Screen Memories: Evil Dead Burn, Tony, Leviticus
This is a free post from Larry Fitzmaurice's Last Donut of the Night newsletter. Paid subscribers get one or two email-only Baker's Dozens every week featuring music I've been listening to and some critical observations around it, along with a Screen Memories column every one or two weeks where I write about stuff I watched lately.
In about two weeks or so, this column will also be largely paywalled—so if you like what you see, I highly encourage you to take advantage of the "birthday layoff" sale I'm running. We're talking 39% off the first six months of a monthly subscription, or the same discount off of a year of the annual subscription. You can grab the monthly sale ($1.83/month) here, and the annual sale ($18.30) here. You won't regret it, and you'll be keeping this 100% independent publication alive and well, too.
OK, without further ado:
SPERMWORLD [Lance Oppenheim; 2024]
Like most people online and off, I am very much looking forward to Lance Oppenheim's narrative debut Primetime, which is experiencing an oceanic level of buzz due to this sensational trailer as well as the always-extremely-impressive Robert Pattinson potentially extending an extremely-impressive run this year. (I told several people that Eric Rahill was in this one too—is this something I hallucinated? Possibly misinformation I absorbed on social media? No matter...) Upon getting juiced up for Primetime, my wife revealed that she didn't recall watching Oppenheim's 2024 doc SPERMWORLD, so we threw it on for a rewatch; I'm not even sure you could call what he does here and across his other documentary work "pure documentary," only because everything is so cinematically composed—not that I'm complaining in the slightest, the look of his films (all credit to cinematographer David Bolen, who indeed returned for Primetime) is purely dazzling in its grainy iridescence, fairly rare that documentaries like this (his prior flick Some Kind of Heaven was slightly less effective in the narrative department but no less pleasurable to look at) are so visually engrossing/. Alongside being a fascinating collection of character studies within a truly American side hustle, SPERMWORLD also feels like something of a definitive post-COVID document to me—just tons of haunted-looking spaces (no Backrooms) and social emptiness, it really did feel like that for a while after things opened up again.
Evil Dead Burn [Sébastien Vaniček; 2026]
On a level, I do appreciate that the Evil Dead franchise—man, just the fact that "Evil Dead franchise" is a thing at this point is a sign that we've really come a long way (derogatory)—is following a sort of internal logic set forth by the obviously-iconic first two films: Things get bad, things get worse, and then things get so impossibly bad that all hope is truly lost. Weirdo-opinion time but I've always found the original Evil Dead to actually be very sad instead of haha-funny the way many see it, when things really kick off it's very clear that everyone's fates are locked in and inescapable, the ensuing relentlessness setting it apart from the picking-off-the-shitheads approach of, say, the Final Destination films. This new (and seemingly endless) run of Evil Dead films are spiritually faithful to my reading, and if anything they're getting worse in that department; 2023's Evil Dead Rise was suitably high-octane enough to sugarcoat the no-lives-spared carnage, but Evil Dead Burn is pretty much pure dulled-senses misery and that's it, for a mind-numbing almost-two-hour runtime. The influences that Vaniček (whose prior film, 2023's Infested, I have not watched only because I hate spiders) is drawing from here are obvious, with dashes of New French Extremity (highly redolent of, say, High Tension or Martyrs) as well as the trauma-survival narratives that have become constantly recycled in certain corners of horror. (Despite the explicit domestic violence trappings of this one, the overarching toxic-family sitch reminded me less of Hereditary, which I've seen comparisons to, than it did 2018's similarly miserable Await Further Instructions.) The gore was—as usual—more or less a decent time, and of course I welcomed the presence of Souhelia Yacoub effectively turning the film into a Climax Cinematic Universe dealio, but otherwise this one was a real drag and not much fun to watch overall.
I Want Your Sex [Gregg Araki; 2026]
Not really the "Gen Z is afraid of sex" critique as advertised and much more a Gen X-borne "Are straight people OK?!?" rhetorical, and the answer is indeed pretty clear...the screenplay (a co-write with former VICE person and frequent Joe Swanberg collaborator Karley Sciortino) is slightly more provocative than it's been given credit for, explicitly suggesting that sex-starved straight men "in this sociocultural moment" will fake the funk when it comes to engaging with specific sexual aspects of queer culture (an early dialogue exchange between Cooper Hoffman and a better-than-expected Mason Gooding very much spells this out) but are largely too careless and emotionally unequipped to handle everything that comes after. Fresh off an extremely funny performance in The Invite, Olivia Wilde continues to entertain, we'll see what she does in Behemoth! before cementing the hot-streak narrative that so many are already affixing to her...the third act really falls apart here even though I didn't hate the ending itself (something of a callback to Nowhere's concluding moments, maybe), a bit unfortunate that one of the film's most climactic moments reminded me of the tawdry Sydney Sweeney DTS vehicle The Voyeurs from 2021, overall still a treat to see a new Gregg Araki film, here's hoping he's done with TV for the time being. (Before we move on, obligatory mention of Charli XCX's brief turn here, which reminded me a little of Smiley Face while also cementing her own four-peat streak—yes, I'm counting the utterly dreadful The Moment here—of acting turns that leave you saying, "Well, at least she helped this one get a little more funding.")
Leviticus [Adrian Chiarella; 2026]
File this one under "well-intentioned failure," I certainly understand the point of a film like this but, given its very prescriptive intent, ultimately I think the picture this paints is almost absurdly bleak when it comes to hall-of-mirrors cruelties that young queer people can face. (The ending in particular, Frank Ocean needledrop and all, felt especially misguided; what lessons are exactly being imparted from the filmmaker through tacking on an "OR ELSE" to what is otherwise an unremarkable and well-trodden YA-ish queer narrative?) Some half-decent scares here but they're largely drowned out by the suffocating level of atmosphere, what a shame.
Blue Film [Elliot Tuttle; 2026]
Definitely a YMMV situation here in terms of provocation (this one was rejected from pretty much every major festival) but I thought this was very effective and well-done, if slightly held back by the "basically a play" presentation that keeps things very much on-rails...I thought Reed Birney was excellent in this, the same way he was in the similarly "basically a play" Mass from 2024, perhaps my only other issue with this one was the somewhat unnecessary DV-shot portions, which play into certain themes on display but aren't very effective beyond serving as a reminder that DV-shot stuff looks pretty cool sometimes.
Tony [Matt Johnson; 2026]
Even as a card-carrying Matt Johnson fan I was shocked how much I liked this one...I have zero interest in Anthony Bourdain in the way that many of my millennial cohort does, I have a lot of respect for the way he expressed himself politically during his lifetime and would hope he shifted a worldview or two in the process, but I was never captured by his aspirational aura the way many others have been. Johnson is in the same boat, and I do believe his professed lack of interest in the man/myth/legend makes for a much better film, which is a very well-shot and excruciating document of a young man being a total asshole and slowly, but not necessarily surely, learning how to be a better person as he wreaks unnecessary havoc in the world around him. I still think Dominic Sessa is demonstrably Only Good At Doing One Thing for now (his total faceplant in the overall faceplant that was Now You See Me: Now You Don't was unfortunate proof of this) but he fits the bill very capably here, I also enjoyed Leo Woodall's things-get-worse-after-dark turn and it's always a pleasure to check in with Antonio Banderas (who was, dare I say, a little underrated in the otherwise-it-was-fine Babygirl). Some have said this isn't much of a Matt Johnson movie in spirit but I'd very much disagree with that, and not just parts of the final third reminded me of Matt & Bird Break Loose (I told you I was card-carrying!), throughout his career he's made films about men acting carelessly and with a thickness of chauvinism and, if anything, Tony seems like a more mature take on what is very much his established thematic milieu.
Glengarry Glen Ross [James Foley; 1992]
Been a minute since I watched this one, I've been doing a book club with some friends from college for a year and change and we throw in movies to have other things to talk about as well, I was actually expecting this one to have lost some of its appeal but it holds up, all praise due to Al Pacino and Jack Lemmon of course...I often have a hard time getting past the fact that Mamet's pure loathing towards women is so uncut and surface-level, and the exchange between Pacino and Jonathan Pryce regarding marriage-as-a-contract is real "Telling it like it is" fare from his brain in the absolute worst sense, I'd say "Can you imagine being married to this guy" but Rebecca Pidgeon (who is apparently starring in his upcoming film adaptation of Speed-the-Plow) certainly can! In terms of James Foley, I have At Close Range bookmarked as something to watch sooner or later, seems very much up my alley.