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Posts Tagged ‘Joe Swanberg’

Nights and Weekends

Tuesday, February 13th, 2024

Hey, you know Greta Gerwig, director of last year’s biggest movie, BARBIE? Whose two previous films LADY BIRD and LITTLE WOMEN were also great and also best picture nominated? Do you remember that she used to be an actress in no budget talkie film festival movies?

It’s cool how quickly we can adjust to those transformations. They seem so strange at first, but then they stick. Stuff like “Bradley Cooper, Oscar nominee” seems unlikely and amusing at first, then pretty soon it’s the most normal thing in the world. At first Gerwig was this rising star of indie movies, she had cool hair, played adorable space cadets, seemed like somebody I would’ve wanted to be friends with or had a crush on when I was younger. I don’t think I saw LOL or HANNAH TAKES THE STAIRS, the two Joe-Swanberg-directed movies that got her started, so I first knew her from BAGHEAD and THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL. (read the rest of this shit…)

You’re Next

Friday, August 30th, 2013

tn_yourenextIn YOU’RE NEXT, a group of adult siblings and their significant others gather at their rich parents’ big ass, miles-from-where-anyone-can-hear-you house to celebrate their anniversary, but get invaded by 3 or more maniac killers wearing plastic animal masks. This is kinda the new subgenre, isn’t it? Faceless killer home invasion movies, like ILS (THEM), THE STRANGERS and THE PURGE. ILS was genuinely pretty scary, THE STRANGERS was for a while, and I didn’t watch THE PURGE but it looks hilarious. YOU’RE NEXT isn’t quite as tense as those other two I saw, but it’s more fun.

All of the web guys have been hyping this one up since it premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and Fantastic Fest two years ago, so I’m not surprised that I’m seeing a little mini-backlash from people I know. But I don’t really blame anybody. It’s easy to see how people at a film festival see a brand new movie, are excited to tell everybody about it, it takes forever to come out, but they really want people to see it so they do everything they can to promote it, and by the time everybody else finally gets to see it it sounds like it’s supposed to be the Second Coming when it’s really just a fun horror movie. Which, in my opinion, is worth telling people about, so I appreciate the tip.

For me this was not a KICK ASS situation where it seems like you must’ve had to be there at that one midnight screening to have any idea how people could enjoy the movie that much. My smaller 7:50 multiplex audience for YOU’RE NEXT was laughing and enjoying themselves too. (read the rest of this shit…)