Sean Lemme

I started blogging as a way to lazily pass my high school senior project and somehow I've kept doing it for more than half my life

Shocktober Day 13: Manhunter

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986) Manhunter (1986)

In the August of 1975, a patrolman arrested an unusual man who had been cruising around the suburbs late at night. The man had removed the front seat of his car and he had a bunch of conspicuous items, like a ski mask and handcuffs. But the man had an explanation for everything. Thankfully, Detective Jerry Thompson remembered a similar suspect and vehicle were described in a different case, and even though the man was released, Thompson began working with police in five different states to put everything together. Eventually they had enough hard evidence to put together a case and arrest the man, convicting him of dozens of murders and other heinous crimes. That man would escape prison and kill again, and eventually he was sentenced to death. His name was Ted Bundy.

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Shocktober Day 12: Day of the Dead

Day of the Dead (1985)

I saw the first Night of the Living Dead in the Nineties, when I was just a kid, too young to understand any of the movie’s themes. I watched it with my family and mostly remember being excited about the second tape that came with the movie, the parody Night of the Living Bread. I didn’t see its sequel (and the remake of that) until I was in college. I watched a downloaded copy of Dawn of the Dead in my dorm room by myself and absolutely was all about its criticisms of consumer culture and message of hope beyond all reason. Now, all these years later, thanks to the advent of (arguably too many) streaming services, I have finally completed watching the three Living Dead movies that matter.

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2018 Mildly Pleased Summercast

Well, now the summer is over. It’s still warm out, but the kids are back in school and the smog has cleared (for the time being), so we’re calling it. Here’s a podcast where we briefly talk about some of our favorite summer media and also the main thing that happened, Criterion Month. I say briefly sarcastically, because this is pretty long for a mostly directionless podcast. Maybe you wanted to hear from us, though? Methinks that might be the case. In which case, hear away!

Can’t Fight the Friction

Mission: Impossible – Fallout

I was so skeptical of the sixth Mission: Impossible movie that I didn’t put it on my list of most anticipated movies this year, even though I loved the last three dearly. I was influenced by the news stories about it: Christopher McQuarrie bucking the trend of having a new director for each film. Jeremy Renner choosing to be in Avengers 3 over this. Henry Cavill growing the world’s most expensive mustache. We were due for a disappointment, it seemed inevitable. I was wrong: instead we got the best Mission: Impossible yet.

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Criterion Month Day 26: Taste of Cherry

Taste of Cherry (1997)

As we come into the home stretch of this year’s Criterion Month, we seem to have found ourselves in a patch of movies about traveling. We had a movie about people puttering about America, then one about traversing France, and now a film about driving around Iran. Taste of Cherry‘s little twist on the minimal road trip formula? It follows a man looking for someone who will burry him after he kills himself.

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Criterion Month Day 20: The Man Who Fell to Earth

The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976)

When you’re doing a project like this one, especially if you’re doing it the way I am, it’s easy to takes movies for granted. This month I’ve already watched eight other movies, and in most cases, written up reviews immediately after their credits rolled. When you’re watching some of the world’s finest cinema, it’s really not that hard to do; you just summarize the plot, comment on the themes or the film’s impact, and Bob’s your uncle. It such a streamlined process I didn’t even think to talk about how comforting it was to see familiar actors last night in The Last Picture Show, a rare gift in this mostly director-driven practice. But it all comes to a smashing halt when you watch something truly experimental, like The Man Who Fell to Earth.

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Criterion Month Day 19: The Last Picture Show

The Last Picture Show (1971)

The Last Picture Show is yet another coming of age story that’s really distant from my life experience. It’s set during the Fifties in a small (and shrinking) town somewhere in Texas oil country, where optimism seems to have already died long ago. This is a place where no one has career prospects and the adults entertain themselves by watching to terrible high school basketball team and sleeping with each other. For the kids, the entertainment options have dwindled to the property of one man, Sam the Lion (Ben Johnson), who has a cafe, a pool hall, an the movie theater, from which the title of the film comes.

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