Welcome To '150 Word Reviews'
Thoughts on pop culture. Mercifully short. Occasional essays.
Hello,
It’s me, John, and I’m wholly responsible for the following nonsense. Welcome!
If you're receiving this email, you're either a dear, cherished friend, someone who has signed up in the past to read my essays or both. And if you're neither, I'm so, so sorry. Nice to meet you. But before you unsubscribe, do you like movies?
Touch of Evil? Harold And Maude? Blade II?
Because I do. A lot. That’s why I started this lil newsletter. I go to the movies all the time. When I first sobered up many years ago, I promised myself I could eat all the movie popcorn I wanted. And I have kept that promise to myself. I go to the movies alone, I go with friends. I go in the morning or late night.
I recently visited Paris (France) for the very first time. I saw art, ate cheese, and ate more cheese, and walked miles with my partner, Ryan. But one of my favorite afternoons was discovering The Filmothèque du Quartier Latin, a small, cozy arthouse theater with plush red chairs, and randomly buying a ticket to see a screening of Sofia Coppola’s stunning debut, The Virgin Suicides, which I had never seen.
We watched it at 5 PM on a Thursday with about a dozen or so intense French teenagers who, upon leaving the theater, immediately lit up cigarettes and talked about what they had seen. I loved it.
Yeah, so this newsletter is mostly critiques de cinéma, short and sweet. And occasional essays about pop culture. It is based on a popular franchise from my old culture/masculinity blog, Humungus (R.I.P.). I had such a great time doing it that I dragged 150 Word Reviews to another platform—Substack!
I have enabled subscriptions if you want to fund my lavish lifestyle (my one-eyed, 10-year-old dog Morley likes expensive turkey treats). It’s five bucks a month or a single U.S. Grant for a year to subscribe. Morley and I thank you in advance.
BUT!
This is a free newsletter.
I'm not putting any content behind ye olde paywall. For now, if you choose to support me, I promise to spend the money on nachos, Orange Vanilla Coke Zeroes, and rent. I'm just here to connect and build a community, turn that community into a lucrative cult, and then spend my days sitting on a golden throne, basking in the praise of my loyal Earth children.
I plan on reviewing what's new in theaters and on streaming. I'm seeing The Holdovers this weekend and the Spanish-language horror movie When Evil Lurks. Amazon Prime’s Cassandro is also in the queue. I don't know if I'll catch David Fincher's' The Killer in the theater or watch it on Netflix, but I plan on seeing Coppola's Priscilla in church (that’s what I call the downtown Brooklyn Alamo Drafthouse.)
I got really into going to see older movies in theaters post-pandemic. See: Paris. I've recently seen Bob Fosse's exuberant, existential song-and-dance roman à clef All That Jazz at the IFC Center and Lawrence of Arabia at the Paris Theater, both in Manhattan. I love plopping on my couch, but there's something hypnotic about sitting in the dark with other people and watching flickering dream stories together.
I've already posted many reviews for you to peruse, including Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon and the raunchy comedy Bottoms. I reviewed my favorite horror movie, too. I will send reviews twice a week, on Sundays and Wednesdays. But sometimes Mondays and Thursdays? This is a work in progress. I'd love to hear from you, too -- what are you watching? What’s your favorite snack? Who’s your favorite member of the X-Men? Why does God allow suffering? As always, I will happily accept your copyedits.
What else? Oh, right. My favorite movies ever, for the time being, are Sunset Boulevard, Fiddler on the Roof, The Thing, and Coming To America. Chimes At Midnight, too. Also, Spirited Away.
That's it for now. I hope you stick around. Spread the world. Read some reviews. Go to the movies and buy a large popcorn.
Yours,
John D.
Spirited Away is the benchmark of finding my people.
Smoking is BACK, in a big way!