Lists & Articles

Altered Docs

/ swampflix / 1 Comment

My happy place is the Altered Innocence logo card.  When I close my eyes, I’m often transported to that James Bidgoodian terrarium, which is just as often tacked to the front of the best films on the modern media landscape.  Not everything the high-style, queer distributor releases can be as transcendent as all-star titles like The Wild Boys, Knife+Heart, Arrebato, and Equation to an Unknown, though.  Like all small-operation film labels, they’re also in the business of releasing minor, low-budget festival acquisitions that would otherwise drift into the great distribution abyss.  And if you’ve ever been to a film festival, you know that distro model is going to include a lot of documentaries – a medium that’s cheap to produce but difficult to market.  I’ve run across a couple Altered Innocence documentaries before on both ends of that distribution path: I caught their couture culture documentary House of Cardin at New Orleans French Film Fest before it was certain to land proper distro, and I sought out the personal coming-out essay film Madame because it already had the Altered Innocence stamp of approval.  I love Altered Innocence most for its proud, consistent platforming of arthouse weirdos Yann Gonzalez & Bertrand Mandico, but I also respect that their stated mission to release “LGBTQ & Coming-of-Age films with an artistic edge” extends to smaller, no-name directors whose work would otherwise screen once at venues like Outfest, then fade into oblivion.  In that spirit, I’d like to highlight two recent queer-culture documentaries distributed by Altered Innocence that might not have as flashy of a premise as phantasmagorical fiction titles like After Blue: Dirty Paradise (a sci-fi acid Western in which a lesbian orgy planet cowers in fear of a demonic assassin named Kate Bush) but still deserve wide attention & distribution anyway.

The more innocuous title of this pair is 2019’s Queer Japan, a densely packed, low-budget documentary about contemporary queer culture in—you guessed it—Japan.  I’m calling it innocuous because it’s relatively soft in its political advocacy, over-explaining basic concepts that are common to most queer subcultures regardless of region.  It argues that drag is art, bisexuality is real, and lesbian spaces are too often trans-exclusionary, all while scrolling through a never-ending glossary of basic terms in onscreen text & Instagram graphics.  It’s somewhat illuminating as an update to the semi-fictional, half-century-old street interviews in Funeral Parade of Roses but, overall, the film’s queer politics are largely understated & unspecific.  Thankfully, its region-specific details are much more prominent in the “artistic edge” Altered Innocence seeks to platform.  At its best, Queer Japan is an extensive catalog of beautiful queer visual artists, ranging from avant garde drag performers to gay manga illustrators to high-fashion latex & puppy play fetishists.  It also doubles as a tourist roadmap to popular queer nightclubs & pride events in its titular country, which I suppose might be of use to travelers using the doc as a quick crash-course primer.  There’s a wide enough range of vibrant pop art footage that it’s instantly clear why director Graham Kobeins decided they had enough raw material to justify a feature length documentary here; it must’ve been daunting to edit.  If anything, though, that overabundance of subject material is almost too wide of a scope for one documentary.   I would have been a lot more enthusiastic about it as a whole if it dropped its onscreen dictionary of political terms and instead focused entirely on profiling queer Japanese artists in particular, since that’s where its heart appeared to be.

By contrast, the 2017 punk scene documentary Queer Core: How to Punk a Revolution did pull off the trick of tackling both queer art & queer politics without overextending itself.  A talking-heads nostalgia trip into the queer zine culture of punk’s hardcore & riot grrrl eras, there’s nothing particularly revolutionary about the film in terms of form, but its revolutionary content more than makes up for it.  It has plenty furious things to say about assimilation politics that continue to resonate beyond its vintage punk scene infighting & self-mythology, loudly decrying assimilation a “death trap”.  It also has a stylistic upper hand over Queer Japan in its archival footage’s vintage zine aesthetics, cobbling together a loose art scene between such disparate artists as Bruce LaBruce, Vaginal Davis, Team Dresch, Tribe 8, and Bikini Kill (citing earlier provocateurs like Quentin Crisp, John Waters, and William S. Burroughs as their queer elders).  Somehow, though, its political advocacy comes across as much sharper & more specific than its corollary in Queer Japan.  It throws punches at supposed counterculture movements like hippies & punks for continuing the retrograde sexual politics of their Right Wing enemies, pointing out “punk”‘s origins as an explicitly queer term and pushing back against the macho hardcore scene & AIDS paranoia of the Reagan Era.  As soon as Queer Core opens with a cumshot title card, its goal to make straight-boy punks uncomfortable is loud & clear, and all of its hagiographic interviews of queercore, homocore, and riot grrrl artists are filtered through that viscus lens.  Director Yony Leyser’s only real misstep is an early narration track that’s quickly dropped to instead let the subjects speak for themselves, since they’re all loudly, politically opinionated enough to carry the movie on their own.  The art cataloged in Queer Japan is on par with the art cataloged in Queer Core, but only one movie makes great use of the political meaning behind its creation.

You don’t have to be a physical media collector to access these titles.  Queer Japan is currently streaming for free (with a library membership) on Kanopy, and Queer Core is streaming for free (with ad breaks) on Tubi.  As strongly as I preferred Queer Core out of the two, they’re both worth your time if you have any interest in their respective subjects.  I’d even extend that to say that I’ve yet to see an Altered Innocence release that isn’t worth your time.  They’re the best distributor of “LGBTQ & Coming-of-Age films with an artistic edge” that I can name, give or take a Strand Releasing.

-Brandon Ledet

Bonus Features: Peyton Place (1957)

/ swampflix / Leave a comment

Our current Movie of the Month, 1957’s Peyton Place, is a sprawling epic of small-town scandal & melodrama.  It’s essentially Douglas Sirk’s “Harper Valley PTA”, an exquisite illustration of lowly gossip & pulp.  Since its source-material novel was essentially the Fifty Shades of its time, its major-studio adaptation had to put on an air of arty prestige & high-minded sexual education to justify the indulgence.  The sex education aspect is loudly pronounced, advocating for healthy sexual habits to be openly discussed and taught in schools, since the small-town sex shaming of all “dirty talk” is what causes heartbreak & tragedy in its doomed characters’ lives.  Prestige is a much trickier quality to signal to the audience, something the film prompts in its sweeping shots of artificial woodland vistas and soaring melodramatic strings.  It also signals prestige in the casting of Lana Turner as its biggest-name star, prominently advertising her performance over much meatier roles for the teens-in-crisis beneath her.  When Peyton Place hit theaters, Turner was a glamorous movie star that afforded the film an air of legitimacy. A year later, an act of domestic violence in which her daughter stabbed a mobster boyfriend in her family home would make her a magnet for tabloid scandal, dragging Turner down to the movie’s true gossipy nature.

Getting a sense of where Peyton Place fits within the restrictions & subversions of Old Hollywood’s final hours means getting familiar with how Lana Turner was understood & adored as an Old Hollywood movie star.  So, here are a few recommended titles if you enjoyed our Movie of the Month and want to bask in more of her Studio Era glamour.

The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)

Since every other title on this list casts Lana Turner for her star power but doesn’t actually center her as its star, it’s imperative to include her iconic, spotlight-commanding role in this classic studio noir.  Turner plays the world’s most pragmatic femme fatale in The Postman Always Rings Twice, using her smoky sexual charisma to inspire a lovelorn drifter to kill her husband so she can run her own roadside diner, to both her and her lover’s eventual peril.  Despite a couple mid-film courtroom battles that ice their wayward momentum, it’s a great story about two lost souls who are so rottenly horny for each other that they don’t know what to do except destroy everything.  If nothing else, it’s easily 1000x sexier than its 80s erotic thriller remake, a movie that Turner dismissed as “pornographic trash” without ever actually watching it.

The Bad and the Beautiful (1952)

The only reason the mean little Hollywood tabloid The Bad and the Beautiful can’t claim to be a proper Lana Turner showcase is that she’s outshined by an incredibly unrelenting Kirk Douglas performance that leaves no scenery in his path unchewed.  The movie itself is also somewhat outshined by its own overperforming peers in the same way, as it boldly, brashly recalls Citizen Kane & Sunset Boulevard without having any of the necessary virtuosity to back it up.  Luckily it’s bitchy & cynical enough to stand on its own as a self-hating Hollywood mythmaker, and it props Turner up as a mildly fictionalized version of herself – a powerhouse Studio System starlet with a troubled life offscreen.  She’s unusually vulnerable in the role too, plunging to rock bottom before towering over Douglas’s frantic anti-hero as his romantic foil.

Imitation of Life (1959)

Turner also plays a struggling actress who eventually makes it big in Douglas Sirk’s classic melodrama Imitation of Life, and I’d say she’s also outshined as a secondary attraction there, despite her prominence on the poster.  Like in Peyton Place, Turner’s name is used as a box office draw, but the most compelling melodrama in the film is reserved for the teens running circles at her feet.  She looks absolutely fabulous in the role as the matriarch Broadway star, though, modeling a million-dollar wardrobe that broke records for Old Hollywood productions at the time. 

By pretending to position Turner center stage, Sirk was able to get away with telling a subversive story about racial discrimination, passing, and self-hatred with Juanita Moore’s character in a way that would’ve frightened off studio execs without blinding them with Turner’s gowns & jewels.  The boldly political sex education messaging of Peyton Place is hidden behind Turner’s star wattage in a similar way, even if it’s not nearly as tasteful nor exquisitely staged as its Douglas Sirk equivalent.  By the time she “starred” in Imitation of Life, the real-life tragedy in Turner’s family had already made tabloid headlines, but she was still useful to Sirk as a signal of class & prestige, which I think says something about the inherent strength & respectability of her screen presence.

-Brandon Ledet

Krewe Divine 2023

/ swampflix / Leave a comment

For Carnival 2017, a few members of the Swampflix crew joined forces to pray at the altar of the almighty Divine. The greatest drag queen of all time, Divine was the frequent collaborator & long-time muse of our favorite filmmaker, John Waters. Her influence on the pop culture landscape extends far beyond the Pope of Trash’s Dreamlanders era, however, emanating to as far-reaching places as the San Franciscan performers The Cockettes, the punkification of disco, and Disney’s The Little Mermaid. Our intent was to honor the Queen of Filth in all her fabulously fucked-up glory by maintaining a new Mardi Gras tradition in Krewe Divine, a costuming krewe meant to masquerade in the French Quarter on every Fat Tuesday into perpetuity.

Our initial krewe was a small group of Swampflix contributors: site co-founders Brandon Ledet & Britnee Lombas, regular contributor CC Chapman, and repeat podcast guest Virginia Ruth. We were later joined by local drag performer Ce Ce V DeMenthe, who frequently pays tribute to Divine in her performances. There’s no telling how Krewe Divine will expand or evolve from here as we do our best to honor the Queen of Filth in the future, but for now, enjoy some pictures from our 2023 excursion, our fifth year in operation as Swampflix’s official Mardi Gras krewe (and our first year returning after the COVID-19 outbreak of 2020):

Eat Shit!

❤ Krewe Divine ❤

Movie of the Month: Peyton Place (1957)

/ swampflix / 1 Comment

Every month one of us makes the rest of the crew watch a movie they’ve never seen before, and we discuss it afterwards. This month Britnee made Boomer, Brandon, and Alli watch Peyton Place (1957).

Britnee: I love drama. Soap operas like The Bold and the Beautiful and Days of Our Lives were the inspiration for “playing pretend” with my Barbie dolls when I was a wee one. Now, as a grown adult, I spend most of my time in the BravoSphere obsessing over everything Real Housewives (when I’m not watching movies, of course). Yes, I like my drama on the trashy side, so it’s no surprise that I fell in love with the classic melodrama Peyton Place. 

Peyton Place is adapted from Grace Metalious’s debut novel of the same name that shocked the world in 1956. It was regarded as smut by the public and banned in various cities and countries due to its racy subjects, including incest, rape, abortion, and adultery. Film producer Jerry Wald jumped on getting the rights to Peyton Place from Metalious less than a month after the novel was released. The result is definitely a sanitized version of the novel, but it’s still pretty scandalous considering that the film was released in 1957.

In the small New England town of Peyton Place, the gossip is hot and the secrets are plentiful. Michael Rossi (Lee Phillips) arrives for his new job as the high school principal along with his “liberal” education methods in tow. We soon find out that he is taking the position from Mrs. Thornton (Mildred Dunnock), who is a tenured English teacher more than fit for the job. There’s a plethora of sad moments throughout the film, but Mrs. Thornton’s heartbreak at that disappointment hits me so hard. We are then introduced to multiple families who have all sorts of juicy secrets, particularly the MacKenzies and the Crosses. Constance MacKenzie (Lana Turner) is a widow and shop owner, raising her only-child, Allison (Diane Varsi). Allison is best friends with Selena Cross (Hope Lange), who’s mother Nellie (Betty Fields), is Constance’s maid. Selena has an extremely rough life, especially compared to Allison’s. She lives in a shack with her mother, younger brother, and horrible alcoholic stepfather.

The judgmental and hypocritical society of Peyton Place causes irreparable damage to much of the community, particularly the youth. Allison is judged harshly by Constance for an innocent kiss, only to find out that she was the product of an affair. Selena is raped and impregnated by her stepfather, struggles to get an abortion, and miscarries due to an accident. Her mother, Nellie, then commits suicide at the MacKenzie residence. To make matters worse, she murders her stepfather in self-defense when he tries to attack her again and is put on trial. And that’s not even getting into Rodney & Betty’s struggles outside the main drama. There is never a dull moment in the film, since we are following so many different families and couples, which is one of the things I appreciate most about it. You can rewatch it multiple times and focus on a different character each time. It’s movie magic!

I’m dying to know what the rest of the crew thought of this movie. We’re there any characters y’all found more fascinating than others?

Brandon:  I loved this.  It’s the exact intersection of high and low art sensibilities where you’ll find most of cinema’s shiniest gems.  For whatever reputation Peyton Place might have as a trashy paperback, this adaptation treats it with the same wide Cinemascope vistas and sweeping orchestral overtures you’d expect in a David Lean adaptation of a literary classic.  A sprawling, gossipy epic of small-town scandal & melodrama, it’s essentially Douglas Sirk’s “Harper Valley PTA”, an exquisite rendering of sensationalist pulp.  The material at hand earns that treatment too.  No matter what prurient curiosity the novel may have held as the Fifty Shades of Grey of its time, it also functions as politically-minded sex education advocacy.  It argues that good, healthy sex habits should be openly discussed and even taught in schools, since the small-town sex shaming of all “dirty talk” is what causes heartbreak & tragedy in these doomed characters’ lives.  There’s something genuinely radical about its 50s-era sex positivity, especially when the proudly horny Allison explains to her male classmate “Girls want to do the same things as boys,” a truth that still hasn’t been fully absorbed in small-town American rhetoric.

Singling out individual characters is a smart way to discuss this film, since there are seemingly hundreds to choose from, each representing their own hot-button issue meant to inspire hushed watercooler & beauty salon chatter among anyone lucky enough to have visited Peyton Place.  I was also heartbroken by the professional disappointments Mrs. Thornton suffers in the first act; I found myself crying over her open-hearted kindness within seconds of meeting her, as her students pooled money together to buy a congratulatory gift for a promotion that never came.  She’s only a small part of the story, though, especially as her potentially pompous replacement proves himself to be just as noble & progressive in his approach to teen-years education.  What I was more hanging on the edge of my seat about was the character arc of Allison’s friend Norman Page (Russ Tamblyn). 

Throughout the film, Norman is portrayed as sexually timid & confused, to the point where he was an obvious representative of closeted (and maybe even oblivious) homosexuality.  What was unclear was how far the movie could possibly go in openly discussing his sexual orientation, beyond broad, Freudian characterizations of his overbearing mother and his self-hating nature as a “coward” and a “sissy.”  My fear was that Allison would be romantically paired with Norman as a narrative attempt to “cure” him, but thankfully they just remain good friends & co-conspirators.  Like many of the hot-button issues the movie collects like Pokémon, Norman’s status as a sexual outlier is never exactly challenged or resolved.  It’s more just plainly represented as a simple fact of life (as much as it could be in a time of intense sexual repression).  The difference with Norman’s sexual identity crisis, though, is that it’s never openly discussed like the affairs, suicides, rapes, and miscarriages playing out elsewhere in town.  Even for a movie that proudly tackles the most sensational topics of its day, Norman’s (ambiguous, unconfirmed) queerness is too controversial to be discussed in clear, honest terms, which is what makes him such a fascinating character to keep track of in the larger crowd.  There’s a tension to seeing just how far the movie is willing to go in his characterization in every scene he enters.

Boomer: It’s funny that Brandon should mention “Harper Valley PTA,” since that’s the only real exposure that I had to Peyton Place (other than its use as exactly the same epithet that Jeannie C. Riley used) prior to this viewing: “You think that as the mother I’m not fit / Well, this is just a little Peyton Place / And you’re all Harper Valley hypocrites.” That is to say, a Peyton Place is somewhere that there’s an awful lot of funny business going on, if you know what I mean. I don’t know how much of that was born out of the film itself and how much was the result of the various sequel soaps and other adaptations that were released in its wake, because in practice, there’s actually very little sex in the film, with what little there is being unspoken or deep in the back story, while the forefront is composed of so much suspicion and gossip. There’s one really frisky classmate of Allison and Selena who flirts with the former before devoting himself to his one real childhood sweetheart (to whom he seems faithful despite his raging hormones, especially in combination with his disdain for his father’s own implied adulteries), and then in the backstory Connie had an affair with a married man, of which Allison is the product. It’s barely salacious, even for the time period, and only the first of these is common knowledge, though it enters the town’s thriving marketplace of gossip attached to the incorrect players. Peyton Place’s prosperity comes in the form of its textile mill, but it runs just as much on the rumor mill, as very little information that gets passed around is accurate, and real secrets get covered over in the rush. Connie’s affair could have remained hidden forever, just like Lucas Cross’s crimes and sins, because town gossip was mostly concerned with fiction. 

I, like Brandon, also thought of Douglas Sirk while watching this, but in my mind I titled it “Sirk’s Twin Peaks” because in both titular towns, the deepest and most harrowing crime is at the expense of a teenage girl and mostly concerns itself with her peers and the people of her parents’ generation who are supposed to be looking out for their children. (And they both have Russ Tamblyn!) It could just as easily have been Sirk’s Blue Velvet, however, given that it was the earlier of David Lynch’s works about an idyllic town with a monstrous underbelly of violent unchained id and a facade of perfect Americana with a maggoty core. (And they both have Hope Lange!) But the film is only Lynchian in its topic, not in its tone or its temperament, and in this mixture between the cheerful color of full-on Cinemascope melodrama and its seedy story of suspicion and vice that makes it feel at once both dated and timeless in the best possible way. 

Alli: I went into this movie, as I do with a lot of movies from this era, with my 1950s housewife lenses on. I like to imagine that I’m completely fresh and contemporary to an old movie. From that perspective, Peyton Place is positively lurid. Teenage sexuality? Class consciousness? Education reforms? Abortion? Absolutely shocking. Which is why I couldn’t stay in that frame of mind for long. It’s just too ahead of its time. I’m honestly astonished that it even got made. It’s not always an easy watch, but it is a worthwhile one, filled with drama, critiques of small town America, and necking. If this movie were made on this scale today, there are still people who would find it absolutely shocking and controversial. 

It starts off strong with Michael Rossi arriving in town observing the dilapidated shacks on the wrong side of the tracks, only to arrive on mainstreet in this idyllic New England hamlet, complete with beautiful green trees, gorgeous homes, and quaint local businesses. He has a conversation with a restaurant owner about the state of employment in Peyton Place where we find out that almost everyone works at a woolen mill and that business has a stranglehold over everything in town. Like any town where one industry dominates the entire economy, the business owners have a vested interest in making sure that education is undervalued and that the status quo is maintained. Rossi does manage to haggle for a better salary, even with the reluctance of the school board, probably because he is not the “older” woman Mrs. Thorton (“older” in scare quotes here because it’s later revealed that she’s in her mid to late 40s). This clash of capitalistic American values against an educator’s desire for fairness and equality for all students is riveting. When he’s demanding a salary and refusing to do the unpaid labor of coaching sports teams, I was elated. We need more movies where characters stick up for themselves in the faces of tycoons.

All these teens’ stories are so good. I love them sneaking around and indulging in horny teenage rebellion. I love Betty slutting it up. It’s extremely satisfying when Allison stands up for herself to her hypocrite mother. Norman suffering his Psycho-esque Norma Bates mother is just oedipal perfection. Selena’s story, however, is heartbreaking, and quite frankly, it was extremely difficult for me to watch. The abuse she suffers at the hands of her stepfather is presented so starkly and realistically. In a movie full of overblown drama, this plot line unfortunately feels the most realistic until the town rallies behind her (real life is rarely that hopeful). When she snaps and kills Lucas, it is weirdly satisfying, even with the thought that she may have just doomed herself by trying to save herself.

I’m so glad that I watched this soapy, melodramatic epic. It is going to stick in my mind for a long time.

Lagniappe

Alli: I was so focused on how great the narrative is, I forgot to mention it’s beautiful too! How about Mrs. Mackenzie in that red dress going to Rossis’ house for Christmas? The bright, saturated colors there are just wonderful.

Brandon: My only previous exposure to Peyton Place was the shot of Jayne Mansfield reading it during a self-indulgent bubble bath in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, a visual gag that’s much funnier now that I know of the novel’s sub-literary reputation.

Britnee: I find myself referencing Peyton Place more and more as I get older. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing, but it’s a reminder of how relevant the film still is. It should come as no surprise that a Peyton Place themed excursion to its Camden, Maine filming location is on my vacation wishlist. The Camden Public Library even put together a map of Peyton Place landmarks. The majority of the locations haven’t changed much since 1957. It’s the melodramatic time capsule of my dreams!

Boomer: I was on the edge of my seat waiting to see which actor I knew from their appearances on Alfred Hitchcock Presents or The Alfred Hitchcock Hour would appear next. I immediately recognized Mildred Dunnock (Mrs. Thornton) from her three appearances in the former program and her singular appearance in the latter, in the episodes “None Are So Blind,” “The West Warlock Time Capsule,” “Heart of Gold,” and “Beyond the Sea of Death.” Arthur Kennedy (Lucas Cross) appeared in the Hour episode “Change of Address,” Betty Field (Nellie Cross) was in the Presents episode “A Very Moral Theft” and “The Star Juror” episode of Hour, and Staats Cotsworth (Charles Partridge) had a role in Hour‘s “The Thirty-First of February.” Even Lorne Green, who will forever be the original Battlestar Galactica‘s Commander Adama to me, appeared in the Presents episode “Help Wanted.” Surprisingly, the big one was Robert H. Harris, who played Peyton Times editor Seth Bushwell: the was in no fewer than eight episodes of Presents (“Shopping for Death,” “The Orderly World of Mr. Appleby,” “The Hidden Thing,” “Toby,” “The Dangerous People,” “The Safe Place,” :Graduating Class,” and “The Greatest Monster of them All”) and an episode of Hour entitled “Consider Her Ways.”

Next month: Brandon presents Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957)

-The Swampflix Crew

Swampflix’s Top 10 Films of 2022

/ swampflix / 3 Comments

1. Everything Everywhere All at Once — Maybe we’re living in the worst possible timeline, but maybe we’re just living in the one where Michel Gondry directed The Matrix.  It’s nice here.  The absurdism, creativity, and all-out maximalism of Everything Everywhere has made it the most talked-about movie of the year, and with good reason.  Films about intergenerational trauma and poor parental relationships often come across as schmaltzy and reductive, but this one is complex in ways that you can’t predict or imagine.  You’ll even find yourself empathizing with a googly-eyed rock.

2. Marcel the Shell With Shoes On — In the tradition of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, the Borrowers books, and the half-remembered TV show The Littles, Marcel the Shell shrinks itself down to the level of a tiny being to view the world from their perspective.  Like the original stop-motion YouTube shorts, it’s a rapid-fire joke delivery system where every punchline is “So small!”  It also has a big heart, though, acting as an emotional defibrillator to shock us back into the great wide world of familial & communal joy after a few years of intense isolation. 

3. Mad God — Both a for-its-own sake immersion in scatological mayhem and an oddly touching reflection on the creative process, the indifference of time, and the cruelty of everything.  Phil Tippet’s stop-motion descent into Hell is meticulously designed to either delight or irritate, so count us among the awed freaks who never wanted the nightmare to end.

4. RRR — An anti-colonialist epic about the power of friendship (and the power of bullets, and the power of wolves, and the power of grenades, and the power of dynamite, and the power of tigers, and the power of bears, oh my).  A real skull-cracker of a good time.

5. Neptune Frost — A post-gender Afrofuturist musical that triangulates unlikely holy ground between Space is the Place, Black Orpheus, and Hackers.  This movie is gorgeous, even if it takes more than one viewing to piece together a thorough understanding of its plot, since it phrases its protests against colonialism & strip-mining in the language of dreams & poetry.

6. Men — If it weren’t for the tabloidization of Don’t Worry Darling, this would easily be the most over-complained about movie of 2022.  The Discourse was not kind to Alex Garland’s shift from chilly sci-fi to atmospheric folk horror, but the spectacular MPreg climax & Rory Kinnear’s terrifying face will haunt us forever anyway.

7. Triangle of Sadness — A delightfully cruel, unsettling comedy that invites you to laugh at the grotesquely rich as they slide around in their own piss, shit, and vomit on a swaying luxury cruise ship.  It’s incredibly satisfying—and maybe even Östlund’s best—as long as you prefer catharsis & entertainment over subtlety & nuance.

8. Funny Pages — Proudly wears its 2000s indie nostalgia as a grimy badge of dishonor, questioning why Ghost World and The Safdies can’t share the same marquee.  You might wonder where its alt-comics slackerdom fits in the modern world, but any dipshit suburbanite poser who’s ever romanticized suffering an “authentic” life as a starving artist in The City should be able to relate.

9. Nope — After examining the horror of suburbia and neoliberalism in Get Out (our #1 film of 2017) and the horror of self and manifest destiny in Us (our #7 film of 2019), Jordan Peele’s latest is an oddly laidback, immensely scaled sci-fi thriller about a brother & sister’s fight to understand, outsmart, document, and monetize an extraterrestrial being beyond our comprehension.  Consider it a Signs of the times. 

10. Hatching — A great entry in the Puberty as Monstrous Transformation canon, alongside titles like Ginger Snaps, Jennifer’s Body, Teeth, and Carrie.  Hatching stands out in that crowd by adding an extra layer about mothers living through their daughters in unhealthy ways. In fact, we recommend all mothers and daughters watch this twisted Finnish fairy tale together; it’s gross-out fun for the whole family.

Read Alli’s list here.
Read Boomer’s list here.
Read Brandon’s list here.
Read Britnee’s list here.
See Hanna’s list here.
Hear James’s list here.

-The Swampflix Crew

Britnee’s Top 15 Films of 2022

/ swampflix / 1 Comment

1. Barbarian – This is the ultimate midnight movie of 2022, which is exactly what makes it the best movie of 2022. I tried my best to guess the next big plot twist over and over again, and I was wrong every single time. Nothing could have prepared me for what happens. It brought back the same feelings that I had when I first got into B-movies in my pre-teen years, but more importantly, it gave me faith that the art of trashy, ridiculous big-budget horror films is not dead. I rate this 5 full baby bottles.

2. Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris – I adore charming, feel-good British movies, so it’s no surprise that Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris is ranked so high on my personal list. I laughed, I cried, I cheered, and I even screamed from pure joy. Mrs. Harris has become my role model, and I strive to be more like her every day.

3. After Blue (Dirty Paradise) – Bertrand Mandico has a knack for creating some of the most beautiful atmospheres in modern film. More movies should be set in a sandy, post-apocalyptic paradise full of glitter, phallic plants, and hairy lesbians. I loved every second, even the 5,000+ times the characters said “Kate Bush”.

4. Hatching – All mothers and daughters need to watch this twisted Finnish fairy tale. Its story is engaging, its body horror is haunting, and the practical puppeteering of the main monster completely blew me away. Everything about it is wonderfully unsettling.

5. The Northman – Watching a bunch of tall, ripped Viking men commit brutal acts of violence for 2+ hours made me feel like such a pervert. Robert Eggers somehow managed to turn a Viking revenge film with a lot of heart and a couple of farts into a cinematic masterpiece.

6. Triangle of Sadness – Rich people getting flung around a luxury cruise ship while covered in their own shit, piss, and vomit for a solid 20 minutes was the most satisfying thing I’ve seen all year.

7. The Eternal Daughter – A wonderful Gothic ghost tale that I strangely connected with on a personal level. The film has a very small cast (half of it portrayed by Tilda Swinton) and takes place in a cozy, spooky English manor with not much going on, but it’s somehow riveting.

8. Mad God – This is a pure nightmare that explores the depths of Hell within Hell through the best stop-motion animation I’ve ever seen. It’s so disturbing and even made me physically ill from time to time. How metal is that?

9. Fresh – This starts off as a cute romcom but turns into something sinister while still maintaining its dark humor. I’ve never seen anything quite like it before, but I hope it starts a trend, because I really enjoyed it.

10. Resurrection – Rebecca Hall gives the best performance that I’ve seen all year in a gut-wrenching monologue that’s about 10 minutes long. It’s also the best MPreg movie of 2022.

11. Aline – This was such a goofy, heartfelt film that made me truly appreciate the legendary Celine Dion. I still don’t quite understand how or why it was made and got so much recognition, but I love that this weird little movie about a counterfeit “Celine Dion” made its way into my life.

12. Crimes of the Future – The king of body horror does it again. I honestly was a little bored with the plot, but I was so mesmerized by all of the grotesque spectacle that I didn’t care.  

13. Men – Rory Kinnear’s face will forever terrify me. This maintains an eerie atmosphere from beginning to end (very A24) that kept me engaged and creeped out throughout. Also, it’s the second best MPreg film of 2022.

14. Nope – I’m not really a big fan of horror that crosses into the sci-fi realm, so I didn’t make watching Nope a priority. I’m ashamed I didn’t watch it sooner. This is such a badass movie that completely freaked me out in every way possible.

15. Deadstream – I was not expecting this found footage horror to be equally terrifying and hilarious. It’s a blast, with loads of fun jump scares and unexpected turns.

-Britnee Lombas

Alli’s Top 5 Films of 2022

/ swampflix / 2 Comments

1. Marcel the Shell with Shoes On

I have loved Marcel since my husband showed me the first stop-motion short on YouTube a decade ago. It sparked a love for Jenny Slate that makes me excited to watch anything she’s in. When this movie was first announced, I was squealing in excitement throughout my house, so I was pretty hyped up. Despite going in with extremely high expectations, I absolutely loved it. 

Marcel is as charming as ever, rolling around in his tennis ball “rover” and showing off his “breadroom”. Isabella Rossellini is amazing as Grandma Connie, dispensing tough love and working in her little garden with her little bug friends. All the wonderful tiny details are just beautiful. And that’s part of what this movie is about: appreciating the small day-to-day details and the processes we use to get through life, not taking anything for granted, and keeping your head up through the tough times. It’s also a look at what family and community truly mean. 

I’ve mentioned it on the podcast, but my grandma died this past year. We were far apart at the end of her life, but I was very close and lived with her off and on as a child. Watching Marcel’s relationship with Connie was really nice and beautiful. I cried so hard, but there’s so much hope and warmth to this movie that it doesn’t leave you sad. You keep your head up and appreciate what you’ve got, because the world can be a nice place.

2. Fire of Love

There was no world in which I wouldn’t love this documentary.

#1. I am absolutely fascinated with volcanoes! (Brandon and I actually met in a geology class that spent a good amount of time on volcanoes! He borrowed my notes! Look at us now!)

 #2. I love love, and this movie is absolutely a love story.

With captivating narration by Miranda July, this documentary tells the story of Katia and Maurice Krafft: two vulcanologists who fell in love, got married, and lived & died by the volcanoes they also loved. They filmed countless hours of footage of volcanoes and themselves studying them and not just in straightforward ways. The videos they made were purposeful, cinematic art. Their obsession with these destructive and creative forces is contagious, even as you learn that they lost their lives to it in to the eruption of Mount Unzen in 1991. They took risks, lived passionately, and loved each other, flaws and all.

Once again, I cried even knowing the ending was coming.

3. Everything Everywhere All at Once

The absurdism, the creativity, and the all-out maximalism of this movie blows my mind. Who hasn’t pondered in recent years the multiverse and whether we’re living in “the worst timeline?” (To me, the answer is no, but we’re not living in the best one either.) Where are the best or weirdest versions of ourselves? Maybe these questions aren’t directly answered in this film, but they’re seriously considered. 

Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan are both incredible. I also love Jamie Lee Curtis looking like a regular person! The choreography of the fight scenes is fantastic. Hot dog fingers! Googly eyes! EVERYTHING bagel! This movie has it all and a heart of gold.

4. Neptune Frost

A psychedelic, non-linear, romantic Afrofuturism musical that questions gender, colonialism, capitalism, technology, and the intersections thereof. This movie is a beautiful experience, and there’s nothing like it. Go in with an open mind and enjoy the ride.

5. Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio 

I’m the #basiccinemabitch of Swampflix in that I pretty much love everything del Toro has ever done. I’m not fanatical enough to seek out something just because his name is on it, but everything I see with his name on it is something I at least appreciate. Despite that, I still went into this movie skeptical. There are Disney remakes and “live action” adaptations of Pinocchio coming out practically every hour, so did we really need another one? Well, when the moral of the story is to be yourself even if that means being an annoying agent of chaos, then yes, we did need another. 

Yes, this is del Toro, so of course there’s fascism afoot. No, not all of the songs are good. Yes, it has the familiar del Toro motives and goth sensibilities. No, you will not appreciate it if you never liked his shtick or are over it.

The stop-motion animation is absolutely gorgeous. Every character design is just so good. The story, despite being familiar, is also wonderful. I love that this movie manages to capture how hyper and wild kids can be, and that it celebrates those qualities. Plus, there’s biblically accurate angels, mockery of the crucifix, and a song about poop sung directly to Mussolini. Who cares about being a real boy? Become ungovernable. 

-Alli Hobbs

Podcast #177: The Top 27 Films of 2022

/ swampflix / 4 Comments

Welcome to Episode #177 of The Swampflix Podcast. For this episode, Brandon, James, Britnee, and Hanna discuss their favorite films of 2022.

00:00 Welcome

05:35 Resurrection
11:00 Strawberry Mansion
15:14 Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
21:00 Fresh
25:15 Pearl
31:35 Men
35:38 Deadstream
38:48 The Eternal Daughter
43:58 Funny Pages
50:07 Parallel Mothers
52:05 Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio
1:00:52 Triangle of Sadness
1:06:16 The Northman
1:10:33 Hatching
1:14:30 Inu-Oh
1:16:53 Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris

1:22:25 Please Baby Please
1:29:06 Jackass Forever
1:34:30 Vortex
1:44:47 Aftersun
1:54:23 After Blue (Dirty Paradise)
2:00:38 Everything Everywhere All at Once
2:08:05 RRR

2:13:25 Neptune Frost
2:19:10 Barbarian
2:27:22 The Banshees of Inisherin
2:36:15 Mad God

James’s Top 20 Films of 2022

  1. Mad God
  2. The Banshees of Inisherin
  3. RRR
  4. Everything Everywhere All at Once
  5. Vortex
  6. Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio
  7. Aftersun
  8. Pearl
  9. Men
  10. Jackass Forever
  11. Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
  12. Funny Pages
  13. Triangle of Sadness
  14. The Northman
  15. Crimes of the Future
  16. On the Count of Three
  17. Hatching
  18. Fire of Love
  19. Bodies Bodies Bodies
  20. Emily the Criminal

You can stay up to date with our podcast by subscribing on SoundCloud, Spotify, iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn.

– The Podcast Crew

Boomer’s Top 15 Films of 2022

/ swampflix / 2 Comments

Hello, all; it’s that time of year again! As always, I must begin with my apologia and my explanations. First, as I’ve said before, I personally feel like any movie released during the last two weeks of December should technically be counted for the year following. I’m not a person who can be counted on to go and see something with a December 29th release date in time to compose my end of the year list (which I’m doing right now on only the second day of 2023); it’s an arbitrary rule, but it is mine. Some of you out there might think that I’m already laying the groundwork to include Hot Twink Spider-Man: Too Many Spider-Twinks on this list because of its December 27th, 2021 release date, but that leads me to my second introductory note for the year. Although this may surprise many long-term readers, there are no comic book movies on this list. To tell you the truth, the MCU ended for me a couple of years ago with Endgame. That movie served to conclude all of the things that I had come to care about within that franchise and put a nice little cap on it. I’ll still stick around for Spider-Men and occasionally check out one of the shows if it piques my interest (in this house we watch anything with Tatiana Maslany in it), but I can hardly work myself up to care about the big flicks anymore. I didn’t even see the new Thor, and the only MCU movie I did see was Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which was 95% because of Sam Raimi directing and 5% Patrick Stewart cameo, which leaves 0% in the tank for the ongoing Marvel long term plan. I did also see The Batman, which would have been a great crime thriller were it not for the fact that it’s a Batman movie, and also Morbius because I hate myself. Finally, although a year is a long time, it’s still not enough to see everything. Brandon’s list just went up and there were nearly a dozen movies on it that I had never even heard of, but the assignment is due and it’s time to turn in what I’ve got even if I didn’t finish all of the homework. For what it’s worth, based on synopsis and marketing material alone, I think the films most likely to appear on this list if only there were world enough and time were After Yang and Triangle of Sadness. 

Honorable Mentions

The House – The first two of the three segments that comprise this anthology are phenomenal, and either one of them could have ended up in the top three of this list if they were features. The third short, however, simply disrupted my viewing experience in a way that I’ve still not managed to get over. You see, the third short is too happy, or at the very least, too optimistic. The most important thing that a film can do is create an emotional rapport with you, and The House does this with the opening segment about a man whose obsession with a fine house draws him into a Faustian bargain that becomes a nightmare for his child, and that spirit of dread and discomfort plays out through the second segment, which is about a contractor who is unable to flip the house into which he has invested everything, and his inability to drive out parasites and pests. The third segment simply changes the feel of the movie in a way that moves it out of the top tier of consideration for me, as much as I like two initial vignettes.

Licorice Pizza – I loved this one, and it’s funny to me that I can’t technically put it on this list, since I saw it in theaters as late as March (a full two months after seeing 5cream at the drive-in). But it technically had its wide release in November of 2021, so I can’t even grandfather it in with my arbitrary two-week rule noted above. Everything about this movie felt like magic to me, like a story of a 1970s Pippi Longstocking who seems to be able to do just about anything he wants through the power of sheer gumption and never questioning himself, and the way that maturity looks differently on different people. 

Hatching – Leaving this one here because although I really did love it, I fought with myself about whether number 12 below should count as a movie or only be considered for Honorable Mention status, and the truth is that the experience that made it onto the list below just deserves it more. But if it weren’t for that, Hatching would have made it to the number 15 spot. 

Without further ado: 

15. Bros – I can’t say much more about it than I already did; read my review here. 

14. Do Revenge – Hitchcock by way of Heathers, a twisty bubblegum potboiler that’s more fun than it has any right to be. Read my review here. 

13. Don’t Worry Darling – I’ve already done my apologia for why this one was better than anyone gave it credit for and was more than the sum of its inspirations, and I stand by them. Check it out here.

12. Everything is Terrible: Kidz Klub – Everything is Terrible is one of the few social media outlets that is run by people you can truly respect. They create new films out of hundreds of old VHS tapes, and you can hear more about one of their earlier ventures on the Lagniappe episode found here, in which we discussed their film The Great Satan. Kidz Klub likewise cribs largely from propaganda distributed in churches as well as secular material, with this film being about a child asking “Goddad” about life, the universe, and everything. I know EIT content is normally more digestible for the public in web-hosted chunks, but this one is well worth tracking down if you don’t get headaches from their material. 

11. Neptune Frost – An Afrofuturist fable about colonialism, strip-mining, and the concept of a unified people in the form of a musical, this movie is gorgeous, even if it will probably take more than one viewing to begin parsing together a thorough understanding of what its plot is. The message is clearer than the narrative, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Listen to us discuss it on the Lagniappe episode here.

10. 5cream aka Scream aka Scream 5 – The latest feature in my personal favorite horror series, this one suffers from too little Sidney Prescott, but it’s still worth watching. Read my review here. 

9. Barbarian – Identified by Alli as the Castle Freak of AirBnBs, Barbarian is about men and their barbarity, and all of the ways both subtle and obvious they walk through the world. A harrowing movie about the anxieties of existing as a person who is historically disenfranchised within a world controlled by others which also contains a scene in which Justin Long struggles hilariously with a tape measure. Read my review here.

8. Prey – The colonial era Predator prequel that everyone’s dad probably thought was really cool until they went to their favorite YouTube channel that’s focused around The Discourse and learned that they were supposed to hate it because the main character is a Mary Sue and this new film is woke SJW bullshit. You know, unlike the first film in this series, which they somehow believe was an apolitical move about Vietnam. Listen to us discuss this one on the Lagniappe episode here. 

7. Glass Onion – A worthy sequel to Knives Out. It’s absurd to call a film so tightly constructed “sloppy,” but there is something that’s a little less sharp and fine-tuned about this one than its predecessor, but some of the new zaniness therein helps balance this one out. Read my review here.

6. Fire Island – It is a truth universally acknowledged that most romcoms derive the core basics of their plots from Jane Austen novels, even though they rarely wear their inspiration on their sleeve so openly and honestly as Fire Island does. Joel Kim Booster is our Elizabeth Bennett, who initially has friction with the seemingly humorous but ultimately passionate Will, who stands in for Mr. Darcy. It could just be recency bias that’s making me rank this one so high, but I watched the whole thing with rapt attention and a big smile on my face, and sometimes, that’s really all you need. Read my review here.

5. Men – Possibly a spicy take here, but I loved Men when I saw it and even though I know that there was discourse, it passed me by completely and I still love this as much as I did when I first saw it. You can read Brandon’s review here. 

4. Three Thousand Years of Longing – An absolute delight of a movie. A stodgy academic meets a handsome djinn and, determined to use her wish wisely, listens to the stories of the djinn’s life and the loves he has has lost along the way. A love story that crosses time and distance in a truly magnificent and magical way. You can read Brandon’s review here. 

3. Nope – Another absolute home run for modern horror maestro Jordan Peele. After examining the horror of suburbia and neoliberalism in Get Out and the horror of the self and manifest destiny in Us, Nope is about a brother and sister whose experiences with extra terrestrial life require them to stop trying to outsmart the entity which has taken up residence near their ranch, but to realize that it’s impossible to reason with an intelligence so alien. Read my review here.

2. Everything Everywhere All At Once – This has easily been the most talked-about movie of the year, so what more do you need to hear from me about it? I love Michelle Yeoh, and although she’s no stranger to the complex role, it was nice to get to see her play a character who considered themselves to be a good person but whose actions are often selfish at best. So often, a film that is about intergenerational trauma and poor parental relationships comes across as schmaltzy and reductive, but this one is complex in ways that you can’t predict or imagine. You’ll find yourself empathizing with a rock more than you ever have before. You can read Brandon’s review here. 

1. Marcel the Shell with Shoes On – I fell in love with Marcel the moment I saw a trailer for this movie. I love anything that gets down to the eye level of a little being and sees the world from their perspective. Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, the Borrowers books, the half-remembered TV show The Littles, and even Ant-Man: it’s an immediate win for me. Marcel has more than that alone going for it, though, with an earnest depiction of a relationship between a child and his grandmother that found me where I live and pressed on my emotion button. I laughed and then I cried and then I laughed some more. Long live Marcel the Shell with Shoes on. 

You can read Brandon’s review here.

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond