On this episode, in collaboration with our Best Movies of the Decade conversation we had on Episode 641, we thought it would be fun to discuss all the changes to our Top 10 lists for the first half of the decade! While we loved our Top 10 lists at the time we originally conceived, they of course evolve over time, with some films rising the ranks and others dropping spots. Either way, it was quite enjoyable to talk about all the differences.
Dave Giannini: Izidor’s story is heartbreaking and, of course, not one that has been shown, especially to American audiences. How did you first become aware of it?
David Kabbe: A mutual friend introduced me to Izidor Ruckel and Sarah Padbury in the summer of 2015. We met for coffee on Main Street in Santa Monica and ended up talking for hours. I was immediately drawn into Izidor’s story—there was a quiet gravity to it. I went home and read his biography, dug through every article and interview I could find, and started studying the political history of Romania, especially the treatment of orphaned children under Ceaușescu.
But what haunted me most was one specific moment: the day a nanny took Izidor outside for the very first time. That image wouldn’t leave me. Over time, my connection to the story deepened. It grew from fascination to responsibility. Eventually, it wasn’t just a story I admired—it was one I felt compelled to tell. Telling stories like this is what I’m made for.
DG: Can you speak about how disability is treated in your film? It seems that this is a problem, regarding representation, in many cultures.
DK: This isn’t a documentary—we set out to create a narrative film that uses both animation and live action to build a visual and emotional world, one that draws the audience into Izidor’s experience. The reality of those institutions is beyond most people’s comprehension. If we showed the full truth—the neglect, the cruelty—viewers would likely shut down, feel only horror. We had to temper it just enough to allow people to feel without recoiling.
But make no mistake, this was the reality for children with disabilities in communist Romania. Many societies, including the U.S., still have work to do. Izidor continues to face discrimination, as do so many others around the world. If this film does anything, I hope it stirs compassion and a sense of urgency to give people with disabilities the dignity and opportunity they deserve.
DG: What is the significance of food in your film?
DK: Food in this film isn’t just sustenance; it’s symbolism. In the institution, kids were fed “bean mush” or watery bread soup. That was it. And what makes it worse is the fact that the region is actually rich in agriculture. Everything grows there. Locals ate relatively well during communism. The fact that the children were malnourished wasn’t due to scarcity. It was due to neglect. There were crab apple trees on the hospital grounds, and yet they were still hungry.
But there’s another layer to this. Izidor remembers the first time he sat down for a meal with a family. That image stayed with him. It was about more than food. It was about belonging, about love. In Romanian culture, family is everything, and food is how that love is expressed. For a child who had known none of that, it must’ve felt like stepping onto another planet. That moment—that meal—is the emotional core of the story.
DG: I would like to ask you about the decision of animation vs filmed actors? In many cases, animation is used for vibrancy and excitement. In your film, it is the opposite. What went into that decision
DK: Honestly, it started out of necessity. You can’t film a live-action scene with 300 starving, naked, deformed children and do it responsibly. So we started exploring animation early. But what we found was that it offered more than a practical solution—it helped us dive into the emotional and symbolic world of Izidor’s memory.
The film is, in many ways, unfolding inside his mind. Animation lets us explore that interior world. It let us depict a reality that’s emotionally honest without being exploitative. We filmed the animated scenes in live action with stand-ins, just to get the pacing and feel right. Then we translated that into animation. It gave us a control over tone that we couldn’t have had otherwise.
And yeah, traditionally, the animated world is the escape—the magic. Here, we flipped that. In Izidor, the real world is bright, beautiful, and alive. The animated world is the cage. That inversion helped drive home what this boy was missing all along.
I love hearing from audiences how they react to the animation. And there are also other little Easter eggs to discover in the film!
DG: As I was watching the film, I noticed that I was swept up in Izidor’s perspective. So much so, that when he was returned to the orphanage, it felt cruel. What did you feel, from a character perspective? Is this cruelty or kindness?
DK: I wanted the audience to sit with that question—is it cruelty or kindness? I know the full story, but this film doesn’t give you everything. That’s intentional. As a storyteller, I tried to leave space for your own response.
There’s a case for seeing the nanny’s actions as cruel. Offering comfort, then taking it away, can feel like betrayal. But there’s also quiet courage in giving someone one good day when you know you can’t give them a lifetime. Onișa’s the kind of person who believes small things matter—that one act of kindness can echo.
To Izidor, being sent back felt cruel. He had seen what life could be—and once you’ve tasted hope, going back is a kind of heartbreak. But over time, that feeling changed. He was no longer a blank slate. That glimpse of love and belonging, even if brief, lit a fire in him that never went out.
Bruno Bettelheim’s work influenced my thinking, especially The Uses of Enchantment. He argued that fairy tales help children face darkness symbolically—abandonment, death, fear—through stories. That’s what I tried to do here. Izidor wasn’t saved in the traditional sense. He was given a story worth holding onto. And maybe that’s what makes survival possible.
I could never end this film with “happily ever after.” But I could offer a different kind of hope: If Izidor can overcome his trauma, then maybe you can too. So go slay your dragons.
DG: Home is an obvious theme of Izidor. What does home mean to you? How is it different from Izidor’s perspective?
DK: For me, home has always been tied to people—not places. I had a loving family, and we moved around a lot, but I always felt rooted because I had that emotional anchor. To me, home means belonging. Safety. Identity.
For Izidor, it was the opposite. His earliest environment was one of abandonment and survival. He had to learn what home was, later in life. That one afternoon with Onișa gave him the first taste of it. It’s no wonder he held onto it.
The tagline of the film—”To belong is to be alive”—says it best. Belonging isn’t just a comfort. It’s a need.
DG: A strong emotional moment involves Izidor sharing food with a friend upon his return. What do you see as the role of sharing the feeling of food and home, even when being forced to leave?
DK: That moment is all about legacy. It shows that one act of kindness can ripple outward. Izidor had experienced something beautiful, something new—and instead of hoarding it, he shares it. He gives Cristina a taste of hope, of what life could be.
He didn’t use words. He used food. And in doing so, he modeled what Onișa had done for him. It’s a small moment, but I think it says everything about the human capacity to pass on kindness, even in the darkest places.
DG: Can you discuss the decision to include real (and disturbing footage) at the end of the film?
DK: That was a tough call. During the edit, we realized people might not grasp the true disparity and cruelty of the institutions. Without context, the film might seem too gentle. But if we opened with that footage, it would’ve felt manipulative—like we were trying to shock the audience into caring. What we really wanted was for the audience to walk beside Izidor and experience that day as he did.
So we held the real footage until the end. Just flashes. Just enough to suggest the depth of Izidor’s trauma and the courage it took to return. Those images aren’t fiction. They’re part of his story, the actual children he lived alongside in the institution. We wanted to honor that.
Izidor really did go back. It wasn’t easy. But by including those real glimpses, we hope people come away not just moved—but changed. Maybe they’ll want to be someone like Onișa. Or maybe, if they’re in the midst of their own battle, they’ll draw strength from Izidor’s resilience and courage.
The film was a true blessing to make, and I hope it becomes a blessing to those who find their way to it.
This week on the InSession Film Podcast, the great Adam Kempenaar from Filmspotting joined us to discuss our Top 5 movies of the decade so far! 2020 and 2021 were obviously impacted heavily by the COVID pandemic, forcing Hollywood to make massive changes, but despite those challenges it still rendered some really great films. The big studios might still be reeling in some ways, but the last few years have been extremely rich for cinema and it made for a really fun exercise talking about the best movies we’ve seen over the last five years. With that said, what would be your Top 5?
Here are the movies that made our list. Be sure to listen to the show as we discuss these films and why they made our list.
JD
1) Oppenheimer
2) Nickel Boys
3) Aftersun
4) All We Imagine As Light
5) The Worst Person in the World
6) Tár
7) The Zone of Interest
8) First Cow
9) Past Lives
10) The Brutalist
Brendan
1) Petite Maman
2) Licorice Pizza
3) Luca
4) Furiosa
5) Perfect Days
6) The Worst Person in the World
7) Nope
8) Oppenheimer
9) The Banshees of Inisherin
10) Dick Johnson is Dead
Adam
1) Aftersun
2) Petite Maman
3) The Brutalist
4) All of Us Strangers
5) Oppenheimer
6) The Worst Person in the World
7) All We Imagine As Light
8) First Cow
9) Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World
10) Lovers Rock
Hopefully you guys enjoyed our lists! If you agree or disagree with us, let us know in the comment section below. Clearly there are a lot of other contenders that battled for our lists that just missed the cut. That being said, what would be your Top 5? Leave a comment in the comment section or email us at [email protected].
On this episode, Brendan is joined by Ryan McQuade of AwardsWatch to discuss Mike Flanagan’s new film The Life of Chuck! Flanagan has a passionate relationship with Stephen King’s work, and while that’s admirable, the results have been mixed. The Life of Chuck obviously got a rousing reception out of TIFF last year, even winning The People’s Choice Award, but was that just festival hype? We discuss why that might be the case and more in this conversation.
Review: The Life of Chuck (4:00) Director: Mike Flanagan Writer: Mike Flanagan Stars: Tom Hiddleston, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Karen Gillan, Mia Sara
Synopsis: Disabled children are banished in 1988 communist Romania. But one daring nanny resolves to take 8-year-old Izidor outside for the very first time. She never could have imagined the consequences.
It is no secret that people with disabilities have been treated differently than those without. This has taken many forms in many cultures, and to varied extremes. Even something as simple as visibility and representation plays a large part in othering those with mobility issues. This is bad enough, but during some parts of history, the treatment was much worse. For example, in the mid-to-late 1980s in Romania, the communist regime essentially banished disabled children to orphanages. Talk about visibility, they were not allowed to be seen on the streets at all. This is a drastic decision, and one that seems deeply disturbed and barely real. But these histories must be faced, so we can learn from them across cultures.
David Kabbe’s Izidor tells the story of one of these children hidden away in Romania during this time. An opening scrawl tells us that in Romania, the law demanded that all couples have five children. If and when parents cannot provide for them, they are transferred to state-run institutions. But, if children have disabilities, they are housed in asylums. And more than that, they are not to be seen on the streets at all. This is where we meet the film’s titular character (Iosua Barbu), a young child housed in one of these asylums.
Visually, the film takes some chances stylistically. With the opening, the outside world is shown in lovely detail, giving a sense of beauty and freedom, with birds flying over lush, green trees. But, as the camera moves to the asylum, the oppression is palpable. And as the film transitions inside the building, the style changes from standard film to roughly performed animation. This decision is both odd and effective. Though most filmmakers use animation to detail freedom and vibrancy, Kabbe does the opposite to incredible effect. The animation is technically in color, but only just so. The quality gives us a sense of ugliness and a dour feeling that hangs over the scenes. Effectively, we wish for it to end or change, just like Izidor must in every possible moment.
And it does change, as a kindly nurse, Onisa (Sarah Padbury, also the screenwriter) at the asylum convinces the doctors to allow her to take Izidor for a day out. But, of course, she must be cautious as if he is seen on the streets, there will be trouble for everyone involved. Kabbe does a tremendous job of immediately making us feel this threat, just as the film begins to move back to live action film. This decision gives us a sense of reality that fools both us and the child into thinking that this is his new life. As the film is from his perspective, we are not allowed a lot of detail into what will happen later. Only this moment matters. And this moment is full of love, life, and happiness.
We are introduced to an entirely new world. A world with a kindly patriarch and adoring children. There is an extended scene with the father (Lucian Igna) telling the story of the “Bigmouth Frog” that is a perfect encapsulation of a cheesy Dad joke, but never loses its charm. The children laugh and Izidor joins in, for the first time being given both the feeling of home and a genuine family. This dinner scene, paired with Izidor’s discovery of fruit on the vine and fresh mushrooms creates a sense of wonder that feels almost like we can taste it with him.
Although some of the actors are clearly amateurs, this actually works for Izidor. The delivery of heavily accented English draws the audience in and helps us want to experience this and build the same trust that Izidor does. But Barbu, in his acting debut, gives a stunning performance. His move from frightened to trusting back to terrified must feel genuine. And he does not have much time (the entire film is less than a half hour) to accomplish this. But through small facial expressions and gestures, we see and feel it all. He provides first a meek personality, then a sense of awe at the world around him, and then near defeat when he is returned to the asylum after one perfect day.
These stories of abuse and maltreatment must be told, no matter how difficult they are to experience, even through the distance of film. Kabbe does honor to Izidor and the countless other children who were starved and hidden away from sight. Our disabled community deserves much better and this is a reminder of both how far we have come (so far) and what we must fight to avoid in the future.
Directors:Adrian Molina, Madeline Sharafian, Domee Shi Writers:Julia Cho, Mark Hammer, Mike Jones Stars: Yonas Kibreab, Zoe Saldaña, Remy Edgerly
Synopsis: Elio, a space fanatic with an active imagination, finds himself on a cosmic misadventure where he must form new bonds with alien lifeforms, navigate a crisis of intergalactic proportions and somehow discover who he is truly meant to be.
It has finally happened: Pixar has found its own The Emperor’s New Groove. No, Elio is not like that film—a 2000 animated comedy that Vulture’s Bilge Ebiri once described as “an irreverent, pratfall-heavy, non sequitur” in Disney’s otherwise fabled ‘90s filmography. Elio has no pratfalls to speak of, is occasionally irreverent—almost by accident—and is absolutely a non-sequitur in Pixar’s recent slate of films, which has hit a rough patch with titles like Elemental, Lightyear, and Onward. I’ll also go on record as one of the few critics who believe Inside Out 2 is one of the most overrated films of the decade.
Elio doesn’t follow Pixar’s usual narrative arc, failing to forge a coherent connection to the studio’s defining theme of exploring the human condition. Instead, the story leaps into a visually dazzling, kinetic sci-fi fantasy that feels exhaustingly hollow. Let’s look at the setup: Elio (Yonas Kibreab), an eleven-year-old boy who has just lost his parents, is taken in by his Aunt Olga (Zoe Saldaña), who gives up on her dreams of becoming an astronaut to care for him.
The script, by Julia Cho (Fringe), Mark Hammer (Shotgun Wedding), and Mike Jones (Luca), never meaningfully explores Elio’s loss or the trauma of abandonment. These themes should be the emotional glue binding Elio and Olga together, but they’re only briefly hinted at in the opening and closing scenes. The script wanders aimlessly when it comes to an emotional trajectory. Elio feels lost, so he looks to the stars for connection, hoping to bond with aliens so he doesn’t feel alone. You’d think the script might tie this into the memory of his parents—the sky as heaven, a metaphor for grief, a theme of terminal loneliness—but it’s barely touched.
Then, Olga intercepts a message from an alien civilization called the “Communiverse.” Through a mishap, Elio mistakenly identifies as Earth’s leader and is beamed into space to receive their message. Unfortunately, he’s tasked with negotiating a truce between his new alien friends and Lord Grigon (Brad Garrett), a worm-like warlord in a Tony Stark-style Iron Man suit. Grigon wants to destroy the Communiverse—and Elio—until our young hero meets Glordon, an adorable alien worm creature who, it turns out, is the villain’s son.
This is where the story should focus, but it takes far too long to arrive, and the third act sidelines Glordon, who barely interacts with Elio. Directors Madeline Sharafian (Coco), Domee Shi (Turning Red), and Adrian Molina (The Good Dinosaur) fail to meaningfully connect Elio’s coming-of-age arc with the necessary emotional realism that Pixar is known for. If they tried, they didn’t make that connection resonate with the audience. By the time the film navigates its own cosmic whimsy and absurdities, there is a touching and beautifully realized moment about fathers and sons. Still, the Elio storyline is left cold, detached, and emotionally vacant.
And the journey to get there? Just plain weird. Most of the jokes fall flat, including supposedly irreverent moments like Lord Grigon blasting cute space dandelions from the sky. Glordon is the film’s breakout star—mark my words, plush alien worms will be a hot Black Friday item—but that feels like the movie’s larger purpose: to be a visually kinetic feast for the eyes, primed for marketing. It’s a film tonally out of sync from start to finish as if pieced together from ideas pulled from different movies and forced together like mismatched puzzle pieces that never quite click.
Overall, Elio reflects a new Pixar trend: underdeveloped, not fully realized scripts. I might call it an homage to the studio’s earlier work—if it didn’t feel so much like self-plagiarism of better efforts. At least the film is coated in that signature Pixar animation goodness.
If only it had the heart to genuinely tackle family issues, like the studio’s classic films did, with a little more heart and soul.
On this episode, JD and Brendan are joined by Brandon Lewis of AwardsWatch to discuss Celine Song’s new film Materialists! As you could imagine, the internet has been very normal about this one. There’s been no controversy at all. Seriously though, it’s hard to have a nuanced conversation in 280 characters, which is why we were deeply grateful to have Brandon on this episode as we dig into all of the layers that spark the kind of discourse we’ve seen around Materialists.
Review: Materialists (4:00) Director: Celine Song Writer: Celine Song Stars: Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans, Pedro Pascal
*** This piece contains spoilers for Materialists and Past Lives ***
After watching Materialists, it’s clear that the world has finally regained what was lost with Nora Ephron’s death. There’s a woman slightly digging about romance, writing about women questioning choices of the heart and mind, while making the men rotate around them, like the string section surrounding a trombone soloist in Maurice Ravel’s orchestral piece “Boléro.” It’s difficult to watch her most recent film without immediately remembering Song’s feature debut, Past Lives. Nora Moon (Greta Lee) and Lucy (Dakota Johnson) are the trombone players, while their men rotate in a semicircle around them, without actively participating in the smooth, slithering piece of music both women individually play. There’s something about the way Celine Song shows her women. Whether Nora Moon or Lucy, they’re both grounded in realism, even though they secretly wish whatever fantasy they once dreamed of is true. They never let their hearts dictate their paths, but they cling to those fragile hearts like bonnets from a bygone era.
Where they diverge is in the choices they make and how they carry themselves in the world. Lucy carries her white privilege, a tall, beautiful woman with the body and the grace of a model-turned-actress (even if in reality she’s just another beautiful failed actress-turned-matchmaker. She looks sultry, her beauty oozing a confidence that could also be a mask for latent insecurities. Nora Moon is an immigrant woman, a calm kind of beauty, someone who knows her place in the world, and the constant struggles she will keep facing and meeting, how her background marks her choices while holding on secretly to that place of love in her heart, even if she knows she can’t give in to it completely. Where Lucy walks among professions that rely highly on the aesthetic, Nora Moon hides behind papers and words, dreaming in Korean and confusing her kind husband, but also allowing her origins to fade into the background.
As Lucy and Nora Moon both navigate choices of the heart and mind, viewers are left to wonder, what do we root for regarding those two? One chooses her heart, the other chooses building a stable, ambitious life. Lucy is marked by the reckless freedom to be whoever she wants in the world, even if that choice will most probably have consequences, preventing her from living a life she aspires to. Nora Moon, on the other hand, has to “achieve” that status in society or else there will be no place for her. No one likes a loser immigrant, but the world is kinder to a smart, intelligent white woman making a loser choice in the realms of love and relationships, which subsequently casts a shadow over her.
Had Nora Moon been in Materialists, would she make the same decision as Lucy? Would she have the liberty to turn down Harry (Pedro Pascal) in favor of John (Chris Evans)? No two roads are the same, and it’s unfair to compare Arthur (John Magaro) with Harry. Arthur is an average American man. A writer: no more nor less. Yes, he and Nora Moon meet and fall in love, and she marries him for reasons Lucy would consider practical, but it’s the type of relationship where people fall into the mutual benefits and comfort they provide one another. Yes, Arthur gives Nora Moon the green card that secures her a U.S. residency, but that’s about it. Harry would’ve given Lucy the world at her feet, and yet she clings to her struggles with John. So again, if Nora Moon was in Materialists, still hung up on her “past lives” entanglements with Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), would she still choose Harry over Hae Sung? Or is that out of the question for Nora Moon, whose life and choices, marked by her status as a South Korean immigrant who had to change her name to fit in a new society, are never easy?
Song poses that deep dark question about love in both films. Both Nora Moon and Lucy are women who leave. They are women who like to calculate their steps and their moves, they weigh their chances and understand the limitations of their circumstances. Like Nora Moon, Lucy was not born into wealth, and her insistence to marry a wealthy man stems from her fear of being dragged into poverty by her heart, repeating past traumas of parents who failed her. While Nora Moon’s problem is deeply rooted in her racial identity, Lucy’s is a class issue. Both girls not winning in life, each on a different trajectory than the other. But if we’re being honest, Nora Moon has talent, she is a writer. She is an active participant in the New York art scene. Lucy’s talent is her persona, the one she puts on to attract her clients, a fading token from her previous acting days. But they’re both smart and calculating, weighing their options as women growing old alone, having to rely on their survival skills. They’re not naive, with their cases being Lucy growing poor in New York, and Nora Moon an immigrant wanting to do whatever she could to belong to a foreign society.
But why are their choices different? Why does Lucy give up her calculating mind while Nora Moon remains with her good husband, savoring what she once had with Hae Sung as an unfulfilled desire, an unconsummated love story that will forever haunt her like Mrs.Chan in In the Mood For Love? Is it a culture difference -a phrase a woman like me hears all the time whenever a relationship with a foreigner fails- or is it something related to the complex nature of both characters?
I don’t think Celine Song wants us to know. Or is she leaving us to project our own thoughts and feelings on those two women, finding love and identity in the merciless city? Either way, Materialists is worth a watch, if not for the rom-comness of it all then for the brutal honesty with which it analyzes the feelings of a modern woman caught between her pulsating heart and the harsh truths of our reality.
Synopsis: A Formula One driver comes out of retirement to mentor and team up with a younger driver.
The new Brad Pitt summer tentpole vehicle F1®: The Movie follows the classic tradition of proving you can’t teach an old dog new tricks—but you can teach a pack of puppies a few new ones. It’s a film that’s big, flashy, and, for the first ninety minutes or so, a genuinely engrossing piece of gluttonous popcorn entertainment that is as American as, well, a bucket of buttery popcorn.
However, as Pitt’s cinematic skid mark loses control, where even Jesus cannot take the wheel, into its final turn, F1®: The Movie becomes self-indulgent and even arrogant, unsure of when to walk away. It ultimately lets the big climactic moment it builds toward slip through its fingers despite its old-fashioned Hollywood trappings.
The story follows the aging and weathered (and, of course, still breathtakingly handsome) Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt), a former Formula One driver who hasn’t raced in the league in nearly thirty years. We first meet Sonny during the 24 Hours of Daytona, where he’s racing for Chip Hart (Shea Whigham), the scrappy principal of a ragtag team.
Hayes brings his menacing, wrecking-ball style to the track, taking out a rival driver to help his team regain the lead. After earning a quick five grand for his trouble, Sonny retires to a pinball machine in a laundromat—until an old friend shows up.
That friend is Ruben (Dune’s Javier Bardem), a fellow veteran of the racing circuit who now owns his own Formula One team. Unfortunately, Ruben is $350 million in the hole, and the board is ready to replace him—unless he can shake things up and consistently finish in the top ten. He convinces Sonny to come out of retirement, not only to lead the team as its head driver but also to mentor a hotshot young prodigy, Joshua “Noah” Pearce (The Commuter’s Damson Idris)—a driver in whom Ruben sees shades of Sonny himself.
F1®: The Movieis directed by Joseph Kosinski (Only the Brave), who has been riding the high of Tom Cruise’s “saving cinema” with Top Gun: Maverick. At first, we’re swept up in the film’s breakneck pace and immersive style, which puts the audience right inside the helmet of Pitt’s Hayes.
He comes across as the William James of racing—someone who not only endangers everyone around him but also demands they treat the sport like combat. Pitt delivers a magnetic, even visceral performance that’s deeply felt.
However, the rest of the characters are two-dimensional, with the villain telegraphed from the start. Damson Idris is fine, but his character is a cliché—used primarily to humanize Pitt’s Sonny, giving him redeemable value by mentoring Pearce to be a leader, even though he doesn’t behave like one. It’s the old trope of leadership being thrust upon the reluctant hero.
The script by Ehren Kruger—who also wrote Top Gun: Maverick and has a history with Reindeer Games, The Ring films, and Michael Bay’s Transformers franchise—suggests his Academy Award nomination may have been an outlier. You learn almost nothing about Formula One racing, not even during scenes focused on Kerry Condon’s character, Kate McKenna, a technical director and former aerospace engineer explaining changes to the cars.
Worse, there seems to be no clear logic to what the team must accomplish to save Ruben’s job, leaving the stakes muddled and convoluted. The film is also overstuffed with exposition—not just from the characters, but from the overhead announcers, who commit racing’s cardinal sin: constantly “mouth-vomiting” exposition in a desperate attempt to explain the sport’s mantra and throw out red herrings. It quickly becomes laughable—and more than a little grating.
To make matters worse, Kosinski lets the big moment slip away the movie is building towards. The final race, especially in IMAX, gives the audience a sense of flying that is immersive and, for some reason, cuts away from some trivial scenes that take away from a moment where F1 finds footing in cinematic wonderment. Along with an overabundance of goodbyes where the movie refuses to end, F1®: The Movie squanders an exhilarating premise, by overstaying its welcome.
You can watch F1® THE MOVIE only in theaters on June 27th!
Synopsis: A young woman navigates a discovery within her immediate family only to find much more.
Happiness for everyone looks, and feels different. For me it’s a quiet night at home with my cats, for others it’s a good book, or even their careers. It’s a basic human emotion, and when it’s missing from your life, the consequences are often dire. How does one quantify the price of the sacrifices that must take place to obtain happiness? And how do we justify happiness in a world filled with cruelty? Best Wishes to All attempts to answer these questions while making sure you’ll never want to sleep over at your grandparents house again. It’s uncomfortably isolating with its small village atmosphere that has paranoia lurking behind every closed door.
Grandparents’ homes are a place many people attribute nostalgic feelings of happiness; I often think back to the many holidays spent around a large table enjoying countless meals. As an adult, looking back at those memories has me daydreaming about the lives of my grandparents and what they sacrificed for me to allow me the success in life I have. In Best Wishes to All, we are introduced to a young nursing student (Kotone Furukawa), who remains unnamed for the entirety of the film. She’s on her way to her grandparents’ house while on a short break at school. Planning on meeting her parents and younger brother there, she ends up at her destination a few days earlier. From the moment she arrives, something about her grandparents’ home feels off; she’s not new to this feeling, as a child she’d often hear noises coming from the ceiling above her as she attempted to fall asleep.
Curious to find a reason for the strange noises coming from behind a locked bedroom door, the young woman begins to notice her grandparents are not acting the way they normally would. Both unassuming from the outside, her grandparents are eager to share with her a secret, each time showcasing stranger behavior, like standing in the middle of a hallway, mouth agape, staring at a locked door. Or eating a delicious meal with their granddaughter and coming over the table to both grab her fingers and suck on them. It’s safe to say she is disturbed, and tries to find answers for her grandparents’ sudden shift in personality. But what turns out to be a getaway trip to a once dear place quickly becomes dark while discovering the secret to happiness.
Best Wishes to All breaks the sense of normality in this young woman’s life by creating increasingly disturbing situations for her to encounter. As she navigates through the film, the answers to her questions don’t render any real solutions she can decipher, throwing her deeper and deeper into confusion even after the remainder of her family arrives for their visit. Director Yuta Shimotsu makes sure to not only keep the audience on their toes, but his lead character as well. Choosing to let us discover the evil truths and the cost of her and her family’s happiness alongside her, Shimotsu drives home the differing ideals between young and old and how the willingness to make irreversible sacrifices in the name of happiness comes easier for some than others.
There’s a lot going on within Best Wishes to All, and for those who aren’t used to Japanese horror it could become overwhelming. There’s plenty of disturbing imagery within this film, and it comes in different forms. The big reveal of the film, which is best left without spoiling, is a shock in concept alone. Paired with plenty of bleeding eye sockets and axes to the head the, visuals add an extra layer of ick. Making the main character feel like the odd one out from the start makes her easy to root for, even when she makes a decision that is hard to accept. The film tends to get lost in the more over the top ideas, leaving some of the most compelling conversations the film is trying to invoke to the side. Making it seem that the dark truth behind her family’s happiness is something she needs to accept, giving her no real choice for herself in the end.
Taking place in a close-knit community adds yet another layer to the film’s bleakness and the paranoia felt by the film’s lead. Captured through the lens of cinematographer Ryuto Iwabuchi, the focus on architecture makes the film feel like it takes place in two different realities: the home of her grandparents and the life she lives as a nursing student. Newer buildings in Tokyo capture the film’s youthfulness and progressive innovations, paired with the older, more broken-in homes of the aging neighborhood she grew up in. Iwabuchi’s work blends these two worlds together for her, giving her reminders of her family’s sacrifices even when they physically aren’t there.
Leading a film filled with some truly stomach-turning plots and visuals cannot be easy, but Furukawa surely makes it look that way. She has a unique ability to match the film’s increasingly bizarre atmosphere through the way she smiles. Earlier in the film, her smile is natural and lights up a film that has a bleak color palette. As she finds more and more darkness within her family life, the corners of her smile become sharper, and the giggles behind her smiles sound forced, making her look like she’s in pain rather than exuding real joy. She plays a bright-eyed nurse who only wants to help others like a natural; even when the film gets overstuffed with ideas, she shines as the film’s relentless lead.
Moreover, Best Wishes to All is a solid thriller that shocks with its plot and will have your stomach in knots from its visuals. Even when there’s one too many things going on at once, the film gives unconventional answers to life’s most existential questions about the costs of happiness. Shimotsu crafts an impressive film that leaves a lasting impact long after the credits roll.
I was in high school when some friends suggested we go see a late night showing of Psycho at our local art house theater. At that point in my life, I had decided to be a filmmaker and I was watching a lot of movies, mostly new releases, but I was slowly making my way through the classics. I wasn’t a fan of horror. In fact, I had gone out of my way to avoid it, but I was excited to be with the group and they assured me I would be OK.
Psycho wasn’t my first Alfred Hitchcock film, that was The Birds, which we watched in middle school after reading the short story, thus ensuring my trepidation about birds to this day. Psycho seemed like the scarier of the two just based on subject matter. Though, I felt a little more comfortable with Psycho because it is indelible to the cultural lexicon. I, like most people, had seen parodies or pieces of the famous shower scene. It’s everywhere from cartoons to sitcoms to comedic movies. One of the best is in Mel Brooks’ send up of all things Hitchcock, High Anxiety. As much as I knew the scene I also knew the music cue. It comes up just as much as the scene and often in different contexts, but with the same intention, to evoke a sense of fear.
Making the film, as detailed in Stephen Rebello’s book “Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho,” Hitchcock and the rest of the crew viewed the shower scene as the centerpiece of the film. The amount of detail, the complicated covering of body parts, and by today’s standards a paltry amount of blood was necessary to give the audience a shock. Add in that truly iconic score by Bernard Herrmann and it’s a classic and indelible scene for a reason.
Seeing the film for the first time, you assume that Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) will be the heroine for the whole film. Even with the knowledge of the shower scene and knowing it’s Marion getting murdered, you may assume that that sequence occurs at the end of the film. It would just make sense for the main character to not be the first body to drop. Though, knowing that Marion will be killed is not the point of the film. That tension of knowing Marion’s fate isn’t Hitchcock’s, screenwriter Joseph Stefano, or original novelist Robert Bloch’s intention. They would prefer you to go in blind.
Yet, for me on that fateful night, I did know about that scene. I experienced constant anxiety that an entire killer and victim game would be played out while knowing that Marion didn’t have a happy ending. What I never predicted, and what that scene out of context never prepares you for, is that after you jump in your seat when that music cue hits, you have the majority of the film left to watch.
There’s a calm as Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) cleans up after Mother’s murder in utter silence. It’s a strange phenomenon to watch his entire thought process play out. You expect him to be caught. You expect him to find the money. None of that happens, though. It’s as if it happened in reality without the time shift a film like this usually has. This changes how you view the film, especially for the first time.
The murder you’ve anticipated, the one that you’re frightened by is over. So now what? What could top this scene that has been in the hearts and minds of people for 65 years? Now Hitchcock keeps you on your toes.
This calm, languid period is to lull you into a false sense that this film will simply become a type of noir. This final two acts of film has its own private detective, Milton Arbogast (Martin Balsam). It has a concerned couple in Marion’s sister Lila (Vera Miles) and Marion’s boyfriend Sam (John Gavin). This detective story is the end. It’s the final nail in Mother’s coffin because the detective always gets his perpetrator. Nothing can happen that can top the shower scene. In my mind, as I watched it that first time and felt my heartbeat steady and my worry that the shower scene was all Psycho had to offer, I figured Psycho was a gimmick film. It was a film with one great set piece and little else. That is until Arbogast enters the Bates home.
Arbogast’s looking for proof of Marion or at least to attempt to talk with Mrs. Bates (voiced at different times by Virginia Gregg, Paul Jasmin, and Jeanette Nolan). This is when we know something else will happen. Editor George Tomasini inserts several shots of Arbogast ascending the stairs. A foot on the step and a hand on the railing, then a head cresting the top of the landing, but there’s something else there, too. There’s a light behind a door that’s slightly ajar. That door creaks open a little more. That’s when cinematographer John L. Russell’s camera is suddenly in an overhead shot and with a terrifying silence, Mother shoots out of a room, knife raised and she brings it down, slashing through Arbogast’s face. Arbogast’s look of terror, mixed with the rear projection of the floor at the foot of the stairs coming up behind him, and the uncredited foley artist’s horrifying sounds of Arbogast attempting to get his feet underneath him, climax with him landing on the first floor on his back. Mother is on him in seconds to pierce him twice as he screams.
This sequence, while not as famous, is the real trick of Psycho. The first murder makes sense, the second is an utter shock. It simply terrified me that first time in the theater. I nearly stood up to cower away. It alarmed me so much. It’s that effective of a scene. While we know Arbogast is in danger when he goes into the house, we can’t know that he is at such a disadvantage. He’s not even close to a match for Mother’s cunning and we’re not prepared for Hitchcock’s second feat of daring filmmaking. The shower scene gets a lot of credit, and rightly so, but this scene is just as impeccable and just as shocking in its execution. That’s when we realize it’s been Mother’s story all along.
The psychological explanation at the end of the film for why Norman may have taken on the personality and persona of Mother is pop psychology. Even as it makes movie sense for Norman and the inspiration for Norman, real life killer Ed Gein, Norman’s cross dressing is not easily defined. While someone blurts out the word transvestite during Dr. Richman’s (Simon Oakland) explanation of Norman’s psychology, Dr. Richman balks at the notion and declares that Norman is much more disturbed.
We can take this in a couple of different ways, but it’s obvious that there is an equality in Dr. Richman’s mind between Norman’s mental illness and his gender dysphoria. Dr. Richman believes that Norman’s queerness is just another symptom of that mental illness. It has been that way in film since the advent of the Hays Code. Queerness and queer people are bad. Even in previous Hitchcock films, these characters are antagonists. Characters like Brandon (John Dall) and Phillip (Farley Granger) in Rope, Bruno (Robert Walker) in Strangers on a Train, Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson) in Rebecca, or Leonard (Martin Landau) in North by Northwest are all queer coded and are all proven to be amoral in some way, their queerness just another factor in why they commit evil. This isn’t to defend Norman’s actions when he is dressed as Mother, but to say that Norman’s need to kill Marion and Arbogast wasn’t because he’s queer. Norman’s queerness isn’t evil, but it is a part of him that others wrongly perceive as evil.
As the credits rolled on that screening I went to, I couldn’t slow down my heart beat. I could barely catch my breath. My friends were giddy and excited by my terror and my elation. Even as the film struck at the core of my fear and anxiety, I knew I had to see it again. In the many times I’ve seen it since, there is still a quickening of my pulse as Marion starts the shower and Arbogast begins his ascent up the stairs. There’s even more anxiety as I anticipate Norman’s sly smile at the end, which my friend Adam, who had the same build and stature as Anthony Perkins, delighted in recreating on the dark drive home. Psycho is a classic not just because it’s a great Hitchcock film, but because it helped to build and mold the ideas of modern horror. The film is a blueprint for how to shock, scare, and titillate an audience. It is beloved because it shows us not monsters in rubber masks, but the banality of the true killers that walk amongst us. They can be anyone and they can get to anyone and for a while they may even get away with it too.
This week on the InSession Film Podcast, we are joined by Adam Kempenaar from Filmspotting to discuss our Top 5 movies of the decade so far! Despite a pandemic completely reshaping much of the industry, it’s been a great decade for movies and we had a great time talking about our favorites. We also spend a few minutes talking about the Brad Bird / Incredibles 3 news.
– Opening Banter (0:37) We begin the show this week with some housekeeping and fun banter talking about our crazy, chaotic schedule we have coming up in the next few weeks. There are a lot of reviews coming soon and some not-to-be-missed bonus content as we revisit our year-end lists for the decade so far (2020-2024).
– Incredibles 3 News (4:34) We are huge fans of Brad Bird and his two Incredibles movies, so we were a little torn on the recent reports that he will not be directing Incredibles 3. It’s understandable given that he was quite public about how Incredibles 2 burnt him out a little bit, so perhaps that’s part of the reason as to why he’s not directing, but it will be more concerning if it’s a “creative differences” problem with the studio.
– Top 5 Movies of the Decade So Far (17:59) After discussing performances and scores of the decade the last few weeks, the time has finally come to discuss the best movies to come out in the first half of the decade. 2020 was obviously a weird year given everything that happened, but there were still some amazing films to come out of that crop. As a result of some films moving to the following year, 2021 is a surprisingly really deep year all things considered. 2022 was a solid year at the top, but goodness gracious the last two years have been a cinephile’s dream come true. It’s maybe too early to tell, but they could go down as some of the best we’ve ever seen. Despite the industry still reeling on the whole in terms of box office and theaters, we’re witnessing filmmakers at their very best and it’s exciting to see. With that said, what would be your Top 5 film scores of the decade so far?
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Director:Fawzia Mirza Writer:Fawzia Mirza Stars: Amrit Kaur, Nimra Bucha, Hamza Haq
Synopsis: Azra is worlds apart from her conservative Muslim mother. Following a tragedy, Azra finds herself on a Bollywood-inspired journey to Pakistan – guided by memories of her mother’s youth in Karachi and her own coming-of-age in rural Canada.
It’s safe to say that The Queen of My Dreams is a deeply personal directorial debut from Fawzia Mirza. Starting off as a short film of the same name from Mirza in 2012, she turned her short film into a stage play titled Me, My Mom & Sharmila. Over 10 years later, Mirza brings this story of a young woman of two cultures navigating complicated familial relationships and loss to the big screen. Using her own life as inspiration, Mirza explores being queer as a Pakistani woman who has lived her entire life in Canada. This gives audiences an authentic view into growing up queer in two different worlds.
Courtesy of Willa/Product Of Culture – Nimra Bucha as Mariam; Ayana Manji as Young Azra
We first meet, or rather hear the film’s lead Azra (Amrit Kaur) as The Queen of My Dreams shows her mother, Mariam (Nimra Bucha), sitting in front of a mirror staring at her reflection. Azra recounts fond memories she has with her mother from her childhood, how beautiful her mother is, and their shared love of Bollywood, especially Sharmila Tagore and Rajesh Khanna in the film Aradhana. As the memory fades, we see Azra, who is at college, living with a woman, Rachel (Kya Mosey), she tells her family is her roommate, but is definitely something much more. A call to her parents’ house has her chatting with her father, Hassan (Hamza Haq), catching up about her schoolwork. As her father passes the phone to her mother, it’s clear that there is a rift in their once happy relationship, leaving questions about how there is such a frigid coldness between two that seemed so close.
After Azra’s father has a fatal heart attack, something she learns over a voicemail left after several calls made to her apartment went unanswered. She must travel to Pakistan to be with family and start mourning her father. From Azra’s perspective, her father was kind, understanding, and the only parent who gave her warmth. Her mother, at some point in her life, turned cold to her, and they don’t even get along well enough to speak to each other on the phone. The film often shifts to flashbacks from Azra’s past, showing that she and her mother were once inseparable, even being a mother-daughter sales duo selling Tupperware to their neighbors. The Queen of My Dreams tugs hard at those moments, making the reveal of why their relationship is strained that much more heartbreaking.
When Azra arrives in Pakistan, Mirza makes sure to show how out of place Azra feels; her clothing makes her stand out right away. But she soon feels at home as a familiar face picks her up from the airport. As Azra is traveling, the film shifts into 1960s Pakistan, where Kaur is now playing the younger version of her mother, Miriam. The colors are vibrant, and her clothes are a bit more revealing, portraying the younger version of her mother who is full of life and ambition. This is where the most about Miriam is learned, how she met and fell deeply in love with her husband, Hassan, and how their love story bloomed from secret dates to their wedding. Mirza uses these flashbacks to also show the parallels between Azra and Miriam’s lives as they were growing up; although Azra grew up in Canada and Miriam in Pakistan, the foundation of their girlhood and finding their sexuality is rooted in their shared love of Bollywood films.
Courtesy of Willa/Product Of Culture – Amrit Kaur as Young Mariam; Hamza Haq as Hassan
The non-linear way that Mirza tells the story in The Queen of My Dreams is where the most is learned about Azra and her mother. Constantly shifting from young Miriam to Azra keeps the audience’s attention, but it can be a tad confusing for the film’s narrative. Information on Azra and her sexuality takes a back seat during the majority of the film as there’s a larger emphasis on Miriam and her backstory, and even though her younger life is often more lively than her daughter’s, it is easy to lose interest in Azra. The best of this storytelling comes when a younger version of Azra (Ayana Manji) is introduced in a flashback, and a young woman’s love and admiration for her mother is slowly chipped away as her mother walks in on something she shouldn’t.
What makes The Queen of My Dreams tick is the performances from Kaur, as both Azra and young Miriam. Fully embracing both Mirza’s Canadian and Pakistani side, the duality between a young queer college student and an outgoing Pakistani woman is captivating. My favorite moments from Kaur are when she arrives in Pakistan back with her family, learning how to dance, taking the male part in a couples dance, causing gossip among her female family members. She makes it look so easy shifting from Miriam to Azra, giving committed performances for both. Paired with Bucha as an older Miriam, their work together is captivating to watch; their ability to show a quiet tension that is easily agitated is a wonder to watch.
Courtesy of Willa/Product Of Culture – Amrit Kaur as Young Mariam
The Queen of My Dreams is easy to fall in love with from its visuals, especially during the 60s flashbacks with a youthful Miriam. The bright colors of the clothing, cars, and food in Pakistan pop with the saturated color grading. Cinematographer Matt Irwin balances the narrative shifts between the past and present incredibly well, making a clear distinction between then and now. What stands out the most with Irwin’s work is during the Bollywood recreations where Azra and Miriam place themselves in their favorite film. Irwin mimics the framing of it well and captures the romance through the glowing colors and lingering close-ups of women in love.
Ultimately, Mirza captures a queer story that is deeply connected to her personal experience; its heartbreaking and often charming moments show just how much potential this film has. It’s easy to get lost in the film, but the performance from Kaur makes each passing minute more interesting than the last, especially when she’s being a rebellious young woman. The Queen of My Dreams works best when exploring the generational differences between a mother and daughter and how getting to know your mother’s past helps you understand your own life.
Director:Aimee Kuge Writer:Aimee Kuge Stars: April Consalo, Nate Wise, Clay von Carlowitz
Synopsis:An exploration of one’s relationships with food, sexuality, and revenge. It asks, “How far would you go in the name of love?”
Food and sex aren’t the strange combination we, in our most vanilla moments, believe them to be. Popular sexual innuendo includes some reference to eating or parts of anatomy that are referred to as food items. This combination, when taken to extremes, can contribute to the use of cannibalism as a version of sexual desire or as a catalyst for arousal. It’s not everyone’s proclivity, of course, but this avenue of eating, sex, and cannibalism is something worthy of being explored.
As much as these elements are all a part of Cannibal Mukbang, the story often doesn’t go far enough, or push deep enough into the psyche of its characters. In some ways, there are points where the depths could be plumbed with precision like a sharp knife through a tomato, but instead, the script, by writer/director Aimee Kuge, seems to smash the tomato first and then try to cut the pieces with a different and less effective mode of communication. It may be that the holes in the logic are just more visible when taken as a whole because the ending is a surprise, but not in a good way.
There are many things to like about Kuge’s script, though. The way she builds her metaphors about truly knowing someone and the anonymity that is built into our lives on the internet is well thought out. It’s clear that Mark (Nate Wise) has had a lot to unpack with his therapist and that his hesitancy with Ash (April Consalo) is coming from a real anxiety. It feels true to life that no matter how much Ash opens up to Mark, she has to remain guarded because of her mission and how she proceeds with it. It’s actually sweet, in spite of the circumstance, to see the two of them growing to trust and open up to one another.
That’s also thanks in part to Kuge as director and co-editor. The story is crafted like a pre-internet age horror film and a pre-internet age romance. There are multiple montages set to upbeat music and terrifying angles to cut between. This gauzy, emotional killing spree is also benefited by the eye of cinematographer Harrison Kraft. Kraft and Kuge are obviously aficionados of B movie horror and, in the midst of this modern tale of internet life, they find a way to create a throwback that at once looks familiar, but is distinctly modern.
One of the best crafted sequences of the film is also a terrific example of the “show, don’t tell” mantra of storytelling. Ash is ready to open up about her past and in a flashback made to look like a B movie scene, we see the story of Ash and her sister Allie (Autumn Consalo). The scenes are wordless, but the shift from something innocent to something horrible is deftly handled with careful staging. The sequence is ultimately a triumphant origin story for Ash.
This scene is helped by the fact that April Consalo fits that mold of classic femme fatale and modern “e-girl” stand in so perfectly. She has an arresting presence and a depth to her performance that makes you wish she was the focal character of the film and not just Mark’s love interest. She can shift easily from the vulnerable to the frightening, and from the cheesy to the serious. Consalo becomes every bit of Ash, or at least what Ash is willing to show.
Cannibal Mukbang might make you hungry or horny or both. It is a horror-romance, after all. These strange feelings will arise from these seemingly disparate ideas, like sex and food, mingling together. Cannibal Mukbang had the potential to be a truly awesome experience, but a few narrative missteps, including a tragedy of an ending, and slow pacing keep it from the upper echelons. It’s still a film to see to believe and worth seeking out wherever you can find it.
Director: Christopher Nolan Writer:Bob Kane, David S. Goyer, Christopher Nolan Stars: Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Ken Watanabe
Synopsis: After witnessing his parents’ death, billionaire Bruce Wayne learns the art of fighting to confront injustice. When he returns to Gotham as Batman, he must stop a secret society that intends to destroy the city.
“Why do we fall, Bruce? So we can learn to pick ourselves up.”
When he was a boy, Bruce Wayne fell down a well and while looking for a way to get out, he was swarmed by bats, terrifying him and leaving him helpless, until he was brought out. His greatest fear was then realized, and the very sight of bats gave him the shivers. Soon after, he watched his parents, Thomas and Martha Wayne, be gunned down in an alley by a robber looking to make a quick score. He stood frozen as the people who raised him breathed their last and released to the care of his butler Alfred, having to come to terms with the realization that he is now an orphan. It is also the night that for all intents and purposes, Bruce Wayne became the Batman.
20 years ago, it is this tragic story that was brought to life by Christopher Nolan in Batman Begins, the epic start to what became The Dark Knight Trilogy and formed what is now considered one of the greatest trilogies of all time, while also revitalizing the image of Batman in film. The previous live-action entry, Batman and Robin, was universally panned by both critics and audiences, with many people showing their dissatisfaction, and it brought the previous saga of movies set in motion by Tim Burton’s Batman in 1989 to a grinding halt. That movie brought a more cheesy, lighthearted and even cornier version of Batman to life, and many felt that the dialogue and storytelling went against the darker, more somber nature of the character. With Batman Begins, Nolan went back to exactly that, crafting a more gothic noir version of Batman, and one that embraced fear more than any previous iteration.
As the adult Bruce Wayne, Christian Bale embodies that fear and tension that exists within the character perfectly and devoting himself to the ideals of who Batman should be, but also balancing the dichotomy of Bruce and Batman effectively. When outside the suit, he is the billionaire CEO of Wayne Enterprises and a playboy who makes the tabloids just by showing his face, and it is this facade that keeps him in the public eye as the celebrity he is regarded as. When gliding across the city or driving in the Batmobile in the Batsuit, he is a symbol of fear that hides in the shadows, often using them to trick and capture anyone who aims to harm the people of Gotham, people who can often feel defenseless like he did in that alley, and the two versions of the man are brilliantly realized. When it comes to the people closest to him like his butler, Alfred (a wonderful Michael Caine), a man who is a parent to Bruce when he didn’t have one to talk to, Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), a brilliant employee at Wayne Enterprises running the Applied Sciences division and gearing up Bruce for his more vigilante-related activities, and his old friend/love interest Rachel Dawes (Katie Holmes), all of them provide emotional anchors for Bruce that ground him and keep in mind what he is fighting for.
Where Batman Begins also succeeds is in making Gotham a character, a trait that Nolan maintains even in The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises. Lensed beautifully by Wally Pfister, whose work in this garnered him an Oscar nomination, the brownish-golden filter over the often polluted, smoky skyline, while exposing the corruption and grimy underbelly that is seeped into the workings of the city through The Narrows, portrays a bleak image of its people and the few honest souls who peer out of the woodwork and want to make a difference, like Rachel and Sergeant James Gordon (Gary Oldman). Years later, Batman Begins looks incredible, and the 35mm photography ranks as some of the finest in the comic book genre.
When the action does kick in, Batman Begins soars. From the intense first act with the League of Shadows and Bruce’s training with Ra’s al Ghul (Ken Watanabe, at first) and Ducard (Liam Neeson), to the League’s temple being burned down so they cannot bring harm to Gotham, to the first appearance of Batman as he takes on Carmine Falcone (Tom Wilkinson) and his thugs, the stunning Batmobile chase across the city and the final act on the train line, Nolan directs these sequences brilliantly, with well-utilized practical effects and even some terrifying imagery, and all scored to perfection by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard, and containing a plethora of more incredible shots from Pfister, such as Batman walking through wards at Arkham Asylum as bats swarm around him.
Batman’s world is full of fascinating villains and antiheroes, and Batman Begins does a good job with Falcone and Jonathan Crane (Cillian Murphy), whose Scarecrow persona and fear toxin releases offers up some imagery not quite suitable for young kids, from a flaming demon horse to a demonic appearance of Batman interrogating Crane about who he works for, eventually leading to the real Ra’s (formerly Ducard) reemerging and bringing Crane’s toxin to the entire city, and plunging it into chaos. As course corrections go from something more lighthearted like Poison Ivy’s vines and hypnotizing others with her mutant plants and Mister Freeze’s antics, Batman Begins couldn’t be more of a pendulum swing to the other side if it tried. As the final act commences and the full force of Gotham’s rundown infrastructure and societal collapse comes to a head through the fear toxin, watching Batman work with Rachel and Gordon to prevent Ra’s from spiking the city’s entire water supply and fighting him on the train about to collide into Wayne Tower, it’s a tense series of events that makes its threat feel palpable.
By the end, Batman Begins pulls off a terrific origin story about a man learning to embrace his fears and anxieties by helping others, while also paving the way forward for more troubles to come his way and his story to continue in fascinating and epic ways. Nolan’s trilogy set the benchmark for what the comic book genre is capable of being, with many comic book movies later trying hard to replicate its formula and its writing, but few succeeding in understanding its strengths. The selflessness of Batman and his singular goal of just wanting to be a beacon of hope for people who believed there was none is captured in spades with Batman Begins, and even when Gordon mentions that he hadn’t yet thanked him for that feeling and everything Batman had done so far, the answer is one that is directed to both him and everyone watching the movie: “And you’ll never have to.”
This week on Women InSession, we discuss two adaptations of William Shakespeare’s comedy in 10 Things I Hate About You and The Taming of the Shrew (1967)! Both films were successful in their own ways (one a huge box office sensation, the other garnering two Oscar nominations), and that brings its own compelling discourse, but it’s also fascinating how different these movies are despite coming from the same base material. Of course, per usual, we get quite distracted with some…uh…impassioned conversation we’ll say.
Panel: Kristin Battestella, Amy Thomasson, Jaylan Salah
On that note, check out this week’s show and let us know what you think in the comment section. Thanks for listening and for supporting the InSession Film Podcast!
Synopsis:As an ancient threat endangers both Vikings and dragons alike on the isle of Berk, the friendship between Hiccup, an inventive Viking, and Toothless, a Night Fury dragon, becomes the key to both species forging a new future together.
It’s interesting to see Dean DeBlois’ readaptation of Cressida Cowell’s How to Train Your Dragon, fifteen years after seeing the original animated masterpiece on the big screen. I may be the biggest hater of these cash-grab live-action remakes that Disney sadly popularized since 2010, but there’s something about How to Train Your Dragon that, for me, feels semi-earnest, so I couldn’t not give it its day in court.
DeBlois has never directed a feature film in live-action and has been making animated masterpieces ever since bringing Lilo & Stitch to the world with Chris Sanders, which makes this shift as intriguing as Brad Bird going from Ratatouille to Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol. Obviously, this remake doesn’t reach the heights as Bird’s transition to live-action, but it makes sense for DeBlois to have a desire in bringing this story back to life with new challenges and constraints, even if the plot, dialogue, and musical score from John Powell is the exact same as the original.
Literally – and I guarantee this will happen when the film eventually reaches homes – you can do a side-by-side comparison of the animated and live-action films, and nothing has changed. DeBlois doesn’t deepen any of the side characters further or flesh out aspects that might have been briefly touched upon in his animated movie. It’s the exact same product, but done through the prism of live-action. In a sense, the film severely lacks originality and inventiveness, especially if someone knows the animated entry by heart.
The biggest cynics may think this transposition is nothing more than a shameless piece of “content” designed to milk as much money as possible, as its release has been positioned with the opening of Universal’s Epic Universe, and they would be right to think so. However, what I found most fascinating was how DeBlois used the limitations he had at his disposal, which animation does not have, to essentially make the same movie, almost as if this entire thing is nothing more than an exercise for him to know if he indeed can direct something in live-action.
In that regard, he mostly succeeds. Mostly, because the entire back half of the movie does not hold weight (at all) compared to the staggering visuals of the animated film’s climax, and is instead a largely artificial, sludgy action setpiece where the costumes look like poor cosplay, and the green screens stick out like a sore thumb. There’s little to no excitement in seeing Stoick the Vast (Gerard Butler, reprising his role from the animated film) stand aimlessly in front of an entirely synthetic background as he gathers his troops to invade a Dragon’s Nest and kill all creatures who live there.
There’s also little excitement in seeing Hiccup (Mason Thames) and Toothless fight against the Red Death, even if cinematographer Bill Pope tries his hardest to give it some form of life, but to no avail. The emotional impact is also dampened because anyone who’s seen the original knows what will happen. DeBlois likely took his screenplay from the 2010 movie, did CTRL + C and CTRL + V on his computer, added “2025” to the new script, and delivered it to Universal. That’s how close it follows the original movie – no stone is left unturned in replicating it down to a tee, but with living actors as opposed to the staggering artistry of the animated film.
However, one thing that differentiates both movies is how DeBlois can employ large-format photography in key sequences to immerse the audience in Hiccup’s bond with Toothless in ways he couldn’t, even with the use of 3D in 2010. Utilizing the immense power of IMAX cameras (with the aid of 3D, creating an even more powerful effect than in 2D), DeBlois and Pope frequently expand the frame and plunge us straight into the world of Berk, creating jaw-dropping flight sequences that will genuinely make you jump out of your seat in pure adrenaline, as Powell’s score blares through the speakers and reminds you exactly of why the animated offering has stood the test of time.
These first-person shots are exacerbated by some of the most lifelike CGI you’ll see in a modern movie, especially regarding Toothless’ design. The Night Fury looks like a living, breathing entity next to Hiccup, even if it’s entirely created through the artifice of computer-generated animation. Thames is also very good as the protagonist, though he doesn’t possess the same range as Jay Baruchel, as illustrated during scenes of confrontation with his father. The dramatic intensity of those moments doesn’t hit the same, especially when Butler approaches Stoick with the exact same register as when he voiced him fifteen years ago.
Moreover, the alchemy Hiccup possesses with Astrid (Nico Parker) doesn’t work. The two aren’t on the same wavelength at all, and it’s highly evident when DeBlois attempts to pair them together in the romantic sense of the term. They only work when in the ring, competing against each other, as Hiccup has found ways to subdue the dragons as opposed to brutally killing them, which is what Stoick and Gobber (Nick Frost) are training them for, and the path Astrid is following.
These moments are wondrously directed and engaging enough for us to ultimately care about this reheated story (the IMAX aspect ratio shifts certainly helps involving us in the live-action world), with enough care for DeBlois in wanting to flex his filmmaking muscles a bit and show that he can transpose his story in a different language and environment. While it may not be a perfect shot-for-shot remake, it’s certainly an admirable one, notably thanks to DeBlois’ reverence for Cowell’s source material. He would never make something outright egregious, even if one can feel that he can sometimes get pressured by the limitations he’s working with.
The climax, in particular, is an absolute visual nightmare, and incomparable from what was showcased in the 2010 film. And yet, it’s miles ahead from the other live-action remake of a Dean DeBlois movie released last month, especially in how its filmmaker thinks about how his story should be told through a different medium. That alone made it somewhat compelling, even though I was watching the exact same movie as I did when I stepped foot in the world of Berk for the first time, fifteen years ago, and my appreciation of animation as a medium forever changed.
While feeling was not present while watching this readaptation, I still left the cinema moderately satisfied, knowing that it could’ve been worse. But in the hands of DeBlois, this source material will always be treated with the utmost respect, but I don’t think I’m ready to relive the emotional trauma of How to Train Your Dragon 2 in live-action just yet…
Synopsis:On the cusp of graduation, the members of USC’s celebrated SoCal VoCals have one more challenge to conquer before adulthood: The International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella in New York City.
Rest assured: If everything you knew about A Cappella came from Glee and/or Pitch Perfect, you’re not alone. The same goes for many of the harmonizing members of the University of Southern California’s premiere instrument-free singing group, the SoCal VoCals, and many of them feel as though they’ve been plucked out of those aforementioned fictional choirs to lead a real one. Perhaps that’s a credit to how in touch shows and films that center on A Cappella ensembles tend to be with the broadened stereotypes that make up its members, or a direct criticism of the assumption audiences have maintained since Glee, that these world class voices to belong to gay Latinos, goth Asians, and one particularly annoying, angel-voiced Jewish girl in a pleated skirt. In any case, thanks a lot, Ryan Murphy.
Image courtesy of Tribeca Festival
A sincere kudos is owed to Abraham Troen and Angelique Molina – the co-directors of Just Sing, a Tribeca-premiering documentary that centers on the SoCal VoCals pursuit of a collegiate A Cappella championship – for acknowledging these clichés and allowing their subjects to address them in the interviews that make up the prologue of the film rather than those filling its entirety. The other interviews with members of the group tend to align with where we are in the documentary’s narrative, a basic (at best) structure that doubles between detailing a few of the group members’ individual journeys to this point in their lives and singing careers, and the VoCals’ run to what would potentially be a record-breaking sixth International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella title. To answer your burning question: Indeed, the competition hosted by Elizabeth Banks and John Michael Higgins in Pitch Perfect is very, very real.
And for the students we meet in Just Sing, it’s just as borderline life-or-death as it was for the Chloe and Aubrey-led Barton University Bellas. (You know, before Anna Kendrick showed up and made singing fun.) Members of the VoCals are as prone to saying things like “I never want to say, ‘I sang in college,’” as they are to suddenly bursting into song on the bus to their next competition. In all likelihood, most of them will continue to sing for the rest of their lives, whether in a professional capacity or an everyday amateur one, if only because they’re all ridiculously talented. If we’re to use Glee as a reference point, the VoCals certainly have a Rachel Berry (Tiffany Galaviz, Just Sing’s de facto star), a Santana Lopez (Janina Colucci), and a few Kurt Hummel-Blaine Anderson hybrids to boot. Not because they’re gay, but because they are far better singers than Finn Hudson ever was.
Image courtesy of Tribeca Festival
What predominantly links an honest nonfiction work like Just Sing to a hyperbolic, often-offensive comedy series like Glee is its competition-related emotional manipulation technique, a staple in documentaries like it and in any medium in which a team is chasing some form of glory. It’s akin to Last Chance U and Cheer, two Netflix docuseries’ that followed a junior college football team and cheer squad, respectively, in their pursuit of a trophy at season’s end. But a film requires much more than the inherent care its viewers will have for the success of its on-screen subjects. You’d be considered a sociopath if you viewed a piece of entertainment like Last Chance U or Just Sing and longed for its participants to fail, regardless of whether or not you find them likeable. It’s a gambit that has never failed when it comes to projects like these, but said projects can’t live and die by that scheme, either.
Additionally, an entire season of television, streaming or otherwise, affords viewers the opportunity to invest in the arcs of a few signature “characters,” if you will. Their academics, home environments, and romantic entanglements are both tracked alongside and considered as important as their athletics. Just Sing, though it does its best to highlight a few of the more interesting members of the VoCals, has but 93 minutes to document the team’s competition circuit, their rehearsals, the impact of the group itself on its participants and A Cappella culture as a whole, and to emphasize the personal lives of the few subjects it deems worthy of further exploration. It’s a fine amount of time, but not enough to do the work it saddles itself with.
You’ll never hear this critic saying he wishes a film had been a series – not even a mini one; sorry, Adolescence – but there’s plenty of meat on Just Sing’s bones that Troen and Molina fail to gnaw off, a frustrating development for those who enter the film starved for intrigue. And though you’re bound to be wholly concerned with the outcome of the SoCal VoCals’ championship aspirations, the beats their journey follows feel too clean and too obvious to ever fully consider as anything but predestined, despite our most predictive efforts. That’s not to say that the film is fictionalized in any sense, but that it’s roughly as surprising as the concept of one of its many excellent vocalists tripping over their falsettos as the spotlight shines its brightest. You never expect them to, and they never do. They may not sound off-pitch, but the same can’t be said for the story they’re in.
Synopsis:Kate is dealing with a personal tragedy while owning and training horses in Echo Valley, an isolated and picturesque place, when her daughter, Claire, arrives at her doorstep, frightened, trembling and covered in someone else’s blood.
The conceit of Michael Pearce’s Echo Valley promises a riveting psychological thriller between mother, Kate (Julianne Moore), and daughter, Claire (Sydney Sweeney), as the two carry a fractured relationship, but not as heated as when Kate is with her ex-husband, Richard (Kyle MacLachlan), who has now wiped his hands clean of his past life and lets Kate take care of their daughter. We learn that Claire has been in and out of rehab, and promises to her mother that she is finally clean, when the two reunite for the first time in a long time.
Things seem to be going relatively well, until, one night, Claire arrives at Kate’s door covered in blood, and demands that she helps her out. I won’t reveal more specific detail, as Pearce and screenwriter Brad Inglesby essentially hope that you watch this movie without having seen a piece of footage or know the bare minimum. This is a thriller which thrives on the audience not knowing what will come next, for its reveals to act like a shock to the system, especially its final needle-drop that supposedly ties the entire story together. The only problem is that, at every turn, Pearce and Inglesby make some of the most ridiculous screenwriting decisions that constantly shift the movie from point of interest to the next, without much thought behind the machinations of its story.
It starts out as a quiet, almost poetic drama in whichKate still reels from the loss of her wife (the reason for the divorce with Richard was her coming out) and has trouble keeping her ranch afloat. When Claire arrives in the picture, the movie becomes something else entirely, one that feels like a reconnection picture, as Kate attempts to help her daughter out in getting back on her feet, until Jackie (Domhnall Gleeson) comes into the picture, and the movie once again shifts gears. It’s at that point where it began to lose my grip, particularly during a confrontation between Kate and Claire, with Sweeney being especially terrible in moments of raw dramatic power.
We’re supposed to fear for Kate’s life, at the grasp of Claire, who is still clearly using, but each occasion of terror, where Jed Kurzel’s music creates bludgeoning impact, doesn’t feel at all tangible, either through Sweeney trying way too hard to sell strong emotions that don’t need to be exaggerated this way, or with a defenselessMoore having little to no chemistry with the actress playing her daughter. It doesn’t work, and the movie sadly never recovers from that scene, since most of the emotional beats that follow are built around it.
Moore does try her best on several occasions, especially when pitted against Gleeson’s Jackie, but he gives one of the worst performances of his career. It creates a wobbly sense of tension when one veteran actor is terrific, or at least tries to imbue her thinly written character with as much humanity and emotional attachment as possible, while the other completely misunderstands the assignment, even during the final scene, where all is revealed. None of it works, and very little actively feels earned.
The only saving grace the film offers in its 104-minute runtime is fleeting appearances from Fiona Shaw, as Les, one of Kate’s closest friends. Whenever the two are paired together, the film lights up, especially during Shaw’s perfect delivery of “Grief: There is no roadmap for that shit.” She brings a much-needed emotional anchor for a movie that’s in desperate need of something, anything, for the audience to cling to. Their relationship works, and even though Shaw sparsely appears, her presence is always most welcome.
When Echo Valley eventually culminates in a scene where the audience realizes they were tricked and everything is revealed, every scene of importance we saw before feels pitifully unearned, as if all the narrative and thematic threads Pearce wanted to present led to nowhere intriguing. Cinematographer Benjamin Kračun certainly tries to develop an arresting visual language for the movie, but when the story never engages its audience to a real point of interest, most of what we get is a series of striking images with little to no meaning while many A-list actors deliver some of the flimsiest performances of her career.
Thank God for Fiona Shaw, because if it weren’t for her, I would’ve turned it off ages ago.
On this episode, JD and Brendan discuss Carson Lund’s simple, but beautiful sports film Eephus! We had heard really good things about this film, but there’s nothing that could have prepared us for the specific way that it hit us. There’s something so singular about it and we did our best to articulate how it impacted us as a result.
Review: Eephus (4:00) Director: Carson Lund Writer: Michael Basta, Nate Fisher, Carson Lund Stars: Keith William Richards, Frederick Wiseman, Bill “Spaceman” Lee
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