eating your way through american midwest - BONES AND ALL, the 2022 cannibal road movie from luca guadagnino

along with the obvious queer readings, theres also a grindhouse-literal metaphor for them realizing that it is not possible to move through the world without causing pain to someone at some point, and they meet all these characters who embody different ways of either accepting or avoiding that fact. stuhlbarg and green dgaf and treat it like a game with no consequences, chloe sevingy is eaten alive by guilt, rylance is twisted from living in semi-denial, etc. they all been shaped by their various reactions to the discovery that interacting with other humans is inherently, uh... messy.

god yes booming post

Speaking of, I could barely watch Rylance. What did we think of that performance?

It was a goofy scenery-chewing character actor performance for sure but I liked it - he was as weird as I’d expect of someone who spends most of their life alone with brief interludes of eating dead bodies

i loved rylance’s performance but historically i prefer a goofy scenery chewing character actor performance. from the moment he’s onscreen he exudes an atmosphere

and at least in the first scene you’re not even sure what kind of atmosphere it is, it’s just super unsettling and fills the room like a poison gas

Enjoyed this quite a bit. The couple in front of us said it reminded them of Near Dark, which I could see--I suppose this, in some ways, essentially a vampire film stripped of the supernatural aspects. Likewise, I'd finished the television adaptation of Interview With a Vampire a week ago and this was complimentary viewing, re: coming to terms with this strange desire, the reluctance to kill to live, the comfort/horror of finding others like you that you can't trust because they are like you, etc.

I thought of Bigelow too.

Gotta admit that Rylance's voice immediately made me think of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9t-slLl30E