Jason Adams

2 weeks ago | pajiba.com | Jason Adams

The pandemic is never mentioned in writer-director Paul Andrew Williams’ deeply unnerving psychological thriller Dragonfly, which stars Oscar nominees Andrea Riseborough and Brenda Blethyn as lonely neighbors who become fast friends before it all unravels in a very bad manner. And yet the shadow of our lives lived in COVID-19’s catastrophic wake feels very much present in the film—isolated people quivering on the edge of mental unwellness, ready to disassemble at the slightest provocation.

3 weeks ago | pajiba.com | Jason Adams

The formula seems, above the surface, an indestructible one. A serial killer who murders his beautiful young prey not with knives or sleeping bags bashed into trees, but with sharks! It’s the perfect Summer Movie Trash event of the season on the basis of that log-line alone—be to Jaws what Wolf Creek was to Crocodile Dundee. No notes! I’m already in love.

3 weeks ago | pajiba.com | Jason Adams

“It’s not a conspiracy, it’s a family!” That line of dialogue was spoken by one Flanders “Flan” Kittredge (Donald Sutherland) in the 1993 film version of Six Degrees of Separation. A wonderful film and a wonderful performance (go watch it if you never have), which coincidentally you could drop down into any Wes Anderson movie without breaking a single bead of sweat.

1 month ago | soc.life | Jason Adams

It’s tempting for a gay writer like me to say here in retrospect that the titular Playhouse that the series Pee-wee’s Playhouse was centered around—a magical structure that stood half-Sphinx in the middle of a claymation forest, where Chairs and Floors and Genies alike all sang and screamed and let their imaginations slash ids run amok—was its maker Paul Reubens turning The Closet he’d chosen to live in into something wondrous. An escape from his, our, stifling reality.

1 month ago | pajiba.com | Jason Adams

It’s tempting for a gay writer like me to say here in retrospect that the titular Playhouse that the series Pee-wee’s Playhouse was centered around—a magical structure that stood half-Sphinx in the middle of a claymation forest, where Chairs and Floors and Genies alike all sang and screamed and let their imaginations slash ids run amok—was its maker Paul Reubens turning The Closet he’d chosen to live in into something wondrous. An escape from his, our, stifling reality.