Tag Archives: Arthouse

You Have to See This! Shiva Baby (2020)

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Streaming on Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, HBO Max

It’s unreal that Emma Seligman is a newcomer director when watching “Shiva Baby.” She manages to build and introduce us to what is easily one of the most chaotic and absolutely uncomfortable movies I’ve ever seen. “Shiva Baby” is a master class in making its viewer absolutely uneasy and anxious as Seligman just revels in amping up the anxiety to every single bit of her narrative every minute. Seligman, despite making “Shiva Baby” her work of absolute love, is not one who ever lets her characters off the hook. Despite focusing the entirety of “Shiva Baby” on her central protagonist Danielle, Seligman has a great time making her squirm, panic, and just about heave in sheer horror as she twists the screws on her throughout “Shiva Baby.”

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Pleasure (2021) [LA&M Film Fetish Forum]

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Many times in our lives we spend it eating our meals, but never really knowing how the meal is prepared. We never know how the sausage is stuffed, we never see the cow butchered, and “Pleasure” is, in a way, a look at how the cow is butchered for our entertainment. “Pleasure” isn’t so much an indictment of the porn industry, it’s more so a look at the rough and shoddy experience that is the porn industry and how much it can destroy someone that isn’t quite prepared for it. Our main protagonist Bella Cherry is a woman who will do anything to be a famous porn star, but the question lingers is how far is she willing to go to achieve that stardom?

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Going Nowhere (2022)

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One of the things that being a filmmaker does is it grants you the ability to know the true hardships of really making a film. For an indie filmmaker, simply getting your work out there is not just a labor of love, but it is laborious in and of itself. “Going Nowhere” is thankfully one of the many very good indie productions about making movies. Izzy Shill’s feature film debut is a meta-mock documentary about the struggles that come with getting a movie finished. Along the way she also tackles ideas about human relationships, getting the perfect message across with your film, and the impostor syndrome.

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Belle de Jour (1967) [LA&M Film Fetish Forum]

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Luis Buñuel’s film is not just a celebration of protagonist Severine’s penchant for sadomasochism, but it’s also an examination of her desire for it. When we first meet Severine, she’s riding in a carriage with her husband. After some words are exchanged, he violently tears her off and drags her in to the woods. There she’s tied up, whipped, and savaged by his two coachmen, both of whom delight in taking advantage of her. We then see it’s nothing more than a depraved fantasy from a woman who is absolutely bored. As someone who is a part of the elite, who finds herself in the mountains at a ski lodge every weekend, she desires something so much more that money can buy.

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Triangle of Sadness (2022)

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There’s always a point where fiction begins to catch up with reality, and even sometimes forecast it, and we’re at a pivotal point of pop culture where artists are commenting on the class divide. What with the rich becoming richer and the poor becoming poorer, now more than ever the film world is ripe for commentary through various genres. We saw it with “Glass Onion” and we basically see it with “Triangle of Sadness” which wears its social satire on its sleeve, and relishes in its darkness and penchant for spitting on social structures.

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Juniper (2022) [CINEJOY 2023]

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Director Katherine Dudas’ drama “Juniper” is a powerhouse film, one that thrives on being a wonderful character study and an excellent take on grief. “Juniper” is one of the many films of its kind involving thirty something adults, and a weekend where all the secrets are aired out, but Dudas accomplishes such a great task of making it feel so fresh and new. “Juniper” is that kind of slice of life that really fleshes out its array of characters to suck us in to the situation that our main character finds herself in.

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Infinity Pool (2023)

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Writer/Director Brandon Cronenberg’s horror film promises to be one of the most polarizing, if not the most polarizing, film of the year. It’s a grotesque, beautiful, nauseating depiction of sickening hedonism and amorality in its seductive and repelling. It’s a kaleidoscopic orgy of sex and violence and pure blood thirst that, as art often does, comfort the disturbed, and disturb the comfortable. “Infinity Pool” is the very definition of body horror, a movie that both celebrates and abhors everything about the body.

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Skinamarink (2023)

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**Mild Spoilers Included in Review**

One of the exciting things about intelligent horror is that it can often inspire a lot of debate and interpretations among the fan base. They’re fun to read, and will be with “Skinamarink” now in the annals of the horror film. Like most modern horror, “Skinamarink” built its reputation going viral on the internet with its word of mouth as a terrifying movie. I’m happy to say that “Skinamarink” is quite terrifying but not in the ways you might think.

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