#and I'm sure the filmmakers are taking people's critics into account

[movie-robotnik-positivity]

HOT TAKE, GO!

Sometimes it feels like I'm one of the few people in the fandom who understands how the Sonic movies operate.

I see many fans are deluding themselves into expecting Sonic 3 to go on a completely different direction antithetical to what the previous films stablished (directly adaptating the games, no humans, constant references, Sonic becoming more like his game counterpart), even though after two movies we should have a pretty solid understanding of the filmmakers' approach. It's gonna end up in disappointment.

[stomp-that-ho-regard]

Well, friends, get a load of this...

Hey, I found your account by accidentally adding a space to my search query. I've read some of your takes and have a suggestion for you: I think you should consider taking a step back from discussing shipping with others. You've obviously had experience with warring ships in the past (something that I think is incredibly immature of those who participate), and judging by your posts, it has affected you quite a bit. I still participate in shipping with friends privately, but keeping discussions offline has been great for my mental health as I don't brush up with toxic people in the fandom. Also, just so you know, you come off as quite aggressive and antagonistic with your opinions, so it might be something to be aware of (it's the only reason I felt the urge to send you this ask). This being said, I do disagree with a lot of your takes, so take my opinion for what it is. I'm a gay non-binary person and have a degree in film/screenwriting, plus primarily direct queer media, yet I have not been offended or triggered by the cast's representation of queer characters or queer relationships since some instances in Campaign 1. I think the cast & company have made great strides in efforts to have respectful representations and are constantly improving. Call it both age and experience, but when taken in the context of an improvised D&D game, characters are going to fall in love with whomever they do, and it might not be the person they were first showing interest in. That's pretty normal in real life, and not all queer relationships are the same nor have the same dynamic. I rarely send asks, but since you're someone who openly debates others, I decided I'd pass my criticism along. I genuinely hope you're enjoying I/modna more than you enjoyed Beau/yasha, and congrats on being this passionate about something. Cheers.

You:

Me:

Thanks so much for the unsolicited advice.

You have a degree in filmmaking... Okay, you're one of those.

Do you think that makes your opinions more valid? Also, I don't remember ever bringing up anything to do with films or even queer media. What post prompted the sharing of this information?

That's another thing about this ask. You say you 'disagree with a lot' of my takes, yet don't even bother to reference which takes those are. Where are the specifics?

'Just so you know, you come off as quite aggressive and antagonistic' 'Aggressive' huh? Wow! Thank you for pointing that out! I had no idea!

Honey, sweetie, babycakes... this as a RANT blog. That's made CLEAR AS DAY in the blog description. You must be brand spanking new to Tumblr if you don't understand what a rant blog is. It is a space for myself and others to VENT. THAT'S THE POINT.

'Antagonistic' though? I've never been antagonistic toward any of my anons, or anyone else I've interacted with on here. I'm definitely being antagonistic toward you though, but only because of your tone.

'characters are going to fall in love with whomever they do, and it might not be the person they were first showing interest in' Sure. But Beau and Jester both ended up with the person they were first interested in (despite the FACT that those initial feelings were fizzling at various points). I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here.

'Openly debates others'? Um, where? I have never 'debated' anyone on this blog. Not once. Also, you're not 'debating' here either. This is a hit and run. You came across me 'accidentally' (which I have NO reason to believe), then decided to condescend, then run away.

Also, I'm really not inclined to take someone seriously (who clearly takes themselves incredibly seriously), who is willing to lecture (and psychoanalyze?) a person they randomly came across on here and not have the guts to do it with their URL attached.

Anyway, you will, more than likely, never even see this response. And honestly, I'm glad, because otherwise that would mean you've begun stalking my blog, which would be incredibly fucking weird.

[alittlefrenchtree]

Did everyone just forget the problematic aspects of balenciaga

if it happened more than 2 weeks ago, probably. That's how the Internet (and the world) works 🤷🏻‍♀️ Is there more than that advertising campaign and using ugly and overpriced products to get reach on the Internet? I mean other than being a fashion brand and, by definition, having problematic aspects by its very nature?

I'm pretty sure (or i hope at least) most people online have a pretty shitty opinion on Balenciaga overall, so yeah.

And since knowledge is better than sitting here and judging, here is what wikipedia says about Balenciaga controversy, if anyone wants to read about it ⬇️

In November 2022, an advertising campaign posted on Balenciaga's Instagram account featured children holding teddy bears, which were dressed in bondage and BDSM gear.[44] Following heavy criticism, Balenciaga later apologized and removed all posts connected to the photo campaign. Meanwhile, the photographer, Gabriele Galimberti, said that both the children and the objects which appeared in the photos were all selected by Balenciaga.[44][45][46] Hours later, Balenciaga apologized for a separate, earlier advertisement, in which a $3,000 Balenciaga handbag sits amongst papers which include the text from a Supreme Court opinion in the Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, which was a child pornography case.[47][44] Balenciaga announced that it was taking legal action in pursuit of $25 million, against the production company North Six and set designer, Nicholas Des Jardins, and they claimed they were responsible for the advertisement with the child pornography court document. In response, the set designer's attorney said that Balenciaga representatives were present at the shoot, and handled the papers and props used.[48][49] Balenciaga dropped their legal action on 2 December.[50]

In another image, featuring the actress, Isabelle Huppert, two art books can be seen in the background: one is based on The Cremaster Cycle (1994–2002) by the filmmaker Matthew Barney and one is As Sweet as It Gets (2014) by the Belgian painter Michaël Borremans. Some Twitter users tried to connect imagery from Barney's and Borremans' works to the court document, and based on this suggested there was a hidden message about child abuse in Balenciaga's marketing material.[51]

Carl W Jones from the School of Media and Communication at the University of Westminster described the campaign as an attempt of shockvertising.[52] Balenciaga brand-ambassador Kim Kardashian, who initially said nothing in public about the scandal, started selling her Balenciaga clothing and shoes.[53]

[anhed-nia]

BLOGTOBER 10/4/2020: SOCIETY

Without having a survey to back me up, I feel comfortable asserting that as a horror fan, you go through different phases with SOCIETY. It’s a basic fact of life, and yet it morphs and mutates underneath you, shocking you anew just when you think you’ve got a grip on it. You never forget your first time, because there is simply nothing like it. Then, after you get over the initial shock of its patented brand of body horror, you start to take it for granted; it's so broad and monolithic that it becomes something like the Grand Canyon--when it’s not right there in front of you, you begin to experience it more iconically, as part of the wallpaper of existence, rather than an in-your-face confrontation with the limits of experience. Then, you revisit it every few years (or months, depending on what sort of person you are), and the prophylactic layer that your brain has wrapped around your memories of it--the one that allows you to think of SOCIETY as a fun, wacky cheap thrill--begins to crumble, and you realize all over again how iconoclastically vile it is. Wherever you happen to be at, with this inimitable genre landmark, you'd be hard pressed to deny that it earns its royal status among horror movies, just for being so uniquely fucked up.

Filmmaker Brian Yuzna is best known as the co-creator of the indispensable RE-ANIMATOR (or as the co-writer of HONEY, I SHRUNK THE KIDS...depending on what sort of person you are, again), itself a milestone achievement in the blending of sex and gore that so characterized '80s horror production. That film clearly brought out the best in Yuzna and frequent collaborator Stuart Gordon (also of HONEY, I SHRUNK THE KIDS fame...among other things), but it's interesting to see how they operate apart, to understand the unique ingredients that each filmmaker brought to the more perfect union of their classic Lovecraft adaptation. Gordon skewed darker and more intellectual, as evidenced by the end of his career with the shattering mob thriller KING OF THE ANTS, the disturbing true crime drama STUCK, and the Mamet-penned EDMOND. Yuzna, for his part, is almost anti-intellectual, preferring to cook up blackly comic, semi-pornographic nightmares like his two increasingly horny RE-ANIMATOR sequels, the terminal S&M fantasy RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD 3, and the shamelessly hokey comic book adaptation FAUST: LOVE OF THE DAMNED. Yuzna's lack of shame is really his defining feature as an artist, and nowhere is this more obvious than in his directorial debut and signature masterpiece, SOCIETY.

Salvador Dali's "The Great Masturbator," a chief visual inspiration for SOCIETY.

Yuzna was able to leverage the success of RE-ANIMATOR to lock in two directorial opportunities, BRIDE OF RE-ANIMATOR, and a bizarre body horror exercise about a Beverly Hills orphan who discovers that not only are his adoptive family from a different bloodline, but they're not even from the same species. That both pictures employed the writing team of Woody Keith and Rick Fry gives you a little taste of what to expect from SOCIETY, but to be frank, the latter threatens to make the former look like a very special episode of ER; "overkill" barely begins to describe SOCIETY’s ambitious assault on the human body. In a recent interview, the philipino-american director giggles perversely, "I think my friends were a little embarrassed for me (when they saw SOCIETY)," and this sound bite reminded me that the last, most important ingredient that Yuzna contributes to any project is unabashed joy. It's a little hard to imagine stomaching SOCIETY without it.

In this unusual scene from the class struggle in Beverly Hills, Billy Warlock (son of HALLOWEEN 2's Michael Myers, Dick Warlock) plays Bill Whitney, a rich, handsome, athletic high school student with a heavy duty anxiety disorder. Although he appears to have it all, he is plagued by nightmares and hallucinations, reflecting suspicions that the family that spoils him is also out to get him. Perhaps this is all understandable, though. Bill is under a lot of pressure these days, with his parents devoting all of their attention to his sister's coming out party, and his narcissistic girlfriend pushing him to ingratiate himself to the assholes higher up the social ladder; it's enough to make any teenager feel alienated and insecure. But, do these garden variety anxieties account for his visions of his sister's body deforming itself unnaturally, or the dubious evidence he finds that her debutante ball involves incestuous orgies and human sacrifice? Is Bill simply crumbling under the strain of societal expectations, or is the friction with his shrink, his parents, and his peers all symptomatic of an elaborate plot against him by elites who are truly less than human?

I can’t believe they use this cheapo blanket trick MORE THAN ONCE in a movie that is famous for its unforgettable special effects, and I guess I kind of love it.

In case I haven't made the answer abundantly obvious, I'll add that while SOCIETY is the purest expression of Yuzna-ness on the market, it has an important co-author in Screaming Mad George. The eccentric japanese FX master, whose name is apparently an amalgamation of Mad Magazine, Screamin' Jay Hawkins, and...George, has produced some of horror's most outrageous makeup and visual effects, mostly for Yuzna, many of them in SOCIETY. If you've seen even a trailer for Alex Winter's 1993 oddity FREAKED--which is itself a grossout criticism of American social standards--then you are already familiar with SMG's trademark style. He specializes in twisted perversions of the human form that would make a cenobite blush, driven by a penchant for puns, and influenced equally by THE THING's Rob Botin, and Big Daddy Roth’s Rat Fink style. Screaming Mad George is instrumental in articulating Yuzna's premise: that behind the shimmering veneer of success and sophistication, the upper class are just a bunch of degenerates, who literally degenerate into something unimaginable behind closed doors. It's impossible to imagine SOCIETY without his sinuous, slithering monstrosities, or his indescribable realization of their most important social event, "the shunt".

One of many great images from a zine I wish I owned, on SMG’s Facebook page.

It's easy to get overwhelmed by SOCIETY's visual impact, but its message is just as potent now as it was at the end of the Reagan era: Rich people are not only different from the rest of us, but in fact, they aren't even human. Writers Keith and Fry make an interesting choice of hero to help put this across. A lazier writer would have selected any archetype from the Freaks and Geeks set to create an easy Us vs Them tension, but SOCIETY is led by a promising young man who, for reasons he himself does not yet understand, is just not "the right kind of people". Bill appears to have every advantage in life, including a level of popularity that wins him presidency of the debate team despite his nerdier rival’s superior prowess--and yet, he suffers from a stigmatizing psychiatric disorder that is the natural result of feeling indefinably different from one's peers, and intuiting that, as a consequence, they don't even really like you. The shallow jock with deep-seated emotional problems is a much more interesting protagonist for this kind of social allegory than the charismatic outcasts that you get in movies like THE FACULTY and DISTURBING BEHAVIOR, for whom the idea that the elites could be aliens is just de rigueur.

It's worth noting that this complexity of character extends to Bill's love interest, sympathetic society girl Clarissa Carlyn (Playboy Playmate Devin DeVasquez). At first, she seems villainously eager to introduce Bill to the many splendors of "the shunting", but as the plot against him mounts to its horrifying conclusion, she defects. There appears to be a reason for this, although honestly, this is the most difficult part of SOCIETY for me to wrap my head around. Clarissa lives as an essentially independent adult, only burdened by her mother (Pamela Matheson), a possibly brain damaged hulk who lurks in and out of various scenes just to be disturbing, always announced by some toots on a tuba, before eventually siding with our heroes. I'm really not sure what's supposed to be going on in this part of the movie, except that this character contributes to a number of distasteful jokes. But, I hold on to the idea that by virtue of whatever disorder Mrs. Carlyn suffers from, she serves the purpose of priming Clarissa to rebel, since her very existence makes her daughter something of a societal outcast herself. That's the best I can do.

In any case, everyone working on SOCIETY commits completely, with Mrs. Carlyn being no exception. The movie's climactic orgy of the damned is an all hands on deck operation, just as reliant on Screaming Mad George's artistic abilities as it is on the actors' responsibility to make you believe that this fucked up shit is really happening. There's a visceral patina of sleaze spread over the entire film, dripping from the way that characters talk to and touch each other, flirting and flaunting their bodies in a distinctly unseemly fashion, even when it stays within the realm of mundane reality. This constant sinister, insinuating attitude on the part of the whole cast lays the foundation for what is to come, and while I appreciate everybody's hard work, my favorite performance is from an actor who only comes in at the very end: David Wiley as society king Judge Carter. Wiley's career consisted almost exclusively of the most ordinary sort of television work, which makes his outrageous turn in this alien porno flick all the more respectable. While other characters transition from suspicious pod people to full-on mutated perverts, Judge Carter has to show up just for the finale, establish his authority, rip off his clothes, and plunge straight into a sea of slime, happily fisting his way through the cast. Wiley meets this challenge with aplomb, making of himself a hybrid of Robert Englund and Gene Hackman, perfectly embodying the movie's joyful absurdity, and never betraying the slightest hint of embarrassment. 

SOCIETY is very much a don't-look-down type of endeavor, a fairy that could expire at the slightest lapse in faith. There's a visual pun in the last act that's so gross, so offensive, so frankly idiotic, that I don't have the courage to describe it; my whole body tenses up when I know this scene is coming, as if it were the meat hook scene in TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE or the brutal rape in the middle of SHOWGIRLS. I don't like it, but at the same time, I respect Yuzna's unhesitating commitment to show it to me, and I think that actor Charles Lucia should get some kind of award for shouldering the burden so valiantly. SOCIETY is a daring movie in the truest sense, a film with more balls than brains, and in this it exposes the limitation of intelligence and taste, and the real need for pure transgression, in producing art of any real value. You might argue with me about whether Yuzna's masturbatory magnum opus really qualifies as art, but to respond to that, I'll quote the great transgressor Alejandro Jodorowsky: "If you are great, EL TOPO is a great picture. If you are limited, EL TOPO is limited." So stick that in your shunt and smoke it.

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PS Here, have this stuck in your head for the rest of your life.

[365days365movies]

April 4, 2021: The Great Dictator (Review)

It's a 100%. Haven't given one of those in a while!

Here's the thing: this is a great film. Hang the comedy bit, even though it's also a very funny film! This is a great movie, no questions. I actually have no problems with it, and barely any actual commentary, gonna be honest. Fact of the matter is, it's essentially perfect in my book. Maybe it's not actually flawless...but I'm having a lot of trouble seeing any flaws. If you've got any, PLEASE tell me! I'm curious, really.

But OK, why am I even writing this, then? Because I want to close out this Golden Era of Comedy with a post about the end of its biggest star, Charlie Chaplin. Because from here...things are all downhill. And the seeds of that journey can be seen in this film. So, in other words, this post is a film history post. WELCOME TO SCHOOL

Yeah, sorry. If you like these history posts, I hope you like this one! And if not...yeah, that's entirely fair. Go ahead and skip this one! The next movie is Arsenic and Old Lace, so I'll save you the trouble of scrolling down! See you next time!

...

...OK, you still here? Cool, let's do this. Go ahead and "keep reading" for more on Chaplin after this film!

Review: Charlie Chaplin

Chaplin's walking on air, at least in terms of his film career! The Great Dictator will become his best-received film critically, and was a smash-hit in the United States. But that's pretty heavily contrasted with the reception of, well, Chaplin himself. Because unfortunately for him, Chaplin's ideologies would soon VIOLENTLY clash with that of his adopted country of the United States.

First things first, his love life was a mess, as was typical for the film star. His latest significant other was actress Joan Barry, and they separated bitterly (AKA, the only was Chaplin separates from anybody), after having a child together. This relationship would begin the downfall of Chaplin's image, starting in 1942. And that would be due to one of the most irritating, shitty dudes in the history of the FBI: J. Edgar Hoover.

Hoover HATED Chaplin, mostly because he was suspicious of him, as he was with EVERYBODY. Fuck Hoover, by the way, dude was a monster. He was also an INSANE patriot, bordering on straight up nationalism. But his hatred of Chaplin revolved around the fact that Chaplin's views were...controversial. I mean, Modern Times was an anti-industrialist film, and that's what the USA was ALL ABOUT at the time. And then, there's...one more thing. I'll get there.

Hoover launched a smear campaign against Charlie, and the Barry case was saddled with an additional allegation: violation of the Mann Act, which stated that it was illegal to transport women across state lines for sexual reasons. It was an attempt to stifle prostitution, and part of a massive moral panic of the time period. It was a bullshit charge, and Chaplin escaped it in trial. But damage had been done to his reputation, and Charlie was about to make it worse.

Shortly after, in 1943, Chaplin would meet his last wife, Oona O'Neill. She was 18, he was 54. Fuckin' OOF, dude. And in 19 years, the two would have EIGHT CHILDREN JESUS FUCKING CHRIST CHAPLIN!!!

Anyway, other than this positive development, the Barry trial had beaten the shit out of him, will-wise. But he began developing a new ambitious film project in 1946, which was called Monsieur Verdoux. This was a black comedy about a bank clerk/serial killer that killed women for money. Which is obviously pretty controversial in a moral panic-stricken America, but that was made worse by Chaplin more overtly expressing his political views...which were violently anti-capitalism! In post-World War II America!

Uh-oh.

In 1947, with the release of Monsieur Verdoux, the film was legit booed at the premiere in the USA. Fuck. Tensions finally came to a head, and Chaplin was "outed" as a filthy, filthy commie! And I put "outed" in quotes because, well...he wasn't. Sure, Chaplin was against capitalism and military nationalism, as well as sympathizing with communist ideals in some cases. He was also friends with suspected communists, and with Soviet diplomats. And that shit's barely OK NOW amongst a pretty big proportion of people in the country. In 1947? WAY FUCKIN' WORSE.

Chaplin was "dangerous and amoral" according to the FBI, and he probably believed in equal rights for minorities too, the FILTHY FUCKIN' COMMIE!!! But, yeah, he was targeted by Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee, and was nearly listed as one of the Hollywood Ten, a group of filmmakers blacklisted from Hollywood for alleged communist activities. Chaplin escaped that, but was still a major target for the Red Scare.

Chaplin, not giving a fuck as always, now decided upon a new project. Limelight was a semi-autobiographical film, in which he played an aging former vaudeville actor who had lost his popularity and fame, and falls in love with a younger woman. On the nose as always, Chaplin. Also, that's Buster Keaton in the GIF up there! Only time the two ever appeared on screen. Neat, huh?

Chaplin went home to the UK for the film's well-publicized premiere in 1952. And that's when the US Attorney General STRUCK, revoking Chaplin's VISA, and trapping him overseas permanently. Chaplin was banned from the United States, through really shitty underhanded tactics. Fuck, man. Worst part is, it's since been proven that there was no good justification for the VISA to be revoked. But the damage was done, and Chaplin willingly cut his ties with the United States, having been spurned by his adopted country for years.

Loved in Europe and hated in America, Charlie continued making films, with his next film being another semi-autobiographical parody called A King in New York. He also came out not as a communist, but as a straight-up anarchist! He hated government altogether at this point, and it's hard to blame the guy. He really did get screwed. But, ironically, his love life was now quite stable, and his marriage with Oona was happy, by all accounts.

His films were banned in the United States, and Chaplin banned them right back, not releasing his films there, and preventing American journalists from attending its premiere. But even ten years later, Chaplin's filmography began to re-emerge for movie audiences, and his popularity began to rebound. The man was just that good, what can I say? Chaplin made a romantic comedy in 1967, called A Countess from Hong Kong, and starring Marlon Brando of all people! It was his first color film, and...it did NOT go well with audiences, ANYWHERE. It just wasn't well-received, and that film would be Chaplin's last.

In 1967, Chaplin had his first stroke of many. He continued his marriage with Oona, and even continued making another film called The Freak, an ambitious project from what's known about it. Basically, it was about a South American girl with wings, which is interesting. In 1972, after 20 years away, Chaplin was welcomed back to the United States with open arms, and was given an Honorary Academy Award for his insane contribution to the medium since the Golden Age of Hollywood. He was given a 12-minute standing ovation, the longest ever given at an Academy Award ceremony.

Still planning on making his film, he returned home. But the film went on a permanent hiatus by 1977, by which time his health had badly declined. On Christmas Day, 1977, Chaplin was found dead, having suffered a stroke in his sleep. He was 88 years of age, and was buried two days later in Switzerland. And THEN...he was dug up.

Yeah, DUDE'S GRAVE WAS FUCKIN' ROBBED! A couple of guys held Chaplin's corpse for ransom, which didn't work out for them, and he was reburied a few days later, this time in a reinforced concrete vault, where his remains remain to this day.

Charles Spencer Chaplin is one of the greatest actors and filmmakers of his time, and didn't deserve the guff he got from the government. The guff he got from his wives...eh, that he probably did deserve, not gonna lie. Dude wasn't the best husband, or the best dad to at least three of his kids. But in an ongoing effort to separate the art from the artist, Chaplin needs to be appreciated for the mountain of talent that he was, and his films will make him immortal in the annals of film history. Long live the Tramp.

But with him and his influence, the film industry had a place to evolve from, especially in terms of comedy. After The Great Dictator, some comedies felt the freedom to take a bit of a darker tone. And from here on out, we're splitting the timeline by genre, tracking comedy films by the evolution of their respective genres. And we start in 1944, with a film about...MYURDERRRR!!! And sweet old ladies!

April 5, 2021: Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), dir. Frank Capra

[weekendwarriorblog]

The Weekend Warrior 10/8/21 - NO TIME TO DIE, THE RESCUE, MASS, LAMB, NIGHTSTREAM, and More

It's a very special week here at the Weekend Warrior because October 10 will be my 20th (!!) anniversary as a film critic and the 20th anniversary of me doing a weekly movie preview column, mostly about box office but also with reviews and other stuff. Pretty cool, huh? (I’m celebrating this occasion by writing this column to the music of Public Enemy’s Apocalypse 91 which is 30 years old this month.)

Of course, this column wasn't called The Weekend Warrior in the early days, as I was instead doing "Half-Assed Analysis” at a long-gone Hollywood Stock Exchange fan site called HSJ.org. But then, it was a conversation with Mirko P. from ComingSoon.net (R.I.P.) that got me on the track of changing the name to "The Weekend Warrior" even though it would be a year before I would actually bring it to ComingSoon for 12 ½ wonderful years. The column has gone through a number of transformations and evolutions and iterations over the years, sometimes it being called something different just 'cause I didn't want to go through the ordeal of explaining to one of my bosses at a website that "The Weekend Warrior” is my own, and if I leave, it goes with me.

Anyway, I have taken a few weeks off over the years, particularly earlier this year when it just didn't seem a good time to be trying to predict box office, and I was starting to get burnt out on reviews. Now, the column is kind of back to being mostly about box office but with a few reviews, which is how I've always intended it.

Who knows if I'm going to continue this on that much longer, because honestly, there's no money and very little reward, and it does take a lot of time to write this up each week, especially with all the work I have to do for Below the Line. Anyway, for now, I'm going to keep it going, and we'll see how it goes. But Happy 20th Anniversary to me, and I can promise you… there won't be 20 more. NO FUCKING WAY.

Before we get to this week’s theatrical releases, I feel the need to mention the first of a bunch of October horror film festivals, as NIGHTSTREAM will begin on Thursday and run through Oct. 13. This is an amazing streaming horror/genre film festival that was instituted last year by four festivals, the Boston Underground Film Festival, the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival, the North Bend Film Festival, and the Overlook Film Festival when all four were cancelled due to COVID. Some of these are still happening this year as physical in-person festivals but Nighstream continues on. Some of the guests at this year’s Nightstream are The Green Knight director David Lowery; Akela Cooper, who wrote the recent James Wan horror film, Malignant; horror and special make-up FX legend Greg Nicotero, who is also the showrunner on the Creepshow anthology series, and more.

There are so many movies and events going on in the week of Nightstream but some of the highlights include the World Premiere of Jefferson Moneo’s Cosmic Dawn, Scott Friend’s feature debut, To the Moon, and the Virtual Premiere of Scott Barber’s doc, This is Gwar, as well as much more.

You can see the full list of movies here and learn how to get a pass at the official site.

Let’s get to some other movies hitting theaters...

Obviously, the big release of the weekend and maybe the month is the 25th James Bond movie, NO TIME TO DIE (MGM), once again starring Daniel Craig in his final outing as 007, his fifth movie in a run that started with Casino Royale in 2006 and 15 years later, it’s coming to an end.

Obviously, this being Craig’s last stint as Bond is a big draw for the movie, but there are other interesting things to note First, it’s directed by True Detective’s Emmy-winning director Cary Joji Fukunaga, who is making his biggest budget movie to date, having started with smaller films like Sin Nombre and Jane Eyre, and then getting more attention for his festival favorite, Beast of No Nations, starring Idris Elba, who for a while, people seemed to want to play the NEXT Bond.

Much of Bond’s colleagues and friends from past movies are back including Naomi Harris as Moneypenny, Ralph Fiennes as M, Ben Whishaw as Q, but it also brings back Jeffrey Wright, who was introduced as Felix Leitner in Craig’s first film, Casino Royale, and also a few people from the last Bond movie, Spectre, which wasn’t received as well as the previous one, Skyfall. (More on those things in a bit.) Christoph Waltz played Blofeld in Spectre (for better or worse), and he’s back, as is Léa Seydoux, who played Bond's love interest, and actually she continues said role but brings more to the plot.

The new cast is pretty significant, starting with Oscar winner Rami Malek (Bohemian Rhapsody) as the new arch-villain, Safin, and actually, there’s also a new 007 in Lashana Lynch, who replaced Bond after he retired from MI6. There’s another “Bond Girl” (if you don’t mind the outdated trope) in Ana de Armas, who previously starred with Craig in Rian Johnson’s Knives Out, which feels like it was made 500 years ago but actually has a sequel shooting as we speak. In fact, Armas seems to be getting the best notices from everyone who writes about the movie, even though her section probably isn’t more than 15 minutes long.

I’m not going to say more about the plot. You either don’t need to know it in advance cause you’re seeing it anyway or you don’t WANT to know anything, and good for MGM for being able to keep the plot and lots of stuff secret despite the movie being delayed for 18 months due to COVID.

That’s right. No Time to Die was probably one of the first movies delayed due to COVID, and it definitely wasn’t the last, but MGM (and EON Productions) really stuck to their guns, and didn’t allow a streamer to come forward with millions and millions of dollars to put James Bond on streaming. (Granted, Amazon did come forward and ended up buying MGM outright earlier this year, and we’ve yet to see how and when that will come to fruition. As far as I know, Amazon has nothing to do with MGM’s 2021 releases, of which there are a few still to come.)

Actually, the fact that MGM is releasing this one on its own is an interesting point in itself, because it’s been almost 20 years since the studio has done that with Pierce Brosnan’s last Bond film, Die Another Day. In the time since then, MGM has been co-distributing its films with other studios until fairly recently -- the last four Bond movies were released by Sony Pictures. I’m not gonna throw shade at MGM, because they’ve been doing a fantastic job with No Time To Die, essentially marketing the movie once back in early 2020 and then again for its final release spot this Friday. In between, the movie has moved a number of times as COVID just kept ambushing its planned release date. Any weaker studio (like, say Sony) would have just sold the movie off (as Sony has done many times over the past 18 months until finally having a theatrical hit with Venom). Interesting how that works out, huh? MGM took over Bond, and now it’s releasing the new Bond a week after Sony’s biggest 2021 hit, essentially killing its chances at having a decent second weekend.

Others are seeing how well Venom did and are assuming that the box office is back, and that Bond can do even BIGGER numbers, but you need to take a few things into account, including something called REALITY. And it comes from the wonderful box office archive site, The-Numbers.com, which I have been using for those 20 years mentioned above.

Up until Daniel Craig took over the role, the biggest opening for a Bond movie (not accounting for inflation) was Brosnan’s Die Another Day with $47 million. Casino Royale opened with just $40 million in 2006, but it proved to have significant holiday legs as more people discovered it and decided that the new direction of tougher and grittier and more violent action was for them. It made $167 million domestically and $594 million globally. A few years later, Quantum of Solace had a much bigger opening of $67.5 million but made almost the exact same amount domestically -- the reason? People didn’t like it as much as Casino Royale, so it was more frontloaded.

Oscar-winning filmmaker Sam Mendes took over the 50th anniversary Bond movie, Skyfall, four years later, and that was generally as well received as Casino Royale, so that it set a new opening record for the franchise with $88.3 million and OVER A BILLION worldwide. Woo! Three years later, Spectre was going to introduce two classic Bond villains, Blofeld and Jaws (played by David Bautista) but it once again wasn't received that well, and it opened lower with $70 million and “only” made $200 million domestically vs. the $300 million of Skyfall. It still made over $879 million globally, but a final movie for Craig was always going to happen.

Now I’m going to talk about why I don’t think No Time to Die is going to break the opening record set by Skyfall, and believe it or not, it's not because of COVID. This is the thing. Bond clearly peaked with Skyfall and then it dropped down with Spectre, and that movie wasn't that well-received either by critics or fans with 63% from the former on Rotten Tomatoes and 61% from audiences. That is basically Quantum of Solace numbers and down from Skyfall's 92% and 86%. You take that disappointment and then you add six years, which is how long it's been between Bond movies, and you have a lot fewer people interested in shelling out money to see another Daniel Craig movie. There's no way around the fact that people are just burnt out on Craig and maybe Bond himself, and it really would take a huge wave of positive reviews to get them back.

Also, and unlike Venom, Bond is about as white as you can get in terms of a fanbase. I'm sure there's some African-Americans and LatinX movie fans who enjoy the action and stuff, but do you think you would see the entire James Bond collection in their Bluray libraries? I'm sure there are some, but they may be outliers, because Bond is the kind of Baby Boomer anti-woke un-PC franchise that the Millennials have been warning you about for years. It also doesn't have as big a female fanbase as other franchises (like Marvel) so that's another audience that might not rush out to see the movie. Sure, some changes have been made, including additions like Lashana Lynch or as she's better known, "WHO?!?!?", and de Armas, as well, but it's still the same old James Bond. Fukunaga just didn't try hard enough to make the necessary changes, or maybe he wasn't allowed to, because EON's Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. WIlson still hold very tight reins on the Bond films. Whatever has been done may not just be enough and who knows how many will want to see No Time to Die just to give Craig a glorious send-off? There's also the matter of No Time to Die being almost an hour longer than Venom -- longer run time, less screenings, less money per screen. It's simple math.

I already reviewed the movie for Below the Line -- I liked it but had some issues -- and it’s sitting pretty at 83% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, which is a good sign for getting the interest of fans to return to theaters for a movie that won’t be available on streaming on VOD for quite some time, I’d imagine.

I’m feeling generally bullish (or is it bearish?) on No Time To Die, especially with how much better Venom: Let There Be Carnage did last weekend compared to my prediction (OUCH!) but I’m also keeping track of that REALITY I mentioned before. Not just COVID on this one, but also opening the movie earlier overseas where the movie can be easily bootlegged and put on piracy sites for people who just don’t want to chance it at movie theaters yet. (I’m going to be writing more about this soon, but I have seen probably 100 movies or more in theaters since they reopened in NYC, and I get tested regularly. I have not tested positive for COVID once.)

The movie has done very well overseas, scoring $121.3 million in its first weekend, but I still don’t think it will open over $80 million in North America. But I do think it will be close, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it opens somewhere between $75 and 80 million.

Without knowing if any of the movies below might be going wider (but highly doubting it), here’s what the weekend Top 10 might look like. Actually, let’s make that the top 8 cause last week’s #9 and 10 were so odd and I have no idea if anything is expanding wider, as I write this:

1. No Time to Die (MGM) - $76.5 million N/A

2. Venom: Let There Be Carnage (Sony) - $31.5 million -65%

3. The Addams Family II (MGM/UA Releasing) - $9.3 million -45%

4. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (Marvel/Disney) - $ 3.5 million -43%

5. The Many Saints of Newark (New Line/WB) - $2.1 million -55%

6. Free Guy (20th Century/Disney) - $1.3 million -45%

7. Dear Evan Hansen (Universal) - $1.1 million -57%

8. Candyman (Universal) - $700,000 -47%

I think there are just way too many great movies to pick just one "Chosen One,” but since I probably should decide, I'm going with Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi's new documentary THE RESCUE (National Geographic). You may remember Jimmy and Chai from when they won the Oscar for Free Solo, and their latest is just as good. The rescue in the title refers to the 2018 rescue of an 11-kid Thai soccer team called the Wild Boars and their coach when they became trapped in the Tham Luang caves in Northern Thailand, as the annual monsoon season hits early, flooding the caves in which they’re exploring.

To fully understand how they got trapped, you have to have some idea of the structure of this underground cave system, and this film does a great job explaining how the monsoons create flooding in the caves and how much harder it is to get someone out of them when the rain just won’t stop. Two British cave divers, John Volanthen and Richard Standton, are called in to survey the situation and figure out if there’s a way to get the dozen trapped out alive, as time keeps passing until it seems like those kids are trapped without food longer than any human can survive. Seemingly, thousands of locals and foreigners come to the caves in hopes of helping, whether it’s trying to pump out water or dig new tunnels to try to find where the kids are trapped (which is a difficult task in itself).

There’s a good chance you were watching the news and you know the results of this elaborate and daring cave diving rescue, but you definitely don’t know how the plan was developed and pulled off until you actually watch it as it’s taking place. The underwater and cavern footage of the kids and their saviors is absolutely second to none, and it’s hard not to get emotional in the way Chin and Vasarhleyi assemble the footage with the music.

The Rescue is an amazing movie, maybe as good as the duo’s previous one, Free Solo, and it may be the best recapturing/documentation of an important news event that I’ve seen in recent memory.

I was seriously close to having multiple "Chosen Ones” this week, because there are a few other very good movies, including Fran Kranz’s directorial debut MASS (Bleecker Street), which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, and deservedly received mass praise and stellar reviews. I don't want to say too much about the movie, because its emotional power may lay in not knowing too much about it in advance. The simplest plot is that it involves two couples meeting in the room of a church to have an important face-to-face about a difficult subject, one that needs resolution and absolution from both parties. If you like great writing and amazing performances, than the work of Reed Birney and Anne Dowd (as one couple) and Jason Isaacs and Martha Plympton (as the other) will make this movie a can't miss.

Again, without getting too deep into what the couples discuss, Mass is written and directed similar to one might do a 90-minue one-act play, but it begins with us seeing the people who work at the church trying to set up the room where this eventful tete a tete will take place. It’s surprisingly witty and even elicits a few laughs from Breeda Wool, who is so nervous and awkward about the meeting that’s about to happen.

When the two couples arrives, that’s where we really get into it, but it still starts out slow, a re-aquaintance phase between the two couples, who clearly have a difficult past, try to get through the niceties before getting into the serious conversation at hand. And here is where I’m gonna put a HUGE SPOILER IN HERE FOR THE NEXT PARAGRAPH.

As with so many movies, Mass deals with gun violence and the survivors of the types of school shootings we’ve seen far too many times in the last two decades. Isaacs and Plympton’s son was killed by the other couple’s son, who turned the gun on himself. It creates this dynamic where both couples have lost a son they loved, but Dowd and Birney are put in a spot where they have to try to explain their son’s behavior and if they saw that he was capable of such violence before the shooting took place.

The actors are all terrific, and while you might think a dialogue-heavy movie with four actors sitting at a table might not do much for you… well, first of all, you can go see No Time to Die if that’s more your speed … but Kranz’s direction is more than just getting these emotional performances out of his actors but also capturing it on film and editing it to best effect. There’s even an imperfection to the camera work, sometimes focusing on one actor while another is talking, that makes this long conversation feel even more authentic, as if you’re a fly on the wall in that room.

Again, the writing and performances and direction of Mass makes it one of the most powerful dramatic works this year. I’d love to see any of the four main actors get awards attention, but especially Dowd and Isaacs, who have been so deserving of awards love for a very, very long time.

Icelandic filmmaker Valdimar Jóhansson's LAMB (A24) is a very different movie, this one starring Noomi Rapace and Hilmir Snær Guðnason as Maria and Ingvar, a couple living on a sheep farm (or rather, a lamb farm -- I honestly don't know the difference) who make an incredible discovery when a lamb gives birth to a child they decide to raise as their own. Invar's brother Pétur is not only not impressed but he thinks they’ve gone crazy, but there’s a lot of far more nefarious things going on in and around their remote and isolated farm.

This is a really fascinating film, one that’s fairly subdued but Johansson and his cinematographer (Eli Arenson) beautifully capture the vast landscapes of Iceland and gives us a real idea of how remote and isolated the farm where it mostly takes place is. He also does a great job building on the mystery of this child and the tension that surrounds where it came from, and yet, I’m not sure I’d consider Lamb to be horror, even if A24 is maybe marketing it in that direction. Really, it’s more magical fantasy mixed with character drama, and Rapace is just great as always, really impressing me with her skills delivering baby animals and driving a tractor.

If you dig a bit deeper, you’ll discover that Jóhansson wrote the screenplay with one “Sjón,” an author who has contributed to Lars von Trier's Dancer in the Dark (one of my favorite musical movies) and also wrote The Northman, Robert Eggers next movie.

This is a terrific debut by Jóhansson -- I have an interview with the director over at Below the Line, too -- and it will be highly interesting to see where he goes from here.

I was hoping to watch and review SOUTH OF HEAVEN (RLJEfilms), the new movie from Aharon Keshales, the co-director of the fantastic Israeli thriller, Big Bad Wolves, which stars Jason Sudeikis, Evangeline Lilly, Mike Colter, and Shea Whigham, but I fell foul of a lousy screener and just didn't have tie to watch it before writing this week's column. Sudeikis plays Jimmy, a convict who has served 12 years for armed robbery who gets early parole, and he swears to give his childhood love Annie (Lilly), who is dying from cancer, the best final year of her life.

I also didn't get a chance to watch Russian filmmaker Evgeny Ruman's comedy GOLDEN VOICES (Music Box Films), which opens in New York and L.A. this weekend. It stars Maria Belkin and Vladimir Friedman as Raya and Victor, the Soviet Union’s popular film dubbers who have been translating film classics into Russian for decades. When the country collapses in 1990, the Jewish couple decides to move to Israel in hopes of finding employment. When she answers a help wanted ad looking for “pleasant voices,” she ends up working as a phone sex operator catering to the Russian community in Israel while he falls in with black market film pirates.

I also just haven't gotten around to JUSTIN BIEBER: OUR WORLD (Amazon), directed by Michael D. Ratner, which seems like the fourth or fifth documentary about the global superstar, this one that goes into the making of his 2020 New Year's Eve concert after a three-year hiatus atop the Beverly Hills Hilton for 240 invited guests and millions via livestream. It will stream on Amazon Prime Video this Friday.

A couple horror movies streaming this week are THERE’S SOMEONE INSIDE YOUR HOUSE (Netflix), the new movie from Patrick Brice (Creep), which hits Netflix and involves a masked assailant targetting a high school graduating class to expose the darkest secret of each victim, forcing a group of misfits to band together to stop the killings.

Shudder gets V/H/S 94 (Shudder), the latest anthology horror movie made up of five installments, directed by Simon Barrett, Chloe Okuno, Ryan Prows, Jennifer Reeder, and Timo Tjahjanto. I haven't watched it yet but that's quite a rogue's gallery of horror/genre filmmakers there.

Streaming on Amazon Prime Video are the next two installments of this year's batch of Welcome to the Blumhouse movies, Axelle Carolyn's The Manor, an eerie tale set in a retirement home and starring the legendary Barbara Hershey, and Ryan Zarazoga’s Madres about a young Mexican-American couple having their first child in ‘70s California where he’s sent to work on a farm where the wife finds a talisman and a box with belongings of the former resident. Both of them debut on Amazon Prime Video this Friday, too. Also, you can read my interview with Ms. Carolyn over at Below the Line.

Other movies that just didn't fit into my schedule this week include:

ASCENSION (MTV Documentary Films) VENGEANCE IS MINE (Vertical) PHARMA BRO (1091) KNOCKING (Yellow Veil Pictures)

Next week’s wide release is David Gordon Green’s horror sequel, HALLOWEEN KILLS!