Red Rooms

Digging up turpitude from the deep recesses of dark web opportunism, Pascal Plante’s Red Rooms is a serial killer thriller that finds power in its restraint and shocking prescience: an evil — yet vital — film to understand the stranglehold of postmodern, screen-abetted detachment. Juliette Gariépy’s chilling performance is a roundhouse kick to the teeth to dismantle our culture of macabre obsession, parasocial madness, and growing numbness.

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SXSW 2025 Film Review: Fucktoys
SXSW 2025 Film Review: Fucktoys

A 16mm stunner through a Tarot-inspired, heightened-reality Louisiana, Annapurna Sriram’s Fucktoys is a luscious, filthy homage to lost artforms and the best film out of SXSW this year: a modern day “trashterpiece.” Minor spoilers ahead…

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SXSW 2025 Film Review: Festival Dispatch
SXSW 2025 Film Review: Festival Dispatch

Welcome to my dispatch from this year’s SXSW. Like always, I won’t be writing full reviews of everything I see at the festival, but this year has plenty of notable features worth at least a quick write-up: Paul Feig’s long-awaited sequel Another Simple Favor, Michael Bay’s kinetic foray into documentaries, and Alison Brie and Dave Franco’s gross-out “metaphorror” flick. Here are the capsule reviews for A Simple Favor 2, We Are Storror, Together, and Death of a Unicorn.

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SXSW 2025 Film Review: Drop
SXSW 2025 Film Review: Drop

As with typical Christopher Landon fare, Drop is by-and-large a lighter version of a movie you’ve already seen with its glaring flaws plastered over by an immensely likable lead. Here, Meghann Fahy navigates a first date that plunges into a paranoid nightmare, terrorized by anonymous drops that threaten her family. With a winnowing bag of tricks and a bottle-episode location that feels more limiting than creative, Drop works as well as it does solely upon Fahy’s winning performance and frantic interiority. Minor spoilers ahead…

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SXSW 2025 Film Review: The Accountant 2
SXSW 2025 Film Review: The Accountant 2

The speed-dating, line-dancing, “dudes rock” surprise of the year, Gavin O’Connor’s The Accountant 2 detonates its predecessor’s satisfying, yet tonally confused, drama into something much more assured — and better yet, much more outrageous. A buddy comedy in the place you would least expect it, The Accountant 2 finds strikes the perfect balance of Ben Affleck and Jon Bernthal’s bickering within a web of ludicrous criminal intrigue. Minor spoilers ahead…

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Film Review: Red Rooms
Film Review: Red Rooms

Digging up turpitude from the deep recesses of dark web opportunism, Pascal Plante’s Red Rooms is a serial killer thriller that finds power in its restraint and shocking prescience: an evil — yet vital — film to understand the stranglehold of postmodern, screen-abetted detachment. Juliette Gariépy’s chilling performance is a roundhouse kick to the teeth to dismantle our culture of macabre obsession, parasocial madness, and growing numbness. Minor spoilers ahead…

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THE STRANGE HARBORS PODCAST

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Actress Maggie Cheung, 1990
Keanu Reeves and Hugo Weaving filming The Matrix (1999) with its revolutionary Bullet Time technology, an effect achieved photographically by a set of still cameras fired sequentially surrounding the subject
Angelina Jolie as Thena in Marvel’s Eternals (2021), directed by Chloé Zhao. What did everyone think of the movie? .............................. Eternals (2021), directed by Chloé Zhao. #Cinematographer: Ben Davis
It Follows (2014), one of the best horror films of the last decade, is now streaming on Netflix. What are your thoughts on David Robert Mitchell’s horror debut? .............................. It Follows (2014), directed by David Robert Mitche
Dune (2021), directed by Denis Villeneuve. #Cinematographer: Greig Fraser
Edgar Wright’s decades-long tour of genres makes a no-frills horror pitstop in Last Night in Soho. A collision between past and present painted with the brush of giallo and other era-appropriate terrors, the film is a lush and arresting thrille
“Mmm…corn syrup. Same stuff they used for pig’s blood in Carrie.” .............................. Scream (1996), directed by Wes Craven. #Cinematographer: Mark Irwin
Ana de Armas as Marilyn Monroe on the set of Blonde (2022)
Sleepy Hollow (1999), directed by Tim Burton. #Cinematographer: Emmanuel Lubezki
“How do you do, fellow kids?” Steve Buscemi dressed up as his own meme for Halloween. 📷 Debra Wexler
Florence Pugh on the set of Ari Aster’s Midsommar (2019)
Titane (2021), directed by Julia Ducournau. #Cinematographer: Ruben Impens
Matt Smith and Anya Taylor-Joy on the set of Edgar Wright’s Last Night in Soho (2021)
Lightyear (2022), directed by Angus MacClane. Production Designer: Tim Evatt
Léon: The Professional (1994), directed by Luc Besson. #Cinematographer: Thierry Arbogast
Congratulations to the cast and crew of Dune on the official announcement of Part Two! Dune: Part Two is coming October 20, 2023.
The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021), directed by Joel Coen. #Cinematographer: Bruno Delbonnel
“I thought I just needed a good night’s sleep but it’s more than that.” .............................. Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. #Cinematographer: Bruno Delbonnel
The stunning costumes of Dune (2021), designed by Jacqueline West and Bob Morgan. Intricate, sumptuous work bringing the people of Arrakis, House Atreides, and House Harkonnen to life onscreen. Read my full review of the new Denis Villeneuve epic via
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), directed by Tobe Hooper. #Cinematographer: Daniel Pearl