Tribeca: "In Fabric"

Jason Adams with another review from the Tribeca Film Festival.

There was a Twitter query going around last week asking in the wake of the new Avengers film what pop culture events we felt personally blessed to have lived through in our lives. Apparently some people feel this way about the Marvel movies, which, well, great for them. It's nice to be happy. Personally I like more lesbian sadomasochism and insect fetishism in my entertainment, so my answer to said query falls more in line with how I think we're live-time experiencing the birth of a genre genius with the writer-director Peter Strickland, who's gone three for three with Berberian Sound Studio, The Duke of Burgundy, and now In Fabric, his latest slow-motion psych-out beamed in from an alternate dimension.

In Fabric first introduces us to Sheila (a marvelously world-weary Marianne Jean-Baptiste), who swims through her bank job and a string of telephone-based blank dates with all the ease of any Strickland character, which is to say with little to no ease at all...

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Six Alternate Cinematic Realities More Desirable Than Trump's America

Daniel Crooke here. Just in time for the newest season of Game of Thrones, Sen. Ted Cruz and Gov. John Kasich’s presidential aspirations are officially, swiftly deceased – leaving the door open for a brave new world even more horrific than some of the worst doomsday scenarios we’ve seen on the big screen. Now that Donald Trump has ostensibly become the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, science fiction has officially become reality. When you consider the inherent havoc in a candidate who makes light of civilian casualties, discards women, ensures bigotry and violence, and endorses straight-up rights snatching – not to mention his microscopic, ahem, vocabulary – many cinematic dystopias and alternate realities once thought to be cataclysmically dreadful begin to sound imminently habitable if he were to actually be elected. Next to the fascist plunder-land of Trump’s America, living in these broken worlds would be downright nirvana.

Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

If a clown is going to be elected president, let’s make sure it’s Peter Sellers.

The Duke of Burgundy

Whether BDSM knocks your boots, a world full of lesbians is bound to involve less literal dick-measuring than this one.

Mad Max Fury Road

We’re already well on our way to oppressive weather patterns – from vicious sandstorms to severe drought – and the faux-chismo of Immortan Joe will already inhabit the Oval Office, so let’s wait it out in the desert until Furiosa starts her noble reign and maybe get to know a member of the Vuvalini along the way. Note: null and void if Hillary wins – we’ll have our own shiny, chrome leader and mediocre Trump will go the way of the People Eater.

Battlefield Earth

Better hair.

Children of Men

Trust me. Despite the governmental meddling, guerilla warfare, and international class struggles, living in a world with no children is much more hopeful than passing on Trump’s to the next generation. Plus stoned Michael Caine is exactly the kind of deadbeat loosuh we should keep around.

Planet of the Apes

Fictional tyrannical orangutan > real tyrannical orangutan.

Which otherworldly filmic universe would you rather inhabit than a planet of Trump?