QUEER

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"Queer" searches for a story, but never finds one.

There's good reason that the producers left  William S. Burroughs' name off its title, considering that nothing lines up regarding Daniel Craig's rendering of Burroughs' character from his 1985 novella.

Daniel Craig's "William Lee" ("Bull Lee" in Kerouac's "On The Road") is so obsessed with screwing a handsome young man with all the personality of a mildewed hand towel, that Lee never once sits down to write.

A more boring sex addict/junkie you'll not find on the big screen.

David Cronenberg's filmic adaptation of "Naked Lunch" remains the best cinema adaptation of any Burroughs novel to date.

Most lacking is any chemistry (sexual or otherwise) between Daniel Craig and Drew Starky's Eugene character. Drew Allerton is a poker-faced ex-G.I. ex-pat with nothing but time on his hands.

"Queer" is an open-handed insult to its audience and to William S. Burroughs in particular.

By the time the movie gets around to its big fuck scene, it's too little too late. Not to mention Mr. Lee taking the top position.

Anyway, Jason Schwartzman steals the movie as Joe Guidry, an old Jewish queen who's part of Will Lee's '50s era social circle in Mexico City.

Will Lee's heroin addiction takes over his lost sex addition and all roads lead to a deeply unsatisfying audience experience.

It's cool that Daniel Craig goes full queer Queen but so what? It's just not that interesting to watch when there isn't a cogent storyline to hang the movie on.

Everything about "Queer" screams failed experiment. Luca Guadagnino has no natural instinct for narrative structure.

Guadagnino's cinema is a fake formal style without any foundation whatsoever, save for whatever depth Daniel Craig brings with a brave but limited performance.

Luca Guadagnino is a phony wannabe queer; is there anything worse?

Even Donald Trump sucks fake microphone cock — another phony wannabe queer.

Good sucking vs. bad sucking?

John Waters come back!

Rated R. 136 mins.

ZERO STARS

LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT — SHOCKTOBER!

Welcome!

Groupthink doesn't live here, critical thought does. This ad-free website is dedicated to Agnès Varda and to Luis Buñuel.

Punk heart still beating.

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Wes Craven's debut film is everything wrong with exploitation cinema. Mean spirited to its core, this film's overriding theme seems to be that society is broken up into three categories: killers, victims, and witnesses.

Amateur filmmaker Craven switches tone between horrific sexual abuse, lighthearted comedy, and hippie crushing thriller.

Schlock.

Just ugly.

Actor David Hess's folk guitar songs point in a dead-end direction. Hess takes a piss at Led Zeppelin's "Stairway To Heaven" with a too often repeated song that states, "And the road leads to nowhere."

I suppose it is fitting for such a piece of shit movie.

David Hess plays Krug, a cigar-chomping killer living out his perverted obsessions on two hippie girls that Krug and his "family" kidnap to torture. 

Wes Craven reworks Ingmar Bergman's significant "Virgin Spring" into something cruel and disgusting.

The specter of the Viet Nam War only hangs over the movie with the thinnest of threads.

The sexual abuse and murder scenes are treated without regard to any meaningful subtext. This is a movie without a soul.

There is no social commentary to be found. This is exploitation for exploitation sake.

Gene Siskel put it succinctly in his review of the movie.

"My objection to The Last House on the Left is not an objection to the graphic representations of violence per se, but to the fact that the movie celebrates violent acts, particularly adult male abuse of young women ... I felt a professional obligation to stick around to see if there was any socially redeeming value in the remainder of the movie and found none."

Rated R. 84 mins.

ZERO STARS

ANORA — CANNES 2024

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This ad-free website is dedicated to Agnès Varda and to Luis Buñuel.

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LOVE FOR SALE:

SEAN BAKER'S CINEMA OF SATISFACTION

Sean Baker has stepped firmly into the role of America's most sophisticated, articulate, and socially meaningful filmmaker.

Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Richard Linklater, Ken Loach, and Mike Leigh should be falling over themselves, praising Sean Baker for his filmmaking gifts.

Not the least of which is Mr. Baker's seamless ability to slip intimately between American regions (Florida, Texas, New York City) to create thoroughly researched, locality specific, stories that ring like a bell with authenticity and humor.

Sex-work in America is the topic that Sean Baker continues to mine in all of his films.

Mikey Madison takes no prisoners in her fearless performance as Anora. Russian/American "Ani" works at a Brighton Beach strip club where she meets Vanya (Mark Eidelshtein), the over-privileged son to Russian oligarch, Nikolai Zakharov (Aleksey Serebryakov). 

Shit hits the fan when Vanya's filthy rich folks find out that their son and a stripper are a thing.

Darya Ekamasova is hilarious as Galina Zakharov, a woman with way too much money and power. 

The film's remarkable ensemble cast feeds on the material to achieve incredible set-piece action sequences that explode like indoor fireworks.

"Anora," is yet another film (behind "Starlet," "Tangerine," "The Florida Project," and "Red Rocket") that Mr. Baker wrote, cast, directed, and edited, is yet another quantum leap in modernday cinematic storytelling.

This is a movie that gets into your bones.

It is inspiring that Sean Baker is able to write screenplays with such precise novelistic detail about people interacting in overlooked aspects of day-to-day life in America.

Mr. Baker's dialogue is modernday Shakespearean.

Just stunning.

You want Neo-Modern-Realist Cinema, well here it is. Serious adult filmmaking doesn't get any better than this. All NYU film students should be studying Mr. Baker's films.

You can easily tell in its first 15 minutes why "Anora" won the coveted Palme d'Or at Cannes.

"Anora" is a winner, and an instant classic of American Independent Cinema.

Rated R. 140 mins.