8 years ago
All posts by Charles Bramesco
“What Now”
What Now, Ash Avildsen's debut as director, writer, and actor, explicitly invokes the name of Entourage only once. But every frame of this nigh-on unwatchable film is suffused with that ghastly program’s regressive gender politics, brutal absence of wit, under...
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“Gerontophilia”
The two closest points of reference for Gerontophilia, Canadian indie stalwart Bruce LaBruce’s latest, happen to be Xavier Dolan and Gregg Araki — though it’s not because of the gayness. While all three auteurs gravitate towards stories of love and loss with a...
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“Kung Fu Killer”
A friend of mine lived in Osaka for a spell. During a conversation on Facebook chat one evening, he mentioned that he enjoyed eating at the local McDonald’s as much as any of the local eateries. At the time, I couldn’t fathom why a guy would travel halfway aro...
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The Agony of Comedy
“In order to become a comic—pay attention—you have to love watching yourself die.” —Lewis Black
In the new documentary Misery Loves Comedy, funnyman Kevin Pollak interrogates the popular notion that comedians must necessarily live wretched lives to fuel their...
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“Monsters: Dark Continent”
In retrospect, Gareth Edwards’ 2010 film Monsters looks more like an audition tape for his covertly profound epic Godzilla four years later. He laid the groundwork for his revival of Toho’s iconic kaiju with Monsters, from the sober-minded assessment of how gi...
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“Clouds of Sils Maria”
“Thinking about a text is different than living it.” Internationally renowned European movie star Maria Enders, portrayed by internationally renowned European movie star Juliette Binoche, speaks these words to her personal assistant Valentine (Kristen Stewart,...
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“White God”
Allegory has long been a handy tool for fiction writers making harshly critical or otherwise potentially inflammatory statements on delicate situations. Cloaking rhetoric in what is essentially an elaborate symbol can make complex commentary immediate and pala...
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Throwing Shade: An Erotic “Fifty Shades of Grey” Fan-Fiction
There’s nothing in this world that gets my blood pumping, that makes my breath shallow, that invigorates my inner goddess quite like trash cinema. I live for the garbage, and I’ve been looking forward to one upcoming release that would satisfy me in ways I nev...
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“Crazy Bitches”
Third-wave feminist theory extrapolates that, in the modern age, women face threats on two fronts. It’s not just that men perpetuate systems of patriarchy that marginalize and objectify women, but also that societal mores constantly pit women against one anoth...
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“The ABCs of Death 2”
2012’s anthology film The ABCs of Death set out with a noble mission: to assemble an international crack team of the finest under-the-radar directors in the scare-‘em game, assign each one a letter of the alphabet, and tie a blood-soaked ribbon around 26 self-...
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