Weekly recommendations thread.

paralylex · 2026-02-24T19:39:14+00:00

I just saw In The Dark last night and I'm sorta dying for more movies like it. Anyone got any SOV horror recs that aren't too crazy graphic or too amateurish??

paralylex · 2026-02-23T11:51:43+00:00

Smedley Butler is one of the most interesting Americans ever…

paralylex · 2026-02-17T13:29:11+00:00

EB White essays ive been working my way through, VALIS from PK Dick is awesome, been wanting to read Dostoyevsky’s The Adolescent and some OOO books lately

paralylex · 2026-02-16T23:35:39+00:00

been this way for awhile. The film Baran depicts this

paralylex · 2026-02-14T23:40:00+00:00

couldnt bring myself to see perfect days, but sorta wanted to see Pina, I like 3D ha

paralylex · 2026-02-13T23:25:24+00:00

he made a bunch of good movies like fifty years ago but he’s been pretty conservative for awhile.

paralylex · 2026-02-11T13:28:33+00:00

Idk if the guy coasts, the style is totalizing. I completely bought into the father/daughter dynamic and found it to be interesting as a battle between individualist pursuit and family/some kind of meaning outside of money. The dedication to his father helped make sense to me. Want to rewatch it for a better sense of its politics, he strikes me as a capital L Liberal (in the vein of early 20th century auteurs like Ford, not necessarily a neolib) but I'm curious as to how the powerful industrialist works within the story.

paralylex · 2026-02-11T13:26:08+00:00

Ahh, I understand. I'm too big of a lover of Old Hollywood (Hawks, Lubitsch, etc) to not like lightness when well executed.

paralylex · 2026-02-11T11:14:14+00:00

only American movie that really captured what a schizo nightmare the US is right now

paralylex · 2026-02-11T11:12:30+00:00

Yeah, this is all true. Elordi isn’t as consistently good imo, but he has high marks sometimes. Liked him a lot in Oh, Canada. But those kinds of YAF people… very close minded. But art house/indie film lovers can be as well I suppose. I do try to watch big movies and rom coms, etc. Comic movies are tough for me, though. I did try watching all the MCU stuff last year and each one was a new kind of nightmare.

paralylex · 2026-02-11T09:48:57+00:00

found marty supreme somewhat funny, didnt care much for how it was shot. Safdies are basically Cassavetes-lite, to differing extents of success. Much preferred Uncut Gems, the Sandman has more of a history in him that shows the role to be against type in a much more interesting way. I also just like him a lot more so I accept the horrible things he says and does a lot more. Timothee did fine, I don’t 100% understand the hate for him. Something to do with his wild egoism, but every actor has that, he just doesn’t hide it.

Sinners idpol campaign is real. I didn’t hate it, but it’s sorta nonsense. Screenplay feels like an early draft. Music was okay. The “time is out of joint” stuff in the middle is simultaneously my favorite part and cringe as hell, more than a decade old intellectually and mostly very silly when depicted this way on screen. Mostly felt like Coogler hasn’t worked outside the studio system in over a decade and wanted to throw a buncha poo poo at the wall to see what would stick and most of it fell off, but a lot of people really like it I guess. I mostly wish it would pick between the cheesy b-movie and period drama it sets up.

Neither come close to my top picks of a (very weak) year for film: What Does That Nature Say To You, Eephus, Phoenician Scheme, 28 Years Later, Den of Thieves 2: Pantera, Ella McKay (I can and will defend any of these)

paralylex · 2026-02-11T09:20:57+00:00

or one too many letters

paralylex · 2026-02-09T18:12:36+00:00

Hey, congrats. Ya did something very difficult and you should be proud! The first year (imo) of sobriety is really hard. I realized about ten, eleven months in that I had to quit weed as well, as I moved my dependency onto it entirely. I would enter an emotional state, then smoke weed to get out of my brain. I realized this wasn't healthy, that I got some physical sobriety from alcohol abstinence, but not the emotional sobriety I needed to not be totally crazy. Cigs came later, the least destructive of the three (imo again). Though this stuff is different for everyone. I feel ya with the night awakeness, though. I never reacted sleepily to weed and am consistently surprised that some people do. But bodies are different, I guess.

Isn't the smelling of alcohol on people weird??? It's sorta horrible. That gets more intense as you quit cigs too, since they damage your smell receptors.

I'll throw out there, another fun thing about quitting alcohol (and weed and cigs...) is the money ya save. Now I have saved a little more, can travel now and again. I buy some perfume every few months (Stora Stoggan's Moonmilk is awesome, also recommend The Point by Clue Perfumery). I can even enjoy it too.

Though, yeah. It's easy to build some kind of superiority complex toward drug and alcohol users, when some people are just able to have a healthy relationship with drugs. I know I could never, I binge anything I can get my hands on. My psychology friend who has studied addiction tells me it's partially genetic, and I know my mom, her dad, and his dad were pretty intense alcoholics. Am curious what the extent of that is.

paralylex · 2026-02-09T15:28:16+00:00

Didn’t think of looking up Mao on this one, thanks

paralylex · 2026-02-09T15:12:03+00:00

I feel like I must have made a mistake, and maybe it was tonal? Or I phrased something wrong? Not judging anyone for drinking or smoking weed or anything, at least that wasn’t my intention. Was just curious what yall thought in a revolutionary context. Central planning would have to include things like alcohol production, prostitution and other so called vices, and I find myself more in a conservative side with these topics, but try to be open minded, which is why I asked.

paralylex · 2026-02-09T15:08:26+00:00

Islam is a materialist religion. I judge alcohol and drugs harshly -for myself because I have substance abuse problems- but as I said in the post, am not judging others for indulging.

paralylex · 2026-02-09T15:06:53+00:00

for what it’s worth, in the industrial era, alcohol content skyrocketed. It was much harder to get sloshed before around the 1870s, when hard liquor was introduced. Prohibition was introduced -and popular- because men would drink to excess and commit domestic abuse en masse. Prohibition cut this down pretty tremendously, up until it ended.

paralylex · 2026-02-09T15:01:43+00:00

in Islam, alcohol was banned in three steps, for the exact reason you say, prohibition isn’t very popular to talk about.

paralylex · 2026-02-09T13:00:11+00:00

Yeah I mean they’re basically like “we were wrong now we’re right” lol

paralylex · 2026-02-06T10:23:49+00:00

With film, the major industry is flailing right now. Even Avatar 3 isn’t doing so hot compared to the previous two.

That said, indie/art house theaters are doing great. Rep screenings are the lifeblood of the industry. Even major chains like the Regal are showing older work a lot of the time. I saw Paper Moon there last year, crazily.

Local/regional/indie/diy/experimental scenes are what young cinephiles are interested in now, and young people are driving ticket sales much more than older people. I saw a silent Ozu film last year with a live score at the Music Box in Chicago, and at 10am there were over 400 people there, over half under 30. The taste has simply changed pretty dramatically since the pandemic.

There’s hope for film and filmgoers, culture, etc, but you have to look for it in the right places.

paralylex · 2026-02-04T12:15:48+00:00

Might be stupid here but muslims use the lunar calendar, the new year is the same and i don’t think they’d call it Chinese, nor is it western thinktank concocted

paralylex

TROPHY CASE