medialog

• logged on:02-20-2026
• ratings:

Very mixed feelings on this one.

The premise is interesting on the surface, but unfortunately I felt the movie lost me the more it showed its hand with the 'real' meaning of the story.

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In my interpretation of the film, it becomes clear that the fey child represents the repressed trauma that the husband Darcy is unable to open up to his wife Daphne about. 'The child' appears while the couple is living alone together for the first time in a remote location, literally sneaking up behind Darcy while he is alone, and they lurk around the couple's home until they cannot get rid of them-- 'the child', or, really, the trauma, becomes demanding, barricades themself in Darcy and Daphne's bed, screams at the couple to be given a name so that they can be theirs forever, and finally starts to physically destroy the home. The unwanted child cannot be gotten rid of until the couple plays along on the child's terms, treating them patiently and gently and attentively, and lulling them to rest. And, finally, Darcy is able to tell his wife about what happened to him.

I do think that representing buried trauma as a malevolent fey force and presenting coming to terms with it as playing along with the rules of an unknowable force of nature is interesting. I particularly like the way the movie likens a CSA survivor feeling unable or unwilling to put a name to what happened to the idea that you shouldn't give a fey your name, that doing so grants them power over you. Something about this movie just didn't stick the landing for me, though, and it's hard to place what exactly it is.

Seeing other reviews of this movie, I was surprised that other people disliked it for being too opaque and 'weird'. Even though I didn't love this movie, it bothers me how unwilling people are to engage with stories that incorporate folklore and fairytale elements or treat anything with their inclusion as completely impenetrable. It felt very obvious what this movie was saying, a little on the nose at points for me.

also... is this a safe space. The part where Darcy is recording the sound of running a mic through his wife's armpit hair was really hot.

• logged on:02-13-2026
• ratings:

god we are so back

There was a premiere of this movie in my city earlier this year, with a Q+A afterwards with Matt and Jay. I got so excited to go to it that I forgot to actually buy my tickets, and I wanted to drive off a cliff about it. So I'm pretty happy to finally get to see this movie!

It's as good as the best episodes of the show, which is to say it's fantastic. I had an unenthusiastic audience at my showing, which is crazy? this movie is hilarious. And aside from just being funny, NTBTSTM is genuinely a really incredible and impressive piece of guerilla filmmaking and editing. There were so many bits that made me think 'how the hell did they pull this off??'

It's just a really sweet story about friendship, as silly as the premise and the characters they're playing are. Nirvanna The Band forever and ever...

• logged on:02-02-2026
• ratings:

This movie was recommended to me based on my current favorite film, Sweet Smell of Success (1957). At first I wasn't sure where the comparison was coming from, but boyyy does it deliver once it starts going.

I love movies that are laser-focused onto one interpersonal dynamic, especially a mutually poisonous one. The way the dynamic shifts as the movie goes on is so delicious. Barrett is such a rotten character in a way I really enjoy-- that obnoxious way he laughs is a really cute acting choice. The movie's commentary on class divide is very interesting, too. Even though Barrett is a terrible person, I just can't help but root for him... scheming his way into this rich guy's life and ruining it from the inside out, going from serving Tony to forcing him into submission.

Another parallel I find between this and Sweet Smell of Success is the undeniable homoerotic undertones (practically overtones in this film, lol) and the way this is interestingly paired with the two characters' misogyny. It's interesting (and frustrating) how both movies present a pair of men fairly obsessed with each other, and how the women in their lives become casualties of this dynamic; how even when two men in these situations are actively acting antagonistically towards one another, they are still unquestionably allied in acting against women. Barrett worms his way further into Tony's life by turning Tony against Vera, even though Barrett and Vera are partners in the crime.

something something that one post like 'you are gay because you like men I'm gay because I hate women we are not the same'

• logged on:11-29-2025
• ratings:

Very tough watch. I don't know if I'd say I 'liked' this, and probably wouldn't go watch it a second time, but I think it was worth the first viewing. I guess??

The movie, an autobio doc by Joanna Arnow, claims from the outset to be about her boyfriend and 'whether he's a good person'. And he does massively suck-- aside from being degrading and cruel to her, he is a 'performer' who goes onto open mics to give deranged slur-hurling racist libertarian rants to the mostly black audience of a venue in Harlem, NY.

But the documentary isn't really about him?

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Joanna is definitely portrayed as a victim in a dysfunctional and honestly emotionally abusive relationship, and beyond that, just a very sad and lonely person. Still, it becomes clear that as terrible as James is, he is ultimately a weapon that Joanna is using against herself. Joanna is characterized as someone who... hates herself! But beyond that, the relationship has turned into a vehicle for her to hurt herself.

It feels terrible to say that someone with low self esteem sets themselves up to be hurt, but this movie is an act of pressing on her own bruises. She has clearly already made up her mind that James is bad for her, and that she intends to break up with him, but as the disembodied voice of a friend she calls up points out, she needs to ask everyone's take on it. She sits her parents down to watch him both verbally abuse her and have sex with her on camera. It seems like she seeks humiliation not just from him but from others seeing her with him.

There are these insane??? scenes where her editor, a man who insists on being nude the entire time he's on camera in a way meant to degrade her (while also literally doing so verbally), bluntly calls what she is doing self-harm, in the territory of humiliation fetish, and he's kinda... not wrong.

I didn't like this doc very much, but I feel like we are often uncomfortable with talking about how low self esteem can become a nasty form of self obsession, and I can't think of another example of something so candidly showing the self-absorbed nature of hating yourself. Much less from an autobiographical point of view.

There is a shot I keep thinking about, where Joanna is filming James talking while he stands next to a mirror, zooming in on him and herself in the background simultaneously.

I saw a lot of reviews (understandably!) questioning the 'point' of filming her white boyfriend calling his black audience niggers to their faces, but I think it's an important key to how the film characterizes her and her agency. She passively films it, and at a point tepidly asks a black woman if what James says makes her uncomfortable, but never meaningfully has anything to say about or bothers to challenge this behavior of his.

I don't think I would recommend this, but I did think about it for a long time afterwards.

• logged on:11-26-2025
• ratings:

I liked it. This movie was corny, but cute. It felt very much like a high budget cable detective TV special, and I mean that in a positive way. My main issue was the script was a little corny some times, but I really enjoyed it overall.

Josh O'Connor it appears I've grown quite fond of you you come to me as a long lost friend with whom I once picked apples in papa's orchard. His character, a former boxer priest, channels Father Karras from The Exorcist in a very obvious but still pleasant way.

Special shout out to Blanc's outfits in this movie. The 70s style tailoring of his suits looked super good on him. He also gets papa's orchard points for being a fellow CATShead.

• logged on:11-10-2025
• ratings:

Fantastic, devastating movie.

I think I was spurred on to watch it by seeing a quote from Spielberg somewhere about this being one of the most terrifying movies he'd ever seen, and I think that's pretty apt!

(I know all of my reviews technically have a general spoiler warning, but I really encourage you to watch this as blindly as possible.)

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It isn't a movie with big scares necessarily. It is a mystery, but the 'what' and 'who' of the central incident becomes clear to the audience very early. A woman on a trip with her boyfriend goes missing at a rest stop. We are shown the man who did it, and the method of her kidnapping.

It isn't stated or shown outright that he has killed her, and the movie plays with the audience in such an interesting way here. Though we know more of the truth than the protagonist, her boyfriend Rex, who keeps up the search for years after her disappearance, we are in his shoes. You hope that she is alive, and technically it is ambiguous enough that she could be, but deep down you know that she has been killed.

What remains to be figured out is the 'how', and the movie is really less about Saskia than about Rex's obsessive pursuit, no longer of his girlfriend, but of the details of her murder.

I love a good feel-bad movie, and this put a huge rock in my stomach. Again, there is no big scares or on-screen violence, but the horror is in how mundane the evil is.