Good Morning, Riley

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Good morning only to these six straight minutes of footage of Dual director Riley Stearns getting super sweaty on the mat with another dude. (If you haven't been following our long-running Twitter thread on the director click here.)

Good Morning, World

A happy 36th birthday to the director Riley Stearns today! If you follow me on Twitter then you've no doubt come across my neverending Riley Stearns thread there -- if not I've included the start below and if you click on there you'll be granted an entire year plus one month's worth of obsessing. And I have no intentions of quitting either! Not as long as he keeps being the Insta-gift that keeps giving anyway. I suppose you could also follow him on Instagram but who can keep up with all of these things? Me, that's who! That's my job. 

Anyway as for Riley yes he does direct movies -- I talk about that less than I talk about those biceps, but... well have you seen his biceps? Just saying. No no his movies are good! I really loved The Art of Self-Defense with Jesse Eisenberg and yesterday's birthday boy Alessandro Nivola, and his movie from this year called Dual was great too -- you can read my review of that one right here. You can watch Dual online now! I still haven't seen Riley's first movie Faults but every time I think I will I feel a solidarity with him about the whole Mary Elizabeth Winstead situation (he and MEW made that movie together and were a couple and then MEW ran off with Ewan McGregor -- that whole "situation") and my enthusiasm wanes for long enough that I forget, until the next time. One of these days! I have heard good things.

Good grief is Riley Stearns the hottest director pic.twitter.com/UYCAk0o7Z2

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) May 27, 2021

10 Off My Head: My Sundance 2022 Round-up

Okay! Here this is! I promised it on Friday and then pulled a "me" and didn't do shit except google photos of Andrew Garfield lifting his arms above his head. That's so Me, to the tune of That's So Raven. I used the excuse that I might have more Sundance content coming out and... well I still might? I haven't decided. But the fest is now over and done -- here are the films that won awards -- and for as of right now I have written ten reviews, and I shall link to them! More than that! I shall link to them in order of preference. Starting with my least favorite reviewed and working up to my most (although the only two that I'd say were actually actively bad are the ones I have ranked at #10 and #9 here). Also mind you I saw around 40 films (that includes short films) so this list, of just the ten that I have reviewed, is hardly the complete picture. And I might write up more? I might not? Today I don't have that answer, but I do have these ten...

Reviewed Sundance Films Ranked Least To Fave

10. Babysitter (dir. Monia Chokri) -- reviewed at TFE

"If the intention is to induce queasiness to go along with the drunken asshole antics then Mission Accomplished, but to what end? I know what it's like to be fall-down drunk and nobody is signing up for that experience in 4DX."

9. Alice (dir. Krystin Ver Linden) -- reviewed at The Film Experience

"We've seen this same traumatic slave narrative hundreds of times by now, and the only thing that kept me plowing through it this time was Keke Palmer, giving every expected beat her all."

8. You Won't Be Alone (dir. Goran Stolevski) -- reviewed at Pajiba 

"It’s actually rather lovely. Most especially in the film’s Orlando-esque second half as Nevena discovers her ability to shape-shift into other forms so she can experience life from their vantage. As “lovely’ as something that involves tearing out the original owner’s organs can be anyway, but the metaphysical-ness of it, which Stolevski leans hard into, strangely manages the feat."

7. Dual (dir. Riley Stearns) -- reviewed at The Film Experience

"Here too Dual, as deadpan inclined as its disposition might be, feels fiery in its back-end convictions -- what is the modern state of the law besides some way to keep us at war with ourselves unto infinity, wiping out the expiration dates on such mediocre substance as flesh, identity, selfhood"

6. Watcher (dir. Chloe Okuno) -- reviewed at Pajiba

"The silky cinematography from Benjamin Kirk Nielsen, muted creams and grays just screaming out for the splashes of crimson we know will come eventually, is to die for, leaving just the right amount of fuzzy out-of-focus at frame’s edges to make us lean forward. There’s an absolutely chilling sequence on a subway train at night that deserves to be studied under the banner of “how to film suspense”..."

5. Speak No Evil (dir.Christian Tafdrup) -- reviewed at The Film Experience

"The gay reading is there for those looking, and becomes moreso as the movie plows along. It's baked right into the eventual tragedy of the thing. Because yes, Speak No Evil gets dark -- so dark you can hardly stand it eventually."

4. Resurrection (dir. Andrew Semans) -- reviewed at TFE

"Anybody who doesn't want to watch the hell out of a movie about Rebecca Hall losing her mind over Tim Roth is not anybody I wanna know."

3. FRESH (dir. Mimi Cave) -- reviewed at Pajiba

"If you ever wondered what might happen if Promising Young Woman met cute with Patrick Bateman then have I got the movie for you!"

2. Brian and Charles (dir. Jim Archer) -- reviewed at Pajiba

"We’ve seen the “boy and his dog” story a million times and there’s a reason for that—the story works, and Brian and Charles, a shaggy goofy lo-fi Brit-wit spin on the thing, works as well as it ever has."

1. Living (dir. Oliver Hermanus) -- reviewed at Pajiba

"Not that Nighy over-plays it—his unshowy work, expertly maneuvered, remains so dialed back and oft-closed-off you become tuned into the slightest shifts in temperature; he makes you lean in so close you begin noticing half- and quarter-degrees. All the better to devastate you when the time comes for devastation, of course. And come does it ever."

Happy Riley Day

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Did you know that the writer-director of last year's terrific toxic masculinity take-down The Art of Self-Defense, starring Jesse Eisenberg and Alessandro Nivola, looks like that? Well he does, and it seems like important information to share here on Riley Stearns (that's his name) 34th birthday. Very important! You can follow him on Instagram here -- he seems like a good enough chap from here; he hates on Trump at least. Oh and he was also married to Mary Elisabeth Winstead for a few years...

... which evinces excellent taste. You should all watch The Art of Self-Defense if you haven't yet -- unfortunately I never properly reviewed it but I found it really striking; it felt like he has a distinct voice anyway. (I still haven't seen Faults, his first film from 2014 starring Winstead, but it's streaming on Prime.) We'll see how much of that voice carries over to his next movie, which sounds promising -- it's called Dual and it's about a woman (the great Karen Gillan) who has a clone of herself manufactured when she finds out she's dying, only to miraculously recover and then have to face down, as in a battle to the death, that same clone. It will also star Aaron Paul and mark a re-team with Self-Defense star Jesse Eisenberg again. That's set to come out next year.

Happy 34 to the exceedingly adorable Riley Stearns, writer-director of the exceedingly underrated The Art of Self-Defense -- can't wait to see his next movie! pic.twitter.com/xS3YOpdL6X

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) June 29, 2020