Joe

 Joe is a rambling, nasty but beautiful southern gothic with a never-better Nicholas Cage in the titular role - a grizzled, no-bullshit ex-con who manages a team of tree poisoners somewhere out in rural Texas. He's a bit of an ogre, but fair to the people who earn his trust - a circle that, shortly into the movie, extends to teenager Gary (Ty Sheridan), a kid who joins the crew and makes a good impression.

 Gary's been dealt a bad hand; His father Wade (Gary Poulter) is an alcoholic whose main income is brutally stealing Gary's earnings, and whose shenanigans got his family run out from their old town. The kid deals with it as best he can, but is trapped in a horrible home situation with his sister and his mom. Working on Joe's crew makes things a little better - not the least because he develops a sincere friendship with Joe.

 For his part, Joe tries to distance himself from Gary's home life, correctly sensing that if he steps in things will take a very nasty turn. It's not just that he's on a very thin line with the police, who hate him for a run-in which landed him a few years in jail; the guy has some very real anger issues. But a feud with a local thug (Ronnie Gene Blevins) escalates things until he can no longer stand by the sidelines.

 For all its bleakness - and it gets incredibly bleak - director David Gordon Green leavens it with plenty of his signature lyricism and oddball humour. His camera rests for long stretches on his cast of non-professional actors, leading to long, authentic-sounding conversations and character moments. The plot is almost in the background for a lot of the movie, surfacing every now and then to strengthen the film's themes and tighten the screws; These moments - which include a ruthlessly violent, evil incident that startingly recontextualizes the menace of one of the film's villains - are expertly paced by scriptwriter Gary Hawkins amidst the film's almost two-hour runtime.

 It's a beautiful-looking neo-noir, too, with cinematographer Tim Orr (who worked with Green on all of his movies up to this one) managing some gorgeous lighting on both daytime and nighttime scenes. The acting is strong from both professionals and non-actors, with Cage in particular giving what's probably his career best turn. Sheridan is very good as well, but the biggest impression besides Cage is made by Poulter, who looks like a frail-looking old man but manages to tread the line between pathetic and pure fucking evil in a way that almost made me queasy several times. An all-time villain played by a local homeless man, who sadly died while the movie was in post.

 Other than the shitty Amazon AI subtitles (which were sorely needed to make some headway into the southern drawl) I can't really thing of anything that doesn't work here. There's some animal cruelty, for those of you for whom that's a deal breaker, and some truly vile mundane evil, but it's all woven into the film's strengths. Maybe one development right near the end didn't make a whole lot of sense to me? Or a fairly contrived coincidence to set up the escalation of the plot? Or the fact that it seems... unlikely that Joe would have survived his frequent run-ins with the law, let alone managed to stay out of prison.
 No matter. For my money, this is one of David Gordon Green's very best films, possibly the best alongside George Washington. I don't say this lightly, as I consider most of his early stuff unimpeachable. Hugely recommended.

Longlegs

 Ten families butchered over two decades, each a clear case of the one of the parents snapping and killing the rest. But here's the thing: in each one of the murder scenes there's a letter written in code, signed as LONGLEGS.

 FBI agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe), a cripplingly shy and socially awkward FBI agent, is assigned to the case. Her gregarious superior (Blair Underwood), hopes her unnatural intuition can help shed some light when Longlegs strikes again.

 His hopes prove founded: with a little help from an unexpected Longlegs letter and a hilariously '70s guide to satanism, Agent Harker cracks the code and finds a new element to the murders that only muddles things further... unless you're willing (as Harker is) to indulge in supernatural explanations.

 Longlegs is the latest film from writer/director Osgood Perkins, one of the most fiercely idiosyncratic  genre directors working in horror today - and for better and for worse, this movie is an excellent showcase for his talents. It's a deeply grim, unsettling film, a creepy exercise in growing ambient dread that's expertly ratcheted up until it threatens to drown everything. The direction is precise and the shots often starkly beautiful, with a cohesive palette that alternates between deep earthy colours and chilly bone-white tableaus. Just from a visual and aural standpoint, the film is a marvel.

 But the script tries to juggle a little too much, and some of the elements are a little suspect. Chief amongst them Longlegs himself, Nicholas Cage in a fright wig and grotesque pancake makeup - Cage's talents are numerous, but there's a little miscalculation to how much weirdness he's allowed to indulge in here, his histrionics effectively creepy but too ridiculous for the film's otherwise tightly controlled tone. I think I get what Perkins and Cage were going for (a screeching injection of white noise into the film's more subdued static drone),  but it didn't really work for me.

 I did like the fact that the killer's into T. Rex and Lou Reed. Giving heavy metal a little time off to relax. And Cage does seem to be having a blast.

 Equally problematic is that the film is a little bit disjointed. Each one of the fairly well worn horror and serial killer movie tropes it brings into play are immaculately well crafted, but they end up clashing against each other once it becomes clear how they're supposed to slot in together. The film shines in its first two acts, and while there's a lot to like in the last one, it is more than a little bit clunky and nonsensical.

 Another problem is the film's stylish marketing campaign, a beautifully put together series of mysterious, gorgeously edited trailers which stands in contrast to the terrible, crass job trailers have been doing to promote their respective films for a couple of decades now. It's a petty thing to hold against the movie, not to mention my own damn fault - the slight disappointment of being overhyped - but there you go. For what it's worth, the film was never misrepresented by the trailers, and I suspect they'll prove influential.
 Oh, and please ignore any comparisons to Silence of the Lambs; That type of hyperbole will never do a movie any favours.

 For all my reservations and the time I've spent on them, I really like this movie. It's of a piece with other jagged, retro-tinged mood pieces, artifacts from a 70s experimental horror subgenre that never was. Osgood Perkins and his crew have made something that's pretty special, and I hope its success allows the director to pursue his batshit, uncommercial vision as far as he's willing to take it.