scumbelievable

The Deadlights Theater: Dogtooth

Tonight's screening of Yorgos Lanthimos's Dogtooth begins at 7pm EST!

I Would Like to See It: Memories of Murder

Like many South Koreans who came of age during the civil unrest of the 1980s, Bong Joon-ho has a healthy disdain for cops. You can see it in virtually every film he’s produced, from the oppressive dystopian regime of Snowpiercer to the cloying bureaucratic apparatchiks of The Host, but nowhere has it ever been clearer than in his second film, Memories of Murder. Cops beat civilians who comment on the public rape trial of a fellow officer, hang suspects from the ce...

In the Flesh: Infinity Pool

“Do you know why duplication exists only in La Tolqa?” asks Dr. Modan (John Ralston), smiling impishly. “It’s something about their sense of poetry. We’ve tried to recreate the technique, but we’re far too literal.” This sort of wink-and-grin dialogue flirts with overexplanation, but it’s perfectly suited to the queasy, dissociative nightmare world writer/director Brandon Cronenberg conjures in Infinity Pool. Stymied writer James Foster (Alexander Skarsgård) and his ...

The Deadlights Theater: Dangerous Liaisons

Tonight's screening of Stephen Frears' Dangerous Liaisons begins at 7pm EST!

In the Flesh: Nightcrawler

Jake Gyllenhaal is one of those leading men who only really works if he’s playing an absolute freak. His sunken cheeks, his big, wet eyes, his sensual lips — he has the presence of something between an underwear model and a school shooter, and that particular vein of discomfiting sleaze has never been mined so thoroughly as it is in Dan Gilroy’s Nightcrawler. The minute petty thief Lou Bloom appears on screen, the obviousness of his dysfunctionality seems almost to ooze from hi...

I Would Like to See It: The Hourglass Sanatorium

There are few subgenres of film I find as challenging as the Polish surrealist wave of the 1970s and 80s, relentlessly talkative movies with no room for quiet or reflection, consumed with existential angst and saturated with complex and fettered cultural anguish as the children who survived the Holocaust and the Russian and German occupations come into their own as filmmakers under strict censorship. Wojciech Jerzy Has’s The Hourglass Sanatorium is as exhausting and demanding an ex...

The Deadlights Theater: Barry Lyndon

Today's first screening of Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon begins at 1pm EST, with an encore to follow at 7!

In the Flesh: Flux Gourmet

Julie Taymor’s Titus, Tarsem Singh’s The Cell and The Fall, Lynch’s infamous Dune adaptation — I’m a longtime lover of strange costumes and odd tones, elements which can carry entire films for me. Flux Gourmet fits the bill in many respects, with its outlandish horned headpieces and monastic robes, but whatever spell it’s trying to cast with its its bizarre couture, its ritualized cooking scenes, and its cold, impersonal translations of...

I Would Like to See It: Dumplings

There’s something so unusual about Bai Ling, some ineffable quality of strangeness which transforms her socially palatable thinness and beauty into something borderline grotesque. As the cannibalistic former OB GYN and abortion provider Aunt Mei in Fruit Chan’s Dumplings, that ghoulishness hangs particularly heavy. Ling moves with a noticeable hunch, frequently dropping into a squat that bends her spine nearly double. Her nails are long and curved, her teeth prominent. She looks,...

The Deadlights Theater: The Draughtsman's Contract

Today's showing of Peter Greenaway's The Draughtsman's Contract begins at 7pm EST!

The Deadlights Theater: Gosford Park

Today's screening of Robert Altman's Gosford Park begins at 1pm EST, with an encore to follow at 7!

The Deadlights Theater: Lost Illusions

Tonight's showing of Xavier Giannoli's Lost Illusions begins at 7pm EST!

In the Flesh: You Were Never Really Here

Joe (Joaquin Phoenix) dreams of killing himself. He fantasizes idly about it, miming the act of stabbing himself through the palate and into the brain as he lies on his back in bed. He imagines blowing his brains out with his .38 snub-nose revolver in the middle of a diner, the world going about its business around his leaking corpse. At the film’s midpoint he walks into a lake, his pockets filled with stones, and sinks slowly down into the rippling dark. He’s a man who’s spent his enti...

The Deadlights Theater: Rebecca

Today's first showing of Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca begins at 1pm EST, with an encore to follow at 7!

In the Flesh: The Menu

“We strive for perfection, which of course does not exist, and this is a difficult truth for me to accept. So please, bear with me.” Thus speaks chef Julian Slowik (Ralph Fiennes) of the exclusive offshore restaurant Hawthorn, the kind of place you might see showcased in one of Chef’s Table’s breathless paens to snobbish one-percenter crimes against edibility. Over a grand per plate, slavish devotion to the kitchen by chef and staff alike, and for what? So a crowd of moronic ...

The Deadlights Theater: Marie Antoinette

Today's screening of Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette begins at 7pm EST!

In the Flesh: Glass Onion

The mystery, perhaps more than any other genre, relies on rigor in its structure. The rates at which audience and characters learn information, the art of dispensing little visual clues and flourishes, the pace of character development relative to our suspicions as viewers and to the overall level of tension animating the film. All of this requires careful calibration. There are other concerns, of course. All the usual elements of filmmaking still need to happen, and a visually and dramatical...

I Would Like to See It: The Devils

“Hearts that ought to burn with the fires of passion are merely dead with the gray ashes of convenience,” drones sister Jeanne of the Angels (Vanessa Redgrave) to the young Madeline de Brou (Gemma Jones) upon the submission of the latter for membership in the local Ursuline convent. It comes at the end of a droll spiel on the reasons women wind up in such cloistered spaces: lack of a dowry, ugliness, and simple bad timing consign entire generations of second and third daughters to enclose...

WYRM I.V

                                                        The Interview

Lizzie sat perched on her mother’s garden wall, watching the family take their leisure in the yard. Her mother and uncle still sat at table...

The Deadlights Theater: Cracks

Today's first showing of Jordan Scott's Cracks begins at 1pm EST, with an encore to follow at 7pm.

The Deadlights Theater January 2023: Let Them Eat Cake

This month in the Deadlights Theater we're watching movies about aristocracy! Excess, ignorance, inbreeding, scheming, and ruin. Great tastes that taste great together.

Cracks, 1/1, 1pm and 7pm

Rebecca, 1/4, 7pm

Marie Antoinette, 1/8, 1pm and 7pm

Lost Illusions, 1/11, 7pm

Gosford Park, 1/15, 1pm and 7pm

The Draughtsman's Contract, 1/18, 7pm

Barry Lyndon, 1/22, 1pm and 7pm

...

The Deadlights Theater: The Passion of Joan of Arc

Tonight's screening of The Passion of Joan of Arc begins at 7pm EST, with a special encore to follow at 9pm in light of the film's artistic and historical significance.

In the Flesh: Boardwalk Empire Season 5

“I care about you, and I care about the family we’re going to have together,” says the young, ambitious Enoch “Nucky” Thompson to his wife Mabel. “That’s all I care about.” Mabel is begging him to help the young vagrant Gillian Darmody, twelve years old and on the run from the abusive staff of a brutal Christian orphanage. Nucky is reluctant, too preoccupied by the idea of his budding nuclear family to see the one that’s fallen into his lap. And so, to put it bluntly, he sel...

The Deadlights Theater: The Devils

Today's first screening of The Devils begins at 1pm EST, with an encore to follow at 7!

The Deadlights Theater: Valhalla Rising

Tonight's showing of Valhalla Rising begins at 7pm EST!

The Deadlights Theater: The Last Duel

Today's screening of The Last Duel begins at 1pm EST, with an encore showing at 7pm. Between screenings, a special repeat showing of Black Death will be held at 5pm.

In the Flesh: Tár

Here are women arrayed in ranks, kneeling behind glass. Each holds a number, and it is given to disgraced composer and conductor Lydia Tár (Cate Blanchett) to pick one for a massage heavily implied to lead to sex. A madame waits expectantly for her answer. This is the position Lydia has cherished and clung to for at least a significant portion of her adult life, using her position as conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and her status as a grant appointment judge to groom young fem...

Wyrm I.IV

                                             Tansy, Ginger, Pennyroyal

“It’s the feast of St. John week after next,” said Lizzie. “Come to town with me. My mother lays a good table. My cousins will be there, and a poet called Winslow my uncle favors.”

Gretchen's Top 10 Films of 2022

10. The Northman, Robert Eggers

Robert Eggers’ third film is undoubtedly his shakiest, losing some of its momentum and aesthetic flare as it enters its third act, but its unforgettable early action sequences and the window it provides into Norse culture as a context both alien and oddly familiar cement it as one of the most engrossing medieval epics of its time.

2022-12-11 21:01:07 +0000 UTC View Post

The Deadlights Theater: Flesh+Blood

Today's first showing of Paul Verhoeven's Flesh+Blood begins at 1pm EST, with an encore to follow at 7pm!