Sam Bodrojan
words in Filmmaker Mag, LARB, Reverse Shot, Peach Mag, Little White Lies, etc.
https://cchelmetgirl.substack.com
- Everything about Highguard discourse, and by extension Horses discourse, really feels like we are trapped, even in the corners of the internet made on their rejection of Elon/Trump/what have you, in a perpetual, decaying 2016.
- Not only is everything obviously gamergate, but we are so far beyond gamergate that the rhetoric that once applied when combating the reactionary tide of the zeitgeist has long become totally futile! Nobody is evolving, truly, to meet the times. It’s a shitstorm in which we are totally adrift
- I wrote about my new habit of compulsively rewatching POSSESSION, and how awesome it feels to love a popular movie in the exact same way as everyone else: open.substack.com/pub/cchelmet...
- Reposted by Sam BodrojanGood thread
- I think about the game Mouthwashing all the time - its fandom, its form, the ways it is subtly singular even in the indie horror boom of the 2020s. It feels like a great injustice, rhetorically, that we discuss that game as being *about* sexual violence when, to me, it is about something far messier
- This is the heart of the game, I think, and sits alongside LAKE MUNGO and UZUMAKI as being one of the Scariest Things I Have Ever Encountered. The most upsetting thoughts spring forth from the lips of drunk coworkers. youtu.be/THFxLLcM3aM?...
- I think about the game Mouthwashing all the time - its fandom, its form, the ways it is subtly singular even in the indie horror boom of the 2020s. It feels like a great injustice, rhetorically, that we discuss that game as being *about* sexual violence when, to me, it is about something far messier
- I think about the game Mouthwashing all the time - its fandom, its form, the ways it is subtly singular even in the indie horror boom of the 2020s. It feels like a great injustice, rhetorically, that we discuss that game as being *about* sexual violence when, to me, it is about something far messier
- Mouthwashing, to my eyes, is not about misogyny. It is about having coworkers. It is about the apathetic intimacy of spending your whole life with people you are taught that you heve no obligation to care about. It is about how we replicate structures in miniature
- This is NOT just locker room talk - it is also the indifference towards Swansea’s addiction, it is the bizarre projections of family onto people you barely know, it is the resentment of those injured on the job. It is all of a piece.
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View full threadIt is about being terrified of the Markiplier streambait and the very clear examples of Ways Men Act That You, The Player, Would Never Behave - only to be implicated in a familiar, terrifying detachment to your colleagues.
- Beat a run of sektori. Like seeing God tbh
- I wrote about visiting my grandfather. one of the more fragile pieces I’ve penned of late~ open.substack.com/pub/cchelmet...
- All I do is play Sektori now.
- Kristen Stewart’s THE CHRONOLOGY OF WATER opens tomorrow. It’s an impassioned, weak debut, but I don’t want to talk about that. I want to talk about Imogen Poots - the greatest working actress in the English language. open.substack.com/pub/cchelmet...
- MARTY SUPREME is the monoculture. It is Great Entertainment, a black hole that consumes all of American cinema. Went long on its virtues and vices for @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social lareviewofbooks.org/article/made...
- Grateful to Ellie Eberlee and Emily Szpiro for giving this such a thoughtful edit during all the end-of-year hullabaloo. Really proud of this piece, really honored to get to work with such sharp, generous editors
- “Focus, M” this video is so mean games might legitimately change forever
- some thoughts on racist trainwreck pt.3 boxd.it/c7EZbD
- The Best Films of 2025, from yours truly. I promise, something about this list will surprise you :) open.substack.com/pub/cchelmet...
- went to the beautiful and noble Cameron winter chapel concert tonight. started praying and everything lol
- Cameron Winter is incredibly funny on-stage. Before “Nina + Field Of Cops” he adjusted a live mic for a full 90 seconds
- I’m not Catholic but when I play a video game that’s really nerdy I imagine trying to explain it to a beautiful woman and feel immense shame
- FUCKTOYS is the best undistributed film of the year and a modern camp classic. As part of my end-of-year round-up, I spoke to writer/director/star Annapurna Sriram about tarot, angels, and solidarity: open.substack.com/pub/cchelmet...
- I want to pay more money for movies made by people who got paid more to work less for a longer period of time and I’m not kidding
- pricing for LB movies is certainly high, and high enough that it might have been the wrong calculus. but tbh I don’t think it’s unfair; you SHOULD be paying this much to support indie films without distribution. streaming oligarchs have just convinced u otherwise
- there’s a real argument to say that people cannot afford to do that - but then the argument is that the public has been deceived about the spending power of our disposable income, NOT the value of PVOD
- it may arguably be more directly financially beneficial to the artists to rent the film here than to see them at a film festival! sometimes I think ppl venerate the experience of going to the movie theater more than cinema itself
- Helmet Girl Year in Review kicks off w some reflections on the newsletter’s first anniversary, my favorite music of 2025, and a list of every single book I read: open.substack.com/pub/cchelmet...
- It is flat out embarassing that the conversation around the transparently fascistic, implicitly anti-queer censorship of a video game (I.e. the vanguard of every social movement for the past 15 years) has been derailed by a smug debate about the nature of art.
- It is this, not the game, that serves as a damning indictment of games criticism’s juvenile state
- just connected two and two re: the casting of a side character in MARTY SUPREME that is probably the most galaxy-brained thing in a movie this year in a way that is like lowk maddening
- I wrote about being hot your whole life open.substack.com/pub/cchelmet...
- Reposted by Sam Bodrojani am going completely insane watching gamers make up shit about horses and interrogating every single thing the devs have said for inconsistencies and then deciding well it probably had cp in it. this is the easy mode version of the kinds of censorship that are to come and you're failing like babies
- finally saw FUCKTOYS after almost a year of anticipation. Has more life in its pinky finger than most movies have in their entire body. cannot imagine *not* being head over heels for this. movies with VISION >>>>
- It is maddening and unjust that this doesn’t have distribution yet
- just ran a half marathon in a blizzard 👍👍
- Everyone who suggested I watch this is in recommendation jail sorry
- Reposted by Sam Bodrojanhappy thanksgiving 🦃🍁🍂
- Dave Chappelle (suddenly getting serious 50 minutes into a special): On November 27, 2025, Hamnet died. He fucking died.
- This week’s newsletter is about PLAYERS, the Kiarostami-esque e-sports melodrama only available via unlisted YouTube videos: open.substack.com/pub/cchelmet...
- I offered some words for "Jack the Modernist," the book I wanted to be when I grew up: open.substack.com/pub/cchelmet...
- Reposted by Sam BodrojanSandy Peterson thinks he’s John Romero. John Romero thinks he’s John Carmack. John Carmack thinks he’s J. Robert Oppenheimer
- saw MARTY SUPREME…I have tapped into the grindset….I am ready to abandon my loved ones and blow up my life in pursuit of my dreams…five stars
- very much a moment of like, okay everybody pack it up. they made a real movie. we are finally free.
- I’m seeing Marty Supreme tonight, nothing can touch me
- Expedition 33 is the most normal video game of all time. The enemy design is great and the combat is fun to break. The story is charmingly terrible. It is shiny and expensive-looking and ugly. The music is hilariously bad. It is, in many ways, exactly what we deserve.
- The people long for fabula nova chrystallis