scumbelievable

In the Flesh: The Tomorrow War

“Every twenty-six days they retreat into their burrows and go quiet,” says the military instructor from the future to her band of fresh present-day recruits, describing the behaviors of the ravenous aliens called “whitespikes”. “We call it the Sabbath.” That should give you an idea of the kind of minds at work behind The Tomorrow War, directed by Lego Batman impres...

Wyrm I.VIII

                                          Chapter VIII: Mortimer’s Dagger

On the fourth night of the march to London they made camp outside the town of Radcot on the west bank of ...

In the Flesh: Evil Dead Rise

More than Raimi’s Looney Tunes camerawork or Bruce Campbell’s hammy, preposterously handsome stupidity as chainsaw-wielding protagonist Ash, it’s a certain streak of nastiness that defines an Evil Dead movie. Lee Cronin’s Evil Dead Rise certainly has that going for it. The possessed Ellie’s (Alyssa Sutherland) hatefully faux-sympathetic “Mommy’s with the...

Wyrm I.VII

                                                     Chapter VII: Icarus

“Don’t die,” Lizzie hissed to Will, grinding he...

Paper Cuts: The Marquis

The Marquis will likely never be finished. After over a decade it remains incomplete, two volumes out of a planned five, the remainder of the work a casualty of Davis’s (justified) clashes with Dark Horse and his subsequent career in creature design for Guillermo del Toro, which one imagines pays a hell of a lot better than comics. Still, it remains an extraordinary landmark in the m...

In the Flesh: Seconds

John Frankenheimer’s sly, audacious Seconds begins its game of bait and switch the moment you read its title. More, you think. Yes, but of the same. In the time-tested words of Buckaroo Banzai, “Wherever you go, there you are.” That’s the conflict at the crux of the film: the paradoxical desire to escape the self. Frankenheimer illustrates his point with crush...

In the Flesh: Black Coal, Thin Ice

Everywhere we turn in Black Coal, Thin Ice, women are being brutalized. Crushed. Trampled into paste and left for dead. Washed-up former cop Zhang Zili (Liao Fan) sexually assaults a coworker at his factory security guard gig. A cheerful husband blithely ignores his pregnant wife’s concerns about having cops and a confessed murderer blunder through their apartment to connect the dots...

The Deadlights Theater: The Longest Shadow

This May in the Deadlights Theater it's a full month of Eastern noir, with film noir entries from China, Turkey, Japan, Egypt, and Korea.

5/3, 7pm: DRUNKEN ANGEL, AKIRA KUROSAWA

5/7, 1pm and 7pm: THE WILD GOOSE LAKE, DIAO YINAN

5/10, 7pm: ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA, NURI BILGE CEYLAN

5/14, 1pm and 7pm: ARE YOU LONESOME TONIGHT?, WEN SHIPEI

5/17, 7pm: A...

Wyrm I.VI

                                                 Chapter VI: Michaelmas

The first snows had not yet fallen, but the halls of Framlingham were hung...

In the Flesh: Dead Ringers Episode 6

“I have to climb inside you now,” Beverly whispers to her twin. It’s a line as chilling as the moment we see Elliot make the decision to become her sister, to accept the gift of exculpation from her own crimes and ethical violations. Weisz’s face changes as immediately and completely as if she’d flayed her skull and put it back on inside out. Her mouth widens, the corners turning down...

In the Flesh: Dead Ringers Episode 5

Directed by Karyn Kusama of Jennifer’s Body and The Invitation fame and written by Susan Soon He Stanton, Dead Ringers’ fifth episode is its bluntest and most imagistic, adrip with symbolic and brutally straightforward examinations of the profession of gynecology, its specters and its secrets. It does so in the language of the Southern Gothic. The sprawling Alabam...

In the Flesh: Dead Ringers Episode 4

Happy birthday, Mantle twins! Watching Elliot and Beverly regress, melt down, and white-knuckle their way through a visit from their charming and unpretentious parents Alan (Kevin McNally) and Linda (Suzanne Bertish) is like being waterboarded while trying to watch three different Tennessee Williams plays. I mean this as the highest praise possible. Elliot clings to their father like a shy six-...

In the Flesh: Dead Ringers Episode 3

“This isn’t normal,” says Genevieve (Britne Oldford) as she stands between a stone-faced Beverly (Rachel Weisz) and her visibly decompensating twin Elliot (Rachel Weisz). “This isn’t healthy.” There’s Dead Ringers’ third episode in a nutshell for you. With the birthing center taking off and Beverly struggling to adjust to both its bougie exclusivity and her association ...

In the Flesh: Dead Ringers Episode 2

One of the first things a writer learns is the difference between a scene and a segue. A scene is muscle and bone, developing characters, advancing plot threads. A segue is the ligament connecting scenes to one another. A character walks from room to room. A pointed line sets up a cut to a related sequence. The second episode of Alice Birch’s Dead Ringers features n...

In the Flesh: Dead Ringers Episode 1

That a remake of Croneberg’s Dead Ringers exists at all is strange enough. That it’s incredible is something else entirely. Alice Birch’s adaptation, penned by a murderer’s row all-women writers’ room and built around a breathtaking dual performance by Rachel Weisz as twin gynecologists Beverly and Elliot Mantle, is the good stuff, a bump and a fix wrapped up in bloo...

In the Flesh: Soldier

The ways in which Paul W. S. Anderson’s Soldier sucks are almost as intriguing as the ways in which it rules. The sets and lighting are often cheesy, there’s a definite G. I. Joe-esque “action figures for sale” vibe to the whole thing, and its messaging about fascism and militarism might be politely described as both overcomplicated and as simple as stacking alphabet blocks, bu...

The Deadlights Theater: Unforgiven (1992)

Today's first screening of Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven begins at 1pm EST, with an encore to follow at 7!

The Deadlights Theater: The Killing of a Chinese Bookie

Tonight's screening of John Cassavetes' The Killing of a Chinese Bookie begins at 7pm EST!

In the Flesh: 65

65 is a frictionless narrative object, a surface upon which human scrutiny can find neither purchase nor traction. Why is the pre-human society of the planet Somaris near-identical to our own? Why does Mills (Adam Driver) speak English while Koa (Ariana Greenblatt) speaks a conlang? Why set a movie during the Cretaceous period if you’re just going to completely make up your dinosaurs...

In the Flesh: Once Upon a Time in Anatolia

The first hour and a half of Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is a dream, a long dark night of the soul in which a group of

The first hour and a half of Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is a dream, a long dark night of the soul in which a group of rural Turkish police try to find a dead man’s body with the guidance of his killer, the guilt-w...

The Deadlights Theater: You Were Never Really Here

Today's first screening of Lynne Ramsay's You Were Never Really Here begins at 1pm EST, with an encore to follow at 7!

In the Flesh: Visiting Hours

Curiously situated after Black Christmas, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and Halloween but before Single White Female and the wave of nebulously feminist slashers that came out in the early nineties, Jean-Claude Lord’s Visiting Hours is a brutally cynical exploration of cultural ambivalence toward feminine pain. Starring Michael Ironside as Colt Hawker, a mi...

The Deadlights Theater: The Hit

Tonight's screening of Stephen Frears' The Hit begins at 7pm EST!

In the Flesh: Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

There are some lovely practical effects in Honor Among Thieves, Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daly’s latest in a long line of attempts to translate the beloved tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons to the big screen. Some fun performances, too! Genuinely funny jokes. Cool creature design. It doesn’t look like much, helmed as it is by a total amateur and a...

The Deadlights Theater: Killing Them Softly

Today's first screening of Andrew Dominik's Killing Them Softly begins at 1pm EST, with an encore to follow at 7!

The Deadlights Theater: I Want My Scalps

This April in the Deadlights Theater it's a full month of movies about contract killers, mercenaries, and guns for hire of every stripe from the covert hit squads of the US Military to the lowliest thugs and also-rans of the criminal underworld. Come and watch with us!

Sunday 4/2: Killing Them Softly, Andrew Dominik

Wednesday 4/5: The Hit, Stephen Frears

Sund...

In the Flesh: Avatar: The Way of Water

“What if indigenous people ultimately won the long, degrading battle of colonialism?” is a pretty repulsive premise for a series of blockbuster films mostly made by and starring white guys, even cloaked in the plausible deniability of a nominally separate science fiction setting. James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water attempts to complicate the original film’s dirt-simple the...

In the Flesh: The Nile Hilton Incident

I can’t think of anything from last year as blackly funny as the corrupt cop in The Nile Hilton Incident who orders room service next to a woman’s corpse and tells the waiter to charge it to the room. Tarik Saleh’s stylish neo-noir may be as dark as pitch, but it’s neither precious nor ponderous about human nature. With complete disinterest in holding the viewer’s hand it spi...

Paper Cuts: Perfume, the Story of a Murderer

On a stinking street in Paris in the last century of Bourbon reign, a nameless woman delivers her fifth child into a pail of rotten refuse. Shortly after this she is arrested for her previous infanticides and put to death, leaving the child in care of the city’s dubious charitable institutions. Alas, the minute crumbs of kindness given to the infant Jean Baptiste Grenouille are too little and...

The Deadlights Theater: Death Line

Today's first screening of Gary Sherman's Death Line begins at 1pm EST, with an encore to follow at 7!