Obsession
Obsession begins with a rehearsal. We watch tight-jawed twentysomething cutie-dweeb Bear (Michael Johnston), cordoned off in a tight single shot, nakedly confess his heretofore hidden love for friend and workmate Nikki (Inde Navarrette).
Cat People
On one level, this is a story of longing and projection, of strange love between opposites.
X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes
The first thing we lay eyes on is… an eyeball! No enveloping head. Just an eyeball attached to an optic nerve, floating in a beaker, a precious organ isolated, helpless. What has it seen?
undertone
Listen. Movies, like so much culture, are subject to the hegemony of the visual, but it’s sound that surrounds us.
Wetiko
I’ve no idea how literally to take Wetiko’s claim, displayed in multiple languages during its ominous title sequence, that the film is based on true events.
Cronos
The aging antiques dealer discovers the device in the hollow of an archangel statue. The device was forged over 400 years previous by an alchemist who used this intricate creation to filter his blood and grant him eternal life—until his heart was pierced by debris from a fallen edifice and his contract with eternity was suddenly terminated.
The Brood
What was, until The Shrouds (2024), David Cronenberg’s most overtly autobiographical film, The Brood (1979) chronicles the bitter termination of the marriage of Frank (Art Hindle) and Nola (Samantha Eggar) and the accompanying battle over custody of their young daughter.
Kuroneko
A swarm of samurai emerge from a bamboo grove in firefly patterns, arriving at the threshold of a humble hut. The scene is nearly silent, false tranquility preceding a torrent of savagery.
The Leopard Man
A lipstick and makeup mirror slip from fear-frozen hands, a sack spills corn flour along a grassy trail, a ball floats atop a geyser of water, the rattlesnake whir of castanets, blood seeps in from below a heavy door: The Leopard Man (1943), the third in auteur producer Val Lewton’s cycle of low-budget horror films for RKO, and his last collaboration with the great B-movie director Jacques Tourneur, brims with such haunting, often eerily erotic sounds and images.
Ms .45
Stripped to its essentials, the story could be an especially bleak, brazenly sleazy fairy tale. Thana, a young seamstress working in Manhattan’s Garment District, is raped not once, but twice, in the space of perhaps one hour—this is the New York Taxi Driver warned you about.