Andy Andersen

Jerry Garcia's favorite movie was Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, a 1948 comedy/horror mashup that he says gave him "a general fascination with the bizarre" that would fuel his music career. "There are things in this world that are really weird. I don't think I knew that before I saw that movie, that there are things that are really weird, and there are people who are concerned with them," Garcia said in "The Movie That Changed My Life" in 1995. "That became important to me, and I guess I thought to myself, on some level, I think I want to be concerned with things that are weird. […] It seems like fun."

Hey hey, it’s October 2021 which means it’s Spooky Season and fuckin’ Bond season. Daniel Craig’s final 007 outing is finally out after a year and a half of COVID delays, and since this’ll probably be the last time I have a calendared excuse to write about James Bond for a while I figured I’d indulge in a not-so-humble, non-definitive ranking of every Bond movie.

Hey hey, goin’ a bit off the usual script this week. Haven’t done a straight review of a new release on here before (I think the closest we ever got was our rapid-fire convo about Mank) but I saw the new Candyman over the weekend and for various reasons — chief among them my nagging sense of conflict with the calcifying critical consensus — I feel compelled to get my full two-cents out there in the ether.

Jesus, we’re halfway through 2021 already. Didn’t want to let any more time pass without givin’ y’all my favorite movies of the year so far now that we’re on the downslope.

It's summer y'all, which means it's time to cozy up with some sungrown bud and indulge in the great tradition of summer movie watching. Whether you're hitting the vape and venturing into a cool, dark theater to escape the heat, catching a cult classic at a retro summer evening drive-in, or just throwing a classic summer comedy on your TV at home while nursing an indica from your favorite bong, there's no summer-movie experience you can't successfully augment with a little cannabis.

The question of ‘what to watch’ can become an overwhelming proposition fast, especially if you’re stoned, couch-locked, and faced with an ever-multiplying mess of major streamers on your TV. In the age of infinite content options, curation is key. That’s why we’re giving you a roundup of top-shelf streaming options to hit up with your next evening joint, edible, or casual vape.

If you've spent any amount of time smoking weed and watching movies, you already know the two activities make an ideal pair. You might say film is the most psychotropic art form, engaging multiple senses and modes of thinking and feeling at once for an experience that, at its best, you can intuit sensorily as well as emotionally. The late filmmaker and legendary stoner Robert Altman once described the ultimate cinematic experience as such on The Dick Cavett Show in 1972.

1981: it’s the witching hour in America. A recession is in full bloom and Ronald Reagan’s promise to “make America great again” remains, for good or ill, unfulfilled. Strung out between the aching, post-’60s come-down nihilism of the late ’70s and the neoconservative free-market mass-consumption orgy of the Reagan era, the masses occupy a strange, pre-apocalyptic no-man’s-land moment in American culture, and so do the movies.

Most of Nolan’s movies I like more than I dislike, but I also get turned off by the fussiness and preciousness with which Nolan approaches his concepts and how his films often feel like looking at an MC Escher drawing with someone behind you demanding you see something more profound than what’s actually there. Fortunately, I mostly found Tenet to be a stylish thrill ride that wasn’t begging me to revere it more than it deserved or even care about understanding it that deeply. And I think what makes that possible is that it’s a loving, Byzantine monument to James Bond movies first, and a Chris Nolan joint second.

It’s as a good a month as any to start doing this thing ‘cause I really went all the fuck over the place with what I watched. A lot of people do “Noirvember” which I’ve never really attempted ‘cause after October I’m always in a horror hangover and feel like I need to decompress by not putting a lot of thought into what I’m watching and just sorta vibe around.

The name may or may not ring a bell, but you know the work of Ralph Bakshi even if you don’t know you know it. You’ve likely come across a Fritz the Cat poster at your local comics or record store, caught snippets of the animated Lord of the Rings on Cartoon Network as a kid, or seen memes and stills of a young, pre-fame Brad Pitt with an animated buxom blonde Jessica Rabbit-type in Cool World.

It’s hard to remember a time when Disney wasn’t the behemoth media/entertainment empire it is now. But in 1981, the company was a whole different, non-Earth crushing animal. It was on the verge of being bought off and broken up, in fact. And in this transitional period, a small band of folks at Disney Records put together a sci-fi stadium rock band called Halyx. Live from the Space Stage: A Halyx Story is a new documentary that uncovers this fascinating piece of forgotten pop history...

If this were a normal, non-pandemic summer, UNHINGED would’ve been exactly the type of B-movie I’d relish seeing at a theater on a hot afternoon – popcorn, maybe a hot dog and a soda in hand, in the company of strangers as ever-so-momentarily carefree as I. So it feels super weird to have watched this strange and scruffy Russell Crowe B-thriller from home on a screener, days before it’s supposed to be the movie that “reopens theaters” in the U.S. All this is to say, be careful out there

You ever get obsessed with a good movie year? Lately I’ve been really diggin’ 1981. I’m not sure if it’s generally thought of as iconic or important a movie year as, say, 1980 (The Shining, The Empire Strikes Back, Raging Bull — all of which are getting the big 40th anniversary treatment this year), but it should be. Raiders of the Lost Ark, Escape from New York, Scanners, Heavy Metal, The Evil Dead, Excalibur, Blow Out, The Road Warrior, An American Werewolf in London, The Howling, Halloween II

I’m always game for a good documentary about a movie. You Don’t Nomi, the new doc about Paul Verhoeven’s notorious NC-17 “trashterpiece” Showgirls, ranks among the best of them. Taking a similar approach as Room 237 did with the cottage industry of conspiracy theories surrounding Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, You Don’t Nomi looks at Showgirls from every possible angle...

I recently saw a tweet that said “You know what I miss about the 90s? Dark edgy indie films with studio budgets.” You know what, same. But also not. As we (hopefully) head into an era where we rely less on Hollywood to make movies for us and start making them ourselves with technology that’s readily available to literally everyone, we should be looking back at the actual micro-budget, DIY indie films of the 90s for actionable inspiration.

I tend to be a sucker for slashers with “massacre” in the title. From The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (contender for greatest horror movie ever made) to 80s camp classics like The Slumber Party Massacre and Sorority House Massacre and modern ultra-low-budget oddities like Pool Party Massacre. There’s just something about the simple pleasures of the whole ***** Massacre phenomenon that really does it for me. So I jumped at the chance to review WRESTLEMASSACRE

Performance is a psychedelic British crime film starring James Fox and Mick Jagger as a gangster and reclusive rock star brought together by fate for an existential melding of minds, egos, and personas in a kaleidoscopic haze of blood, sex, drugs, art, and music. Drug movies from the late 60s and early 70s can often be tedious, frustratingly incoherent, and just plain shitty. But Performance succeeds where so many others fail, partly because it’s bookended by another genre.

TRUE HISTORY OF THE KELLY GANG is a movie about crime. It’s a modern, poppy work of historical fiction that approaches the idea of criminals and the nature of crime with a deep sense of modern concern. What are the power dynamics at play when it comes to deciding who is a criminal, who is the law, and who is more equipped to uphold justice?

Well shit! Top Gun: Maverick, the latest victim of Hollywood’s unfortunate but necessary mass-rescheduling wave in response to the pandemic, has been pushed all the way back to December. Gotta admit, I was pretty stoked to indulge in this particular title come July — though much more as a Tom Cruise Stan (not to mention, an ardent Miles Teller enthusiast) than out of any love or nostalgia for Top Gun.