Friday, March 29, 2024
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Oscars 2024: A Reaction

Another Oscars has come and gone. Many laughs and many tears as well as a beautiful moment of an entire room of professionals collectively deciding Jimmy Kimmel has overstayed his welcome. He won us over with a setup and lost us with a disappointing punchline. It was a bit of whiplash as Kimmel received boos at his shot at SAG president Fran Drescher, while then getting cheers for talking about solidarity between the unions. Maybe the Academy should give no host a shot again or find writers who have better knowledge of movies rather than just knowledge of mistakes celebrities have made in the past. It was utterly painful to watch as Kimmel couldn’t land his joke and kept needling Robert Downey Jr. about his past behavior.

In spite of Kimmel’s bland attempts and uncomfortable sexual harassment of Ryan Gosling, the show was pretty enjoyable. Many presenter jokes didn’t land, but were still charming, like Octavia Spencer and Melissa McCarthy’s double act. There was also the Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny Devito bit. It was GREAT, especially as they brought in Michael Keaton, who deliciously mugged at the two actors who have played Batman villains. Though when the two men got to the actual presentation, they lost some steam and had a hard time getting it back. 

The best of the best were those fully committed to their bit and transitioned seamlessly to the presentation. John Cena walked out naked to present the award for Best Costumes. Kate McKinnon and America Ferrera’s presentation for the Documentary categories included a terrific bit about Jurassic Park that included a very game Steven Speilberg. John Mulaney pontificated on the strange rules of ghost baseball before he presented Best Sound. Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt squashed the Barbenheimer beef while stealthily promoting their upcoming movie The Fall Guy, about a stuntman in the wrong place at the wrong time, with a clip package of excellent stunt work from the year.

This year also brought back a sweet presentation of five past winners presenting each of the acting awards. Some of the pairs of presenter and nominee were incredibly poignant, others made the best of their very wordy material that some of them had a hard time getting through. A terrific highlight was Sam Rockwell presenting to Robert Downey, Jr. with Downey’s famous line from Tropic Thunder, his last nomination, about not dropping character until the DVD commentary. Nicolas Cage was an odd choice for Paul Giamatti, but like all the others he was given a perfect connection to his gonzo method with Giamatti’s willingness to wear a contact that would mimic a lazy eye.

It’s hard to pick a winner’s speech to highlight as most of them were funny, humane, and absolutely tear jerking. Da’Vine Joy Randolph brought tears to us all and a camera even caught a solitary tear coming down Paul Giamatti’s cheek. Randolph also started the running joke of the night of thanking a publicist. Cord Jefferson gave the rallying cry to studios that one $200 million dollar movie is the same risk as 20 $10 million movies, encouraging them to take more chances. Documentary feature winner Mstyslav Chernov impactfully reminded us that he wishes his feature didn’t exist as it chronicles the ongoing suffering of the people of Ukraine in their struggle against Russian aggression. Johnathan Glazer in his acceptance of the award for International Feature Film gave a stirring address about the parallels of complacency with atrocity in his film, The Zone of Interest, and what is occurring in Gaza as the Israeli military attempts retribution for the terrorist action perpetuated by the Hamas group on October 7th.

The speech that surprised and delighted us all, even herself, was from Emma Stone. After she won her second career Oscar in the highly competitive Best Actress race, she began with a little self-deprecation about her broken zipper and a quick zinger that it obviously happened during “I’m Just Ken.” She then gave us the incredible awww of describing how much she loves her daughter. It’s this kind of spontaneous, genuine moment that makes the Oscars worth watching.

That and they can still pull off a truly spectacular scripted moment. Love Barbie, hate Barbie, indifferent toward Barbie, it can’t be denied that the performance of “I’m Just Ken” was all killer and no filler. It brought the house down if not only for an A-list, nominated actor putting his whole self into his performance, but also bringing in surprise after surprise. Kens from the film! Mark Ronson rocking a pink shirt and guitar! Audience participation! SLASH SHREDDING HIS AX!! The nominated songs this year were an eclectic bunch, the performances were well done by all and this was just the amazing capper to those achievements.

After last year’s love fest for Everything Everywhere All at Once and this year’s avalanche for Oppenheimer, it seems as though we are trending away from the idea that in the expanded Best Picture era, every nominee in the category should go home with something. Past Lives, Maestro, and Killers of the Flower Moon all went home empty handed. Tragically, this isn’t the first time a Martin Scorsese film has blanked on Oscar night after early laurels in fall, remember The Irishman? It’s a trend that has been seen to varying degrees in the past and in a year as lauded as 2023 has been, it is a bit surprising to see two films dominate as much as Oppenheimer and Poor Things did. It certainly harkens back to twenty years prior when presenters had to make it through saying, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King 11 times in one night.

All in all, a great spectacle as the Oscars should be and with the new early start, long, but not overwhelming. Seriously, though, Academy, ditch Jimmy Kimmel. He’s had his chance. Get someone new, someone old, or no one at all. 

Chasing the Gold: 2024 Oscars Reactions

This week on Chasing the Gold, Shadan Larki and Erica Richards give their thoughts on the 96th Academy Awards! It was an eventful evening with some incredible winners and musical performances. There’s so much to talk about and we get into everything that made this year’s Oscars a memorable one.

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!

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Chasing the Gold – 2024 Oscars Reactions

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Movie Review: ‘The Book of Solutions’ is Unfiltered Gondry


Director: Michel Gondry
Writer: Michel Gondry
Stars: Pierre Niney, Blanche Gardin, Françoise Lebrun

Synopsis: Follows a man, a director who tries to vanquish his demons, which are oppressing his creativity.


Ever wanted to spend 102 minutes living inside Michel Gondry’s unfiltered mind? No? Then immediately avoid The Book of Solutions. If your answer is even a tentative yes, going through a fictionalized version of the director’s post Mood Indigo breakdown is still a lot to take in. If you are on the (fantastically inspired inventor) Gondry train already, The Book of Solutions is high-wire absurdity, and you’ll enjoy the constantly derailing ride.

Marc Becker (Pierre Niney) is a director presenting his unfinished film to his financiers. His working partner is doing what he can to run interference between Marc’s increasingly nebulous film (which will come together in the yet to be filmed fifth act) and the financiers who just want to take what there is and cut it into “something.” Marc refuses to relinquish his film and enacts an immediate heist along with his editor, Charlotte (Blanche Gardin) and producer Sylvia (Frankie Wallach) with some quick moves by the intern Gabrielle (Camilla Rutherford) to take all the hard drives to his Aunt’s house where they will finish the film in secret.

Marc is clearly having an extended nervous breakdown. His loving Aunt Denise (Françoise Lebrun and partially based on Gondry’s own aunt Suzette) takes in Marc and his team and patiently deals with his personality peccadilloes which have been exacerbated by his decision to suddenly cease taking his psychiatric medication. Marc is off the charts; his internal narration is almost consistently at odds with that is happening on screen. He’s selfish, temperamental, paranoid, anxious, and an egomaniac. He’s also avoiding actually finishing or even looking at the film. 

For all the farcicality, and there is more than most films could deal with even Gondry’s own, there is the recognition that any artist who wants control of whatever they are making has to fight not only the material roadblocks of the process, but also the creative roadblocks. What if the film just isn’t any good? What if the film is genius but can only be so if there is proper collaboration? What if there are too many ideas or worse, too few? You can’t just make something and assume people will show up — a metaphor Gondry uses with Marc’s animated film about a fox attempting to open a hair salon.

Every possible genre gets squeezed in somewhere. Imagined gangster film, a smidgen of science fiction, obviously some slapstick humor, a will they/won’t they romance, paranoid imaginings, some odd psychosexual stuff, angry office equipment, and whatever is happening in Marc’s seemingly never to be completed magnum opus, ‘Anyone, Everyone.’ Marc also somehow ends up as a real estate owner, the interim mayor of the town in the Cévennes where he grew up with his much beloved aunt. And a hairdresser for a day. Because of course he does.

There is method in Gondry’s madness. Through Niney’s hyper-energetic performance we see an astounding set piece in which he conducts an orchestra with no score — they have to play based solely on his body movements. His “Book of Solutions” a book of rules he keeps making and breaking to facilitate the perfect piece of art does contain some wisdom — although Marc can barely tie his own shoelaces. He spends two days observing a bug. Days making an editing suite for Charlotte which is devised from an old truck. He has Denise star in her own comedy cooking show. Eventually he even gets Sting to play on the soundtrack to the film (Marc tells Sting how to play and gets away with it). He observes the ‘second gear’ rule while driving just to annoy people. He constantly wakes Sylvia up with new and urgent requests. He takes a dislike to one of the crew, Carlos (Mourad Boudaoud) for coughing too often. He makes pinhole cameras out of leaves, cuts down tree branches which he happens to be sitting on… he is unbearable but endlessly charming too.

Once Marc moves back to Paris after the film is somewhat abandoned (but rescued by Charlotte and Sylvia) he becomes even worse than he was in the Cévennes. The depression which follows the creative mania sets in and he quietly rejects everyone who reaches out to him, including Denise. Yet he finds a kindred spirit in his dream girl Gabrielle (with whom he had a fantastical relationship with earlier in the film). Can two oddballs who recognize each other be the solution? Is his no longer completely autonomous ‘Anyone, Everyone’ a film he will finally watch?

Explaining the plot of The Book of Solutions is akin to using skywriting in a foreign language on a cloudy day. You might see part of it, but just as you think you’ve got a handle on it, it vanishes. The themes are key. Marc’s love for Denise (a stand in for Gondry’s own aunt, Suzette) without whom he would not have his most important audience. Overcompensation because artistic vision has been “vandalized” before. The terror of facing the work which has been done. And recognition that one can be a “genius” and a “arsehole director” simultaneously and you can only get away with it for as long as you are giving something to the world. Marc’s real gift has nothing to do with the movie. One of the gifts he contemplates proffering is, shall we say, not something anyone wants.

Michel Gondry made in conjunction with Charlie Kaufman a film so beloved that it propelled him to a kind of fame he could never again live up to. Despite being involved with dozens of smaller projects, music videos, animations, television series — Gondry is always The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind guy. The Book of Solutions finds Gondry reflecting on his own career — parts are so self-referential and metatextual they require a non-fictional Gondry Bible.

Michel Gondry has thrown everything at the wall and seemingly randomly lets the audience decide what sticks — which is the most apt way of describing a career which includes the Seth Rogen starring The Green Hornet next to The Science of Sleep. Or The We and the I next to Human Nature. Gondry after all these years is still figuring out his formula, and The Book of Solutions might just be the most fun you will have trying to unlock his puzzle box mind.

Grade: B-

Interview: Director of ‘Silver Haze’ Sacha Polak

Nadine Whitney: Silver Haze is your second collaboration with Vicky Knight after Dirty God your English language debut. It was something you were working on for a long time before you met Vicky. For her it was an essential part of healing from trauma and being perceived as monstrous. The film also helped to usher in significant change in the British Film Industry and created a long overdue discussion of how people with scars, disabilities, and noticeable facial differences are used in media. Silver Haze again stars Vicky. In this film you are partially drawing on her own life experience with the fire which caused her burns as a child. You also reference her work in healthcare and acknowledge her queerness. The film is filled with damaged and damaging people. Yet it also has a core sensibility of forgiveness and moving on from the thing you believe defined you. Can you tell me a little about the process of working with Vicky and how you collaborated with her to speak a kind of truth about her life?

Sacha Polak: This film was written for her and loosely based on her own life stories. After Dirty God, Vicky and I traveled all over the world to promote the film. I was so touched in the way Vicky spoke to people telling them her life story and comforting them. We had a lot of tears in the audience and Vicky was so powerful. This was one of the reasons why I wanted to make another film with her. 

After I wrote the script we improvised around the scenes. For me it was important that we have lots of time to find honest performances but also playfulness and humor. 

In the there is also a lot of anger and people hurt each other, it’s a harsh world. I hope the characters have both sides though. Franky’s mother Jenn is traumatized and there is choice there between moving on or being stuck in the past. Franky in the end chooses to move on. 

NW: Through Florence, Franky manages to escape not only the heteronormativity and violence of her East End community but meets Alice and Jack in Southend which seems like a magical place for her. For a while Franky is bewitched by Florence and the kindness Alice shows her. For the first time in years someone is taking care of her instead of her carrying the weight of others. How did you fashion the golden moments with Florence, Alice, and Jack?

SP: Franky falls in love with Florence. Although it is her first romance it is overshadowed by her breaking up with her family. She comes to Southend, a place full of kindness. Something she is not used to at all. With Angela I spoke a lot about making Alice human, not an angel. But somebody who does take care of Franky who was taking care of everyone in her work, her family and Florence. I spoke a lot about how it feels like to fall in love for the first time with both Esmé and Vicky. 

NW: Without spoiling too much of the film, Florence is more than mercurial. She’s mentally ill. She thinks herself an evil person. Yet Florence can no more control her actions than Jack can control his neurodivergence. Nor Alice stop the cancer which is killing her. You give Florence a space of grace despite her behaviour and eventual turn on Franky. How important was it to you to show that Florence despite her cruelty, is also living with internal scars which she can’t keep hidden?

SP: Silver Haze is a love story, and it deals with trauma. In the beginning of the film Florence doesn’t want to live anymore. She has already given up. Franky is a fighter; she solves everything with fighting. This is why their relationship can’t work. Florence does love Franky but doesn’t love herself. 

NW: Silver Haze is about the importance of letting go of rage. Franky’s mother, Jenn can’t let go of the fire because it wasn’t even so much the moment when she almost lost a child, it was the moment she felt betrayed by her husband and best friend. Leah feels a quiet guilt because she was supposed to be in the pub that night. Franky needs to know how it happened because she was a small child at the time and no one’s stories align.

In letting go of her rage, especially against the people she was told consistently were responsible, she has a chance to heal. She also has the opportunity to extend her kindness to people who deserve it. Her found family, and Leah who has somehow found herself in an unusual manner. Can you tell me a little about building the process of self liberation for Franky and Leah?

SP: Franky and Leah have been taught to constantly fight. I believe that rage is not a way to overcome trauma. Franky has a chance to heal and finds love and warmth in Alice and Jack even though she loses Florence in the process. Finding a family even though it’s not blood resonates with me since both my parents have passed away. 

NW: Your work has been compared to Ken Loach and early Andrea Arnold. It is social realism, yet it is never exploiting the people it is depicting. How do you create the balance between realism, authenticity, and avoiding poverty cliches?

SP: It was very important that this film would never be “poverty porn” as they call it. That it would be a film full of light and love and humor. Because this is how I see Vicky and her family. 

NW: Your cast is excellent. Vicky was not a professional actor before she met you. Leah, played by Charlotte Knight is Vicky’s real-life sister. Archie Brigden as Jack was not a professional actor. The most experienced cast members you have on the film are Angela Bruce and Esmé Creed-Miles who grew up around the film industry. How do you collaborate with emerging talents. How much of the script do you give to them to improvise?

Thank you. It was helpful that I knew Vicky and Charlotte before from working with Vicky on Dirty God. So, Charlotte had seen the process with her elder sister. We spoke about what this film would be about. Which scenes were important to me to keep as written and what would be the scenes to play around with. We shot a lot in Dagenham where they both lived. Esme I also knew from the tv show Hanna I directed. Vicky and Esme immediately hit it off. For me it is important that the actors feel safe, and they trust me and each other. That there is space to try things. Working with Archie was especially tricky for me because he is autistic, and I found out that I need to be very precise in how I direct him. It was confronting for me to find out how sloppy I am with words. Also, he found it important that the character of Jack would not be a victim and would be portrayed in a way that would be respectful to people with autism.

Podcast Review: Spaceman

On this episode, JD is joined by guest Jacob Throneberry to discuss the Johan Renck film Spaceman, starring Adam Sandler and Carey Mulligan! As we talk about in the discussion, it might not all work, but it’s the kind of sci-fi we tend to like and who doesn’t love dramatic Adam Sandler?

Review: Spaceman (4:00)
Director: Johan Renck
Writers: Colby Day
Stars: Adam Sandler, Carey Mulligan, Paul Dano

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InSession Film Podcast – Spaceman

Podcast Review: Dune: Part Two

On this episode, JD and Brendan discuss Denis Villeneuve’s latest epic in Dune: Part Two, starring Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya! We are big fans of the first Dune, and have been anticipating this film for quite some time. There’s much to discuss here and we had a great time delving into everything that makes Dune: Part Two as massive as it is.

Review: Dune: Part Two (4:00)
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Writers: Denis Villeneuve, Jon Spaihts
Stars: Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Josh Brolin, Austin Butler

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InSession Film Podcast – Dune: Part Two

Movie Review: ‘Lovely, Dark, and Deep’ is a Horrifying Forest of Terrors


Director: Teresa Sutherland
Writer: Teresa Sutherland
Stars: Georgina Campbell, Nick Blood, Wai Ching Ho

Synopsis: Lennon, a new back-country ranger, travels alone through the dangerous wilderness, hoping to uncover the origins of a tragedy that has haunted her since she was a child.


The first mistake Robert Frost made when he approached the infamous “two roads diverged in a yellow wood” was entering the woods in the first place. Nothing good happens in the woods. Those who disagree are either not of this world or superior beings to us normies. John Muir is one of those people; the naturalist author, who created the National Parks System, wrote a great deal about the beauty of nature and its mysteries. He once wrote, “And into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul.”

That passage, which appears at the beginning of Teresa Sutherland’s directorial debut, Lovely, Dark, and Deep, is a common misquote — he actually wrote, “And into the forest I go, to lose myself and find my soul.” But the version Sutherland cites feels more fitting for a horror film these days, particularly one where the main character experiences most of their terror not just in the forest, but because of the forest. It might as well read, “And into the forest I go, to eventually die.”

Which isn’t quite how things unfold for Lennon (Barbarian’s Georgina Campbell), but just as well! We first meet our heroine, a newly-minted park ranger with a haunted past (Indie Horror Mad Libs, anyone?), as she drives to work in the dark, listening to a radio broadcast about missing persons, specifically those who have gone missing in the woods. Along the way, Lennon comes to a stop at the sight of a black deer in the middle of the road. It stares into her soul; she stares back. But her attentive gaze is interrupted by a screeching sound on the A.M. dial. She switches it off, exhales, and when she looks up, the deer is gone.

It’s a familiar opening sequence — a character, alone in a dark setting, is harshly disturbed by a frightening creature/object that doubles as a foreboding omen. Yet just because something is familiar doesn’t make it cheap. What follows may feel repetitive and safe at times, but this set piece lays the groundwork for a competent film about how we respond when old wounds reopen. 

Lovely, Dark, and Deep delivers beats you’ve seen before, but in distinctive ways. Deer, for instance, pop up in horror films all the time — they represent innocence and protection, often presenting themselves to others if you’ve been hurt and your heart needs tending, which makes the dead deer we see at the start of Jordan Peele’s Get Out all the more heartbreaking. But have you ever seen a deer with smoky, blackened fur? You’ve seen a deer in headlights before, but have you ever seen a character be more fearful of the deer than vice versa? 

In short, what follows is The Cabin in the Woods if the cabin was the woods, an imbalanced yet absorbing descent into madness and terror through the eyes of a tortured vessel. As has become a staple in the genre, the seeds of this terror were planted long ago: When Lennon was a child, her sister went missing in the woods, a loss she feels responsible for. Naturally, it’s what led her to becoming a park ranger: she who was once responsible for one person in the wilderness must now be responsible for all of its visitors. 

This sort of narrative decision does feel rather on the nose — no longer is it one’s fear that is the mind-killer in horror films, but one’s trauma — yet it doesn’t matter nearly as much as it otherwise might thanks to Campbell’s layered performance. The ascendant Scream Queen draws more out of her character than one imagines Lennon could have been in lesser hands. While Barbarian required Campbell to access terror on full-tilt, Lovely, Dark, and Deep sees her mining authentic hope out of a hopeless scenario. To instill even the slightest shred of optimism in an audience well aware that the backdrop to her terror is a vast, dangerous national park essentially defies the impossible. 

Not as impossible, yet still an impressive feat, is the ability to render real scares in broad daylight. And though Sutherland’s film does so with sharp orchestral strums and screams from those suffering, both common cues in the genre, it’s commendable that it even tries. Midsommar this is not, particularly because Lovely, Dark, and Deep does still spend a great deal of its time in the dark. Ari Aster’s second film did what no film had done before, drawing discomfort and dread out of increasingly bright landscapes littered with inviting bursts of color that made up its central Swedish cult’s design palette. 

But Lovely, Dark, and Deep still manages to create something fresh, tactfully keeping its reliance on recognizable, cult-adjacent themes that give a heftier weight to its chills to a reasonable minimum. What matters more to Sutherland is what we struggle to live with whether the lights are bright or have gone out completely, and how it impacts our mindset, for better or worse. In a horror film forest full of trauma-laden trees toppling silently, this is the rare sort that makes a sound.

Grade: B

From Poverty Row To Big Player: The First Years Of Columbia Pictures

2024 marks the centennial of Columbia Pictures, the studio behind the Spider-Man franchise, Ghostbusters, The Bridge On The River Kwai, On The Waterfront, The Social Network, and Taxi Driver; among many other films and franchises. Like the rest of the major studios that have been around since the silent era, Columbia had its humble beginnings, but they were looking up at the big names for a while and not a serious threat. Louis B. Meyer referred to Columbia as Siberia to send actors to when being leased to the studio. However, three people, especially the work of one controversial man, would lead Columbia to the top of Hollywood’s elite and stay there while others would fall. 

Poverty Row Startups 

Columbia’s origins go back to 1918 when brothers Harry and Jack Cohn signed, with Joe Brandt, a deal to start their own studio, the Cohn-Brandt-Cohn (CBC) Film Sales Corporation. The three were part of Independent Moving Studios under Carl Laemmele, who would later turn it into Universal Pictures. With just $5000 in 2022 money ($250 in 1918) as capital, Brandt was the president of CBC, sales, marketing; distribution was run by Jack Cohn in New York City, while Harry Cohn ran production in California where all the studios were moving to. They would move entirely to Hollywood in 1922, renting a location on a street nicknamed “Poverty Row” because of the other B-studios located there.

Oddly, the studio would not release their first movie until 1922 with the melodrama More To Be Pitied Than Scorned. It was a success and permitted them to produce other films, leading the major studios to joke that CBC stood for “Corned Beef and Cabbage.” Now in the film exchange business, the company was reorganized and renamed Columbia Pictures Corporation after the image of the woman with the same name who is described as the personification of America. The studio would move out of Poverty Row and be part of the Little Three with Universal and United Artists, a mid-major tier behind the big names: Paramount, Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), and Radio-Keith-Orpheum, or RKO (the only one which is now completely defunct). 

Their Golden Ticket

Columbia did not control movie theaters and didn’t have the same resources as the Big Five studios did to expand their influence. One of the leaders of their push for bigger recognition came from a director who had worked with Harry Cohn a decade earlier. Frank Capra had done multiple jobs under Cohn before transitioning to full-time director at rival First National Studios before creative differences caused him to leave and join the upstart Columbia. His hiring came when sound began in motion pictures and Capra, who had an engineering background, was a full supporter of this innovation. Capra convinced Columbia to invest completely while the other studios were reluctant to transition because they saw “talkies’ ‘ as a fad.

His first film for Columbia with sound was 1928’s Submarine, followed by 1929’s The Younger Generation. Harry Cohn called this period onward until 1939 the start of Columbia’s string of high quality films, as well as being consistently profitable at the box office. The film that put Capra over the top, as well as Columbia, would be the screwball comedy It Happened One Night. It would be the first film to win the Big Five Oscars – Picture, Director, Lead Actor (Clark Gable), Lead Actress (Claudette Colbert), and Screenplay. Capra’s following films for the studio would also be critically acclaimed, including Mr. Deeds Goes To Town, You Can’t Take It With You, and Mr. Smith Goes To Washington.  

Meanwhile, the Cohn brothers had a volatile relationship in managing the studio, so much that Joe Brandt chose to retire from the movie industry and sold his shares to Harry, who became President of Columbia and would be until his death in 1958. Harry would cement his status with a very autocratic style, maintaining his position as production manager with input in every part of every production. It is also known that Harry had organized crime connections to keep their signed actors in line, hired other family members in major posts within the studio, and was notorious for his “casting couch” methods with new female actresses. Yet, Cohn struggled those first years to get rid of the stigma of being a low-tier studio as they could not afford to keep their stars, so they went to other studios to lease actors to star in their pictures. 

No Longer In Poverty

When It Happened One Night swept the 1934 Oscars, Columbia gained the right to hold major studio status and Cohn got to rub shoulders with other movie moguls. Theaters that rejected signing Columbia releases now openly showed their films; the Paramount decree of 1948 ended studio ownership of movie theaters and helped Columbia be on complete equal footing with other studios. The commercial success of Capra’s films allowed them to sign stars for longer term, including Jean Arthur, Cary Grant, Rita Hayworth, and The Three Stooges. Even then, Harry Cohn carefully allocated budgets and recycled set pieces to keep overall costs down and avoid financial losses compared to other studios.

Their most recognized logo, Columbia herself standing on a pedestal lifting a torch, was first shown in 1936 and would change twice, first in 1976, and then in 1993 which is how it remains today. By 1950, the studio had toppled RKO as being part of the Big Five, and with the establishment of Screen Gems for television production, Columbia cemented their place permanently. Many names before the invention of sound fell because they did not adapt to it and Columbia played smart with their finances to prevent the pitfalls of going under. It is this foundation that the studio has worked on to be relevant and successful 100 years later. 

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Women InSession: 1989 Best Picture Analysis

This week on Women InSession, in the spirit of the Oscars, we take a look at the 1989 Best Picture nominees and discuss why it was such a bizarre Academy Awards! Driving Miss Daisy has not held up since winning the Oscar, but the entire Best Picture lineup is interesting to talk about and we spend some good with it.

Panel: Kristin Battestella, Zita Short, Amy Thomasson

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!

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Women InSession – Episode 75

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Episode 575: Top 5 Sci-Fi Movies of the 21st Century

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This week on the InSession Film Podcast, using Dune: Part Two as inspiration, we talk about our Top 5 sci-fi movies of the 21st century thus far! Plus, a few thoughts on Dune‘s opening box office numbers and the Oscars doing something really fun for the ceremony this year.

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!

– Dune Box Office (5:45)
Last year we spent a good chunk of time talking about the importance of Barbenheimer’s success at the box office, so we wanted to touch quickly on why Dune: Part Two‘s opening weekend success is a vital sign for optimism. It was likely destined to do well, but still, there are great things to take away from its initial release numbers.

– Oscars Ceremony (20:32)
It was recently announced that the Oscars will bring back the idea of having previous acting winners announce the nominees at this year’s Academy Awards, which is really exciting. We talk about why that’s a great thing and hopefully it’s something they maintain going forward. 


RELATED: Listen to Episode 516 of the InSession Film Podcast where we discussed our Top 10 Movies of 2023!


– Top 5 Sci-Fi Movies of 21st Century (44:25)
While we’ve done segmented sci-fi lists before on the show, somehow we’ve never done a broad Top 5 Sci-Fi Movies list. It seems like low-hanging fruit and yet it’s avoided us all these years. This may not be the broadest range, but it’s the widest we’ve tackled yet, and boy was it a lot of fun. Some of these movies are among our very favorite movies, and you never tire of talking about them. How do our lists compare to yours?

– Music
To the Stars – Max Richter
In the World of My Breath Aska Matsumiya

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InSession Film Podcast – Episode 575

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Favorite Sci-Fi Movies

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Movie Review: ‘One Life’ is a Competent, By the Numbers Biopic


Director: James Hawes
Writers: Lucinda Coxon, Nick Drake, Barbara Winton
Stars: Anthony Hopkins, Lena Olin, Johnny Flynn

Synopsis: Sir Nicholas ‘Nicky’ Winton, a young London broker who, in the months leading up to World War II, rescued over 600 children from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia.


Sir Nicholas Winton was, for many years, one of the “unsung heroes” of World War Two. Dubbed the “British Schindler,” Winton and his associates managed to rescue 669 children who ended up in Prague after The Munich Agreement ceded Sudetenland to Hitler in 1938. Bohemia’s ethnic, political, and religious diversity made it a prime candidate for the Nazi first putsch. With a large amount of Jewish and Roma people inhabiting the area as well as Socialist intellectuals; the Third Reich used it as a testing ground before the invasion of Poland.

Director James Hawes takes from Barbara Winton’s biography of her father, Winton’s own scrapbooks and stories, and the now famous episodes of ‘That’s Life!’ aired in 1988 to build his by-the-numbers biopic. The aim is not so much to adequately explain the horror of the beginnings of the Holocaust; something most people should be more than familiar with, but to highlight how a few “ordinary people” decided to step up and do what they considered to be the right thing. Unbidden by any government, Nicholas Winton was an educated stockbroker from an immigrant family, who decided he must do whatever he could to assist those in need.

Hawes begins the film in 1987. Nicky Winton (Anthony Hopkins) is still tirelessly working collecting money for charitable causes. His wife, Grete (Lena Olin) is patient but bemused by Nicky’s drive to keep making a humanitarian difference. They are about to become grandparents and Grete just wants Nicky to start letting go of the past so he can embrace the future of new life joining the family.

Grete decides she will spend some time with their pregnant daughter Barbara (Ffion Jolly) and begs Nicky to start making space. There are boxes upon boxes in their Maidenhead shire home. Nicky reluctantly agrees to declutter; but there is a briefcase he can’t let go of. The briefcase filled with information about the Kindertransport scheme he was involved with from 1938 to 1939. Before Grete gets goes to spend time with Barbara, she says to Nicky, “Don’t let yourself get the way you get.”

The way Nicky “gets” is haunted that he failed to save as many children as he could. Hopkins plays Winton as somewhere between mournful, annoyed, uncommunicative, yet still pushing for people to know what happened. He doesn’t want the credit, but people should not forget. He’s haunted by the Holocaust. Nicky Winton is also the easy focus for the British Savior narrative, because he was born in England to Russian and German Jewish parents. His parents converted to Church of England and became prosperous. Nicky worked as a stockbroker, became a left-wing agnostic, and somehow represented all that is “right and proper” within Britain.

Hawes takes the audience back to 1938 and the Wintons’ (recently changed from Wertheim after having to deal with the xenophobia of World War One) well appointed Hampstead apartment. Babi Winton (Helena Bonham-Carter) is bemoaning the fact that young Nicky (Johnny Flynn) has decided he will go to Czechoslovakia despite the growing troubles there. It was supposed to be a skiing trip with his friend Martin Blake, but instead Nicholas volunteers to help a group of people trying to keep the Sudenten alive through a harsh winter and the incoming Nazi takeover of Prague and eventual border closures.

Winton meets up with Doreen Warriner (Romola Garai in serious no-nonsense mode), the somewhat impetuous but passionate Trevor Chadwick (Alex Sharp) and camp liaison Hana Hejdukova (Juliana Moska). Doreen’s operation, The British Committee for Refugees, from Czechoslovakia is running on donations and fumes. Doreen’s primary objective is to get political refugees and intellectuals out, but Winton insists that the children are the most vulnerable and must be prioritized.

Hawes directs Nicky in the freezing makeshift camps very well. He spends just enough time on the faces of the children to make his point — or particularly to inform the audience how Winton came to desperately want to protect the children. In reality, Winton was only in Prague for three weeks. But during that time the film posits he was the man who ensured the Prague Kindertransport happened. Meeting with a skeptical Rabbi (Samuel Finzi) who asks, “How will you ensure they maintain their heritage?” Winton’s answer is enough to convince him to advocate for the transport. The Rabbi warns Nicky, “Don’t start what you cannot finish.”

While Flynn gives an empathetic and adequate performance as the younger Winton, he is very much outclassed by Bonham-Carter as Babi Winton. It is Babi who uses the rhetoric of the “British people being morally upstanding” to guilt bureaucrats, bankers, Rotary Members, Ladies who Lunch, Church of England clergy, Sports clubs, and others to get involved. Babi’s “I am British, thank you very much,” attitude serves as one of the few acknowledgements of the still prevalent xenophobia in British society at the time. There are no Oswald Mosley types in the background (perhaps the film would be a little less cloying if there were). Hawes isn’t doing anything particularly complicated with the social attitude. Babi sees one letter which comes in with the donations asking, “Why are you bringing the dirty Jews here?” which she throws on the fire.

Lack of complication seems to be what the film is aiming for. The frantic race to get the children out of Prague doesn’t quite feel as urgent as it should because Hawes is more concerned with talking about the beginning of the Holocaust without showing the audience anything profoundly distressing. It is sad, and in hindsight tragic, but more melodramatic than filled with terror. What Hana, Doreen, and Trevor are doing is consistently interrupted by the older Nicky’s poring over pictures of the ones he lost and his extended guilt. 

One Life is designed to reach the endpoint which is the now famous BBC segments hosted by Esther Rantzen (Samantha Spiro). To get to where Anthony Hopkins starts weeping and the audience is filled with the children he helped place, including Vera Diamontova Gissing (Frantiska Polakova and Henrietta Garden) who he discussed skiing and swimming with when she was a child. Lady Milena Grenfell-Baines who is now a member of the aristocracy. Hanuš Šnábl who returned to Prague in 1945 but eventually permanently moved to Britain as a journalist.

Anthony Hopkins is, of course, giving an excellent performance in a film which is designed to elicit some audience sniffles when he cries, but, like Winton himself, doesn’t want to really discuss what happened after that last train didn’t make it. Hopkins’ Winton is the focus. “Nicky’s Children” and the bravery of the parents, children, and Doreen and Trevor serve as background.

“Save one life and you save them all,” is the maxim the elderly Martin Blake (Jonathan Pryce in what is essentially a cameo) reiterates to Nicky. Saving 669 lives was an extraordinary achievement, but it didn’t only belong to Winton, as he keeps telling people. It’s the tenacity of the younger Winton and the humility of the elder Winton around which Hawes builds the emotional core. 

One Life is a “feel good” Holocaust narrative — something which seems a tad manipulative. Of course, the world needs the “ordinary people” to step up in times of great injustice. But without Hopkins sincerely selling Nicky Winton, One Life is nothing much beyond a reverse engineering of the ‘That’s Life!’ segments. Competent but not excellent filmmaking.

Grade: B-

VIP Bonus Content: Stepping Outside Our Cinephile Bubble

On this episode, JD and Brendan discuss the importance of stepping outside the cinephile bubble and connecting with the general public on their own terms when it comes to movies! We often become consumed by the critic/film nerd community that we forget we’re the weird ones when it comes to film.

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Chasing the Gold: Final Oscars Predictions (2024)

This week on Chasing the Gold, we give our final Oscars predictions for the 96th Academy Awards! It’s been a long journey but we’re finally here. The Oscars are upon us and it’s time to make your final picks. We had a lot of fun parsing through this year’s categories and talking about who we think will win. Also, stay tuned for a fun announcement at the end of the show.

Panel: JD Duran, Shadan Larki, Erica Richards, Brian Rowe

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!

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Chasing the Gold – Final Oscar Predictions

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Movie Review: ‘Bring Him To Me’ Drifts in Circles


Director: Luke Sparke
Writer: Tom Evans
Stars: Barry Pepper, Jamie Costa, Sam Neill

Synopsis: Under orders from a ruthless crime boss, a getaway driver must battle his conscience and drive an unsuspecting crew member to an ambush execution. There is a long drive ahead.


The Australian crime thriller Bring Him To Me is one of those frustrating film experiences because it has all the makings of a good genre film. For one, Barry Pepper is an underrated actor who can bring enough grit and complexity to any role to make it interesting. The premise takes the viewer on a mystery that’s a long and winding road. However, the action scenes are stagnant, and a handful of supporting performances range from weak to over-the-top, and that does not even mention the head-scratching plot points and character decisions.

Tom Evans’s script follows Pepper’s character, “Driver,” a shadowy mob figure always sitting in the car while running, waiting for his team to be their getaway. The film alternates between two narratives—one is in the present day. Driver gets a message to bring an associate in for a meeting; that character is known as “Passenger” (played by Jamie Costa), and Driver is immediately worried.

That’s because his boss, Veronica (Rachel Griffiths, doing her best Jackie Weaver impression), puts a premium on punctuality. He also finds it strange to call everyone in at the last minute. However, when Veronica goes over their previous score, it is light. The implication is that Passenger is the one behind the missing money, and Driver knows the end game if he delivers the young man to the murderous mobster. In fact, his overreactions to the most straightforward questions and roadblocks are questionable, which makes the screenplay rather obvious.

That’s where Bring Him To Me should thrive, but rather, it meanders with action sequences and plot points that fail to camouflage the central mystery. The main character is a contradictory one. If he doesn’t care about his criminal peer and knows the rules of the game, why is he so anxious about delivering him to his boss? Why would he be putting himself in danger over someone dumb enough to steal from a prominent member of the criminal underworld? And why does the Passenger seem oblivious and nonchalant during the trip?

Director Luke Sparke (Red Billabong) needs to address these issues adequately. Bring Him To Me feels like a short film with bloated filler to create a feature film. I would equate this to a clause where you take out the middle section, but it wouldn’t affect the beginning or end. In between, you have a few listless car chase scenes that occur for the primary purpose of killing time. That involves a second local mobster, Frank (Sam Neill), and his son. The scene is laughable, with them being notified and chasing down the duo in a short time frame when the script noted how far their destination was to begin with.

Frank believes anything his intended targets have to say as he holds them at gunpoint. This is just an excuse for Pepper and Costa’s characters to create an opening that would typically never be available to them. To that point, Griffith’s Veronica lets one of her henchmen, whom she knows is guilty, go, which leads to another eye-rolling action scene driving around a parking lot when they could have just been taken right then and there by a half dozen armed men. Not to mention, she let them take the money. Oh, and why is one of the men walking around with no injuries from gunshot wounds from the robbery days later?

All of this could be a bit of B-movie bliss, but instead, Bring Him To Me has higher aspirations it simply cannot reach. Costa is too lightweight an actor to play a character with the needed depth and complexity to accomplish those desired heights. The villains are so underwritten that it forces Griffiths and Neill to play their roles as exaggerated cartoon figures because they are rather one-note. The only person who comes away clean is Pepper, who keeps the movie mildly engaging because of his strong presence and emotional range.

If you have seen enough crime thrillers, Bring Him To Me is the film equivalent of a road trip that goes nowhere but ends up where it started. 

Grade: D

Movie Review: ‘Club Zero’ Devours its Members


Director: Jessica Hausner
Writers: Jessica Hausner, Géraldine Bajard
Stars: Mia Wasikowska, Sidse Babett Knudsen, Amir El-Masry

Synopsis: A teacher takes a job at an elite school and forms a strong bond with five students – a relationship that eventually takes a dangerous turn.


Jessica Hausner distrusts every institution dedicated to “caregiving, comfort, and devotion.” Her targets have ranged from the Catholic Church and faith healing in Lourdes, the devouring service industry in Hotel, charismatic poet-philosophers in Amour Fou, nature, pharmaceuticals, and motherhood in Little Joe. Her first feature, Lovely Rita, was a violently nihilistic coming-of-age story. Rita is abused by her Catholic School peers. She deals with religious fervor at home with her overly devout mother. After unsuccessfully trying to seduce an older man, she turns her attention to a just pubescent boy — the only person who makes her feel special. Conceptually, Lovely Rita is a Rosetta Stone to unlock Hausner’s cinema of mistrust and anxiety.

Club Zero has Hausner home in on the exclusive private school: “good parents,” “bad parents,” and the abnegation of responsibility they have for their own actions and children. The school is for gifted students — but often their gifts are nebulous. It is prestigious and prestige is a business. It is run by an immaculately groomed woman, Miss Dorset (Sidse Babett Knudsen) who is catering specifically to the rich parents of the “sensitive children” — the next generation who will inherit whatever is theirs by dent of cultural and class endorsement.

When wealthy parents decide that clean eating should be a course offered on the curriculum, they prime their discontented teens to be seduced into a cult run by the enigmatic Miss Novak (Mia Wasikowska). She seeks out her targets carefully. At first, she introduces them to the idea that conscious eating is a remedy for consumerist wastefulness, that it is a solution to environmental destruction. Conscious eating is a form of self control which provides mental clarity. Disciplining the body will enhance physical agility. Radiant beauty is paired with a body no longer filled with toxins. All negative energy will be expelled on a cellular level.

Miss Novak identifies each of their needs. Ragna (Florence Barker) is the child of liberal bohemians (Lukas Turtur and Keeley Forsyth). They are both artists of some kind and also desperate to be the “cool parents.” Ragna is embittered because for all their doting, they are primarily self satisfied. Look what a good example they set with their communal largesse. With their artisan house, cursory questions, and nutrient rich menu, they believe the job of parenting Ragna is complete. Ragna is a competitive trampoliner who secretly fears she is ugly and overweight. Resentment hangs over her blue-streaked head of hair. 

Elsa (Ksenia Devriendt) is the school beauty and Queen Bee. She already has an eating disorder quietly encouraged by her lonely trophy wife mother (Elsa Zylberstein). Her father (Mathieu Demy) is a high-level finance man. He is the bullish bully who refuses to indulge Elsa’s or his wife’s behavior. He has his servants cook elaborate feasts and refuses to let either of the women go until they have eaten to his satisfaction. Greed is good. Pleasure is his just desserts. Elsa is a concert pianist in training. She already metaphorically and literally regurgitates the lessons both her parents have taught. Be perfect, pretty, and powerful.

Ben Benedict (Samuel D. Anderson) is an intellectual scholarship student. Of all the participants in Miss Novak’s class, he is the skeptic. He knows Miss Novak is using pseudoscience mixed with just enough objective evidence to promote her radically restricted diet. His modest background sets him apart from the beautiful people. Although he projects insouciance based on his high grades and academic performance, he has an unrequited crush on Elsa. He is also the roommate of Miss Novak’s most psychologically fragile student — Fred (Luke Barker).

Fred is training to be a classical dancer. He is lithe, fluid, and obsessed with his image. He needs to be seen. His white savior Ghana based NGO parents (Camilla Rutherford and Sam Hoare) have summarily dumped him as a boarding student. For reasons he can’t process he is rejected while they favor his much younger brother. Every attempt he makes to communicate with them is cut short. They barely feign interest in his progress and circumvent every request that he be able to visit them with weak excuses. “The climate is too much for him his delicate skin would burn,” or “It is not a good time to arrive during Seth’s development.”

Fred has a dance instructor who is trying to guide him. Yet, as soon as Miss Novak pays him motherly attention, he rejects him as a jealous gatekeeper who refuses to allow him to experience what he must to become an artiste. A simple pass to allow him to go to an Opera.

Finally, there is the environmental activist, Helen (Gwen Currant), whose parents think nothing of consuming fossil fuels as industrial manufacturers. They are antithetical to her stance as an eco-warrior.

With the exception of Ben’s unpretentious single mother (Amanda Lawrence), almost no one has done their due diligence in screening who comes into contact with their children. Miss Novak, a woman who prays to a mysterious icon for strength to carry out her purpose, was simply found via an internet advertisement. She used self-branded cleansing tea as a way into the school. Miss Novak is an invention of the cult which she serves or the cult of which she is the creator. She is an avatar of an omnipresent devourer – watching, waiting, and stalking. She is Lamia — one who preys on the children of others. Yet without the children, she is nothing.

Promising the children they will be purified, they instead develop Autophagia. Every step they take to become a member of Club Zero relies on primal rituals. Screams, shrieks, and vocal catharsis become a secret language. Common practices in tribal behavior, but also tactics used in indoctrination. There will be a cost, but the result is worth it.

Fred almost dies because he stopped taking his insulin. The arrival of his father at his bedside in the hospital is not because of genuine concern for his son, but because it is the expected gesture of a parent. It’s inconvenient. He once again entrusts Fred to the school; “Fred has always been a difficult child. I have to rely on you. Please take good care of our child.”

Hausner’s technical fingerprints are all over the work. An uncanny internally mid-century modern school with a queasy color palette. Bright yellow and royal purple clash against the clean modernity of Oxford’s Saint Catherine’s College (the key location standing in as the school). Choirs sing about being lifted up to something higher. The banners, statues, and medallions evoke a mixture of traditional pride and the aesthetics of dictatorial states. An elite school is already a battleground for supremacy. 

Similarly, whichever home space the audience encounters speaks to the privilege, or lack thereof, of the inhabitants. Hausner’s aestheticized absurdism is telegraphed via location and composition; expertly filmed by Martin Gschlacht who has a granular understanding of Beck Rainford’s purposive production design.

The audience is experiencing the euphoria of starving children and watching their bodies and minds collapse. Fred’s exam dance recital is glitter-soaked humiliation. A tacky ballet rendition of “Peter and the Wolf” by Rachmaninov. Conversely, Elsa’s piano recital is executed with embodied perfection, but a key spectator is not there to witness her. Ben has gone so far down the rabbit hole he rejects his mother’s ministrations as a form of control. He accuses her of offering him food as an unfair test of his love for her. Ragna’s furtive acquiescence to filling her belly which makes her temporarily an outcast, a failure, and a figure of disgust. Helen’s declaration that if people stop eating no one can starve because of poverty, while later scooping her school provided food into a waste bin with the others. There is no awareness that they are imbedded in late-stage capitalism and any act — mundane or seemingly gifted by manipulation will change anything in the economics of greed.

Eventually, Miss Dorset realizes that Miss Novak is a threat to the school and to her authority over the children. She ignored Miss Benedict’s concerns because her son was not a full fee-paying student. An opportunity to remove Miss Novak comes via alleged sexual impropriety with Fred. Something relayed to her because of one student’s anger at being rejected by another.

The all-powerful parent association meets and discusses the ethics of dismissing Miss Novak. The dark comedic tone belies the fact none of them want to take responsibility for endangering their offspring. The statement “We must not be lenient just because we brought Miss Novak into the school” is Hausner’s pugilistic condemnation of their hypocrisy. 

The removal of Miss Novak doesn’t halt the bizarre behavior of the teens. They were promised deliverance from all that ails them. Their bodies are no longer temples, they are traps. Never feeling “good enough” to be good, each teen forces their parents into stalemate. The parents have to deliver their genetic commodities to the now rightful owner. Body horror, vomiting, regurgitating the regurgitated as an anti-capitalist act. There is no boundary between sacred and profane for them in their delusional state. A version of God asks worshippers to take his body and eat it.  

Or perhaps what was delusional was expecting their children to do whatever they expected from them. Be pretty, do better, be smart, be less visible, stand out more, don’t be demanding, don’t prioritize their own desires. Survive high school group think and come out the other side as rational but extraordinary talents.

“We want to know why.” The parents ask a student.

“Isn’t it obvious?” She responds.

“I thought I did everything I could to support my teen, friend, lover…” is often the lament of those who discover a person who has erased themselves in some manner. “Why didn’t I see the signs?” Hausner’s Club Zero lights up the signs in a sickly neon. Many teens are searching for some kind of faith. Someone they can trust is looking over them. 

Jessica Hausner interviewed high school students before she wrote the script with Géraldine Bajard. They reported the effects of bullying and the weight of expectation on them while at school. Incidents of body dysmorphia, self-harm, disordered eating, and mental health crises among teens has statistically never been higher than it is currently. Youth suicides have increased by over sixty-percent since 2007. Underlying Hausner’s Vantablack satire is a material reality.

Jessica Hauser is often profoundly misconstrued. Perhaps some audiences will see Club Zero as too abject, too fetishizing, and too tonally uneven. Mostly it could be read as too pulchritudinous for a film filled with puke. How can something be so pretty-ugly? Club Zero is not favoring style over substance — which is the entire point Hausner is making. If only the members of Club Zero had something authentic to anchor them, they would no longer fall for falsehoods.

Grade: B+

Movie Review: ‘Three’ is Haunting Spiritual Horror


Director: Nayla Al Khaja
Writers: Nayla Al Khaja, Ben Williams, John Collee
Stars: Jefferson Hall, Faten Ahmed, Saud Alzarooni

Synopsis: A boy is going through a mental health crisis, prompting his mother to seek help from an unlikely man. This man must set aside his Western thinking to save her son through an intense ritual.


Often we only think of religious horror, especially possession and exorcism, through the lens of Christianity. In Three, we get a glimpse into the practice of Islamic exorcism. In many ways, the rites are similar. Both use holy men as bulwarks against evil and use the scripture of their holy text to drive out the evil within the possessed.

In this way Three falls into an easy rhythm. It follows the pattern of the exorcism film. The parent is distraught, she seeks help from doctors and when the doctors fail, she goes to the spiritual leader, the ultimate bastion against the unknown. That makes most of Three a bit formulaic. There’s little to set it apart from other films of the genre.

What does differentiate Three from other films like it isn’t only the difference in religion, but the way science interacts with faith. Typically in a film like this, the medical doctor or psychologist would be made irrelevant by the second act. Though, in this film, Dr. Mark Holly (Jefferson Hall) is around for the duration, even being present at and interfering with the exorcism. This integration of science and faith is a way to introduce skepticism into the proceedings. It almost feels like a metaphor for the city of Dubai in which the film takes place. Dubai is a city that straddles the traditions of its indigenous people with the heavy western influence that came with the country’s vast wealth.

There are a few other things that set Three apart from other films in the genre. There is that the djinn possessing Ahmed (Saud Alzarooni) was let in by malevolent human trickery, not by the act of the spirit itself. Alternatively to other films, the family here seeks the help of several mullahs before they find one who will be strong enough to combat the djinn and complete a successful exorcism. It is also of note that the horror of the film isn’t based on simple jump scares.

Director Nayla Al Khaja builds the terror of her film from tension. There is a particularly good scene when Ahmed’s friend Yasmeen (Amna Rehman) comes to visit after Ahmed has been expelled for assaulting his teacher. Ahmed and Yasmeen seem to be having a nice time until Ahmed’s face goes slack and Yasmeen slowly backs away. Ahmed is able to trap Yasmeen in the shower where he repeats words over and over as he smacks the wall, eventually cracking it and also cracking Yasmeen, alerting the adults to what is going on upstairs.

There are several tense scenes like this one that make your heart pound. Though, the tension is often deflated too soon. It builds to a nice peak, but the drop is sudden. The exorcism itself feels anticlimactic because of this. This makes the film less scary rather than just plain unnerving, which isn’t a bad thing, but if you’re looking to be terrified, not a satisfying thing either.

All in all, Three is a solid thriller. It’s derivative of other films in its subgenre. It never fulfills all the aspects of the body horror of exorcism films or the gore of Ahmed’s violence when under possession. See it for the unique take on the genre, not only in the aspect that it is an Islamic exorcism, but that modern science plays a much larger role than in other films of its ilk.

Grade: C

Podcast Review: The Teachers’ Lounge

On this episode, JD and Brendan discuss İlker Çatak’s Oscar-nominated film The Teachers’ Lounge! There’s been a lot of hype for Leonie Benesch’s performance, but there are elements to the film itself that we wondered about in the conversation.

Review: The Teachers’ Lounge (4:00)
Director: İlker Çatak
Writers: Johannes Duncker, İlker Çatak
Stars: Leonie Benesch, Leonard Stettnisch, Eva Löbau

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InSession Film Podcast – The Teachers’ Lounge

Podcast Review: The Promised Land

On this episode, JD and Brendan discuss the Nikolaj Arcel film The Promised Land, starring the great Mads Mikkelsen! It may not have been selected for the Oscars, but this is a film that has a lot to offer. It has an old Hollywood feel to it that is pretty exciting.

Review: The Promised Land (4:00)
Director: Nikolaj Arcel
Writers: Nikolaj Arcel, Anders Thomas Jensen
Stars: Mads Mikkelsen, Amanda Collin, Simon Bennebjerg

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InSession Film Podcast – The Promised Land

Movie Review: ‘Spaceman’ Relies on the Soul of Sandler


Director: Johan Renck
Writers: Jaroslav Kalfar, Colby Day
Stars: Adam Sandler, Carey Mulligan, Paul Dano

Synopsis: Half a year into his solo mission on the edge of the solar system, an astronaut concerned with the state of his life back on Earth is helped by an ancient creature he discovers in the bowels of his ship.


Spaceman attempts to use the backdrop and void of space to examine depression and anxiety about the unknown—yes, the feeling of just how inconsequential we are in the universe, a blip in time, if you will. What Spaceman does is take its time to examine our regrets, fears, and possibly the prospect of reinvention. That’s where Adam Sandler comes in. The role is his best career performance and his most intimate on-screen to date. 

Sandler plays Jakub, an astronaut trying to outrace a South Korean team looking for a pinkish space anomaly resting just past Jupiter. From there, Sandler’s Spaceman is a raw, emotionally expressive, and evocative take on mental health, showcasing how the titular character leaves their most painful feelings on their sleeves.

However, Spaceman begins to meander in its self-pity. I would call director Johan Renck’s (Breaking Bad) penchant for excessive self-exploration an endless drag instead of having the right amount of poignancy. Initially, the film becomes gripping, even suspenseful. That’s because Jakub may have finally been broken for good after six months of solitary confinement in space and in the tin can he calls a ship.

For one, his wife, Lenka (Carey Mulligan), right before Jakub is about to make history, sends an electronic message to her husband, saying she’s filing for divorce. The head of mission control, Commissioner Tuma (Isabella Rossellini), and Jakub’s handler, Peter (The Big Bang Theory’s Kunal Nayyar), intercept the message before he can view it. However, it doesn’t matter, as Jakub has been waiting to hear from Lenka for weeks and can read the stars.

First-time scriptwriter Colby Day then makes a bold choice. Jakub encounters a giant space spider that can talk and goes by the name Hanuš (voiced by Paul Dano). Is this a clear mental break, or has Jakub made another grand discovery? He’s sane enough to ask Peter to locate a camera and tell him what he sees in the control bay, but all of the cameras have been slowly going offline for weeks.

Renck’s pacing and Day’s plotting do an excellent job of keeping the viewer from staying a step ahead of the ending, which ends up being ambiguous, allowing the audience to draw their own conclusions. The interactions between Sandler’s Jakub and Dano’s Hanuš slowly become a fascinating character study of the titular character’s own existential crisis. Dano’s calm, even tone and soothing voice mirror a therapeutic relationship. This allows Sandler’s character to begin pondering themes of his existence, the power of his choices, and the search for the meaning of his life.

This is all very provocative stuff. Yet, the film begins to become mildly repetitive. The script starts to fold in some backstory of how Jakub and Lenka met, even their fights before he left. The film would have done better to add one more layer to flesh out the main character thoroughly. They leave hints of haunting family memories, with Jakub’s father floating away like George Clooney in Gravity

Exploring this part of the human condition in Jakub’s backstory, such as suffering, morality, and paternal relationships, would have added greater depth to the film’s experience. Yet, the film’s final few scenes are sublime. It’s a daunting finale, with a sense of ominous beauty and melancholy that is even more profound. Most movies cannot find an appropriate ending for a film, but Spaceman manages to encompass the vast and powerful setting is a metaphor for what’s essential in life.

Now, Johan Renck’s movie is nothing new; we have seen countless takes on a tried and true story of life and love, even if the setting here.is vastly different. Additionally, the film could have benefited greatly if the filmmakers continued to explore the marriage and Jakub’s haunting childhood with additional flashbacks. However, Spaceman succeeds on the shoulders of Sandler’s soulful turn. He does what great actors do, making the viewer feel something that is emotionally visceral. 

That’s how Sandler’s Spaceman wins.

Grade: B-

Criterion Releases: March 2024

It is March Madness and Criterion has six new releases on the horizon. One of them, the 1941 drama The Devil And Daniel Webster, is a re-release, but with a new title. Three films are from the last two years alone, emphasizing the contemporary push Criterion has been doing of late. Director Gus Van Sant has a new film part of the collection in a biting satire of true crime, media-obsessed society, while two documentaries, a hidden classic of Iranian cinema, and a modern French drama also come aboard the CC train. 

All That Money Can Buy (1941)

The new title for Daniel Webster, which was the actual releasing title to avoid confusion with The Devil And Miss Jones that same year, retains the same folk tale of a farmer (James Craig) who is willing to sell his soul to the Devil (a fiendish Walter Huston) for two cents. He gets seven years of prosperity and good fortune, but the change comes with a steep price to it, and when the Devil comes to reap the farmer’s soul, honorable lawyer Daniel Webster (Edward Arnold) pleads for the farmer’s soul. Director William Dieterie, editor Robert Wise, and composer Bernard Hermann, who won the Oscar for his score against himself for Citizen Kane, put up a cackling adaptation of a Faustian-American story on the danger of being a sellout to the worst person possible. 

The Runner (1984)

From director Amir Nederi comes one of the most impactful Iranian dramas after the Revolution of 1979. An orphan runs around the city to survive, doing different jobs to get himself food and shelter amidst growing impoverished lands. It is Iranian realism at its finest portraying the struggles of a new Iran that remained stuck between Westernism and traditional values. However, even with the promise of change still distant, the orphan keeps running towards it, learning to read and write, and surviving one day at a time. 

To Die For (1995)

Nicole Kidman received her first Oscar nomination in Gus Van Sant’s dark comedy about a weather girl who seeks to be famous by seducing two high school teens (Joaquin Phoenix, Casey Affleck) to kill her husband. Inspired by a real life case, Van Sant uses Buck Henry’s script to pop in the hyperglamorized tabloid sensationalism of the times, combining narrative and mockementary to mirror contemporary media. The film’s tagline, “All she wanted was a little attention,” brings attention to people today, almost thirty years later, who seek the same thing. 

All The Beauty And The Bloodshed (2022)

Winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, director Laura Poitras follows the life of Nan Goldin, renowned photographer and artist who found a second calling as an activist against the current opioid crisis. As a survivor of addiction, Goldin forces the public to recognize the million-dollar contribution from the Sackler family to museums as a form of whitewashing their guilt in the crisis. Goldin’s life from childhood through New York’s underground scene and the AIDS crisis is put on display, her photographs a timeline of happiness and tragedy leading up to today.

Lynch/Oz (2022)

In a unique comparison piece, director Alexandre O. Philippe uses The Wizard of Oz to dissect all of David Lynch’s work as it played a massive influence in his work. Every element in the legendary 1939 classic is put out as a direct comparison to every piece of Lynch’s surrealist work that makes it an incredible look and could make us understand more about Lynch’s secretive world. Eraserhead, Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet, and others all borrowing something from that wonderful world away from Kansas. 

Saint Omer (2022)

A Senegalse woman is on trial for killing her baby and the question is why. A pregnant novelist who plans to write a modern version of the Greek tragedy Medea attends the hearing and finds herself drawn to the answers that affect her thinking, bringing about her own concerns about what motherhood will do to her. Director Mati Diop confronts the issues of trauma, immigration assimilation, and familial bonds through a single, heinous crime (it is based on an actual event in France) with her documentary sensibilities on not passing immediate judgment to the mother. It is a courtroom drama that also brings compassion to difficult subjects. 

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