Sound & Fiction: BFTW 11/7/25

I’ve been meaning to watch Charles Burnett’s To Sleep With Anger since the days of VHS and taking John Pierson’s Spike, Mike, Slackers & Dykes out from the library. I knew the film concerned an old friend (played by Danny Glover) visiting a family that had moved from the South to South Central LA. But it always seemed ambiguous as to whether the character was magical, or was going to blackmail them with secrets, or what. There was something mysterious and vague about the enthusiasm the movie earned, neither suggesting heart-tugging family drama nor a thriller.

I'm glad to discover this is for the best of reasons, as the film avoids easy slotting. There's certainly drama, where long-festering resentment and anger bubbles up into violence. But Burnett’s brisk editing and sense of scene construction avoids not just familiar theatrical notes, but ones from television as well. Anger achieves what I think James L. Brooks is going for in his more wandering, episodic dramedies, without the burden of sitcom logic and desire for easy payoffs. Similarly, Burnett feels no requirement to delineate between superstition and synchronicity. Glover’s Harry and his peers respect folklore and old customs brought with them out west, but Burnett doesn’t insist upon us seeing them either as genuinely potent or simply as symbols of faith. Whether Harry is merely a skilled manipulator or something more is almost irrelevant to the movie, rather than a hook to keep us watching. 

Much of the film’s acclaim is centered around its portrayal of black experience, and Burnett deserves credit for his unabashed presentation of intergenerational and cultural issues within African-American life, trusting the audience to read between the lines, not providing an audience stand-in or an explainer. But I found the film’s pace no less striking than its milieu, so unbeholden to any popular school of cinematic storytelling, arthouse or otherwise. It made me want to learn more about Burnett’s influences, and whether experience with documentary inspired his understanding of pace and avoidance of artifice. Better late than never! FIVE BAGS OF POPCORN.

I mentioned in my Twelve Songs From 2025 Good Enough To Play For My Kid post that I forgot X’s Smoke & Fiction had come out the year before. Had I realized it at the time, it might have topped My Favorite Albums Of 2024. It feels odd to say it’s likely my favorite of their albums. For one, that's by a nose. 1981’s Wild Gift is just as much a classic and 1980’s Los Angeles has tremendous songs, as well. Smoke & Fiction is also a short album - less than a half-hour - and its weakest songs are at the end, denying fans a grand finish. But the album remains a fantastic rush of reflection and memory. Less flashy and vibrant than the glory days, or even 2020’s tremendous reunion Alphabetland, but no less authoritative or felt. The band has said it will likely be their last album, not because of acrimony or infirmity, but due to the effort it takes to play and write at this level. It’s rare expression of pride and discipline in rock these days, and wholly earned. 

I have a soft spot for found-footage horror, and, for four movies (usually found on Shudder), Hell House, LLC was a reliable fount of the stuff. Sure, the overarching narrative was absurd - a hotel once owned by a Satanic cult now accrues fresh victims by inspiring idiots to use it as a haunted house - and the jump-scares were familiar, but there was just enough spooky craft and imagination that the amateurish acting was charming rather than grating. The fourth film even survived the demolition of The Abbadon Hotel and moving the horror to a nearby mansion in the woods. Naturally, I was thrilled to by the surprise appearance of Hell House, LLC: Lineage in the Shudder menu this week.

Unfortunately, Lineage is not found footage. It’s more like a David Gordon Green franchise revival, in all its half-assed gravitas. Dull, quiet, tenderly lit sequences of people wrestling with trauma from previous movies, before they’re startled by familiar iconography. The quality of acting becomes more of an issue, the most memorable performance provided by an obsequious real estate manager, who - through either post-production negligence or necessity - sighs dramatically twice during a line, without breathing in once. It’s an uncanny valley of audio inflection infinitely more arresting than shattered people staring in terror at a red ball. THREE BAGS OF POPCORN.

I avoided Turnstile because, after The Armed and Deafheaven, I don’t get excited when people debate whether a new band fits in an old sub-genre. It usually means they're mush. But I saw a TV clip that passed my first test for young bands on TV: can I imagine a parent being weirded out? Unfortunately, their punk-meets-M83 sound, which is at least amusing, is sunk by the singer. Dude sounds like Gotye. Sorry, fans! At least the Grammys agree they're cool.

Recent 2025 albums I am spending time with: 
Amber Mark, Pretty Idea
Brian Eno & Beatie Wolfe, Lateral
The Lemonheads, Love Chant
Antibalas, Hourglass

Recent 2025 albums I am not currently spending time with:
Geese, Getting Killed (there are too many Tom Waits albums I haven’t spent time with)
Nine Inch Nails, Tron: Ares OST (there are too many Tangerine Dream albums I haven’t spent time with)
Tame Impala, Deadbeat (blue-eyed The Weeknd)
Soulwax, All Systems Are Lying (still solid beat makers, still flimsy singer-songwriters)
Jeff Tweedy, Twilight Override (a half-hour shorter than Sandinista! - his comparison point, not mine! - and a whole lot duller)

My popcorn ratings are explained here. If there are albums you think I should spend time with, or stuff I should stream, please let me know at anthonyisright at gmail dot com.