I always want to rate Tron: Legacy better than I feel it deserves. When I’m watching it, I’m overwhelmingly bored. The conversations drag on for so long. The dialogue is too uninspired to justify this. The worldbuilding is intriguing, but shallow.

Yet characters-inside-computers is among my favorite things ever (see also: Reboot and The Animatrix). The aesthetic is excellent—I want to live somewhere that looks like this. The costumes are so cool. Whenever I think about T:L, those are the things I think about. The lengthy slow conversation scenes simply don’t stick in my mind. So I kinda love it when I’m not watching it and melt into the floor out of boredom when I do.

This also is one of my favorite movie scores of all time. Truly, Daft Punk did 90% of the heavy lifting here. This movie could have been vastly worse and the score would have made it watchable. It’s almost not worth remarking on the movie attached to the score. The work might be Daft Punk’s magnum opus, whereas the movie is incredibly middling work.

I could even forgive the horrid de-aging CGI if they just did more fighting. Please! Let the stunt people cook! More light bikes!

Part of what frustrates me about T:L is that other things are *so* good too. Michael Sheen as Zuse is an absolute gas. I want to be a queer-coded villain dancing to Daft Punk while the betrayed heroes get their arms chopped off. The action scenes are a delirious delight, and if they’d just had 50% more action and 50% less talking, it would probably be a 5* movie.

Yet being very close to greatness still managed to land Tron: Legacy squarely into a very boring place.

It is interesting to note that I used to think of this as a bad movie. I no longer do. Mostly because recent Disney movies have reset the bar on being bad and boring on a whole new level: cynical, nonsensical, and often feeling cheap despite bloated budgets. I mean, I hadn’t seen all the live action Renaissance Disney remakes yet. But this feels genuinely heartfelt. They were tackling a difficult project with real gusto, and it just didn’t turn out. The CGI looks aged but not cheap. (Even the bad de-aging CGI looks expensive.)

Somehow this movie is a two-star “love.” It’s bad. I want to skip most of it. I’m obsessed with it. I could make this my entire life.

(image credit: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)

Even Luca Guadagigno can’t make me want to watch a sports movie. My reaction to Challengers says a lot more about me and my personal tastes than it says about the movie itself: Just like a terrible, dreadful movie can push all my buttons so I love it (like Repo! The Genetic Opera), a great movie can push all my “ugh” buttons in a way that leaves me cold.

I like women. I get really bored with men. The rising female tennis star is one of the three leads in this movie; unfortunately, the movie isn’t quite as interested in Tashi as it is in Tashi’s sports-related ambitions and make-two-boys-kiss ambitions.

The boys really want to kiss, but they need an excuse. Tashi wants them to take tennis and boy-kissing more seriously and mashes them together until that happens. I know! It sounds great. Evidently, based on others’ reviews, most people think this is absolutely great.

The sports aesthetic and sheer amount of gay male-gaze testosterone sweating off the screen just made me want it to end.

(Aside from when Zendaya is in her underwear.)

I got real Machiavellian asexual vibes from Tashi, which is theoretically cool, but again — all the sports and testosterone. The way she manipulates should be cool! But it’s all about men! Making men do things. I just don’t care that much. The men are very sexual. There are dongs. There’s so many rippling abdominals. So many men sweating in locker rooms and saunas while having boy drama. It’s just…nothing I’m interested in.

But boy, can I respect it. Luca Guadagigno is still a really good director. Although I wasn’t convinced by the chemistry of Art and Patrick initially, the story made up for it. And I do enjoy the *idea* of everything that’s happening. But when something is so much about male desire, exerted in all the wrong directions (according to Tashi), I just cannot get into it.

Something about the sweaty pulsing score by Trent Reznor et al, which sounds like it should play in a gays-only gym, made this feel soapier. I caught myself thinking about May December again. May December was more overtly soapier and trashier though, whereas Challengers is glossy enough to be a Gatorade ad (sans Gatorade).

I totally see why so many people like it; I thought it was fine and also wanted it to stop. This one just call to me the way that Luca Guadagigno’s sapphic answer to Call Me By Your Name did. (Yes, I’m talking about Suspiria.) (In Guadagigno movies, twinks sweat for each other; sapphics gush blood. I know which I prefer more clearly than ever.)

(image credit: Amazon MGM Studios)

Paranormal Activity is a simple movie taking place in a Los Angeles house, where a het couple has moved after their last place burned down. They think the woman, Katie, is haunted. The man, Micah, buys a camera to document it, and his footage is the movie we see.

This is another fun found-footage horror film that wouldn’t exist without The Blair Witch Project. This one was fairly seismic on its own scale. The production company did their best to make Paranormal Activity look ambiguously real-ish in a similar way. Traditional credits are eschewed for thanking the families of the main characters, for instance. The whole thing is shot like it’s really some douchebag boyfriend intruding on his traumatized girlfriend’s progressive demon possession.

I was the exact right age for this when it came out — nineteen years old and quite similar in appearance to Katie — but I thought this was wildly boring interspersed with semi-boring (but spooky) tension. I had no interest in the daytime scenes, and I totally missed the delight of the escalation. Rewatching this now, I’m not sure how I felt that way! I’d say I was sleeping through it, but I remember every scene.

It’s actually a very competently executed movie, all things considered. The best way to watch this — like many horror movies — is in a rowdy group with Strong Opinions. That means shouting when you see the demon has broken the picture glass directly over Micah’s face, throwing things at Micah when he’s put himself in-frame, and shrieking with delight when the bed covers move. You need to feed off one another’s energy. Paranormal Activity understands that horror is a group watch activity, and it feeds into it. The quiet that descends once they arrive at a new night, encouraging you to look closely for details like shadows, is just this side of masterful low-budget film making.

Plus, watching it now feels like a time capsule to 2006. I’m sure Katie and I both were dressed entirely by Old Navy. Every one of my richer friends’ houses looks like this McMansion they movie into. It’s Western American whiteness in a nutshell. I think even the demons are pretty much to be expected — whomst among us isn’t a Catholic being chased by demons, really?

The Real Horror Is Heterosexuality, in many ways. However unsafe Katie feels being stalked by a demon that set fire to her last home — and has been following her since childhood — she also feels unsafe with Micah, who doesn’t respect her. He doesn’t listen to anything he says. He tries to use the camera to film her in intimate times. Micah’s disrespect is, in many ways, necessary to the conceit of the film; if he were not so obsessed with his camera, we would not have all this footage.

This is one of many movies where I find myself asking whether men actually like women, especially the ones they’re in relationships with. Most interactions between them are overtly hostile before the demon even ramps up its activity. The thing is, it feels authentic. I have known so many couples like Micah and Katie. It’s not a challenge to suspend disbelief.

And if there’s anything to make you feel less secure when you’re being hunted by a demon, it’s knowing that nothing you say or do will change the behavior of your companion. That he will absolutely provoke the demon with a Ouija board. He will act like his masculinity is any defense and dismiss every concern. He won’t even be convinced it’s *actually* paranormal until the last fifteen minutes. It’s got that slippery, out-of-control feeling of a nightmare.

The ending is perfect for the setup. Wholesome, one might say!

It’s not really a great movie, but it’s not trying to be. Paranormal Activity is schlocky fun. It’s good for a sleepover or Halloween watch party. Remember to bring the Ouija board! Just don’t leave it unsupervised.

(image credit: Paramount Pictures)

In Moon, Sam Bell is an astronaut solely responsible for mining helium3 from the titular Moon. But after a crash checking on one of the harvesters, he discovers another version of himself.

Everything I find worth discussing in the review demands basically full spoilers. It’s a simple story. You shouldn’t read this review until you watch the movie.

Spoilers ahead!

This is a surprisingly sweet, lightweight science fiction movie about corporations, cloning, and acceptance. The lunar mining corporation cloned the one original astronaut, Sam Bell, and kept hundreds (or more) of him in stock so they’d never need to train another. Each Sam works for three years. The clones are not designed to survive beyond this point. They degrade in the last month of the contract rapidly.

Whether using clones is *actually* an effective cost-control measure isn’t clear, nor does it seem to be important. Simply digging out the facilities to store all those clones would be humongously expensive. I have to think Sam Bell was a uniquely good choice for solo work on the lunar surface; the relative ease with which he handles the surprises of the story suggest he’s way more emotionally rugged than I am. So maybe they just wanted to keep the perfect guy as long as possible.

I think it’s safe to say that’s all meant to be symbolic more than anything.

Moon doesn’t spend much time grappling with the corporate morality on-screen. That said, the distinctiveness and humanity of each clone is likely meant to imply this choice is wrong.

The director and writer, Duncan Jones, could have chosen to go somewhere a lot more psychological with this. Marital troubles due to Alpha Sam’s personality flaws are only ever touched upon. Once we’ve learned the full truth of Sam1 and Sam2’s roles in the mining operation, there isn’t much time spent processing the enormity of their limited lives. Minor clashes between Sam1 and Sam2 are resolved with some annoyance and self-struggling, but it doesn’t reach the level of real conflict. I think I’d be interested in the version of this movie where the push-and-pull between the two Sams makes them develop into a better version of Sam overall.

But that’s not the story Moon is telling. These things are placed just out of reach of the story.

Instead, it’s a cozy narrative told in a sparse environment with only one real actor ever on screen; Sam Rockwell’s charisma is effective for keeping us entertained the whole time. He does well depicting all the facets of himself. In a way, this narrow lens feels like it belongs on a stage more than it belongs on the movie screen. I can easily imagine the 00s retrofuturistic moon base as a set. Is Broadway listening to me? (No.)

The outcome is a warmly sad story to watch, though — if only because of how tenderly Sam and Gertie, the robot employed in Sam’s care, come to tend one another. Gertie’s an asset of the corporation as much as Sam. It’s complicit in gaslighting the clones throughout the course of their three-year contract. But once the veil is lifted for Sam1 and Sam2, Gertie becomes an accomplice to them, seeking to provide the best care possible: Gertie gives them answers and passwords and anything else they need to live their fullest little clone lives.

As Sam1 degrades, Sam2 goes from treating him with irritation to sweetness. He tries to keep him warm and comfortable. He seeks a way to help Sam1 get to Earth, until realizing that won’t work. Watching Sam2 try to keep a hat on Sam1, shivering from organ failure, is the most bittersweet display of compassion. Obviously each of these clones doesn’t deserve the false semi-life that has been foisted upon them, though the movie doesn’t make too much drama about it, either.

A soul seems to be implicit in the clone Sams. When Sam1 begins degrading, he hallucinates his adult daughter-on-Earth repeatedly, which is someone he could only envision if he had some kind of connectivity to his Earthbound family. Sam2 also prays when he first gets into a pod intending to escape. These are spiritual men. Knowing they were manufactured as adults doesn’t change anything.

Ultimately, the clones empower themselves to choose their own fates. Sam1 accepts the end of his contract (and life) to spare two other clones premature death; Sam2 finds his way to Earth to live a life. Travel, maybe. Meet the daughter Alpha Sam fathered on Earth.

While I find that the simplicity of the story leaves me with more question than answers, science fiction is often at its best when it leaves you thinking, and Moon is one of the best. It’s aged well in fifteen years. I think it will remain timeless in its way, and leave generations of cinemaphiles asking questions about humanity.

(image credit: Sony Pictures Classics)

In Love Lies Bleeding, a dirtbag lesbian gym owner falls hard for a bisexual bodybuilder heading to a physique competition in Vegas. They share steroids, they fall in love, and then crime happens.

Before seeing this movie, I heard it described as genre-defying. That is nearly true. It would be fair to call this a crime movie with noir elements, too.

I posit that this is a queer wlw fantasy movie, almost exclusively. When I say fantasy, I mostly don’t mean fantasy elements (there is no Gandalf). I mean that this is a story written to please a lesbian, filmed to please a type of lesbian, depicting a lesbian story mostly through metaphor.

WLW here means woman-loving-woman, inclusive of those who are bisexual or lesbian — or the straight woman intimate with other women, which is more common than one might think. This is a broad category of human. The types of stories that speak to these humans will be as diverse and broad as the humans themselves.

I am a (sometimes) (often) wlw from the American West. I grew up a dirtbag in a small town, and I recognize this story. (Tag yourself: Are you the dirtbag enabler, the muscle mommy, or the flaky pasty one who’s always on something?)

A couple of broad lesbian stereotypes apply here. Have you heard of the U-Haul lesbian? The one where a couple of wlw meet and are instantly head-over-heels, lifelong commitment, ride-or-die? Yeah. That one. You also get the thing where wlw relationships can be extremely messy. There is the betrayal of realizing that your woman got dicked down, even though there’s nothing *technically* wrong with that.

Assumed boundaries are frequently, easily violated.

The size of wlw emotions are somehow bigger — perhaps because female socialization means that you’re likelier to have two people in contact with genuine emotion than you are in a het relationship. When things go wrong, they are very, very wrong. And when things go well, it is euphoria purer than any drug (sometimes there are also drugs).

What is a lesbian fantasy?

It’s the fantasy of men facing consequences: the man who hurts a woman you love, the man whose sperm helped bring you to this Earth, the man who is a fucking cop. It’s wishing so hard that you could kill your girlfriend’s girlfriend that you do it. It’s being able to recognize that women are tuned into the reality of pleasure more than any guy, who’s more in love with his dick. And it’s becoming so full of the love injected into you by your woman, you grow huge from it, capable of destroying anything, running away from everything, and being free.

Only in this context does Love Lies Bleeding make sense to me.

It’s a delirious, surreal piece of cinema noir that we’re lucky to have. This lens on womanly pleasure is uncommon, to say the least. You get dykes you don’t often see, and you see them well, writ with glorious artistic metaphor.

Even though I felt the energy flagged in the last minutes of the movie, I still left it thinking, “I am so happy I watched that. I really *liked* that.” I could criticize it by saying that it dropped the tension entirely, but I think what actually happens is that the climax isn’t when plot events peak, or when tension peaks, but when the women get what they needed the whole time. After that, cleaning up loose ends (including someone who seemed like a Big Villain) is just some simple housekeeping.

It’s a happy ending because we deserve a happy ending, not because it would be realistic. It’s a lesbian fantasy. Let us have it.

(image credit: Warner Bros.)

In THE THING, an alien shapeshifter emerges from the antarctic ice and takes the form of people stationed at an outpost to kill them one by one.

You wanna talk beginning in media res? This is a movie which begins in media res, and then some. We begin with a Norwegian scientist failing to kill a Husky from a helicopter, only to accidentally blow himself up instead. It’s too bad none of the Americans who witness this speak Norwegian. Surely the Norwegian pilot was warning them not to let the Husky spend all day wandering the base. Monolingualism loses again!

I’m used to horror, like most stories, beginning with some amount of “normal world.” It’s a common story mechanism. The Thing has no time for this. Our filmmaker, John Carpenter, doesn’t waste time trying to set up the movie. We’re in Antarctica, on a base, and it’s cold. There are Huskies. (For sleds?) Is it weird that I’m surprised to get so little exposition about the base’s intentions and the milieu of the outside world when we don’t *need* it? We already know what Americans get up to in Antarctica (SCIENCE), but many modern movies labor over clunky dialogue making sure the most basic assumptions are spelled out.

The reason I wonder if this is truly a “real world” setting is because some of our humans feel like aliens are a given. Of course, these kind of people do exist in reality. Carpenter just wasn’t worried about clarifying things. The closest we get to exposition is visiting the Norwegian base to see how badly they got rekt by the alien first.

I was delighted to jump into this one feet-first. That gives us ample room in its 100-ish minute run time to show everyone being suspicious of one another, trying to figure out the “rules” of the alien, and attempting to survive one another. There are times when I almost thought they’d already killed off the alien and they were just going to kill each other out of suspicion. Kind of like The Mist making humans the greatest enemy.

I love most of the tropes at play here, but it’s a bit frustrating when horror depends primarily on the hysterics of humans to sustain itself. It’s not unrealistic. I wouldn’t be level-headed in such a situation. Would you? And it’s not like anyone in 1982 had been playing Among Us enough to have preset strategies for making sure you’re never vulnerable to an imposter. Even so, it’s maddening to see them determine beyond a shadow of a doubt who isn’t an alien…then go off out of sight from one another, immediately isolated again. I wanted to jump into the tv and shake them. Then carefully step out of the tv again, because NO THANK YOU, alien.

I also never enjoy dogs in peril. I know, I know. Give me all the bloody effects in the world if they’re adult humans. But have a couple dogs in danger and I’m thiiiis close to quitting the whole thing.

Nonetheless, the effects are a hokey delight. They’re filmed in such a straightforward way, you can really appreciate the art design. The alien Thing is incredibly unnatural. Mouths will form out of the side of humanlike noggins. What looks like dripping veins can quickly turn into ropey tentacles. Did someone just lose his head? Well, now the head is crawling away like a spider. It’s all extremely slimy. For some reason it doesn’t bother me like the body horror of the Hellraiser movies, and I like that! I like how it’s just gross and amazing and sprawling. The stop motion is wonderful. The miniatures are fabulous, especially when they burn.

They can do realistic effects though — what bothered us most was simply seeing people cutting deeply into their own thumbs to draw blood. Clearly Carpenter et al were entirely in control of what we were experiencing the whole time. I know a masterpiece when I see one.

I always love movies where someone comes in with a vision and executes it with skill. The Thing is just a roller coaster of slimy fun, emphasizing the emotionality of humans as a major weakness, and it gives us Kurt Russell with gloriously fluffy hair through the whole thing. They really should have checked his fabulous hair to see if it had a life of its own. Maybe it could have saved them all.

(image credit: Universal Pictures)