Death by Hanging Confronts Ludicrous Prejudice With Equally Ludicrous Dark Comedy

It was supposed to be a simple execution. R (Don-yun Yu), son of Korean immigrants raised and living in Japan, would be executed by way of hanging by a group of Japanese law enforcement officers. Seems like a foolproof way to kill somebody but once the lever got pulled and the hanging was executed, it turned out R wasn't dead, he was surely alive. In fact, he was not just revived but he had total amnesia about his life up to that point. Now all the powerful members of Japanese society tasked with killing R are stuck in a conundrum; can they re-kill a man, especially one who is now a shell of the former murderer? They all decide to give it their best go in restoring R's memory so that they can kill him and restore their sense of warped justice.

13 Days of First-Time Frights: American Psycho

13 Days of First-Time Frights is a series of reviews for October 2019 where Douglas Laman, in the spirit of Halloween, watches and writes about thirteen horror movies he's never seen before. These reviews will be posted each Tuesday and Thursday as well as the last three Wednesdays of October 2019.

Entry #12: American Psycho

Christian Bale flew up to the status of super-stardom with portraying the titular superhero in Batman Begins, but much like future Batman performer Robert Pattinson, Bale spent his pre-Batman days doing a variety of bold smaller-scale films working with acclaimed filmmakers. For Bale, this meant getting to act under the guidance of names like Todd Haynes, Lisa Cholodenko and Jane Campion and also included the 2000 Mary Harron directorial effort American Psycho. This grisly social satire, adapted by a novel by Bret Easton Ellis, showed off the kind of acting chops that Bale would become famous for while also demonstrating Hanlon's knack for an insightful skewering of toxic masculinity.

Is Southland Tales A Mess? Wildly Entertaining? Perhaps Both?

MASSIVE SPOILERS FOLLOW

Donnie Darko seemed to signal that newbie director Richard Kelly was someone to watch out for. The film was so unique in its exploration of one troubled High Schooler's life that it not only put its main actor, Jake Gyllenhaal, on everyone's radar as a leading man, but also seemed to be the emergence of a new interesting filmmaking voice in Richard Kelly. In the two decades since Donnie Darko, Kelly has only directed two films and has directed nothing since the November 2009 release of his film The Box. What exactly happened here? Well, part of it may be the divisive reception of his follow-up to Donnie Darko, Southland Tales, a 2007 political satire so weird that it makes Donnie Darko and its giant rabbit look a mundane Max Keeble's Big Move by comparison.

The Zany Satire of Showgirls Is Equal Parts Entertaining And Impressively Thoughtful

Content Warning: Discussions of sex (it's a review of the most high-profile NC-17 movie of all-time, what did you expect?) and sexual assault ahead. 

What Ishtar was to the 1980's, Showgirls was to the 1990's, a unique high-profile movie that generated all kinds of scorn and became known as an all-time entry in the halls of bad cinema. But just like Ishtar, Showgirls has been given a hefty critical re-evaluation in recent years, with praise of the film being widespread enough for the project to warrant a theatrical screening at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York City on Sunday, June 24, 2018 that I was lucky enough to attend. What better way to watch Paul Verhoeven's incredibly divisive motion picture for the first time than on a 35mm print projected on the big screen? Even if the film was terrible, the experience itself was too good to pass up!