X-R-A-Y Specs: THE PLUMBER (1979)
I don’t think Max’s colonization of the bathroom is an accident. It’s a place where we feel vulnerable, and many times we attach a lock to the door to prevent others from walking in unannounced.
Jillian Luft is a Florida native currently residing in Brooklyn. Her writing has appeared in Hobart, Booth, Pigeon Pages, The Forge Literary Magazine, and other publications.
I don’t think Max’s colonization of the bathroom is an accident. It’s a place where we feel vulnerable, and many times we attach a lock to the door to prevent others from walking in unannounced.
The idea of chasing people into submission, trying to tame them as they run for their lives. Both the futility and cruelty of it.
In fact, my experience watching Popeye is what this film most reminded me of: the feeling of alarm, then dismay, and then the slow death of acceptance.
And isn’t a catechism a religious text that takes the form of questions and answers? Is our conversation a catechism? Or just a cataclysm? Ha.
Isn’t that what every artist wants? To do the thing in the way they want to do it and have everyone they care about want that for them, too?
This film is a Freudian’s dream. The way Cheryl constantly offers him milk isn’t exactly subtle.
All-American Murder isn’t bad, but it’s almost an extraterrestrial product, a movie made for humans by something that has no relationship to the physical universe.
Like Terminators or cockroaches, dive bars will always rise again. They’re one of the last bastions of organic and spontaneous social connection.
I knew I was going to love it when the head started to vomit guns. The tone felt like a Monty Python film. Is that a common comparison?
Boston is burning itself over a baseball game. Outside of Fenway, the local evening news zooms in on a few torched sedans. Undercarriages in flames like hibachi grills. White boy ruddy faces rejoicing. Game 4 of the 2003 ACLS. A Red Sox victory. I care about baseball because I love you. I want to wake you up to celebrate Johnny Damon and Pedro Martinez and all those other shaggy-haired rascals hellbent on breaking the curse. Once you view the game highlights, I want you to bang me against the TV, so my bare ass kisses static. I want you to…