"CATCH YOU FUCKERS AT A BAD TIME?"

One Battle After Another

(there will be spoilers)

I was pretty sure I’d like Paul Thomas Anderson’s ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER, but I was surprised to walk out feeling it was the movie of the year. That’s not only because it speaks so deeply to our exact moment of political insanity, but because it’s such an exhilarating viewing experience – confident, masterful filmmaking, very effective as a thriller, but also extremely funny, absurd and original. It’s possibly Anderson’s most traditionally entertaining movie but it doesn’t feel in any way watered down or compromised.

I saw it in bona fide IMAX, where its Vista Vision format fills the entire screen, so the anxiety-inducing score by Johnny Greenwood rumbles in your jaw as you stare at a scraggly, sweaty, 37-foot-tall Leonardo DiCaprio face fretting and scowling. Then sometimes it switches to a taller version of a Sergio-Leone-type-shot where two tiny characters stand apart on opposite sides of the screen. That’s the full range of cinema right there.

The credits say this was inspired by (not adapted from) the book Vineland by Thomas Pynchon. I was surprised when I learned that character names like Perfidia Beverly Hills, Virgil Throckmorton and Junglepussy didn’t come from the book. These little heightened details spike a mostly naturalistic feeling world with exaggeration and draw attention to the authentic ridiculousness of our world. Sometimes that feels more real than if it was realistic. (read the rest of this shit…)

October 14th, 2025 | 19 Comments »

Significant Other

When I was writing about VILLAINS the other day I looked up its writing/directing team of Dan Berk & Robert Olsen, and realized I’d already seen 3/5 of their filmography (including BODY and STAKE LAND II). I’ve been meaning to get to their latest, NOVOCAINE, but I’m in horror mode this month, so I went for the other one remaining: SIGNIFICANT OTHER (2022). This one went straight to Paramount+ which, like so many parts of our society today, is now owned by a fascist billionaire currently buying up and destroying our institutions to try to make life shittier for everybody. So I understand if you want nothing to do with that service. But as far as the movie itself this is a good one, I think my favorite by this team.

It’s another one about a young couple, the lady once again played by Maika Monroe (INDEPENDENCE DAY: RESURGENCE), but it’s more like her usual downbeat characters, and it’s a much more serious movie. She plays Ruth, whose boyfriend Harry (Jake Lacy, CAROL, BEING THE RICARDOS) has convinced her to go on a hiking trip through a forest somewhere in Oregon. He doesn’t seem like a horrible monster or anything, but tends to dance around the line between charming and condescending, and he doesn’t seem very sensitive about how nervous she is. She’s a surfer girl, she didn’t grow up camping like he did, and she suffers from panic attacks. She intellectually understands that yes, going way out into nature with him should be safe, but that doesn’t mean she’s gonna be all relaxed about it. You gotta give her some leeway and understanding, dude. Jesus. (read the rest of this shit…)

October 10th, 2025 | 5 Comments »

Villains

VILLAINS is a 2019 indie movie I’ve wondered about for a while. It uses the reliable formula “somebody tries to rob a house and discovers a horrific thing going on there.” Other ones that come to mind are THE COLLECTOR, LIVID and DON’T BREATHE. This is a much jokier take on the format than any of those, more of a dark comedy than anything, but I’d say it’s at least horror adjacent. There are maniacs doing something crazy, it takes death seriously, it stars two perhaps underrecognized greats of contemporary horror… yeah, I’ll count it as horror.

It’s about a couple of addled deadbeats named Mickey (Pennywise/Orlok/The Crow himself Bill Skarsgård) and Jules (Maika Monroe, THE GUEST, IT FOLLOWS, WATCHER, LONGLEGS) who clumsily rob their last gas station, intending to use the money to move to Florida and start a new life selling seashells. Trouble is they run out of gas on a remote, wooded road. They are not criminal masterminds.

On foot they find a large, isolated house where no one seems to be home. They break in, hoping to steal the car in the garage or come up with some other escape plan. But they face a moral dilemma when they find a young silent girl (Blake Baumgartner, MADELINE’S MADELINE) chained up in the dark basement. (read the rest of this shit…)

October 9th, 2025 | 5 Comments »

The Smashing Machine (2025)

THE SMASHING MACHINE (2025) is one of those movies that comes along every once in a while that’s so geared toward my niche interests that it seems like a prank. How the fuck is there a movie where

1) The Rock finally does what I’ve been saying he should do for years and chooses a movie based on the director, artistic merit and acting challenge rather than its potential to be the highest grossing, most universally seen and least memorable generic middlebrow cinematic porridge ever squirted out of a tube

that happens to be

2) a remake of an obscure and now impossible to find sports documentary I watched and became obsessed with because it was from the director of the greatest DTV movie of all time?

If I was stupid and dumb instead of savvy and wise this would be one of those “this proves life is a simulation” moments for me. The new version is written and directed by Benny Safdie (actor from HAPPY GILMORE 2 who directed GOOD TIME and UNCUT GEMS) and released as a hip art movie by A24. Original director John Hyams is credited as a consulting producer, and man I hope he got paid because this is entirely built on his movie. (read the rest of this shit…)

October 8th, 2025 | 21 Comments »

Hell of a Summer / Clown in a Cornfield

HELL OF A SUMMER (2023) is a horror comedy playing off of the format of FRIDAY THE 13TH and other summer camp slashers. It’s not like a Jason movie, it’s based on the whodunit slasher model that was popular in the late ’90s, but that puts it in line with the first FRIDAY THE 13TH and SLEEPAWAY CAMP movies, so I’ll allow it. Anyway I have an interest in the topic, so I decided to see it even though it’s written and directed by two of the kids from GHOSTBUSTERS: AFTERLIFE. Nothing against Billy Bryk and Finn Wolfhard, but there were already two SCREAM movies before they were born, so the chances that their commentary on the genre was gonna offend my old school slasher sensibilities seemed high. I had to turn off THE FINAL GIRLS for horror nerd reasons and that’s a well regarded movie. I’m sensitive.

But I’m okay with this one. It’s pretty funny.

Like many of the FRIDAYs it’s about the counselors gathering and getting into some shit before any kids get there. We know from a fireside prologue that the owners of Camp Pineway, John (Adam Pally, ASSASSINATION OF A HIGH SCHOOL PRESIDENT) and Kathy (Rosebud Baker, TURNABOUT) will be permanently absent thanks to some psycho in a cheap devil mask. I like this intro because the couple have a really natural chemistry, making fun of and laughing with each other, really humanizing them in the brief time before they’re slasher fodder. Good adults in a slasher movie. It immediately gave me more faith in the youths behind the camera. (read the rest of this shit…)

October 6th, 2025 | 12 Comments »

Play Dirty

Man, this new straight-to-Amazon-Prime movie PLAY DIRTY is some kind of monkey’s paw shit for me. It’s the great Shane Black (THE NICE GUYS) writing and directing for the first time in seven years, returning to crime movies for the first time in nine years, and it’s based on my favorite crime series ever, Richard Stark’s Parker books. The catch is that most of what I want from a Shane Black movie (such as the quippy dialogue) I definitely do not want in a Parker adaptation, and they originally had Robert Downey, Jr. cast in the role, which seemed like a problem. Could he really seem intimidating enough to be Parker, and more importantly would he even know how to shut the fuck up with his little smart ass comments? I didn’t think he would.

But I wish I could’ve found out, because Downey got replaced with Mark Wahlberg (PLANET OF THE APES), also a poor fit but in a less intriguing way. Downey is a totally different type than the character, while Wahlberg sorta aspires to being the right type, he just doesn’t have enough of it. I know people dislike him now due to past crimes, dumbass interviews and lowered quality standards, but I’m too old to entirely let go – I haven’t forgotten that exciting alchemy of the most uncool pop rapper of the ‘90s winning us over with a great performance in BOOGIE NIGHTS, nor have I forsaken THE BIG HIT, THREE KINGS, I HEART HUCKABEES, THE DEPARTED, THE OTHER GUYS, THE FIGHTER, etc. So it’s not Marky Markophobia when I say he doesn’t seem believably cunning enough, or intimidating enough. The other characters have to treat him as if he is, but I don’t quite buy it. I don’t feel it. I don’t feel the vibrations. (read the rest of this shit…)

October 2nd, 2025 | 57 Comments »

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters vs. Gretel & Hansel

My recent revisit of THE BROTHERS GRIMM (2005) pushed me to finally get around to seeing HANSEL & GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS (2013). I had wondered whether they were kind of in the same genre and yeah, turns out they’re more similar than I even guessed. Just like Gilliam’s movie this one starts out with a fairy tale inspired childhood flashback, then tells the story of a pair of traveling supernatural expert siblings hired to help a small town where the children have gone missing. Both movies even have Peter Stormare (GET THE GRINGO) as a cartoonish bad guy (this time he’s the sheriff who gets a chunk of his nose bit off by Gretel).

The major distinction is that they’re not con artists or skeptics – as the title suggests, Hansel (Jeremy Renner immediately following a run of THE TOWN, GHOST PROTOCOL, THE AVENGERS and THE BOURNE LEGACY) and Gretel (Gemma Arterton, CLASH OF THE TITANS) grew up to become witch hunters, and this being a twenty-teens studio movie that means they wear cool leather outfits, have fancy steam punk shotguns and crossbows, do lots of slo-mo spins and flips and what not. Yes, that kind of sounds like a parody movie-within-a-movie meant to satirize Hollywood excess (like something from LAST ACTION HERO, or the Max Landis action version of Huckleberry Finn from the pilot of Jean-Claude Van Johnson). Fortunately writer/director Tommy Wirkola (DEAD SNOW, VIOLENT NIGHT) takes the ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER route of keeping a straight face and trying to make it cool instead of giving in to the temptation to prove to the audience that he’s in on the joke. I was worried for a second because there’s a joke at the beginning about drawings of missing children on milk bottles, but that was a one time occurrence. (read the rest of this shit…)

October 1st, 2025 | 7 Comments »

Jackie Brown

There are a bunch of fun movies based on Elmore Leonard books – I always like seeing what bits of his style can translate properly – but there are two absolutely great ones that are among my very favorite movies. One is Steven Soderbergh’s OUT OF SIGHT, which I got up the courage to write about for its 20th anniversary in 2018, and I bet you could guess what the other one is. Quentin Tarantino’s JACKIE BROWN has been at the top of my not reviewed list* for I don’t know how many years. It’s intimidating, you know, to try to write something worthy of a movie this good that I’ve put off for that long. But recently I took a vacation to L.A. and I was able to see a midnight show of JACKIE BROWN at the New Beverly (the historic theater owned by Tarantino since 2007), so it’s time to finally do this.

Rarely has there been a more synergistic match of adapted and adapter. The small time criminals who love to talk about other stuff, the funny loser made more dangerous by his stupidity, the protagonists who aren’t following the law either but who are our guys, the very specific regional details – all these things make perfect sense for both a Leonard book and a Tarantino movie. So this becomes both an extra-Leonardy Tarantino and a Tarantino-fied Leonard. An unstoppable combination. (read the rest of this shit…)

September 29th, 2025 | 25 Comments »

Tornado

TORNADO (2025) is not a disaster movie, and the title isn’t even (primarily) a metaphor. It’s the name of its protagonist, played by Japanese singer and actress Kōki, (yes, according to the credits there is a comma in her name). It’s set in Scotland in 1790, and she’s the disaffected daughter/assistant to Fujin (Takehiro Hira, HARA-KIRI: DEATH OF A SAMURAI, SNAKE EYES), an ex-samurai turned traveling marionette performer.

We’ll find that out later in flashbacks. But for a while we just see her in a wind storm (not tornado), running from a mob of scary thugs led by Sugarman (Tim Roth, THE MUSKETEER), slipping into a mansion and hiding as the goons storm in, pushing the occupants out of the way to search for what they say is a girl about this high and a boy about this high. We don’t have to know who she is or what they want from her to know fuck these guys, and to be thrilled by the well-executed cat-and-mouse sequences involving rotting floorboards.

It was the samurai aspect that got me to rent this on VOD, but it largely feels like a western, and it has a slow burn revenge angle to it. Don’t worry, it’s a 91 minute slow burn, not a torturous one, and it has a real strong mood and atmosphere that made it captivating to me. Director John Maclean (SLOW WEST), cinematographer Robbie Ryan (THE FAVOURITE, MARRIAGE STORY) and production designer Elizabeth El-Kadhi (ONE SHOT) have somehow concocted endlessly pleasing imagery within a grey and barren landscape. And it has a really effective score of menacing percussion, folksy strings and eerie organ by the Australian musician Jed Kurzel, who scored all the movies directed by his brother Justin (THE ORDER) as well as THE BABADOOK, ALIEN: COVENANT, THE NIGHTINGALE, OVERLORD, THE POPE’S EXORCIST and MONKEY MAN. But I wouldn’t underestimate the power of all the quiet scenes where you can hear the wind, so shout out to sound designer Alexej Mungersdorff. (read the rest of this shit…)

September 25th, 2025 | 3 Comments »

Baby Assassins 3

You know how much I love those Baby Assassins, the young women in the movie series from writer/director Yugo Sakamoto. Chisato (Akari Takaishi) is an energetic, giggly anime girl come to life, Mahiro (Saori Izawa) is her dour bleach blond best friend, they were raised to murder for money, a job they’re very good at, but that they try to just get over with so they can pursue their passions such as enjoying desserts and making soup and going to restaurants.

In BABY ASSASSINS (2021) they had graduated high school so their organization made them find an apartment and day jobs. In BABY ASSASSINS 2 (2023) they had to get out of an enormous debt because they forgot they signed up for an elite assassin gym membership and ignored all the bills. There’s plenty of absurd humor about the bureaucratic operations of this underworld, but the main attraction is obviously the excellent fights, action directed by Kensuke Sonomura (MANHUNT, HYDRA, BAD CITY). Izawa is a veteran stunt pro (doubling the lead of the RUROUNI KENSHIN movies) while Takaishi is an actress, but they both acquit themselves well in long, brutal battles. I like how in this little scene where they play fight on the beach Izawa can’t help but go into a serious fight stance and reveal the muscles she usually keeps hidden under baggy clothes.


(read the rest of this shit…)

September 24th, 2025 | 10 Comments »

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