Category Archives: Movies

Goodbye Horses: The Many Lives of Q Lazzarus Is More Than a Music Documentary

Cover of Goodbye Horses The Many Lives of Q Lazzarus documentary soundtrack album
Cover of the soundtrack for Goodbye Horses: The Many Lives of Q Lazzarus out on Sacred Bones

If you’ve ever requested “Goodbye Horses” at your local ‘80s or goth club, you need to seek out the new Q Lazzarus documentary. TBH, you need to see this movie even if you’re tired of hearing the song from Silence of the Lambs at every spooky night in town. You need to see it even if you think you don’t know what I’m talking about because- trust me- you will once year hear the first few seconds of the melody. Goodbye Horses: The Many Lives of Q Lazzarus, directed by Eva Aridjis Fuentes, is a must-see music documentary, in part because it’s much more than one song that became an unexpected club hit. This film is no nostalgia ride. In it, Diane Luckey, aka Q, shares her struggles and what ultimately led her to vanish from music in the mid-1990s.

Last month, I reviewed the Goodbye Horses soundtrack for Bandcamp. The 21-song collection is the first ever full-length Q Lazzarus release and, while listening to it, I was stunned by how she built up a large and eclectic body of work over a 10 year period, yet struggled to find anyone to release it. So, I went to a screening of Goodbye Horses at Philosophical Research Society in Los Feliz on Friday night to find out what happened. While I had read about bits-and-pieces of Luckey’s life and knew that she died while the documentary was in the works, I wasn’t expecting the revelations that come in the film.

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Dinner in America and the “Watermelon” Earworm

Dinner in America screenshot Emily Skeggs and Patty
Patty (Emily Skeggs) singing “Watermelon” in Dinner in America

I had “Watermelon,” the song that Patty sings in Dinner in America, stuck in my head for nearly a week, so I decided to watch the movie again. Of course, the earworm burrowed deeper into my brain.

“Fuck the rest of them

Fuck ‘em all

Fuck ‘em all but us”

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The Juniper Tree: Ingmar Bergman meets Brothers Grimm in this 1990 Movie Starring Björk

Screenshot from The Juniper Tree (1990) starring Björk
The Juniper Tree (1990)

The Juniper Tree is one of those movies that’s been kicking around on my “To Watch” list for ages, but it wasn’t until last weekend that I finally saw it on Kanopy. The film, made in Iceland by American director Nietzchka Keene, was released in 1990 and is probably best known as “Björk’s first movie.” Several years ago, The Juniper Tree was restored and re-released. Since then, it’s been making the rounds on the repertory cinema circuit. In fact, if you’re in L.A. and want to see it in a theater, you can catch it at Philosophical Research Society on Saturday, February 22

While Björk is clearly the movie’s selling point now, she’s not the only reason you should check out The Juniper Tree. It’s a stunning movie that makes good use of the landscape to tell a modern-medieval fairy tale with a Seventh Seal feel. 

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Valley Girl Is the Best ’80s Teen Movie

Julie (Deborah Foreman) and Randy (Nicolas Cage) in Valley Girl.
Julie (Deborah Foreman) and Randy (Nicolas Cage) in Valley Girl.

Television and film is loaded with heart-to-hearts between kids and parents where young people learn that you shouldn’t judge someone by how they look or what they have, but by who they are. The conversation in Valley Girl, though, hits a little differently than the rest. Julie, the lead Val in the 1983 film, is torn between the Hollywood punk she likes and the preppy dumbass that her friends want her to date. Julie’s dad adds that it’s not just what’s inside a person that counts, but “what they stand for.” Then he reminds her that not everyone will be okay with her choice because, “There are lots of people out there who just ain’t happy unless you live and think the way they do.”

The answer should be simple, but it isn’t. It never is. 

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Pump Up the Volume Is the ’90s Teen Movie That’s Relevant Right Now

Pump up the Volume Christian Slater

There is no needle drop quite like the one that kickstarts Pump Up the Volume. We are less than five minutes into the movie. Credits are still popping up on screen in neon, graffiti script, but we’ve already seen that the kids are not alright in this completely ordinary town. The camera leads us into a bland suburban home, into a room stocked with cassettes and audio equipment. Someone— we’ve heard his voice, but have yet to see his face— literally drops the needle on a Leonard Cohen record.

“Everybody knows that the dice are loaded/Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed,” he sings. 

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Finally, There’s a Horror Movie for the Vinyl Nerds

Pater Noster and the Mission of Light horror film 2024

Finally, there’s a movie that truly understands the vinyl nerd, one that gets the crazy, stupid and possibly dangerous lengths we might travel to procure an ultra-rare, likely-cursed album released by a hippie cult a half-century ago. Of course, this movie, Pater Noster and the Mission of Light, is a horror flick served with a good dose of comedy. Where else did you think a hunt for Discogs gold would take you? 

Directed by Christopher Bickel, the South Carolina-based, “anti-Hollywood” filmmaker whose previous efforts include Bad Girls and The Theta Girl, Pater Noster and the Mission of Light is no-budget cinema at its finest. It looks good, has a great soundtrack with original music and, most importantly, is a clever, well-written film. Released last year, Pater Noster has been streaming on Night Flight, which is where I caught it. There’s also a Blu-Ray release on the horizon.  

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I Saw Y2K and You Should Too

Y2K Kyle Mooney Movie Promo poster
Y2K Kyle Mooney Movie Promo poster

We were looking for a movie to see because it was Tuesday, when tickets at Alamo Drafthouse are close to half-price. The problem was that little looked particularly worthwhile. I have absolutely no interest in ever seeing Wicked, Nightbitch looks like something I might eventually watch if it turns up on streaming and, IDK if I was really in the mood to be terrified by Hugh Grant in Heretic

But, this Y2K, the new movie directed by Kyle Mooney, sounds pretty funny, especially since we’re old enough to remember the build-up to that New Year’s Eve. In real life, people spent a full year playing “1999” ad nauseam and hawking survival kits, but, then nothing happened. The sky was not all purple. People weren’t running everywhere. We didn’t even get a computer crash. The world remained somewhat normal, or so we thought. And another two decades would pass before I could listen to “1999” again. 

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I Swiped This Real Life Song From Voyage of the Rock Aliens

Voyage of the Rock Aliens 1984 movie title card

There’s a Real Life song that’s creeping into my DJ sets and it’s not “Send Me An Angel.” I’ve played “Openhearted,” from the band’s 1983 debut album, Heartland, in my sets at Splash! twice this month. Most likely, it will keep turning up in my new wave sets, at least at bar gigs or early in the night, because it’s a good alternative to the Australian band’s big hit, packed with drama and a sticky melody. Also, the song has been stuck in my head for most of this month, so I probably need to keep playing it until I dislodge the earworm. 

But, I have to make a confession about “Openhearted.” I totally, 100% swiped this Real Life song from Voyage of the Rock Aliens. In fact, I wouldn’t even know the song were it not for that bonkers movie and I probably should be embarrassed for saying that. But, also, I’m from L.A., where “Send Me an Angel” has been such a dominant banger for so long that any other Real Life song has long since faded from memory. That is, unless you are so baffled by Pia Zadora’s turn as a high schooler torn between her controlling rockabilly boyfriend and a new wave alien that you watch Voyage of the Rock Aliens every time it pops up in your Tubi recommendations. 

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The Legend of the Stardust Brothers Is a Wild Ride Through Pop Stardom

The Legend of the Stardust Brothers 1985 movie
The Legend of the Stardust Brothers

It’s Tokyo, 1985 and the vibe inside the nightclub is Cabaret, were that movie directed by David Lynch. The scene is shot in grainy black-and-white and filled with characters who look as if they are caught between the past, the present and a fever dream. At this moment, which is just seconds into The Legend of the Stardust Brothers, nothing could be too weird for you. Well, nothing, perhaps, except the appearance of the Stardust Brothers themselves. 

Kan and Shingo, the washed-up pop stars at the center of the film, bolt onstage and on screen in full color, their silver jumpsuits shining, their tale of woe set to a glam rock beat. Kan tries to keep it together as Shingo gorges himself on food and drink. They are a brilliant mess, but the crowd is thoroughly unimpressed. 

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Lost in Time at WHAMMY! Analog Media

Hammerman cartoon starring MC Hammer from 1991 on VHS at Whammy! Analog Media in Echo Park. (Photo: Liz Ohanesian)
At Whammy! Analog Media, I learned that there was an M.C. Hammer cartoon. (Photo: Liz O.)

On a drizzly, Sunday afternoon, I half-forgot about what I was looking for inside WHAMMY! I was semi-crouched in a small aisle, scooting out of the way of passersby while scanning the spines of VHS releases of old cartoons. There was the Charlotte’s Web movie that I still vividly recall seeing multiple times on TV as a kid. (Was it one of the Family Film Festival movies? Do anyone else who spent ‘80s weekends watching KTLA remember?) Two Care Bears cassettes were filed next to something called Buttons & Rusty, which I don’t remember at all. 

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