LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT — SHOCKTOBER!

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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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LOVE FOR SALE:

SEAN BAKER'S CINEMA

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.

MIDSOMMAR — SHOCKTOBER!

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Writer/director Ari Aster's brilliant horror/social satire is a film that would make M. Night Shyamalamadingdong jealous, very jealous.

"Midsommar" is everything that M. Night imagines his movies to be, but are not. Namely, being truly terrifying, albeit with a keen wit regarding theme and plot development. Smart.

Bold.

You want "character-driven"?

Well here it is.

Carried by Florence Pugh's flawless performance, "Midsommar" could have yet been improved upon with a good 12 minutes of editing.

Nonetheless, Ari Aster isn't afraid to shock his audience into submission. If ever there was a Halloween movie guaranteed to shock you, "Midsommar" is it.

Prepare for the worst.

This is one brutal movie. Not for the faint of heart.

"Midsommar" will not be everyone's cup of tea.

That said, if you're down with Aster's nuanced restraint, even his graphic depictions are engaging.

The violence is just literal enough, but you can clearly make out rubber from flesh.

The cycle of life, as carried out in a dystopic Swedish cult community, is the social Petri dish that Ari Aster uses to examine death, for the complex confusion and fear that it instills in all humanity.

Indoctrination is an essential part of the cult plan.

There's even a slasher-film aspect to "Midsommar" that tips its hat to black comedy.

All you need to know going into this transgressive (if surrealistic) film is that it covers: animal abuse, cannibalism, incest, suicide, matricide, homicide, and some serious fucking.

My work here is done.

Get thee thinking cap on.

Rated R. 148 mins.