scumbelievable

The Deadlights Theater: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

Today's first screening of Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre begins at 1pm EST, with an encore to follow at 7!

The Deadlights Theater: Ravenous

Today's first screening of Antonia Bird's Ravenous begins at 1pm, with an encore to follow at 7.

In the Flesh: Joker

Watching Joker is like sitting next to a profoundly unwell person on the subway as they ramble through a recitation of ‘The Aristocrats’, the infamously sick and revolting anti-joke which is the subject of Paul Provenza’s 2005 documentary of the same name. Here’s the abused and brain-damaged child of a delusional mother, who chained him to a radiator for her boyfriend to prey on at his leisure. Here’s the fascist strongman she falsely claimed was his birth father. The frien...

The Deadlights Theater: Bon Appétit

This month in the Deadlights Theater it's all cannibals all the time.

3/1: BONE TOMAHAWK, 7pm

3/5: RAVENOUS, 1 and 7pm

3/8: WE ARE WHAT WE ARE, 7pm

3/12: THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, 1 and 7pm

3/15: IN MY SKIN, 7pm

3/19: RAW, 1 and 7pm

3/22: DUMPLINGS, 7pm

3/26: DEATH LINE, 1 and 7pm

The Deadlights Theater: Bone Tomahawk

Tonight's screening of S. Craig Zahler's Bone Tomahawk begins at 7pm EST!

The Deadlights Theater: The Wicker Man

Today's first showing of Robin Hardy's The Wicker Man begins at 1pm EST, with an encore to follow tonight at 7!

In the Flesh: F9: The Fast Saga

I almost admire this franchise’s total disregard for title consistency. What the fuck is F9: The Fast Saga supposed to mean? What kind of insider knowledge of the production of and mythology behind this deeply weird series would it take to unravel the mystery of how that title made sense to the people who created it? At the same time, there’s no possible reward of an explanation that could justify the effort needed to uncover it. That’s F9 in a nutshell, a great big co...

In the Flesh: Fate of the Furious

I kind of love the lizard-brained simplicity of pitting Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel) against his own family by giving him another, more vulnerable family for the villainous super-hacker Cipher (Charlize Theron) to leverage against him. Diesel makes for a good heavy, backed up by Kristofer Hivju of Game of Thrones fame as Cipher’s bloodthirsty right-hand man, and if the plot is microwaved leftovers from the last two films, at least the spectacle is twice as big and three times as stupid...

The Deadlights Theater: The Empty Man

Today's screening of David Prior's The Empty Man begins at 7pm EST!

The Deadlights Theater: Kill List

Today's screening of Ben Wheatley's Kill List begins at 1pm EST, with an encore to follow at 7!

The Deadlights Theater: The Invitation

Today's screening of Karyn Kusama's The Invitation begins at 7pm EST!

In the Flesh: Furious 7

James Wan looked at Fast 6’s “too much of a good thing” philosophy and thought, “okay, but what if there was MORE?” I am sickened to report that the result, even subjected to Wan’s inability to hold a shot longer than three seconds, kind of works. It’s too long by half, often refuses to let its moments land, doesn’t have anything new to say about its characters, and it’s measurably uglier than any of Lin’s installments in the franchise, though still a solid cut ab...

In the Flesh: Fast and Furious 6

It’s bigger! It’s dumber! It’s a full-blown spy action movie with giant planes, armored ramp cars, Luke Evans as a deadly English ex-special forces killer, and a tank hidden inside a cargo truck! Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel) uses a controlled crash to launch himself out of a car and across the divide between two bridges, catching Letty (Michelle Rodriegruez) in midair. Oh and Letty has amnesia. And is alive. It’s  an order of magnitude wackier than the fifth film’s vehicular hijink...

In the Flesh: Fast Five

Right out of the gate Fast 5 makes it clear that it’s abandoning the leanness of Tokyo Drift altogether for the absurd superheroics of Fast and Furious, its immediate predecessor. Armored cars ramming bank vaults, twin muscle cars hauling a ten-ton safe attached to high-tension cables through the streets of Rio de Janeiro, the Rock taking scalps as hardass FBI agent Luke Hobbs, and Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel) whipping the aforementioned safe through a fleet of corrup...

In the Flesh: Fast & Furious

If Fast & Furious represents a return to the meatheaded stupidity and cartoonish logic of the first two films after the brief respite of Tokyo Drift’s low stakes and relative sense of realism, at least it doesn’t return to their visual laziness. Justin Lin is still at the helm and his eye for framing and lighting remains strong enough that even the film’s more Loony Tunes-esque moments — drag racing through secret drug tunnels under the US-Mexican border...

In the Flesh: The Fast and the Furious 3: Tokyo Drift

It’s incredible how going from two total visual incompetents to Justin Lin, a guy who basically knows where to point a camera, makes Tokyo Drift feel like it was shot by Kubrick in comparison to its predecessors. On its own it’s a competent little fish-out-of-water action movie, a little Orientalist, a little sexist, but that’s basically par for the course in mid-2000s blockbuster filmmaking. Set against the preceding films it’s a giant-sized step up for the series which move...

In the Flesh: 2 Fast 2 Furious

It’s remarkable that even with the removal of Vin Diesel and the doubling down on Paul Walker’s unwatchable performance as now-disgraced cop Brian Spilner, 2 Fast 2 Furious somehow comfortably outstrips its predecessor, which is to say it’s merely dumb and bad instead of gruelingly stupid. This time it’s Tyrese Gibson shouldering the burden of getting us to the finish line. As hotheaded driver Roman Pearce, Gibson is all dazzling smile and effortless charisma, a dynamo in his...

The Deadlights Theater: The Master

Today's presentation of Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master begins at 1pm EST, with an encore at 7!

I Would Like to See It: The Fast and the Furious

The single most devastating thing about this movie is that Rob Cohen has absolutely no idea how to convey a sense of speed. He tries, I’ll give him that much. Shaky-cam, weak CGI, sped-up footage, tight, jittery zooms on eyes narrowing and clutches shifting, green screens — there’s a whole bag of tricks in play from the word “go”, but taken together it serves mostly to make the whole thing feel a sterile and false as the spotless and un-lived in cars our protagonists obsess over. Th...

The Deadlights Theater: The Final Exit of the Disciples of Ascenscia

Tonight's screening of The Final Exit of the Disciples of Ascenscia begins at 7pm, with an encore to follow at 8.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Immolate Myself Online

Every time I read one of those op-eds where a rich kid talks half-guiltily about displacing someone from their home so they could have a place of their own or a critic hems and haws about reviewing art directly benefiting a notorious bigot, all I can think is that you couldn’t make...

The Deadlights Theater: The Other Lamb

Today's first showing of Małgorzata Szumowska's The Other Lamb begins at 1pm, with an encore to follow at 7!