An interesting deconstruction of the masculinity inherent to film noir with a cop antagonist who is a bully, a prick, and a rapist presented alongside a be-gay-do-crimes queer femme fatale who is a confident badass and successful novelist.

And then it’s twenty years later and you’re addicted to your nostalgia. You see ghosts of your own memories from the corner of your eyes on the streets you used to know and the songs you once knew so well are dim echoes that you can’t quite make out.

“You’re not getting any younger, Mark. The world is changing. Music’s changing, even drugs are changing.” A film that’s not about heroin.

More so than biological relationships or shared DNA, families are tapestries of histories and stories repeated again and again until they become legends.

Sonic experimentation with sewing machines reveals the hidden gendered histories behind innovative clothing inventions.

A cosmic mix of the dramas of the ‘10s combined with the exploitation films of the ‘70s. There is constant surprise in how layered and postmodern the film is willing to get but it always keeps a sense of playfulness and joy in its use of ‘70s exploitation tropes and metafictional devices right up until the end.

WET HOT AMERICAN SUMMER works best when it’s leaning into its silliness which unfortunately it doesn’t do frequently enough: the going-to-town montage is great; the subplot with Ken Marino’s character trying to get back to camp is gold.

This film deserves the acclaim that ANCHORMAN has for some reason: undeniably up there with THE NAKED GUN and AIRPLANE! as a perfectly observed absurdist parody of its genre.

A horny fugue state of a film that adopts the novel’s epistolary format in a way that doesn’t really work on film.

Loath though I am to suggest that this film should have more THE ROOM-level dialogue or more scenes of hunky shirtless men or more confusingly-staged melodrama or more scenes of the mother (Nicky Whelan) and son (Parker Mack) who look the same age but PRETTY LITTLE STALKERS really needed more establishing scenes for most of its central characters.