In 2023, Matt Johnson's BlackBerry made its North American premiere at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival, to date the only year I've attended, and I missed it. Leaving SXSW and seeing BlackBerry's critical raves (in particular Glenn Howerton's supporting performance), I took missing it then as a big regret-slash-blind spot, and in catching up with it months later, that feeling was correct. BlackBerry was an oasis in the desert of 2023's product-based films, the only such one about…

I love the films of Sam Raimi. Spider-Man 2 is my favorite superhero movie, at once an exciting action blockbuster, an affecting and refreshingly earnest character drama about a good man put through the wringer, and an outlet for a startlingly effective horror setpiece or two. His Evil Dead "trilogy" showcases a fantastic blend of comedy, horror, and frantic, bonkers camera moves. (Ditto for The Quick and the Dead, but for the action-Western.) I'd even call Doctor Strange in the…

Something about this being the first installment, and my first time watching these rather than absorbing them through cultural osmosis as I’d done, made most of the deaths kinda harrowing! The bathtub kill, the series’s first true death, is so simple, spare, and effective; Death had yet to stumble upon the Rube Goldberg machines it would grow to love (well, until the burning house of knives later on in the movie); and the train misdirect does a great job of…

It hits the ground running with a brutal opening kill and the best title treatment of the year, after which it takes a minute (okay, several more minutes than I have fingers) to introduce the Necronomicon proper, but once it does, Evil Dead Rise friggin’ moves, only stopping for the most necessary exposition and having the sense to get in, do its thing, and get (the hell) out. It’s got its Raimi (zooms, frantic tracking shots, a sense of kinetic glee),…

Bodies Bodies Bodies suggested that Rachel Sennott’s best performances come when her characters are mean and desperate (will see Shiva Baby eventually and report back), and to make a long explanation short, Bottoms confirms this. Only the “fucking ride” it was introduced as in the parameters of being the teen high school sex comedy that it is, but it’s consistently funny (I’m torn on whether the size and constant laughter of the crowd were net goods, but whatever), unapologetically and authentically queer, surprisingly…