Staff Picks: Panjandrums, Poets, Power Struggles
Still from David Lynch’s The Cowboy and the Frenchman.
I’ve had lately, and this week’s no different: I ducked into a theater to see Nacho Vigalondo’s film, , and was agape from start to finish. It follows an entitled fuck-up millennial named Gloria who’s seemingly spent much of her adult life running her mouth, partying too hard, and doing it all without consequence. But when her dreamy yet insufferable boyfriend dumps her and she’s forced to move into her unfurnished (and unoccupied) childhood home in upstate New York, things take a turn for the peculiar: a giant lizardlike creature materializes in Seoul—and Gloria somehow controls it. Monster as metaphor is anfilm—with its mix of dark hilarity, stunning cinematography, and gripping take on the self-infatuation that plagues many of us—is brilliant. What I love most, though, is that it’s a revival of what as “the cheesy, campy, guilty pleasures that used to bubble up with some regularity out of the B-picture ooze of cut-rate genre entertainment,” which was nearly driven to extinction in the early aughts. With ’s low-budget sci-fi feel, it’s wacky, outrageous plot, and its unwavering look at the monsters we harbor inside us, B flicks are back and better than ever.
