Table 19

Sometimes, a wedding just isn't a happy ending.

Beware The Slenderman

An interesting surprise of a documentary, in that this look at the Slenderman assault in Wisconsin starts out as a look at memes and how they propagate and how this affected the two attempted murderers but then slowly shifts into a look at how mental illness was a factor. It's that second part that was much more interesting to me, as I was pretty much familiar with all the meme stuff (Creepy pasta, got it, Richard Dawkins, eh, memetics, so forth and so on). But the interviews with families of the girls involved in this get deeper and more complex as everyone tries to come to some sort of understanding of what happened (and jeeeez, did I feel for the parents of the accused).

2017 - Written and directed by Irene Taylor Brodsky

Jug Face

An interesting and smart horror film by way of the Lucky McKee crowd. Chad Crawford Kinkle hasn't quite made his May or The Woman yet, but this certainly shows some good potential. Lauren Ashley Carter is a standout here as a young woman in a backwoods family cult who tries to escape her fate. Damn nice Sean Bridgers performance as well.

2013 - Written and directed by Chad Crawford Kinkle.  Starring Lauren Ashley Carter, Sean Bridgers and Sean Young.

Under The Shadow

What do you do when the people outside are worse than the horror inside the house?

Stranger Than Paradise

1984 - Written and directed by Jim Jarmusch.  Starring John Lurie, Eszter Balint and Richard Edson

★★★★

Not all of the Jarmusch I've seen has worked for me, but this, his first proper feature, is the kind of slice-of-life weirdness where I think his strength lies.  Sometimes, that slice is of on-again off-again vampires in Detroit trying to just make their way in the 21st century and sometimes that life is a hitman who follows the bushido code as he protects some really, really low-rent mobsters.  There is a joy in his best movies about finding the specialness in the every day, even if sometimes it might feel a bit fantastical.

Moonlight

2016 - Directed by Barry Jenkins.  Written by Barry Jenkins based on the play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue by Tarell Alvin McCraney.  Starring Alex Hibbert, Ashton Sanders, Travante Rhodes, Janelle Monáe, Naomie Harris and Mahershala Ali

★★★★★

Sometimes,  a movie just works from beginning to end and when you search for something, anything to criticize it starts coming down to "oh hey, I'd have liked more of this one thing."  Such is Moonlight, the story of a young boy in Miami searching for his identity in three separate phases of his life.  We first meet him around ten, called Little, as he's dealing with a mother sort of keeping it together as a nurse who also has a crack habit and also dealing with bullies chasing him from school.  It's the sort of thing where you can tell this has been going on for a while and could be going on for quite a while more.

The Last Emperor

1987 - Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci.  Written by Bertolucci and Mark Peploe

★★★★ 1/2

Such a sad, small epic of a man who was bounced from golden prison to golden prison and then finally to walls of concrete and a sad end. I dont' quite buy that Pu Yi had that serene of an ending, but nonetheless it's a great movie  about his poor life.