January Subscriber Gifts
Spotlighting Two of the Best Films from 2024
Happy 2025 and apologies for the delayed subscriber gifts this month. I hope you’ll find them worth the wait.
I’m currently compiling a list of my favorite 2024 film releases and thought I’d turn two of them into digital wallpapers this month. The first film I want to spotlight is Exhuma (2024), an imaginative, frightening, and surprisingly fun Korean folk horror film with an incredible cast and some of the year’s best cinematography. Exhuma was made by Jang Jae-hyun, a relatively young director with only a handful of films under his belt. I haven’t seen any of his previous work but Exhuma suggests he’s a skilled filmmaker with a broad imagination and lots of empathy for his characters who is influenced by classic Asian horror cinema.
In Exhuma, we’re introduced to a group of occultists: a Korean shaman (Kim Go-eun) and her apprentice (Lee Do-hyun), along with a feng shui master (Choi Min-sik) and a mortician (Yoo Hae-jin). This unusual foursome bands together to help a wealthy family protect their ailing newborn son from the angry ghost of a vengeful ancestor. Unfortunately, the situation quickly grows more complicated than the foursome had bargained for, and they’re forced to face their growing fears as the danger escalates.
I really admire Choi Min-sik, who starred in Old Boy (2003), and Exhuma is the actor’s best film since I Saw the Devil (2010). He’s terrific here as an aging feng shui master who gets dragged into the proceedings because he wants the generous financial reward to pay for his daughter’s upcoming wedding. The rest of the cast is also terrific, especially Kim Go-eun as the female shaman, and they all have great, understated chemistry with one another. Together, they resemble an adult Korean version of the teenage detectives in Scooby-Doo, but they’re missing a goofy dog companion. They’re also battling real monsters instead of corrupt capitalists wearing monster masks.
The second film that I want to spotlight is Carol Doda Topless at the Condor (2024), a wonderful documentary about the infamous topless dancer Carol Doda. The documentary was directed by Marlo McKenzie and Jonathan Parker who expertly weave Doda’s compelling story with archival footage while discussing the historical and profound social changes that were taking place in San Francisco during the dancer’s heyday. Doda’s fame began in the early 1960s when San Francisco became the first city in America to offer topless entertainment to adults. The dancer’s liberal attitudes towards nudity and sex helped launch the swinging decade and the film celebrates her accomplishments with humor and intelligence.
As someone who grew up in the Bay Area and spent a lot of time in San Francisco hanging out on Broadway during the 1980s and 1990s, when it was still home to bustling rock clubs and concert halls as well as topless bars, I found the film fascinating and a lot of fun. Doda was quite literally a larger-than-life figure and her neon sign dominated the North Beach skyline at night. I admired her beauty and staying power but I knew very little about her and the impact she had made on the country at large so I found the film utterly engrossing. But anyone interested in San Francisco’s counter-culture history should find this a worthwhile watch.
Carol Doda Topless at the Condor is currently streaming for free on Kanopy and Exhuma is available on Shudder.
The following digital wallpapers were inspired by both films and are available to paid subscribers. If you’d like to download them for yourself please consider becoming a paid subscriber today! Every month you’ll get new digital downloads for your computers, tablets, and phones.