Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret (2023) - Movie Review

While perusing audience reactions to You Are So Not Invited To My Bat Mitzvah, I saw this film show up a few times as either the superior version or a potential double-feature candidate with it. Now, this film has been on my radar for a while now, coming from the maker of one of my favourite modern coming-of-age films. I recognise that, at this point, it’s getting a bit redundant whenever I bring up looking at a film made by someone who made another film I’ve reviewed, since that’s the bulk of my selections for this month thus far (and spoilers, it’s going to keep going).

But in this case, I felt a real need to check this one out because Edge Of Seventeen and Craig’s work on it specifically is the progenitor for the wave of coming-of-age films for girls that we’ve experienced since. Lady Bird, Eighth Grade, Booksmart, Babyteeth… maybe Cuties depending on who you ask, even You Are So Not Invited To My Bat Mitzvah; not only has this led to stories that hadn’t really gotten this level of mainstream attention beforehand finally getting it, but the average for this wave has been pretty damn solid. Even the ones that I’m not in total love with have their merits.

And thankfully, Craig is still tapped directly into that well of inspiration that led to her crafting one of the best coming-of-age films I’ve ever reviewed on here, for her adaptation of a book that I only know the name of because it showed up in one of Dr. Cox’s rants on Scrubs.

The Unholy (2021) - Movie Review

It was inevitable that we’d get to this point. After working as part of the DisneyToon machine in the 2000s, and breaking out into the mainstream to properly embarrass Disney licenses in the 2010s, it was only a matter of time before Evan Spiliotopoulos stopped merely writing unnecessary stories and started directing his own. Admittedly, I wasn’t expecting that transition to take the form of a Raimi-produced horror film, but seeing him attached as director to a new movie still isn’t as shocking as it should be. What is quite shocking, however, is how much this film is already starting to sour in my memory less than an hour after watching it. And my thoughts on it weren’t exactly glowing to begin with.

The Devil All The Time (2020) - Movie Review

This film came recommended to me by a Twitter mutual as a palate cleanser for having sat through Hillbilly Elegy. Have to admit, this film’s been on my radar for a little while now because of just how packed its cast is (up to and including my celebrity crush Tom Holland), and while just about anything would’ve been palatable compared to whatever the hell Ron Howard was thinking, I guess this is the push I need to finally check this flick out.

Corpus Christi (2020) - Movie Review

Here’s a pretty extreme version of ‘fake it ‘til you make it’: Polish delinquent Daniel (Bartosz Bielenia) wants to become a priest, but his criminal history prevents him from doing so. However, when he arrives into a town neighbouring a sawmill he’s supposed to be working at, he starts telling everyone he’s a priest… and they believe him. To the point where, when their own vicar falls ill, Daniel fills in for him and leads the town in their pursuit of faith.

It’s the kind of premise, one that puts deceit and religion directly next to each other, that reads like predominantly atheist cinema on the surface; like a miscalculated team-up of Ricky Gervais and Bill Zebub. However, where director Jan Komasa and writer Mateusz Pacewicz differ (to a gargantuan extent) is that in their exploration of a man who bluffed his way into the Church, they unearth a tremendous amount of queries around ideas of faith, forgiveness, sin, and righteousness.

Hail Satan? (2019) - Movie Review

In my time perusing social media and the many places where the unseen masses congregate to share their views, I have realised a fairly simple equation: The more that a person points the finger at someone for being a Satanist, the less they actually know about what Satanism actually is. Anyone in the mood for a good laugh (and still has the strength of will to use Twitter) should go and check the Church of Satan’s Twitter account, where there are daily iterations of people taking the time to lash out at the Church, while not using a fraction of that time to do some basic Q&A reading so that they know what they’re angry against.

It’s one of those aspects of the modern understanding of religion that always tickles me, and it’s what immediately drew me to checking this documentary out. A chronicle of the Satanic Temple, the more politically-minded side of Satanist doctrine that is more interested in activism than metaphysics, the depiction we are given is one that takes into account the common misconceptions about the movement and, with a devilishly cheeky grin, dispels a lot of the more frequent myths surrounding it.

Boy Erased (2018) - Movie Review

Gay conversion therapy is a tough thing to write about. Partly because it is an extremely harrowing subject that doesn’t lend itself to easy composition, but mainly because I don’t want this review to devolve into me just ranting about the practice. At any rate, it’s something that continues to be administered in far too much of the Western world, and it serves as the main focus of the latest from Australian cinematic titan Joel Edgerton. Adapted from the memoir of Garrard Conley, which goes into the horrifying things that take place within ex-gay therapy centres, Edgerton finds himself in prime form, delivering a story that seriously needed to be told.

Jesus, Bro! (2017) - Movie Review

In the year of some people’s Lord 2014, something happened. A film by the name of God’s Not Dead was released by PureFlix Entertainment. After seeing the rather intense reactions to it online, I checked it out for myself. I didn’t like it. At all. Here’s my review on just how much wrong is contained within. Ordinarily, that would be the end of it: It’s a bad movie, something we get a lot of year-in and year-out. However, this was decidedly different because God’s Not Dead apparently stuck such a chord with both its defenders and its detractors that it spawned, as put aptly by critic and filmmaker Brad Jones, “a golden age of a different kind of exploitation film”.

 

Over the next three years, a slew of similar Christian-oriented cinema began to spring up, from the hardcore apologetics of Kirk Cameron’s Saving Christmas to the seemingly unaware sexism of War Room right down to the furthering of dangerous narrative of God’s Not Dead 2. Brad himself has covered several of these films on video, either in character as the Cinema Snob or just giving his immediate post-watching thoughts for his Midnight Screenings series. However, it seems that his interest in the subject still can’t be sated so he went all-out and made a feature-length production to mock the hell out of this sub-genre. But how did it turn out?

When Black Birds Fly (2016) - Movie Review

Well, after revisiting an underground filmmaker yesterday, I figure it’s only right to continue on this path for a little bit longer. As such, it’s time to look at another indie oddity that I have covered before: Jimmy ScreamerClauz. Last year, I ended up reviewing his work Where The Dead Go To Die, a film I still maintain is one of the most disturbing pieces of cinema I’ve ever sat through. It occupies that area of reception that most people reserve for films like Requiem For A Dream: I loved it, but I never want to watch it again. Well, having discarded any semblance of regard for my own mental health a long time ago, I have watched that film a couple times since and, honestly, it still holds up as easily one of my new favourite films. Naturally, with that opinion still intact, I was definitely curious to see what else Mr. ScreamerClauz could come up with. Time to dive into the madness once more, and may Caine forgive me for this.

Dickshark (2016) - Movie Review

 

”Ben-Hur, the 1959 cinematic epic, is widely regarded as one of the greatest films ever made. It is also three-and-a-half hours long, so between my disliking of overlong cinema and general attention span issues ingeneral, I haven’t gotten around to watching it yet and I’m not even sure if I will. Yeah, I may do my background research where I can, but even I have limits.”

Yeah, I had a feeling that those words would come back to bite me in the arse before too long. We’re talking about Bill Zebub once again, the only director who seems to be trying to push the aestheticisation of rape as well as the king of cringingly slow and awkward sex scenes, and this looks to be something of a new landmark for the guy. I could point to Zebub’s own blurb for the film saying that it is “the most absurd movie that [he] has ever created”, but that’s not why I consider it as such. No, this one marks new levels for his filmography because the film I’m going to talk about today, the rather humourously titled Dickshark, is almost three hours long. The Uncut version available on Vimeo is not only the only copy of the film I could secure in time for a review but it’s also a version that is markedly longer than what will be found on the DVD/Blu-Ray copies of the film. Yeah, I can’t help but feel that this is karma for complaining about long run times in the past. Still, I made it a point of reviewing both of Zebub’s works last year so might as well keep going from here.