Ahahahaha I forgot about the follow-up! I think it’s very hard to walk that line but the Farrellys do it quite a bit. 30 Rock would sometimes trip over it but could also hit that humor very well, thinking of Dennis Duffy saying, as a way of affirming his newfound sensitivity, that he “cried like a big dumb homo.”

That is definitely there but Mary is sunny and goodhearted in a way that makes her Cool Girl stuff feel like honest extensions of her personality instead of poses. She also hangs out with Magda, who is not exactly a Cool Girl accoutrement, because she likes to. But most of this, again, comes back to how great Diaz is…

Dillon’s delivery of “I work with REDACTED” is one of the best lines of the 90s. He thinks he’s being sensitive and you know what, in his sleazy way he is. But it’s so, so wrong.

Kingpin is fantastic, in a career full of grossness and grotesqueries the Farrellys have yet to top Lin Shaye.

Dad gummit, I don’t have a monkey for a grandfather and I dang sure don’t have a mushroom for a cousin!

Never heard of it but damn this sounds great, it’s going on the list. Thanks!

I love It’s Alive, but one of the things that makes it great is how it’s about the father’s relationship with the baby and how he comes to term with what he’s helped create, John P. Ryan does fantastic work here. The mother’s side is less important in the movie.

This seems a bit too *sigh* “elevated” for me but credit where it is due, Brosnan and Theroux are at the top the “handsome but untrustworthy” dude list so great casting here.

Hmm, vibes of Annihilation and especially The Ruins here, interesting. Plant body horror is underrated.

I think Walter does a great job of being a goon, the guy who is almost forced to be serious because someone has to get things done and lord knows the Joker isn’t reliable. You know he’s the one who got the permits for that parade at the end! I have a soft spot for this kind of villain role and especially for poor Bob,…

I like some superhero stories, I’m more apt to like them if they’re animated or illustrated. I’ve never seen any Superman movie! I fell asleep to the first one with all the Krypton stuff up front but that was more on me than the movie, I’ll give it another shot sometime.

“Instead, characters like Toad and Bob the Goon were infinitely more threatening through physical, brooding menace”

I haven’t seen Hackman’s version, but I can confirm that Brown’s version is fantastic. He’s playing the smartest man in the room/angry at Superman for being super version of the character, but doesn’t try to make him a tragic villain or anything -- he’s just a constantly scheming menace who enjoys outwitting others…

DELIVERANCE SPOILERS

70s caper with Beatty and Oates?! I need to get on this immediately.

Wise Blood is great. Beatty is of course excellent (and so is Harry Dean Stanton) but Dourif is uncanny, a raw nerve. The soundtrack is terrible though! No idea how that got approved.

I came across it pretty much at random a few years ago and watched it with my jaw on the floor, the tunnel “game” especially. 

Well, the message is extremely blunt — there is a prologue and epilogue directly addressing the viewer — but it’s the style that makes it interesting, the portrayal of nightmarish futility. It worked pretty well for me! What it made me think of more than anything was the infamous British Rail short film The Finishing…

Having watched it, this is about those anxieties basically coming to life via the amusement park. It is weird and not in the mode of “the monster is a metaphor” that a lot of horror takes, and the “terrible thing moving on to kill someone else” is very pointedly (outright stated!) to be coming for you.

It is a series of vignettes at an amusement park that has been allegoried up, there’s no real plot other than the lead character getting beaten down (sometimes literally) by all the awful indignities and incapacities of getting old.