Year: 1994
Rating: 5.0 / 10
Content Warnings: Police brutality, Gun violence, Vehicular accidents, General sex-pestery, Blood/Violence, Nudity. Sex, Person on fire, Attempted suicide, Drinking and Driving, Scat (fake)
A man aims to have sex in his car, but is met with constant misfortune and side-tracking.
Summary:
The first part of the movie follows the summary pretty well– a guy’s misadventures in trying to have sex in his car. It’s kind of what you’d expect from a slapstick-sex-comedy of the era... But then it begins to weirdly morph into stranger and more abstract territory, until you don’t really know what’s going on anymore. The gags, when they do hit, are fun... But god I was so confused by the hour-mark into what was going on anymore. They seemingly end up dropping the car-sex plotline and it veers into a yakuza-samurai movie, then full on into sci-fi. Not the worst, but I can't say by the end I was enjoying it a ton.
Year: 2026
Rating: 4.5 / 10
Content Warnings: Sex, Nudity
Summary: A meek man gets entangled with a biker and ends up in a BDSM relationship.
This was pitched as a romantic movie and... It’s really not at all. To be blunt, it felt kind of like a toned down 50 Shades of Grey for gay guys who wanna be dominated.
The main premise is this meek guy [Colin] kind of wordlessly ends up in a relationship of sorts (neither end up calling it being boyfriends/partners/ect) with a mysterious man who's really into motorcycles [Ray]. There’s not a lot ever said about Ray, and what we get of Colin aside from his meekness is he’s a singer in a quartet and seemingly comes from a loving family.
Anyway, much of the relationship is a wordless arrangement. To each their own, but the part where it becomes just weird is the coldness about Colin’s actual life. This I guess comes into why I called it “50 Shades of Grey for gay guys” because it ends up not even really BDSM with aftercare and whatever, it just ends up feeling more along the lines of horror. Ray never shows care to Colin, which Colin is fine with (up to a point)... But then you get things like Ray not even caring to be decent to Colin after his mother dies until he purposefully injures himself.
In the end, Colin snaps due to Ray’s unwillingness to give him a day off of all of this, runs off with Ray’s motorcycle, and is back in the morning. Ray then offers him a day free of their dynamic to hang out. After this, Ray disappears from his life without a word.
I kind of wondered if this whole thing was about Ray wanting Colin to stand up for himself and learn to be less meek and set proper boundaries for this type of play, but given how it felt in the beginning, I don't really know if that’s the case. In the end, Colin just ends up meeting up with another guy and engages in similar play, requesting 1 day off a week.
I guess my big thing is it’s pitched as a romantic-comedy-drama... And it’s really just a bleak drama. There’s no real connection between the main two beyond general submission and dominance, and there’s no reason for it beyond... Handsome man I guess...? I don’t know. I doubt it was supposed to be a good showing of gay BDSM– which is fine! I don’t need every film focusing on a subsect of people to be good representation... But it felt like bland representation too, actually. There wasn't really anything even titilating about the whole thing; A movie about fetish that felt oddly lacking in any sexual charisma.
It kind of left me feeling frustrated, wanting something more out of the whole thing. I think there were wonderful performances and I have no issues with the technical aspect, but the plot just ended up feeling kind of lackluster by the end. I felt there was just a lot of unexplored material that could’ve been interesting if fleshed out more, but it just wasn’t there.
Reading a quick summary on the book it’s based off of, it seems like a lot changed. In general, I think the dynamics in the book– at least from a summary– seem a lot more interesting and seem to have more depth, focusing a lot more on a massive age-difference, power imbalences and consent, versus this where... Well, there's not really too much here. I remembered an opening scene of the main characters leaving their dogs unattended better than 75% of the rest of the film.
Year: 2007
Rating: 7.0 / 10
Content Warnings: Sex (without nudity), Light nudity, Violence/light gore, Death via natural disasters,
Summary: A cam girl re-finds her first love, a tattoo artist, and tries to get a tattoo from her.
Let me start off by saying visually this movie is a delight. The bright colors, the beautiful flowery artwork, the 2000s internet of it all. There's such a lovely use of contrast and mood, it’s a visual feast. I’m kind of mixed on the plot. One thing I don’t get is the tattoo artist, Takeko’s refusal to acknowledge who Jade is for a good bulk of the movie. I get why she doesn’t want to engage with her further, as its tied to trauma, but I just don’t get why she pretty much pretends not to recognize her. Maybe this is a fault of the subtitles and I’m missing something– because the version I watched had kind of lackluster subtitles (everytime I tried to find new ones, they were the same. Eventually, I found a rip of it on YouTube and the video quality was shit, but they at least subtitled the Japanese segments unlike other versions). I guess I’m also just kind of confused on the timeline of things; It shows Jade meeting Taeko when she was like 7 and Taeko looked to be like at least 12. Then it showed them as classmates...? (And looking the same age) But now Jade is saying she’s 18 and Taeko has her own shop that’s thriving...? I don’t really get all of that. I do think it’s an interesting story at its core, but I really feel the whole thing needed to be tidied up story-wise. I like the thread of flowers, tattoos and memories and I think the flower symbolism is a really interesting thing to delve into. It’s beautiful in it’s atmosphere and kind of a relaxing movie, but I wish they added some more context between the two girls. I have nothing really bad to say about the subplot with the families or the thing with the other guy who wanted a tattoo– think those were fine enough.
Year: 2008
Rating: 8.5 / 10
Content Warnings: Discussions of STDs/HIV[2], Vomiting[2], Infidelity[2], Homophobia[2], Violence against the elderly[2]
Summary: A romantic-drama anthology of 3 stories by Zero Chou revolving about the interconnecting lives of LGBT people.
The first story revolves around a blind singer, Jing, looks after her younger sister, May. She has a relationship with her accordion player, a butch woman called Diego. Due to the strange hours her sister keeps, May starts going to a foster family. May also starts developing a crush on Diego, leading to her putting her sister in vulnerable positions. She ends up full-time living with the foster family, who then asks Jing to stop seeing May until she’s an adult due to her “lifestyle”. Reluctantly, Jing agrees. We then flash forward; Jing and Diego finally get to see her again, now grown up and about to go to college.
In the second story, we start by seeing Jing and Diego singing for a wedding, but find out it’s more of a marriage of convenience, as the bride and groom both have same-sex partners who they run away with during the ceremony. Flash forward, we see Lily, the bride, as an older lady with Alzheimer's, with her husband coming to see her. Her husband, who she keeps calling Ocean– the name of her lover–, is the man she got the marriage of convenience with, Yen, and who is currently HIV-Positive and his lover is cheating on him. Yen aims to only stay for a small while, but Lily attempts to keep him there. Yen leaves and Lily chases after him. After calling his ex, Yen returns home to find that Lily still hasn’t come back. She’s eventually found, but still believes he’s Ocean. They go out together and Yen gets harassed, eventually culminating in him leaving, but putting his contact information on a bracelet he gives Lily.
This circles around to him remembering his youth and being asked out by Diego. It’s revealed Yen and Diego were close friends when they were in school. We see Diego’s past, working under her grandfather for a puppet show at the temple. Her mother wants her to present femininely, but she protests against this. Due to her nature, there’s a rift in the family; Her brother wants to solely inherit their family trope. We also see the introduction of Lily when she was younger as well. Lily calls up Diego, saying if she sings with her, she’ll get a puppet. She flirts with Diego, making someone in the crowd jealous. Diego’s brother gets angry with her for this, but her grandfather supports her. Diego then calls a girl she's in love with named June, who tells her about her date with a boy. She then goes to find Lily, who's upset because of the woman in the audience being upset. Lily then comes onto Diego, who expresses her own frustration over her body. Lily comforts her and they spend the night together, waking up and talking about their wants in life.
It ends by showing that Diego, May, Lily and Yen are all seemingly on the same train.
I really liked this one. I think it was really well connected and it did a good job of making everyone feel multi-faceted.It got me quite emotional, especially the second story. The acting was really good and it easily pulled you into the lives of all these intertwining characters and made you feel for them clearly.
Genuinely my only complaint was I felt the first segment ended too quickly and it kind of confused me with that (especially because it did feel like that segment could keep going), and it felt like a hard transition (though I did enjoy both stories).
I grew really attached to the characters and I really like the different themes they played with around family memory, different types of love, and gender and gender expression. I think it was really well done, and even better than Spider Lillies, which had the same director.
Year: 2000
Rating: 8.0 / 10
Content Warnings: Drugs, Sexual discussions/scenes, Sexual assault, Vomitting, Blood, Cutting, Suicidal ideation, Animal death/harm (harm caused by fish vs fish; same with death)
Summary: The story of 2 roommates– a lesbian photographer named Chinatsu and a flirty straight girl named Kyoko. Things become complicated as Kyoko flirts with Chinatsu and Chinatsu develops feelings.
Man this movie is a ride. The first half feels like a light slice of life comedy and then it just hits you with intense drama. I think the happy build up works really well as it really showcases our main characters and their relationship first and foremost.
We have Chinatsu, unsuccessful in love but falling in love with her roommate, Kyoko, especially after one girl rejects her. Meanwhile, Kyoko has multiple boyfriends but starts flirting with Chinatsu, to the point of even asking her to show her how to masturbate. The two are poor, but their adventures together make them happy.
It all starts to shift as Chinatsu desperately wants Kyoko to reciprocate and begins being upset at her lack of care. The zenith really hits as Chinatsu is assaulted by their boss– someone Kyoko has been flirting with– and Kyoko ignores her, focusing on an art project she’s doing for another guy she likes. This whole segment– from the assault (which is shown enough to be horrifying, along with the aftermath), to Chinatsu begging Kyoko to reciprocate her feelings is really uncomfortable and haunting. It’s such a stark difference from the beginning of the film, it really helps put you on edge and feel for the situation.One of the stand out moments is her refrain of asking “Why am I a girl?” right after the assault. Really chilling, really depressing.
As I resonate more with Chinatsu, I do like how they still did weave complexities on the situation. Kyoko is this overtly flirty with everyone, whether she means it or not, but because of the proximity with Chinatsu, it feels so much more intense. We see this as she chases after a guy who works at a fish shop– someone who barely looks at her– versus multiple guys whom she flirts with and then runs away from. It also is an interesting study on the lines of situations being blurred and you really can get both Chinatsu and Kyoko’s perspectives. Kyoko wants them to be friends without that extra component and she genuinely does seem to love Chinatsu, but it’s just not in the same way. It feels heartbreaking on both sides, especially as one of the last scenes has Chinatsu wanting to not see her for some time.
I don’t quite get the ending implications, but my guess is that Chinatsu did leave Kyoko, and Kyoko staring at her photos is reminiscing and waiting for her. Either way, it’s sad as hell but it feels all so very real. Really compelling movie, the more I think about it, the more I like it.
Year: 2019
Rating: 7.0 / 10
Content Warnings: Vomiting, Mentions of Cancer, Blood/gore, Sex, Light nudity, Death, Self-harm, Sexual assault
Summary: A religious-obsessed palliative care nurse becomes obsessed with “saving” her patient.
I think this was an interesting character study but sadly I think it’s a film I watched at a bad time (both due to illness and certain events). I do think it captured feeling and tension really well. It's one I really want to revisit, because I did enjoy it, but I think I'd be better off reviewing this fully another time.
Year: 2026
Rating: 8.5 / 10
Content Warnings: Blood/Gore/Death, Cancer mention, Child abuse mentions, Sexual assault mentions, Attempted coercion
Summary: 10 years after being sent to jail for shooting her father while trying to run away with her sister, a woman gets a job at a luxury apartment building. However, things go sour fast as she wakes up in the middle of the night to people trying to murder her.
This movie is great. It has such a perfectly done and clear vision and it’s just a fun movie. I’m not a big fan of action movies, but the plot supported it well enough and the fight scenes were so well choreographed and shot, it was hard to take my eyes off of it. I think the acting was great and the stylization matched perfectly. There were some fun and unexpected plot beats, such as the pig head reveal, and I think they put a lot of creativity into each fight scene in order to make them feel refreshing and new each time.
Genuinely just a blast and a fun movie!! And I think underneath the guts and gore, the story of familial love is really sweet and it was actually quite heartfelt.
Year: 1974
Rating: 3.5/ 10
Content Warnings: Sex, Nudity, Violence/Blood, Sexual Assault, Abuse, Incest, Flashing warning
Summary: A woman enters a convent to learn what happened to her mother there.
I do feel like it’d be remiss to go a whole month of pride without one nunsploitation movie. Though exploitation movies are just that, you can’t deny there’s a lot of gay shit happening.... Except this one felt severely lacking in that realm and leaned very straight all things considering... (don't let the image I used fool you!!!)
It feels more straight up exploitation in the first part and then horror-mystery in the latter. It kind of doesn’t feel like the first part and the second work well together and to be honest... The main girl isn’t very likeable. Even before finding out what happened to her mother, she sets up a woman to be sexually assaulted... So it’s kind of hard to root for her having a good outcome. Tonally the whole thing feels kind of weird, but maybe I’m expecting too much out of this type of movie.
One thing I will say is it does have pretty cinematography! But it just didn’t do much else for me.
Year: 2025
Rating: 5.0 / 10
Content Warnings: Death/murder
Summary: Cast out of high-society from birth due to his mother's affair with a poor boy, a man named Beckett recalls how he ended up in prison as he attempted to inherit his way back into money.
I guess by the end of this I felt annoyed. It's not that this movie is bad, but it didn't feel fulfilling either-- especially the whole last part.
Tldlr: After everyone in his family set to inherit is dead, he gets the money. However, then he's taken down and framed by Julia, a girl who's known him since childhood. However this whole part feels... Implausible. Its not the fact that he's framed for a murder he didn't commit-- this happens all the time-- it's the fact you're telling me a guy worth 10 billion doesn't have the finances to fight this....? Literally look at people who clearly killed and get away with it. On top of that what frees him is... I guess a suicide letter? As if self inflicted wounds and external caused wounds even look the same? Not to mention yes there's evidence fabrication but it feels like it goes above the realm of possibility. In all honesty, it would make more sense if he went down on his embezzlement, got a slap on the wrist and then got with Julia.
... This also is accounting for the fact that why the hell would you want to get with someone like her she's a nightmare. Main guy is too in his own way but he at least was written with a base level of charisma. And don't get me wrong-- evil women are some of my favorite archetypes... when done well!!! But she just felt like a cardboard cutout. I'm not saying the main guy was the most compelling either, they both were just kind of... eh.
... Also you're telling me this lady who's claiming she's like 6 figures in debt can hire a private eye...?
Idk! The logistics pissed me off too much to offset the good acting and decent enough filmography. There were elements that were appealing but that whole last part just felt like such a clumsy finish, it soured a lot of the experience leading up to it.
Year: 2024
Rating: 3.0 / 10
Content Warnings: Death (incl. Death by police), Implied sex, School shooting, CGI nudity
Summary: A time traveller arrives at a diner where he recruits people to help him save the world from an upcoming apocalyptic future caused by AI.
I wanted to like this movie; a fun concept with a decent cast (which they severely underutilize Zazie Beetz imo (who was in They Will Kill You)) but I feel it's just a severely lacking movie. I guess it gets off on the wrong foot too-- an incredibly preachy speech to start. I didn't wanna discount it from that-- sometimes a movie doesn't know how to start or is too on the nose for a scene or two. Fine, whatever, the general concept of “time traveler coming into a restaurant and threatening to kill people unless some help him” is interesting enough, I can look past it!
I guess my issue is as it progressed it felt like something I've seen parts of but done better. A lot of its politicking felt very hollow. A lot of the plot had holes the size of trucks (the girl who's allergic to wifi and her nose bleeds... wifi is everywhere...and she's fine around her boyfriend's virtual reality device... and also the time traveller's whole backstory....). Also, the whole big deal they made about the secret escape thing is weird because... They never explain how that girl knows about it. Later in the movie, it’s revealed the girl who knew about the escape been communicating with a talking version of her dead son (I guess it’s AI)... But it still really doesn’t make sense to me; Did he know about it? Is her son just the AI hivemind represented in the child we see? If that's the case, why even do that? Why bring everyone down this road instead of having them killed by the cop shoot out? I don’t get it.
Also god this film needed at least half of it trimmed down. The whole scene where they reach the 9 year old had so much editing that could be done, it felt like an eternity getting to the ending from that point on (I also was not feeling the film at all at this point, so I’m sure that has something to do with it.)
I also do have to side-eye a movie that while trying to talk about society’s ills still relies on some weird feelings towards its fat characters (which, to their credit, there are 4! But 1 dies almost immediately, 1 is only really there to talk about wanting pepsi, 1 barely gets any dialogue aside from saying she just wanted pie... The third lasts longer but still dies.) I don’t know, maybe I’m reading too much into things but given that it’s also a movie that relies on its social themes, it feels like a strange choice to have those characters be almost throwaways.
While I DO strongly admire the “fuck AI” stance this movie takes, it also feels very... Bland in terms of anything else going on for it long-term. It feels quite disjointed tonally and I feel it makes it near impossible to actually connect– good or bad– with any of the characters emotionally. Even the characters whose backstories we get to see, it still didn’t make me care for them any more or feel for their situation.
Year: 1970
Rating: 8.0 / 10
Content Warnings: Nudity, Flashing images, Infidelity
Summary: A story revolving around a woman, her cheating husband, and a man who she begins to find interest in in an allegory to Adam and Eve.
Something about Věra Chytilová’s filmmaking is that it’s always quite striking. The use of color really stands out and compliments the story well. The scoring in this movie really stands out in enhancing the almost fairytale-like atmosphere that backs up this film.
The Adam and Eve allegory is apparent from the jump, as it even starts with a montage of images before going into talking about the story. Still, while it uses that, it still stands on its own as an allegorical piece with its main story, as well as being quite interesting and visually stunning all the way through.
It’s strange, it’s fun, and generally all around a beautifully crafted film in its production. I feel like there’s a layer I’m missing beyond the surface level things, but it’s definitely a film I’d revisit in the future to further ruminate on.
Year: 1988
Rating: 7.0 / 10
Content Warnings: Sex, Nudity, Blood, Suicide/Mentions of real life suicide, Sexual assault, Discussion of AIDs/HIV
Summary: A reporter’s next project involves telephone sex clubs.
This was kind of a pain to find, but eventually, I did it! Anyway, funny enough, I didn’t find this going through Sato’s catalogue, but rather in the tumblr tag for Fruits of Paradise.
As per Sato’s catalogue I’ve explored now, it has a profound sense of desolation and a lotta porn. I mean, the latter is expected given it’s a pink film. What I didn’t expect is a conversation going in detail about Yukiko Okada’s suicide (which had occured 2 years earlier) and how horny it made the main girl, Midori.
Anyway, the plot goes like this: A reporter named Nukada ends up trying to interview a girl named Midori who works at a telephone club. However, when he gets an interview, she’s swept off by a man who works at a tech company named Kihara. Kihara enjoys kinky and painful sex. Midori is offput by it, but also fantasizes about wanting to die. Kihara ends up dead and the reporter gets news of it, alongside there being a videotape attached due to Kihara wanting to film encounters with Midori. It comes to light that Midori fatally stabbed Kihara as she tried to flee from him after he forces her to engage in acts she’s not comfortable with. After watching the tape, Nukada dreams about being Kihara in that scenario, without being stabbed, before being thrust awake by the vision of a zombie-esque Kihara appearing behind him. He finds out that Kihara’s wife knew Midori and that Kihara knew that. Midori reveals that Kihara’s wife wanted a divorce due to the rough sex, but Kihara refused and Kihara’s wife asked Midori to kill Kihara, in part due to her being underage and thus not receiving a harsh sentence. Kihara’s wife finally corroborates it and talks about having to take drugs to deal with the pain he inflicted upon her.
Nukada tapes Midori while talking to her, saying he’s doing it for his own personal excitement. She talks about her suicidal ideation. Nukada tells her that he’s not planning to turn her in and she rebuttals that he’s into her because she’s pretty. She jumps off a small ledge, landing into grass, all while Nukada keeps filming her. Nukada goes home and puts in a video tape he received. It’s of Kihara, who talks to the camera about being terminally ill and inputting all his personal data into a computer. He then goes on to say he wants to commit suicide, but is too scared of doing it himself, so he purposefully went after people who would have a higher chance of killing him. He then speaks directly to Nukada, saying he’s sending him the curse of the dead before the TV starts talking to him and telling him they’ll pin a crime on him, and announcing the results of Kihara’s post-mortem, saying he was HIV+.
All in all– I really kind of expected it to be more pornographic, and I’m actually kind of surprised. I mean that in a good way– it actually had a pretty coherent storyline overall and was interesting. It does a good job harnessing Sato’s strengths– the camera and filming, the desolation and loneliness throughout, just an incredibly weird vibe. It follows a similar pattern of death/sex mixing together in a weird and muddy way, but I think it manages to do it quite decently. I also think the mix of technology into the story is an interesting one; It in a way kind of reminded me of Videodrome.
All in all, actually, I enjoyed this one a lot more than I thought I would!
4:35pm .... // 07.01.2026