The Repetition of DIE MY LOVE

DIE MY LOVE (4K + Blu-ray)

2025 / 119 min

MUBI 

Review by Stinky the Destroyer😾

Let’s accentuate the positive first. The performances in Die My Love are outstanding. As far as Jennifer Lawrence is concerned, it might even be the best of her career, certainly deserving of the Golden Globe she was nominated for. She approaches the role of Grace with a level of fearlessness and bravery that’s truly compelling (sometimes morbidly so). Co-star Robert Pattinson, as Grace’s beleaguered boyfriend/husband Jackson, further distances himself from the old Twilight days. He successfully avoids being overshadowed by Lawrence in a role that, depending on how one views the film, is either a protagonist or an antagonist. 

At no time do we feel like we’re watching actors, but a really troubled couple whose lives are unraveling due to Grace’s severe postpartum depression (and no small amount of Jackson’s perceived lack of emotional support). Elsewhere, director/co-writer Lynne Ramsey makes a lot of aesthetically interesting choices that enhance the film’s surreal, sometimes hallucinatory moments, bolstered by excellent cinematography by Seamus McGarvey.

However, I can’t eliminate the negative. Despite those stellar performances and themes worth exploring, Die My Love is a challenge to endure. Not because it’s very deliberately paced and depressing. Given her reputation, I wasn’t expecting sunshine and lollipops from Ramsey, anyway. But while Lawrence and Pattinson are all-in, their characters are static and simplistically conceived. Aside from an opening scene where they engage in an uninhibited bout of floor sex (presumably conceiving the child that’s the catalyst for what follows), Grace and Lawrence are defined by verbal and physical conflict. 

A Montana honeymoon. 

In fact, neither of them come across as all that likable or sympathetic. Grace, in particular, grows increasingly vindictive and unhinged, some of her actions bordering on unforgivable. But here’s the biggest problem…Die My Love soon becomes phenomenally repetitive. Not to disparage the impact of postpartum depression on women and families, but as depicted here, the repeated pattern of crises and reconciliation gets rather predictable and boring after a while, despite efforts to jazz things up visually. Along the way, there are no character epiphanies, no meaningful explorations into the nature of this disorder and certainly nothing resembling levity (though I suppose some of this could be seen as black comedy). 

Still, some viewers might appreciate the film’s frankness, surreal elements and no-small-amount of sensationalism. If nothing else, the great cast (including Sissy Spacek & Nick Nolte) makes it difficult to dismiss Die My Love entirely. However, two hours is an interminable amount of time to spend with characters who are exactly the same at the film’s conclusion as they were at the beginning.

Hire THE HOUSEMAID

THE HOUSEMAID (Blu-ray)

2025 / 131 min

Lionsgate

Review by Princess Pepper😺

We get these from time to time…a psychological thriller with a sexy cast that comes out of nowhere to become a sleeper hit. In that sense, The Housemaid could be seen as this decade’s Gone Girl and is definitely cut from the same cloth. This one’s more preposterous, heavy-handed and ultimately kinda predictable, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy it.

Millie Calloway (Sydney Sweeney) is a homeless parolee who lies about her past to get hired by Nina Winchester (Amanda Seyfried) as the live-in housemaid for the mansion she shares with her successful, handsome husband, Andrew (Brandon Sklenar), and daughter Cece (Indiana Elle). Almost immediately, Nina appears mentally unstable, repeatedly flipping on the crazy switch and directing most of her cruelty and venom at Millie. Since losing the job means going back to prison, Millie quietly suffers Nina’s increasingly vicious tirades. All the while, Andrew keeps apologizing for his wife’s behavior and becomes protective of Millie, which ultimately leads to…

…well, you’ll figure out where that particular relationship is going long before the characters do. At any rate, the film’s first hour sets up the meat of the story…a series of narrative plot twists calculated to have the viewer questioning who the real villains are. For the sake of avoiding spoilers, I won’t elaborate on any of them, but will say that some you’ll see coming, others might be a surprise. The Housemaid also snatches a page or two from the Gone Girl handbook for its own purposes, such as flashbacks presented to reveal the truth behind what we’ve already been shown. The film culminates in a wild, bloody climax clearly intended to evoke visceral reactions from the audience, which it more or less accomplishes.

Best sammich ever.

Though The Housemaid is longer than it needs to be, especially with its sometimes laborious first act, director Paul Feig manages to step out of his comfort zone (he’s mostly known for comedies) to deliver an engaging, occasionally lurid thriller that pushes a lot of the right buttons. And interspersed among scenes of gratuitous sex and some butt-puckering violence are welcome moments of black comedy (the final scene is particularly amusing). A couple of gonzo performances add to the fun. While Sweeney might be Hollywood’s current Flavor of the Month - largely for aesthetic reasons - both Seyfried and Sklenar easily steal the film. The former, in particular, serves up some wildly entertaining scenery-chewing.

None of this will ever be mistaken for high art, but it’s generally a lot of fun. As psychological thrillers go, what The Housemaid lacks in originality (and perhaps plausibility) is compensated by pure exuberance. Being a surprise hit, a sequel has already been announced, but since the premise precludes any notion of lightning striking twice, I think everyone involved should quit while they're ahead.

EXTRA KIBBLES

FEATURETTES - From Page to Panic: Making The Housemaid is a pretty decent 35 minute behind-the-scenes doc featuring numerous interviews; Secrets of the Winchester House: A Housemaid Tour looks at the mansion itself; A Peek Inside is a brief promotional doc. 

2 AUDIO COMMENTARIES - Both feature director Paul Feig, with others involved with the film joining him for the second one.

DELETED SCENES

TRAILER

EXCALIBUR: For People Who Love Shiny Things

EXCALIBUR Limited Edition (Blu-ray)

1981 / 141 min

Arrow Video 

Review by Mr. Paws😺

In addition to its gorgeous aesthetic, Excalibur was sort of unique for the time. Here was a big budget, live action fantasy film aimed squarely at adults, boasting copious amounts of nudity, sex and brutal violence (that scene of a crow plucking out a dead knight’s eyeball still gets to me). For the most part, only Heavy Metal magazine and the occasional album cover offered such gratuitous gifts on a regular basis. The film transcended its genre, attracting an audience who normally wouldn’t be caught dead watching one of these things. Hell, even my parents went to see it, which is really saying something because Dad always hated this shit. 

Not to let an opportunity go to waste, Excalibur was later re-released in an edited PG-rated version to grab the kiddie crowd. Studios did that sometimes, most memorably when Paramount took the splicer to Saturday Night Fever. But at least the music and dancing was left intact, which was that movie’s main appeal in the first place. But a de-fanged Excalibur? Why bother? I only bring it up because this Blu-ray release from Arrow includes the original and edited-for-TV versions of the film. I don’t know if the latter is the same as the PG cut, but I wasn’t ready to sit through it to find out. Still, it’s here for the curious. 

Aside from Deliverance, Excalibur arguably remains director John Boorman’s most fondly remembered film, a sprawling, visually stunning epic that walks that fine line between high art and high camp. From a narrative standpoint, it’s all over the place, but this was never something you watched for the plot. Excalibur has always been a movie of moments (of which it has plenty), its lulls compensated by striking cinematography and production design. Best to settle in and immerse yourself in the imagery, violence, music and the perverse pleasure of beautiful people doing terrible things…

A shiny kingdom is a happy kingdom.

…and Excalibur is chock full of beautiful people, some who’d later become big stars, such as Gabriel Byrne, Helen Mirren, Patrick Stewart and Liam Neeson. The performances are generally exaggerated and over-the-top, most of the cast delivering overtly grandiose dialogue with such seriousness that the result is sometimes unintentionally funny (Nigel Terry as King Arthur & Nicholas Clay as Lancelot still make me chuckle). The big exception is Nicol Williamson as Merlin, the lone actor who appears to be having fun in his role and steals every scene he’s in. He’s also the closest thing the film has to (intentional) comic relief.

Still, the actors and characters ultimately take a backseat to the real stars: Boorman’s flamboyant direction and Alex Thompson’s Oscar-nominated cinematography. These days, I suppose Excalibur might seem a little quaint compared to Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films, but remains a unique visual experience that’s been very nicely restored in all its shiny, colorful, soft-focus glory for this 3-disc release. It also comes with two audio options, the original mono and DTS-HD 5.1. In addition to two cuts of the film, there’s an entire disc of new and archival bonus features. Arthur and his knights never looked so good.

EXTRA KIBBLES

NOTE: Free Kittens Movie Guide was provided with a promo disc for review purposes. Physical supplemental material included with the final product (booklets, artwork, inserts, etc) were not available for review.

TV VERSION - An interesting curio, and maybe worth watching once for a few chuckles.

THE MAKING OF EXCALIBUR: MYTH INTO MOVIE - Neil Jordan’s on-set documentary, which I seem to remember airing on HBO back in the day.

EXCALIBUR: BEHIND THE MOVIE is another, more recent documentary featuring numerous cast/crew interviews.

NEW INTERVIEWS - Individual interviews with director/co-writer John Boorman, John’s son & actor Charley Boorman, Neil Jordan, production designer Anthony Platt, co-writer Rospo Pallenberg and 2nd unit director Peter MacDonald (MacDonald’s interview is the longest and most entertaining).

DIVIDED NATURE - An appreciation by Howard S. Berger and Kevin Marr.

3 AUDIO COMMENTARIES - 1) By Boorman biographer Brian Hoyle; 2) By filmmaker David Kittredge; 3) By director John Boorman.

2 TRAILERS

5 IMAGE GALLERIES

SPLICE: Some Folks Really Get Into Their Work...Literally

SPLICE (Blu-ray)

2009 / 104 min.

Warner Bros

Available at www.MovieZyng.com

Review by Josey, the Sudden Cat🙀

Vincenzo Natali’s weird, wild and slightly pervy variation of the Frankenstein concept is the closest he ever came to directing a film as great as his first, 1997’s Cube. Even then, Splice runs a very distant second. It's interesting and sometimes a lot of fun, but often wavers between darkly provocative and unintentionally funny.

Elsa and Clive (Sarah Polley and Adrian Brody) are a couple engaged in cutting-edge gene splicing experiments, combining the DNA of different animals to create new species. The company they work for - Nucleic Exchange Research and Development (N.E.R.D….ha-ha) - sees profit potential in their work. But these two have loftier ideas, namely splicing together human and animal DNA, which Elsa initiates even though she’s directed not to. Despite the moral and legal implications, Clive reluctantly assists her.

The experiment results in a rapidly growing humanoid creature, which Elsa names Dren (Delphine Chanéac). Once they can no longer keep her hidden at the lab, they move Dren to Elsa’s old family farmhouse, keeping her in the barn. Already pretty unlikable from the get-go, Elsa develops maternal instincts, but they tend to be of the abusive variety. Meanwhile, Dren’s hodge-podge of DNA endows her with a venomous stinger, as well as the ability to breathe underwater and sprout wings at will. She also matures sexually and gets the hots for Clive, and in one erotic/horrifying/chuckleworthy scene, the feeling is mutual. Exacerbated by Elsa’s cruelty and the prisonlike environment, Dren soon becomes dangerous.

"Shake! Oh, wait...sorry."

There’s a lot to like about Splice. It’s a neat premise that creatively borrows from Shelley while incorporating elements of genetics-gone-wrong films like The Fly. The CG and practical special effects used to create Dren are generally pretty impressive, as are the overall performances. On the other hand, the main characters are unsympathetic and generally unpleasant to be around. Elsa, in particular, is almost hilariously self-absorbed. Speaking of humorous, while I appreciate Natali’s efforts to create something a bit edgier than the usual sci-fi/horror hybrid, the sexually charged scenes approach a level of camp that I don’t believe is intentional.

Splice mostly favors sensationalism over themes related to ethical questions raised by genetic tampering, but we won’t hold that against it. As big budget exploitation, there’s some nasty fun to be had here, and depending on the viewer’s frame of mind, a few laughs. As for this writer, I’m still waiting for Natali to live up to the potential he demonstrated with Cube.

This is a re-issue of a Blu-ray first released in 2010.

EXTRA KIBBLES

FEATURETTE - A Director’s Playground: Vincenzo Natali on the Set of Splice is a good 35 minute behind-the-scenes documentary.

Revisiting BOOGIE NIGHTS in 4K

BOOGIE NIGHTS (4K UHD)

1997 / 155 min

Warner Bros

#InPartnershipwithWB

Review by Mr. Bonnie, the Boinker😽

Everything I know about the porn industry I learned from movies and TV, and until Boogie Nights came along, it was almost always depicted as a profession populated by bottom dwellers…junkies, perverts, mobsters and performers driven by desperation. Pornography represented the dark, icky side of humanity.

Not that writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson paints it as sunshine and lollipops, but nearly 30 years after the film established him as a creative force to be reckoned with, it remains the only one I know of that humanizes those who choose porn for a living, on both sides of the camera. So while sex, drugs and rock & roll are still here in abundance, Boogie Nights never feels exploitative. If anything, it’s more of a love letter to a bygone era, when disco was king, collars were wide, and most significantly, dirty movies had plots and played in theaters.

"Hey! My pecs are down here!"

I know a lot of people who love Boogie Nights, including some who find the subject matter itself repellant, and others who feel Anderson has yet to top it. I’ve never been quite as enamored with the film (or the director in general), feeling it was too long, with a narrative that was mostly only engaging once things started going south for these characters. Still, there’s a lot to appreciate here…the performances, the killer soundtrack, impressive technical aspects (love all those lengthy tracking shots, especially the opening one) and an overall aesthetic that immerses us in another time as effectively Quentin Tarantino would do two decades later with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

Is Boogie Nights an accurate depiction of the porn business in the '70s? Don’t know, don’t care. What matters is that it feels authentic and is always visually interesting. Speaking of which, the film looks and sounds really good in 4K. Having never seen it on Blu-ray, I’ve got no basis for comparison, but I was impressed that it kind-of had the overall texture of a projected film. Soundwise, the DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio track does the job quite nicely. This disc also includes an all-new bonus feature - a couple of lengthy panel discussions featuring Anderson - along with a batch of older stuff carried over from the 2010 Blu-ray release.

EXTRA KIBBLES

AMERICAN CINEMATEQUE PANEL Nights 1 & 2 - Running nearly an hour in total, these were filmed during a screening celebrating Warner Bros’ 100th Anniversary. The first night features writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson & actor John C. Reilly, The second features just Anderson.

2 AUDIO COMMENTARIES - 1) By writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson; 2) By actors Don Cheadle, Heather Graham, Luis Guzman, William H. Macy, Juliane\ne Moore, John C. Reilly, Mark Wahlberg and Meloria Walters.

10 DELETED SCENES

MUSIC VIDEO - “Try,” by Michael Penn.

THE JOHN C. REILLY FILES - Outtakes/extended scenes primarily featuring…guess who?

DIGITAL COPY

THE DEMONESS: Dubbed & Dirty

THE DEMONESS (Blu-ray)

2024 / 96 min

From Well Go USA

Available at www.MovieZyng.com

Review by Josey, the Sudden Cat😾

The original English title of this Russian-produced film was Succubus, named for a mythic female demon who gets her power from seducing human male victims. That’s sort-of the gist of the story, too, though this particular demon appears to be happy with men and women, as gobs of female nudity will attest.

In fact, every female character gets naked at one point or another while the men remain more-or-less covered up, even during numerous voyeuristic sex scenes. If boobies, booties and boinking are your thing, you have a kindred spirit in director Serik Berseu. However, The Demoness falls apart as a horror movie - even an erotic one - partially because of the languid pace and an abundance of tired tropes, but mainly the perplexing decision to shoot the damn thing in English.

Too bad, because the basic premise is okay. Four bickering couples arrive at an island retreat to participate in a program that promises to salvage their rotten relationships. But that turns out to be a ruse instigated by the titular creature, which can assume any form in order to do her dirty work (no pun intended) while turning these couples against each other. But aside from an admittedly cool revelation about the main protagonist, The Demoness is mostly skin, sex and jump scares.

When your room has free Netflix.

“But, Josey,” some of you might be saying. “We love skin, sex and jump scares!” 

Hey, that’s great, and far be it from me to question your tastes in horror. However, not only is The Demoness plodding and damn near bloodless, it suffers from a major distraction that repeatedly sucks you right out of the movie: This is a Russian production and a Russian cast, yet it's shot in English, with the actors obviously dubbed to get rid of those pesky accents. The results are awful and it’s entirely possible that some of the cast had minimal understanding of their own lines, which can’t help but affect the performances. I’ve previously seen other Russian productions go this route, but to what end? 

Are subtitles really that big of a chore? A good horror movie is a good horror movie, no matter the language. But since The Demoness is not a good horror movie, the distracting dub just exacerbates the problem. Peepshow qualities notwithstanding, this one’s a hard pass.