May 25, 2026 • Watched

Super Mario Bros.

For a so-bad-it's-good cult movie, this is one of the greats in my book. It's full of big budget (for the 90s) spectacle and insane creative decisions, the result of too many cooks in the kitchen that's on an airborne plane without wings. Not as tedious as Manos, not as trope-filled as Waterworld, decently paced, full of practical & digital effects, and a time capsule of post-TMNT studio trash. Despite trying to make some serious sense of Mario lore, it's barely recognizable as that IP. Bonkers.

May 24, 2026 • Watched

Whistle

May 23, 2026 • Watched

Undertone

This was a fun scary film. It reminded me a lot of sinister but with an even simpler setting. GOOD SHIT.

May 22, 2026 • Watched

Against All Odds

May 19, 2026 • Watched

Out of the Past

May 19, 2026 • Watched

Idiots and Angels

I like the concept & animation, but it's hardly enough to sustain a feature-length film. Even as someone who loves visual storytelling without dialogue and is on board with Bill Plympton's signature sense of humor and characterization, I found this pretty weak. The plot's thin, the people are stereotypes, and despite a 5-man animation team that's 60% women, it plays into sexist tropes from start to finish. Unfortunately, this belongs back in the 1980s when machismo satire got by without nuance.

May 19, 2026 • Watched

Ichi the Killer

I saw the unedited version of this with spilling guts & jugular sprays a-plenty, and it lives up to its grisly reputation. I suppose the extreme juxtaposition between the over-the-top violence and one character's underdeveloped, pathetic nature is a unique one, but I don't get much from it other than humor. Every person is despicable here. There's not even an antihero to connect with. It's better as a genre film then, and I winced while watching it, for sure. It's fine as pulpy grindhouse fare.

May 19, 2026 • Watched

The Plague Dogs

Quaint as this animation is, I'd like to see it on a big screen. It has a kind of pastoral quality to it despite its depressing premise. Out of the frying pan, into the fire. A couple of plot points require some suspension of disbelief, but otherwise, this holds a scarring, bleak reality within its fantasy-folk style. It's a little dry and long at points; it could probably have been a short film. For a naturalist animal fable about human progress and human evils, it's dour in the right ways.

May 11, 2026 • Watched

Project Hail Mary

If the charisma of this movie was in Nolan's Interstellar, we could have really had something. Gosling is great, of course, and the creative leads have extensive work in comedy and genre fiction. It's an ideal pairing for a studio hit, but personally, I found the compromises made in the science, plot, tone, dialogue, etc. detracted from the gravitas its source material seems to have had. Intellectually stimulating at times, eye-rolling popcorn fare at others. It's good, though. Worth the watch.

May 11, 2026 • Watched

The Last House on the Left

Is it sacrilege to say this movie kinda sucks? I don't care how much the soundtrack is purported to be an intentional tonal clash, it sucks at even that, especially since nothing else in the production is aware there's supposed to be one. Also a case where it's not method acting if the creep is legitimately a creep and the victim is legitimately a victim. Supposedly the shock factor -- very tame by today's metric -- was meant as a Reefer Madness style word of warning, but it's just exploitation.

May 11, 2026 • Watched

Northfork

An incredibly well-made and thoughtful, almost meditative film about impending death that deals more in its sociological aspects than its psychological ones. It's slow, dreary, dreamlike & strange. A whole third of the film seems to occur in the fever dreams of a dying orphan. There's also these six trenchcoated government figures that struggle to pull the hangers-on of a dying town out of their homes before a big flood comes. It all seems more like just a tonal exercise than anything, though.

May 11, 2026 • Watched

The Hitcher

A serial killer flick that sets itself apart by a strange loving sadist relationship between its villain and victim, the main draw for The Hitcher is Rutger Hauer's harrowing performance as the near superhuman hitchhiker that slaughters anyone that he can use as a pawn in his mind game with the "kid" who picks him up. This thing is riddled with plot holes and logic gaps, but it almost doesn't matter if you take it symbolically. Still, the violent bits hold it back from a serious character study.

Apr 23, 2026 • Watched

The Drama

This was a 3.5/5 until my new fav film reviewers in 2026, Fish Jelly, revealed stuff I had missed or not considered. Even so, my big quibble is with the secret twist that comes in the first act, and I'm hearing a lot of that. I, however, don't mind that it is what it is, but I think it isn't a deep enough exploration of this touchy subject for a plot device that could have been any mcguffin. The film is about secrets *in general*. Good acting, though, and smart use of editing as storytelling.

Apr 23, 2026 • Watched

In a Violent Nature

I'm only docking a half star for plentiful plot holes, even though I'd almost argue that they can be reinterpreted as a commentary on plot holes in slasher films. As a plot synopsis, this movie is trope central, but like Scream and Cabin in the Woods, it's the twist that works. In this case, it's not the script but the cinematography, which is MASTERFUL. Wouldn't work without the excruciating gore (which earned it a rare Unrated rating from the MPA). The tension is thick, harrowing & entrancing.

Apr 23, 2026 • Watched

Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom

Having now seen this infamous, now 50-year-old Italian film, I get why it's a classic, why it's in the Criterion collection, and also why it's frequently on disturbing media lists year after year. It's egregious, but its philosophical self-awareness is dead right. In the wake of Epstein, Pasolini warned us about his ilk long ago, but many of us took it to be hyperbole when, well, I guess it isn't. In a post-Human Centipede world, though, shock value is not what it was, so Salo is a real slog.

Apr 23, 2026 • Watched

Exit 8

I was going to say that this should have been a tight 90 minutes, but it turns out it basically was, at 95 minutes. Due to the repetition and non sequiturs, it felt much closer to 120. That's really my main complaint, since the rest is rather good. Given what was a bare bones casual indie game with no lore whatsoever, this adaptation builds out a thoughtful story and new characters that use the liminality of its premise to exceptionally good effect. Fans of J-horror and anime should love this.

Apr 23, 2026 • Watched

Eleanor the Great

I guess I align with many of the criticisms lobbed at this one. Squibb is fantastic, of course, but the script is patchy, the themes are inconsistent, the direction is nondescript, and the takeaways are dubious. For the first time since putting reviews on LavishMade here some 20+ films ago, I really don't have more to say. Just a middling meh that's an easy skip to prescribe.

Apr 23, 2026 • Watched

KPop Demon Hunters

Ok, I finally watched it. It's great. Genuinely. Even as a music maker and critic who is not exactly in love with K-pop, I can recognize a banger, and this has one at every turn. Musicals live & die on their songs, and this thrives. Broadway When? Further- the animation, writing, characterizations are all on point, and with great themes. Turns out we're all demon hunters, huh? And while I mourn the loss of attention spans in feature length media, this ain't slop. It's smart. Genuinely great.