Hamnet
Look, I’m not one of those people who brags about their ignorance like it’s some badge of working class authenticity. I’m mostly a smart guy, and would love to be smarter. But I’m honestly admitting here that I’m not all that qualified for the works of William Shakespeare. I’ve enjoyed some of the adaptations, mostly the more stylistically adventurous ones like TITUS or ROMEO + JULIET or even THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH. But the language (beautiful as it may be) is a real obstacle for me. I always struggle with following what anyone is talking about, and you mostly gotta know what they’re talking about to know what’s happening.
Even the ones I can get a grip on I barely retain memory of afterwards. Sometimes I can’t even remember if it’s Macbeth or Hamlet that has the Ghost Dad. I really have to go into my brain and do the following math: oh yeah, in THE NORTHMAN his name is Amleth, so that’s inspired by the same story that Hamlet is inspired by, so Hamlet is the one where his uncle killed his dad. And that was also the one that STRANGE BREW was riffing on and that had the Ghost Dad. Okay, got it. I know all about Hamlet.
“Don’t you know who I am!? I wrote the essay for the UNDER SIEGE 4K from Arrow!”
If you are the type of person who would buy UNDER SIEGE in its fancy new Arrow limited edition 4K or blu-ray I recommend checking out the essay in the booklet. It might be by somebody you know.
I went many years without ever achieving the status of “guy who writes liner notes for home video releases,” but now I have a few notches on my belt. The first was for a region B release of DOBERMANN, then I did NAVY SEALS for Vinegar Syndrome. UNDER SIEGE is the biggest movie I’ve done and also the first time I was the obvious choice. They said they found out about me while researching the movie. I hope they remember me if they do DARK TERRITORY!
I have two other ones coming up from other labels, but they’re not announced yet. One is an unknown no-budget movie I can’t wait to tell everybody about, and the other one I almost won’t believe until I see the disc with my own eyes, and then I’ll be carrying it around like Tom Cruise showing everybody his I.D. in EYES WIDE SHUT. Long after I’m in the ground my skeleton will still be bragging about it. But I have no more deadlines at the moment so I am focused on reviewing the good shit for you here. Happy 2026, despite everything!
Afterburn
AFTERBURN is one of the two post-apocalyptic Dave Bautista vehicles that played theaters in 2025, but it’s the one I missed. I saw IN THE LOST LANDS, which is more of a stylized fantasy movie, while this is more like a straight ahead lower budget action movie done, apparently, on a mid-budget. Huge compared to the DTV stuff I watch (including FINAL SCORE starring Bautista), of course, but in a similar spirit. It’s out on physical media today and I was happy to catch up with it.
It’s set six years after solar flares devastated much of the earth and destroyed the infrastructure so that electricity doesn’t entirely work (but some of it does? I’m unclear). Bautista’s character Jake was a deep sea treasure hunter who now takes jobs going into dangerous territory to find rare objects for warlords like August (Samuel L. Jackson, THE RETURN OF SUPERFLY). He’s good with bombs and puzzles, and in the opening he’s on a mission that involves pretty cool video game style problem solving to get a Stradivarius out of a secret vault. He doesn’t personally care about that type of rich people shit – the rare item he brings home for himself is a Public Enemy record. It’s late Public Enemy (“How You Sell Soul to a Soulless People?,” 2007) and it sounds very tinny on his phonograph, but it speaks well of his tastes. As with IN THE LOST LANDS, I also appreciate knowing a guy has BLADE RUNNER and Basquiat neck tattoos in the future. (read the rest of this shit…)
Trancers: City of Lost Angels
You may remember that I recently saw TRANCERS for the first time. Which of course means I haven’t seen any of the other TRANCERSes. And I’m a sucker for a long series of sequels. I’m not planning to watch them all in one chunk, but I don’t want to let them sit and fester, I thought I should get started. So I learned about the unusual fact that it took them seven years to get around to part two, but three years before that they filmed a TRANCERS short meant to be a segment in an anthology film called PULSE POUNDERS. The movie was never released, a casualty of Empire International Pictures going out of business.
I didn’t mention this before but after the black and white version of JOHNNY MNEMONIC came out, Charles Band released TRANCERS in black and white calling it TRANCERS NOIR. So he’s not one to miss out on a quickie library exploitation. When a copy of the PULSE POUNDERS segment turned up in 2013 he released it as a standalone on DVD even though it’s only about twenty minutes long and of rough transfer quality. These days you can get it as an extra on the TRANCERS blu-ray or just watch it on Tubi. The lost angels were found. (read the rest of this shit…)
Bronco Billy
There are a couple reasons why BRONCO BILLY isn’t one of the better aged Clint Eastwood pictures. First of all, it’s part of that phenomenon that he was so enamored of Sondra Locke that he kept putting her in movies, but playing his most obnoxious love interests (here a comically snide and uptight heiress whose upper crust accent exaggerates more with each cowboy she comes in contact with). These days that also means you might be reminded that after they broke up he reportedly used his clout to sabotage her career.
It’s also a particularly blunt version of the “yeah he’s sexist but he’s secretly sweet and she’ll come around” trope. Clint’s “Bronco” Billy McCoy coerces Locke’s Antoinette Lily into working as his assistant when she’s just trying to borrow a dime for the pay phone. Then he slaps her on the ass. He does rescue her from rapists (good), but then makes a pass at her (insensitive). Maybe worst of all he interrupts her explanation of why she knows how to shoot guns already and then never follows up. I don’t need to know, but he should care if he’s supposed to be in love with her! Anyway I did not find the magical untightening of the rich lady to be all that charming.
At the same time as all that the movie does have a timeless appeal that I can’t resist, because it’s about a tight crew of show-people who have worked together for years, get mad at each other but would die for each other, and have sacrificed to live unconventional lives dedicated to this thing they do together, this traveling wild west show. (read the rest of this shit…)
My Buddha is Punk
Yesterday I reviewed STREET PUNX, which I did not think was a successful movie but I was intrigued by its movie-within-a-movie topic of punk rockers in Yangon, Myanmar, and the lead character mentioning that there is a documentary about them. Last night I rented that documentary on Vimeo and yes, it was very much worth sitting through STREET PUNX just for that movie recommendation.
MY BUDDHA IS PUNK (2015) is a 67 minute cinema verite look at Kyaw Kyaw, the lead singer of a band called Rebel Riot. He was in STREET PUNX mostly talking to the main character on video chat. There he came across as a goofy, sweet, kind of shy guy with a whole bunch of girlfriends, and it came as a surprise when the movie ended on his moving explanation of the importance of artists in a revolution. Here, though, the younger Kyaw Kyaw is absolutely magnetic, a wise punk rock guru always speaking philosophy and inspiration, always teaching and advising. He straight up doesn’t believe in leaders, but seems to be the driving force of a punk rock movement and subculture in Yangon. He has a bunch of friends and band members who live and work together as a collective, but at least when the cameras are on most of them don’t talk much. They’re always listening to him. He genuinely seems a little frustrated by this. He’s always soliciting responses, but usually not getting them
Street Punx
There’s this distribution company called Gravitas Ventures. They’re owned by Shout! Studios, but they just put out indie movies, mostly ones you’ve never heard of, both on VOD and on DVD-R. They’ve been around for almost 20 years and their biggest moment might be in 2021 when THE MOLE AGENT was nominated for the best documentary Oscar. That’s the Chilean documentary that inspired the Ted Danson show A Man on the Inside, which you can see on Netflix, not from Gravitas. And maybe you haven’t heard of that either.
Oh, they also put out DA SWEET BLOOD OF JESUS. And GRIZZLY II: THE REVENGE. I’ve seen those. And they did SLOTHERHOUSE. I’ve heard of that one.
Being released by Gravitas is not a mark of quality. Most of their stuff, honestly, I assume I wouldn’t like. (Could definitely be wrong.) But I appreciate their existence just because they’re putting movies onto physical media that otherwise would disappear, either by not being noticed or not being available. Some obscure movie that played at some obscure film festival, somebody worked hard on it, very few noticed, but Gravitas did, so there it is on a purple DVD, if you need it. (read the rest of this shit…)
Sentimental Value
SENTIMENTAL VALUE (Affeksjonsverdi) is the beginning of my awards season viewing ritual of seeing movies that I know almost nothing about except they’re supposedly good. It’s on all the lists of predicted best picture nominees, but also my friend Matt Lynch told me to see it, so I was planning to.
It’s from the Norwegian director Joachim Trier, who has been directing features for almost 20 years but the only one I’ve seen is 2021’s THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD, which I enjoyed but did not review. This reunites him with that film’s star Renate Reinsve (who made her debut in his second film, OSLO, 31 AUGUST). It’s one of those director-actor combinations that works so well I assume they’ll make five or ten more.
The story centers around the Oslo home of the Borg family. In the opening scene, a narrator (Bente Børsum) describes it through the perspective of Reinsve’s character Nora, when she had to imagine a building’s feelings for a school assignment. It’s a poetic description of the personality of a house and its meaning to the people who spend their lives in it, multiple generations of the same family living and dying in the same rooms. I thought of Robert Zemeckis’ HERE in this sequence, with its match cuts between time periods, showing the same locations in the dress of entirely different eras. (read the rest of this shit…)
There’s Something in the Barn / A Christmas Tale (2005)
THERE’S SOMETHING IN THE BARN is a 2023 horror comedy that I watched because it was one of the very few Christmas movies on Shudder that I hadn’t seen yet. It’s pretty middle-of-the-road, but definitely watchable, kept me entertained, gave me a few laughs.
Martin Starr (XTRO 3: WATCH THE SKIES) stars as Bill Nordheim, an enthusiastic American dork who moves his family to Gudbrandsdalen, Norway when he inherits a house from his uncle. One thing he doesn’t mention to the family is that the uncle died mysteriously while trying to burn down the barn. And one thing he doesn’t know himself is that the uncle was trying to burn down the barn to exterminate a dangerous barn elf (Kiran Shah, LEGEND). (read the rest of this shit…)
Avatar: Fire and Ash
I’m not gonna waste your time pretending you need my opinion whether to see AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH or not. If you don’t like these movies, no, don’t bother. If you do, obviously you’re gonna see it, it’s a new AVATAR! A new James Cameron! You’re not a heathen. And he’s still pretty much undefeated. The streak continues.
If I were to offer viewing advice it would be to avoid HFR (high frame rate) projection at all costs. I recklessly decided to see it at my favorite theater (SIFF downtown, f.k.a. Cinerama) despite my hatred for that format, and as soon as it started my heart just sank. When projected in this format, what seems like the majority of the movie is presented with the ugly screen saver sheen of 60-frames-per-second, but it repeatedly switches back to aesthetically pleasing 24 fps and if you’re like me you sigh with relief until it goes back and then you start grumbling to yourself again. It felt like I spent the whole 197 minutes fighting over the remote control with some guy who wants the motion smoothing on, so my level of concentration was not ideal for maybe the first 45 minutes. I was so taken out of the movie that a James Cameron directed air battle dropped dead in front of me like some Stephen Sommers clatter. Should be illegal. I’m never doing HFR again. (read the rest of this shit…)
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