Travis Woods
@aheartofgould
Professional obsessive. BYLINES: Bright Wall/Dark Room, Southwest Review, Letterboxd, Fangoria, etc COMMENTARY TRACKS/BOOKLETS: Cinematographe, Fun City Editions, Vinegar Syndrome, Radiance, Imprint, Shout Factory
For those who dug NIGHT NURSE, I highly recommend CALL ME, a low-budget, high-style erotic thriller that intercourses between two parallel plots: the story of a woman increasingly unhinged/aroused by obscene phone calls, and a gritty nYC neo-noir drug caper, both lustily rubbing against the other.
For @letterboxd.social Journal’s Underrated Blockbusters piece, I wrote about how there was a time in which major studios would spend $100 million to make a summer thriller about the sex life of a hot middle-aged couple.
When I’m really stressed out, I won’t talk about it. But there will be signs.
Rewatched my beloved POINT BREAK for the 4th of July and realized it’s just (my also beloved) BASIC INSTINCT with surfing instead of sex, in which a himbo law enforcement agent with kamikaze eyes falls in lust with a beautiful blonde psychopath who takes him to the edge.
"Vinny is a man so at war with his urges and his denial of them that he couldn’t save his marriage, his friend, or himself. This story, these people, this entire fucking SUMMER OF SAM, has been his own private rock opera of fear, played at maximum volume." www.brightwalldarkroom.com/2024/10/02/s...
"The real Son of Sam was drawn to street-necking couples, and in the film, Vinny’s need for dangerous sex almost wills the killer into existence and arouses his interest, like a kind of lumpen fuck-golem conjured not from clay but illicit cum and blood." www.brightwalldarkroom.com/2024/10/02/s...
I don’t wanna tell anyone how to live their lives, but the song “Little Heaven” by Toad the Wet Sprocket from the original soundtrack to the 1992 motion picture BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER is pretty much the definitive Sunday morning song.
A film about what it is to discover that someone else speaks your dirty language, on the same line, and will not hang up, NIGHT NURSE is both a lovely work of art and absolute fucking freak shit that will either enrage or enrapture. I loved it.
Cemre Paksoy’s performance in NIGHT NURSE is hypnotic, writer/director Georgia Bernstein’s confidence in her own vision is total (and earned), and together they create a kind of cinerotica that is somehow both alien and unspeakably (or, in this case, *very* speakably) familiar.
NIGHT NURSE: A black dramedy of quietly psychosexed intensity, one that somehow creates an all-new kink (!) as it essays lust, power, and the uncontrollable need to need. It locates in its strange creatures a desire as all-consuming as it is wholly impossible to ever satisfy.
You're scrimping and saving for the Criterion Kubrick box set; I am obsessing over this vintage satin Cinemax jacket on eBay. We are not the same.
Michael Douglas in BASIC INSTINCT is just like me fr (sleeping peacefully after a bender to HELLRAISER).
This is a great read about Donna Deitch's wonderful film DESERT HEARTS, but also when will someone commission me to write about her devastatingly underseen gender-flipped take on BASIC INSTINCT, 1994's CRIMINAL PASSION (aka ANGEL OF DESIRE).
I am now the deliriously proud owner of the ORIGINAL ink/ pencil/ charcoal @tulalotay.bsky.social drawing that was used as the preliminary design for the new BASIC INSTINCT 4K release.
Did you know that Paul Mayersberg—the film critic and screenwriter behind Nic Roeg’s THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH, Nagisa Ōshima’s MERRY CHRISTMAS, MR. LAWRENCE, and Mike Hodges’ CROUPIER—wrote two novels of BASIC INSTINCT-styled pulpsmut noirotica in 1991 and 1992? Well, now you do.
Very proud to have written about one of my favorite erotic thrillers/neo-noirs—Clint Eastwood’s self-incriminating and ghost-directed TIGHTROPE—for the new issue of THIS IS CINEMATOGRAPHE. Get it from @vinsyn.bsky.social/ @cine-matographe.bsky.social: vinegarsyndrome.com/collections/...
I have two tickets to the screening of BAD TIMING at the Aero this Saturday (with a Theresa Russell Q&A!). I can't go. Hit me up if you want the tickets, gratis.
Big thank you to @criterion.bsky.social for shouting out the CRASH 30th anniversary essay I wrote for @letterboxd.social Journal.
Out now: The @secondsightfilms.bsky.social 4K set for the Nordic noir INSOMNIA. Absolutely jacked to written about this terrifying film for the massive book of essays included in the set. Big thanks to @phillipescott.bsky.social for including me. Get it: secondsightfilms.co.uk/products/ins...
The @filmsradiance.bsky.social definitive release of Brian De Palma’s psychosexed satire, HI, MOM!, is out now. Includes a 4K restoration, the lost De Palma film DIONYSUS IN ‘69, interviews, a making-of, a @mattzollerseitz.bsky.social essay, & my commentary track. diabolikdvd.com/product/hi-m...