With Eyes Unclouded

By Sarah Jester 3/4 stars Luca Guadagnino had a banner year. This summer, he swept up the world in a boundary-pushing and undeniably sexy love triangle on the tennis court, only to bring our walls crashing down this December via a Call Me By Your Name meets Naked Lunch tableau.  Image credit: MUBI Queer stars Daniel Craig as William Lee and newcomer Drew Starkey as Eugene Allerton, plus support from a nearly unrecognizable Jason Schwartzmann as Lee’s longtime friend Joe Guidry. The James Bond veteran delivers a career-best performance in Guadagnino’s adaptation of William S. Burroughs’ semi-autobiographical novella. As a lifetime Bond fan, I’m well-versed in Craig’s long-running portrayal of the pinnacle of male fitness and heterosexuality. His metamorphosis into gay expat junkie Lee is nothing short of shocking. Opposite him, Starkey is haunting as Eugene, a former Navyman. It’s addiction at first sight for Lee—the kind of inextricable affair he won’t shake until his dying days. T...

By Sarah Jester Room for one more onboard the Demeter? 2024 was a monumental year for Nosferatu fans. Not one but two adaptations of the classic vampire tale have graced the silver screen: Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu and the first of film programmer Josh Frank’s newly launched “Silents Synced” series, Nosferatu X Radiohead . Both draw on F.W. Murnau’s 1922 silent classic Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror , the unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula. Murnau lightly edits the 1897 epistolary horror, renaming the titular villain Count Orlok, later referred to as Nosferatu. What does "nosferatu" mean? Romanian interpretations point towards “vampire” or “undead.” Other etymological experts look to the Greek term “nosophoros,” or “disease-bearing.” One thing’s for certain—both Max Schreck and Bill Skarsgård have the undead, disease-bearing vampiric sauce . What follows are two very different accounts of the same story. ** As a fan of Herzog’s 1979 Nosferatu the Vampyre ,...