Category Archives: Movies

Ancestors, Protect Me

This week’s episode of Someone Else’s Movie is, I fear, the most fun I will have all month.

That’s because my guest is Jacob Anderson, the almost distressingly charismatic actor you’ll recognize from Game of ThronesBroadchurchOverlord, the titular role in the HBO series Interview with the Vampire … and he wanted to talk about Hot Rod.

Hot Rod is a movie we both love, and no one else seems to — or at least that was how it felt when the movie arrived in the summer of 2007 — but honestly, I’ll embrace any chance to talk about what the Lonely Island guys are up to, how well the story of unproven stuntman Rod Kimble holds up almost twenty years later, and the film’s place in a kinder, more absurdist cycle of comedy that arrived as a response to the meaner, Farrelly-driven brand that dominated Hollywood in the ’90s.

The reason for our conversation, by the way, is that Jacob co-stars in Alice Lowe’s delightfully bizarre historical romance Timestalker, opening in US theaters and dropping on digital for Valentine’s Day on Friday. The Canadian release is still being worked out, and this is why you should come to Secret Movie Club whenever you have the opportunity. (There’s another edition coming up next Tuesday, by the way.)

So jump in, and lose yourself in the giddy joys of two guys talking about a ridiculous favorite.  The show awaits you on AppleSpotifyYouTube Podcasts or your podcatcher of choice … and of course you can download the episode directly from the web and listen while you practice your fighting skills in your stepfather’s basement. His time will come.

(And obviously, we missed the obvious point of connection between The Lonely Island and Lord/Miller: The guys back up Tegan and Sara on The LEGO Movie‘s magnificent earworm “Everything is Awesome!!!” That’s on me.)

Then go catch up on Shiny Things, why don’t you? Last week I wrote about the contrast in the way Universal and Warner treated Wicked and Juror #2, and I’m queuing up a piece about some deep catalogue cuts from Arrow Video as you read this. All you have to do is subscribe, and it will be yours!

All the Young Dudes

This week on Someone Else’s Movie, film editor Anna Catley — who cut Karen Knox’ We Forgot to Break Up and Sook-Yin Lee’s Paying for It, which is currently rolling through Canadian theaters –dives into Todd Haynes’ 1998 glam-rock fantasia Velvet Goldmine, and I am delighted to jump in alongside her.

Is it a great movie? Not necessarily; the mystery aspect of the narrative feels tacked-on, and the fact that Haynes originally wanted to make a David Bowie biopic but had to pivot to a fictional stand-in when Bowie refused to participate means the film can’t help but feel like a pale copy of the real thing.

That said, Velvet Goldmine is an endlessly fascinating watch on its own terms, because Todd Haynes is incapable of making a movie that isn’t interesting or artful, and because Ewan McGregor’s Not Iggy Pop seems deliberately styled to resemble the late Kurt Cobain, which opens up a whole other meta level within the storytelling. Also, we fold in The Phantom Menace somehow. You should listen!

The show is available at all the usual places:  AppleSpotifyYouTube Podcasts, your podcatcher of choice … and of course you can download the episode directly from the web and listen to it while you do your makeup and think about your next stage persona.

And then, of course, you can catch up on your Shiny Things. Last week I wrote about the new releases of My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock and Heretic (from Cohen Media Group and A24, respectively), and there’s some very flashy stuff coming up, including a giveaway! Subscribe now so you don’t miss anything.

And speaking of not missing stuff, don’t forget to check out my latest piece for Toronto Today about how Sook-Yin Lee re-created the Toronto of the late ’90s to make Paying for It … and how making the movie inevitably led her to think about her own history, too. That was a fun one.

Right! Back to not thinking about the collapse of humanity for another week. Hope you’re doing well.

It Flies!

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:  AppleSpotifyYouTube 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?

Fix Your Hearts or Die

David Lynch died last Thursday. I wrote a little about him over at Shiny Things, but there wasn’t much to say that hadn’t been said by so many other people. Universally beloved and respected, consistently weird, able to alienate a cinema full of retired dentists and their wives in the space of three hours — honestly, what better way to be remembered?

So this week’s episode of Someone Else’s Movie pays the tiniest of tributes to him, bringing back Rick Roberts‘ September 2017 episode on Eraserhead. It’s a celebration of the film, of course, but it’s also conversation about an artist discovering another way to make art, and the cracks that can open when you least expect them. So yeah, it’s hopeful. I like that.

You can find the show in all the usual places:  AppleSpotifyYouTube Podcasts, your podcatcher of choice … or you can download the episode directly from the web and play it loud to drown out the cries of that weird baby in the next room. Assuming it is a baby, of course.

And then, get on board with Shiny Things! In addition to Lynch, last week I wrote about Criterion’s new 4K editions of The Mother and the Whore and Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling — two auterist knockouts I never thought would be rescued from limbo — and Arrow’s new 4K limited edition of Inglourious Basterds, which, meh. Subscribe now if you haven’t already so you don’t miss the next thing!

Negotiations and Bad Faith

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:  AppleSpotifyYouTube 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.

Party Time, Excellent

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:  AppleSpotifyYouTube 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.

Feeling Pinned Down

It’s New Year’s Eve, and while I’m usually a pretty optimistic person I think things are only going to get worse in 2025. This year started shitty, it only got shittier, and it ended on one final flourish of shittiness; you would think this leaves one feeling hopeful for an eventual upswing, but I’m not seeing it right now. Check back with me in April.

That said, at least we can close things out with a banger: My guest is writer-director Steve Pink, co-writer of Grosse Pointe Blank and High Fidelity and the director of Hot Tub Time Machine and its sequel, and he’s chosen to tackle Luc Besson’s 1990 breakout La Femme Nikita, a movie that still vibrates with raw talent and style even though its maker has done his best to ruin it in the rear view.

It’s a good one, and though I struggled to find a connection to Steve’s latest project — the documentary The Last Republican, opening Friday at the Film Forum in New York — we managed to end on a hopeful note. So go forth and listen, and maybe we can make it through this nightmare after all.

It’s available in all the usual places:  AppleSpotifyYouTube Podcasts, your podcatcher of choice … or you can download the episode directly from the web and listen to it as you’re hunkered down behind a pillar, waiting for that sniper to reload so you can take him out.

Then, get caught up on Shiny Things, where I’ve just dropped my lists of the year’s best movies and discs. It’s free to read, but you can always subscribe if you feel like it. Subscribers will have a better 2025 than everyone else. I can’t help it, it’s been decided.

That’s it! See you in the new year, and may the door hit 2024 good and hard in the ass as it leaves.

God Bless Us, Everyone

We did the holiday thing last week, so this Christmas Eve episode of Someone Else’s Movie offers a different sort of celebration as Vera Drew — the writer, director and star of the instant cult hit The People’s Joker — joins me to discuss the 2001 unicorn that started her on her own artistic and personal journeys: John Cameron Mitchell’s Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

Just like the movie, it’s a warm and welcoming conversation about some of the heaviest things a person can consider: Who we are, what we want, and where our hearts lie. I’ve been hoping to get Vera on the show for two years now, ever since The People’s Joker premiered at TIFF … so this is my Christmas present to myself, I guess. And to all of you, too.

You can find the episode in the same places as always: AppleSpotifyYouTube Podcasts, your podcatcher of choice — or you can download the episode directly from the web and listen to it while writing the song that will define you forever … unless your boyfriend makes off with it, of course.

And then you should catch up on Shiny Things, because I’ve been  busy! Last week I reviewed the new releases of Joker: Folie a Deux and The Beast and the new 4K editions of No Country for Old Men and Demolition Man, which don’t really have anything in common but still line up in interesting ways. My lists of the best discs and movies of 2024 are coming up this week; you’re subscribed, right? Wouldn’t want to miss those.

… oh, and check this out: I wrote a thing about the Wicked sing-along screenings for Village Media’s Toronto Today, my first news piece in almost three years. Journalism! I missed it!

Anyway, that’s everything. Let’s meet back here on New Year’s Eve, shall we? Dress warm.

An Obligatory Holiday Re-Run

I was unable to conjure an appropriately seasonal episode of Someone Else’s Movie this year — people just don’t pick Christmas movies that often! — but that just means I get to reissue our very special holiday movie bonanza show from December 2015, in which Kristian Bruun and I sat down with a plate of very boozy fruitcake and talked about our favorite Christmas movies.

That’s right: This one’s from December 2015, recorded in a different house, a different Toronto and a very different world. So much has changed in the last nine years, and so much has been lost; pets, parents, jobs, friends. But you wouldn’t know it from this episode, which is as goofy and animated as every conversation I’ve ever had with Kristian; it’s just nice to hang out with him again, and be happy.

(Speaking of old friends, Dexter even wandered down to join us for a bit, because there was food, and his appearance is also a nice little memory to re-encounter all these years later.)

So go get it! It’s in all the usual places — AppleSpotifyYouTube Podcasts, your podcatcher of choice — or you can download the episode directly from the web and listen to it while flipping through Netflix to find the first season of The Recruit. They don’t make it easy.

And then you can catch up on your Shiny Things; this week I wrote about the new 4K editions of Allan Arkush’s Rock ‘n’ Roll High School (from Shout! Studios) and Abel Ferrara’s The Addiction (from Arrow Video), and there’s a lot more coming before the end of the year. Are you a subscriber? Why aren’t you a subscriber? It’s free!

Also, if you’re reading this on the morning of Tuesday the 17th, I’m back hosting TIFF’s Secret Movie Club at the Lightbox tonight, and a few tickets are still available for what’s likely to be the weirdest picture we screen all season.

That’s an endorsement, by the way.

Alone Again, Naturally

This week’s episode of Someone Else’s Movie is a gentle one, as befits both the film selected and the work of the guest who selected it: That’d be Michael Clowater, a Fredericton commercial filmmaker who, in his mid-fifties, has written and directed his first feature, Drive Back Home. It’s a small drama, set in the winter of 1970, with Alan Cumming and Charlie Creed-Miles as estranged brothers forced back together when one is arrested on sodomy charges in Toronto and the other has to bail him out and chauffeur him all the way home to New Brunswick.

It’s a gentle, warm character piece, and so it makes a lot of sense that Michael would bring Tom McCarthy’s The Station Agent to the podcast; it’s similarly deeply rooted in character and relationships, with established actors given an opportunity to be seen a little differently. And any conversation about McCarthy’s work is going to open up all sorts of interesting avenues; I hope you enjoy the ride.

You know how this works:  Subscribe to the show at AppleSpotifyYouTube Podcasts or on your podcatcher of choice, or download the episode directly from the web and play it on repeat as you make that thousand-mile run to the east coast.

And then you can catch up on your Shiny Things reading: Last week, I tackled Shout! Studios’ releases of Viggo Mortensen’s The Dead Don’t Hurt and Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, The Wrath of God — which looks infernally beautiful in a new 4K restoration — and Severin’s jam-packed special edition of Jane Giles and Ali Catterall’s Scala!!!, which is the best documentary about rep cinema you’ll see all year. Of course, if you’re a subscriber you already know that. (And if you’re not, there’s an easy fix.)

More housekeeping: If you’re reading this today (Tuesday, December 10th), there are still a few tickets available for tonight’s last See the North screening of 2024: Molly McGlynn’s excellent first feature Mary Goes Round. Show starts at 6:15pm, fuzzy scarves entirely optional.

And I’ll be back down at the Lightbox next Tuesday, the 17th, for the December edition of Secret Movie Club, which is going to be a good one. There were about thirty tickets left this morning; grab one while you can. See you there.