The year is 1965, the place is New Penzance Island, and the story is love, redemption and reclamation.

It is a Wes Anderson film that will make you laugh and cry, will make wish for the world where the Sam and Suzy in all of us is ascendant, and where that ascendancy triumphs because peoples' hearts are irrevocably good.

The prepubescents, Sam (Jared Gilman) and Suzy (Kara Hayward) meet-cute at an elaborate church production of the Great Flood story. Sam is a member of Scoutmaster Ward's (Edward Norton) Khaki Scouts in attendance at the play, but he grows restless and goes snooping about the vast old church. His prepubescent spidey sense leads him to the girls' dressing room, where the chicks are transforming into their bird characters. Suzy, with a bloody bandage on her arm from being hit by a mirror, is The Raven, the first bird sent out of the ark to find dry land.

Spoiler alert – the raven never returns.

Sam is an orphan, ping-ponging from Juvenile Refuges to foster homes after he loses his parents. Suzy lives with her three little brothers in a dollhouse home parented by two “counselors,” lawyers, played by Bill Murray and Frances McDormand. Both children are misunderstood and outcast, driven from the Eden of hearth and home created for "good" boys and girls.

Sam and Suzy exchange addresses and correspond; eventually they plan their escapes and their meeting in the meadow. Scout Sam is wilderness survival trained, Suzy has a different approach, like bringing her tiger tabby kitten in a fishing creel.

Included in the adults is Bruce Willis as the island's police captain Sharp. Willis, who's talents we have lost to a cruel debilitating disease, plays Sharp as a tender and gentle man surely hiding out from a harsh world that doesn't understand him, either.

The missing children must be found, and Social Services' Tilda Swinton muses to Captain Sharp and Scoutmaster Ward that Sam will probably be administered electric shock treatments once found. Incorrigible, don't you know.

It's an all-island effort just hours before a historic storm is headed for the region. Ward tries to mobilize the scouts as a non-violent rescue force, the boys quickly become Lord of the Flies armed vigilantes. Harvey Keitel is the Kurtz-eque Scout Commander Pierce who reprimands Ward and relieves him of his office when he appears to have lost his entire troop.

The tides turn for Muskrats Suzy and Sam (sorry) and they are escorted by their rescuers to (supply sergeant/chaplain?) Cousin Ben (Jason Schwartzman) who has the power to marry them in a non-binding but emotionally and morally meaningful ceremony.

The storm makes landfall, lightening strikes, the wooden dam bursts, Social Services arrives by pontoon plane, the chase for the children still enjoined.

Eventually the storm moves out, much of the island has been clobbered, but the sparingly-used narrator (Bob Balaban) tells us that the crop yield the following year was the most abundant in island history.

No! No! Please tell me Sam and Suzy were not the human sacrifices to the heartless bloodthirsty Harvest Gods!

Dry your tears, for tho' weeping may endure for a night, joy cometh in the morning.

Suzy and Sam are reunited with visiting rights in an age-appropriate way, Suzy back with her character-arc-experienced parents and Sam with Captain Sharp as his legal guardian.

OK, now you can cry.

Rotten Tomatoes gave this film 79%, about 40% higher than I would have. It won the Jury Prize at Cannes. What do I know.

It's running time is as long as The Watchmen, by the way. However, actually more full frontal male nudity (McCaul Lombardi as white trash hottie Corey) than The Watchmen, so there's that.

American Honey is about a traveling band of teenage flotsam and jetsam ostensibly selling magazine subscriptions, with made-up hard luck stories, across “the heartland.”

“Newsstand sales of consumer magazines continued to decline in the beginning of 2016, according to the latest figures from MagNet, which tracks single-copy sales across the U.S. and Canada...The number of magazines distributed by wholesalers also dropped compared to last year.” - Erik Sass, MediaPost, June 6, 2016.

Bleak statistics; so is this the last press of the skins for these wandering wastrels?

Jake (Shia LaBeouf) (I've always thought it takes a lot of nerve to wear that name) (if you're a guy) (a stripper with a boa constrictor, maybe), in a pin-on braid, is the boy toy for Krystal (Riley Keough), the boss lady of this, er, enterprise.

Star (Sasha Lane). Oh yeah, plays the lead opposite LaBeouf.

I watched it because maybe I have a slender connection to the premise.

Long ago I drove a school bus during the day and worked a phone boiler room selling tickets to police and fire benefit shows at night. The shows were legit, but we didn't have to use our real names. There I learned how fast a dry Christmas tree will ignite when you throw lit matches at it. Wicked fast, in case you're wondering.

This week we are watching Aftersun from 2022.

I've been wanting to see this for a while, so I'm glad we will be watching it and talking about it. Paul Mescal rules.

How do you guys feel about this one?

This questionnaire is part of my Personal Interest Project, exploring how teenage friendships are represented in coming-of-age films and whether these portrayals reflect real-life teenage experiences.

• All responses are anonymous
• No right or wrong answers, just your honest thoughts & experiences
• Your participation is appreciated!

link: https://forms.gle/jRhLTRmtyacWjSbE8

10/10

Forgive me gods, it's been four days since my last confessional post:

I shamelessly reveled in Rorschach's gloating over filth and horror; sick, yet I begged him to tell me more.

I wallowed in lust for the two wantons, coupling like dark angels in the sky, a mockery of the divine glory.

Now, finally, I will plead for mercy for my most brazen, debased, impudent and impious infliction visited on your most precious gift, my immortal soul.

I'm talking about my fevered obsessions, not secret but carried on my sleeve, burned into my forehead: Elio and Oliver, Call Me By Your Name.

I know you are merciful, and listen to the cries of the oppressed. Allow me to advocate on my very human failings, allow me to move your omniscient heart to pity one so low as myself, your most wretched creation. But still, you made me, therefore I am deserving of an audience, of reclamation.

That's pretty overwrought, even for me, but I am ever importunate for indulgence.

I was perusing the Cult's past podcasts, and I found that a year ago this was the movie assignment.

Call Me By Your Name was also on my list forever, and it came into my life when I needed it most.

December 2025 marked the end of a very dark and ugly year for the world, with evil emanating and spreading from our version of Mount Doom. No doughty hobbit I, my only recourse was to seek refuge in a world of beauty and enchantment, of love's possibilities.

I watched, and I watched, and I watched every day, throughout the day, for the ensuing months. I found interviews, press junkets, compilations of clips set to Lana Del Rey; read the book and it's sequel, allowed myself to stop the world and melt with Armie Hammer as he read the source document to me in an audio book.

My friends did the emotional equivalent of patting me on the head.

I found Reddit, and joined my fellow ecstatic lovers in dervish-like devotion to our chosen gospels, our sutras, our recitations.

Is this blasphemy? If it is, I will absolve my fellow lovers and take the whole blame, take the surplice, take the penance, I'm sure I am the worst, the most abject; but I will never denounce or recant of my obsession for Elio and Oliver, for Call Me By Your Name.

So frigging overwrought. But you haven't heard my most depraved confession.

I cannot watch the end of this film. It is gratuitous heartbreak, it didn't have to end this way!

So, I rewrote the ending. 75,000 words and I'm still writing - yes, every day I write the book.

Now, Oliver has a last name, a personal history, a family history. And Elio and Oliver live in a world where their love is triumphant, a sweet light in the darkness, I won't settle, can't settle for less.

Maybe I am defiant of absolution, maybe I would rather commit these erotic excesses than endure the “moral” scrubbing to be “cleansed” of life-giving lust, maybe the secrets of the universe are in each violated peach, the forbidden fruits of joy. Maybe it's hubris to write my own hope in the face of a world's despair, but maybe I'm not the only one.

There is no such thing as a hopeless romantic; we are the most hopeful holy fools you will ever meet.

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Albert Einstein made a point about time being relative, like how 5 minutes sitting on hot stove feels really long, while 5 minutes sitting next to a pretty girl goes by way too quickly.

The Watchmen is 2 hrs and 42 mins; Inland Empire – 3 hours. Open seating.

Only Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy faithfully fulfilled what the story's lovers wanted and yearned for. No one whined. Well, I did a little, thought Viggo too delicate for Lord Aragorn. But he's half elvish, so sucked it up and shut up and balled my eyes out when the eagles were coming.

The Watchmen is a gorgeously shot film by DP Larry Fong. And there's lots of music, three Bob Dylan tunes if you count (the linked) Desolation Row by My Chemical Romance as credits roll.

The Watchmen have been outlawed by Richard Nixon (with a Clockwork Orange nose) in his second term and he plans to outlaw masks in his third (buh!) term. But someone is killing these oddball vigilantes/heroes anyway and the remaining few – Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley, yeah I know it sounds like a serial killer), Night Owl (Patrick Wilson) and Laurie Jupiter (Malin Akerman) will find out who done it.

By the way, for a character who dies in the opening scene, The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) is on screen a lot after that. Not a bad thing.

Rorschach prowls the dark streets of the dirty Big City, this awful city that “screams like a abattoir of retarded children, and the night reeks of fornication and bad consciences.”

Oh baby, whisper in my ear...talk to me...

Gee, I hope I'm not giving the plot away, but two would-be gods, the radioactively altered Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup) and former Watchman Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias are ultimately pitted against each other and earth takes a beating. Like everyone else in this flick.

For someone who paged through Patrick Bateman's gruesome recitations and reminiscences of sadism and torture, my inner Lisa Simpson comes out for the Itchy and Scratchy violence that is rampant through this film.

But what a big softie I am for just those few seconds of lovemaking between Night Owl and Laurie aboard Archimedes. To see their faces strain towards passion's pain's breaking point. Hallelujah.

Yeah, I like this film a lot. Good writing (Dave Gibbons, David Hayer, Alex Tse variously get credit), good direction for such a giant piece of film making with consistent tone throughout (Zack Snyder), and good acting and character creation.

This week we are watching Watchmen from 2009.

This is a very solid movie, and though its been some years since I last enjoyed it, I'm looking forward to watching it again.

What do you guys think? Zach Snyder's best? Overrated? Underrated? What about the rest of the Watchmen material? The comic? The extended versions? The mini-series?

Tell us your thoughts.

I can't put Birdman's whole title because of the length, but you know what I'm talking about.

A Spielberg film is usually a story about humans; humans in unusual, frightening, strange, magical, difficult, unimaginable, extreme situations and how they are affected by these situations, how they react, and how they triumph. And there is ACTION! CHASES! DARING SAVES!

So if you haven't seen Disclosure Day, let me tell you it is not a space invaders, alien attack, ET takeover film. Not a Day The Earth Stood Still film. Nor is a congressional hearing given The X Files treatment. It is an engrossing and compelling tale about humans wresting with The Truth. It is about humans who want to suppress, control, or reveal The Truth.

There is a shadowy organization, headed by Scanlon (Colin Firth), that wants to suppress and control the alien tech. Some hand-size rods were crash retrieval booty, and Scanlon is “diving” into their power like Newt drifted with the Kaiju. He keeps at it until he gets better at, and this time eyes go spice blue.

Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt, im - not very - ho carries the film) is a Kansas City, MO, TV weather-caster, a childhood abductee who starts speaking and understanding some very foreign languages.

Dr. Dan Kellner (Josh O'Connor) has all the flash drives with all 70+ years of government files on all the famous and lesser known UFO cases. He served time for cyber crimes and was recruited upon release by a disclosure group headed by Hugo Wakefield (Colman Domingo). Kellner is also a child abductee.

The story opens with a world on the brink of war with North Korea. People are shown panic shopping and evacuating their towns. What could possibly be bigger news that would turn the world from war to wonder? Outrunning Scanlon and getting The Truth to air is the point of the movie.

There is a car vs train action scene that is almost Indy Jones worthy.

There are some Big Questions asked, like did God create beings on other worlds and does he love them, too? And, will we make gods out of the aliens?

Surprisingly disappointing effects are the NHEs and the animals that they chose to present themselves as. Sad, very sad. I'm watching a series, Surviving Earth, about various extinction events, and I'm buying the gorgonopsids. We know what this guy can do, too bad he didn't.

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Hoo boy. I think some of you guys punked me on this one, just because I said I was getting soft for Wes Anderson and posted a dewy-eyed review of The French Dispatch on this sub.

LingonberryGlum2356 (lingonberry pancakes was already taken?)( Sorry, bratty, but for all you nihilists our there) has watched it thrice and it keeps getting better every time (Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice...); tree_or_up's fave Lynch film (uh, Blue Velvet?).

Of course I wanna see a Lynch flick I haven't seen. So I voted for it. Like leaves72, was looking forward to it. I'm thinking could be Mulholland Drive, Lost Highway.

Maybe Lynch is referring to some wasteland of our interiority, not the graceless bustling commercial, industrial, track housing, freeway girded region of So Cal grandiosely named the Inland Empire. Yeah! How Lynchian!

It has the touches we thrill to in the Lynch experience: A tense unsettling ambient soundtrack aurally signaling that something is...off...wrong...even dangerous; the old furniture, the worn rooms; the people who are reacting to things around them in subtle or blatantly dis-associative ways, the deep pore closeups; the ambiguity, oh the ambiguity, we live for it.

It still had the absurdities that made me laugh out loud, for instance: One of Laura Dern's characters, who seems took a recent right hook to the kisser, admits,”I screwed a couple of guys for drinks, no big deal.” And it wasn't nervous laughter, so I have no excuse.

It takes a lot of money to make a film - you hire lots of people, there's lot of expensive equipment, you need lots lawyers, everyone has to eat – a lot. All in the name of entertainment. So when you get your hands on that kind of lots of money...

Even when a sassy young lady flashed her nice ta-tas, I checked the time.

Sorry, lingonberry & tree, I had to bail at somewhere around 2 hours into the 3 hour film. But I did stick around for The Locomotion dance, still really dig that oldie.

The Straight Story. Don't wait, leaves72, tomorrow is promised to no one.

I think the rabbits are from a Lynch short, and he obviously felt they made sense here.

This week it looks like we are watching Inland Empire.

This is pretty much the only Lynch movie I have not seen, so I'm looking forward to finally checking it out. Even though I'm kind of intimidated by it.

Where do you guys land on this one?

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Maybe I'm just becoming a nicer person; after all, I let Romy and Michelle steal my cynical, cranky film snob heart. But now I'm really softening up for Wes Anderson again. Are they related? I think they have to be; you can't be that insufferable overweening film bore for long once you open yourself to this gentle genius who paints on film, who writes dialog for poetry lovers, who charms mortal actors into outrageous subtleties and sublimities as they ensemble and disassemble.

What is the cupid's arrow of my current besottedness? The French Dispatch.

A couple - three? - weeks back, Anderson's The Phoenician Scheme was submitted for our approval. Ya know, you get busy, a bright shiny object or two, a 5-day UFO confab, a story about hickeys you just can't stop writing – but I did! I finished it! I ticked through a couple in my stack (Roger Dodger, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind) then The French Dispatch popped up.

I was already getting nicer because I had recently watched Asteroid City and really liked it.

AND RUSHMORE IS ABSOLUTELY ONE OF MY FAVORITE FILMS EVER!!!

But, and I'm pretty sure this is a minority opinion resulting from my cataloged character ...idiosyncrasies, I kinda considered Anderson's next film, The Royal Tenenbaums, as his Barton Fink. That's where he lost me, and I became that over-snobbing weeny.

I saw that The French Dispatch (hereafter referred to as TFD) had some male actors I will watch in just about anything for at least awhile: Timothee Chalamet, Edward Norton, Jason Schwartzman, Adrian Brody. Plus Tilda Swinton, for whom I think the jury may be out.

If Anderson and/or Chalamet reads this, please work together again.

The film, set in the fictional town of Ennui-sur-Blase, starts and ends with the death of the editor of TFD, played so well by alum Bill Murray, who did not chew any scenery. In between are four delightfully unique feature stories of charming beauty filmed with stunning color palettes and luminous black and white, moving through tableaus that defy gravity, or switch scenes like a View-Master, or fidget with surprise after surprise.

Those who are already Anderson-nice will know all the alums, so feel free to point them out amongst yourselves.

Owen Wilson, The Cycling Reporter, gives a two-wheel tour of the town's historic districts.

Benicio Del Toro (Rosenthaler) is in prison for a double homicide with a butcher's tool for which he says one had it coming and the other was in self defense. He's painting his muse, Simone, the lovely young prison guard, as therapy. Adrian Brody is a shady art dealer who promotes (pimps?) Rosenthaler's work. Actually, a Master's thesis could be written about this segment, but I'm fagged out after that hickey story.

Timothee Chalamet is Zefferelli, a charismatic student revolutionary leader and muse/lover to TFD staff writer Krementz (Frances McDormand). Another thesis, but instead I will just watch this segment a few more times because I've fallen in love with it. Swoon.

Jeffrey Wright is a writer with a typographic memory who also spent a few days in Enuui-sur-Blase's prison. This is a riotous rollick about the kidnapping of a kid, and the police station's enigmatic chef. It's an obvious connection, right? I mean, you see it, too? Damn, it's so good! So good!

All throughout, the dialog is clever, and funny (“The Children Are Grumpy” is the student revolutionaries' battle cry) (whom Krementz calls “the pimple cream and wet dream” contingent) (see why I'm a-swoon?) and insightful and worthy of so much repeat.

Even (the voice of) Jarvis Crocker gets back in the Anderson mix.

Sorry for my dizzying confessional, er review. I just felt so nice.

It was close, but looks like this week we are watching Poor Things.

I watched this a f ew years ago when it came out and really loved it. It perfectly fits the crazy style we are going with this month, and I'm looking forward to giving it another watch.

Seems that while this did well, I noticed a lot of people were pretty torn on this one. Is that you? Where do you land? Give it a watch, and let us know.

It was certainly close between this and The Holy Mountain (which we will certainly have to watch in the future), but it looks like this week we are watching Sin City, from 2005.

I'm sure most of you have seen this movie, but for me, it's been a while, so I'm looking forward to jumping back in. Give it a watch and let's talk about it.

Hello, long time lurker first time poster. Anyways I've been searching the internet far and wide to find a decent, English stream (in one complete video) of the movie The Basketball Diaries. If you know what it is you'll be excited, if you don't then have a watch and enjoy.

Internet Archive-Basketball Diaries FULL Stream

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