Joey Magidson
Welcome back to my Home Movies! This week, we have one of my favorite films of the year hitting shelves in Longlegs. In fact, if you pick this movie up today, you’ll find a quote from yours truly on the box! So, Awards Radar is literally represented in this edition of Home Movies. What else is out? Read on to find out…
Joey’s Top Pick
Longlegs
Longlegs is a horror masterpiece, plain and simple. Again, as my quote that appears on the box states, it’s the best serial killer horror film since The Silence of the Lambs. The movie is unsettling and effective in a way that only a classic can. The flick has the goods, from the vibe to Nicolas Cage‘s gonzo turn, with everything in between. I spoke to filmmaker Osgood Perkins and star Maika Monroe here, while my four star rave review here begins like so:
I’m rarely scared by horror. Now, I love the genre, but the more you know how the sausage is made, an appreciation for scary movies does tend to lead to fewer and fewer actually frightening you. So, when I’m unnerved or even outright terrified by something, it bears notice. With Longlegs, the very essence of the film chilled me to my core. There are some scares to be found, sure, but the movie injects fear into your very marrow. Anything and everything can happen, which puts you on edge. This is a masterpiece of the genre and just out and out art. Nothing I’ve seen so far this year has come close to Longlegs. Yes, it’s that good.
Longlegs is the best serial killer horror film since The Silence of the Lambs. They don’t quite traffic in the same territory, but they’re cousins in some ways, notably in petrifying vibes, impeccable craftsmanship, and just overall quality. Watching this mix of police procedural, occult slayings, and atmospheric stress, you’re able to give yourself over to the filmmaker. For about 100 minutes, you’re allowing the possibilities of a great horror movie to just wash over you.
Also Available This Week
Before Dawn
Despicable Me 4
The Exorcism
Friday the 13th (4K)
Friends: The Complete Series (4K TV)
Mad Max 5-Film Collection (4K)
Paranormal Activity 8-Movie Collection (Blu-ray)
Stardust (4K)
Transformers 7-Movie Collection (4K)
Young Sheldon: The Complete Series (TV)
Criterion Corner
Gregg Araki’s Teen Apocalypse Trilogy
From The Criterion Collection: “Take the conventions of the American teen movie, transpose them to Los Angeles’s freaky fringes, anchor them in an unapologetic vision of sexual fluidity, and top it all off with heavy doses of Gen X disillusionment, gonzo violence, and hallucinogenic surrealism, and you’ll end up with something like these audacious transgressions from New Queer Cinema renegade Gregg Araki. Gleefully mixing slacker irony with raw sincerity, Godardian cool with punk scuzz, the savagely subversive, hormone-fueled films that make up the Teen Apocalypse Trilogy pushed 1990s indie cinema into bold new aesthetic realms, while giving blistering expression to adolescent rage and libidinal desire.”
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Happiness
From The Criterion Collection: “As disturbingly funny as it is audaciously empathetic, auteur of unease Todd Solondz’s portrait of damaged souls reaching out for connection reveals the existential void underneath middle-class suburban “normalcy.” An extraordinary ensemble cast—including Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jane Adams, Lara Flynn Boyle, Ben Gazzara, and Dylan Baker—embodies an array of loosely connected New Jersey deviants, depressives, and misfits, among them a frustrated phone-sex pest, an all-American dad concealing his pedophilic urges, and a lonely woman with a grisly secret, all of whom want just one thing: to be loved. One of the most controversial films of the 1990s, the unflinching Happiness unnerves precisely because it dares to see the humanity in those most often denied it.”
Stay tuned for more next week…
Now I can begin my “Alicia Witt for Best Supporting Actress” FYC campaign.
There you go!