protean depravity

Well, I'm going to say it out loud, this year's Berlinale is a dud. Insanely quickly sold out tickets, a lukewarm selection of films, a lack of genre pictures in its program, and finally idiotic comments from the jury... Berlinale is already a fail and makes me want to look ahead for other festivals. Honestly, I'm not sure I'll give it much space in my future life, I think I'd rather save my leave days for the FFF and the Final Girls Berlin. Sorry for the rant.

Jenny Kaplan is as New York City as they come – independent and complex, trying to make a living through a severely underpaid job at the lifestyle magazine Bread and Circus , and always one rent away from being evacuated. Her biggest accomplishment is a very personal and honest piece of autofiction that includes her break up and abortion, titled “Drano”, which got her the most views and support she ever had, but also brought along powerful enemies, such as The Brotherhood and, unfortunately, the owners of her workplace.

The new year started so busy that I almost forgot about publishing the short reviews. Luckily, because of that, there are quite a few now since they added up. In the meantime I discovered a new favorite author, Drew Huff, I fell in love with The Divine Flesh,  the way it was written and the subject matter was totally up my alley, so I have been stocking  up on Huff's books (because I'm totally expecting to do nothing and sit on my couch and read books as long as the snow piles up outside, the way it does now). I also really want to focus on short stories this year, and to put a dent in my TBR by finishing all the horror anthologies I collected over the years, and I started doing that. Hope you enjoy my short reviews, have a great winter time! 

...because that's when Berlinale starts again!

In my introductory blog post to  Skeleton Crew  I stated that there are stories in this collection that outright bother me, that I don't like, and even yes, I hate. I don't mean to be preachy or judgy, but some of these are extremely mean - especially against people above a certain weight. I don't want to claim that King is fat-phobic, but after re-reading these stories, I almost think he might be. I certainly hope it was a phase and he's not like that still, because it is a bitter pill to swallow for me, as I'm obviously a fan of his.  Where do we draw the line in such cases, though? How can a reader discriminate between an author writing a character realistically, with their flaws, misogynistic, racist, homophobic characters because in real life they exist and should be written about; and an author being himself misogynistic, racist, homophobic and using a character as his mouthpiece? This is a difficult task for any reader and I'm usually very lenient and giv...

It's finally time for some crime, thriller and mystery again, let's go! I've had tons of time to read over the festive days (it was so wonderful), so there are quite a few short reviews today. Enjoy.

I have been spending this last weekend mostly at the Fantasy Filmfest White Nights, and this year is the most movies I have seen during White Nights ever, a personal record! I was thinking that the really good movies were reserved for the Nights section in April and the main festival in September, but, wow, was I wrong... A shout-out to the organizers and the Zoo Palast crew, the festival was amazing as always, and a heart warming highlight in this dark, cold and icy winter. I put the films in the order of my personal delight, ranking from least to most, with the movie at the bottom of the page being my favorite of the festival. It doesn't mean that the lower ranking movies are bad or not worth watching, on the contrary, in this year's White Nights selection there wasn't one movie that wasn't worthwhile, but I will explain for each movie why they didn't make my personal best. The good news is, they all made it into the top ten! I missed two films and saw seven from ...

  Welcome to part three of Cult Classics! It seems like cults are everywhere right now; in the independent news, in conspiracy theories, in media we consume, in movies we watch... Whether an organized group of powerful extremists controlling our lives really exists, or it is the mere paranoid fear thereof mirroring into horror fiction, it is worth to take a look at this phenomenon and the way it is represented in recent horror movies. In this installment we'll study the cults in The Void (2016), Last Shift (2014), Kill List (2011), The House of the Devil (2009) and Martyrs (2008). The titles are linked to their respective imdb pages for full film information and stills. I do presuppose that you watched the movies discussed here, so I will only give the shortest plot summary. It would make sense to watch the movies before reading my cult descriptions, as I SPOILER EVERYTHING. I also decided to add an additional part 4 to this series as I ended up finding more cults that ...

Let's start the year 2026 with the hope that these empty cinema seats will be the only places to witness horrors and that horror will stay strictly confined to fiction. And the first opportunity to fill those seats will be during the upcoming film season - our first station is the  Fantasy Filmfest White Nights  on January 24 and 25, which is like a mini winter break weekend for horror fans. I usually only watch a couple of films during the White Nights, but this year I feel like 2025 wasn't that great of a year for horror, and I feel somewhat starved for more movies. So I decided to take a leave from Hammett on that Saturday and to watch all the films on the first day, and three films on Sunday. Let's take a look at the trailers and talk about them, in order of their appearance at the FFF.