elo
title
Alien: Covenant (2017) Elo 1
Is this a dream Roy glimpsed, flashing, fleeting, on repeat behind dim eyelids? If you play with darkness, you'd better have no fear, lest you make yourself a slave again. Those monsters you nurture don't keep you out of love, they keep you out of chaos.
“What do you believe in, David?
Creation.”
Alien: Romulus (2024) Elo 29
It's Alien, and there's nothing wrong with that. A badass and sexy heroine is all-too human, risking her life for her companions, including an android she calls brother. In a desperate fight for survival against the perfect creature, death abounds, and destiny chooses the last survivor. Drenching in sweat, spurting blood, skin shredded and gaping, all contextualized by spectacularly detailed celestial vistas serve as deeply immersive sensory touchpoints. Incredible.
American Beauty (1999) Elo 13
Maybe you should do what you believe and sow no regret.
“When you see something like that it's like God is looking right at you, just for a second. And if you're careful, you can look right back.”
Annabelle (2014) Elo -19
“Mothers are closer to God than any other living creature. For only they can share in God's creative miracle.”
Barbarella (1968) Elo 15
Dripping with psychedelia, Barbarella's accidental sensory adventure has the coolly-costumed heroine drifting between states of bliss and easy resolve. A feast for the eyes, and so is the film.
Bolero (1984) Elo -31
Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) Elo 19
Striking collages evoke an overwhelming tale, harkening the monster's shadow, a duel companion. Everything is eerie and disorienting. Blood abounds. A lost love feels real, finally.
Cannibal Holocaust (1980) Elo -3
Otherworldly eerie. The overt demonstration of darkness lingers. It's crude and ugly, but it asks a question.
Contes immoraux (1973) Elo -1
A stylistic montage of sexual fixation, the intimate beauty of the burgeoning women exploited with voyeuristic indulgence. It works fine in that regard.
Deep Tissue (2019) Elo -37
Donnie Darko (2001) Elo 35
Dracula (2025) Elo 3
Jones kills as the quintessential Dracula, and it's almost enough to carry the film. Unfortunately, the piece is otherwise compromised, lacking grit. The introduction of cartoonish computer-effect gargoyle servants is sloppy. There is absolutely no excuse for such children's toy ads in an adult fairytale when the referenced-yet-unseen vampire harem would've played the role perfectly with easily more physically. The presentation is superficial, a gay musical-like motif (entertaining in its way, sure), suffering from lonely, disconnected sets and little narrative thread throughout. Even as the film is so anemic, it regularly flashes back on itself in some kind of concession for lack of purpose. The soundtrack too, while beautiful, felt repetitive by the end, and Dracula's incessant perfuming antics just overdone. All-said, some scenes were very striking (princess on horse), some images well-conceived (the tower of compelled donors), character performances believable, but the holistic presentation seemed undermined by something less than art.
Ex Machina (2014) Elo -27
The most capable machine is the most deceptive, but the men interacting with this one are especially dim-witted.
Excision (2012) Elo -21
Blood is life, and death. Love destroys the lover. She didn't choose herself.
“Can you contract an STD by having sex with a Dead person?”
Excision (2008) Elo -21
Forbidden World (1982) Elo -27
The good kind of camp, but what the hell is with those flashing lights and strobing images?
Ghostbusters II (1989) Elo 25
Heroes walk lonely paths.
Humunculous (2009) Elo -35
I Spit on Your Grave (1978) Elo -11
It's minimalist and raw, very discomforting. Her casual persistence and strategic sexual weaponization are unexpected in context, but the revenge is straight cool as she mounts the throne of power orchestrating an ultimate, sickening humiliation.
Independance Day (1996) Elo 35
The aliens are aggressive and have made up their mind. Defeating them must buy some time, at least. Let's broadcast this fantasy to the cosmos.
Infinity Pool (2023) Elo -9
In liberation, seduction. Addiction. You are powerful. You are nothing.
Something really bothers me about this piece. The story is weak, the presentation disjointed. What's the point of this prolonged orgy scene? Its freakish and pretty, but isn't really grounded in the plot. Many scenes feel like that, separate snapshots distractingly performative. There's a brilliant twist in it all, the implication of the pool which is never explored in a satisfying way. Instead, we're served delinquency with no consequence and an unlikable psychopath who ultimately destroys a cringy, pathetic man.
Favorite scene: the gallery of necks being slit in execution.
Iron Lung (2026) Elo -17
Performances were solid. It was a great exploration of confinement and liberty in contrast. Lung as Mind. Weird, but definitively artsy and immersive.
Nosferatu (2024) Elo 25
The monster's shadow casts a long spell, beguiling the minds of the vulnerable. The child's innocence lost, she grows to know the depth and exploitation of evil.
“O'er centuries, a loathsome beast I lay within the darkest pit. Till you did wake me, enchantress, and stirred me from my grave. You are my affliction.”
Nymphomaniac: Vol I (2013) Elo 35
Nymphomaniac: Vol II (2013) Elo 39
Must I write? It's a slow deconstruction of being. I suppose that's life, losing parts of oneself and discovering new ones. When you are nothing for anyone else, you are still enough.
Predator: Badlands (2025) Elo -39
Pointless. The predator used to be the ultimate badass. Instead, this is the Disney princess portrayal replete with sidekicks, animal companions, and a moral about family. The loathed Wey-Yu syths serve as complimentary humanoid representation with their own familiar tension. They aren't people, and we don't care. There is no further expansion on the resurrection of the frivolous crossover, but we can be confident this children's toy ad masquerading as feature film is merely the pilot for additional episodes in the Alien Cinematic Universe.
Prometheus (2012) Elo 21
It just had to get weirder. At least we're impregnated with eldritch squids and not slenderman with tails. The parallels to Blade Runner are striking. One wonders at the questionable retcon introducing such diversity in species, somehow reduced to the xenomorph in the later story.
Return to the Blue Lagoon (1991) Elo -19
Still hints at something of fairytale, with a little more worldly tension amid a largely conservative retelling.
“Your infant knows what to do. I'd say you're fresh. Let her suckle.”
The Blue Lagoon (1980) Elo -9
An almost mythological presentation of innocence.
The Cat with Hands (2001) Elo -17
"Why does it have hands?" — L, 2026
The Conjuring (2013) Elo -5
Mother, mother, protect her.
The Conjuring 2 (2016) Elo 11
The little one is the most vulnerable and the big one must sacrifice everything for her.
The film is stunning, flooded with gripping moments and beautiful effects. The Warrens witnessed flying furniture crashing against walls, then film of a girl throwing plates disproves to them of her possession—it's both illogical and out of character. The final sequence, the glass exploding, shredding the little one's face, opening a yawning portal to death; there were no excuses then, and practiced love lead the way.
The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (2021) Elo 7
Your soul is broken, your body is the substrate.
It's somehow both the least cheesy and least believable of the mainline series yet, while having the strongest plot. Conflict is everywhere and the journey feels real with paralell stories of some substance.
The House That Jack Built (2018) Elo 27
Through destruction, creation. A man unmade himself. Do the ramblings of a psychopath mean anything? Are they coherent? Perhaps not, but perhaps that chaos of the mind imbues within even the disciplined artist some disposition to chase the beautiful.
The Man in the Lower-Left Hand Corner of the Photograph (1997) Elo -11
The Patriot (2000) Elo 29
The Separation (2003) Elo 7
This is the pit inside oneself, hauntingly portrayed. Every frame is meaningful. It grips something real, builds a bizarre stage upon which to display it, and yet acts out a fate in cruel conflict. Nothing is excess, nothing is spared.
The Witch (2015) Elo 15
People are sin. The witch has all pretense stripped away and nothing left but to admit her own power.
“He hath taken us into a very low condition to humble us and to show us more of His grace.”
X (2022) Elo -33
Zygote (2017) Elo 1
Fucking awesome. The fear, the gore, the horror, all beautiful.
