5d2a2m

I typically see Ifa depicted in Nollywood movies with wicked sound effects and Animorphy SFX - it was interesting to see it practiced (and critiqued!) in Bahia, Cinema Novo.

The ritual scenes and their almost tantric dancing were hypnotic. I loved the kissing on the beach scenes. Trying to get one Yemanja's children killed is buckwild but a bold way to the test faith, superstition, and will of your fishing village neighbors

Will put this on at a party

Watched on Tuesday May 13, 2025.

a film that understands how great dancing at a party can feel

Watched on Monday May 12, 2025.

Watched on Sunday May 11, 2025.

Watched on Sunday May 11, 2025.

sinners was soldout at the alamo :(

Watched on Saturday May 10, 2025.

beautifully shot but ooof bummer city

Watched on Sunday April 27, 2025.

Watched on Saturday April 26, 2025.

Certainly the best Shrek and maybe the best sequel of all time?
If not this, then Spy Kids 2: Island Lost Dreams or Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit

That'd put Antonio Banderas in 2/3 best sequels of all time
That lucky dog

The soundtrack is too good. Pete Yorn! Butterfly Boucher & David Bowie!
Though my roommates could've done without the Eels

Tis all for now...

I keep thinking Alex Garland's going to make a war film that critiques the American War machine or atleast subverts the typified 'war is hell' war movie. Then he doesn't :(

This film was a complete assault on the senses, effectively so.
And yet...

Coogler blends music and genre in a way that elevates this Mississippi Delta vampire movie. I loved the world logic that music had the power to thin the veil between realms and connect people across their ancestry, across time.

Wunmi Mosaku MADE this film for me, she's so great as the hoodoo priestess. Plus the whole thing was surprinsgly sexy? Eating pussy in films is back y'all

there are visual sequences of communal in this film that were like water to my throat, when the men in the cell block sing for domingoes + when women gather around maria and let her wail!

there's something about the way people tended to each other in the past and in older films, that I find expansive and disarming. this is how people ed each other, they'd walk on foot to find people who'd been kidnapped and they sit with you when you cried

god bless the criterion channel for cataloguing sensual international films.

fernando was being messy as hell in the spanish countryside, sleeping with all of those sisters. Surprisingly, I found his relationship with their father to be the most erotic of it all because....say it with me, they were friends!

a realer pain

Pica and Tobi''s unlikely, gender playful friendship was like water to my throat. I can't believe that Malik got got :(

Watched on Saturday April 5, 2025.

This review may contain spoilers.

Charles Burnett's my kind of filmmaker: committed to storytelling about place and the everyday domestic squabbles and triumphs of Black people

I love how much this feels like a filmed stage play, all the dialogue's delivered in this embodied, casual, domestic way that makes you feel like your eavesdropping on a dinner party argument or watching people get drunk at a fish fry

Sheryl Lee Ralph? C'monnnnn.
She won the Independent Spirit Award for her performance in this.
Danny Glover did his own stunts, slipping and *dying* on the pile of marbles

I spent most of the film not knowing where we were going and I loved that. It became a road movie. We came upon an underground life/death organized crime syndicate run by Tom Waits?

There's a flurry of amazing character actors that pop-up (Leslie Bibb, Nick Offerman) and the film has this quiet comion for people who want to leave the land of the living, which I really appreciated

good 90 mins or less selection

I programmed Groove in Atlanta at Eyedrum with the help of the Audio Video Club's Cinelogue. I curated a Groove exhibit with BTS stills from the film and copies of the Raver's Manifesto. I threw a dance party that my friends DJ'd.

It was immense!
We fundraised for Goma Actif in the Congo.
Ample people gave me 'the nod' and all was well in the evening

What did Robin Pecknold say?
'In that dream I could hardly contain it"
I felt that 🌙

Watched at 1230am on DVD with the Director's Commentary ON!!!!
Greg Harrison is a marvel, this is such a well-crafted, harm reductionist, community made film that he wrote, directed, and edited after being a part of the rave scene for five years or so. Shot in 24 days. 16mm to 35mm film.

Every scene has background extras and dancers who are actually apart of early 2000s Bay Area collectives like Cloud Factory and Friends and Family. Crew make so many cameos as ravers, party attendees

The altar in the chill room was designed by a woman who specifically makes altars for SF parties!! Plus most of the DJs in the film went on tour with films screenings and spun at after parties in promotion of the film

This model of filmmaking and film sharing is like water to my throat.
I emailed Greg Harrison and got a bounce back email, if anyone can help me reach him so I can say thank you -- you know where to reach me

Watched with my DJ friends at 1am in my living room
They loved it :)

killing for your spouse is back!

I enjoyed all the cunty little speeches and schemes from these heterosexual spies, but this work environment would stress me out!
asking your friend to dinner after forcing them into a polygraph test, freak behavior!

Watched on Wednesday March 12, 2025.

I was astounded by the beauty of the creepers and how unabashedly Nasha was loved (and good at loving). I'd watch this again just to see that

This review may contain spoilers.

on your creepy uncle dying

Top tier rat film, so kinky, surprisingly incestuous and FRENCH!

"Loneliness is a awful awful ting"

Despite it's peppering of hiccups -- James Earl Jones' Jamaican accent was all over the place, Fish's fighting with demons became the loss of a dream?, Poinsettia and Fish could both had the power to see these invisible entities but not each others? ...

These geriatric weirdos falling in love still charmed the hell out of me
Demon ghosts tumbling and bristling in the shaded trees was brilliant too

questlove's musicianship makes him a great music documentary maker, I learned so much about Sly's influence and impact on music

I thought Everyday People was an Arrested Development song - wrong!

loving, even briefly, is always worth it!
there's gonna be one less lonely girl

Watched on Thursday February 13, 2025.

bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh

squelching, metamorphosis cults, and anxiety galore. Together has NEON comedy-horror written all over it, casting dave and allison to play partners in this was peak

This review may contain spoilers.

'I wish I was your phone so you could touch me all day'

Cliqua's short Shut Up & Fish is my favorite short maybe ever? I was excited to find out they were making a feature and loved the semi-autobiographical, doppleganger elements - the whole thing sorta floundered for me in the end but their Drake casting was so close to Drake I didn't care

I could watch Andre Holland bike around Brooklyn forever

Watched on Monday January 27, 2025.

I thought this would be an homage documentary about the freedom house music offered its makers and appreciators, but it was an expose on white music execs capitalising on Black and Brown creative expression

steve dahl's edgelord take down of disco is so boring
disco forever

Watched on Sunday January 26, 2025.

The cinematography was gorgeous. I found myself intermittently distracted from Wishaw's stellar, embodied performance because he and Hall were framed so beautifully. I was impressed by Sachs' alchemization of a transcript into a conversational film a~la My Dinner With Andre, but I was more taken by how the film managed to make me feel like I was invited to eavesdrop on a moving tableau

Homegoing stories are intrinsically about death and life. Rohan Kanawande keenly articulates and enshrines this sentiment in his lilting semi-autobiographical debut feature, which won Sundance’s World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic. Cactus Pears approaches first with its prickly exterior about complex family reunions and death rituals, only to reveal a softer, fleshy nectar and pastoral-set sensual romance at its core.

When Anand (Bhushaan Manoj) leaves Mumbai for his hometown in the Western Indian countryside, he intends to stay just two of the ten days required for his late father’s funeral rituals. Work and metropolitan life demand his attention and the longer he stays in the countryside, the longer he and his mother Suman (Jayshri Jagtap) must field tricky community questions about Anand’s singledom and sexuality. With time, Anand surrenders, choosing to stay for the duration of the ritual which demands he not wash his hair, not drink dairy, sit upon the Earth and receive a deluge of visiting mourners. Vestiges of the past find Anand and Suman as those days , the most seismic of them coming in the form of Balya (Suraaj Suman), Anand’s boyhood lover who never left their town.

The film thrives in the geometric orchestration of bodies in the frame, the simple but not simplistic camera work which lingers on each scene like the formidable quiet after death. Above all, Kanawande visualizes a sliver of queer sensuality that I seldom see celebrated in movies: the ways an interpersonal alchemy can form in the corners of honest conversations, and in pockets of time spent caressing beneath shaded trees

I could watch lonely people fall in love again, forever

oh to be a bespoke piece of furniture

Watched on Friday January 31, 2025.

I want to see everything Eva Victor makes ever

She manages to make a funny, naturalistic film about building a life beyond assault and ive suicidality which is INCREDIBLY hard to do. The non-linear storytelling, the ing performances from Naomi Ackie and Lucas Hedges, the simple camera work, it was so easeful and engaging

I'm excited to see it again

One of the best films screened at Sundance 2025 was pulled then re-added to this year’s program. Video artist Kahlil Joseph’s BLKNWS: and Conditions expands upon his 2018 short BLKNWS. The nearly two-hour cinematic mosaic soldiers together archival footage, filmed fabrications and music to explore Blackness through space and time. Aboard the Osiris, a futuristic sea vessel that serves both as a floating gallery for Black arts and a Black Star Line-esque ship for of the diaspora back to Africa, Joseph introduces a revolving door of real and imagined characters.

The film leapfrogs from prominent figures and movements catalogued in Henry Louis Gates and Kwame Anthony Appiah’s 1999 book, Encyclopedia Africana, to the hallmark memes nestled in the bosom of Black cyberspace (à la Seeking Mavis Beacon). Shawn observes, “It’s like watching an academic veteran in their field pour their entire heart and souls’ work out to you, and as overwhelming, dense and fast as all this archival information is laid out… its hope and energy is so infectious.”

As journalist Shayla (Shaunette Renée Wilson) notes the sensations and reflections of engers onboard the Osiris, breaking news segments about the “British monarchy’s collapse” are spliced into the form, alongside videos of pedestrian four-wheeler tricks, reenactments of W.E.B DuBois’ and Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti’s political contributions, Ron Funches’ stand-up on Black tuba players, SZA’s music, and reflections from Fred Moten and Saidiya Hartman on Black futures. Ambitious and dense in its scope, BLKNWS manages to never bloat. It unspools itself with an elusive ease and ethnographic elegance—no mean feat, considering the impressive editing renders the project some parts documentary, some parts narrative, some parts video installation

Watched on Friday January 31, 2025.

Oh Hi! made me feel like I would carry on, even if I got my heartbroken in upstate New York

Sophie get's something incredibly right about intimacy in this film. How expansive and possibility making it can feel to desire and feel desired, how easily we rupture when people change their minds OR when we change our minds about the possibility of standing in love with someone - how all of its human and happens every day all the time

Molly and Logan refreshingly embody and then disrupt the tried asshole/crazy girlfriend dynamic! There is a coldness we can exhibit when letting someone down (asshole!), a desperation (or craze!) we can possess when clutching, convincing, holding on. But allowing things to change and trusting love will emerge and stay much of the time, this is life's blood.

The Weyes Blood, Clairo, Dino soundtrack goes crazy too!

Angela love of my life, get in the house!

With Sing Sing and Songs from the Hole, I've been feeling more optimistic about the ways we are storytelling about Black life within and beyond incarceration. Rashad Frett's added a notable work to that constellation of emerging films, its textured conversational dialogue, understanding of time theft, and portrait of Caribbean life in Connecticut were especially refreshing to see

Sheryl Lee Ralph and Stephen James performances carried the project for me that's otherwise bloated with the disconcerting anxiety, strain of repair and rebuild that a post-prison life film neccesitates

If I had a grape for everytime I yelped fuck in the theater there'd be a bushel for me and all of my Letterboxd friends!

I love films about women who are unsure of themselves and how to articulate their power, I only wish we better knew who Rebecca was (or thought she was) so we could connect more with her hiccups and shortcomings as they happened.

I'm glad Katarina gave herself permission to make a revealing film about a woman who was sometimes selfish, sometimes desperate for attention, sometimes repulsed about these aspects of herself. I'm excited for her to keep making movies

• Jesus' Son
• Frank
• All That Jazz
• First Reformed
• Black Girl
• What Happened, Miss Simone?
• A Woman Under the Influence
• Half Nelson
• La Haine
• Sorry to Bother You

...plus 37 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Submarine
• Amélie
• Billy Elliot
• Hanna
• How I Live Now
• Beginners
• Palo Alto
• The Breakfast Club
• s Ha
• When Harry Met Sally...

...plus 16 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• The African Desperate
• All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt
• Groove
• Slacker
• Modulations
• 20th Century Women
• Beba
• Sorry, Baby
• Beats

big city boy or girl goes back to hometown in time for a family member to die and secrets to arise during the burial rituals and death ceremonies

• On Becoming a Guinea Fowl
• Cactus Pears

• Megalopolis
• Paterson
• 65
• Hungry Hearts

• Beautiful Losers
• All the Beauty and the Bloodshed
• The Go-Go's
• Marley
• The Punk Singer
• What Happened, Miss Simone?
• Kusama: Infinity
• The Disappearance of Shere Hite
• Modulations

• Paterson
• Lovers Rock
• David Byrne's American Utopia
• Little Women
• Dick Johnson Is Dead
• Save Yourselves!
• Waves
• First Cow
• Hair Love
• A Hidden Life

...plus 33 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Faat Kiné
• Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India
• Paterson
• Bend It Like Beckham
• Lovers Rock
• The Forty-Year-Old Version
• Sylvie's Love
• Hair Love
• Waves
• Jezebel

...plus 41 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt
• Earth Mama
• Saint Omer
• Nanny
• Mami Wata
• A Thousand and One
• Mountains

• Milisuthando
• Theater Camp
• Shayda
• All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt
• Earth Mama
• The Persian Version
• The Eternal Memory
• Kokomo City

the entire film takes place on a train

• Bullet Train
• Snowpiercer
• Train to Busan
• The Polar Express

  mostly counts, hold your water + take it easy

  do you know what kind of train this is?
  have you ever listened to mo bamba?

• The Parent Trap
• Shrek 2
• Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit
• Meet the Robinsons
• Where the Wild Things Are
• Austin Powers in Goldmember
• School of Rock
• Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
• The Perks of Being a Wallflower
• Finding Nemo

...plus 18 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Max Keeble's Big Move
• Sleepover
• Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams
• Camp Nowhere
• Big Fat Liar
• Austin Powers in Goldmember
• The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl
• Scooby-Doo
• Space Jam
• Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen

...plus 4 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India
• PK
• Kuch Kuch Hota Hai
• Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham
• 3 Idiots
• Kal Ho Naa Ho
• Dangal
• Kaabil