This week’s update is a bit late, I know — chalk it up to one final frenzy of logistics and organization before we lock everything down for September.  Honestly, I’ll be lucky if I get a newsletter out at all this week.

But I did get a fresh episode of Someone Else’s Movie onto the feed, featuring producer-director Ant Timpson — whose charming father-daughter story Bookworm just had its world premiere at Montreal’s Fantasia genre festival — discussing a remarkable film that fundamentally shaped his developing sense of cinema: Cornel Wilde’s The Naked Prey.

I’d known the film only by reputation, having somehow missed out on Criterion’s DVD and BD editions over the years, and catching up to it now was a revelation: Utterly unsympathetic and without an ounce of fat on it — and strikingly modern in its perspective for a film nearly sixty years old — Wilde’s film is a remarkable accomplishment in both practical and aesthetic terms. So jump on in, and keep an eye out for Bookworm when it gets its theatrical run. It’s all good.

As always, you can find the show wherever you get your podcasts — Apple, Spotify, YouTube sooner or later — or just download the episode directly from the web while you flee your pursuers across the merciless veldt.  Take your mind off things.

And if I don’t get the next Shiny Things out before the weekend, you can always catch up on the most recent issues! Last week I reviewed the new releases Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, Immaculate and Tarot and spun up the new 4K editions of Twister, Matinee and UHF. Warner’s Twister turned out great, which is … not something I thought I’d say. But I did say it, and you can read that and everything else if you have a subscription. So get yourself set up! It’s worth it!

In this week’s episode of Someone Else’s Movie, it’s my distinct pleasure to talk to Dave Merheje, a very funny person who ventures into serious-ish acting opposite Daisy Ridley in Rachel Lambert’s Sometimes I Think About Dying, which is on Hoopla in Canada and on Kanopy and Mubi in the US. (It’s very good, and you should see it.)

And what movie did Dave want to talk about? Good Time, the chaotic 2017 feature from Josh and Benny Safdie in which Robert Pattinson plays Connie, a young man who spends a hectic day racing around New York like a toxic pinball, trying to gather the bail money for his brother after a robbery goes sideways. But that’s the thing with Connie: Everything he does goes sideways, and over the course of the film we watch him heedlessly derail or destroy the fortunes of pretty much everyone he encounters.

It’s a pretty potent angle for a character study, and Dave and I found plenty to discuss about the Safdies’ cinema, Pattinson’s career choices, and Dave’s path to the screen. The Varsity 7 also comes up. (If you know, you know.)

Join the fun! You can find the podcast at the usual locations — Apple Podcasts, Spotify, possibly YouTube by now — or just download the episode directly from the web and listen to it while you pinball around the Bronx ruining people’s lives. And check out Rachel’s episode on Midnight Cowboy, too. It’s very good.

And then catch up on Shiny Things, why don’t you? Last week I caught up to a lot of catalogue releases, covering the new 4K editions of American Gigolo, Mute Witness, Purple Rain and South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut in one dispatch and Twister, Matinee and U.H.F. in another. Sounds like something you’d want to read, doesn’t it? Subscribe and make it happen!

Well, look at that. We made it to July. And for this week’s episode of Someone Else’s Movie, here’s another story of parents and children finding each other, as writer-director Anna Fahr steps up for Bahram Beyzai’s  Bashu, The Little Stranger, the 1986 Iranian drama that became an international breakout hit.

If you’ve never heard of Bashu … well, that’s not surprising. The film was an art-house success in the West, but hasn’t sustained itself the way other Iranian exports like Taste of Cherry or Close-Up did; it’s not in the Criterion Collection, and as far as I can tell there was never a proper North American DVD. But it’s out there if you look for it, and it totally holds up, and Anna and I had a wide-ranging conversation about Beyzai’s film, its place in the canon and its specific impact on her work as an artist. That’s what this show is about, after all.

You can find the podcast at the usual locations — Apple Podcasts, Spotify, even YouTube pretty soon— or just download the episode directly from the web and listen to it while you grudgingly care for your own little stranger.

And then you should catch up on your Shiny Things; last week all I had time to do was write about Criterion’s gorgeous new 4K edition of Bound, but this week I’ll be catching up to a host of catalogue titles from other labels, you’ll want to be there for those. So subscribe already!

Also, it’s almost time for another free See the North screening; this month’s pick is Stephane Lafleur’s delightfully odd coming-of-age dramedy Tu Dors Nicole, starring Julianne Côté as a recent graduate spending a muggy, aimless summer back home. That’s the whole movie, really. except that there’s a whole lot of other stuff going on, because that’s how life works. It’s a delight, and it’s free, and we’re screening it next Tuesday, July 9th, at 6:30pm. You should come.

So, some news.

Kate’s mother died last week after a very long hospital stay. Her kids were with her, and it was as peaceful as possible, and it was awful.

We’ve spent the last few days figuring out who we are if we’re not caregivers, and it turns out we’re not really sure. But we’re working on it.

Weirdly enough, the loss of a parent also figures in the movie Queen Tut, which is the film that brought Ryan Ali onto this week’s episode of Someone Else’s Movie.

We recorded the episode months ago; synchronicity is a very odd thing. But now that Queen Tut has landed on Crave, just in time for Pride, it seemed like the right moment to put our conversation into the world — especially since Ryan chose another queer film, Daniel Levy’s Good Grief, for the show.

A drama about a man sent reeling by his husband’s sudden death, and the friends who drag him back to life, it’s maybe not the project people expected from Levy as the follow-up to his beloved Schitt’s Creek … but maybe  that’s the point. We talked about that, and a lot more besides.

You can find the podcast at the usual locations — Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify — or just download the episode directly from the web, and listen to it while sitting alone at a cafe, staring into the middle distance.

And then go catch up on Shiny Things! Which won’t be hard, given that all I managed to write about last week were the new releases of American Fiction and The Boys in the Boat.

And the other thing, of course. But even so.

Yeah, yeah, Father’s Day just happened — but you know how it works on Someone Else’s Movie, the guest picks the film.

And it turns out that Shayelin Martin, who stars in Wild Goat Surf as a teenager determined to surf in the Pacific, is a massive theater kid, and Phyllida Lloyd’s Mamma Mia! is her go-to comfort movie … so we were off on a bouncy, ABBA-inflected conversation about Amanda Seyfried’s ebullience, Pierce Brosnan’s bellowing and the  absolute joy of Meryl Streep enjoying herself in front of a camera.

We talked about some other stuff too, but I’m not going to spoil it all for you. You can find the podcast at the usual locations — Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify — or just download the episode directly from the web, and listen to it while spying on the three men who might be your dad. (See? It’s Father’s Day after all.)

Regrettably, the Shiny Things publication schedule has slowed again, so all I got out last week was is a look at Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire and The King Tide, a great big kaiju blockbuster and a tiny, eerie drama. But there’s a lot more coming. Have you subscribed? It helps if you subscribe.

Yep, just as I figured, this week’s post is a little late. I did manage to get this week’s episode of Someone Else’s Movie out on time, but everything else has been jostled by the peak of my programming cycle and [waves vaguely in the direction of Oakville].

So hopefully you’ve already heard and enjoyed my conversation with Trevor Anderson, the writer and director of the excellent new drama Before I Change My Mind, on his very favorite film: Pedro Almodovar’s 1987 breakout Law of Desire.

If you’ve seen both films, the connections are pretty clear; if you haven’t, congratulations! You get to discover two terrific, genre-defying queer films just in time for Pride. (Seriously get on them; they’re both available on digital and on demand, though discs of Law of Desire are increasingly hard to find.)

You can find the podcast at the usual locations — Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify — directly from the web, and listen to it while you pace back and forth in the lobby during your latest premiere.

And then go catch up on Shiny Things! Last week I wrote about the pure frustration that is Sony’s Madame Web and a quartet of recent Arrow catalogue releases — Joe Carnahan’s Narc, Anthony Mann’s The Tin Star, Peter Yates’ Murphy’s War and Sidney Lumet’s Night Falls on Manhattan — that all seem to be saying the same things about he-man heroism, even though they’re operating in very different modes. That’s the stuff I live for, you know?

I can’t believe I’ve been making Someone Else’s Movie for nine years now and this is the first time someone’s wanted to talk about Josie and the Pussycats. Or maybe I can, since Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont’s delightful 2001 satire still hasn’t received the respect it deserves.

Fortunately, Ally Pankiw is in the Pussycats’ corner. She loves it wholeheartedly, in fact, and was delighted to learn it was available for her episode of the podcast. And so we could talk about it the way she experienced it as a kid, a blot from the blue, and as an unlikely source of inspiration for her work writing Schitt’s Creek and directing that one episode of Black Mirror (“Joan is Awful”) and the first season of Mae Martin’s Feel Good.

(Ally’s new film, I Used to Be Funny, is also very good, and it starts rolling into theaters across North America this Friday. Don’t miss out.)

You can find the podcast at the usual locations — Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify — or download the episode directly from the web and listen to it while standing in line to buy whatever shiny new thing you suddenly want to own.

And speaking of Shiny Things, are you caught up on your reading? Last week, I covered the new releases of Kung Fu Panda 4 and Bob Marley: One Love, and the new 4K releases of Peeping Tom and American Sniper, two films that tell very different versions of the same unpleasant story. C’mon, subscribe already.

Also, given the uncertain publication schedule here, I should also let you know that next Tuesday, June 11th, is the date of the next See the North screening, and we’re featuring LIlies, an essential work of queer Canadian cinema now beautifully restored in 4K and presented in the company of director John Greyson and writer-star Michel Marc Bouchard. Tickets are still available — and free. Come on out, why don’t you?

On this week’s episode of Someone Else’s Movie, I’m joined by documentary filmmaker and generally incredible artist Lisa Jackson — whose new film Wilfred Buck is now making its way onto screens across Canada,

Lisa’s film is a study of the eponymous Cree elder, who credits his interest in Indigenous cosmology with giving him a purpose after a lifetime of trauma. (It’s very good, and you should see it.)

Perhaps not by coincidence, Lisa chose another story that relies on understanding an elaborate, mysterious mythology: Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away, the 2001 fable that won Studio Ghibli its first Oscar and further entrenched Miyazaki as a global legend in animation and world-building … though I still can’t get over that time he was a dick to his translator.

We get that out of the way in the first few minutes, and the rest of the episode is a fun stroll through impossible worlds and the challenges of making movies in Canada — you know, the usual sort of thing that comes up when discussing enchanted buffets and hungry goblins.

You can find the podcast at the usual locations — Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify — or download the episode directly from the web and listen to it while you’re cleaning up the ghost spa. So go do that!

And then catch up to the latest editions of Shiny Things, in which I run through recent horror titles Night Swim, Lisa Frankenstein and  Monolith and tackle the appeal of Mean Girls — both versions! — now that Paramount’s released both the 2004 original and the 2024 musical adaptation in spiffy 4K editions. Will “fetch” finally happen? Subscribe and find out!

Yep, here we go, it’s time to start the next five hundred episodes of Someone Else’s Movie. And who better to have with me than actor and filmmaker Caitlyn Sponheimer, whose spiky new coming-of-age drama Wild Goat Surf is now playing in Toronto and Vancouver?

… well, no one, that’s why she’s here. And also because Caitlyn wanted to talk about Paolo Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty, which stars Toni Servillo as a jaded celebrity journalist who finds himself questioning his life’s work on his 65th birthday and is the only one of the director’s films that I’ve actually enjoyed from start to finish.

It’s also the only of one his that Caitlyn has seen, so that made for a fun jumping-off point as I tried to explain my loathing of Il Divo to somebody who had no idea what I was talking about.

Come along for the ride! You can find the podcast at the usual locations — Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify — or download the episode directly from the web and listen to it as you wander the streets of Roma, wondering whether all that decadence has truly nourished your soul.

Also, if you’re reading this on Tuesday you may still be able to snag a ticket for tonight’s See the North screening of Sook-Yin Lee’s Octavio Is Dead! The show starts at 6:30pm, with Sook-Yin in attendance for the intro and a post-screening Q&A. Let’s hang out, Toronto!