How are things going for you? Still grim? Yeah, I thought so.  Maybe this week’s episode of Someone Else’s Movie can offer a little hope.

I’m joined by writer-director Lowell Dean, who made the Wolfcop movies and has two films coming out in 2024; one of them,  the horror-wrestling mashup Dark Match, is dropping on Shudder in the US and opening in Canadian theaters this Friday.

And we talked about Superman.

Sure, Richard Donner’s 1978 blockbuster defined the superhero movie narrative that now dominates mainstream American cinema. But it also endures because it’s a goddamn great movie, a film that wears its heart on its sleeve and understands its characters on every level. Christopher Reeve’s performance connects directly to kids and helps them be better adults. Margot Kidder is having the best time. Gene Hackman! Ned Beatty! Valerie Perrine! Jackie Cooper! What more could anyone ask?

Anyway, it’s a wonderful picture and Lowell and I both love it. We talked about the big-screen treatment of the Man of Steel over the last half-century — and how Reeve’s performance casts a long, long shadow over every subsequent interpretation of Clark Kent — as well as our admiration for what Donner accomplished cinematically and the stones it must have taken to deliver a movie that argues for hope over cynicism in the post-Watergate era. Because that’s Superman; it’s even more of a miracle than you think it is.

Come listen! Find the show in all the usual places:  Apple, Spotify, YouTube Podcasts, your podcatcher of choice … or download the episode directly from the web and listen to it on your morning commute to the Daily Planet.  It’s swell.

And then catch up to Shiny Things, where I’ve just written about the new releases of Conclave and We Live in Time and Imprint’s exceptionally curated 4K special edition of The Longest Day, which took almost two months to reach me but was entirely worth the wait. You’re already a subscriber, right? Otherwise why am I even doing this?

We don’t get a lot of Kurosawa on Someone Else’s Movie. I think it’s because people are intimidated by the idea of discussing his movies, or nervous they’ll be seen as arrogant for presuming to have the definitive take on Rashomon or Seven Samurai or Ran or Ikiru, or any of the dozens of other classics he made over his remarkable career.

But that’s the fun of the podcast: No one’s take is definitive! We’re just talking! And so I was really excited to welcome Birdeater directors Jack Clark and Jim Weir onto the show to talk about High and Low, Kurosawa’s 1963 adaptation of Ed McBain’s novel King’s Ransom, transposed to Yokohama and following the ordeal of over-leveraged executive Kingo Gondo (Toshiro Mifune, brilliant as ever) whose takeover of his own company is derailed when a kidnapper abducts the child of his chauffeur, mistakenly thinking the boy is Gondo’s.

It is, as they say, a hell of a picture, and Jack and Jim have all sorts of stuff to say about it. So give it a listen, and then go check out Birdeater, which is a very different film from High and Low … but shares a certain grimy intensity. You’ll see.

You can find the show in all the usual places:  Apple, Spotify, YouTube Podcasts, your podcatcher of choice … or you can download the episode directly from the web and listen to it while you wait for the next call from your extortionist.

Also: Shiny Things is back up to full speed, with reviews of Warner’s exquisite new 4K disc of Seven and the long-in-coming (literally, because they were stuck a Canada Post warehouse during last month’s strike) Via Vision special Imprint boxes of The Blair Witch Project and Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria. More coming soon, so be sure to subscribe if you haven’t already!

And then, if you’re still looking for something to read, check out this piece I wrote for Toronto Today about the locations of Young Werther, as celebrated by last week’s SEMcast guest José Avelino Gilles Corbett Lourenço. It was fun, and there’s a great shot of Douglas Booth with his mouth full of gelato that makes a lot more sense once you read the story.

It’s 2025, and while the general state of things is pretty bleak, at least Rudy Giuliani continues to be available for petard-hoistings on the regular. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy, or at least a more ethical one.

But today, we are also celebrating writer-director José Avelino Gilles Corbett Lourenço, whose first feature Young Werther made its world premiere at TIFF last fall and now opens across Canada on Friday.

It’s a deliriously charming adaptation of the Goethe novella, starring Douglas Booth as the eponymous fancylad, who decides to help the girl of his dreams (Alison Pill) realize she should dump her fiance (Patrick J. Adams) and get with him instead. For her own happiness, you understand.

José’s become a friend, and so it was even more of a pleasure to invite him onto Someone Else’s Movie; he returned the favor by picking Wayne’s World, the movie that made Mike Myers a megastar and helped Penelope Spheeris go legit after starting off in rockumentaries. And as it happens, I’m old enough to have seen Myers play Wayne long before he brought the character to Saturday Night Live, so that opened up the conversation a little bit. (We never got around to discussing his performance as David Cronenberg’s Anne of Green Gables, so that’s a story for another time.)

Anyway, it’s a blast. So give it a listen! You can find the show in all the usual places:  Apple, Spotify, YouTube Podcasts, your podcatcher of choice … or you can download the episode directly from the web and listen to it while riding around with your buddies after a long night out. Rock on.

And then, once you’re done rocking, get back on the Shiny Things train! I took last week off, but I’ll be back at it Wednesday with a comprehensive look at Warner’s new 4K restoration of David Fincher’s Seven, which is a thing of terrible, terrible beauty. And there’s more where that came from, so make sure to subscribe!

That’s it for now. Stay warm, everybody.