Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Triangle of Sadness (2022)

The Captain: My government murdered Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Bobby Kennedy, and John F. Kennedy.. My government overthrew good, honest, democratic leaders of the people in Chile, Venezuela, Argentina, Peru, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama, and Bolivia. Along with Britain, we carved up the Middle East, creating artificial geographical boundaries and installing puppet dictators. War itself became our most lucrative industry. Every bomb that's dropped, somebody makes a million dollars. You don't have to know where those bombs are exploding. You don't have to see the grieving mothers and the mangled bodies of their children. Eugene Debs gave this speech in Canton, Ohio, in 1918: 'Throughout history wars have been waged for conquest and plunder... The master class has always declared the wars. The subject class has always fought... They've taught you to believe it to be your patriotic duty to go to war and to have yourselves slaughtered at their command... When Wall Street says war, the press says war.'"

Well that speech hits home in 2026, huh? Anyway a happy birthday to the great Swedish director Ruben Östlund today! I was super sad when I read that his next movie The Entertainment System Is Down wasn't ready for Cannes this year so he's holding it off for an entire year for Cannes 2027 -- what, you're too good for another festival, Ruben?? The supposed reason is he's gunning for a third Palme d'Or -- which would break the record -- but, and I say this as a big fan, this feels terribly presumptious, Ruben. I mean you can think this sort of thing inside of your head but maybe don't let that narrative out into the world -- that shit draws the knives all on its own, my man. That said with a fantastic-seeming cast including Kirsten Dunst, Keanu Reeves, Julie Delpy, Tobias Menzies, Daniel Brühl, Lindsay Duncan, Nicholas Braun and Connor Swindells, and a right-up-his-alley micro/macrocosm class-warfare story about a bunch of people trapped on a long flight where the entertainment system goes down and they all presumably lose their minds, I'm expecting good things. Which is why making us wait an extra year is deviant behavior!

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Synonyms (2019)

Yoav: I moved to France to flee Israel. Flee a state that is nasty, obscene, ignorant, idiotic, sordid, fetid, crude, abominable, odious, lamentable, repugnant,
detestable, mean-spirited, mean-hearted... 

Emile: No country is all that at once.

Today is the 51st birthday of the rightfully outraged Israeli ex-pat filmmaker Nadav Lapid, who's weaponized his filmmaking to dissect the horrors of his homeland making one furious masterpiece after another. This includes the brilliant film above as well as 2014's The Kindergarten Teacher, 2021's Ahed's Knee, and the just-recently-released here in the U.S. film Yes. And speaking of Yes I am rather furious at myself for not reviewing that movie because I found it a total stunner, so let's throw down some words about it since the ocassion's presented itself. (I already shared the trailer right here.)

Yes tells the story of Y (Ariel Bronz) and his wife Yasmin (Efrat Dor) as they party the pain away in Tel Aviv, turning their radios up so they can drown out the sounds of the bombs dropping onto Gaza. He's a musician, she's a dance-instructor, and the two of them routinely hand off their baby son (pointedly named Noah) so they can humiliate themselves every night for the grotesque powers-that-be in order to sustain a living. Lapid gives the Israeli elite the full Beckmann & Dix treament, rendering them hideous to the point where they're literally bending over and waving their assholes in our face. It ain't sublte, nor should it be. 

Since the pair are gorgeous and entertaining and simply good at what they do (i.e. debasing themselves with extreme vigor) Y & Yasmin move pretty easily up the social ladder, until Y finds himself charged with writing a new national anthem for Israel in the wake of the October 7th attacks. For there he's shot through the cannon of a dark night of the soul as he tries to come to terms with his role as propogandist for genocide, but Lapid spares no one his visciousness; everyone is to blame for keeping the broken system afloat. Yes is brutal, brilliant, a ballistic missle shot straight at our insidious self-preservation in the face of so much unspeakable. Its farce is tragedy, all too familiar. All the punchlines are a horror; our laughter curdled, indistinguishable from screams. How au current, if you will. 

Look at This Gif

I assume that some of you might be young enough to have not experienced in real time the sex-quake that resulted from this shot of Brad Pitt in Fight Club in 1999 --  the walls of every movie theater across the land shook with the revelation of this ab-splosion! It was a glorious moment in male exploitation, lemme tell ya. Anyway David Fincher has slowly been remastering his movies in 4K as of late and now it's Fight Club's turn and I don't know about you but I definitely feel the need to re-experience this moment in cinematic history in glorious 4K -- you can pre-order the disc here. It's out on May 12th. I actually haven't re-watched Fight Club in years but it's been on a mind a whole lot what with anarchic thoughts of fucking the system up becoming an every-minute-occurance in 2026, so I look forward to this revisit. It won't just be about the abs this time. But the abs help. They're a great delivery system. 

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Bulworth (1998)

Bulworth: Yo, everybody gonna get sick someday / But nobody knows how they gonna pay / Health care, managed care, HMOs / Ain't gonna work, no sir, not those / 'Cause the thing that's the same in every one of these / Is these motherfuckers there, the insurance companies!

Tanya: Insurance! Insurance!

Bulworth: Yeah, yeah / You can call it single-payer or Canadian way / Only socialized medicine will ever save the day! Come on now, lemme hear that dirty word - SOCIALISM!

Up front I have to admit that I have never seen Bulworth -- I guess I was into what the kids call "cringe" before the kids were calling it "cringe" because the sight of Warren Beatty rapping in the trailers for this movie in 1998 made all of my insides recoil right up into my insides and I never got over it. But I have heard good things about Bulworth -- any fans of it out there? I was going to say that it's a shame it was the last movie Warren Beatty ever directed, but it's not actually that at all -- I think I can be forgiven for forgetting 2016's Rules Don't Apply exists though. (Sorry Alden Ehrenreich.) Anyway it's Warren's birthday today and we wish him a good one, where ever it is that he's been squirreled away by Annette Bening -- there's a really ridiculously long rap quoted on this movie's IMDb page that I came really close to using as our quote in this post but chickened out; it's kind of terrifying how much of what he was saying in 1998 remains true / has only worsened with time, though. We're falling apart. Happy Monday!

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Network (1976)

Arthur: You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it! Is that clear? You think you've merely stopped a business deal. That is not the case! The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity! It is ecological balance! You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU... WILL... ATONE! Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state, Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that... perfect world... in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused. And I have chosen you, Mr. Beale, to preach this evangel.

Howard: Why me?

Arthur: Because you're on television, dummy.

60 million people watch you every night of the week,
Monday through Friday.

Howard: I have seen the face of God.

Arthur: You just might be right, Mr. Beale.

Sidney Lumet's Network has been released on 4K blu-ray today thanks to the fine folks at Criterion -- watch it today and despair at how timely it remains. Everybody remembers Howard Beale's speech about getting up and screaming futilely out your windows that you're mad as hell and not going to take it anymore, but it's what's done with that -- how the media and government collude to commodify and dull our rage itself -- that really makes Network tick, and stick. It's wild how long we've been driving off this cliff for y'all!

Just Say Yes!

I was sold on a new Nadav Lapid movie right off the bat thanks to the name Nadav Lapid -- his previous films Synonyms, Ahed’s Knee, and The Kindergarten Teacher are all phenomonal. But then I watched this, the first trailer for his new movie titled Yes, and... I am even more sold. More even more. Extremely more even! This looks phenomonal and that was even before they sell it as...

A Radu Jude seal of approval? Fuck yeah. These are the world-class provocateurs of our moment, sign me the hell up.  And to have a major artist from inside Israel making something this critical of Israel's ongoing genocide of Palestinians is uhh let's say welcome. The film stars Ariel Bronz as a musician tasked with writing Israel's new national anthem post-October-7th and it looks no holds barred. Thank goodness there are still real artists out here making real political art. This gives me hope for us. Watch:

Yes is out in U.S. theaters on March 27th. Gimme!

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Enough Said (2013)

Eva: Oh, the Container Store? 

Albert: Yes, yes, the Container Store. 

The store that sells crap so you can put your crap 

in so you can go out and buy some more crap.

Eva: I love that store. I love crap.

A very happy birthday to the icon and legend and queen Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who has quite possibly made me laugh more than other other human being on earth over the years. It's between her and Lisa Kudrow I guess, just given their decades worth of output, but seeing as how I only ocassionally watched Friends I think the title's gotta go to Jules. Also she posted this below photo of herself over the weekend, reminding us all how fucking hard she rules:

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Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Nightmare Alley (2021)

Pete: When a man believes his own lies, starts believing that he has the power, he's got shuteye. Because now he believes it's all true. And people get hurt. Good, God-fearing people. And then you lie. You lie. And when the lies end, there it is. The face of God, staring at you straight. No matter where you turn. No man can outrun God, Stan.

Guillermo Del Toro's Nightmare Alley landed in the Criterion Collection this week on glorious 4K, where this gorgeous and deeply under-appreciated gem belongs -- I hope that people will go back and realize they were incorrect in their negative critical asessments now, mainly to prove that I was right and this movie rules. But for other reasons too! Bradley Cooper gives his best performance to date in the film for one, but it's also (as the above quote suggests) a savvy  dissection of our poisoned modern-day political situation without ever being too on-the-nose about it. It's like Luca Guadagnino's Suspiria in that way. It diagnoses the rot. Anyway we also see Bradley Cooper's dick so what have you got to lose? Go watch it! (Looking forward to an upgrade on the gif below with the 4K edition, you best believe it.)

Mussolini: Son of a Century in 200 Words or Less

Joe Wright's eight-part miniseries Mussolini: Son of the Century dropped on MUBI last week and it really deserves far better than I'm about to give it, but it can't be helped as I'm running woefully behind and fully ensconsed in NYFF stuff right now. But watching our leaders applaud the racist pile of shit Charlie Kirk this morning made me realize how vital and timely the series is, so I really want to highlight it in case you're unaware -- Italian actor Luca Marinelli, who'd already stunned me right outta the gate with Martin Eden a couple of years back, gives what can only be described by ye ol' chesnut "tour de force" as ol' Benito, and it's in service to a deeply traumatic and extremely worthwhile excavation of how Fascism takes hold. Methodical in its brutal detailing of how Democracy crumbles by the eensiest of steps, one norm crossed without a word after another until it's too late and nobody's noticed, this series made me sick to my fucking stomach but in a very necessary way. Can't recommend highly enough. It's all on MUBI. Go watch it this weekend. I shared the trailer back here.

On Weapons & Its Gay Stuff

Nobody likes a killjoy yet I've found myself falling into that role over and over and over again when it's come (mostly) to horror movies in 2025; I just haven't been on consensus this year. God forbid. But it seems to've been my review of writer-director Zach Cregger's Weapons, which stormed the box office this past weekend, which seems to've annoyed people the most... even though I gave the movie a mostly good review! I gave it a fresh Red Apple on that dastardly Tomatometer! I just have several nits to pick with the film that seem to really be killing people's joy, if the comments on said post are to be believed, and there's one I really want to address since it's a subject I've spent most of my writing career (lol "career") contemplating. 

Annoyed at the should-know-better homosexual’s comment on my review saying we fought for the equality to be played as weirdo jokes and get murdered in horror movies so I’ll probably go off on that at MNPP tomorrow, stay tuned!

— Jason Adams (@jamnpp.bsky.social) August 10, 2025 at 10:05 AM

Yeah that's the one. Specifically people seem annoyed with the following passage from my review (and yes I'm diving head-first into SPOILERS at this point so beware if you haven't seen the movie and care):

"And oh right lest we forget there’s the homophobic portion of our evening’s entertainment, the chapter involving Marcus (Benedict Wong, great and not in the least at fault for the way these scenes are framed). He’s the school’s gay principal and he’s who, along with his hissing stereotype of a partner (they love weiners and have Mickey and Minnie t-shirts, haha!), the film really relishes giving a heftily violent what-for. Killing your gays is so in y’all."

Marcus' partner is named Terry and I honestly don't know if I'll see a more offensive-to-me image in the movies this year than the one of Terry mincingly holding up two boxes of Fruity Pebbles in the grocery store. And that really has nothing to do with the "killing your gays" trope -- although yes I'll get to that -- it has to do with it feeling as if Weapons is actively laughing at these characters for being gay. It's not that I mind "sissies" in real life -- nobody's ever mistaken me for the captain of the football team y'all. It's that the movie thinks these gigantic queens are weird and hilarious and so fucking gay -- aren't they so fucking gay??? So many weiners! Plates and plates of weiners! High-larious!

And yes I will admit I've lost some of my humor here in 2025 on this subject. But I feel as if any sane fucking queer person should be right there alongside me in the same humorless goddamned boat. Look around. Our rights are being ripped away. Marriage Equality is probably going to be gone in the next year. Trans service members are being ripped out of service and denied retirement benefits right now, right this second, and it'll be the rest of the rainbow next. They are coming for us all with terrifying methodical swiftness and all of our systems of defense are failing.

So yeah ten years ago I also might've been making the case, as has been made in the comments on my review, that some modern version of cinematic equality sees gays getting to die in horror movies just like straight characters do. And sure, okay -- in a utopia there's something to that. Maybe just don't turn them into cartoonish stereotypes before that? Maybe we can be main characters once in awhile? And maybe don't have it be the gay characters love for one another that becomes what kills them. Weapons gives us no reason to give a shit about Marcus & Terry's relationship before Marcus is forced to murder Terry by smashing their faces together over and over again, which -- it's not a fucking stretch to see this as "men kissing men" weaponized. 

So yes -- we argued that we gays should be able to die in horror movies just like straights. It's just -- JFC did the storytellers immediately take us up on that offer, like gangbusters. In the past month I've seen (SPOILER for The Gilded Age ahead) a gay dude trampled by horses in front of his lover on The Gilded Age. I've seen a gay couple in the horror movie Together (SPOILER for Together ahead) turn out to be the weirdo freak cult leaders who've come to pervert the straight couple and turn them into non-binary monsters. And now I have seen this sequence -- in a movie I mostly liked otherwise! -- and... I dunno. I'm just pretty tired y'all. So cut me some slack if I kind of come off like this most of the time:

Home, Home on the Rage

It's time for the second review drop of today, and once again it's me bucking up against the system, dropping truth bombs outside the mainstream, baby! Click on over to Pajiba to read my thoughts on Ari Aster's latest, the COVID-era Neo-western Eddington starring Pedro Pscal and Joaquin Phoenix, which got a cold pretty shoulder in Cannes but which I loved. I will admit it took me two viewings to find my way to that love -- it was a rough sit on my first go-round and I thought I might have hated it at first. But I couldn't stop thinking about it and that second view spun me right around. It's dry dark comedy at its absolute cruelest, with a shit-heap's worth to say about the madness of right now. Anyway we love a good challenge and hoo boy is Eddington one of those. Go see it this weekend!

They Tried To Make Us See

I will admit that this is a dark way to follow my earlier post saying that we should look for light in dark days, but this one demands our attention -- on the same morning that there's a really fucking upsetting article in the NYT about how our not-esteemed President's healthcare cuts are mucking up the imminent cure for HIV I stumbled upon this video of Russell Tovey doing a reading of a famous letter by John Waters' star and downtown goddess Cookie Mueller. In it she talks about the devastation of AIDS, which would later claim her life as well. If you need a more succinct rundown on the background of Cookie than the many I've given over the years, read this wonderful piece. I think this is really the only note we can end Pride on in 2025. Be furious. We need to be furious. We need to summon the rage of those we lost, and those we will lose. They're coming for every one of us and throwing trans people under the bus isn't going to stop them from shipping a white homosexual like me to a gulag. We're in this together y'all. Make art, make violence, just scream. Scream in the motherfuckers face. Make them uncomfortable. Fucking fight y'all. Things are not okay. So dark days, yes, but we can be the light. Bright violent light if need be -- the sort of light that snuffs out the darkness in a explosion of itself. 

Frankly Dear Give a Damn

It's time for another Tribeca Fest 2025 review from yours truly -- this time I'm tackling the Best Doc winner Natchez, which takes a look at the titular town in Mississippi which earns its tourism dollars off of Ye Olde Antebellum Mansions within its borders. Click here to read my thoughts at Pajiba in full but the baseline is it's a really fantastic documentary and I hope it gets far and wide play because it tells its dark story accessibly and with sharp humor that should hopefully cut the "Heritage not Hate" bullshit off at its knees. 

Do It For Captain America

It's proving exceptionally difficult for me to get any work done today with everything happening in this country -- i.e. its quick descent into absolute fascism ya know, no big whoop -- and so looking at the clock I'm tossing my hands in the air and giving up on fighting the tide. A bunch of hateful morons handed the keys to our country to the same man who tried and failed to flush democracy down the toilet four short years ago, and now we're reaping the collapse we deserve for it. I can't write anything entertaining right this moment. I just have to go scream into a pillow, hug the people I love, and prepare to scream myself hoarse at the protest happening on Saturday -- if you missed my earlier post on that click here. As for the movies opening this weekend Celine "Past Lives" Song's latest Materialists starring Pedro Pascal, Dakota Johnson, and this hot slab of America's Ass pictured here is -- despite the attitude I get from commenters on here whenever I've posted about it! -- worth your time. It's not as good as Past Lives was, but it's way more sticky and weird and unexpected than its typical rom-com trailer would have you believe. Anyway that's the sum total of coherent thinking I can type right now. Please everybody be safe, go to a protest this weekend, and fuck up the fascists. America's Ass is counting on you!

Just Say No Kings

The only King I recognize is Derek Jarman's film Edward II (pictured above), and so I'm going to use a slice of its beefcake the way Derek intended -- to grab your attention whilst sneaking in a political message. This Saturday there are over 2000 protests scheduled around the country to combat President Nazi's little limp-dick birthday celebration happening, and I expect my MNPP'ers to represent! Click here for an interactive map where you can zoom in and find the one nearest yourself. I'll be scampering about NYC where no big surprise it'll be massive, but as that map shows you there are ones happening in the smallest of towns everywhere. I was proud to see how many are happening in the red farm-town districts of Upstate New York where I grew up -- there's basically one happening in every other town! It's wild. Anyway going to a protest and being among like-minded and mad-as-hell people is exceptionally good for one's mental health -- we're in this together and this is a great big opportunity to exercize our democratic constitutional rights in the face of genuine fascism. There are so many more of us than there are of these small pathetic creeps. Let's show them. 

Cosmo Jarvis Plays the Other Man of Steel

Somehow I totally missed this news that dropped a couple of weeks back -- Variety reported that our talented boy Cosmo Jarvis is going to play Joseph Stalin in a movie called Young Stalin, directed by Georgian director Géla Babluani and based on the bestseller by author Simon Sebag Montefiore. You can see a photo of what Stalin looked like in his earlier days down below -- I'd say Cosmo's pretty good casting, especially once he slaps on that stache. Apparently Little Joe got himself into all sorts of criminal shenanigans involving bank robberies and that's what this story's about -- I don't know why they'd feel the need to draw a throughline from a life of criminality to dictatorships these days. So weird. Just coming out of nowhere, that one! (As a more pleasant aside if you'd like a couple more photos of Cosmo from the shoot seen up top, click here.)

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

The Lion in Winter (1968)

John: A knife! He's got a knife!

Eleanor: Of course he has a knife, he always has a knife, we all have knives! It's 1183 and we're barbarians! How clear we make it. Oh, my piglets, we are the origins of war: not history's forces, nor the times, nor justice, nor the lack of it, nor causes, nor religions, nor ideas, nor kinds of government, nor any other thing. We are the killers. We breed wars. We carry it like syphilis inside. Dead bodies rot in field and stream because the living ones are rotten. For the love of God, can't we love one another just a little - that's how peace begins. We have so much to love each other for. We have such possibilities, my children. We could change the world.

Kate the Great was born 118 years ago today.

Pic of the Day

I am trying to take a momentary break for a minute from anger-scrolling over our shit-ass Russian-puppet President right now so there's a new promotional picture of Jake Gyllenhaal and Denzel Washington for their new stage adaptation of Othello -- I've been entering the lottery every day trying to get cheap tickets but so far come up with bupkis; it hasn't even been a week though so y'all keep me in your prayers! Somebody snapped a photo (seen below) of the cast taking a bow the other day and it looks like Jake is full Jarhead in it, and that is some shit I need to see in the flesh y'all. Regular tickets for the show are so outrageously expensive though the lottery's the only way I'll be seeing it. 

OH GOD HE'S IN UNIFORM TOO LIVE ACTION JARHEAD

[image or embed]

— Jason Adams (@jamnpp.bsky.social) February 27, 2025 at 2:48 PM

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

Psychiatrist: Human fish, swimming at the bottom of the great ocean of atmosphere, develop psychic injuries as they collide with one another. Most mortal of all are those gotten from the parent fish.

The great John Frankenheimer was born 95 years ago today.

Cruising For An Emotional Bruising

I've made it pretty clear here on the site that it's been a rough week or so for me and y'all have been very kind in wishing me well, I appreciate it. And I only bring it up now again because part of what was weighing on me was writing a movie review of all things -- sometimes writing is a blessing and frees you of things and sometimes it's hard as fuck and makes you root around in shit you don't feel like rooting around in. And it was more of the latter when I wrote up my thoughts on the gay drama Plainclothes starring Tom Blyth and Russell Tovey this week. The movie is good, mind you! It just stirred things up and this wasn't the best week for that. Anyway click on over to Pajiba to read the review. Some of the stuff that comes up in there I've mentioned in other pieces before so if you're long-time readers it'll sound familiar. Anyway Plainclothes -- terrific and well acted stuff! The end. (For today.)