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Jermaine Fowler Two Times
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Give This Ass a Chance
One of those movies that sweetly sneaks up on you before you realize what it's done, My Donkey, My Lover, and I (screening as part of FLC's "Rendezvous with French Cinema") stars Laure Calamy as Antoinette, a school-teacher who's first introduced to us as a bit of a nutter -- dominating her room full of elementary kids so that she's the star of their pageant (including a bit where she gets mostly naked in front of them in order to change outfits) she is too much too much from the get-go, and that's before we find out she's sleeping with one of the married parents of her students.
But Antoinette's unapologetic and sunny enthusiasm grows on you quick (Calamy is absolutely winning in the role) and even as we watch the character make outrageously ill-thought-out decisions -- the entire film's about her stalking said married parent on his weeklong family getaway, hiking in the mountains astride the titular ass which she is wildly unequipped to handle -- we find ourselves rooting for her to figure out her right angle, and find a route through to something like actual happiness.
And thankfully the film never tilts too hard into whimsy -- it's cute and charming but in a delicately balanced way, never overdoing the comedy, or somehow, astonishingly, never pushing Antoinette's ditziness into the off-putting. We watch her spill the beans with a big smile on her home-wrecking purposes to a room-full of people she has literally just met, and Calamy makes it all work, down to the last drop. You can see why any (straight) man would be willing to toss decorum over for this delightful nut, and you can also see why she's so much better than the hand she's dealt herself at the same time.
And then somehow it becomes one of the sweetest animal movies I've seen in ages to boot? Antoinette's push-pull relationship with Patrick, her Irish donkey partner on this improbable romantic trek, will absolutely win you over by the end -- there's a bray in the last act that will crumble the heart of the coldest donkey hater. I'd watch a thousand adventures of Antoinette and her best ass friend, I tell ya!
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My Donkey, My Lover, and I is screening through March 10th
on FLC's website. Check out this year's "French Cinema" line-up here.
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Good Morning, World
Well this is good luck for every one of us -- not only do we get those spectacularly hot still photographs of In the Heights and Hamilton actor Anthony Ramos in just his Calvins for the new Calvin Klein underwear campaign that I shared earlier this week, but we also get a video of Anthony moving and grooving and bouncing about his absolutely stunning business...
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Five Frames From ?
What movie is this?
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Miguel Ángel Silvestre Four More Times
As predicted on Tuesday with the first four photos even more photos of Miguel showed up from Esquire Mexico, and and promised I am here to share. And this gives me a chance to ask, since I meant to on Tuesday -- did any of you end up watching 30 Coins on HBO Max? Miguel's horror series created and directed by wacko-auteur Álex de la Iglesia? I talked about it briefly last month, right on here. Oh and here too. It was very soapy, in the broadest sense, but there was also a ton of insanely horrific monster-crafting in between the nonsense and I'm glad I watched it for sure -- don't think I'll soon forget some of the fucked up shit that show flashed at me. If you watched let me know, or go watch it now and then let me know, and hit the jump for three more sexy Miguel man pics...
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The Final Vision
Don't worry, I am not going to spoil WandaVision! Except for the sight of Paul Bettany in that turtleneck. (Anybody else discover they have a thing for Vision thanks to this show?) Anyway I already said this on Twitter this morning, but it bears repeating. This here is just an open post for those of y'all who've watched today's episode already, like me -- I got up early and watched it before I left for work, lest I be spoiled, because that is apparently life in 2021 -- and would like to say how you liked the episode and the season in the comments! I personally am happy. And I'll be happy to say more if anybody asks for more in the comments.
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Pics of the Day
I don't know if I can justify pre-ordering this until I re-watch the film and have a clue what the music sounds like -- I have no recollection of it -- but man alive is the packaging for Waxworks Records'upcoming Alice Sweet Alice soundtrack vinyl making the case for a buy all on its own. I mean I love love love this 1976 proto-slasher already -- seriously underrated! And have you seen Arrow's recent restoration on blu-ray yet? My god it's like a new movie, and this movie didn't even need to be this pretty to rule before. Now it's just bonus awesome. But this vinyl is killing me, in the best of ways.
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Rendezvous Ourselves Right Into the Weekend
I have spent most of today feeling like a train ran me down, and not the fun kinda train either, hence the truly inadequate posting -- I'd intended to get more reviews from the "Rendezvous with French Cinema" series, now up and running at FLC, posted! But my brain just hit a wall, stomped its little brain feet, and is refusing to participate with shit. And so I know sometimes I promise to post over the weekend and then I ghost y'all but really, check back over the next couple of days, I think if I allow myself a good veg out tonight and sleep in tomorrow I can catch myself back up.
For now I previewed the series right here, and yesterday I did review two films that are now playing -- read my thoughts on My Donkey My Lover and I right here, and read my thoughts on Red Soil right here. Hopefully over the weekend I will share my thoughts on some others I have seen (all the titles are over there >>> in the right-hand column in my "Watched" list now in case you're curious), including the one called Faithful, which stars our fave Vincent Lacoste, seen up top. Hi Vincent! "Rendezvous" runs through March 14th!
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The Beach Bloom
Oh, wait! I'd said my goodbyes for the night and then suddenly these photos of Orlando Bloom romping at the beach fell into my lap! It might not be as savory a collection as that last time him and Junior went paddle-boarding, but they'll do. So here's one more thing, or rather nearly two dozen more things -- after the jump a collection of Orlando doing what he does best...
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Good Morning, World
Or as the French say, bonjour le monde! Kicking the week off with some new(ish?) Tom mercier photos -- they are indeed new (via this magazine interview here) but they're pretty similar-looking to the shoot Tom did for VMan magazine last fall when We Are Who We Are was coming out (seen here and here) -- I'm sure it's the same photographer but don't make me look such a thing up please, it's a Monday morning. My fragile state couldn't take that useless effort. Anyway! Here's a quote from Tom in the new interview:
Q: Synonymes had a certain homoerotic background, while We Are Who We Are is clearly queer, does Tom Mercier see himself in the future as a gay icon?Tom: Being accepted by a community is rare. Communities can be sometimes very close, so being able to be a part of a community is great. Due to the way I have of expressing myself, I don’t feel part of the gay community as a gay person and I never intended to be a gay icon. I would never decide to become an icon, that is something you can’t decide.
Set aside the magazine calling him an "icon" -- I mean I think Tom's great, but let's not go nuts. Did Tom just come out, or did he maybe mix up some of his English? Curious, hmm. Is he saying "even though I am gay I've never felt a part of the gay community," or did he mean to say "I don't feel like I am a part of the gay community or like a gay person"? Am I over-thinking this? I am definitely over-thinking this. With all this over-thinking I could have looked up who the goddamned photographer was and been done already. Sigh. Morning.
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Five Frames From ?
What movie is this?
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Steven Yeun, Sex Cowboy
Oh now here's a real treat to start off our week with -- Steven Yeun is on the cover of the new issue of GQ magazine! There's a whole interview that I haven't read yet, just so I could instead post these pictures quick -- I'll go read it after I hit publish. You should see the cover immediately though...
That is ten thousand brands of hot. Thank you, GQ! Steven Yeun as a Sex Cowboy is something I would have known I needed if I had thought of it but y'all thought of it first, and so I am happily surprised by somebody else's horniness for a change. It doesn't happen often enough! Hit the jump for the rest...
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Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...
... you can learn from:
Gloria Bell (2018)
Arnold: I don't think we should panic.Everything goes in cycles, it's natural. Besides, everygeneration thinks it's the end, the worst it's ever been.Charlie: And one generation will be right.Gloria: Well, when the world blows up,I hope I go down dancing.
A happy 47 to the director Sebastián Lelio today! I've been championing Lelio ever since the first Gloria came out circa 2013-ish (which in the great vein of Hitchcock and Haneke Lelio remade his-own-damn-self several years later) but, as much as I have touted those films and Disobedience and A Fantastic Woman I am just now realizing I've never yet bothered to go back and watch the movies he made before this!
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One Son Had Father, Ibrahim
There's a moment in director Samir Guesmi's film Ibrahim (available on Thursday to rent as part of the ongoing "Rendezvous With French Cinema" series at FLC) where our main character Ibrahim (a very good Abdel Bendaher) comes face-to-face with the humiliation of poverty that rang so true to me and my own childhood experience I, like Ibrahim, sobbed. Ibrahim's charismatic bad-apple best-friend Achille (Rabah Naït Oufella, from Raw and Nocturama) has talked him into some petty larceny, as a lark. But Ibrahim's dreadfully bad at it (it's sort of a recurring joke) and gets caught, and the store-cop phones Ibrahim's hard-working father at his job to come get his son.
Bendaher is gangbusters in the moment, mixing horror and the shame of embarrassment up as his already paltry resolve crumbles, turning from 17-years-old into a little boy right before us. But this isn't even the worst part -- the worst comes a scene later, when Ibrahim realizes his stunt's cost his father's his small-dream of getting his missing teeth fixed. The moments when you finally realize the sacrifices your parents have had to make, the humiliations they have had to suffer so maybe, just maybe you their child can have a life just slightly less awful, those ones tend to sting the deepest, and Guesmi captures that feeling in excruciating detail.
I cringe when I remember certain scenes like this from my own life now -- the tantrums I threw as my mother counted food-stamps in the checkout line, my god. And like Ibrahim petty-theft momentarily seemed the fix-it-upper way out of this poor place. I once sat in a store-detective's chair myself, waiting for my mother to come get me. Point being this film felt personal -- unlike a lot of the films that revel in "Poverty Porn" Guesmi's film isn't exploitative, and really gets it. The eensy little degradations every day heaps upon you until your head seethes and you don't know what to do, where to go, what's even right anymore.
In less than ninety-minutes Ibrahim-the-movie captures so much of the spirit of that pivotal moment, the one in Ibrahim-the-character's life where an on-the-cusp-of-manhood young man thrashes around desperate for the footing unto where the good path goes. Guesmi's crafted here a deeply heartfelt take on how wild and dangerous those moments can be. And film has real compassion for its side characters too -- Achille, who invites his friend one night to meet the older man whose been funding his python-jacketed lifestyle, might stand in for the path better-not-chosen, but Guesmi gives him a moving and humanizing speech about their place in the world. Ibrahim has empathy aplenty.
Ibrahim is screening through March 11th-16th at FLC.
Check out this year's "French Cinema" line-up here.
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Jonathan Tucker One Time
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Two Cult Oddities, Out Now To Spook & Unsettle
I made unexpected friends with two surprising new horror flicks this weekend, which turned out to be far more than their front-facing parts -- below are some quick thoughts, but if you wanna avoid spoilers (not that I go that deep) just know I recommend both of these! Check 'em out!
The Empty Man -- I honestly thought this was just another piece of anonymous studio-junk a la The Bye-Bye Dude or The Slender Fella so I ignored its existence for awhile, even with the always-welcome James Badge Dale getting a rare leading man role, and that's egg on my stupid face -- this flick's actually much much more interesting than that. I should've know when it got a lousy Cinemascore grade that it's interesting! Cinemascore always gets horror movies wrong.
At two-hours-and-twenty-minutes s it too long? It is maybe too long. But do I have a clue what I'd cut? I do not! Certainly not the ace opening sequence set in the Himalayas that seems totally disconnected from the rest of the movie for awhile (it is not), since that mini-movie on its own is worth the price of admission. And the middle might meander a little but by the arrival at the film's final destination that meandering feels of purpose, of worth. Not to mention the million little scares that are plunked down here and there askance it. (Oh and James Badge Dale is in long-underwear a lot! Good proper movie stuff!)
The film openly toys with the expectations I placed on its going in, flirting with being one of those generic movies -- blandly stereotyped teenagers speak a Candyman-like riddle on a bridge, summoning up something unspeakable! But talk about some wild swings and wilder swerves -- The Empty Man is seriously richer, smarter, and so much fucking stranger than all that. Just take the ride. Stick with it. It'll stick with you back, I promise.
Son -- This movie made me jump, jump, and jump some more. Another Cult Oddity -- and no big jump required from me telling you the horror sub-genre of the Q-moment would be all about cult-thinking -- Son has a great shock set for its first jump-scare, a terrific jab that just got me totally and completely, and then just kept 'em coming.
Like The Lodge last year Son tells the story of a young woman who escapes her abusive cult-leader father and deprograms herself in order to try and lead a normal life, only to have that past come roaring back to life, peeking through her windows. She keeps telling the cops (led by a sensitive-eyed Emile Hirsch) that she's not crazy, that what she's seeing is really happening, and the film believes her so much that we become skeptical of the film itself -- it's a weird little mental infection of discombobulation, which made sense one I realized this was from Ivan Kavanaugh, the director of the fantastic 2014 flick The Canal; Kavanaugh wants to make us feel crazy, and he half succeeds.
Son's maybe not quite as unassailable as The Canal, a film which still makes me shudder whenever I remember certain visions from it, but this film is better-shot, with its neon-blanched Americana, emptied of soul but rife with ugly poisonous color and rot. There too are visions here I'll find myself squirming at the memory of, and repressing them for the sake of my longterm self.
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Good Morning, World
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Five Frames From ?
What movie is this?
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Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...
... you can learn from:
Jane Eyre (2011)
Jane: Am I a machine with out feelings? Do you think that because I am poor, plain, obscure, and little that I am souless and heartless? I have as much soul as you and full as much heart. And if God had possessed me with beauty and wealth, I could make it as hard for you to leave me as I to leave you... I'm not speaking to you through mortal flesh. It is my spirit that addresses your spirit, as it passes through the grave and stood at God's feet equal. As we are.
Cary Fukunaga's (already classic if you ask me) 2011 adaptation of Charlotte Brontë's (definitely classic no matter who you ask) novel premiered here in new York on this very day 10 years ago. Have you watched it lately? Last July I had myself a little miniature one-day swoon-fest with this movie, Thomas Vinterberg's Far From the Madding Crowd with Matthias Schoenaerts and Carey Mulligan (and you might consider this blasphemy but as much as I love John Schlesinger's film with Julie Christie and -- speaking of swoon -- Alan Bates I definitely prefer the newer version), plus Andrea Arnold's gorgeous and wildly underrated take on Wuthering Heights. And that my friends was a goddamned good day -- I highly recommend all of you replicate it sometime.
Now thinking of doing a triple feature today of Eyre, the Far From the Madding Crowd re-do, and Andrea Arnold’s seriously under-appreciated Wuthering Heights pic.twitter.com/rbnWifN7K7
— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) July 3, 2020
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Desmond Chiam Nine Times
I know not nearly enough of you watched Gregg Araki's TV series Now Apocalypse because if you had we'd have gotten a second season of Now Apocalypse. But if you were one of the people who watched Now Apocalypse then I imagine you remember Desmond Chiam here, who played Jethro (lol that name), the dopey boyfriend of the show's leading lady, and who was really into being sexually humiliated. (God that show was so deeply horny.) Anyway I was happy this week to see that Desmond's got a new gig lined up, and it's a big one -- he's playing... someone... on The Falcon and the Winter Soldier! This photo-shoot is for Esquire Singapore and Chiam refuses to spill the beans on his role in the interview, so I guess we'll have to wait a week and find out whether he's Bucky's new boyfriend. Until then we will make do with this fine set of photos, after the jump...
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