On this week’s episode of Someone Else’s Movie, I welcome actor and filmmaker Jeremy Schuetze,  whose first feature Anacoreta — in which he stars opposite Antonia Thomas and screenwriter Matt Visser as a director trying to make an experimental horror movie in increasingly stressful circumstances – just dropped on digital and on demand. 

And Jeremy’s choice, given his own project, makes a certain sort of sense: He picked American Movie, Chris Smith’s beloved documentary about Wisconsin auteur Mark Borchardt, whose attempts to make a horror short called Coven after stalling out on his folk-horror opus Northwestern develop a certain epic quality as he and his eccentric friends and family –  the kind-hearted Mike Schank being the most loyal – push through one obstacle after another to bring his vision to the screen. I don’t think it’s a spoiler, 26 years on, to note that Coven did not have the cultural impact Borchardt hoped for … except that I guess it kind of did.

You know how this goes: Subscribe to the show on Apple, Spotify, YouTube Podcasts or your podcatcher of choice, or download the episode directly from the web and listen to it while waiting to watch the dailies from yesterday’s shoot.

And then you should catch up on Shiny Things, because last week I wrote about the new Criterion editions of Joan Micklin Silver’s Crossing Delancey and Gus Van Sant’s Drugstore Cowboy — two character studies from the late ’80s that marked a turning point in the way “smaller” movies would be approached in American cinema, even if no one knew it at the time. You can subscribe at any time, you know.

I try to have at least one Oscar nominee  on Someone Else’s Movie every year, and this time around I’m delighted to have Mortiz Binder, whose nomination for Best Original Screenplay (shared with director Tim Fehlbaum and co-writer Alex David) is the sole nod for the excellent journalistic thriller September 5. It’s up against some pretty heavy hitters, but that’s irrelevant; it’s a really good movie, and you should see it. It’s on Blu-ray today, in fact!

Mortiz picked a film that couldn’t be more different than his own: Sergio Leone’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, the wildly ambitious spaghetti Western that disassembled the genre and reconfigured it into a sweaty, desperate epic. I love this movie, and so does Moritz — and his story of discovering it as a kid, and rediscovering it over the decades, is a great one. Also we talk about September 5, of course.

Go get it! Subscribe to the show on Apple, Spotify, YouTube Podcasts or your podcatcher of choice, or download the episode directly from the web and listen to it on the long ride through the badlands. It’s not like there’s anything to look at.

And then get caught up on Shiny Things! This week I wrote about Arrow Video’s new editions of Alice, Sweet Alice (now in 4K!) and Kazuo Mori’s new-to-me ’60s thrillers A Certain Killer and A Killer’s Key, which were a very welcome surprise. And that’s in addition to the weekly What to Watch recommendations I send out to the paid tier. Gotta give them a little something. But you’re already a subscriber, right?

Oh, and the Toronto Film Critics Association gala is coming up on Monday — when we award the great big prizes for Best Canadian Film and Best Canadian Documentary — so I had a conversation with Matthew Rankin, whose Universal Language is one of our finalists, for the TFCA website. That’s a good read, if I do say so myself.

Are you reading this on Tuesday the 18th? A handful of tickets are still available for tonight’s Secret Movie Club, which I’ll be hosting at 7pm at the Lightbox. It’s good. You should come. I will say nothing further.

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 Thrones, Broadchurch, Overlord, 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 Apple, Spotify, YouTube 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!

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:  Apple, Spotify, YouTube 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.

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.

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:  Apple, Spotify, YouTube 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.