The Night Clerk (2020) - Movie Review

This is something I’m likely going to get into more detail with a review I can already see approaching early next year, but just to get it out in the open: I don’t have an inherent problem with non-autistic people playing those on the spectrum. Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Asa Butterfield, and Ben Affleck aren’t on the spectrum (far as I know, at least), and yet their respective depictions in Mary & Max, X+Y, and The Accountant still resonated with me.

Being able to depict something that close to my heart in a truly empathetic way means the world to me, regardless of the status of the actor doing it, and while I get the problem with the lack of IRL autistic representation in these movies (it’s been happening for so long, it’s become the norm to the detriment of working autistic actors), that on its own isn’t the issue. It just adds salt to the wound when the film’s understanding of the condition is already as fucked as it is in films like The Night Clerk.

Under The Silver Lake (2019) - Movie Review

The latest from It Follows writer/director David Robert Mitchell is… a tough one. Like, this is the kind of film designed to be looked at over the course of several months just to figure out what in the fresh hell is even going on. It’s a puzzle film, and like the best of its kind, all of the pieces are presented to the audience, even if it isn’t entirely obvious that what is being shown is part of the completed picture. After having to admit to my previous critical shortcomings a few times already this past month, I’m in the mood for some serious deep diving, so if the following review comes across like the desperate scribbles of a madman, not only is that likely accurate, it’s also fitting for the film itself to be analysed in this way.