Good Morning, World

Another gift for those of us who couldn't make it to TIFF this year (like those photos of beskirted James McAvoy & Friends that I shared on Monday) is the trailer for a short film called Disc that screened there that stars the great Jim Cummings... and if I had to guess judging by said trailer it stars the great Jim Cummings in just tighty-whities for the entire thing? Now that's cinema, baby. It about a "hookup gone wrong" and there are some good reviews for the short around if you google them. For our main concerns however just hit the jump for several more gifs and said trailer...

Behold the Dust Bunny Trailer!

A long long long awaited happy day here at MNPP HQ as Pushing Daisies and Hannibal creator and friend-of-MNPP Bryan Fuller's feature-film directing-debut Dust Bunny is premiering at TIFF tonight! No as I just said in my previous post I'm not in Toronto so I'm not there to see the movie yet but I'm still psyched for our friend and can't wait to see this myself. Starring Mads Mikkelsen as a contract killer who's hired by a little girl named Aurora (Sophie Sloan) to murder the monster that lives under her bed, we all don't have to feel as if we're missing out on seeing the movie tonight in Canada -- they just dropped the first trailer! Watch:

Goosebumps! It looks fuckin' incredible. Pushing Daisies meets The Matrix! Even better we-ve got a release date too and it's so much sooner than I expected -- it's out December 5th! Holy shit! It all looks spectacular but most of all I cannot wait to see what the monster that Bryan created looks like. This man's imagination is unparalleled. Also -- hey Sigourney...

Three Hot Men For the Price of None

I'm not in Toronto right now with all of the other critics but that's okay because the actors on the scene are giving the rest of us a real fucking show -- this weekend it was one hot sexy snap of our faves after another. The menfolk are demanding attention! And we're ready to give it! Even though I shared all three of these pictures on Bluesky already they need to be documented here at MNPP proper. Most especially the above photo of James McAvoy manspreading in a kilt -- that's a look for the record books. You know that line in Clueless about an "unequivocal sex invite"? It's very much that. God damn James, you devil. 

Not that this photo of Chris Evans inviting us to the gun (and pec) show is any sorta slouch! Chris is looking good! (What's new?) Not that I have any idea what movie either him or James are at TIFF for -- I thought for a second that Chris might be reprising his role from the first one in the new Benoit Blanc mystery that premiered at the same time this photo dropped but no, we're not that lucky. (Word on the new Knives Out is semi-ecstatic though so I'm extremely excited.) Anyway finally that brings us to longtime crush Wagner Moura, and we do know what movie he's at TIFF for -- he's there for The Secret Agent, the extremely buzzy new movie from Bacurau director Kleber Mendonça Filho. As a massive Bacurau-head (yes that's a thing) I'm practically foaming at the mouth for this one -- thankfully I only have to foam for a little over week since I'll be seeing it for NYFF next Thursday. Look at that sweet smile! Aww. 

Chris & Barry Go Down

My memory of the headlines from TIFF was that Bring Them Down, the movie starring Christopher Abbott and Barry Keoghan, was sort of indifferently received (I didn't go to TIFF last year and haven't seen the movie yet myself) -- but checking its score on Rotten Tomatoes just now I see it sits at 93% so I guess my memory was faulty. Not the first time that's happened! Anyway the movie got a trailer this week because it's hitting theaters on February 7th, and that's what I am here for. That's what we all are here for. That plus that photo above of Chris & Barry being touchy-feely natch. 

I wouldn't expect much touchy-feely in the movie itself though, since it's apparently a dark dramatic thriller about feuding Irish shepherds, but who knows? Maybe it's shepherds fueding with sexy results like in God's Own Country. Fingers crossed.

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

The Master (2012)

Peggy: And this is where we are at. At the lowest level. To have to explain ourselves, for what? For what we do, we have to grovel? The only way to defend ourselves is to attack. If we don't do that we will lose every battle that we are engaged in. We will *never* dominate our environment the way we should unless we attack! And the city, city's just noise. I know the city. I know its rotten secrets, its filthy lies and secrets. They... invited us here and welcomed us. Only to throw us down. And kick us out. It's a grim joke.

A happy 50 to the great Amy Adams today! I very much hope that Nightbitch, her upcoming movie with the magnificent Marielle Heller, is Marielle Heller's fourth straight masterpiece. And if it gets Amy her long overdue Oscar that'd be even sweller, although I feel as if the whole "female werewolf movie called Nightbitch" thing might limit its Oscar chances. But crazier things have happened! And we'll know how it's being received in just a couple weeks since it's premiering at TIFF on September 7th. (And then it hits theaters on December 6th.) Tell me in the comments -- What's your favorite Amy Adams performance? (Just don't say Hillbilly Elegy. We're pretending that doesn't exist.)

Hi Ho Solo

Finally some news on Solo, the "drag queen romance" starring MNPP faves Théodore Pellerin and Felix Maritaud that I have been posting on for two entire years now -- in February of 2022 I stumbled on some pictures from the movie's set (it was called Drag back then) and I have been (im)patiently awaiting the final product ever since. Even as it screened at fests (it won Best Canadian Feature at TIFF) for other less attentive people, I have waited. And finally my time has come! Solo is hitting NYC on May 24th and L.A. the week after (and then presumably inward toward the middle parts of the country from there), and we've got a trailer! Watch:

Fantastic Fest Review: "When Evil Lurks"

The gore gets piled yea high in Demián Rugna’s When Evil Lurks, a possession thriller and a truly nasty piece of work that will nevertheless have you feeling high off all the yays you’ll be whooping as it slaughters its way across half of Argentina and back. Having just played TIFF and Fantastic Fest, the latest from the Terrified filmmaker drops on Shudder on October 6th, and it does so with a great big juicy splat of pus-filled viscera. For those of you who are into such things. (Cue the “Haha Yes Sickos” meme.) 

Handsome farming brothers Pedro (Ezequiel Rodríguez) and Jimmy (Demián Salomón, giving off big Scoot McNairy energy) are minding their business one night when the sound of gunshots suddenly erupt out in the woods – and there will be a lot of “going to investigate”’ing happening in When Evil Lurks so it’s best if you get over being annoyed by that horror movie cliche right up front. Everybody is always “going to investigate” things they most assuredly should never go investigate, and it never works out well, and yet nobody learns. If Pedro and Jimmy had just sat their asses at home sipping their cerveza we all could’ve rested in peace! 

Unfortunately the brothers go and the brothers investigate, and what they find starts off disgusting and only works its way up the barf dial from there. A body sliced clean down the middle leads them to a nearby farmstead, where a family has been hiding their dirty (and I do mean dirty) secret behind some blanket curtains in a back-room – their son has gone “rotten,” which is how people in this film’s world describe those possessed by demons. It seems to be a common enough occurrence in the world of this movie – the script refrains from spelling it out too hard but there are several vague references to religion being dead, and everybody knows somebody who knows somebody who’s had to deal with a devil in their midst. 

“Rotten” is certainly the word for it though, since the possessed man resembles nothing less than a pouch of spider eggs splattered liberally with tar and bloodied yolks. He’s truly a marvel of grotesque design – the practical-effects in Where Evil Lurks are top-notch; you’ll wanna take a medley of Silkwood showers by the time this goopy baby’s come in for landing. 

Slowly we learn a few more rules about this world we’re inhabiting – most importantly that you can’t shoot the “rotten” dead, because that will cause the evil inside of them to explode out like a virus, infecting everyone within reach. So Pedro and Jimmy and another neighbor get the super not bright idea to just load the “rotten” up in the back of their pick-up and drive it a few hundred miles away, where they will toss it into a ditch and drive off. Let this be a lesson, kids – you can’t ignore your problems or unload them on other people, especially when they’re hell-spawned pustule people out to swallow ya souls. 

So that goes wrong, and before you know it the stench of possession is stinking up the land – Rugna wisely decides to keep us focused on the brothers and their immediate loved ones, but it’s pretty clear that this is a small apocalypse in the making. And so we follow Pedro as he goes to grab his kids from his estranged wife, which goes about as well as you can expect whenever an estranged husband pops up out of nowhere trying to snatch his kids. The film escalates from there into a series of madnesses spilling into one another, ratcheting up the tension and the body count, and letting it be known fast and ruthlessly that nobody is safe – pets and children and lovers of both of those things, beware! 

The last half of When Evil Lurks gets a bit bogged down in over-explaining itself – it’d done a decent enough job up until then just telling us what we needed to know in the moment we needed it, so it’s a little disappointing when it starts spinning its wheels. Especially as a lot of the “rules” and “explanations” don’t entirely jive with what we’ve seen, or how our characters have behaved. But none of that is enough to entirely dilute the nasty power that When Evil Lurks drums up at its strongest – it stays on the right side of WTF just enough to WTF you up.

Colman Domingo Three Times

The Rustin star looking mighty fine at TIFF. (via)

Hello My Concubine!

Here is some exciting news -- a new 4K restoration of Kaige Chen's lush 1993 masterpiece Farewell My Concubine is getting released this month! It's also an "uncut" version, with twenty extra minutes. It's first premiering at TIFF but a week after that it hits Film Forum here in NYC, and then it travels around the usual suspect cites from there. You can see all of the dates and places over here. If you've never seen this lush epic starring Gong Li and Leslie Cheung you're in for a treat -- here's how they describe the plot:

"In Chen Kaige's adaptation of the Lilian Lee novel, Cheng Dieyi (Leslie Cheung) and Duan Xiaolou (Zhang Fengyi) grow up enduring the harsh training of the Peking Opera Academy, where instructors regularly beat the students to instill in them the discipline needed to master the complex physical and vocal techniques of this ancient art. As the two boys mature, they develop complementary talents: Dieyi, with his fine, delicate features, assumes the female roles while Xiaolou plays masculine warlords. Their dramatic identities become real for Dieyi when he falls in love with Xiaolou, who fails to fully reciprocate Dieyi’s affections and marries a courtesan, Juxian (Gong Li), creating a dangerous, jealousy-filled romantic triangle. Spanning 50 years from the early 20th century to the tumultuous Cultural Revolution, Kaige's passionate, exquisitely shot film captures the vast historical scope of a changing country (and the mesmerizing pageantry of the opera) while also revealing the intimate and touching details of a unique, tender, heartrending love story. "

And here's the trailer:

I haven't seen this in a very long time so I'm pretty excited about this 

myself. You can never go wrong with Gong Li and Leslie Cheung.

Well I Feel Teased

It's ridiculous of me to even bother posting this fourteen second teaser for a teaser, but since it's fourteen seconds of Barry Keoghan and Jacob Elordi being naked within one's another vicinity my ass is gonna bite. Saltburn is Promising Young Woman director Emerald Fennell's new movie -- I told you about it previously right here but it basically sounds on paper very Talented Mr. Ripley. Gay-ish obsession with class implications. We'll see when we're teased some more on Wednesday I suppose. Anyway this is premiering in Toronto I think? I'm not covering TIFF this year so I didn't pay much attention to their line-up. It's in theaters at Thanksgiving. Circle back on Wednesday when we'll get teased some more!

Christopher Abbott is My Safe Word

I know you know what Christopher Abbott fans we are here at MNPP -- I never would've guessed it when he was on Girls, where I hated him, but then I never would've guessed I'd be so hot for Jon Bernthal when he was stinking up The Walking Dead either. Took some time to glom onto their particular charms, but Abbott's proven himself an extremely risky fella, taking interesting and daring projects on time and time again. And here he comes again!

Sanctuary premiered at TIFF but only in person so I didn't get to watch it then (I covered TIFF virtually), so I've spent the last six or so months salivating with want -- thankfully it's out on May 19th and I've already RSPV'd for my press screening, thank you very much. That said it's kinda weird how very very similar this one seems to a movie Chris already made -- I speak of Nicolas Pesce's 2018 film Piercing of course, which was about Abbott meeting up with a prostitute (Mia Wasikowska) in a hotel room and the power dynamics shifting wildly from moment to moment between them. (Piercing was one of my favorite movies that year -- seek it out if you haven't seen it!)

This new one stars Abbott as a masochist who meets up in a hotel room with a dominatrix (Margaret Qualley) and, uhh, the power dynamics shift wildly from moment to moment between them. This is a kind of odd niche to carve out for one's self!

But I do think we've probably got ourselves a killer double-feature in the future. I'm admittedly a bigger fan of Wasikowska than I am Qualley, but she looks great here. Anyway see for yourselves -- Neon's gone done and dropped the trailer for Sanctuary today!

Sanctuary is out on May 19th.
What do you think?

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Decision to Leave (2022)

Seo-rae: The moment you said you loved me,

your love is over. The moment your love ends,

my love begins.

One of the year's great films (with two of the year's great performances from Tang Wei and Park Hae-Il) is Park Chan-wook's Decision to Leave and it has been streaming on MUBI for a few weeks now -- here is my review from TIFF if you missed it. But we've got word today of even better news (at least if you're a collecting obsessive like me, anyway) -- those fine folks are also giving the film a physical release! You can never be sure with streamers, so bless you, MUBI. The romantic-thriller hits blu-ray on January 10th and you can pre-order it at Amazon right here right this second. 

Paul Mescal's Thighs Invite You

Charlotte Wells' film Aftersun starring Paul Mescal is so good (here is my review) that if you ask me the advertising doesn't need to rely on advertisements like the one below, that sells it as "Paul Mescal in short shorts... possibly getting a blowjob too!" trickery... but I am not complaining. And technically this is only half the ad -- A24 posted it on their Instagram and if you swipe through you'll see the other half, where the daughter character lays opposite. But they knew what they were doing. We all know what they were doing. And we all thank them for what they done did. Now go see Aftersun, it's truly special.

We All Fall For Paul Mescal

One of the movies of the year is hitting theaters tomorrow -- Charlotte Wells' tearjerking daddy drama Aftersun, starring Paul Mescal as a young father who takes his daughter on a beach vacation, is hitting some theaters (it's playing FLC here in NYC) after a really spectacular run at the fall fests; I saw it at TIFF and reviewed it right here. A choice quote from yours truly:

"Once Aftersun's got you in its grip it's gonna squeeze. The last act of this film held me so tight I was shaking -- I think anybody who's found their relationship with their father fractured will feel this film like a tidal wave across the face."

You can watch the trailer right here but why bother, just go see the damn movie the second you can. You trust me, right? (Don't answer that.) Anyway this photoshoot for Flaunt mag has been around for a little bit but I figured I'd save it for this moment when I could properly nag at you to go see this movie. And now with that accomplished onto the photos after the jump...

Paul Mescal Twelve Times

I have a feeling we're going to be blessed with a whole bunch of Paul mescal photoshoots over the next few months, as if you ask me he's got a very serious chance at a Best Actor nomination for the film Aftersun, which just played at Toronto and is about to play NYFF and which is hitting theaters on October 21st. I reviewed it right here and I shared the trailer yesterday -- he's great, the movie's great, great great great. That said you probably shouldn't be asking me about Oscars things since I'm terrible at Oscars things -- is Mescal too young, is the film too small, yadda yadda I don't care. All I know is he's worthy. This shoot is via Bustle magazine and you can read the chat right here. Or you can just hit the jump for the pictures, I won't judge...

Destroy Me, Paul Mescal

I told you a couple of weeks back when it saw it at TIFF that Aftersun was the heartbreaker of the year, and now this morning A24 has released the film's first trailer which only underscores that point -- starring Paul Mescal as a young father who's taken his daughter Sophie (astonishing newcomer Frankie Corio) on beach vacation the film is from first-time feature writer-director Charlotte Wells, and when I tell you I was absolutely racked by sobs when the credits rolled I have a tweet to prove it even:

Full on ugly crying from the screener I just watched

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) September 5, 2022

Anyway the movie is also playing at NYFF so if you're here in the city you've got an early chance to catch it. Here is my full review from TIFF. Now watch the dang trailer and then head over to Amazon and pre-order yourself some Kleenex:

Aftersun is out in theaters on October 21st.

Which Is Hotter?

Interview Magazine has a large gallery of photos of and brief chats with gorgeous young things who worked on movies that just screened at TIFF (all taken by Myles Pettengill), and it was the fine snaps of Devotion star Glen Powell above and of Aftersun (reviewed here) star Paul Mescal below that, you know, most caught my eye. And I haven't done a poll in awhile? So lets! Why not? Everything is awful but at least there are pretty boys to distract us.

online polls

TIFF Review: Bones of Crows

Spanning an entire century charting the lives of one family of Cree people and the traumas they endure at the hands of their Canadian countrymen, Marie Clements’ moving and enthralling Bones of Crows attempts to do for those Indigenous folks what other cinematic epics like Heaven's Gate or Once Upon a Time in America have done for other groups of people -- set a center focus upon which the entirety hinges, giving us a Forrest Gump like view of history as it spins around and weaves through the middle of their lives. And it does so pretty damned well, I thought!

I hear the film is only the beginning and this is going to be expanded and turned into a miniseries event from here for Canadian television, and one can already sense there's much more to tell at its edges -- Bones of Crows mainly focuses on Aline, the eldest daughter of the Spears family, but you can see how every branch of this tree has a much bigger tale to tell. Even if it's simply a case of the storytelling and performances being so rich in this abbreviated film version that it simply out hints at all of those complex untold stories, that's gold star experience enough for the movie we already have -- that these people feel multi-layered and inexhaustible in fascination is the exact opposite of a problem. We might get those stories told down the road but the film's nudges toward a broader scope is already damned fulfilling. 

The main character of Aline Spears is played by three actresses in the different periods of her life -- Summer Testawich for the start, Grace Dove for the middle, and Carla-Rae for the end. Naturally we spend the most time with Middle Aline and so it's Dove we're gifted most of the film's runtime, and what a gift. What a face, a presence. She grounds the entire epic, the hub by which all else spins. While the darkness that youngest Aline goes through at the "residential schools" -- a Canadian tradition where Indigenous children were torn away from their parents and "re-educated," leaving behind mass graves in the process -- echoes and reverberates out across her entire life, it was the film's passages under Dove's care, her romance with a fellow Cree named Adam (Phillip Lewitski) and their problematic lives together, that hit me the hardest emotionally. And a lot of that's due to Dove's astonishingly open face, a wonder to watch.

Even if Bones of Crows isn't quite mini-series length yet it feels in this form overarching, it feels total and whole, and the weight of all of it might wash over you at the end like it did me -- I was an emotional mess by the credits. You really feel like you've lived these folks' lives, walked in their shoes, and been fed the empathy needed to stop letting stories like this go untold for infernal ages. The bodies our forebears have trampled over and buried will wait as long as it takes for us to speak their names, and will haunt us every step of our ways, our children's and their children's ways, until we do just that. There is no freedom for one, only all.

Leave So Good

The final official poster and trailer for Park Chan-wook's new movie Decision to Leave have arrived today -- this film just played TIFF and I managed to review it for that, you can read my very positive thoughts right here. It's another marvel from the master! I know some people think it's too complicated for its own good and I was worried it was that for a bit myself but I thought he brought it all crashing in together beautifully in the final act. Anyway if you haven't been paying attention this movie tells the age-old Film Noir tale of a detective falling for the widow he's investigating but as with anything Park it's so much more. DTL is also playing NYFF here in NYC in a few weeks -- I will probably see it again then, on a big screen this time huzzah! -- but y'all don't have to wait too much longer after that as MUBI is releasing the movie on October 14th in theaters. Here's the trailer:

 

TIFF Review: Master Park Returns, All Hail

The first thing is a pop of orange. Detective Hae-jun (Park Hae-il) has come upon a crime scene, or what could otherwise maybe be an accident -- a man has fallen (or been pushed) off a steep mountain he'd been climbing, and his body lay shattered at the bottom. So in order to best preserve the evidence the detective slips on two traffic-cone orange plastic gloves to start a'pokin. And your eyeballs burst like bubbles just by looking at them -- the way they perfectly set off against the green-blues of the surroundings, the gray of the outfits. And you immediately say to yourself, "Oh right I am watching a Park Chan-wook movie." And you think how lucky, lucky, lucky we are for being in that fact.

This is how Decision to Leave, Master Park's first movie since he gave the world the stone-cold masterpiece The Handmaiden in 2016, kicks off -- a dead body, a pop of orange, and approximately one thousand question marks scratched down the wall of stone that the man's body tumbled along to its death. There are also mysterious scratches in the man himself, not to mention lingering close-ups of the hungry ants currently strutting their business across his unblinking eyeballs because, again -- it's a Park Chan-wook movie. But this murder mystery to-be is also a strange and wonderful romance, turns out, and those ants will come up in conversation a little bit later as a sort of romantic foreplay? Like I said: Park Chan-wook movie!

See, South Korea loves their detective stories, and Decision to Leave is definitely one of those -- a very good one, in fact. Perhaps one for the ages. But it's so particularly individually special, it's own singular thing, because it's from the man who gave us the extremely patient multi-act unraveling of story-threads in The Handmaiden. The same man who gave us the unexpected quirks of character colliding in service to sex sparks in I'm a Cyborg But That's OK. Which is to say that Decision to Leave takes its time and it goes about its own quirky little path and to be honest I wasn't sure if I was actually in love with it until its final act? How dare I doubt the man, admittedly. But it's been six years! And I'd forgotten how he spins his webs. So as he's ever wont to do Park's playing a long game, and it takes some time for its keen majesty to reveal itself, with all its peculiar particularities -- particular peculiarities? -- adding up to the sort of mountain you'll happily fall off of, time and again. Destroy me, Master Park. Destroy me over and over again!

To that mind there's a reason this movie is set in a seaside town shrouded in mist -- besides the fact that "seaside towns shrouded in mist" are one of the greatest of all the movie settings. It's because like those orange gloves and like those eyeball-ants Park's delicious stylistic flourishes, which seem to obscure intent to some critics -- he gets (wrongly) accused of the ol' style-over-substance so often -- become metaphorical markers through the mist along the way. Park, film to film, seems intent on creating a new language every single time, where the progression of colors indicate story-arcs as clearly as do sly longing glances between characters. The wallpaper is telling us a story, y'all! The story, even! Park is a filmmaker from the Hitchcock School where every dollop of production design and costuming is informing every beat, and you're wise to pay close attention -- I have no doubt this movie will unveil itself even further with multiple viewings, all its unexpected savory flavors rising to its fore.

Especially in a story as seemingly front-obscured and loopy as this one, where character's true intentions plant themselves firmly in that self same fogginess, until its devastating final moments. See, that dead body found bashed up at the bottom of the mountainside in the film's opening was a man who had a wife. That wife's name is Seo-rae (Tang Wei), and she's a Chinese immigrant living in South Korea who spends her days taking care of elderly women. She seems kind straight-off, and she's very pretty of course. And so Detective Hae-jun in the way of all film noir detectives meeting their femme-fatales for the first time finds himself intrigued. Too intrigued for anybody's good doing. Especially when she doesn't react to her husband's death correctly... or in much of any way, really. And the first act speeds through this stuff we've seen so many times before with a shorthand we get well enough -- Hae-jun becomes obsessed watching Seo-rae's every move through his binoculars, through recording devices and interviews, all while his own wife at home goes ignored...

And that's all I really feel like saying about the plot. It's not about the plot, it's about how it's about it, if you catch my drift. And Park, novelistic and dense and stirringly achingly beautiful to behold, is firing on all his master filmmaker cylinders here. There are five second long shots of hands in handcuffs sitting centimeters apart that say more and stir more emotion than some filmmakers manage with entire movies. And effortless wit -- the man can frame a shot so it's immediately funny, without ever forcing it an iota. it just happens, and it's over, and you're reeling, catching up. Watching a movie like Decision to Leave is just like being fed, it's a feast of color and framing and character, of story so rich you smack your lips. Park Hae-il and Tang Wei are broken-heart and throbbing-soul and diabolical silliness -- this is another master love story from the master, bubbling with perversity and sweetness in perfect appointment. There just ain't nothing sweeter than soaking in the full Park Chan-wook experience, finest hair to smallest toe.