0010—EVERY FILM I WATCHED LAST WEEK
L’Humanité (2000) Directed by Bruno Dumont
⭐⭐⭐⭐1/2
Demanding and glacial, Bruno Dumont’s second feature is a fascinating subversion of the crime procedural. Seen through the eyes of the presumably simple-minded Inspector Pharaon de Winter—a fucking kick-ass name with some meta layers to it; check it out—the plot follows the investigation into the brutal rape and murder of a local 11-year-old girl in the alienating village of Bailleul, in northern France.
L’Humanité will certainly haunt you for a long time. Illustration by me, obviously.
Sprinkled with imagery that dances between the ambiguous and the explicit, the movie doesn’t shy away from exploring deeply uncomfortable themes, all while navigating the lives of characters seemingly resigned to their everyday mundanity, surrounded by a kind of violence that feels as unescapable as a sticky hot summer day.
If you were able to get on the same wavelength as this movie but feel like watching something less forbidding, you should also check out Dumont’s terrific miniseries P’tit Quinquin (2014).
Where: Criterion Channel
undertone (2025)
⭐1/2
Hell, for a moment there I was even hopeful we were heading somewhere between Pontypool (2008), Blow Out (1981), and the excellent but underrated Saint Maud (2019). Plus, Catholic iconography is, after all, low-hanging fruit. (Though if you want real Catholic horror, watch Spotlight.)
Unfortunately, it doesn’t take long for undertone to collapse in a crackle, nosediving straight into a parade of tired situations and imagery we’ve seen a thousand times before.
Where: HBO Max.
Lee Cronin’s The Mummy (2026) Directed by—in case you’re wondering—Lee Cronin
⭐1/2
Maybe a spa day, with some proper skin hydration and a decent mani-pedi early on, would have saved everyone a lot of trouble here.
Extra star because embalming fluid is delicious.
Also because I kept my dad’s dentures for basically the same reason Maud did, so who am I to judge, you rat-faced cunt?
Anyway, at least this Evil Dead–wearing–The Exorcist’s-skin mashup is better than David Gordon Green’s possessed-girl movie. I guess?
Also, according to the opening credit type design, this should really be called The Lee Cronin’s Mummy.
Where: HBO Max.
Golem (1980) Directed Piotr Szulkin
⭐⭐⭐⭐
My long-awaited introduction to Piotr Szulkin’s cinema. (I mean, seriously, why the fuck did it take me so long?)
Almost indecipherable by design—a product, in part, of how coercive censorship was at the time—this dystopian satire, made in communist-era Poland, takes us into a post-nuclear world where scientists are trying to create human beings capable of surviving its increasingly hostile conditions. Beneath its cryptic surface, and using the narrative conduit of the doppelgänger, however, lies a fierce critique of Poland’s socialist establishment, one that artists were forced to articulate through more ingenious imagery.
And not to argue in favor of censorship (obviously!), but after watching the dreadful Little Brother on Netflix right before this, it’s hard not to ask an uncomfortable question: what happens to cinema when it no longer has to speak in code? Szulkin had to move through the cracks of censorship, bending his ideas into fragments, absurdity, and coded imagery, and emerged with a masterpiece. Forty-five years later, with all the freedom, money, and technology in the world, we get Little Brother. So, yeah: worth it? I know there’s a ton more to consider here but still…
Anyway, this is the first entry in Szulkin’s Apocalypse Tetralogy, and I can’t wait to tackle the rest.
Also, one of the best movie posters ever, designed by the renowned surrealist artist and graphic designer Franciszek Starowieyski. Pure gold.
Where: MUBI
The Good Son (1993) Directed by Joseph Ruben
(Rewatch)
⭐⭐
Not a good movie by any stretch of the imagination, but definitely a gem of its time. Imagine a big studio producing something like this today, with arguably the biggest star of the moment—a child, no less? No fucking way.
This trashy melodrama, with more holes than a dog meeting its fate at the hands of Macaulay Culkin’s Henry, is still pretty enjoyable in the hands of The Stepfather’s Joseph Ruben.
Also, who greenlit that awful typography for the credits?
Where: Netflix
Little Brother(2026) Directed by Matt Spicer
½
Atrocious.
Where: Netflix
Showgirls (1995) Directed by Paul Verhoeven
(Rewatch)
⭐⭐⭐½
What trashy, pulpy melodramas should be. (And yes, I’m looking at you, Deep Water.)
No one could do one of these like all-time favorite Paul Verhoeven and Hungarian-born writer Joe Eszterhas.
Less stylized than the duo’s previous collaboration, Basic Instinct, but intentionally more cartoony, this gem, like a Club Cheetah dancer, will always have a new layer to strip away with each watch.
Sometimes I wish Nomi’s backstory had never been revealed, but whatever.
Elizabeth Berkley is dynamite, but, as so often happened with the women in Verhoeven’s movies, she deserved better.
Forever Versayce.
Where: MUBI
아저씨 (The Man From Nowehere) (2010) Directed by Lee Jeong-beom
⭐⭐⭐
The occasional sentimentality derails this more often than not. And aside from a couple of shots, the action isn’t particularly outstanding, or even especially well shot.
That said, watching child abusers get their asses handed to them will always rank pretty high on my list.
Where: MUBI
Deep Water (2022) Directed by Adrian Lyne
⭐
Evidence that we were perfectly capable of making slop long before AI came along.
Loved it.
Where: HULU