This week’s movie is Strange Days, the near-future sci-fi flick from 1995. When it came out it polarized audiences, meaning that I loved it and everyone else in the world thought it was awful. In my defense, I was still so young that I had to be driven to the theatre. And also, I just thought it was awesome, okay? I’ll never forget the first time I saw it.

WITH MY GRANDMOTHER HAHAHAHAHAHAH oh god. Sorry, Grandma. I didn’t know.

(She liked Ralph Fiennes, I liked the trailer, we thought it was gonna be a cool little noir whatever. I DIDN’T KNOW.)

Nutshell: On the eve of the year 2000, ex-cop Lenny navigates the underworld selling two-bit memories and pretending he’s on the cutting edge instead of washed up. When one of his contacts is brutally murdered and the killer sends the experience straight to Lenny, Lenny realizes he’s in over his head, and he and his limo-driving pistol-whipping friend Mace have to, you know, save the world. Whatever.

In the future, the leading cause of death is confetti-strike.

“By clicking this tag, you will be going back in time to when I was fourteen and I thought this movie was the shit.”
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Il Fantasma. Long and winding road blah blah blah blah blah this thing is nearly eight minutes long, and that’s because of the editing I gave the ratsex. I’m not sorry.

Part One: here.

Part Two: here.

Part Three: here.

That’s right; while other people were holding vigil for religious things, I was worshipping at the altar of Cinema. And of Windows Movie Maker, which, let’s face it, is only slightly more useful than a stick when it comes to editing.

By now, everyone knows about Il Fantasma.

Part One of the review is here.

Part Two? Right here.

Okay.

Abridged Classics: Il Fantasma dell’opera. Part One.

Just remember, this hurts me a lot more than it hurts you. Until the rat sex. Then it probably hurts you more. (My soul is already dead, so it can’t be hurt again.)

Of the many horrible things one deals with while watching this movie, you’d think that a terrible script, lack of acting, and lack of general coherence are some of your biggest hurdles. Sadly, you would be wrong.

Asia Argento is a very special young lady (who, at 18, let her father cast her in a movie that required full nudity and included non-consensual sex, which, have some therapy, maybe!).

You know what else she is? The world’s WORST LIP-SYNCHER.

The middle portion (she’s in the blue suit) might be half-a-second lagged on my version, but I honestly don’t remember, because the lip-synching is SO AWFUL that it’s impossible to tell.

Maybe they spent all their money on that pipe organ and could only afford one take of all the singing stuff. I don’t know. They clearly couldn’t afford any video footage of people actually singing opera. Or singing, period.

DAMN YOU, prohibitively expensive underground pipe organ! DAMN YOU.