The Sweet Sweet Bugonia Poster

I have in my movie poster collection like four posters from Kinds of Kindness and as many if not more from Poor Things, and it looks like that trend is going to continue with Yorgos Lanthimos' next movie Bugonia because this here first poster dropping today? Smashing, gorgeous, perfect, I must own it immediately. It's giving me big Peter Strickland vibes actually. There's something very In Fabric about it (see below) -- I guess it's the red and the mannequin-ish head. (Although I do think that's actually Emma Stone under there -- just a bald Emma Stone.) I do think of Lanthimos and Strickland as connected filmmakers, although I'm a weirdo who'd say Strickland is the more interesting and out-there one of the two. Who'd have ever thought that you could call Yorgos Lanthimos the mainstream one? And yet here we are. Anyway we're getting the first trailer for Bugonia tomorrow so stay tuned for that! See all my preious posters on the movie right here. 

Thursday's Ways Not To Die

Sometimes I wonder if there is still magic to be discovered in this world, but this morning I am here to tell you kiddos that yes, there is -- there is still magic! Look no further than me discovering in the year 2025 that Texas Chain Saw director Tobe Hooper made I'm Dangerous Tonight, a Made-For-TV thriller in 1990 about an evil red dress possessed by Incan Devilry that starred Twin Peaks actress Mädchen Amick, Psycho star Anthony Perkins, E.T. & Cujo icon Dee Wallace, and... R. Lee Ermey? Because why not?

You'd think I'd have read something about this movie when my beloved Peter Strickland's killer red dress classic In Fabric came out in 2018 but if somebody did mention it it completely slipped past me -- only this week did I learn of its existence when Letterboxd made a list of movies about "Cursed Objects" (thanks to the release of Oz Perkins' The Monkey) and mentioned this film. Obviously I had to watch it immediately -- I couldn't even wait for the blu-ray to arrive in the mail, I watched the shitty quality copy that you see in these gifs. And it was worth every second of squinting!

Tobe clearly knew he had to lean hard into the camp, so this thing is soapy, it's stupid, it's trash, and I loved every fucking second of it. But let's get to this death scene here --  Mädchen's sex-obsessed cousin Gloria (Daisy Hall, chewing the walls themselves) steals the dress from Mädchen and upon putting it on immediately goes into a slutty rage. Her ten foot tall actual linebacker boyfriend obviously never stood a chance! Hit the jump for the rest of the scene...

Buy! Buy! Buy!

And now, for something totally different, let's talk about me (ha) -- I did another round of culling my physical media archives this past weekend and I have listed a great big heaping helping of awesomeness onto eBay for sale, so if you'd like to own a piece of me memorabilia (one way to look at it) or just, you know, some truly incredible movies, then click on over and buy some! Or make a reasonable bid, I tend to accept them (if you're not low-balling me that is). But in all seriousness most of this stuff is stuff I am getitng rid of because I've upgraded it to 4K, not because it's not good, so if you're fine with blu-ray or DVD then there is a wealth of incredibleness on sale over there right now. (And PS I'm going to do a second round of this over Labor Day too.) Including yes my like six month old blu-ray of The Doom Generation, which I'm ditching in anticipation of Criterion releasing their Araki box-set next month. 

And all of my Peter Strickland movies because I have that Curzon box-set of his movies now. It's some really excellent stuff at excellent prices and lord knows I could use the money -- this way instead of me begging for donations (although feel free!) you get something in return. Win win. I've also got tons of art books, movie posters, and vinyl soundtracks for sale too. And with that thus concludes today's moment of solicitation. Thanks for your business!

A Peter Strickland Smorgasbord

I imagine the Venn diagram of these two circles isn't enormous but since I am smack dab in the center of it I will do the post anyway -- this one goes out to my fellow physical media obsessives who are also huge fans of the director Peter Strickland! (And I imagine if you people do exist then you've been here to this site because these are things I post about regularly.) The British company Curzon is dropping one of their legendary box-sets for Mr. Strickland this year! I have several of their boxes -- the absolutely massive one that they put out for Lars Von Trier last year blew my mind -- and they do quality work. This set will include blu-rays of all five of Strickland's feature films to date...

... meaning Berberian Sound Studio, The Duke of Burgundy, In Fabric, Flux Gourmet (aka my number one movie of 2022), along with his debut film Katalin Varga which will be hitting blu for the very first time and which (shh don't tell anyway) I have never seen. Gaps, I know! I have been saving it for a special moment. I suppose getting this set will count. The set will also be loaded with Strickland's music videos and short films -- one of which he made specifically for this set! And there's also a book included with writings by Strickland and his favorite actress Fatma Mohamed. (We worship her.) Anyway these sets are Region B of course so only buy them if you've got a region-free blu-ray player. The set is currently only for sale on Amazon UK at this link. They have the release date as June 24th! Anything that keeps Strickland's name out there so we can get a new movie some time soon! I'm dying here.

My 20 Favorite Movies of 2022

Well I didn't plan on doing this today but what the hell -- seize the moment and such. Unlike last year, where I still haven't shared my favorite movies of the year, that is. That's right -- I'm just going to go ahead and give you my favorite movies of the year 2022 right now, right this moment. Wham bam let's just get it done. I've made it pretty clear here and elsewhere that my hatred for lists and awards has truly gotten the best of me -- ranking something as individual and personal as art as "the best" within a broad context has become nonsensical to me. I don't really even see the use of it anymore.

That said, individually I do find it fascinating -- seeing a single person's favorites, that is. Groupthink obliterates the outliers and quirks of individuality (which is how shit like Green Book or CODA ends up winning a Best Picture prize) but if there's a writer or friend whose opinion I trust I wanna see what they liked, as a singular person, in hopes that they'll direct me to something I might not have paid attention to. See John Waters' list at ArtForum every year -- I've gotten more out of those than any Oscars ceremony ever.

Anyway since I'm a member and/or a writer for a few places where I have had to submit my favorite movies of 2022 a few times already I did make this list awhile back, and I've had it sitting here staring at me. So why not share it? I don't know that I'll ever have the time to do a great big slew of "Golden Trousers" awards like I was doing a decade ago -- with a full-time real-life job AND writing regularly for two other websites AND keeping MNPP itself going my time is thin gruel right now y'all. But please, enjoy this much, if you care to!

My 20 Favorite Movies of 2022

20. Soft & Quiet (dir. Beth de Araújo)
-- my review here -- 

19. Everything Everywhere All At Once (dir. The Daniels)
-- my review here -- 

18. Close (dir. Lukas Dhont)
-- my review here -- 

17. Pearl (dir. Ti West)
-- my review here -- 

16. White Noise (dir. Noah Baumbach)
-- my review here -- 

15. Brian and Charles (dir. Jim Archer)
-- my review here -- 

14. Peter Von Kant (dir. François Ozon)
-- my review here -- 

13. The Northman (dir. Robert Eggers)
-- my review here -- 

12. The Eternal Daughter (dir. Joanna Hogg)
-- my review here -- 

11. Aftersun (dir. Charlotte Wells)
-- my review here -- 

10. Mad God (dir. Phil Tippett)
-- my review here -- 

9. Please Baby Please (dir. Amanda Kramer)
-- my review here -- 

8. All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (dir. Laura Poitras)

7. Tár (dir. Todd Field)
-- my review here --

6. Living (dir. Oliver Hermanus)
-- my review here -- 

5. Great Freedom (dir. Sebastian Meise)
-- my review here -- 

4. Benediction (dir. Terence Davies)
-- my review here -- 

3. Decision to Leave (dir. Park Chan-wook)
-- my review here --

2. Bones and All (dir. Luca Guadagnino)
-- my review here -- 

1. Flux Gourmet (dir. Peter Strickland)
-- my review here -- 

------------------------------------

Runners-up: Fire Island (dir. Andrew Ahn), The Inspection (dir. Elegance Bratton), Holy Spider (dir. Ali Abbas), Bodies Bodies Bodies (dir. Halina Reijn), Triangle of Sadness (dir. Ruben Östlund), Three Thousand Years of Longing (dir. George Miller) A Wounded Fawn (dir. Travis Stevens), Dinner in America (dir. Adam Rehmeier), Women Talking (dir. Sarah Polley), Mrs. Harris Goes To Paris (dir. Anthony Fabian),  Alcarràs (dir. Carla Simón), Pleasure (dir. Ninja Thyberg), The Banshees of Inisherin (dir. Martin McDonagh), Watcher (dir. Chloe Okuno), The Cathedral (dir. Ricky D’Ambrose), Resurrection (dir. Andrew Seaman), The Quiet Girl (dir. Colm Bairéad), Nope (dir. Jordan Peele), Satan's Slaves 2 (dir. Joko Anwar), After Yang (dir. Kogonada)

So there that is! Go watch all of those movies, please.

And on to 2023 we officially move...

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Flux Gourmet (2022)

Jan Stevens: It's your use of a flanger

that I want to discuss.

Elle di Elle: What's a flanger?

Jan Stevens: It's an electronic device that

mixes two signals resulting in a phase shift. 

Elle di Elle: You didn't like it?

Jan Stevens: I think it should be on

a lower setting. Just fractionally. 

Elle di Elle: Why?

Jan Stevens: When you alter the sound too

much you lose all connection to the activity. 

Elle di Elle: But that's the whole point of what we do.

Why do it if it remains in the culinary context?

Jan Stevens: And why do it if it's completely

divorced from it? Then it's just sonic without the catering.

Elle di Elle: So you want catering without the sonic?

Jan Stevens: The best collectives here stretched the

elastic of their culinary sounds as far as they could,

but there was always a connection to the source

material. A semblance of what the sound once was. 

A happy 44 to Gwendoline Christie today!

Her performance in this movie is one of the year's greats.

Click here to read my review if you missed it,

and another piece on the film over at Mashable here.

5 Off My Head: Siri Says 2019

We are indeed still filling in the final few gaps in my "Siri Says" series -- this is where I ask my phone to give me a number between 1 and 100 and then I take that number and I pick my five favorite movies from the year that corresponds. Thing is we left the "Siri" part in the dust awhile back when the remaining numbers got down below fifteen, because waiting for Siri to say a number that hadn't been used before took ages. So now I have the remaining years written on slips of paper and I choose one at random, and yet I still use Siri in the title? Sue me for fraud if you must! Anyway today I chose the number "19" and since there's no chance in all of the depths of hell that I'd have anything to say about the movies of 1919 -- my apologies to Yankee Doodle in Berlin! -- I will be regaling us with my five favorite films from three years ago. (Here is a list of 2019 movies if you need a refresher -- a lot has happened since then!)

And yes I have already posted by five favorite movies of 2019 on the site -- indeed I listed my Top 25 that year! So this will only be interesting if anything has changed, and (drumroll please) I am sorry to tell you the list of movies in my top five has not changed. But wait! The movies themselves have maybe not changed, but (drumroll please) the order of them has a little! Chaos! Sanctus! Dominus! Sanctus! Dominus! Dogs sleeping with cats et cetera! Okay maybe not but whatcha gonna do, we got a space to fill. And I do think it's a little interesting to see what's shifted in three years time's estimation. No? Well without further dreadful ado I give you...

My 5 Favorite Movies of 2019

5. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

(dir. Marielle Heller)

-- released on November 22nd 2019 --

4. Midsommar

(dir. Ari Aster)

-- released on July 3rd 2019 --

3. The Last Black Man in San Francisco

(dir. Joe Talbot)

-- released on June 7th 2019 --

2. Portrait of a Lady on Fire

(dir. Céline Sciamma)

-- released on December 6th 2019 --

1. The Lighthouse

(dir. Robert Eggers)

-- released on November 1st 2019 --

----------------------------------------

Runners-up: In Fabric (dir. Peter Strickland), Sorry Angel (dir. Christophe Honoré), Little Women (dir. Greta Gerwig), Knife+Heart (dir. Yan Gonzalez), End of the Century (dir. Lucio Castro), Peterloo (dir. Mike Leigh)...

... The Nightingale (dir. Jennifer Kent), Pain and Glory (dir. Pedro Almodóvar), Invisible Life (dir. Karim Ainouz), Transit (dir. Christian Petzold), Us (dir. Jordan Peele), Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (dir. Quentin Tarantino)

What are your favorite movies of 2019?

Have We Got a Treat For You

Very important news broke on the world widest of webs yesterday -- Peter Strickland's marvelous 2022 film Flux Gourmet will be getting a blu-ray! One never knows these days when it comes to physical media -- some movies fall through the cracks and are never heard from again. Although I do think Strickland's cult-y enough at this point that we don't need to worry about that happening to any of his. Anyway the disc hits on October 18th and you can pre-order it right here. The price on the disc has already dropped by several dollars since I shared that link on Twitter last night so I wouldn't be surprised to see it fall even further come October. 

Immediately one of the greatest things I own & my birthday present to myself this year — an apparently rare vinyl boxed-set of director Peter Strickland’s really-for-real SONIC CATERING BAND music (as fictionalized in his most recent and amazing film FLUX GOURMET) pic.twitter.com/0J8VJW5TJp

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) July 26, 2022

Flux is one of my favorite movies of the year so far and I have already written about it twice -- here is my review for Pajiba, and then over at Mashable you can read some further words from me on the movie's implosion of flatulence humor, because yes, that's a thing I wrote about. Don't you poo poo me!

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Crimes of the Future (2022)

Caprice: What was that all about?

Saul: Just another epiphany.

Art triumphs once again.

Indeed art has triumphed once again as I haven't stopped thinking about David Cronenberg's Crimes of the Future since it came out back in June -- here was my review in case you missed it. Granted what I think about is often that jump scare slash punchline where Kristen Stewart pops out of nowhere all of a sudden like an enthusiastically sexy chihuahua. But that's a hell of thing to be haunted by! This movie is very funny though, and I kid as well -- the movie as a whole really has infected my brain. And while I do prefer Peter Srtickland's Flux Gourmet, its surprise companion piece on the body and art's invasion therein, I have a lot of love for Crimes too. Be gay, do Crimes!

Anyway I'm bringing Crimes up today, seemingly out of nowhere, because the movie is hitting blu-ray in a week! So if you haven't pre-ordered a copy already you can do so here. Admittedly this release feels a little bare-bones -- I could see a beautiful Criterion edition in our future... as long as "our future" isn't the 'future" of Crimes of the Future anyway, because I think blu-rays would be the last thing on our minds in that timeline. Not when we'd be so distracted grafting ears all over our body, and all. I don't know how you prioritize or schedule such things. "Oh sorry I can't make it to that screening -- I'm getting that finger sewn onto my forehead." The future is weird!