Top 10 of 2025: 3. Eddington

★★★★★--Another film that I absolutely adored that I suspect will be in my top 10 for the decade. A Covid movie about mask mandates, political divisions, and unwillingness to compromise, even when it means death. 

Shares some DNA with Needful Things, except the thing that they all want is a speck of power.  We basically see a man whose desperate grasps for authority results in further loss of power/control, a guy that can’t get out of his own way. He’s not the only one, of course, as everyone lives in their own separate reality. Everyone realizes there is something wrong, but what that is and who they blame is different, even though in the end, they all have the same enemy. 

Great performances from a great cast—Joaquin Phoenix, Deirdre O’Connell, Emma Stone, Pedro Pascal, Austin Butler, and others—another Ari Aster home run. His fourth film—Hereditary, Midsommar, and Beau Is Afraid—he hasn’t made a bad movie in my book. For me, this and Midsommar are my favs. 

Midsommar is the great movie of all time

Midsommar. I loved this movie. Definitely my favorite of the year. Probably my favorite film for the last several years. Totally my type of flick; it is really a beautiful film. Like it way more than Ari Aster's previous film, which is more or beloved, Hereditary.  I wasn't that crazy about it. Saw Midsommar on psychedelics (which I knew factored in heavily going in). After the opening, almost left 15 minutes in, I thought this was a huge mistake, almost left 15 minutes in, but I was glad I took the plunge once they got to Sweden. All of that was visually beautiful. Plus it put me in the right mainframe to really get this movie, I think. Has gotten mixed reviews but if you go in with the right mindset, totally an experience.

Rotten Tomato Consensus: Ambitious, impressively crafted, and above all unsettling, Midsommar further proves writer-director Ari Aster is a horror auteur to be reckoned with.

Gist of the film is that a group of grad students tag along with one of their classmates to the commune  (which ends up being run by a pagan cult) where he is from in Sweden for their annual Midsommar festival. Only this is a special one that only happens once every 90 years and involves ritual sacrifice. Has its roots in The Wickerman and Cannibal Holocaust. One of the students has a girl friend that he reluctantly invites after she suffers a horrific loss that most of the dudes, including her boyfriend, sees as a huge drag. The only one among them that isn't a complete piece of shit to her is the Swedish native, Pelle (Vilhelm Blomgren). Beyond this setup, the couple, Christian (played by one Jack Reynor) and Dani (played by Florence Pugh who is really great and wins the movie), their relationship, it deteriorating. In this aspect, director Ari Aster, sites the Albert Brooks film Modern Romance, which I've never seen, about "a successful film editor with far too many issues that affects the relationship between him and his remarkably patient girlfriend" as a direct influence. Only actor I have ever seen before is William Jackson Harper, who is Chidi from The Good Place, who plays the most ambitious/driven of the grad students, Josh.

So lets just throw this out there. There is this suicide at the beginning where Dani's sister kills herself and murders her parents. She cryptically tells Dani in a text that she is going to do this. It's something like "I'm done. Mom and dad are coming, too. Goodbye." Her dick boyfriend tells her to stop giving in to her sister's attention seeking behavior. He then talks shit about her to his buddies, basically saying that he is finally going to break up with her. You know all you need to know about him at this point of the movie but he just keeps getting worse. Next thing you know she calls him just screaming. The sister indeed killed herself by taping a hose attached to the exhaust of a car to her mouth and murdered the parents by pumping the gas into their bedroom. We see the cops dealing with it, corpses and all. It is truly horrific. In my altered state, I almost had to leave. There is also, spoiler, a pair of suicides when they get to festival. All this is obviously the last thing you want to see when tripping but the characters, at that point, have several days of psychedelics in their systems.

Going to throw out a spoiler warning for the rest of this review. Ok. The movie scores high marks in the dipshit dudes ignoring huge red flags department. For these dudes, the movie is straight up horror. Don't feel so bad about them dying, honestly, though in my youth I could see myself as potentially among them although I was always a pretty good, respectful dude. But this sort of got me asking the unanswerable question of if they had followed the rules or whatever, would they still have died? They sacrifice non in all. Four new bloods. Four of their own. One to be chosen by the May Queen. All of the natives died voluntarily and it would appear, by breaking the established rules, so did the new bloods. It is unclear if they would have survived if they hadn't been dicks but I guess not. Would they have just chosen their own if that was the case? Another unanswerable is if they do this every year or this is part of that once every 90 years stuff the master of ceremonies was talking about. Seems like they would blow through their ranks pretty quickly if they are offing at least four of their own every single year or whatever.

Midsommar kinda of feels like it's maybe in the same universe as Cabin in the Woods. You've got Will Poulter, who plays Mark, as the fool who wears a jester hat in the burning at the end (he and all but three of them are dead by that point). The scholar in Chidi. You have sort of the harlot or whatever with the English chick who went on a date with Pelle's brother before meeting her fiancé, which might be a stretch. Sort of the alpha male Christian who is chosen by the May Queen, his girl friend Dani, to wear the bear carcass (he takes on the beast persona and he was just all virile and what not). Not exactly sure what the fuck the fiancé is other than an arrogant Westerner prick. I guess he was just extra. Oh, and they keep captive and kill a bear. Fuck that shit. For this I can't be a part of this community.

A bit on more on Christian. Dude fucking sucks. Not only is he the worst boyfriend of all-time, he is also a shitty friend. After the ritual suicide on the second day, Christian tells Josh that he is going to write his thesis on this place. Josh, Chidi, is like "fuck you, man, that is bullshit and lazy, you knew I was going to do this." But Christian feels no goddamn shame. Academic fraud, this piece of trash. After being just terrible through the whole movie, he ends up boning this young red-haired girl in this fucking insane ritual in what is likely the craziest movie sex of all time. It involves the dudes in the village sort of egging him on at the start of it and then like 10 or so older ladies standing around the chick trying to get pregnant whilst experiencing vicariously all of her pleasure and what not. Some of them even kind of join in with what I assume is her mom holding her hand and what not and some old lady pushing on his butt and shit. Dani looks through a key hole in the door and sees this going down. She freaks out, understandably, screaming and what not. The other girls that are following her around as the May Queen or whatever, which she won in a psychedelic fueled dance competition, scream with her in her pain, lightening her load. Empaths, all of them, in this commune. Anyway, after Christian cums, he immediately freaks out and runs the fuck out of there, naked, penis flopping, hiding in the chicken coupe with Simon who is technically alive, we see, as his lungs, which are out of his body like wings, hard to describe, filling up with air and shit. Finally figures it out, this fucking moron.

It is there that he is further drugged with some neurotoxin that won't allow him to move. This is where we learn that Dani, as the May Queen, must choose who is to be the ninth sacrifice: Christian or some dude chosen at random. She goes with Christian. She needed to choose him to let that shit go and move on with her life. Also, the choice symbolizes her leaving behind American society which has brought her nothing but pain and entry into the group, her new family. For her the movie is wish fulfillment. She has a family again and she has rid herself of her traumatic and relationship baggage. This is truely total transformative experience. How every psychedelic trip should be.

As you can see, a lot going on in this movie. Haven't even touched on the runes or the paintings and what not. Haven't thought about a film this much in a long time. Highly recommend. 

Hereditary is the greatest movie of all time

Hereditary. Man, this sure goes to some unexpected places. This is a new movie and there will be massive spoilers so don't fucking give me any shit if you read on. It rarely happens but still. So, anyway, yeah, weird. Was one of four people in the theater. The other three, a little family consisting of middle-aged couple and a high school (ish) daughter, were like, "uh, well, what did you think of that? Really something, huh?" Yeah, that sentiment, I'd say that pretty much summed it up.  I can totally see why critics love it and audiences hate it. So if you liked that movie The Witch that came out a couple of years ago and that everyone is comparing this to, you'll probably like this in that it was a lot of "what the hell is happening" followed by an "oh my god it's over." Yeah, they are both very much those critics A-, audience D movies, if you know what I mean. An extremely disturbing ending will do that for you. So, if you liked that other movie or movies that have endings that are super fucked, then I've got something for you over here... Hereditary is the greatest movie of all time.

Rotten Tomato Consensus: Hereditary uses its classic setup as the framework for a harrowing, uncommonly unsettling horror film whose cold touch lingers long beyond the closing credits.

Pros: Ending is super out there. Toni Collette is a hell of an actress. Does a pretty good job of insane. A lot of detail to make the reveal believable (much like Get Out). A slow burn that builds to insanity.

Cons: Not all of it holds up under any sort of scrutiny. Little too over-the-top.

Here we go. Movie opens with the death of grandma Ellen. Her daughter, Annie played by Toni Collette, and the grieving family begin having strange occurrences having to do with their shared ancestry that becomes increasingly horrible as per use in the horror genre. Early on we lose one of the two children when son Peter, played by Alex Wolff from Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, gets baked at a party and his little sister Charlie, played by Milly Shapiro, eats a piece of nut cake despite her nut allergy and the brother decapitates her in a freak accident while driving her to the hospital (I'll get into this later). From there we get seances and possession and hauntings and crazy people and all that fun stuff. It is a pretty standard horror movie you've seen 100 times for the first three-fourths of the movie. Then shit gets cray. This is a motherfucker of a beast of a domestic breakdown flick. It is writer/director Ari Aster's first feature film. It also stars Gabriel Byrne as the dad and Ann Dowd as the creepy-ass "friend" Joanie.

While Hereditary is most compared to The Witch, I thought it more in tune with the mumblegore film (movies with naturalistic acting and often improvised dialogue, low-budget film production, and a focus on the personal relationships)--which, to be clear, this film is not--is House of the Devil. That film, set in the '80s during the "satanic panic", was directed by one Ti West who is a genius, and deals with a broke college girl that babysits for a strange couple in an old house. When she gets there, the home owner informs her that it is not their child that she will be watching but his ailing mom. As the story goes on, she starts uncovering weirder and weirder happenings revolving around a cult bent on ushering in the antichrist. Like that film, this is a slow burn that gets more fucked as shit goes down, ultimately building into one hell of a crazy ass conclusion.

Joanie. Huge bitch

The breakout star of this flick is 100% Toni Collette who is just incredible. She was totally unhinged and insane with grief. Two scenes that really did it for me were the one where Joanie is trying to tell her about how she conjured up the spirits of her dead son/grandson. There is this crazy desperation to the scene with Joanie pawing at her and her resisting the whole thing as nonsense. It is obviously too much for her and she doesn't know how to handle it. She then turns around and does this same shit to her family much to her husband and son's annoyances. The next scene that really shows off her chops comes at the end when she is just fucking devastated. She is completely leveled in a truly horrible way. It is uncomfortable as fuck to watch but is an undeniably great performance.

This is a flick that requires a lot of attention, likely a second viewing. So basically the whole movie revolves around this body snatching, demon worshiping cult that has maybe already put the demon's consciousness in the girl (it is somewhat unclear if the demon has fully manifested in the girl as it prefers male hosts). Everyone in this world seems to be in on it and everything that goes down was all according to plan (no matter how outlandish). Regardless of if Charlie was always possessed or not, the demon needs a male host. The grandmother tried this once before as Annie, the mom, explains her brother committed suicide because he believed that their mother was trying to put people inside of him. We see that she was basically always willing to sacrifice her family for this cause and even went so far as to Hand-that-Rocks-the-Cradling her granddaughter (i.e. breastfeeding her). With me so far? Probably not. I too was lost.

"It's alright, bra. She'll shake it off. She's a rock."

As this was not a super clean movie, there were so many things that confused me. So my questions are why did Gabriel Byrne catch fire instead of the mom? Who possessed the mom when she cut her own head off? Was this like an Oedipus type of fucked situation that caused instant insanity? Why did the demon baby need to be a boy exactly? Is the boy like in the sunken place forever? Or will splashing with water wake him up as it did when Annie was possessed. Also, why go about possessing the daughter in the first place? Why not perform the ritual on the boy when he is like a toddler or something. The movie definitely requires multiple viewings but I'll be damned if I ever watch that shit again.

I was able to answer one glaring plot hole through a bit of research which I guess makes it not a plot hole, technically. This was from the scene where the girl, who was maybe a demon already, ate a piece of cake with nuts in it and her brother takes her to the hospital but gets into an accident and decapitates her instead (he drives home and goes to bed in shock after this takes place by the way, leaving her head on the side of the road). The issue was if the cult was just like hoping the little girl would die or if they forced that to happen in some way.  Apparently when the decapitated head shot pans up, that one Paimon symbol that everyone wheres is on the pole. The shock of that scene was fucking terrible and insane. It sort of makes you sick to your stomach. Holy fuck, man. That is basically the holy movie. Great but not one to watch more than once.