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 impresario Chris McKay and penned by Fast X writer Zach Dean. Chris Pratt stars as Dan Forester, ...

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 the Thames, just north of the old stone bridge. The river ran dark and swift, though its shallows we...

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 maggots now” is a wonderful piece of knife-twisting, and a scene in which likewise-possessed teen...

Wyrm I.VII

                                                     Chapter VII: Icarus

“Don’t die,” Lizzie hissed to Will, grinding her palm against his pretty mouth as he writhed under her, flat on his back in the narrow dirt passway...

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 medium, bursting with bizarre, disturbing denizens of Hell and helmed by the titular Marquis himself,...

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 crushingly intimate and yet totally alienated camerawork, clinging like a second skin to hapless banker A...

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 of a murder that happened in their bedroom. “You stabbed him in the wardrobe?” the inspector as...

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 COLT IS MY PASSPORT, TAKASHI NOMURA

5/21, 1pm and 7pm: THE NILE HILTON INCIDENT, TARIK SALEH<...

Wyrm I.VI

                                                 Chapter VI: Michaelmas

The first snows had not yet fallen, but the halls of Framlingham were hung with holly boughs and garlands of waxed ivy, and with little bells that chimed when the wind sighed...

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. Her brow furrows. Her cheeks cave in, and Elliot is Beverly, the twins’ folie à deux r...

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 Alabama manor where Susan Parker’s family holds eerie, down-home court, the ghostly light of the kerosen...

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-year-old and lashes out at Genevieve at every opportunity. Beverly snaps and jabs at their mother, w...

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 with the Parker name, which sees her splattered in pig’s blood by an angry protester, Genevieve st...

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 no such connective tissue. It’s more a leech, a snail, a cephalopod — one huge thrashing sack of ...

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 bloody skeins of cut, neglected flesh and dripping with incestuous funk. From the macabre Annie Lennox-s...

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, but it’s undeniable that there’s something not quite charming but compelling about its we...

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? Writer/directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods don’t so much wave off these and other questions as ...

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-wracked and disoriented Kenan (Fırat Tanış), who was drunk at the time of the murder. Ceylan captu...

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 misogynistic killer groomed and beaten by his father and witness to the domestically violent older man...

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 TV procedural alum, but nor is it totally visually incompetent. The action’s surprisingly clean 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

Sunday 4/9: You Were Never Really Here, Lynne Ramsay

Wednesday 4/12: The Killing of a...