I like that time stretches & warps in dreams
-- even the worst ones. It’s like stealing
time from god, taking yourself back
from your body all night.
What begins can end.
Bodies that never settle
can’t tell the difference.
I’m writing this from a bathroom stall. The
bouncer keeps pounding on the door.
He’s reminding me of my gender.
100 WORD FILM REVIEWS / Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Celine Sciamma’s feminist LGBTQ+ masterpiece, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, is a testament to slow-burning (pun intended) cinema with a nuanced and minimalistic approach. An artist, Marianne, is employed to secretly paint a portrait of Heloise, who is engaged to be married. What starts off as a job for Marianne slowly begins to morph into a deeper romantic connection, which Heloise reciprocates. Both women study one another with longing eyes; a glance here and there and observing the subtleties of one another’s movements and gestures. The love between these women is so believable, which makes the ending so tragic.
100 WORD FILM REVIEWS / Sonic the Hedgehog
Consider the video game movie curse broken. Much like last year’s Pokemon: Detective Pikachu, this adaptation of the popular Sonic franchise is a perfectly serviceable family film that is bolstered considerably by brilliant casting. This sweet, corny E.T. knockoff truly comes to life whenever Jim Carrey’s egotistical villain Dr. Robotnik is on screen. The film’s writing and jokes can be hit-or-miss, but every scene with Carrey is an absolute delight. Excessive product placement keeps Sonic from a hearty recommendation, but adult fans of Carrey’s 90s comedies—along with fans of the video game—should find a lot to like here.
The state apparatus flexes its judicial muscles, appalled not by that which is appalling, but the baldness with which the appalling is meted out. In the engulfing bombast of the impeachment hearings, premised upon a transatlantic telephone call constituting (as well as in its content questioning) nefarious election interference and dubious foreign interest, those for whom such practice has long been a more discreet pleasure have seized the opportunity to appear historically aghast. In this entirely internecine squabble, the performatively energized political class have rarely seemed so misaligned to their electorate. Are they aware that no one is watching?
COMICS / Mr. Butterchips / Alex Schumacher / February 2020
Butterchips versus anti-vaxxers in the latest from Alex Schumacher!
KCH breaks down our busy February!
FILM / Finding the Sacred Among the Profane: Nosferatu the Vampyre / Sean Woodard
Film Editor Sean Woodard returns to horror for this month’s “Finding the Sacred Among the Profane” column, exploring Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu the Vampyre.
100 WORD FILM REVIEWS / The Bronte Sisters
The Bronte Sisters 1979 film is a French language-production about the literary Bronte family and the relationships that allowed the sisters to write such masterpieces as Wuthering Heights (Emily), Jane Eyre (Charlotte), and The Tenet of Widfell Hall (Anne). It focuses on the effect their brother Branwell’s tragic character had upon shaping the family dynamic. Super restrained acting brings the feeling of heath and moor even to their Belgium patron’s flower and sun filled meals. The Brontes always carry a dark English Gothic presence. It’s no wonder their literary works were towering masterpieces of unique English gloom.
100 WORD FILM REVIEWS / Color Out of Space
After a long hiatus, Richard Stanley returns to direct an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s The Color Out of Space. The film features an alpaca loving Nicholas Cage as he and his family live out in the woods to start fresh. Disaster strikes as what is believed to be a meteor falls from the sky. You can tell it’s been a while since Stanley has directed a film because the film suffers from mediocre editing and a lack of direction of what they want the film to be—a creature film? An alien invasion? A psychedelic cosmological horror? Who’s to say.
I was surprised. How could being a child make her safer? I was sooo anxious to be older to be able to hold my own ticket and be considered a grown-up. Why would she, why would anyone, want to be younger?
“Boys like girls,” he read out loud from the driver’s seat of his Chevy Impala as we sat together in the lot at Evergreen Park, waiting for my little brother to wrap up an activity like a baseball practice or a friend’s birthday party in the pavilion. “Are these boys who are attracted to girls or boys who are similar to girls?”
FILM / Captain Canada's Movie Rodeo / February 2020 / Gabriel Ricard
Gabriel Ricard discusses the power of short films in this month’s Captain Canada’s Movie Rodeo.
From “The Pledge of Allegiance”:
One nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all who fall in the above-$500,000 a year tax bracket, and whose names are not too Españolé or Middle-Eastern-y.
it’s wednesday & daniel johnston is dead.
i know this because each building looks small.
a car hit a robin as i was crossing the street,
its feathers sticky with red.
I was just about ready to do that thing where you spin around and people pin money on your skirt for a dance like some kind of crazy lunatic, after which we would eat misspelled sheet cake from FOOD 4 LESS. I was excited to be a woman at last, as it meant I could engage in all the elegant rituals of Mexican women, such as being angry on the phone, snapping gum in an irritated way, and giving white men erections out of spite.
Winter Solstice sounds as if it’s a cold color, but it is not. It’s a medium-pale shade, grayish with tones of mauve. Elegant but with warmth. Winter Solstice feels solid, timeless.
FILM / 29 Real-Time Reactions to Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, in More or Less Chronological Order / Jeanne Obbard
Jeanne Obbard shares her real-time reactions while watching Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.
I want to say I love my father like the nine-
year-old version of myself did. My thin-fingered
hands waving, taking deep breaths in December
air sticky with saliva, cheering on our beloved
team, a lineage craving its own collapse,