Multimedia hyperlink cinema done right. A reporter boards a futuristic superyacht, hears various stories and maybe becomes unstuck in time and experiences some of them.
Guest directors/writers/DPs take on different sections, Joseph acting as curator, with the cinematographer of Arrival and editor of Everything Everywhere All at Once.
Reminded us of Adam Curtis and Dahomey and a hundred other things. It’s very difficult to explain – fortunately, Robert Daniels is on the case.
The first Sam Raimi movie since Drag Me To Hell, from the writers of Freddy vs. Jason. Humiliated office worker Rachel McAdams has the upper hand when a plane crash kills all her idiot coworkers except Dylan “Twinless” O’Brien, who cannot build shelter or a raft or find his own food, but still tries to pull rank on her. Fun back-and-forth as they poison each other, and she tries to stay lost by avoiding rescue boats. Despite the all-natural setting Raimi doesn’t know it’s even possible to make a movie without adding ugly CG characters, in this case a wild boar, but thankfully non-CG is Rachel’s pet cockatiel, which survives the mayhem.
Benning constructs his own versions of Thoreau’s and Kaczynski’s cabins and films the trees through their windows (on his property in California) synced with audio recorded in Massachusetts and Montana. Part of a larger art/cabin/unabomber project for Benning.
Each cabin gets one 15-minute shot, so there’s not much to look at, just sounds. Odd to hear a big-ass truck drive past Thoreau’s place, distant clanking and traffic near Ted’s. I took the opportunity to listen for birds. Merlin mostly refused to cooperate, finally IDing a nuthatch. Birdnet picked up a house wren, but I had to hand-select its call, couldn’t just leave the app running, and bringing the birdnet-pi downstairs would’ve messed with my backyard stats. So, the movie didn’t work to get me in the mood for our own trip to the cabin, where Merlin always hears plenty of birds, including actual merlins.
A near-doc, near-drama with flights of fantasy, it must’ve looked like a whole new thing at the time. Luis and Armando pass some ladies at a mysterious cave and end up traveling seven generations into the future. A silent episode, serving snow for dinner. Too much with the rural rhythms, but quite beautiful, even in my TV copy.
Cordeiro and Reis were a married couple who made three features together set in this region of Portugal, which is convenient for film viewers who are obsessed with trilogies. Not shockingly, the cinematographer also worked on Monteiro and Ruiz films, and Paulo Branco produced.
Watched this meta-remake because I trust the Pipeline guy, and Director Daniel did not let me down even if Writer Daniel (and his Cam co-writer) strayed increasingly into dumb-ass territory. I find his internet thrillers less compelling – let’s blow up some more pipelines.
Barbie Ferreira of Euphoria is a viral-snuff-video survivor who now reviews flagged violent videos all day for shithead boss Josh (of multiple LaKeith Stanfield movies) until she uncovers a serial killer who’s recreating scenes from Faces of Death (1978). Killer Arthur (a power ranger) takes over the second half, killing her roommate (of Cocaine Bear), as Arthur and Barbie turn the tables on each other repeatedly until his inevitable (captured on video) death.
The roommate has two copies of Independence Day on VHS:
and two of The Sixth Sense:
Redux Redux (2025, Kevin & Matthew McManus)
A great concept turned into an unfortunately bad movie with boring music. I watched on fast-forward.
The Block Island Sound directors cast their sister as a multidimensional force of vengance, hopping parallel universes in search of a world where her murdered daughter is still alive, taking out serial killer Jeremy Holm each time before moving on, until she picks up one of his survivors Stella Marcus and they get to repeatedly save each other.
with Jim Cummings of Snow Hollow as her hookup:
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How to Shoot a Ghost (2025, Charlie Kaufman)
Earned this half-hour movie with the time saved from fast-forwarding Redux. This one has some good words and some good images, making it better than the last Kaufman short I saw (from the same writer). The whole emotional journal of being a ghost in Greece doesn’t come together, but Kaufman and Jessie Buckley deserve a belated victory lap after I’m Thinking of Ending Things.
Scott “Biff” Grant of The Monolith Monsters yachts through a glitter cloud, his wife (of I Was a Male War Bride) unaffected since she was in the cabin. “People actually decrease in height during the day,” says a doctor trying to comfort him. But it’s no use, doc, Biff is definitely getting smaller, and being a real pain in the ass about it. He goes out on the town and meets circus midget April Kent, but that doesn’t help either. Finally he’s small enough to be chased around by the family cat – he escapes into the cellar, but his brother Charlie arrives, and refusing to look in the cellar declares his brother definitely dead then wanders off with the hot wife. Meanwhile, Biff makes a grappling hook (this is exactly what I used to assume I’d do in any desperate situation) to defeat a spider, after which he reaches transcendence as he vanishes into atoms.
Per Criterion, Joe Dante (of course!) loved this movie, and cast the doctor in Innerspace… the same cat who tried to kill Biff later starred in Breakfast at Tiffany’s… I should really watch the remake with Lily Tomlin and Charles Grodin.
Ann Seyfried totes her little brother (Lewis Pullman of a Salem’s Lot remake) as she discovers a Christian sect called the Shakers, marries Chris Abbott but can’t have kids, gets arrested and returns as their messiah, moves to America and leads the group as they grow and inevitably diminish, since her main rule is strict celibacy. The US arrests her for being a treasonous witch but releases her for lack of evidence, then vigilantes burn their place down and murder a bunch of them – this country was cursed from the start.
A musical of the best sort, the looping rhythmic hymns reminding me of Lungfish songs. I assume the great Seyfried won all the awards, but I’m clicking on the awards link and getting distracted by which movies the Golden Globes consider a “musical or comedy.”
Sometimes the vulgar auteurists are wrong. This brit-accented antiquity drama mixed with fast-cut bloodless gladiator action (edited to hell, the same way I recall RE6) from the writers of Batman Forever was a nice-enough waste of time between Resident Evil episodes.
Pretty girl Emily Browning (The Uninvited) likes slave-gladiator Kit Harington (best known as the star of Xavier Dolan’s eighth-best feature). Her dad Jared Harris (Benmont in Dead Man) and Emperor(?) Kiefer Sutherland are playing some kind of political-financial game nobody cares about while Kiefer arranges slave-battles, until the world explodes.
Girlies:
Gladiators:
Emily’s mum is Carrie-Anne Moss, and her friend is Jessica Lucas of Evil Dead Remake. The curly-wigged Charles Laughton-type in charge of the slaves is Graecus of Antiviral, his jailer Bellator is from a Cabin Fever prequel, and the tough Black slave (on his last day on the gladiator force before retirement) pitted against Kit until they team up to fight their oppressors is Heavy Duty from GI Joe 2 or 3.
Birdie:
Apocalypse:
