Discovering good movies, one bad movie at a time

A review requested by Jonny Mugwump, with thanks to supporting Alternate Ending as a donor through Patreon. At the risk of immediately sounding like the absolute dumbest motherfucker imaginable, I think there’s a very good reason it’s called Picnic at Hanging Rock, not Disappearance at Hanging Rock. Along with L’avventura, this is one of cinema’s […]

Actually trying to talk about Asteroid City, on any level more involved than “I really liked it, best movie of 2023 so far, 4.5 stars out of 5” (which is, for the record, the short version of this review) feels like willfully stepping into the world’s most obvious trap. There’s a recurring plot point in […]

A review requested by Andrew, with thanks to supporting Alternate Ending as a donor through Patreon. Do you have a movie you’d like to see reviewed? This and other perks can be found on our Patreon page! Urusei Yatsura 2: Beautiful Dreamer was a film ahead of its time. 29 days ahead of its time, […]

A review requested by Hoffnungshaftling, with thanks to supporting Alternate Ending as a donor through Patreon. Do you have a movie you’d like to see reviewed? This and other perks can be found on our Patreon page! Last Year at Marienbad is to the midcentury European art film as Singin in the Rain is to […]

Hellraiser: Hellworld was made during the second half of the same production block as Hellraiser: Deader, during the final weeks of 2002; the two shoots shared virtually an entirely identical production crew, working in both cases underneath director Rick Bota (the one significant change is that Deader cinematographer Vivi Dragan Vasile was replaced on Hellworld […]

A review requested by Gavin, with thanks to supporting Alternate Ending as a donor through Patreon. Do you have a movie you’d like to see reviewed? This and other perks can be found on our Patreon page! Tommy, the 1975 feature film adaptation of the 1969 concept album by The Who, is an erratic, garish […]

The phrase “elevated horror” is one I am very reluctant to use, since its meaning seems to generally land on something amorphous like “horror movies that people who think they’re too good for horror movies are willing to praise”. But there’s definitely something there, and “elevated horror” is as good a shorthand to describe that […]

A review requested by Morgan, with thanks to supporting Alternate Ending as a donor through Patreon. Do you have a movie you’d like to see reviewed? This and other perks can be found on our Patreon page! To call Southland Tales a messy film would be like calling the Battle of Stalingrad a little scuffle, […]

A review requested by Michael, with thanks to supporting Alternate Ending as a donor through Patreon. Do you have a movie you’d like to see reviewed? This and other perks can be found on our Patreon page! “Eraserhead is about David Lynch’s terrified disgust at the thought of being a father” is such a well-worn […]

One cannot talk about Memoria (if one is an American, anyway) without talking about the simply batshit release strategy that its director, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and its U.S. Distributor, Neon, have concocted for it. In short: one screen at a time in North America, one week at a time, and it will theoretically just float from […]

A review requested by Andrew, with thanks to supporting Alternate Ending as a donor through Patreon. Do you have a movie you’d like to see reviewed? This and other perks can be found on our Patreon page! Officially, the 2009 independent psychological sci-fi thriller After Last Season cost $5 million dollars, which is both a […]

It’s missing the point, I know, but the question I feel compelled to start with is: did we need a revisionist version of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight? The 14th Century Middle English poem is a timeless favorite of medieval literature buffs, but how many of us can there possibly be? Certainly not enough […]