Oops! All Horror - Day 19 - Buffet Infinity (2026)

  Content Warning:  mild gore

Buffet Infinity has opened in the town of Westbridge, Alberta, Canada.  It's got everything.  Just ignore the sinkhole out back.  And the weird, pervasive noise.  And the lack of staff.  And the constant expansion.  

The entire movie is a series of local commercials and news alerts that somehow tells a coherent narrative.  It's possibly the most original film I've ever seen and certainly the most original this year.  And I feel like it'll come and go and no one will have ever heard of this outside film festivals and gorehounds like me.  It is 100% not for everyone.  If someone channel-surfing sets your teeth on edge, for example.  If you've never been up late and flipped through all the infomercials in a kind of mindless haze, best to skip this.  But if you have a weird nostalgia for the shitty used cars ads that were kind of like mini-serials, or the box collections of CDs for people you've never heard on a radio, please watch this.  Please reward this kind of ingenuity.  I promise you it's worth it.

It's streaming on Shudder/AMC+.  It's got the sauce.

Vanilla Sky (2001)

  I remember this being on some lists?  Maybe?  I don't know.  I have no idea why I added it to my queue.  It's not good.

David (Tom Cruise) is a publishing magnate by virtue of having a rich dead dad, and even though he has everything he could ever want, it's not enough.  So when his best friend (Jason Lee) brings a hot new girl (Penelope Cruz) to David's birthday party, David goes out of his way to hit on her.  Sofia is a dancer, bright and beautiful, and over the course of one evening, David convinces himself that she might be The One.  Unfortunately, he failed to run that by his supermodel fuck buddy, Julianna (Cameron Diaz), who is not pleased and also really doesn't like that David refers to her as a fuck buddy to his friends.  Well, friend.  Well, toady that depends on his good graces to make a living.  And for once in his privileged existence, David is going to face some consequences.

Just kidding.  Can you imagine?  LOLOL

This whole film is about how far one rich dude will go to not feel a single thing that might be uncomfortable.  It has a major third-act twist, so I'm not going to spoil it but you've seen better, I assure you.  This is an American remake of an Amenábar film called Abre Los Ojos, which is supposed to be better.

The weirdest part is how uncanny valley Tom Cruise looks when he's not wearing the featureless latex mask.  In a movie that tries so hard to be surrealist horror, all they had to do was keep the camera rolling on him.  Christian Bale very famously said that he based his American Psycho performance on footage of a Tom Cruise interview and never have I believed that more than watching this.  Deeply cursed.

It's streaming on Paramount+.  I'd say skip it, but if you're feeling brave about having a blank-eyed Scientologist stare through your soul, keep an eye out for Michael Shannon and Johnny Galecki in bit parts.

Jackie Brown (1997)

  I don't get why this is considered a classic.  It's fine? I guess, but I wouldn't call it something to write home about. 

Stewardess Jackie Brown (Pam Grier) is stuck between a rock --her gun runner boyfriend Ordell (Samuel L. Jackson), for whom she ferries money back and forth to his partner in Mexico-- and a hard place --the ATF agent (Michael Keaton) who will bust her for possession if she doesn't cooperate in their sting to take Ordell down.  But Jackie is nobody's fool and with a little help from a lovestruck bail bondsman (Robert Forster), she might just turn the tables.

This feels like a period piece of the mid-90s.  Tarantino is a lot of things but you can't say the man isn't consistent with the things he likes.  Including feet.  It's basically one of his auteur trademarks at this point.  This one just didn't gel for me.   It feels like a debut that's a little unsure, a little off-step, but a solid start for growth.  Finding out this was actually his 3rd feature was a little bit of a shock.  IMDb says that he drastically toned down the violence after receiving criticism and maybe that's what makes this feel like a weaker entry.  

If you want to see it, it's leaving Tubi on April 30 so you might want to hurry.

Scream-O-Rama 2023 Day 29: Hagazussa (2019)

  We have a winner!  Finally!  Content warning: blood, CSA, boils, vomit, sexual assault (off-screen), dead animals (goat, rat), infanticide, cannibalism

As a child, Albrun (Celeste Peter) knew she and her mother (Claudia Martini) were shunned by the villagers, so when her mother becomes ill, Albrun is left to care for her alone.  As an adult, Albrun (Aleksandra Cwen) just wants to live a peaceful life, tending her goats, and raising her infant daughter.  A local woman (Tanja Petrovsky) offers friendship, but the superstitions of the age cling tightly.

This is so much better than The Witch it's not even fair.  Just miles better in terms of atmosphere, cinematography, supernatural elements... even the goats are better.  If you only have time for one medieval witchcraft folklore movie, make it this one.  

That being said, this is not for the faint of heart, especially the last 40 minutes.  Things go off the rails very quickly and the ending is completely left-field.  Like, makes no logical sense but that contributes to the unsettling nature of it.  Be ye fore-warned.  

I have had a lackluster month with horror picks this year but this makes up for everything.  Ugh.  So good.  It's currently streaming on Tubi.

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970)

  This is a weird one, folks.  Did you know there was a Czech New Wave film movement?  Because I did not.  I like to think I'm fairly conversant in the major shifts within film and then I get thrown for a loop.  This fairy tale from hell comes to us from the distant land of 1970.  Content warning:  animal death (on-screen), suicide, attempted rape of a minor

Valerie (Jaroslava Schallerová) is attempting to navigate the stormy waters between girl- and womanhood while fending off advances from a horny priest (Jan Klusák), a literal vampire (Jirí Prymek), and her jealous, youth-obsessed grandma (Helena Anyzová).  Her only friend and ally is her brother/love interest (Peter Kopriva) who gives her magic pearls to keep her from harm.

There was A Lot to unpack here.  Symbolism all over the damn place.  Lots of ruminations on guilt and pleasure, organized religion vs paganism, the role of women in the home and in society, the unfair and frankly treacherous concept of purity.  The societal comment that a woman's worth resides in her youth and especially in her sexual inexperience feels very modern, because we keep having to have that stupid conversation every decade.  In one of the scenes, a bride is shown on her wedding night being drained of vitality by a vampire.  Literally the moment of her deflowering, she becomes used and lesser.  Not exactly subtle, but effective.  

That could be the tagline for the whole film, really.  Not Subtle, But Effective!  It would be an insane double-feature with The Company of Wolves, and if you wanted to go for the hat trick of batshit vampires, werewolves, and witches, you could throw in Häxan as well.  You may want to schedule some time off afterwards for self-care, watch something bland and soothing.

Valerie and All Her Bullshit is streaming on Criterion.

Possession (1981)

  This is not a movie I probably would have found on my own.  I recently joined a movie club on Discord and this was their Cinema pick for the week.  It is ...a thing of its own.  Content warning:  attempted suicide, domestic abuse, tentacle sex, light nudity

Mark (Sam Neill) has completed some shady assignment for unnamed government powers and is eager to get home to his wife, Anna (Isabelle Adjani), and son, Bob (Michael Hogben).  The problem is that Anna doesn't want to see Mark.  In fact, she wants a divorce.  Mark can't let go, however, and the more he delves into Anna's personal life, the more erratic and dangerous her behavior.  

This movie is like if Marriage Story and Hellraiser had a gross hentai baby.  War of the Roses by way of H.P. Lovecraft.  It is beyond weird on the surface.  (Dig a little deeper and it turns out to be yet another Cold War paranoia porn about mutually assured destruction.  Boring.)

Adjani was incredible in parts, but her overwrought hysteria started getting on my nerves around an hour in.  The subway scene was about two minutes too long.  This is also the second time I have expected to see Sam Neill eaten by an eldritch abomination and both times I have been denied!

Anyway, if you like watching messy relationship drama with a side of graphic violence, Possession is currently streaming on Shudder.  Bon appétit!

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (2022)

  I love Weird Al and I cannot think of a better way to portray a parody musician than with a parody biopic.  

Alfred Yankovic (Daniel Radcliffe) had a dream: to become famous for changing the lyrics to popular songs.  Success was overnight, thanks to his genius and the help of his mentor, Dr. Demento (Rainn Wilson), but the fame and money could never fill the yawning void of Al's need for his father's (Toby Huss) approval.  Then Al met the Princess of Pop, Madonna (Evan Rachel Wood), and their torrid affair was the stuff of legends.  Over the objections of his band and his mentor, Al devoted himself to Madonna, becoming a raging alcoholic and international assassin.  But was the Material Girl just using him to boost her own record sales?  

This movie is completely bonkers.  Just know that going in.  There are a lot of very famous comedians sprinkled throughout, some in blink-and-you-miss-it cameos.  Radcliffe understood his assignment here and looks like he was having a great time while Wood brings a calculating sinisterness to her crimped hair and acid-washed denim.  

It's currently streaming on the Roku channel.  Don't bother trying to figure out what's true and what isn't, just let the insanity wash over you.  

The Power of the Dog (2021)

Nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor (x2), Best Supporting Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Production Design, Best Sound, Best Film Editing, Best Cinematography, and Best Original Score      So this is the odds-on favorite.  You may have heard of it, you may not have.  Maybe you only know it from a Jimmy Kimmel monologue.  Here's what Jimmy Kimmel seems to have forgotten (which is odd, considering he hosted the Oscars twice):  the Oscars exist for one purpose and it is not to crown the most popular picture of the year.  That's what the box office does.  It's to recognize films, actors, and crew that may have otherwise gone unnoticed.  It is an award given by peers.  Do they get it wrong?  Frequently.  There's a long history of the Academy snubbing films for being "too genre".  Somebody on Twitter was saying that if the Academy ever really looked at horror films in competition, they would dominate the Visual Effects category every year and they are not wrong.  Being under-seen does not make The Power of the Dog a bad movie.  It is worthy of its nominations in every category.  

Now, did I like it?  No.  But that still doesn't make it a bad movie.  Content warning:  animal death, animal abuse

George Burbank (Jesse Plemons) has lived under the torment of his asshole brother, Phil (Benedict Cumberbatch), all his life.  They share a ranch, a house, and even a bedroom.  But when Phil casually mistreats the waiter (Kodi Smit-McPhee) at an inn on a cattle drive, causing the boy's mother (Kirsten Dunst) to cry, George makes a break.  He marries Rose and puts her son, Peter, into medical school.  Phil is furious, claiming that Rose is a gold digger, and makes a point of belittling and tormenting her at every turn.  When Peter comes to the ranch on a break from school, he finds his mother has become an alcoholic and nervous wreck.  Phil mocks Peter relentlessly until the boy discovers his secret.  

Okay, it gets kind of spoiler-y from here on out so I'm going to turn the text white and you can highlight it to read it if you want.  **SPOILERS**  At what point does it become a hate crime?  Like, Phil is 100% shown as closeted, lashing out at Peter until he thinks that Peter might also be gay/blackmail him.  And technically, Peter murders him for being an asshole, not for being gay, but ehhhhhhhh, I'm feeling like it could be a gray area.  Also, Peter should probably reconsider being a doctor with how quick he was to jump to murder as a solution.  Pretty sure that Hippocratic oath is like Day 1.  **END SPOILERS**

Just so you know, this is like the anti-Call Me by Your Name.  If I had known that going in, I might have enjoyed it more but it's presented as just a Western.  The cinematography is flawless and the acting is very good.  I didn't read the source material but the script was very tight, no wasted moments.  It's currently streaming on Netflix.

Scare-a-Thon 2021 Day 29: Borgman (2013)

  Holy shit, this movie was weird.  What is going on in the Netherlands?  You guys okay?

A homeless man (Jan Bijvoet) knocks on the door of an affluent family and asks to use their shower.  The husband (Jeroen Perceval) beats the shit out of him and sends him packing.  The wife (Hadewych Minis) feels guilty and lets the bum into their guest house.  He slowly begins taking over their entire lives, leading them further and further away from each other.  

This is a comedy like Dogtooth is a comedy.  It is surreal and feels random yet completely expected at the same time.  He doesn't really even do anything (well, okay, he poisons a handful of people), he just lets the simmering resentment and anger of this yuppie couple do all the work (again, aside from the people he murders) for him.  Might be supernatural, might just be these people eating themselves.  It is bonkers.  There's one fast scene of gore and everything else is purely psychological.  It is worth watching, especially if you want to question everything you see from the corner of your eye for the next few days.

It's currently streaming on Hulu and Kanopy.

Maps to the Stars (2014)

  David Cronenberg is most famous as a horror director.  Maps to the Stars, however, is billed as a comedy.  And maybe.  If your idea of comedy is desperate celebrities and wannabes name-dropping and being awful.  Plus it has ghosts?  So it's definitely a horror movie.  Kind of a soap opera horror movie.  Which could have been funny.  But isn't.

Agatha (Mia Wasikowska) has come to Hollywood to make amends with the family that abandoned her.  She gets a job as a personal assistant to Havana Segrand (Julianne Moore), a fading star that is obsessed with recreating her actress mother's most famous role and exorcising her own demons, to get access to the same set where her little brother, Benjie (Evan Bird) is filming a sequel to the movie that made him a star.  

Standard drama, right?

Except Havana is being haunted by her mother's ghost (Sarah Gadon) who keeps telling her to kill herself.  The movie Benjie is famous for is called "Bad Babysitter" about a babysitter who sets the house on fire.  Agatha has burn scars on her arms and neck.  You see where this is heading into horror territory now?

Also, there is off-screen child death, discussion of molestation (not shown, but described), just an inordinate amount of talking about incest, and Robert Pattinson.  I can't think of any reason why you should see this movie but it's streaming on Netflix anyway.

Taps (1981)

  CW: dead children, gun violence

This movie baffled me so much I had to put an open call on Twitter for people to explain it to me.  

Brian Moreland (Timothy Hutton) is a cadet at a private military academy.  He is looking forward to his senior year when the Commandant (George C. Scott) reveals that the school has been sold and is scheduled to be torn down and turned into condos after the next year.  Then a tragic accidental firearms discharge sees the Commandant arrested and the school shut down bumped up to "immediately".  Moreland decides to rally the other children, occupy the school, and refuse to hand over the armory until their demands are met.

First of all, I cannot imagine any world where I would be invested so much in a school I'm willing to engage in armed insurrection.  And that's the goal here.  There's been no travesty of justice, no wrong committed against the students.  A private institution was sold in a perfectly legal manner to the chagrin of the minors inhabiting it.  This isn't Red Dawn where someone invaded their homeland.  This is a spoiled teenager with access to mortars and grenades throwing a tantrum because his school is being closed down before he's ready to let go of it.  

I have no idea what audience this movie is for.  (The internet's consensus seems to be "teenaged boys in the 80s," a category I am wholly unfamiliar with.)  I was in the military and these boys made me want to slap them all with a wet copy of the UCMJ.  The only reason I can see to watch this is the cast.  It features three very young actors before they became household names: Sean Penn in his debut, Tom Cruise bringing his trademarked insanity intensity to his role of That One Douche Who Takes Everything Way Too Seriously, and Giancarlo Esposito.  And maybe to marvel at how many people in Hollywood have had their teeth fixed.  

It's currently streaming on Starz, which I have through Amazon Prime.  Do not bother.  

The Mirror (1975)

  This movie made not one bit of sense.  I can't even judge it because I did not know what was happening 95% of the running time.

An unseen narrator (Innokentiy Smoktunovskiy) reminisces about his childhood, his divorce, and the history of Russia as he lays dying.  

I literally got the synopsis off the Criterion description.  Is that what happens?  Kinda.  The film switches between black and white and color, historical footage and scripted, memory and present with no real rhyme or reason.  There's one scene with a doctor saying that the main character is dying but no actual cause?  Like he's a Victorian woman someone said no to too loudly.  The character's mom and ex-wife are played by the same actress (Margarita Terekhova) which is some Freudian shit.  People berate one another for no reason, then cry.  Is that a Russian thing?

It reminds me of some of the films I watched in my German cinema class in college.  This was a generation removed from WWII, so they grew up surrounded by horror but with no direct experience of war.  It definitely feels like a trauma response, like when you walk into a room that's been destroyed and you try to make sense of what happened there.  It also reminds me of Terrence Malick films where it's less about plot and more about feelings.  I hate feelings.

This is considered one of the all-time classics of arthouse cinema, of Russian cinema, and director Andrei Tarkovsky is hailed as a visionary.  It was not for me.  It was too far removed from my own experiences and I felt like I was flipping through a photo album I found at a garage sale.  It's currently streaming on the Criterion Channel.

Force Majeure (2014)

  You've probably heard of this movie if you followed any of the Oscar/critical recommendations of the last few years.  It was so successful it even got an American remake as Downhill, starring Will Farrell and Julia Louis-Dreyfus.  So if you saw that movie, you basically saw this one.  I assume.

Tomas (Johannes Bah Kuhnke), Ebba (Lisa Loven Kongsli) and their two children are on holiday at a fancy French ski resort.  The resort uses controlled blasts to keep snow from building up to deadly avalanches.  One occurs very close to where our vacationing family is eating lunch.  As everyone panics, Ebba grabs the kids.  Tomas...grabs his phone.  Shaken by the encounter, Ebba desperately wants to make sense of how she's feeling, only for Tomas to deny the entire affair.  What follows are two hours of excruciatingly awkward public discussions as Ebba ropes everyone they know into weighing in on the conflict for the next three days of their vacation.

They called this a dark comedy and hoo boy.  It is a lot.  If you think toxic masculinity and gaslighting are funny, this'll be a riot.  If you think being forced to listen to a couple fighting is hilarious, you will love this, you ghoul.  It's currently streaming on Hulu.

Life Overtakes Me (2019)

  I didn't remember that this was nominated for an Oscar.  I didn't even remember to post it.  It was supposed to go up last week.  That's less due to it being boring or uninteresting than how much of a slog Les Misérables was to watch.  This is only about 20 minutes so it is comparably a breeze.

Did you guys know there's a condition called Resignment Syndrome?  Kids in Sweden, almost exclusively children of refugees, have been falling into comas.  Essentially, their lives are so filled with uncertainty, their little bodies just shut down.  The doc follows three different, formerly healthy children and their families to show the impact this has had.

It seems so fake but Sweden is noting hundreds of cases, way more than could be explained by people trying to game the system.  Not to mention the amount of time and effort it would take to fake it.  These kids are on feeding tubes, they have to have daily physical therapy to prevent muscle atrophy, they're missing over a year of their lives.  There are people monstrous enough to poison a child to try and garner sympathy but not hundreds in one place.  But as the refugee crisis worsens, experts and doctors fear even larger waves of Resignment Syndrome breaking out.

This is streaming on Netflix and it is a trip.

The Art of Self-Defense (2019)

  Full disclosure, I didn't pick this movie and I didn't see the opening 20 minutes.  Tyler was watching it and I couldn't sleep so I played on my phone while it was on in the background.

After a vicious attack, Casey (Jesse Eisenberg) feels fragile in body and spirit so he joins a martial arts dojo led by an absurdly influential Sensei (Alessandro Nivolo) who tells him his problem is that he is not masculine enough.  Under Sensei's guidance, Casey remakes his entire personality to conform to what is deemed "true" masculinity, from his taste in music to his wardrobe to how he interacts with his boss (Hauke Bahr).  As he moves into Sensei's inner circle, Casey begins to see exactly how toxic and counterproductive the teachings are while becoming more and more enmeshed.

Yikes.  Not sure how this is billed as a comedy, even a dark comedy, but then I don't think toxic masculinity and all its bullshit is funny or cute.  I've seen way too many real-world examples of this kind of soap bubble machismo.  I will say that the movie does keep you interested in just how fucked up everything is, even if you can guess kind of where it is going.  I did not find the third act twist all that twisty but it was still satisfying.

Content warning:  suicide, a dog dies

Currently available on Hulu.

Tickled (2016)

  I'm having some problems with Blogger at the moment.  For some reason, it reverted my last two posts back to draft.  I published them again so hopefully they're up now.  It's just weird.

Speaking of weird, some friends and I saw the trailer for this documentary on the DVD for Hail, Satan? and thought "well, we have to watch that next."  David Farrier is a New Zealand journalist who specializes in pop culture.  Basically, he spends all day on the internet hunting down cute stories for his news site.  When he comes across a video for "competitive endurance tickling," he knows he's found his next story.  But a simple request for more information turns into a harassment campaign from the video's owner, Jane O'Brien Media.  Everyone should know by now that harassing a journalist or a comedian just leads to more trouble than it's worth.  David and his cameraman, Dylan Reeve, follow the trail of tickling videos from New Zealand to New York City in an effort to determine who is behind the videos, what is their purpose, and who is behind this toxic harassment of anyone who dares question or quit.

Honestly, we were not prepared for how creepy this film got.  I'm not going to spoil it.  It's really something better to be experienced for yourself.  What starts off as kind of a joke turns into a sobering look at how money covers up a lot of sins and just how easy it is to ruin people's lives over the internet.

It's streaming on Hulu and it's absolutely worth your time.

We Heart Horror 2019 - Day 4: The Visitor (1979)

  This is one of the worst movies I've ever seen.  It is Mystery Science Theater 3000 levels of bad.  A bad script filled with atrocious dialogue that blatantly cribs from much better, much more famous movies that inexplicably stars two Oscar nominees, John Huston and Shelley Winters.

Long ago, the evil Sateen escaped from a spaceship to Earth.  He was finally killed by the benevolent Commander Yahweh but not before Sateen managed to propagate.  Over the many years, a child will sometimes be born with Sateen's evil abilities, a spawn of Sateen, if you will.  Katy Collins (Paige Conner) is that child for 1979.  An agent of Yahweh (John Huston) is sent to put an end to Katy's evil doing but what he mostly does is hang out on the rooftops and streets of Atlanta as Katy terrorizes her mother (Joanne Nail) into having another spawn.

Honestly, I don't even know where to begin with this movie.  It's like if you took The Omen, The Bad Seed, The Birds, and a book of racist stereotypes, put them in a blender, added some cheap LSD, gave it a lobotomy, and then set it loose to shamble along the streets of Atlanta with a cup for spare change.

Do not watch this sober.   It's streaming for free on Tubi and I still think it cost too much.

Angel (1984)

  This is pure 80s cheese.  It's somehow both sleazy and prudish, poorly scripted, nonsensical, and feels like it manages to rip off every serial killer movie while predating most of them.  It also manages to spawn THREE SEQUELS.  "Angel" got more sequels than Iron Man.  You think about that.

Molly (Donna Wilkes) is an honors student at a prestigious Hollywood prep school by day.  By night, she walks the streets as "Angel," a tough but tender teen prostitute, with her best friends Mae (Dick Shawn), an aging drag queen, and Kit Carson (Rory Calhoun), former stunt double to Golden Age Western stars.  A killer (John Diehl) is on the loose, murdering prostitutes left and right and Molly/Angel catches a glimpse of him, making her his next target.  Can she balance being on a killer's radar as well as acing the big math test?!

This is bar-none one of the worst movies I have ever watched without the benefit of MST3K or Rifftrax commentary.  Surprise, surprise, it was written by two dudes.  Jury is out on whether either of them had ever talked to a woman before conceiving the idea for the script but one of them also directed, so he would have at least had to interact with the actors, right?  And I'm not even talking about tamping down on the jailbait hooker fantasy elements but just getting even one aspect of being a girl correct.  During the second of three unnecessary naked locker room scenes, a group of "high school" girls put cheerleading uniforms over their surgically enhanced "teenage" breasts and bounce boobily off to practice with not a bra between them.  I literally had to pause the movie and just wheeze over how painful that would be.  I get that sports bras would ruin your naked cheerleading fantasy, but Jesus Christ.  Any kind of support?

Molly/Angel is a hooker but due to the logic of 80s movie heroines, she can't actually have sex or show T&A or she won't be the "good girl" so she remains the most virginal hooker you've ever seen.  I'm sure this was billed as some sort of "she's so tough!  She has a gun!" but she spends more time crying about her lack of a father figure than she does anything else and SPOILER gets rescued at the end by not one, but two daddy stand-ins, while the gay supporting character dies because this is the 80s and we hate women and The Gays.  Seriously, there's another plot thread (again, completely unnecessary to the storyline of girl vs serial killer) where Molly's secret identity is discovered by high school jocks and her spotless reputation is shredded based on a rumor.  There is absolutely no reason to add this except to shame the character --and by extension all sex workers-- for earning their livelihoods.

This is streaming on Amazon Prime because we continue to live in the Worst Timeline but I got it through Netflix DVD because I didn't know that.

Youth in Revolt (2009)

  This movie is the worst.  I honestly don't know how anyone would find this funny.

Nick Twisp (Michael Cera) is a bored sixteen-year-old desperate to lose his virginity.  He meets Sheeny (Portia Doubleday), an equally bored sixteen-year-old girl desperate to get away from her religious fanatic parents.  Nick is willing to do anything to woo Sheeny, including inventing an alter ego named François, committing millions of dollars in arson, stealing at least three cars, manipulating one of Sheeny's classmates to drug her everyday so she'll fail out of her prestigious French academy, and alienating everyone around him.

To get laid.

And it's supposed to be funny and not an extended episode of Criminal Minds.  What in the ever-loving fuck?

*Produced by Bill and Harvey Weinstein*

Oh, suddenly it makes so much more sense.

Avoid.

Fauve (2018)

  After much searching, I'm finally finding the majority of the Oscar nominated shorts.  This one I'm not sure was worth the effort.

Two boys are goofing off in an abandoned industrial site when one begins sinking in quicksand.

That's it.  That's the film.

I will be the first to tell you, I sat there watching it with a big ? over my head.  There's probably some symbolism to it that I completely missed about the fragility of life or something but I just did not get this film.  Fortunately, it's only 16 minutes so all of my ??? was over pretty quickly.  It's streaming on the Criterion Channel and they can fucking keep it.