Film Review

A Cam Boy, A Pedophile, Plus God and Critical Raves

Brandon Judell — Sat, 24 Oct 2026 14:43:15 +0000

A Cam Boy, A Pedophile, Plus God and Critical Raves Brandon Judell October 24, 2026 - 10:43

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Today, Aaron Eagle, a Los Angeles camboy, is ready to rake in some cash after a demanding gym workout. Walking about his barren room, his hairy chest, mussed-up tresses, tattooed limbs, and musky armpits are all on display to seduce us, his online clientele, whom he addresses as “Faggots.”

After seating himself, he instructs us to inhale our poppers before he ascends so all we can now view is his lower chest and crotch.

Grabbing his member through some well-worn cotton while spouting some believably dominant hustler lingo, the cocksure Mr. Eagle sneers: “I know you fuckers want to see what’s under these fucken tighty whities.”

When his online tip jar fills up, we’ll see more, the master seductor promises with the skill of a backstreet Casanova.

However, after some more delicious put-downs, knowing we are groveling for further degradation, Master Eagle upends our expectations by apprising us that one of his fans is paying him $50,000 that very night for some face-to-crotch action.

(Jump cut)

Knock! Knock! The $50,000 john opens his door wearing a three-holed ski mask. Unperturbed, Eagle walks in and asks an inconsequential question but receives no reply.

“Not going to talk,” the john insists after handing over half the cash. The rest will be received in the morning.

Not a bad way to start up one of the year’s more unsettling films, one that Vanity Fair exclaimed was a “genuinely shocking queer drama” while Variety deemed it “a provocative chamber piece.”

Take two superb actors: the not-yet-thirty Kieron Moore (Vampire Academy; Boots) and the Broadway veteran Reed Birney (The Humans; Casa Valentina). Add rather superb direction and a harrowing screenplay by Elliot Tuttle, throw in a sprinkling of salt on some open wounds, stir the pot over a low heat, and just stand back a little as the components begin to boil.

In the living room, seated across from each other, the still sky-masked john starts questioning the hustler about his past. Just what transforms a lad into a camboy, and does he like his career choice?

Eagle: “There are thousands of people who just want me to sneak into their house and fuck them up.” He adores that adulation until . . . .

Blue Film is a seductive two-hander where two liars unmask each other both physically and emotionally, but what’s their connection?

Aaron isn’t Aaron, and the disguised john, Hank Grant, turns out to be his former middle-school English teacher who had been sentenced to seven years for inappropriate behavior with another of his students. Now released, Hank’s bagging in a grocery store and seeking spiritual guidance with a local priest when not ogling online his truly favorite student, the love of his life, camboy Aaron, whose real moniker is Alex McConnell.

Well, without his priest’s complete disapproval, Hank has flown to the West Coast to “chat” with the former teen who had constantly been assigned to detention under his watchful eye. Ah, the good old days!

“I was attracted to more than your physicality. . . . Every class was an act of self-flagellation. . . . I imagined us all being together all of these years. . . . I stopped drinking when I went back to the church. . . . I wonder if there is purity in perversion. If it makes me enlightened in some way?” Hank ponders.

“Why are you in love with me? . . . How often did you think of raping me? . . . My sex is not worthless,” Alex retorts to the perv’s utterances. Hank counters that he prefers being labeled a sodomite, which carries with it a rather pleasant historical context.

What starts out as a transaction and then drifts into an Edward Albee-style verbal battle ultimately becomes one of the great award-worthy character transformations in modern queer cinema. With the aid of a razor, Alex’s hirsute manhood is scraped away into an unnerving boyhood. A young man’s taunting eyes become innocent orbs ready to be preyed upon. Kieron Moore is unforgettable here, as is Blue Movie, a celluloid provocation that has been rejected by many a film festival no doubt for its dicey subject matter and explicitness.

More important, with the addition of home footage of tots running to and fro scattered throughout the film, Tuttle never allows the victimizer to become the victim. When Birney’s finely nuanced Hank intones: “I’m tempted to think of my perversity as spiritual, spiritual because I can’t comprehend any other reason why God would have created me this way,” you just might want to lock him up for another seven years. Make that eight.

(BLUE FILM is now available to rent/buy on digital platforms such as Apple TV, Prime Video, and Fandango at Home.)

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The Gay Rat Catcher, His Wife, and the Bisexual Thief

Brandon Judell — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 16:40:47 +0000

The Gay Rat Catcher, His Wife, and the Bisexual Thief Brandon Judell October 23, 2026 - 12:40

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drama films

“I am looking at myself in the mirror and taking notes. That sounds like I’m a stenographer taking quick looks at myself, then scratching it down on a pad. But I keep getting up to look at myself, and sometimes I’m seeing something I didn’t the last time,” observes the slightly uncloseted Eddie in Marlon James’ The Disappearers, a 613-page novel the New York Times claims is possibly the best of the century.

That description also befits two of the lead characters in Anuparna Roy’s far-less-time-consuming Lovers in the Blue Night, a nominee for the Queer Lion and winner of the Best Asian Film at the Venice Film Festival. Here’s a couple who often seem to be staring at their own reflections and at the world at large with a discomforting uncertainty.

They have good reason to. After all, the two are now living in near poverty in a little one-room hut in Mumbai, a city in a land that enjoys deporting their sort. Their bed is a mat on the floor enveloped by mosquito netting. Their clothing and other goods are kept stacked in cloth bags. Is this a step up for the duo?

Well, Karim (Pritam Pilaniam) and Ameena (Neelima Sharma) met and wed after their Bangladeshi village was flooded and all their kin drowned. “Men under water; fish on land.” A state of affairs that a now-deceased relative of Karim predicted would reflect the chaos of life.

At night they sleep next to each other fully dressed, but untouching. Proximity without intimacy.

By day, Karim rides his bike with a sign boasting his profession: “Rat Killer.” But he is a kind Rat Killer, often capturing the vermin and setting them free in open, more welcoming landscapes.

The highly innocent and no doubt virginal Ameena is working as an erotic phone performer in a bar called the Blue Night. There, the hired ladies are placed in separate tiny rooms next to adjoining tiny rooms housing the johns. The men call the gals up and converse with them. (Think Love is Blind.) If the gents are enjoying themselves, they’ll slip roses into the next room through a space at the bottom of the walls, blooms that were purchased from the owners of the establishment as tips of affection. Sometimes hands are even touched in the exchange.

But when a phoner falls for Ameena’s gentleness, he asks for her name. She refuses, quoting her parent: “My mother said that once you reveal your name to a loved one, you become strangers. All that remains are two names all alone. The person within drifts away.”

No wonder her boss tells her, “Your hesitant Hindi is so sweet. You can satisfy a man so quickly.”

Arousing and aroused at work, while denied on the home front, Ameena gets more and more frustrated: “[Karim’s] never made me feel like a woman.”

She’ll even be more upset if she ever learns that her spouse is gay and currently in love with a small-time, bisexual thief, Suka (Bhushan Shimpi), who heads a gang of bumbling burglars. Karim eventually joins the crew, and when not bottoming for his bumptious lover, he unenthusiastically employs his rat-poisoning skills on a few barking pets, canines that might impede the burgling of their owners’ homes.

Beautifully shot by Debjit Samantam, Lovers in the Blue Night has much more on its mind than just sexual frustration. Roy, who also wrote the screenplay, explores the plight of immigrants, corruption within Indian politics, homophobia, and the limitations of women’s rights and education. Ameena, for instance, was never taught to read, which is especially problematic when she receives love letters.

As for the impoverished, Suka notes to a sorrowful Karim, after the killing of a wealthy person’s pet, “Ten people will show up for this dog’s funeral. For us lot, our bodies will rot in the gutter,” a piece of dialogue that, when intertwined with the film’s coda, recalls Pauline Kael’s take on the great Satyajit Ray’s The Apu Trilogy: “Ray sees that life is good no matter how bad it is.”

(Lovers in the Blue Night was screened at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival.)

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Help! AI Has Just Been Injected into My Brain

Brandon Judell — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 13:29:10 +0000

Help! AI Has Just Been Injected into My Brain Brandon Judell October 19, 2026 - 09:29

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drama

After viewing the trailer for Ace Thor’s short “Wowser”(2019), I can’t argue against the effort being labeled “a David Lynch nightmare.” Well, repeat that praise for Thor’s sophomore feature, Infinitely Dense, which was screened at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival.

A near-graceful intertwining of the psychosexual, eerie dreamscapes, artificial reality, ordering bananas online, piano-bar music, and playing ping-pong with Abe Lincoln, this indie paean to deranged, affluent white men is a gleeful addition to that growing genre that this year alone includes over three hours of Odysseus and over four hours of Elon Musk.

Infinitely Dense opens on a breezy, sun-laden beach day, not a shadow in sight. Clearly this is perfect weather for the grey-haired, grey-sweatered, blue-jeaned Tom Bailey (Glen Steele) to sign his divorce papers. “That’s it?” his now-ex-wife asks, commenting on his muteness at the end of their marriage, though she really wasn’t expecting more. The lean, monosyllabic spouse holds his tongue then and continues to do so for the first ten minutes of the film.

Finally alone in his dreamy house, Tom orders groceries; resituates a huge drum, a vase of flowers, and a chair; feeds his canine pal Bruce; and boxes away photos of his wife and daughter plus anything else that might hold sentimental value for a normal soul.

Bruce, by the way, is banished the following day.

Finally, with no distractions to contend with, it’s time to watch reruns of The Beverly Hillbillies and then connect with camgirl Amypond online. Tom, though, isn’t much more verbal when trying to connect sexually with the momentary object of his desire. He finally fingers out with difficulty: “You look sexy.”

Amypond responds: “Have you been a bad boy?”

So is this how our extremely reticent antihero will expend the rest of the time he has among us? No way.

Tom has signed up for an advanced AI-powered augmented reality system that fiddles with the blurred line between conscious and unconscious thought. Syringed into the back of his neck, Tom just has to say “apple” and a Red Delicious appears in his hand if he wishes for a young, smart, and fit woman who will listen intently to what he has to say, Wham! There she is. And if she’s wearing too much clothing, that’s also easily remedied.

The chip within him he is told “can communicate touch, smell, sight, sound and taste in real time.” He can even transport himself into an episode of an odd take on The Brady Bunch. Better yet, Tom even starts painting again as he did in his youth. His inspiration back then: Goya’s Black Paintings.

But as Truman Capote warned us: "More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones.”

Really now, can being loved by the perfect someone you created to love you be as satisfying as being loved by a mate who complains about your snoring, is not in the mood for a little romancing when you are, and is upset that you forgot her birthday?

And what if you start getting a little loony? Is there a chance you might accidentally hurt someone or worse as you lose your hold on reality?

With the aid of a game cast, a fine score, relaxing visuals, and with Mr. Steel, who’s reminiscent of Bruce Dern, as he makes the unbelievable believable with a highly controlled verve, Infinitely Dense seems to forewarn us that with a bigger budget, Ace Thor might really get to disturb us in an even more disquieting manner.

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Rare Japanese Ghost Stories

Gary Lucas — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 18:26:06 +0000

Rare Japanese Ghost Stories Gary Lucas September 17, 2026 - 14:26

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My wife Caroline and our friends, screenwriter David Hellman and his lady, artist-weaver extraordinaire Hiroko Takeda, went together Friday night to Film Forum NYC to view this incredible 1965 Japanese masterpiece Kwaidan, a rare compendium of Japanese ghost stories and folktales originally all written down in English at the century’s beginning by Greek/Irish expat and Japanophile Lafcadio Hearn…years later painstakingly realized by master director Misaki Kobayashi…and now in a breathtakingly beautiful new restoration.

I'd seen the film in the summer of '68 at Andover Summer School, and way back then thought it the most stunning cinematic objet d'art I'd ever seen. I actually bought one of the earliest DVD releases of the film at the dawn of the digital era. Kwaidan (Ghost Stories) has only improved over time, and I would rank it among my Top 10 Favorite Films.

Each painterly frame, each immaculately composed sequence, has the quality of a profound fever-dream of feudal Japan. It's right up there with Kaneto Shindo's nightmarish Onibaba, whose release in theaters in Japan predates it by a year on the Asian horror/fantasy continuum.

But Onibaba is filmed in the starkest, eeriest high-contrast black and white, with a thunderous percussive score by Hikaru Hiyashi — and Kwaidan (actually pronounced Kaidan in Japanese, go figure) is limned in the lushest, most florid oil colors you’ve ever seen (it’s also shot in Tohoscope, the Japanese version of Cinemascope), with a quasi-electronic score by the great Toru Takemitsu, whose music I adored as a boy, especially Vocalism AI (Love):

In Kwaidan, Takemitsu’s score is heavy on traditional Japanese instruments, especially the twangy stutter of the biwa (the 4-stringed Japanese lute), which figures prominently in what, for me, is the best of this quartet of ghost stories, the third and lengthiest one, known as Hoichi the Earless.

Here the action moves to the turbulent ocean as we witness the epic retelling in speech and song by the blind servant Hoichi of an epic sea battle between feuding warrior clans, lingering on the restless ghosts of the losing side (many of whom drowned themselves rather than be taken prisoner), who centuries later still stalk the shore. Listen to an excerpt here:

This marvelous film totally hypnotized the packed Film Forum crowd of cineastes and tourists Friday night, and is running for another week or so. Please do yourself a favor and try to catch it. It unspools at a languid 3-hour running time, broken up by heart-stopping passages of horror and suspense — and, thankfully, has a 10-minute intermission where you can catch your breath.

Most of Kwaidan is studio-bound with invisible practical effects ("that's the way uh huh uh huh I like it," fuck CGI) — even in scenes of wintry desolation in a dark forest besieged by a blizzard, as featured in the second folktale on display, The Woman In the Snow.

This episode begins with an old huntsman and his handsome young protege trying to make their way through howling winds, shaking, shivering trees, in-your-face swirls and blasts of thick, powdery snow, and various celestial bodies, including the moon looming over the tableaux, painted flats of sepulchral red skies boasting shapes as haints, which seem to wink and gaze down cruelly like some kind of malevolent gods at the struggling mortals trudging through the wilderness below — it's enough to give you frostbite.

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Appy Family

Chet Kozlowski — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 21:35:15 +0000

Appy Family Chet Kozlowski September 16, 2026 - 17:35

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satire

A black SUV, windows heavily tinted, drives up to an affluent country estate. A reception line of people stands outside. The car doors open, and young teenagers file out, all blindfolded. What is this, exactly? The last stop on the Lolita Express?

No, the visitors have arrived at this undisclosed location (hence the blindfolds) because they’ve won a contest. They’re here to meet The Perfect Family, as represented on their social media account our_bright_life. They’ve watched Mom, Dad, and Daughter over the years as they play out their life in public.

The visitors sit around an outdoor table. The family is, in their eyes, a paragon of perfection. “We are just incredibly free,” 16-year-old daughter Luca explains, “and do so many beautiful things and such cool trips. And the best thing is we’re paid for being ourselves.” The visitors pepper the family with questions: “Do you believe in cosmetic surgery?” “What do you weigh actually?” A boy tells Luca, “You look different online. Just over-the-top insanely pretty,” implying that in person she isn’t.

The opening of the new film Babystar deftly balances curiosity and WTF. There’s trouble in paradise, of course: Luca has become bothered with the whole influencer thing. Mom counters, “You’re a brand; you just need to use it.”

No less than Odysseus, Luca wants a home. She has grown up under the scrutiny of her parents’ cameras and has reached the age where remarks like that matter. Her parents are healthy, attractive people, well-meaning in their way, who have figured out how to monetize their lifestyle. Dad’s phone is always out, recording everyday events, and immediately posting them. The family’s every move is calculated for clicks.

And then Mom tells Luca that she’s having another baby, who will become part of their cast. Luca rebels.

As Luca, Maja Bons presents as pretty, pliant, and brooding. Mom (Bea Brooks) and Dad (Liliom Lewald) project a benign concern for their daughter. When she acts out in a restaurant, they leave and eat the meal in the cab of their car, vigorously chewing despite the irreverence.

Director Joscha Bongard has taken on a similar topic before in the 2022 film Verified Couple. He has a fine visual sense, icily elegant, framing the lushness of this fantasy life against Luca’s private times, which are shot simply, befitting her ennui. He’s young, a member of the Digital Generation, as attracted to the vlogger life as he is disparaging.

Babystar is well-made but irresolute. Luca’s life is underpopulated, and her frowns and glances are open to the viewer’s interpretation. She could use a sidekick, someone to complain to. Her motorcycling pal Julie (Joy Ewulu) is an entree to an adventurous life, but their meetings are made up of few words and many pauses.

It’s hard to know exactly what Luca wants. Is she after freedom? Independence? Why then imperiously use her celebrity to try to fashion a new family? Luca’s final act is symbolic but head-scratching.

Babystar is billed as social media satire. But satire works best when it’s pointed and warns us of excesses. Babystar is too taken with the bright, shiny images on our phones. In contrast to the vitality of those with her family, Luca’s scenes are long, almost lethargic takes. Maybe it’s only a document of our times, and not a cautionary tale at all. “I’m addicted to validation,” Luca admits at one point. Maybe Babystar is, too.

__________________________

Babystar. Directed by Joscha Bongard. 2026. German with English subtitles. Runtime 98 minutes.

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Italy’s Oscar Submission Asks, “What Shall We Do with Daddy?”

Brandon Judell — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 14:01:14 +0000

Italy’s Oscar Submission Asks, “What Shall We Do with Daddy?” Brandon Judell September 1, 2026 - 10:01

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It was Christmas, possibly in 1977, when my working-class brother-in-law, John, after drinking a previously unopened bottle of Kahlua, which I had unwisely gifted him, turned over the dinner table heaped with holiday goodies in front of his five children. He then took a rifle and chased my sister down a steep road with a rifle in hand. I called the police, and the family was broken up forever.

John was a “nice man”: selfish, funny, often sober, a major fuck-up now and then, and slightly charismatic in that stereotypical Italian Moonstruck way.

Once, years earlier, while my sister was in the hospital giving birth, I had been staying at their house to babysit. John, after being out all night, shuffled on in, but not from the maternity ward. Before the door had shut, he started bragging that he had just spent the night with two prostitutes. I was perhaps 12 or so.

I never told my sister. How do you tell a sister post-labor or otherwise that?

Decades later, after she discovered some of his infidelities, she phoned. “Did you know?” she asked. I could only answer with silence.

Poor Sister! She only married to escape a violent father who, on a hazy Bronx night, left a belt mark under her left eye. Reason: a bottle of shoe polish had spilled in his den. (Actually, my fault.)

Yes, men can at times be flawed, rather hostile creatures as Richard Gadd depicts so well in HBO’s Half Man. But isn’t it worse when they are someone you are supposed to be able to love in real life? Half Man I could put on pause? Diane had no remote control for her life. Cancer instead pressed her "off" button.

If you can relate, you might find yourself nodding when in director/co-writer Francesco Constabile’s prize-winning Familia, Fulvio (Enrico Borrello), a local fascist leader, in his one humane moment, notes: “These fucking dads, they can’t help but ruin your lives.”

Fulvio’s addressing a young man, Luigi Celeste (Francesco Gheghi), a character based on the real Luigi’s memoir, It Won’t Be Like This Forever (Non sarà sempre così) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DB4DDZCG?lv=shuf&channelId=500&plpRedirect=mhFallback. The Amazon synopsis of the book begins: “There are many roads to hell, but very few leading out of it.”

Well, who knows at the time that life is undermining you that this trauma you’re not coping well with is not forever? Who could have ever guessed Luigi’s serial anguish would one day find its way between hardcovers and then into neighborhood cinemas? Certainly not Luigi.

With a slight bow to neo-realism, showcasing a mamma role Anna Magnani would have killed, Constabile has fashioned out of oft-examined tropes an affecting film that rises above others exploring the same through finessed direction, superb casting, Giuseppe Maio’s subconscious cinematography, and Valerio Vigiliar’s angst-producing score.

Familia begins in an ill-lit hallway. Muffled voices are heard. One might be a mother’s scream. Another a father’s jealous rant. Listening are two scared boys, brothers, frozen in place, eyes agape. Marital rape is not yet part of their vocabulary.

Alessandro (Stefano Valentini): Stay here.

Luigi (Francesco de Lucia): I want to go.

Alessandro: When there are noises, we have to wait.

Gently cupping his brother’s face, Alessandro coaxes: “Breathe.”

Jump. It’s the early 2000s. Mother (the wildly emotionally transparent Barbara Ronchi) is a smoker and a cleaning woman. Dad (Francesco De Leva), a one-time bank robber, is being released from prison. Mother changes the locks on the door. Dad sidesteps her, showing up unannounced where the boys are playing soccer. Luigi runs and hugs him. Alessandro stands back in fear. Dad slaps him, then smilingly orders: “Give me a hug!”

The three go to the fair. They ride the roller coaster. Dad teaches Alessandro how to shoot a gun. A teddy bear is won. Through wily manipulation, the family is united until Luigi writes a Father’s Day essay for class, a seemingly loving one that includes the wish that his dad would stop hitting his mom. The boy’s teacher is concerned. The social services and the police will shortly arrive, and the family is torn even further apart than before.

Jump. The boys have grown up. Alessandro works. Luigi, now with a girlfriend, has joined a fascist group where the shirtless skinheads pogo riotously to a pounding beat while screaming: “I despise what you are! . . . You’re prey for my thirst. . . Duce! Duce! Duce!” Give them a knife or a stick, put them on a street, and you better watch out.”

So has Luigi become his father or is he just the same scared little bambino who’s now shaving?

And can Mother ever escape the threatening mistake she made in her youth that continues to stalk her?

It’s hard to escape.

I remember when my dad ran down the hall of our apartment holding the back two legs of a chair, ready to smack it down on my head. I grabbed to other two legs and pushed back. Dad fell. I ran out shoeless, flying down five flights of stairs into the street forever.

Familia makes you remember, inciting forgotten incidents you might rather forget. Damn that past that rises up again.

In Patrimony: A True Story, Philip Roth writes of his father: “To be alive, to him, is to be made of memory—to him if a man's not made of memory, he's made of nothing.”

At the end of Familia, amidst the end credits, what has become of Luigi is revealed, a strong argument that there are layers and layers of hope in our lives, and all might not be dashed.

Familia is now available for purchase and rental on Amazon Prime and Google Play.

(If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, please know that help is available. You can contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline 24/7 by calling 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) or texting "START" to 88788.)

(Wikipedia shares a rather anemic list of 32 American films with instances of domestic violence.)

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What the Neighbors Saw

Chet Kozlowski — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 17:22:45 +0000

What the Neighbors Saw Chet Kozlowski August 31, 2026 - 13:22

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horror

Bit by bit, layer by layer, the new suspense/horror film Burning examines the same set of facts from different points of view. None are those of the principals: Husband Marat has brought his mother, Farida, to his modest house to care for his wife, Asel. The couple recently lost a son, and Asel is pregnant again— at least according to some accounts. That’s the film’s conceit. The events are viewed through the gossip of the neighbors in their ramshackle, tin-roofed town. Everybody meets at the local bodega, and everybody has their own version.

One version has Mom as a witch, given to incantations and casting spells. Her care for Asel is vindictive, and she has the young mother crawling across the floor and vomiting maggots before the men in white come to take her away. Another neighbor contradicts: it’s actually Asel who is malevolent, possessed by a jinn, an evil spirit. In this case, the men are not mental health goons but Muslim mullahs recruited to exorcise the demon out of the young wife. Yet another account frames a different villain. It’s all hearsay, of course, which rolls out a Rashomon tapestry with hints of Rear Window that appears to be the point of Burning (the title refers to the ritual incineration of the first child’s clothing and toys).

It’s all very intricate, and for the most part well-executed. I’d never seen a film from the Central Asian country of Kyrgyzstan and was impressed by its confidence and quality. Director Radik Eshimov has a number of Kyrgyz feature films on his resumé. He and his crew have absorbed the technology and aesthetics of Western filmmaking, and his cultural cues are few, notably certain etiquettes and the mullah business. As a result, the film could take place anywhere at any time. You don’t have to go far to find nosy neighbors.

The actors too are entertainment-world class. Aisant Edigeeva (Asel) and Omurbek Izrailov (Marat) have the most to do, but it’s Kalicha Seydalieva’s (Mom Farida) performance that is the most varied. Her seasoned range of emotions holds the distinct parts together. Her cartoony-ness in the first segment, with her as an evil conjurer, gives way to more subtle acting that makes her Burning’s emotional barometer.

The first segment is the most effective: it’s complex and visually striking. Cinematographer Kerim Kasymaliev packs the frame with dense colors and ominous patterns: the suffocating wallpaper matches the adornments of the clothes and the bars of the absent infant’s playpen. The special effects are properly repulsive. Throughout, Bakyt Kemelev’s score has a buzzing, ominous quality, yet another Western trope. Writers Aizada Amangeldy and Dastan Madalbekov construct a complex maze of business based on rumors that ultimately purports to get at the truth.

Which is Burning’s biggest flaw. It’s a “tale” that I’m sure plays well at fantasy conventions, etc., but sidesteps a deeper truth. It’s a Western trope as well that a film can present multiple versions of an incident in 90 minutes and wrap it up with one that’s definitive. Burning doesn’t tease the intellect (like, say, Rashomon) or even invite the audience to solve the mystery itself, since it withholds vital facts. Its stakes are too low, and its conclusions too pat, to say anything interesting about the hive mind, which appears to be its ultimate theme. Hive mind is a Western blight, and overtold tales normalize it. One could look to small films from tiny countries outside the Hollywood sphere — like Burning — to challenge it or shed new cultural light on it.

_______________________________________

Burning. Directed by Radik Eshimov. 2024. In Kyrgyz with English subtitles. Available exclusively on Indiepix Unlimited. Runtime 101 minutes.

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What's your definition of dirty, baby?

Chet Kozlowski — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 22:06:57 +0000

What's your definition of dirty, baby? Chet Kozlowski August 3, 2026 - 18:06

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Erotic Comedy

When is a kinky sex comedy not just a kinky sex comedy? When it’s directed by Gregg Araki, a pioneer of New Queer Cinema. In the '90s, he was the go-to guy for a certain brand of teen angst with films like The Living End, The Doom Generation, and Nowhere. He, along with the earthier Larry Clark, exploited this genre of disaffected youth. Strangers came to town, kids regardless of gender cavorted and bed-hopped, and a hedonistic time was had by all. Mr. Araki’s films were wry, knowing, and had their finger on the pulse of a generation, wherever that pulse might throb.

He also made great use of young Mina Suvari, Ryan Phillippe, Rose McGowan and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. With his new film, I Want Your Sex, he has higher wattage stars to work with and has gone mainstream.

I Want Your Sex starts Hollywood Boulevard style, with a corpse face down in a swimming pool, and then cuts to trendy avant-garde artist/entrepreneur Erica Tracy (Olivia Wilde) who taps nebbish Elliot (Cooper Hoffman) to be her boy toy. Elliot works at her studio readying Erica’s art for her next big show. It’s a “hipster sweat shop,” where Elliot chews gum, along with a few dozen others, and presses the pulpy wads onto a canvas of an outline of a vagina. Erica descends on him and initiates him to the world of BDSM.

From there, twists and turns. Erica reams, steams, dry cleans (and skewers) ol’ Elliot. She gleefully dominates him through a laundry list of paces: Elliot is dressed up, dressed down, and even sent as a gift to a friend who’s in town. A hero’s journey with orgasms.

A disquieting undercurrent of domesticity bubbles under the proceedings. Elliot brings his lessons home to his cold girlfriend Minerva (an unremarkable Charli xcx), of whom his best friend Apple (Chase Sui Wonders) says, “she’s like what AI would generate if you told it 'total bitch'.” Elliot wants a wife, and in his mind pastes Erica’s face on Minerva’s inert body. He reacts wildly when he fantasizes Erica asking if he ever wanted kids. The climax (so to speak) involves an altar, with Araki stalwart James Duval officiating.

What does Elliot want? What is Erica actually giving? Signals get crossed, onscreen and in the script. I Want Your Sex would be a candy-colored trifle if not for the actors. Olivia Wilde plays Erica self-assuredly as the businesswoman she is, employing her feline eyes and cougar attitude. I assumed that Ms. Wilde would have produced this, to add to her impressive roster of films, like The Invite, Don’t Worry Baby, and Booksmart. Ms. Wilde has determinably taken the auteur role, but according to the press notes, her only role here is acting, which she handles with aplomb. As a bonus, Margaret Cho and Johnny Knoxville play detectives grilling Cooper.

The real revelation is Cooper Hoffman, Philip Seymour’s son, who continues to meet the promise of Licorice Pizza and Saturday Night. Mr. Hoffman is so genuine on the screen, so real, that you believe him even if you can’t quite believe what he’s doing, like spreading himself across Erica’s lap and being buggered with a dildo. When standing and clothed, he’s more compelling a reason for this movie existing as anything, pretty impressive for one who’s 23 years old.

Sadly, though, for all the talent and shiny latex, I Want Your Sex is surprisingly flat. It has a by-the-numbers quality that the script works valiantly to subvert, but its premise won’t let it. I Want Your Sex lacks the depth of Mr. Araki’s early films, particularly one as insightful and intense as Mysterious Skin (2004). It skitters across a candy-colored surface despite solid performances. Olivia Wilde makes a terrific Mrs. Robinson to Cooper Hoffman’s scruffy Benjamin. But we’ve seen it all before.

How will it play in 2026, when grade school kids know about whips and cock rings? Will the hijinks be quaint? As Elliot’s obligatory gay sidekick Zap (Mason Gooding) says, “Welcome to the sad reality of now.”

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I Want Your Sex. Directed by Gregg Araki. 2026. In theaters. Runtime is 90 minutes.

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Careful What You Wish For

Chet Kozlowski — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 15:18:08 +0000

Careful What You Wish For Chet Kozlowski June 24, 2026 - 11:18

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Film Review

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drama

How far will you go for love? That’s the question posed to the characters of the new film Skin of Youth.

Set in Saigon, Skin of Youth centers on Nam and his transgender love, San. They are embroiled in a torrid romance, and both make a living with their bodies: Nam is a scrappy boxer, San is a bejeweled dancer in a drag cabaret show. San dreams of a sex change and scopes out the men who frequent her club. One, Mr. Vuong, offers to finance her operation (and throw in enough for a vacation besides), in exchange for, well, whatever the rich guy wants. Nam is crushed by the fact that he can’t help but love himself. He marries San in a fanciful ceremony. “Grandma,” he exclaims, “I have a wife!”

Nam’s grandma provides traditionalism: all she wants from Nam’s marriage is grandbabies, something San can’t biologically provide her. While San does Mr. Vuong’s bidding, Nam takes up with a prostitute, intending to make her pregnant. Mimi is barely an adult herself, and when San sees her protruding belly she resents her, then takes her in, and establishes a unique family.

Mr. Vuong has many uses for San. He is a sadist and abuses her. Which propels Nam: he’ll finance her surgery himself by abandoning “legitimate” boxing—where he is headstrong and resents rules—and getting into the bone-crushing “dog cage” circuit, where the stakes are higher, and he’s beaten to a pulp nightly.

If the subject is tawdry, the production is anything but. Writer/director Ash Mayfair immerses us in Nam and San’s lurid world, all neon and sweaty shadows. With elegant staging and jackrabbit editing, she crosscuts between Nam’s bloody carnage and San’s glitzy performances. For the most part, Skin of Youth is suspenseful, solid filmmaking. Ms. Mayfair spares us nothing, and the world she depicts is complex. The fights are blistering, while some of the most effective scenes simply show the characters moving around their humdrum life of Saigon poverty. Ms. Mayfair has a good eye for the telling detail and endears us to her characters within minutes. The sex scenes are frank and essential.

The performances are all excellent. Trân Quân as San has a doe-faced radiance, by turns seductive and tragic. She is heartbreaking as she yearns for and plans her surgery. Nam, a wide-eyed, rooster-haired Võ Diên Gia Huy, is earnest as he scoots through crowded alleys and markets on his motorcycle, barely avoiding the police. Phan Thi Kim Ngân plays Mimi with an endearing childlike innocence. And Hajime Onoue is properly sinister as Mr. Vuong.

On the downside: perky pop music takes the sting out of some hard-hitting scenes (was that a decision of its Western distributors? If so, it’s misguided). As the story unfolds and we wonder how Nam, San, and Mimi’s fates will be resolved, we are plunged into a courtroom drama. It’s a narrative copout. The climax is generic when it should be as powerful as all that comes before.

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Skin of Youth. Directed by Ash Mayfair. 2026. Vietnamese with English subtitles. Runtime 122 minutes.

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Straw Dog Patriots

Chet Kozlowski — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 15:18:12 +0000

Straw Dog Patriots Chet Kozlowski June 23, 2026 - 11:18

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Film Review

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docu-drama

Not nearly as expansive as its title suggests (A whole year? Of the Revolutionary War?), the new film 1780 is essentially a chamber piece, or in this case a log cabin piece. Small cast, few settings. One casting surprise.

Abner, a wounded freedom fighter takes refuge in the humble abode of Honore, a reclusive trapper who simply wants peace for himself and his young son Miles. The trapper isn’t so simple, it turns out. We soon learn that he is wilier than he looks. He is not above misdirecting the three British soldiers pursuing Abner. He calls up memories of his own fighting past, causing him to Rambo out, creating a Straw Dogs-style standoff. Surrounded and trapped in the cabin, the rebels hold firm against authoritarian forces, knowing their resistance may be futile.

Appropriately filmed in Pennsylvania, 1780 is mostly guys talking until the muskets come out. The battle action, so much promised in the opening credits, is limited except for some bursts of brutality and blood-spurting violence.

Since it’s dialogue-heavy, you’d expect writer Steffan Ralph Delpiano’s script to provide the thrills. In the name of “authenticity,” he tries too hard, making the dialogue stiff and self-conscious. “I see you’re silent now. Mere seconds ago, you had tongue enough for two sets of teeth.” Add to that an oddly airless sound mix, with hardly any ambient seasoning. The actor’s voices, however, crackle with post-sync precision.

The actors give it their all. They are mostly from TV and include PJ Marshall (the trapper Honore) from Your Friends and Neighbors and Mindhunter, Vince Eisensen (Abner the refugee) from New Amsterdam, and R. Keith Harris (the leader of the British soldiers) from The Walking Dead. DJ Qualls, a ubiquitous character actor in the early 2000s, makes a brief appearance. Conor Kowalski and John Potvin, also portraying Brits, have mostly appeared in shorts. Young Kamilo Alonzo is particularly fine as the trapper’s son Miles. They all do an impressive, professional job.

On the plus side, 1780 looks good. Cinematographer Tiago Mesquita’s colors are bright and highly processed (in what passes for “beautiful” in the style of pharmaceutical commercials). Director Dustin Fairbanks keeps his camera moving, circling characters. He stays in close, not revealing the breadth of the room or the density of the woods. His aspect ratio is wide and narrow, with no visible top or bottom, probably to mask a dearth of set dressing. Ultimately, this adds to the claustrophobic effect that provides the suspense, which is 1780’s strongest point. But the blocking and editing sometimes make it difficult to tell where the musket balls are coming from and how they hit their targets.

The casting surprise here is Kevin Spacey, whose fortunes have limited available movie roles. It’s good to see him, and he doesn’t disappoint. He brings his characteristic bravado to the role of Thomas, the town ne’er-do-well, playing both sides depending on who’ll pay him. With his scraggly hair and scruffy clothes, Thomas is more Foghorn Leghorn than Frank Underwood, and Mr. Spacey looks like he’s enjoying himself. Birds gotta fly, actors gotta act.

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1780. Directed by Dustin Fairbanks. 2025. In theaters. Runtime 83 minutes.