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.

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: Apple, Spotify, YouTube 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.

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 — Apple, Spotify, YouTube 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.

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 Apple, Spotify, YouTube 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.

This week on Someone Else’s Movie,  I welcome the mother-daughter team of Sheila McCarthy and Mackenzie Donaldson to the podcast, on the occasion of the theatrical release of All the Lost Souls, which Mackenzie produced and directed and in which Sheila co-stars. (It’s playing at Toronto’s Carlton Cinema through Thursday, at least, and streaming on Paramount Plus on Friday the 13th.)

Sheila and Mackenzie wanted to talk about a movie they both love, so they went with The Wizard of Oz, the beloved MGM musical that defined a certain kind of live-action fantasy for generations — and, obviously, continues to delight and enthrall audiences of all ages nearly a century later.

Join us, won’t you? Subscribe to the show at Apple, Spotify, YouTube Podcasts or on your podcatcher of choice, or download the episode directly from the web and listen to it as you run through the poppy fields trying to avoid the asbestos.

And then get caught up on your Shiny Things! Last week I wrote about Anna Kendrick’s Woman of the Hour and Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice Beetlejuice coming to disc, and the new 4K editions of A Simple Plan, Hush and Bones and All that just hit the shelves. But of course you’ve long since subscribed, so you know this stuff already.

Oh, and if you’ll be in Toronto this month, here are a couple of dates you should write down: At 6:30pm next Tuesday, December 10th, we’re throwing 2024’s last See the North screening at the Lightbox, and we’re showing Molly McGlynn’s excellent first feature Mary Goes Round. It’s free, and it’s funny, and its wintry setting and spiky family narrative makes it perfect holiday viewing. And it’s free! So come view it!

Not free, but also screening at the Lightbox and involving me, is the next edition of Secret Movie Club, which is happening at 7 pm on Tuesday the 17th. Obviously I can’t tell you what the film is or who’ll be joining us for the screening, but … well, you might want to grab a ticket while you can. See you there.

Greetings from the Calgary airport, where I’m waiting on a connecting flight after spending the weekend at the Chilliwack Independent Film Festival! They were kind enough to invite me to do a panel, I spent a couple of days talking to very nice people and even sat on a short-film jury. (We gave our prize to Alexander Farah’s One Day This Kid, which you should see at the earliest opportunity.)

But I do other stuff, so here’s this week’s episode of Someone Else’s Movie, in which I welcome the actor and filmmaker Ben Petrie as his first feature The Heirloom rolls into its Toronto theatrical release this week. I’ve been acquainted with Ben for a while now, through his work with his real-life partner Grace Glowicki (herself a friend of the show), and I’m delighted to have him on, especially since he’s the first person in almost ten years to pick a Charlie Chaplin movie.

Specifically,  City Lights, Chaplin’s 1931 masterpiece — and perhaps the biggest gamble of his career, since he chose to make a silent film three years after The Jazz Singer rendered them obsolete almost overnight. He knew what he was doing, though, and the result is one for the ages — literally. It’s almost a century old, and that final shot still brought me to tears. If you’ve never seen the film, consider this your motivation; it’s on the Criterion Channel, and the Criterion BD looks as good as a 35mm print. And if you have seen it, enjoy the conversation. It’s warm and comforting.

You know how this works: Subscribe to the show at Apple, Spotify, YouTube Podcasts or on your podcatcher of choice, or download the episode directly from the web and listen to it while you dodge the punches of your opponent in the ring. And then go see The Heirloom! Ben and Grace will be at the Lightbox on Thursday night for a Q&A with Kaz Radwanski — also a friend of the show — and they’ll be making other appearances at the Revue Cinema when the film moves there on Friday. But the TIFF screening will be the best one, I just know it.

After you’ve secured your ticket, please catch up to the latest editions of Shiny Things. Last week I wrote about Severin Film’s massive second volume of the folk-horror anthology All the Haunts Be Ours and the 4K anniversary editions of Seven Samurai (Criterion) and North by Northwest, Blazing Saddles and The Terminator (Warner). Plenty more to come, so subscribe right now so you don’t miss anything. If you’re reading this, you probably already have, but … well, just in case.

This week’s episode of Someone Else’s Movie is one I’ve been looking forward to for a very long time … because I’ve been trying to book Mark McKinney forever.

The once and future Kid in the Hall and I used to live a few blocks from each other, and we’d run into one another at the occasional thing, and when I launched SEMcast he was one of the first people I reached out to. He was totally up for it; he just had to shoot this pilot first.

The pilot turned out to be Superstore, which ran for six seasons on NBC. And then there was the Kids reunion series, and a bunch of other stuff, and yadda yadda yadda it’s nine and a half years later. But with Mark having two projects landing more or less at once — his new CTV series Mark McKinney Needs a Hobby and a role in the very messy horror comedy Scared Shitless, which has its Toronto premiere this Saturday at the Blood in the Snow Film Festival — we finally carved out an hour to talk.

And Mark picked a doozy: Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, George Miller’s prequel to Fury Road that rolls back the clock on the apocalypse to show us what Charlize Theron’s formidable Imperator went through to become the greatest warrior the wasteland has ever known. (Max Rockatansky is more of a strategist, really.)

It’s a wide-ranging conversation about Miller’s directorial genius, the glory of the big screen, my own Lorenzo’s Oil boosterism and, yes, the gonzo pleasures of Hundreds of Beavers. Mark’s an omnivore, and yeah, this episode was worth the wait.

Surely at this point you know what to do: Subscribe to the show at Apple, Spotify, YouTube Podcasts or on your podcatcher of choice, or download the episode directly from the web and get the Doof Warrior to blast it from his amp. They have podcasts in the wasteland, surely.

And then get caught up on Shiny Things! Last week I wrote up Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger and the new 4K releases of Born on the Fourth of July and Drag Me to Hell from Shout! Studios, and Elvira, Mistress of the Dark and The Invasion from Arrow Video.

There’s a lot more to come, and if you feel like you’re missing out you can always subscribe. I mean, I would.

This week’s episode of Someone Else’s Movie was recorded the day after the US election — in fact, Kamala Harris conceded while we were talking — so politics were an intrinsic part of the conversation.

Fortunately, the movie under discussion welcomes a political lens. My guest, writer-director Gillian McKercher — whose tense new drama Lucky Star makes its Toronto bow this Saturday in the Reel Asian Film Festival — chose Martin Eden, Pietro Marcello’s bold and brawny reinterpretation of Jack London’s novel about a roughneck sailor who decides to get an education, ultimately reinventing himself as a strident individualist as Europe hurtles towards war.

It’s a hell of a picture, as the kids say, and the perfect movie for the moment, so Gillian and I found plenty to talk about. You should listen to it! Subscribe to the show at Apple, Spotify, YouTube Podcasts or on your podcatcher of choice, or download the episode directly from the web and listen to it as you feverishly work on your latest manifesto. We’ve all been there.

And then you can read my latest manifesto, disguised as a new edition of Shiny Things! Last week I spun up a trio of new releases: M. Night Shyamalan’s maddening Trap, Zoë Kravitz’ brilliant Blink Twice and Steven Kostanski’s delirious Frankie Freako. Something for everyone, even the masochists. Have you subscribed? There’s a free option, you know.

… oh, and I was going to remind you all about tonight’s See the North screening of Winter Kept Us Warm, but it appears to be sold out. Sorry about that! Next month’s will be announced shortly. Keep an eye out!