Men would rather chop off their own fingers than go to therapy. If you’re even a little familiar with internet meme culture, you’ve likely seen one of the hundreds of “men would rather [insert stupid or awful thing here] than go to therapy” memes, which chides the male sex for our almost absolute refusal to solve problems by talking through them.
Instead, we usually opt for violence or other reckless behavior that often leaves us worse-off than when we started. The characters in playwright and director Martin McDonagh’s latest film, The Banshees of Inisherin (pronounced Innish-E-rin), would do well to have the little bit of snarky wisdom posted to their Facebook page by a friend. McDonagh set his film in 1923, though, so his characters needn’t be bothered with any modern critiques of toxic male behavior.
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Every time I hear one of a select group of pop hits from the last 40 years, I start singing the wrong words. They might be lyrics about the Star Wars character Yoda, when the song is actually about a woman named Lola. They might be lyrics about making prank phone calls when the song is really about chasing waterfalls. Every time this happens – and I mean every. single. time. – my wife rolls her eyes and threatens to divorce me.
I will never stop, though, because I am a lifelong "Weird Al" Yankovic fan. My music collection contains every album from the most successful and famous parody-song artist of all time, save two. (The last one I obtained was 2006’s Straight Outta Lynwood, so I’m missing 2011’s Alpocalypse and 2014’s Mandatory Fun.)
All that to say I might not be the most impartial judge of a movie about – and co-written by – Yankovic. The new film, Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, directed by comedy writer and filmmaker Eric Appel, in his feature debut, is an absolute hoot. Take my opinion with a grain of salt, since I was clearly in the tank for it from frame one, but Weird is the goofiest, most ridiculous, funniest comedy of the year.
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Executive produced by Bryan Fuller, Queer for Fear looks at queer representation in horror movies from the beginnings of cinema through roughly the 1990s. It covers everything from gay director James Whale’s outsized influence on the horror genre, via his seminal work for Universal Studios in the 1930s, to the Wachowski sisters exploring queer desire in 1996’s Bound.
Any person committed to understanding the world with as much complexity and nuance as possible craves ideas and perspectives other than their own. Queer for Fear gave this (mostly) straight guy a new perspective on dozens of cultural artifacts and made them richer and more interesting for it. It also validates and reclaims a vibrant history for people who have experienced intolerance, rejection, hostility, and violence from those in society – sad to say, probably still the majority – who can’t slap their hands over their ears fast enough when new ideas are presented to them. Queer for Fear is a wonderful achievement in queer cinema. Both LGBTQ+ and straight folks should relish the ideas it presents.
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In a distinguished career marked by multiple award nominations and wins – including two Oscars – actor Cate Blanchett adds another hypnotic, utterly engrossing performance to her formidable body of work with her latest effort. In TÁR, Blanchett plays Lydia Tár, a virtuoso conductor and musician in her own right, and the first female chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic. With all that power, wealth, and fame comes the tempting ability to abuse it, and Blanchett’s fictional Lydia Tár suffers a complete breakdown when her abuses are made public.
Blanchett’s performance is intense and unrelenting in a movie that shares those same qualities, but writer/director Todd Field’s psychologically fraught character study keeps us at a frustrating remove from Lydia Tár, even as we see her come undone. TÁR is a movie that uses current hot-button societal issues like cancel culture, the #metoo movement, and abusing institutional power as window dressing to explore an emotional and psychological crisis. It offers no solutions to these issues, never so much as takes an ideological stance in the face of them. While that kept me at arm’s length from TÁR – enough so that I never fully fell under the picture’s sway – Field constructs a nuanced and complicated portrait of his troubled protagonist that is compelling.
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With Moonage Daydream, documentary filmmaker Brett Morgen has reinvented the form, synthesizing a kaleidoscope of images and sounds from the life and work of David Bowie into a vibrant, electrifying experience. Like its subject’s nonconformist, taboo-smashing body of work, Morgen’s 140-minute tone poem meditation on one of the most sui generis artists who has ever lived is breathtaking in its scope and originality. Morgen’s film is one of the best of the year. David Bowie pulses in every frame, reminding us from beyond the grave that we’ll never see his like on this planet again.
Upon reflection, Moonage Daydream is (slightly) more conventional than it at first seems. Beneath the surface of the film’s elliptical, almost phantasmagorical tapestry is a roughly chronological examination of Bowie’s career over the course of about 30 years. This is the first documentary about the glam rock pioneer that is officially authorized by the estate of the artist, who died in 2016 from liver cancer.
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Return of the Jedi, the final chapter in the trilogy that transformed sci-fi movies forever, is itself a rehash of the plot of A New Hope. That, as well as a few other less-than-inspired elements of the picture, make Jedi the weakest of the first triptych of films.
Released in May of 1983, Jedi was the culmination of the previous six years of Star Wars fever. I was about to turn three years old, so, again, I had no cultural awareness at the time outside of the contents of my own diaper. I would like to pretend, however, that I took my brother – who was about to turn 18 months – to the movie while explaining everything he missed in the first two episodes.
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I had an absolute blast covering Fantastic Fest 2022. I’m writing this post-mortem to get the final stats on the record and to mention the standouts I saw that I haven’t proselytized yet.
By the numbers:
I saw 17 short films at the fest and 28 features, for a total of 45 titles over 7.5 days.
Here’s the breakdown by day:
Day 1: 2 features, 9 shorts
Day 2: 3 features, 1 short
Day 3: 3 features
Day 4: 4 features
Day 5: 4 features, 1 short
Day 6: 5 features, 1 short
Day 7: 3 features, 2 shorts
Day 8: 4 features, 3 shorts
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Me, upon waking up Saturday morning: “I could use a light entry into the screenings today. I hope the choice I made yesterday is kind of tame.”
Checks phone; sees first screening is titled Flesheater.
Also me: “Well, shit.”
Day three was the first day I didn’t leave the theater for the entire day, apart from stepping outside to get some fresh air between screenings. I arrived at 11am and didn’t leave until almost twelve hours later. One of the great things about a film festival at Alamo Drafthouse is access to a full menu for every screening, meaning you never have to leave to get food.
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I felt the lack of sleep I got after day one of the fest in my bones every single minute of day two. Because of it, I made a decision that will cause me to break the promise I made to you only 72 hours ago. I’m out on the midnight (or near midnight) screenings going forward. Threeish hours of sleep a night is simply not enough for me to function. Abandoning any plan or part of a plan always makes me feel a bit like a failure, but then I remembered something. This is supposed to be fun, damn it! Plus, no one is paying me to do this, hence no one is telling me what to do, hence I can make this experience anything I want it to be.
I saw five movies – three features and two shorts – on day two. After writing and publishing the post for day one, grabbing a shower, and heading back to Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar, I was immediately treated to my favorite film of the fest so far.
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Here’s how much of a creature of habit I am. The filmmaker Q&A for the last screening I attended last night at day 1 of Fantastic Fest ended a few minutes after 1:45am. By the time I got back to my host’s house – major thanks to the amazing Melody Smith, who has graciously opened her home to me during the fest – and had unwound enough to drop off to sleep, 2:30 was rearing its ugly head. Yet, right on schedule, my eyes popped open at 5:30, as they do most mornings. I was able to catnap for another 45 minutes before accepting the inevitable and starting my day.
After arriving in Austin mid-afternoon yesterday and securing my press badge, I settled in to my temporary home base with a little over four hours to kill before the first round of screenings. The good people of Fantastic Fest must have sensed I had a few free hours, because they sent me an email telling me six new films were available for me to watch via streaming as part of the Fantastic Fest @ Home option.
Might as well get an early start!
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I have some exciting news that I’ve been sitting on until now. A few months ago, I was approved for credentials to cover this year’s Fantastic Fest Film Festival as a member of the press! This will be the first film festival I’ve ever attended from start to finish while also screening as many movies as physically (and, it should be noted, psychologically) possible.
The closest I’ve ever come to completing this Mecca-like pilgrimage for cineastes is working as a volunteer for the Oak Cliff Film Festival in my own back yard almost a decade ago. Since I was working as a volunteer, though, I was only able to attend a few screenings. My coverage of Fantastic Fest will be a completely different experience.
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In 1980, I would make my own much more low-key première onto the world stage two months and a few days after The Empire Strikes Back reignited Star Wars fever in movie theaters around the globe. I’m tempted to observe that I missed out on the feeling of anticipation that must have been palpable on the eve of the second installment of George Lucas’s blockbuster phenomenon rëentering the cultural zeitgeist. But I think I have a pretty good handle on what it was like. I’ve been through two additional Star Wars trilogy releases, both encompassing multiple years separating each new installment. And, of course, there’s the MCU, whose overlords have calculated with scientific precision the exact number of seconds between installments in order to achieve peak fan excitement.
Still, I feel like a baseball enthusiast who raves to an older fan about the greatness of a current favorite player. The older fan, the one with more historical perspective, only has to mention, in hushed tones, “That’s great, kid, but you never saw Mantle or DiMaggio swing a bat at the top of his game.” Part of the magic of the original trilogy lies in the fact that nothing like it had ever been done before in film history.
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Star Wars is three years older than I am. The film, now known by the canonical title, Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope, was released in 1977, and is celebrating its 45th anniversary this year. As part of that celebration, The Texas Theatre is screening all three original trilogy entries over two weekends. During an introductory speech before New Hope began, the presenter mentioned that, while they couldn’t say with absolute certainty, the current caretakers of the Texas believe that this is the first time the original trilogy has ever been screened at the venue.
I mention the relative age of myself and the most influential, culture-shaping sci-fi franchise in the history of cinema as a way to highlight that, like so many millions of other film fans, I do not remember a time when Star Wars did not exist. It has been a constant in my life, albeit to varying degrees of importance, for (gulp) nearly a half-century now. So, there is basically no way I can skip seeing it on the big screen when the opportunity presents itself.
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In the wake of unleashing the most original and spectacular action blockbuster of the 21st century so far, eclectic Aussie filmmaker George Miller has followed up Mad Max: Fury Road with something that feels like a chamber drama by comparison. His new film, Three Thousand Years of Longing, is a meditation on the very nature of storytelling, how our civilization is making the line between technology and magic ever-more-blurry, and the ineffability of a central human trait: the capacity to give and receive love.
That Miller made such a radical turn between projects should be no surprise. Peppered among the (to date) four entries in his signature Mad Max series, the director wrote the gentle fable Babe and wrote and directed its sequel, Babe: Pig in the City. He also cowrote and directed both entries in the Happy Feet series, which are – and I have to credit Wikipedia for delivering this genre description – computer-animated jukebox musical comedies starring the likes of Elijah Wood, Robin Williams, Hugh Jackman, and Nicole Kidman.
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I’m reposting an essay from the archives this week — what the olden days of TV would call a “rerun,” forcing me to wonder if kids today would be as confused as Milton Baines was about what a rerun is — because, quite frankly, life kicked my ass this past week. I was already leaning toward taking a week off.
The decision was made for me when I broke out in an allergic reaction rash all over my body. It has been excruciating. After suffering the worst itch you could possibly imagine last weekend — there is no way I could have focused enough to be able to write a coherent review — I finally got myself to a dermatologist, who prescribed me a round of steroid pills to beat the allergic reaction into submission. I also have no idea what caused this, so I’m about as anxious as the newscasters in Batman ‘89 of using any products on my body, lest the Joker poison me again. I still have fairly angry looking rash spots across my body, but, mercifully, the worst of the itching has subsided, although, it’s still there. Then, I bricked my phone on Wednesday when it slipped out of my hand as I was setting it down.
So, enjoy a golden oldie this week. Odds are you missed it the first time around. What follows is the essay I wrote after attending a screening of the complete Man with No Name trilogy. I picked this one because I enjoyed writing it and it was the first not-strictly-a-movie-review piece that I ever wrote for my site. I originally published it on June 19, 2015. I had been writing film criticism for six months at that point, so please be kind when considering my skill level. I am simply reposting it without a fresh round of edits because… I’m itchy.
Peace.
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The crispness and clarity of digital projection has finally, I believe, overtaken that of the method born in the fin de siècle and used exclusively throughout the 20th century. As someone born in what the kids are now calling “the late 20th century,” it brings me no joy to acknowledge that the old way of doing things is obsolete and will likely fade from cultural memory even before I shuffle off into oblivion myself.
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A tagline on the poster for the 1934 horror film The 9th Guest proclaims, “Eight were invited…but death came unasked!” The all-but-forgotten pre-Code murder mystery is an example of the “old dark house” subgenre of horror. The 9th Guest was based on a Broadway play, which itself was based on a 1930 novel. I love the fact that the plot employs the hip new technology of the time, wireless radio. The eight guests are informed by their unknown host – via mysterious radio transmission – that he considers them all his enemies, and that over the course of the night, they will meet his ninth guest…death!
The old dark house trope in horror movies is exactly what it sounds like. Get a motley cast of characters together on a “dark and stormy night,” signal that there is danger afoot in the form of a killer, introduce a power outage, let mayhem ensue. My favorite exemplar of the model is literally called The Old Dark House, and I was introduced to it in college. It was produced by Universal Studios horror impresario Carl Laemmle Jr. in 1932 and directed by the legendary James Whale, who directed the 1931 character-defining version of Frankenstein as well as the 1933 adaptation of the H.G. Wells novel The Invisible Man. Another pre-Code entry, The Old Dark House is, especially for 1932, fairly freaky stuff. Seek it out if you get the chance.
The new horror/comedy from independent studio A24, Bodies Bodies Bodies, is the old dark house subgenre for the 21st century. The script was based on a story by writer Kristen Roupenian, with a re-write by playwright and first-time screenwriter Sarah DeLappe. It was directed by Dutch actress, writer, and director Halina Reijn. I’m including that litany of names as a way to signal that I’m not sure who gets the credit for doing their homework on bringing the authenticity of the old dark house tropes and aesthetic to the picture. It’s likely that all three of them did.
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“Understanding is love’s other name.”
That quote is attributed to Thích Nhất Hạnh, an influential Vietnamese Thiền Buddhist monk and peace activist. Known as the “father of mindfulness,” Hanh died at the age of 95 in January of this year. The quote appears in documentary filmmaker Sara Dosa’s Fire of Love, an examination of the lives and work of volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft. At this moment, I can’t recall in what context the quote appears in the movie. I don’t remember if it’s spoken by either Katia or Maurice, if the film’s narrator – filmmaker and actor Miranda July – utters it during the film, or if it appears on screen in text form. I quickly jotted it down in my notes as I watched Fire of Love, but I failed to add an attribution.
The exact context of those words within the documentary isn’t important. At a broader level, the sentiment behind Hanh’s idea is a beautiful and apt thesis statement for everything Dosa explores in her picture. Understanding was at the heart of Katia and Maurice’s personal and professional lives together. It is what the pair were trying to achieve with the white-hot intensity of their decades-long study of volcanos.
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Director Jordan Peele’s much anticipated third outing of big-budget, spectacle horror filmmaking, Nope, has a lot of big ideas swirling around inside it. The comedian-turned-horror-maestro explored the horrors of racism in his debut, Get Out, and the horrors suffered by an American underclass who exist in order to make life easier for everyone above it in Us. With Nope, Peele’s ideas never quite gel into a cohesive whole. The story is ambitious, the storytelling is thrilling, but Nope ultimately feels like a blockbuster-budgeted episode of The Twilight Zone.
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Kids, get out your popcorn, and let me tell you a story about the space Viking, Thor Odinson. This isn’t Thor as seen in Kenneth Branagh’s terminally boring 2011 outing, which made the mythical god and his world as dour and operatic as possible. No, this is Taika Waititi’s Thor, which we got a snootful of in Waititi’s previous outing with the character, Thor: Ragnarok. As in that film – which influenced the general comedic direction the character has taken in the non-standalone MCU movies in which he appears – Thor, in Waititi’s hands, is here for a good time. But, it’s important to note, he’s not here only for a good time.
Right below the surface of all the sight gags and screaming goats in Thor: Love and Thunder – I laughed out loud more than once at those giant screaming goats – is effective and heartfelt pathos that gives the picture its emotional anchor. That’s Waititi’s stock-in-trade. As can be seen as far back as 2010’s Boy, through 2014’s What We Do in the Shadows, to 2019’s Jojo Rabbit and his work in the MCU, Waititi uses all the goofy humor to disguise more serious themes. His technique is as fresh and entertaining here in Love and Thunder as it’s ever been.
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