 80s slasher flicks from his ever-expanding encyclopedia of death.  This year we're back to full power, with three psyche-scarring films of Brennan's selection.

1982

Directed by Jean-Claude Lord

Written by Brian Taggert

Spoilers: moderate

Census Bloodbath: This is a tool, not a toy

THE CARPENTER

It's Halloween again, and for our 12th annual Switcheroo with Brennan Klein of Popcorn Culture, we're doing what we always do this time of year when we turn the tables on one another: he takes over my Cardboard Science feature and reviews some of those corny mid-century sci-fi movies, and I do some fieldwork for Brennan's Census Bloodbath, as he gives me a slate of sick 80s slasher flicks from his ever-expanding encyclopedia of death.  This year we're back to full power, with three psyche-scarring films of Brennan's selection.

1988

Directed by David Wellington

Written by Doug Taylor

Spoilers: moderate

Tubular! Radical! Awesome! Reaganomics!

BARBARIAN

2022

Written and directed by Zach Cregger

Spoilers: oh, severe

Cardboard Science: A million years of evolution with one bomb

DAY THE WORLD ENDED

1955

Directed by Roger Corman

Written by Lou Russof

Spoilers: moderate

Fierce creatures

DANGEROUS ANIMALS

2025

Directed by Sean Byrne

Written by Nick Lepard

Spoilers: moderate

Plutonian shores

CRIMES OF THE FUTURE

2022

Written and directed by David Cronenberg

THE SHROUDS

2025

Written and directed by David Cronenberg

Spoilers: moderate

Humphrey Bogart in Argument!... or Disagreement!... or Quarrel!... or Dispute!... or...

CONFLICT

1945

Directed by Curtis Bernhardt

Written by Robert Siodmak, Alfred Neumann, Arthur T. Horman, and Dwight Taylor

Spoilers: moderate (or a touch more than moderate, but, anyway, not high)

I know you've seen enough of the Falls for one trip, but don't cross us off your list

NIAGARA

1953

Directed by Henry Hathaway

Written by Charles Brackett, Walter Reisch, and Richard Breen

Spoilers: moderate (maybe a teensy bit high, but one generally knows how these things go, right?)

Reviews from gulag: Down with the Oscars (this isn't about the Oscars)

But I will indulge myself a moment, because today I watched Robert Zemeckis's Here—the boldest Goddamn movie of the year, in its way, just a real achievement, and one that deserves a full review—but perhaps just as importantly, I also watched I Saw the TV Glow, the third feature (second anyone's heard of) from Jane Schoenbrun, the follow-up to their torturously boring and bad We're All Going To the World's Fair; and, in tandem, they very briefly restored my faith in the state of cinema, one being a fearless late-style swing from a tottering master that does some truly new shit, the other being the kind of redemption I genuinely want to see from a filmmaker who might've burned me terribly in the past, but is willing to evolve towards good, exciting work.  And this feeling was shattered, because 2024 now bears the ineradicable stain of producing Anora as America's putative Best Picture of the year, and now it's all just a bunch of morbid considerations about that whole "state of cinema" thing: the possibility that Zemeckis might never make another movie (because hardly anybody's seen Here and I do not think its reputation will grow going forward); the possibility that Shoenbrun's literal physical well-being could be jeopardized, let alone that of their career; and the certainty that Sean Baker is going to go on to keep making the worst motherfucking movies in the world for decades and decades to come.

Anyway, we'll get to I Saw the TV Glow, but I also watched Marielle Heller's Nightbitch, and now they're together, because they're both obtuse horror movies or something.  I'd say it's because they're both about nighttime, but I believe Nightbitch takes place mostly, like at a 3:1 ratio, during the day.  Oh, whatever, it's fundamentally arbitrary.

NIGHTBITCH

It's not clear whether it was Nightbitch source novelist Rachel Yoder, or its writer-director Marielle Heller, or its coterie of producers, but clearly it was decided that what women needed was their own 1994's Wolf, though I certainly can't tell you what all these women thought women must've done to deserve that.  And, somehow, the results are even less impressive: both Wolf and Nightbitch are using a story of canid transformation as a means of actually pursuing a fantasy about middle-aged rebellion and rejuvenation, and, as we weigh each film against the other, Nightbitch ought to have an advantage, because it's at least not embarrassed of being a fantasy movie like Wolf was; yet it's counter-intuitively interested in being a fantasy movie even less; and while Wolf is surely not good at "being a werewolf movie," and does not deliver on the genre pleasures which a movie about Jack Nicholson playing a werewolf has blatantly promised, at least it did have Jack Nicholson fucking a woman half his age and pissing on his corporate rival's shoes, whereas Nightbitch isn't concerned with the genre pleasures of either the werewolf movie or those of the middle-aged rebellion story.  For the long, repetitive middle half the most Amy Adams's (oh boy) unnamed mother (credited thusly, though I could've sworn she received a name) ever gets out of being a human dog, or a rebellious middle-aged woman, is... well, I guess let's just say that Heller must actually hate cats, but at least the storytelling in the corresponding sequence of Can You Ever Forgive Me? suggested she understood the concept of not hating cats.  Her movie's "nighttime" photography isn't as risibly bad as Mike Nichols's.  Let's give Heller that much.

The brood

CUCKOO

2024

Written and directed by Tilman Singer

Spoilers: moderate

The Encyclopedia Brown: You're a real down-in-the-earth girl

SADIE MCKEE

1934

Directed by Clarence Brown

Written by John Meehan, Bess Meredyth, E.A. Woolf, Carey Wilson, and Vicki Baum (based on "Pretty Sadie McKee" by Viña Delmar)

Spoilers: moderate

It hadn’t come to him, the knowledge, on the wings of experience; it had brushed him, jostled him, upset him, with the disrespect of chance, the insolence of accident

THE BEAST

2024

Directed by Bertrand Bonello

Written by Benjamin Charbit, Guillaume Bréaud, and Bertrand Bonello (based on the novella "The Beast In the Jungle" by Henry James)

Spoilers: moderate

Census Bloodbath: Sleep out with your peep out

SLEEPAWAY CAMP

It's Halloween again, and you know what that means.  Like every year, we resurrect Brennan Klein over at Popcorn Culture for our October Switcheroo!  Sometimes I win, sometimes he loses, but either way, it means Brennan trapped in our own Cardboard Science format and reviewing 50s sci-fi classics or not-so-classics, while I wear his face for a while with some 80s slashers, Census Bloodbath-style.

1983

Written and directed by Robert Hiltzick

Spoilers: extraordinarily severe; or, everybody already knows anyway; or, I'm not sure, but you've been warned

Nightmare Week meets Friday Week: The only thing to fear is fear himself; or Dude, that goalie was pissed about something

FREDDY VS. JASON

2003

Directed by Ronny Yu

Written by Damian Shannon and Mark Swift

Spoilers: severe

Friday Week: In a Voorhees was he born, through a Voorhees may he be reborn, and only by the hands of a Voorhees will he die

JASON GOES TO HELL: THE FINAL FRIDAY

1993

Directed by Adam Marcus and Sean Cunningham

Written by Dean Lorey, Jay Huguely, and Adam Marcus

Spoilers: high

Nightmare Week: Every town has an Elm Street

FREDDY'S DEAD: THE FINAL NIGHTMARE

1991

Directed by Rachel Talalay

Written by Michael De Luca and Rachel Talalay

Spoilers: see above (high)