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HR Smith

 HR Smith is a writer and editor. She is exceedingly interested in most things.
Posted inMovies & TV

A Useful Ghost Is About So Much More Than Sex With a Vacuum Cleaner

THIS is how you smuggle anti-authoritarian queer romance into a heterosexual horror rom-com.
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At the beginning of A Useful Ghost, the debut film from Thai screenwriter-turned-director Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke, a man has a problem. And that problem is dust. He buys a vacuum cleaner, but the appliance has some issues. At night, the man wakes up to the sound of it coughing dust back up all over the apartment […]

Posted inMovies & TV

Barbara Forever Puts the Body-ody-ody in Body of Work

A new documentary about experimental filmmaker Barbara Hammer is a rare glimpse of a cinematic lesbian good time.
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To Barbara Hammer superfans, Barbara Forever may seem lacking. Where are the jump cuts, the weird overlays, the extended shots of a woman masturbating, superimposed over rock formations?  Brydie O’Connor’s documentary about the experimental filmmaker’s life is more aimed at someone with an extremely finite attention span for experimental film, even the queer kind. Composed […]

Posted inMovies & TV

Sinners: the Vampire Musical With a Cunnilingus Tutorial

In which acclaimed director Ryan Coogler keeps alive the tradition of hiding  art in a vampire movie.
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As a director and screenwriter, Ryan Coogler has built a career as an unparalleled interpreter of other people’s intellectual property. With Creed, he became the first person who isn’t Sylvester Stallone to write a film in the Rocky franchise. With Black Panther, he nailed the near-impossible assignment of adapting a thinly-drawn Marvel character conceit—created by […]

Posted inMovies & TV

Death of a Unicorn Asks: What If Unicorns Make Meat Out of YOU?

Combining the violence of grindhouse with the plot of a straight-to-video moral kid’s fantasy.
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Who is this film for? I wondered, as a monstrous computer-generated unicorn yanked out likewise generated entrails with its pointy horn and tossed them into the air. Watching Death of a Unicorn felt like living the consequences of a late-night, stoned riff on that 2010 unicorn meat meme. The gist is: ”What if unicorns make […]

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