If you’d like to get punched in the brain stem by some juxtaposed imagery, track down the official trailer for I Saw the TV Glow, the arthouse horror-thriller that made a splash at Sundance earlier this year. The images in that two-minute spot toggle between suburban ennui and Jungian fever-dream tableaus that seem to pulse right through the back of your eyeballs.
Having since read up on the film, which opens May 3, I’m anticipating this one with a sense of delicious dread. Writer-director Jane Schoenbrun sets this coming-of-age story in the 1990s, where two misfit kids bond over a deeply weird monster-of-the-week TV series called The Pink Opaque—think Buffy the Vampire Slayer but more hallucinogenic. The film then flits forward through time, reuniting the friends in their teens and twenties as reality itself starts to shimmer and bend.
I Saw the TV Glow is clearly interested in a lot of things: childhood nostalgia, the psychology of obsessive fandom, the treacherous terrain of adolescent queerness, and those imaginary worlds we come to love so deeply as kids. Early reviews suggest that the film is the announcement of a major new talent in director Schoenbrun.
On the other end of the movie mood spectrum, the British comedy Wicked Little Letters stars the great Olivia Colman as a perfectly pleasant little old lady in a small English town circa 1920, who receives some very profane correspondence in the mail. Did people even know these words in 1920? Apparently so.
The movie is based on a real-life scandal that took place in Littlehampton and made national headlines. The anonymous letters really are quite breathtakingly obscene, to the point where the town constabulary launches an investigation. Who’s sending the letters? And why? Director Thea Sharrock is clearly having fun riffing on the pedigreed British period picture, but she’s also got some ideas about repression, institutional misogyny, and the rage that might fuel such hilariously hard language.
A third solid option for May moviegoing, the Japanese import Evil Does Not Exist, is the latest from brilliant filmmaker Ryusuke Hamaguchi, director of 2021’s Oscar-nominated feature Drive My Car. A kind of ecological parable, the new movie details an escalating conflict between big-city developers and a rural village with a fragile ecosystem. Hamaguchi’s film won multiple awards on the festival circuit, including the Grand Jury Prize in Venice. It’s a chance to see how eco-fiction is resonating, in different formats and genres, across the planet.
Quick Picks
Léa Seydoux headlines the French Canadian sci-fi film The Beast (La Bête), which features past lives, parallel timelines in 1910 and 2044, and something about DNA scrubbing. I can never resist stuff like this.
This looks fun: The hip-hop musical Lost Soulz follows an aspiring young rapper on one of those pivotal road trips that change your life trajectory. It won the audience award at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.
British filmmaker Ken Loach, who specializes in social issue films, is back in theaters with The Old Oak, about an Irish mining community, an old pub, and some desperate Syrian refugees.
The experimental action pic Aggro Dr1ft, from forever-restless director Harmony Korine, is touring independent theaters in May, including the Alamo Drafthouse in Raleigh. Be aware: the movie is filmed entirely with infrared photography. Twist!
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