File under: “Things We Make New Interns Do.”

May has been a very transitional month for us here at Film School Rejects. You may have heard about our recent migration across platforms. But there’s even more going on behind the scenes than you may have expected, including the selection and onboarding of a whole new group of interns for our Internship Program. Normally you’d think we’d be sad to be losing our previous group of interns, but we’re not. They’re staying on as contributors and will continue to write for the site (look for them on Sundays starting in June). Also starting in June are 12 new interns selected from the hundreds of applicants who responded to our call last month.

We’re still getting to know these fresh new faces — future people in charge, every one of them — and we thought you might want to meet them, as well. So we’re here with a thought experiment, FSR-style. The thought: if you were a movie, which movie would you be?

I’ve spent the morning thinking about what my own answer to this question might be. Perhaps something like High Fidelity, filled with highs, lows, good music, plenty of arguments about important culture, and ultimately a little neurotic. Plus, I’ve got a few Charlie Nicholson’s in my past and they are not in the fucking phone book.

Enough about me. Let’s meet these new interns. We’re very excited to have them on our team and more than anything, proud to be able to share their work and help them develop their skills over the next 6-months. Here are their answers to today’s big question.

Jasmine Ballew

American History X, yup the movie about the Nazi that curb stomps a Crip gang member over a stolen car. Being that I’m a twenty-year-old, black girl living in Inglewood, most people look at me a little wild when I tell them this is my favorite film but let me extract things for a second. Derek Vineyard, the main character of the flick, and the flick itself revolves around the beauty of transformation and the enlightenment that comes along with knowledge and understanding. The 1998 drama directed by Tony Kaye captures endless silent shots of Venice Beach and the people residing in it; these shots reflect the wondrous colors and movements existing in the world that often times go unnoticed. Through the storyline of Derek and his downfall, many questions are posed at society, the universe, and oneself. A quote I remember so vividly from American History X is “Has anything you’ve done made your life better?” When this question was directed at Derek it was after he had finally hit rock bottom, after all his destructive behavior, and radical decisions left him with nearly nothing. That mere question lubricated the ignitions in Derek’s mind, plunging the plot into new waters as we see the main character make a change from resentful to remorseful. I feel that this story of coming to find one’s truth amongst anger is something I identify with. The complication that comes along with being grateful for living through a time of erratic behavior, but also the guilt that follows from all the pain inflicted on others; and the burden of possibly changing the course of your loved ones’ lives. In this enormous world, it’s easy to convince yourself that your selfish actions only effect you but experience, and this film, preach a different tale. American History X is a dark, controversial film with never-ending examinations. The main themes in my perspective are about family, forgiveness, and anger with glints of humor. Although some viewers have called select scenes graphic and borderline repulsive, I find the gritty approach to cinema and storytelling marvelous. There’s no point in telling a story if it’s not going to include the good, the bad, and the ugly and I feel the same rings true in the characteristics of a proper human being.

Jennifer Bourque

If I were a movie, I would definitely be Almost Famous. The first time I saw the movie as a quiet, reserved, and music-obsessed 15-year-old, I could not believe how much I could relate to something I didn’t create myself. I felt like my soul was being projected onto the screen and playing back for me to watch. The soundtrack was entirely songs I had grown up hearing and loving, and everything William Miller ever says and does is almost disturbingly similar to my own manner of being. As time passes, though, and the more I watch the movie, I see myself reflected in every single character—both good and bad. It’s incendiary! Incendiary.

Farah Cheded

Although we’re not of Punjabi heritage, Bend It Like Beckham has always reminded me of my family for the generous way it centers its characters’ diverse experiences as members of a diaspora in Britain. As a film, it never feels like a political sermon on the boons of assimilation and is less a static representation of culture than it is a beautifully fluid, compassionate look at the unique inner struggles of second-generation migrants like me – something I’ve definitely noticed the lack of as I’ve grown. Not to mention that for central character Jess, football is the interval in which her cultural self-consciousness falls away – and while I’m no prodigal right-forward like her, cinema has played a similar role in my life, uniting parts of myself that might otherwise have felt disconnected as I grew up.

Kieran Fisher

Let me preface this by stating that I’m not going to kill myself, nor have I thought about it ever.  The title of this movie, to the unacquainted viewer, might be a tad misleading.  In fact, I try not to take anything too seriously for the most part.  However, this question sent me on a temporary voyage of self-discovery where I started questioning what my purpose in life is, where I was going, and if I would ever find love again. However, if life has taught me anything, it’s that sometimes you find what you’re looking for in the unlikeliest of places, and eventually, the good stuff falls into place when you least expect it.  Being a dateless loser and the occasional existential crisis aside, my outlook on life is mostly a positive one, and Wristcutters: A Love Story teaches us that, no matter how sucky things might seem at the time, it’s only temporary.

Sarah Foulkes

After countless Buzzfeed quizzes and looking through the entire criterion collection archive, I have chosen the film that best represents me. Well, the two films: All That Jazz and The Double Life of Veronique. Yes, they’re completely different films. Veronique is slow and sentimental, All That Jazz is fast and furious. However, they share a preoccupation with mortality and a commitment to representing their subjects’ inner worlds (and deaths). All That Jazz, a behind-the-scenes musical, does it through intricate dance sequences and dream-like spectacles, oh and a whole lotta prescription drugs. It also arguably has the best (and longest) death scene of all time. On the other hand, Veronique is an intimate supernatural film with little dialogue and a lot of Irene Jacob. Its transcendent cinematography and emotional honesty contrast well with the dazzling choreographies and witty dialogue of All That Jazz.

Karen Gomez

I’ve just recently unlocked the university and adult life achievements, so I guess I should be feeling like The Graduate or even a little Adventureland. But young adulthood crisis aside, I think that if I were a film, I would probably be something more along the lines of What We Do in the Shadows. Although I wasn’t bitten when I was 16, I look younger than I actually am (come on, take a guess) and have a foreign accent. Don’t let the seeming seriousness of the format fool you, I am full of deadpan humor and obscure references.

Emily Kubincanek

As a huge fan of the classic style, I definitely belong in the black and white modern world of Frances Ha. Who wouldn’t want to run around the streets of New York with Greta Gerwig to the tune of “L’ecole buissoniere” from The 400 Blows score or “Modern Love” by David Bowie? It’s a quirky, sincere look at the period between your teens and adulthood that I’m going through right now. I adore this story where friendship love, and the struggles that come with it, are given the importance of romantic love. The line where I realized I am Frances is: “I’m sorry, I’m not a real person yet.”

Natalie Mokry

If I were a movie, I would be Shrek 2. Not the first Shrek, but Shrek 2. Even though the first film is a delightful story that I enjoy very much, the exciting part of a fairytale to me has never been the happily ever after, but rather the curiosity of what happens next. Sure an ogre marries a princess and they can live together forever in the swamp, but he has to deal with her royal parents at some point. I could sit and watch reaction shots and confrontation between characters all day long. Actually, two characters going back at forth at a dinner table is much more appealing to me than an action-heavy scene any day. Going a little deeper though, Shrek’s self-exploration in this film resonates with me more than his journey in the first because I can relate to this notion of trying to figure out where he fits into the lives of others. When Shrek comes across Fiona’s childhood diary, which has Prince Charming written all over it, he begins to question if he is good enough for her. It’s heartbreaking, but honest in its portrayal of life after the fairy tale ends and the marriage begins. How Shrek chooses to handle this situation though, and the sacrifices he is willing to make for the people he has grown to love, allow him to fully form as a character. His challenge to find the right balance between staying true to himself and altering his life to better suit his loved ones, I find to be quite relatable to my own everyday life. The movie as a whole, with all of its wit and charm, gives me a sense of belonging that I can only experience through the eyes of a cartoon ogre.

Sheryl Oh

The film that encapsulates me, at my core, has to be Brooklyn. Like Eilis Lacey, I spent a long time away from my hometown and put down roots elsewhere. (Although, I did not fall in love with an Emory Cohen doppelganger during my years abroad. Shame.) The film masterfully navigates Eilis’ conflicted feelings over two places that have their own charms and problems – that both inexplicably feel like home in different ways. To me, that’s what makes the film’s ending truly romantic; not her choice between two partners but her ultimate assertion to live on her own terms and do what brings her accomplishment and joy. My own story may be amorphous and incomplete, but Eilis’ odyssey of independence and resilience draws me in and gives me hope.

Cooper Peltz

If I were a movie I would be The Night of the Hunter, directed by Charles Laughton. The movie can’t really decide what it wants to be, and neither can I. At points, the film is truly creepy, while at other times it is insufferably camp. Viewers can interpret the film either as a botched attempt at a straightforward thriller or as a skillfully nuanced journey into the mind of the main character. With anything I create, I try to take the same risks Laughton took when he made this film. Additionally, virtually every aspect of the film can be taken as sincere and ironic at the same time. The metamodern paradigm is a quality that is present in my life and work.

Natalia Reyes

When The Secret Life of Walter Mitty came to theaters, I was told by people to not watch it because it was too boring. They said that I should avoid it all costs, this dreadful film. I, of course, waited until it came out on DVD, purchased it and watched it from the comfort of my living room. And people were right. There I sat, agreeing with them that The Secret Life of Walter Mitty was one of the most lifeless stories, but not for the reasons I imagined. I believe they thought the film was boring because on the screen was a man so frightened and petrified to live that he preferred the solitude and comfort of standing in the background. What bored me about the film was the familiarity. I had seen it all before, that nothingness. The dullness of living in one’s mind.  That was what my life was like. Just like Walter Mitty, sitting back in the safety of “what if’s?” But not because I was lazy or because I lacked passion and determination. I had the passion, I had the determination. I had the dreams but I was too scared to do anything with them. Life always seemed better in my head. Only up there was I the type of person that could succeed. Up there I was funnier, I was cooler, I was smarter. Up there I could stand up to my bullies, smack them around, look them straight in the eyes and say “hey, bucko… why don’t you leave me alone.”  Up in my head, I had won every elementary school spelling bee. Up in my head, I wasn’t afraid to say I love you. This film resonated with me (and the person I believe to be in my mind) for the way anxiety was portrayed. A character so in love with life he refuses to live it over the fear of ruining everything. I am Walter Mitty. Life terrifies me. There is much too much of it to live. But I have lost its quintessence, and now I must go find it.

Bethany Wade

If I’m going to be honest with myself, Wayne’s World best describes me for two reasons. Reason number one is I am in fact, in Delaware, though I work at Dunder-Mifflin Paper during the school year. Reason number two is if I don’t like the way things are going, I will rewrite my own ending and make everything work out in my favor. I don’t like settling, I like to make sure things are my standard. Gets me into trouble sometimes, but it’s the troublemakers who get stuff done. Also, Wayne’s World is still the best Saturday Night Live movie to date and who doesn’t want to be associated with SNL?

Remembering the genuine creative risks of DreamWorks Animation’s early repertoire, and the heat death of traditional animation.

When DreamWorks was founded in the fall of 1994, Jeffrey Katzenberg had the most to lose. Unlike his co-conspirators Steven Spielberg and David Geffen, Katzenberg was out of a job. He’d just been unceremoniously ousted by Michael Eisner, the man with whom he’d masterminded the Disney Renaissance. Katzenberg devoted himself to DreamWorks Animation. Back then it was comprised of defected Disney staff, Pacific Data Images, and employees from Amblimation, Spielberg’s short-lived animation branch. It was a gutsy and audacious vision: to launch Hollywood’s first new studio in decades; to create an environment reminiscent of the early days of United Artists; to compete with the industry elite and push for more innovative and emotionally mature storytelling.

Depending on which Boss Babies you ask, DreamWorks hasn’t exactly kept to this ideological path. In 2004, Geffen acknowledged that “[their] eyes were bigger than [their] stomachs,” and that the dream of an independent studio free from conglomerates had failed. Of course, the disparaging remarks volleyed at DreamWorks rarely have to do with its corporate structure. DreamWorks is regularly accused of creative stagnation and brand dilution; of being saturated with sequels and redefining (for the worse) what is “safe and conformist about mainstream theatrical animated films.” Are these allegations fair? Yes and no. But to whatever degree DreamWorks’ bad rap is justified, they’re still losing an image battle with Disney. When a Pixar film underperforms it’s “DreamWorks good,” when a DreamWorks film succeeds, it’s an anomaly.

At some point, DreamWorks stopped producing animated films and started producing cartoons. And while there is certainly a defense in categorically fantastic films like Kung Fu Panda 2 and How to Train Your Dragon, I rarely see an appreciation for DreamWorks’ early canon. When I do, the praise tends to focus on and anatomize one particular film. On the rare occasions when it is considered holistically, it’s as a curious historical footnote to DreamWorks’ embrace of CGI. There is, I think, an unsung boldness to DreamWorks’ early repertoire; an earnest and fiercely imaginative filmography that is worth remembering.

Antz (1998)

Dir. Eric Darnell and Tim Johnson

Antz was the edgier bug cartoon of 1998. A reputation garnered through the mistaken assumption that all animation is for young kids, as well as through comparisons to Pixar’s A Bug’s Life (more on that drama here). While the films don’t actually have that much in common, Antz does a better (if less subtle) job of leaning into themes of individualism, community, and where to draw the line. The animation is more darkly-toned and grounded; fitting for a story flush with existential wit and glumly funny political commentary. I’d also be remiss not to mention that Antz features a surprisingly striking anti-war scene when queen-sympathizing soldiers are unglamorously massacred by the neighboring termite colony. With a distinctive design and a then-fresh tone, Antz’ unflinching commitment to its deeply weird world is praiseworthy.

Prince of Egypt (1998)

Dir. Brenda Chapman, Steve Hickner, and Simon Wells

Prince of Egypt is, simply put, “one of the best-looking animated films ever made.” Employing CGI as an aid rather than a substitute, the sense of scale is outlandishly gorgeous as well narratively resonant. The parting of the Red Sea, in particular, seems expressly made for animation. Coupled with dazzling music and lyrics by Hans Zimmer and Stephen Schwartz respectfully, it’s a spectacle in every sense of the word. More than anything, PoE triumphs by choosing to make its story more human, focusing on the strains and cracks in Moses and Ramses’ relationship as their responsibilities come into conflict. Prince of Egypt is rife with old Hollywood ambition, endowing its religious subject matter with respect and accessibility. Its scope, both emotional and aesthetic, takes full advantage of the medium.

From certain death to rebirth.

Some of my favorite sorts of videos are those that play with established tropes. Take for example the following video from our very good friend, the supremely talented Jacob T. Swinney, who has taken one of the most tried-and-true tropes out there – characters falling from a great height accompanied by the camera all through their descent – and turned it quite literally on its head.

See, the point of showing a character’s complete fall, physically, in a film is to inform or remind us in the audience of the cause for their fall, emotionally or personally, be it as a result of their own decision – as is the case of Waring Hudsucker in The Hudsucker Proxy – or as the result of their actions and doled out at the hands of another – as is the case of Selina Kyle in Batman Returns.

But what happens when you play these falls in reverse? Well, first and foremost, they’re not falls anymore, they’re not plummeting descents, they’re meteoric ascents, they are reversals of fortune and, as Swinney points out in his written intro, they are instead of climactic certain deaths, “something close to rebirth.”

Director Mariano Baino also shares some of the film’s unlikely inspirations.

In 1994, director Mariano Baino released Dark Waters, a dark Italian horror film with roots in the Nunsploitation genre, as well as the films of Mario Bava and the work of H.P. Lovecraft. While it enjoyed a cult classic reputation for many years, Dark Waters was recently restored and released on Blu-Ray by Severin Films, finally making the film accessible to long-time fans, as well as horror geeks (like me!) looking to discover something new and creepy to love.

Dark Waters kicks off with a bit off prologue to set the stage. We’re introduced to a creepy convent, hidden away on a remote Italian island, littered with jagged coastline, churning water and some dark secrets. A young priest is studying a book with strange symbols while a violent storm rages and water finally begins seeping into the decaying church, killing the priest. At the same time, a young nun is trying to escape to the coast, bearing a large amulet with a strange symbol on it. The nun turns and sees something so frightening that she plummets to her death and the amulet smashes onto the rocks below. An unseen hand collects the pieces and suddenly, we’re pushed twenty years into the future, as a young woman from London, Elizabeth (Louise Salter), travels to the island.

Elizabeth’s recently deceased father had been funding the strange convent and Elizabeth, who was actually born on the island, has decided to ignore her father’s warnings to never return. Her trip is littered with strange characters who seem obstinate in her attempts to actually get to the island, which seems locked in both the past and its own weird world. When Elizabeth finally does meet with the convent’s Mother Superior, an ancient blind woman, she explains that she is there to decide if she will continue her father’s charitable funding.

At the same time, some creepy things are taking place beneath Elizabeth’s feet – specifically, in a secret underground cavern where the nuns seem to a hold strange, dark ceremony. A young girl, whom we learn is Elizabeth’s friend from London, has snuck into the cavern and is attempting to retrieve a piece of the amulet from the film’s opening, which has been hidden. The nuns hope to piece the amulet back together, to bring back a dark and demonic force. It doesn’t bode well for Elizabeth’s snooping friend nor for Elizabeth, who has been paired with a young novice named Sarah, a woman who is helping her discover the secrets of the convent but whom Elizabeth suspects might be harboring one of her own.

Although not a traditional Giallo film, the influence of one of the genre’s greatest directors, Mario Bava, can be felt throughout Dark Waters. Deaths are gruesome and plentiful, laden with religious iconography. There are brutal and bloody impalements, burning crosses and strange characters that hold the key to Elizabeth’s forgotten past. While it feels like a fresh story in its own right, the elements are familiar nods to the films that proliferated Baino’s own childhood, one steeped in horror films. As we chatted in the basement of New York City’s Lovecraft Pub, an apt location considering some of the elements in Dark Waters, Baino explained the influences on his film.

“I grew up in Italy during the Golden Age of Italian genre cinema and of course, I mean I couldn’t help it,” Baino told me. “But people may not understand that in Italy, it is much more mainstream. In Italy, when I was growing up our parents would go see these films, not teenagers. I still remember the first time I heard of Dario Argento, in a way he was this mythical figure that people talked about. I remember the first time I heard about The Exorcist, I remember my parents talking to some of their friends about this film and I could hear snippets and I was so scared. I actually didn’t sleep for days just hearing about it. And it wasn’t supposed to be for a ten-year-old, it was supposed to be for our parents. But in Italy that’s how it is, people are much more omnivorous…these films aren’t considered genre.”

Without spoiling much, the work of H.P. Lovecraft can be felt most heavily toward the end of the film, when the secret of the amulet, as well as Elizabeth’s past, is finally exposed. It is this genre mashup – from traditional Italian genre to Nunsploitation to, finally, Lovecraftian creature horror – that makes Dark Waters stand out as a unique and dark horror gem. When I shared how I picked up these cues throughout the film, Baino was excited to hear my thoughts. “Influence is very much like beauty, it is in the eye of the beholder,” he told me. “When it comes to me, strangely enough for someone who makes visuals, I was always much more influenced by reading. I still remember being in middle school and reading The Iliad and reading about the siege of Troy and suddenly, I still remember all the shots that were coming into my head. So when I discovered Lovecraft, it conjured images in my head.”

While I personally wouldn’t consider Dark Waters a traditional Nunsploitation film – these aren’t young and lusty nuns breaking their vows but instead nuns hell-bent on catering to the dark force they worship – the film draws on the darker side of Catholicism, the violent imagery and heavy symbolism-laden within the religion. While this certainly falls in line with the needs of a horror film, it is also something Baino culled from his experiences growing up in a Catholic country.

“If you’ve been to Southern Italy, the version of Catholicism you get here it totally sanitized, even the churches are very bright,” Baino said. “In Naples, you get Jesus with not just one wound but many, the knees are broken, there’s blood everywhere, it’s terrifying and when you see that religion doesn’t feel comforting. I had one nightmare growing up that happened three times when I was a child. I was home in Naples and suddenly the window burst open there was Jesus on the crucifix and I was terrified. When people used to say Jesus appeared to them in the hospital when they were sick I used to say, ‘please Jesus, don’t appear to me’ even though it was supposed to be a comforting thing, it wasn’t.”

The horror of religion is certainly present throughout Dark Waters, but there’s also an eerie vibe cloaking all of Elizabeth’s interactions on the island, akin to The Wicker Man, where something strange is happening and everyone is in on it, except the main character. Although it has long remained a hard-to-find cult classic, the Blu-Ray restoration of Dark Waters will hopefully find its way into the hands of horror fans and elevate its profile as an Italian gem from the early 1990s worth seeking out.

Love puts everything in focus. It extracts meaning from the blur of the world around and within us, it slows things down and gives us a better perspective. When you’re in love colors are brighter, sharper, more vibrant, trouble is easier to keep in its place and solutions are easier to discover. Love is a beacon and an anchor simultaneously, it illuminates a better path and keeps you grounded to it, on track, less susceptible to the distractions and obstacles that would cause you to veer off into darker, murkier, less certain territory. So I’ll amend myself: love doesn’t just put things in focus, love is focus, it is the manner by which we come to see life clearly, by which we strip away the detritus and hone in on the truly important things.

Philosophically this would seem to be the notion behind today’s short, Focus, a 2011 film from writer-director Ari Kruger. A man meets a woman. They fall in like, shortly followed by love. But as their time together progresses, she starts to lose focus. Physically. It starts in her fingers, little digital blurs, and spreads to the rest of her. And he is powerless to stop it.

A metaphor for the perspective-shifting wax and wane of modern relationships, Focus is an emotionally-concentrated and visually-stunning short, a poetic rumination of the ruination of all the vibrancy love brings to the world, a refusal of the clarity it grants us, all taken to quite literal extremes.

Narrated in voiceover and lacking internal dialogue, Focus is also a remembrance, a reflection, and as such it aches with the immediate realization that whatever’s wrong won’t be put right, that – like life – shit happens, love fades, and people move on. But in the inherent sadness of Focus there is the lifeline of understanding, of accepting the evolution of our relationships both for their rises and their falls, and accepting our responsibility in both the propulsion and arrest of love’s path. People fall in love. People fall out of love. Life continues, just a little out of focus. Until next time.

Clyde Berning and Abigail Parker are the actors and their chemistry is simultaneously comfortable and prickly, they fully inhabit the spectrum of emotions two people craft together, giving the film a more palpable tangibility, like we aren’t watching a story at all but a memory, possibly even our own.

80 meaningful moments to get you back in that Lynchian spirit.

Twin Peaks is bar none the most daring program ever shown on network TV, especially for its time. But it wasn’t just the show’s narrative that was so bold, it was also the way co-creator and director David Lynch established a decidedly cinematic aesthetic for his series, a television first. Until Twin Peaks, television was largely shot for economic and efficiency concerns, it was the fast food to the filet mignon of film, a quicker, cheaper, more common alternative. Today that’s not the case, some of the best, most daring, and cinematic work out there is happening on TV, and this isn’t a coincidence: Twin Peaks caused this, it birthed the “Golden Age” of television we’re currently enjoying, thanks to the giant strides it made in the realms of both narrative and filmic storytelling. And even though Lynch wasn’t at the helm for every chapter – in fact just the pilot and six of 29 episodes – the look of Twin Peaks remained constant throughout its run. This is owed, in part, to having just two cinematographers for the entire series: Ronald Victor Garcia, who only shot the pilot and the prequel follow-up film Fire Walk With Me, and Frank Byers, who shot all 29 episodes.

A little bit noir, a little bit soap opera, and dashed with visual tropes from crime, sci-fi, comedy and horror, Twin Peaks is an amalgam of genres the likes of which has been often imitated but never replicated. It is its own genre, in fact, an uncategorizable feat of filmmaking that just happens to take place on television, and the new season promises to be all this to the Nth degree, and perhaps the first literal example of the “one giant movie” most prestige TV shows claim to be.

So in honor of the aesthetic uniqueness of Twin Peaks in advance of its return this weekend (the new series is shot entirely by Peter Deming, who shot Mulholland Drive [!!!]) we proudly present 80 perfect shots from Twin Peaks, including some from Fire Walk With Me.

A reminder here that a “perfect shot” isn’t just an eye-catching, breathtaking frame of cinematography, it’s about imagery that informs, elucidates, and in fact propels the narrative and those within it; a perfect shot isn’t just beautiful, it’s integral, it’s iconic in the definitive sense in that it’s a visual representation, in this case of a narrative’s themes, tropes, and intentions.

Twin Peaks season three begins this Sunday, May 21^st, with two episodes back-to-back on Showtime, followed immediately by the release of episodes three and four on the network’s digital platforms.

And this should go without saying, but just in case…SPOILERS BELOW!!!

Pilot | dir. David Lynch

Notice the figure reflected in the mirror over Sarah’s shoulder…

Episode 1 | dir. Duwayne Dunham

Episode 2 | dir. David Lynch

“My father killed me…”

Episode 3 | dir. Tina Rathborne

You’ll never see more cast members in the same photo than right here, at Laura’s funeral.

Episode 4 | dir. Tim Hunter

Episode 5 | dir. Lesli Linka Glatter

A steel “X” over the secret love of Norma and Ed.

Episode 6 | dir. Caleb Deschanel

RIP Waldo

Episode 7 | dir. Mark Frost

Season one ended with a bang…three of them.

Episode 8 | dir. David Lynch

This, to me, is the scariest image of the entire series.

Episode 9 | dir. David Lynch

“Just yoooou….And Iiiii….”

Episode 10 | dir. Lesli Linka Glatter

Yes. Yes he has.

Episode 11 | dir. Todd Holland

Episode 12 | dir. Graeme Clifford

Episode 13 | dir. Lesli Linka Glatter

Episode 14 | dir. David Lynch

The reveal heard around the world…

Episode 15 | dir. Caleb Deschanel

History repeating.

Episode 16 | dir. Tim Hunter

The truth is known.

This, to me, is the series’ most powerful scene. Ray Wise is AMAZING.

Episode 17 | dir. Tina Rathborne

A total Wizard of Oz moment. Lynch’s work is littered with them.

Episode 18 | dir. Duwayne Dunham

Episode 20 | dir. Todd Holland

Leo’s back and ready to party…

Episode 21 | dir. Uli Edel

Sweet Caroline…

…and introducing Windom Earle.

Episode 22 | dir. Diane Keaton

Episode 23 | dir. Lesli Linka Glatter

The weird, wooden fate of Josie Packard.

Episode 24 | dir. James Foley

Episode 25 | dir. Duwayne Dunham

It’s all coming together…

Episode 26 | dir. Jonathan Sanger

But we know this guy. It’s Ted Raimi.

Episode 27 | dir. Stephen Gyllenhaal

Like an evil eye peering through dimensions…

Episode 28 | dir. Tim Hunter

Someone’s been playing in The Black Lodge…

The end begins.

Episode 29 | dir. David Lynch

Yeah you will!

The end of Earle.

Doppelganger!

Best. Twist. EVER.

Fire Walk With Me | dir. David Lynch

One ring to rule them all…

And so it ends…and begins.

See you Sunday night in Twin Peaks…

The film scholar’s favorite filmmaker.

In my experience, film critics and scholars are obsessed with Paul Thomas Anderson, and rightfully so – yes, I count myself among them – because Anderson combines old-school, classic filmmaking techniques with an innovative and modern storytelling style, resulting in films that feel simultaneously timeless and timely, familiar and groundbreaking. Anderson is a filmmaker who never rests on his laurels but rather stretches himself with each new endeavor, oscillating between contemplative (The Master) and gregarious (Boogie Nights), muted (Punch-Drunk Love) and outspoken (There Will Be Blood), and emotionally intimate (Hard Eight) and epic (Magnolia).

As such, there is no shortage of film commentary and criticism about Anderson and his work out there, and the realm of video essays is no exception. In the following 7 clips, two by yours truly, the impact of Anderson and his work is examined, both in broad strokes and minute ones, including his work in the world of music videos.

While this is by no means an exhaustive syllabus of the Master and his films, it’s an excellent place to start expanding your knowledge and understanding of an artist many consider the preeminent of his generation.

The Lost Souls of Paul Thomas Anderson and the Pursuit of Purpose

[WATCH] THICKER THAN WATER: FAMILY AND PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON

[WATCH] CENTER OF GRAVITY: THE SYMMETRY OF PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON’S ‘MAGNOLIA’

Water and Enlightenment in Paul Thomas Anderson’s ‘The Master’

The Soured Sweetness of Freddie Quell

[WATCH] THE SECRETS OF DAYDREAMING: THE COLLABORATION BETWEEN RADIOHEAD AND PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON

Before you ask, no, it’s not just a list of the other ‘Alien’ movies.

There are plenty of movies you need to watch before you see Alien: Covenant. Five other installments of the Alien franchise precede it, for instance, and even though it is one of the prequels, like most prequels it’s meant to be seen with a familiarity of the chronologically subsequent parts. In addition to the feature, there are also a couple short prologues released online that you should probably see beforehand, especially if you don’t want to be too confused by James Franco’s barely there involvement.

As for movies you need to watch afterward, I’ve got eight recommendations. These titles, which include other sci-fi works, a documentary feature, and a short film, are all better and earlier works that have similar or relevant themes.

Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932)

Inspired by Edgar Allen Poe’s story of the same name, this Universal horror classic stars Bela Lugosi, fresh off his iconic appearance in Dracula, as a mad scientist killing women in 19th century Paris. Why? Because he’s set on proving the evolutionary connection between apes and humans, and in order to do this he has to find a woman whom he can inject ape blood into so that she can then mate with the ape. When not experimenting on women, whom he discards in the river if they’re not compatible, he exhibits his ape, named Erik, in a circus.

In Alien: Covenant, David (Michael Fassbender) is like the Lugosi character, Dr. Mirakle, in that he similarly uses innocent humans as guinea pigs and potential hosts for evolutionary science (never mind that the movie takes place prior to Darwin’s theories). Mirakle and David also both use creatures to do their bidding for them. By this account, the Xenomorphs of the Alien franchise come off as more innocent, as well. David is the true villain of the entire series, having created “perfect organisms” that then are just following their nature.

Forbidden Planet (1956)

You’re probably familiar with Robby the Robot, one of the most famous fictional automatons of all time, but have you seen the movie he comes from? Have you encountered Leslie Nielsen the serious movie star, long before he was Leslie Nielsen the spoof legend? Have you heard Bebe and Louis Barron’s groundbreaking electronic music score?

If not, you need to check out this retelling of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” in space, in which Walter Pidgeon leads as a sci-fi version of Prospero, Anne Francis plays the daughter, and Robby is a mechanical Caliban.

Pidgeon’s Dr. Morbius can also be likened to David in Alien: Covenant (though the latter character makes reference to a different shipwreck tale: “Robinson Crusoe”). Both movies involve a seemingly perfect planet where it turns out an ancient alien race went extinct all at once. And now a strange man (and an intelligent robot, though in Covenant those are one and the same) inhabits their ruins while a creature of his device kills a newly arrived ship’s crew, who are there investigating a previous failed mission.

As much as many parallels can be made, however, Forbidden Planet and the Alien movies are very different in style and tone.

The Hellstrom Chronicle (1971)

One of the great speculative sci-fi documentaries, and the second to win the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature, this creepy nature film looks closely at the lives of insects while a fictional host discusses the eventual extinction of the human race. Whether it’s a nuclear war or pollution of the environment, either way, because of man’s intellect, emotionality, and individualism, we’ll someday be gone and the bugs will prevail, just as they had for millions of years before we existed. They will, according to “Dr. Hellstrom” (Lawrence Pressman) continue to “work together to create the elusive utopia — the perfect society.”

It’s too bad The Hellstrom Chronicle doesn’t feature any of the parasitic wasps that inspired the Xenomorph’s traits in Alien, including the idea of newborns bursting out through their hosts’ bodies (watch a clip from National Geographic documentary In the Womb: Extreme Animals). Still, there is a connection between The Hellstrom Chronicle and Alien: Covenant as far as the evolutionary belief that insects — and insectoid monsters — are a perfect organism. Also, the documentary has one of the greatest opening lines ever: “The Earth was created not with the gentle caress of love, but with the brutal violence of rape.”

The One (2001)

Who doesn’t love seeing an actor fight himself in a sequence where he or she plays twins, clones, two robots of similar model, etc.? Even the awful 1989 Sinbad and the Seven Seas is fun when Lou Ferrigno battles Lou Ferrigno. And haters of Superman III tend to at least like the Superman vs. Superman part.

As the technology improves, these fights grow more seamlessly satisfying, with Michael Fassbender’s android vs. android bit looking so miraculously done that you forget you’re watching an effect. Previously, the Tom Cruise vs. Tom Cruise fight in Oblivion had the distinction of most accomplished example of the “Mirror Match” trope.

Yet the most enjoyable example is Jet Li vs. Jet Li in this 16-year-old sci-fi martial arts movie. Kind of like a mash of Highlander and Timecop, The One is about a guy who tries to kill all the parallel dimension versions of himself, because he gains greater power from each one of his alternate selfs he kills. Of course, he eventually lands on one Jet Li that he can’t easily dispose of, and finally they fight it out mano-a-identical-mano. Like the one in

Of course, he eventually lands on one Jet Li that he can’t easily dispose of, and finally they fight it out mano-a-identical-mano. Like the one in Alien: Covenant, you have to sit through a fairly bad movie to get to the good stuff, but at least The One isn’t trying to seem so serious and its Mirror Match is a lot more entertaining because it’s Jet Li. And Jet Li.

The Thing (2011)

As far as unnecessary prequels with mostly repeated plots go, Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.’s same-named lead-in to John Carpenter’s 1982 classic is surprisingly pretty decent. This one delivers more of a certain origin for the alien creature and isn’t entirely consistent with its nature, but the movie is very well-directed, offering enough new thrills alongside the familiar setting, premise and paranoia themes. And they actually used some practical effects! The way this The Thing links up with the earlier The Thing is handled is so much more satisfying than any other prequel’s attempt, too.

Carpenter’s The Thing is a remake of the 1951 Howard Hawks movie The Thing from Another World, which also influenced Alien, so the connection between the franchises isn’t difficult to see. Van Heijningen’s take more closely aligns with the Alien movies, however, in having a woman protagonist, and it fits even more specifically with Alien: Covenant by the new movie having a sequence where we can’t tell if a certain character is good or evil. David’s impersonation of Walter isn’t the same as The Thing impersonating various characters, leading to great distrust among an entire ensemble, but for a moment it’s pretty close.

Wanderers (2014)

Alien: Covenant starts off with wonder and majestic discovery as its spaceships arrives at a seemingly utopian new world for human inhabitation. Maybe a little too stormy, but otherwise potential paradise. And then the Alien plots kick in and everything turns to Hell. Cut it off at the sign of a second act, and you’ve got a nice little short film involving optimism for exploration and colonization of distant planets. Minus that issue with the ship that causes the deaths of a crew member and some of the other hibernating passengers, that is.

For an actual short film with hope for the future of human space travel, there’s Erik Wernquist’s conceptual documentary that in under four minutes showcases some of the beautiful and awesome places we could go.

Using digital recreations or real photographs of places just within our solar system, combined with ideas of authors such as Arthur C. Clarke and narration from the late Carl Sagan (from his “Pale Blue Dot” audio book), the film ponders the next steps for our wandering species. Hopefully with no Xenomorphs or other threats at other ends of those paths.

Watch the short below, and if you want something similarly speculative in a much bigger format, also check out the IMAX space documentaries Destiny in Space and Journey to Space, both of which incorporate special effects of imagining the imminent cosmic trips of tomorrow.

Ouija: Origin of Evil (2016)

Another prequel that really works is Mike Flanagan’s backtracking follow-up to a 2014 experiment in feature-length product placement. As bad as Ouija is, Ouija: Origin of Evil is good, enough to make you forget you’re kind of watching an ad for a board game. And you don’t have to watch the original to enjoy it, nor is it annoyingly redundant if you have seen the original, even though it is the sort of prequel that unnecessarily depicts a story already told through exposition. Flanagan’s origin of Doris Zander isn’t out to explain her with more plot detail, instead offering a character-driven family drama about grief that turns to paranormal horror.

Ouija: Origin of Evil is a rare example of a great prequel; in fact it’s one that’s much better than the movie it links to. These days, TV series like Better Call Saul and Fargo are showing how prequels can be brilliant when focused on character over filling in story threads. Otherwise, as Flanagan’s movie affirms, the horror genre tends to be the place to find decent movie prequels, whether they’re interested in presenting characters’ origins or appearing to have little connection until a final scene reveals the movie to be set before another in its series. That’s why it’s so disappointing that the Alien prequels aren’t better, seeing as the first installment is a horror movie.

Passengers: Fan Cut (2016/?)

There’s no denying Passengers is a deeply flawed movie. The once highly anticipated union of Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence (plus Michael Sheen) was one of the most disappointing movies of last year. On the one hand, its third act is the banalest, contrived spaceship story denouement that could have been affixed to an otherwise compelling sci-fi situation drama with a morally questionable lead. Then, of course, there’s the problem with that morally questionable lead and whether it’s a bigger issue, in its outdated sexist scenario of him getting away with his rapey offenses than the movie acknowledges. But there is sort of a great movie in there somewhere.

In a recent video essay, the YouTube user known as Nerdwriter (aka Evan Puschak) explained how Passengers could have been and maybe still can be fixed by rearranging its scenes so it’s not so chronological. Open with the moment Pratt and Lawrence meet and then later reveal Pratt’s character as a bad guy who did a bad thing by waking Lawrence’s character and basically forcing himself onto her and her into a relationship with him without her consent. Then change the ending so he dies and maybe, for a kicker of a conclusion, she eventually does exactly what he did. This “fan cut,” as we’ll call it, isn’t entirely doable with the material available but you can come close and just imagine the rest.

The fixed version of Passengers is, in theory, the would-be best movie about interstellar colonization imaginable. It deals with the prospects and dilemmas of delivering a massive payload of new world settlers across space in a thought-provoking way. You could envision it as a prequel to Aliens if you like. As for Alien: Covenant, what a terrible colonization mission movie that is when you consider the logic of the crew. Should a crew of that sort of trip even be made up of couples where one would risk thousands of other lives to save his or her spouse? Actually that drama, as poorly as it plays out, might have been an interesting story on its own without the Alien stuff getting in the way. Now we need another movie “fix.”

In this week’s podcast conversation, we talk to producer Stephen Scarlata about his latest, ‘Beyond the Gates,’ and so much more.

The format of Film Itself is simple. Each week we talk to someone either inside or outside the film industry about the work they do and the films they love. This week, we sit down with producer Stephen Scarlata to talk about Jodorowsky’s Dune, his new film Beyond the Gates, and even a little Jaws and Friday the 13th.

Stephen’s new film got me thinking, I miss video stores. Sure, here in Portland we have one of the best video stores in the world (Mike Clark’s Movie Madness), but I miss the days when video stores were on every corner like Starbucks. And just like the green giant of coffee, they stuck video stores inside grocery stores and gas stations, we were surrounded by movies. Remember how the box-art would draw you in and have you convinced that there was an amazing movie behind that horrific cover. More times than not the movie and the cover were two very different things (I’m looking at you Future Kill). Well, guess what? There’s this clever new film from my friend Stephen Scarlata called Beyond the Gates (now available to stream on Netflix) that is an ode to VHS, video stores, and those crazy VCR games, and the best part is the beautiful cover art of the Blu-ray matches the quality of the film inside (still looking at you Future Kill).

A quick reminder, you can subscribe to our network of shows on Stitcher, iTunes, or your favorite podcast app by simply searching One Perfect Pod and clicking whatever comes back to you. When you subscribe, you’ll get access to the entire channel, four shows strong and growing. Don’t forget to leave a rating on iTunes and let us know how we’re doing.

Check out Beyond the Gates via Amazon below and follow them on Twitter @Beyondthegates_.

Beyond The Gates [Blu-ray]

Welcome, curious viewers…have you the courage to go Beyond The Gates? After their father’s unexplained disappearance, two estranged brothers (responsible Gordon (Graham Skipper) and reckless John (Chase Williamson)) reunite to sift through the contents of his stubbornly anachronistic V…

For almost 40 years, we’ve found terror (and other strange things) in the eight films in the ‘Alien’ franchise. It’s about time we ranked ’em.

Think about it. How many film franchises have survived, let alone succeeded in four different decades? That short list includes a few likely candidates — Star Wars is one. If George Lucas and Steven Spielberg get their way, Indiana Jones may become another one soon enough. That is to say that the Alien franchise breathes rarified air. And not just because it’s set elsewhere in the universe.

From 1979 to this very weekend, the Alien franchise has been a mainstay for horror hounds, sci-fi nerds, and fans of those terrors that lurk in the not-so-well-lit corridors of a spacecraft.

With the release of Alien Covenant, we are presented with the opportunity to look back at the entire franchise, warts and all. And place these 8 films — yes, even the ones with the Predators — into greater context.

We’re doing so this week in two parts. Part one is a podcast episode in which contributor Theo Broxson and I talk through the notion of ranking these 8 films at greater length. We’ve taken into consideration insight from other members of the FSR team and various resources around the web and have come ready to debate the placement of each film.

As you can hear on the pod, this is not something we take lightly. Plenty of healthy debate goes into finalizing these lists. Each one of these films represents years in the lives of their creative teams and the blood, sweat, and tears of their crews. So even though we’re just a bunch of idiots on the internet, we try to approach a list of this nature with reverence. Also, I’ve reserved the right to change my mind between the podcast recording and now. You’ll see what I mean. That said, in the end, it’s up to me to commit the final, definitive rankings to print with digital ink. So here we go…

8. Alien vs. Predator: Requiem (2007)

Given how poorly lit this film was, it’s hard to say that we’ll ever really know if it were good. Maybe someday the Brothers Strause will go back and tune up the contrast for one of those black-and-white cuts that are all the rage. Maybe no one really cares that much about the AvP sequel. What we can say is that to its credit, Requiem did redeem some of the ill-will of AvP‘s PG-13 rating by hinting at a lot of very poorly lit brutality. It’s unfortunate because the concept is a lot of fun, but someone has to be last.

7. AVP: Alien vs. Predator (2004)

There’s a weirdness to Paul W.S. Anderson’s contribution to the franchise. Not just that the story is strange or the visuals of seeing a Xenomorph figure through the heat-vision of the Predator mask is a unique proposition. The very existence of AvP is out there. It originated from a comic book story by Dan O’Bannon, who wrote the original screenplay for Ridley Scott’s 1979 masterpiece that can be seen much further down this page. It was then taken by Anderson and Shane Salerno and turned into the PG-13 schlockfest we see in the final version, filled with Aztec mythology, Predator rites of passage, and a new origin story for Xenomorphs. Looking back, it’s a product of a time when studios wanted to make horror movies for which 13-year-olds could buy tickets, but they never stopped to think about what made the franchise so successful in the first place. AvP may be the ultimate cautionary tale for bad crossover ideas, but it’s also a time capsule for a different kind of bad movie. The ambitious, hugely misguided swings at being the weirdest kid on the block. Never change, AvP.

6. Alien 3 (1992)

If David Fincher doesn’t like this movie — and trust me when I say that he doesn’t — how are we supposed to rank it any higher than some of these other films. Their directors, for better or worse, at least felt pretty good about what they made. The other problem with Alien 3: it’s the tale of two films. Are we rating the original theatrical cut? The special edition? The even better double secret special edition that still exists in David Fincher’s mind? Sorry, we have to look at the theatrical version of this movie and that version is hot, wet, and on fire. It may have given us one of the sexiest single frames of the entire franchise (pictured above), but there’s not much else here to work with. Apologists can crow about studio interference, directorial independence, and the value of unrealized visions all they want, but it won’t make those Xenomorph-running-down-the-hall effects any better.

Nicolas Cage puts on his letter jacket, lights his skull on fire and hops on his motorcycle once more. Are the results any better this time out?

“It doesn’t matter how far you run, there are some demons you just can’t escape. My name is Johnny Blaze, I used to ride a motorcycle for a living. I did a bare ass 360 triple back flip in front of twenty two thousand people. It’s kind of funny, it’s on Youtube, check it out. But when my dad got sick, I did something way crazier than that.”

Last week here at The Tao of Nicolas Cage I took a look at Ghost Rider and touched on where I think it went wrong. I discussed how the film is problematic and ultimately not that good but I still find it enjoyable. More or less I think I spent last week’s column defending Ghost Rider. This week I’m taking a look at the 2012 sequel, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, a film that shouldn’t need any defending.

There’s no beating around the bush this week. Spirit of Vengeance is awesome and how it’s not universally praised as such I’ll never understand. My assumption is more people hate it than have actually seen it. To those people my gut reaction is to say “piss off,” but I like to think I’m a bigger person than that so instead I will explain why everyone should give this Ghost Rider a chance.

And if you have seen it but still hate it then maybe I can convince you to give it another ride.

The most important thing to know going into Spirit of Vengeance is that director Mark Steven Johnson, who helmed the first film, was replaced by Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, collectively known as Neveldine/Taylor. This is the wonderful duo behind the insane Crank franchise. That’s important because these dudes were born to work with Cage. What’s also important is that you read what our very own Brad Gullickson had to say about Crank but don’t click that link until you finish reading this.

Spirit of Vengeance picks up several years after the events of the first film and it opens with the introduction of a priest named Moreau played by the one and only Idris Elba. Moreau is trying to warn a monastery about an impending attack for which the monks on hand foolish think they’re prepared to handle. When the attack occurs it becomes painfully obvious they’re not and all hell breaks loose.

The attack comes from a mercenary named Ray Carrigan (Johnny Whitworth) who the Devil (Ciarán Hinds) hired to find a young boy named Danny (Fergus Riordan). At the time of the attack Danny is held at the monastery along with his mother, Nadya (Violante Placido), for safekeeping. Moreau attempts to help the mother and child flee for safety but Nadya doesn’t trust him and shoots at him as she takes off with Danny in a car.

What proceeds next is a kick-ass car chase with Ray chasing after Danny and Nadya and Moreau chasing after Ray. Because this is a Neveldine/Taylor movie the chase is  wonderfully chaotic and shot to perfection by the extremely talented Brandon Trost. It’s very stylized and features all the manic energy the directors showcased in the Crank films. It reminds me a bit of Kinji Fukasaku’s Battles Without Honor and Humanity, which I admit sounds like it’s coming out of left field. The action sequences in Fukasaku’s film have this frenetic pace to them thanks to the handheld camera approach and this opening scene in Spirit of Vengeance has the same sort of vibe. The key difference is that in Battles Without Honor and Humanity the action sequences are fist fights and in Ghost Rider we’re dealing with a car chase!

Ray and Moreau end up taking one another out which allows Nadya and Danny to speed off. While Nadya and Danny are safe for the time being, Moreau understands that it’s fleeting and if they want to have any shot he’s going to need to bring in the big guns. He needs the Rider (that’s short for Ghost Rider). Using some elite tracking skills Moreau is able to locate Johnny Blaze somewhere in Eastern Europe. Blaze has been hiding out in Europe because he’s unable to control Ghost Rider and that’s not great if you have friends because as we all know Ghost Rider isn’t picky. If you do something wrong, no matter how big or how small, he will eat your soul.

Blaze is not happy about Moreau’s arrival and why should he be? He moved far away from everybody and found a nice little secluded place to keep to himself and here comes this French priest just barging in like he owns place? And what’s the first thing Moreau does? Dumps out Blaze’s booze and breaks a window. Not cool, man, not cool.

As it turns out Moreau isn’t there just to break things. He actually went through all the trouble to find Blaze to offer a proposition — if Blaze can locate Danny and bring him to safety, Moreau’s secret religious organization will be able to reverse his curse. Alright, now Johnny’s listening!

Blaze agrees because he wants his soul released from this terrible curse but it won’t be easy. For starters he now has to try to force Ghost Rider out which is a tad difficult because he’s spent so much time trying to keep him in.

When he finally gets Ghost Rider out his mission begins with chasing down Ray and his goons which isn’t too bad because these are mere mortal men who pose no real threat to a demonic eater of souls like the Rider. Unfortunately things are never as easy as they seem and Ghost Rider soon realizes he also has to deal with the Devil. His relationship with the Devil isn’t great to begin with and it only gets worse when the Devil turns Ray into a demon named Blackout who is arguably just as powerful as Ghost Rider. Chaos ensues!

From the jump Spirit of Vengeance far surpasses anything the first Ghost Rider accomplished. Neveldine/Taylor have this go big or go home approach that is required when operating within this world. That first scene lets you know what you’re in for and from that moment on they just keep trying to top themselves. And somehow they do by later having a chase sequence that’s even more bonkers and off the wall than the first. At one point while standing atop a flaming vehicle that is barreling down a desert highway Ghost Rider grabs Blackout and delivers a Rock Bottom onto another moving vehicle. That is 100% a real thing that happens in this movie and it’s even more glorious than it sounds.

There’s plenty of other crazy nonsense in this film too. That Danny kid, turns out he’s the antichrist! That’s a fun little tidbit. Oh and Johnny describes what it’s like to pee while being Ghost Rider. Hint: it involves a flamethrower. Double hint: he basically says his penis is a flamethrower. Hey now!

Cage carries the film by delivering a stellar performance. That’s right, I said stellar and I’ll fight anyone that disagrees. This Blaze is much more tortured than the Blaze in the first film. Instead of trying to understand what he’s become he’s actively trying to fight it and it’s a fight for his life. He’s fully committed to the role too, going to great lengths to portray his struggle.

“For me, John Blaze, his head is already ignited so when you meet him, he’s in a much different place in this movie than in the other movie,” Cage said in an interview with Collider discussing the film. “It’s almost a completely different character in many ways. A much edgier, almost cynical interpretation than the original or than the Ghost Rider movie.”

Spirit of Vengeance isn’t perfect though, I’ll admit to that. The script is loony with plenty of pieces that don’t make sense. But then is that really a problem? After all Ghost Rider is a character that was given super powers by the Devil and then he uses those powers against the Devil. It’s like why’d the Devil even give him those powers? I don’t know and more importantly I don’t care because it’s awesome.

The CGI is once again not quite up to the task. I wouldn’t say it’s bad necessarily, but it could have been better. It’s still a pretty good step up from the first film but something feels a tad off.

Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance failed at the domestic box office which isn’t too surprising. Movies that go outside the box tend to struggle which is too bad because people are constantly complaining that Hollywood pushes out the same cookie cutter movies. Spirit of Vengeance was an attempt by filmmakers to do something different and audiences shied away.

Part of the beauty of movies are that they live far beyond the box office. Eventually people forget or just don’t care how much money a movie made. The initial reaction slowly fades away and a new audience begins to discover the movie.

I love every second of this batshit crazy movie. It’s like an Iron Maiden album come to life. It tries to be unique and do something different and that’s all you can ask for. Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance deserves a second chance at success. Here’s to hoping it gets one.

It’s looking like Mia Wasikowska’s suggestive acting paired with Mia Hansen-Løve’s subtle filmmaking will be a perfect match.

In an exclusive from Screen Daily, it has been revealed director of 2016’s Things to Come, Mia Hansen-Løve’s next film is set to feature an array of your favorite stars. From Greta Gerwig (who can also be seen in Hansen-Løve’s 2014 Eden) to The Big Lebowski’s John Turturro, the filmmaker’s next feature already sounds promising. Also joining Gerwig and Hansen-Løve newcomer Turturro is Mia Wasikowska, and it’s this collaboration between the actress and director that proves most exciting.

Inspired by a trip to the Island of Faro, the place of Ingmar Bergman’s old home, Hansen-Løve’s English-language debut is clearly inspired by the late Swedish director. Called Bergman’s Island, the film centers on the relationship between a filmmaking couple. As per Screen Daily, the couple ‘retreat to the island for the summer to each write screenplays for their upcoming films in an act of pilgrimage to the place that inspired Bergman.’ Reality and fantasy begin to blur as each writer goes deeper into their story, with the backdrop of the island’s untamed landscape adding some pathetic fallacy.

Speaking to The Film Stage when promoting last year’s Things to Come, Hansen-Løve observed: “there are a lot of films where you feel like there is no subconscious in them because they are so self-conscious in a way that it blocks the access to the unconscious.” The filmmaker continued by observing her aspirations when making a film: she tries “to write films and make them in a way that gives the space and the possibility for the unconscious to find its way through.” While this description of the unconscious type of filmmaking speaks to Bergman’s work, it is also reminiscent of Wasikowska’s type of acting.

Wasikowska’s style of acting is more concerned with the motivations that come from within rather than external emotional factors. Her facial expressions and tone of delivery are expressed internally rather than as a reaction to the actor standing in front of her. Wasikowska doesn’t so much

Wasikowska doesn’t so much become her characters as she is them, each facet of the person she plays feeling as though they have always existed. It’s clear, then, why Wasikowska will be a perfect fit for Hansen-Løve’s worlds. Paired with the director’s suggestive and subtle filmmaking that leaves room for the viewer’s unconscious, the pairing of Wasikowska and Hansen-Løve is looking like a perfect match.

Charles Gillibert, who previously produced Things to Come and Eden, will continue his role on Bergman’s Island. Developed with Sweden’s Filmregion Stockholm-Mälardalen through Gotlands Filmfond, shooting for the film will begin in summer 2018.

The latest chapter of an ongoing series.

This is truly one of my favorite series of video essays. Every few months our friend Vugar Efendi releases a gorgeous new montage comparing classic works of visual art – paintings, y’all – with frames from popular films that have used them as direct inspiration.

Having already exhausted the more blatant instances, Efendi is now in the realm of deep cuts, which for my money I consider far more fascinating than some of the obvious stuff. For example, there’s the pairing of Alex Colville’s To Prince Edward Island with a certain frame from Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom, or John Singer Sargent’s 1882 masterpiece El Jaleo and it’s mirror from John Wayne’s The Alamo – that’s right, not only did Wayne direct, he knew some art as well, go figure – or The Abbey in the Oakwood by Caspar David Friedrich with Inarritu’s The Revenant. My favorite examples, though, are the ones from biopics of artists paired with their actual work, as in the case of Frieda or Lust for Life.

Bottom line, both being visual media, there is an inextricable link between painting and film, one just uses brushes over cameras, is all. Be sure once you’ve finished this video to hit Vugar’s Vimeo page for the first two installments.

A stunning coming-of-age horror film.

When the Overlook Film Festival came to a close all the talk centered around It Comes at Night, the latest film from Krisha director Trey Edward Shults. The talk was justified because the film was making its world premiere as the secret screening of the festival’s closing night. It also helps that the film is great — read my review.

As great as that latest effort from Shults is, my best of the fest belongs to director Nicholas Verso and his absolutely wonderful coming of age horror film, Boys in the Trees.

It’s October 31, 1997, and a group of high school kids are getting ready to go out and celebrate their last Halloween before they have some big life choices to make. With high school graduation right around the corner they have to decide what the next chapter of their lives will be.

Corey (Toby Wallace) has the toughest choice to make. He’s one of the cool kids, spending his days skating and his evenings drinking and getting high. Along with Jango (Justin Holborow) he’s the co-leader of his particular clique. He can go to the local community college, continue to do the same things, and maintain his status as a big fish in a small pond. Jango wants and expects Corey to choose this option.

Corey wants something more out of life though. He wants experiences he can only get by leaving the only town he’s ever known. He has a passion for photography that he believes can be his way out and uses it to get accepted to a university in New York City. Jango catches a glimpse of Corey’s acceptance package and gets upset. The two have a bit of tiff before Corey assures Jango that he was just looking into his options.

Once the argument dies down they prepare to get ready to do what they do everyone Halloween — put on some masks to go out and just be typical high school jerks. They drink, they smoke, they throw dead birds and toilet paper on houses, and terrorize smaller kids. One boy they single out is Jonah (Gulliver McGrath), a kid who’s the same age as them but quite a bit smaller which unfortunately makes him a target.

As the night goes on Jango gets extra jerky, in large due to the fact that he’s still upset that Corey would even consider leaving, which ironically only furthers Corey’s wanting to leave. Sick of childish games and ready to grow up, Corey chooses to call it a night and head home. On the way home, he runs into Jonah at the local skatepark. It’s here where we learn that Corey and Jonah used to be best friends that did everything together and they particularly loved Halloween. Once they got to high school the two drifted apart as Corey became associated with the cool crowd.

Jonah feels that Corey owes him one and asks that Corey walks him home. While Corey won’t come out and admit it openly, it’s clear that he feels the same way and agrees to do so. It’s on this walk home that Jonah attempts to remind Corey of the fun they had with hopes of getting the joy of their youth back.

Boys in the Trees takes place over the course of this one single Halloween night but it has a lifetime worth of story. These kids are at that awkward crossroads where they’re still very much little boys but they’re on the verge of becoming young men. The film is about rediscovering and holding onto the joy and innocence of youth while at the same time growing up and expanding outward to truly discover yourself. This is a story about friendship and the complications that come with it.

There are certain elements within the film that pull you into the heart of the 90’s. I know nothing about growing up in Australia, but I do know about growing up in the ’90s. Boys in the Trees taught me that maybe there weren’t that many differences between growing up in ’90s Australia and growing up in ’90s Phoenix. Kids the world over pretty much do the same stuff. Verso does a number of things well to bring the viewer into this period, mainly through the use of music which not only helps to establish the era in which the film takes place but also sets the tone.

An early scene in the film has all of Corey’s friends gathered in his room. They get on the Internet and we can see it’s obviously a very slow dial-up modern at work and they turn on “Lump” by the Presidents of the United States of America. One kid even drums along to the song as it plays. This lets us know from the start that we are definitely in the ’90s. Later in the film, Marilyn Manson’s “Beautiful People” is used to great effect as the kids are out causing havoc. A lot of other fun throwbacks make their way into the film including Rammstein and Gary Numan. Bush is even used in a way I found to be positive and that’s saying something because I am no fan of Bush.

Boys in the Trees also succeeds visually thanks to the wonderful cinematography of Marden Dean. There are a number of breathtaking shots that are paired perfectly with the music. A scene with the kids on their bikes holding colorful flares is especially awe-inspiring. Verso and Dean make great use of Halloween on the screen, taking advantage of the decorations that come with the holiday to help create the look of the film. And while the movie deals heavily with more real life issues there are a number of fantasy elements that allow Dean to have some more fun with the camera.

I can’t say enough about how much I love Boys in the Trees. It’s a stunning piece of cinema that is uplifting while heartbreaking all at once. It’s something that I would highly encourage people to seek out and see. Boys in the Trees isn’t your traditional horror film in that it’s not super scary — though there are some scares — but it is a beautiful story about the trials and tribulations of growing and it all takes place with a Halloween backdrop.

Never, ever go skinny-dipping in the movies.

Teenage rebellion is nothing new when it comes to the movies. Ever since producers figured out back in the 1950s that not only did teenagers have opinions and preferences, but money to spend, our collective cultural media has been slowly reorienting itself to align with those opinions and preferences to the point today teenagers essentially run our culture. Don’t believe me? The Twilight franchise took in over three billion dollars at the global box office and that girl from 13 Reasons Why has been the top-ranked star on IMDB ever since the show was released.

Also not new at the movies? Teenage rebellion gone wrong, usually to the tune of some reckless behavior that inspires an off-center adult to interfere with our young heroes’ freewheeling naivete. That’s the basic set-up of writer-director Robbie Barclay’s Backstroke, but where he takes things from there is anything but basic and in fact is novel, intriguing, unexpected and an emotional gut-punch, not to mention spellbindingly gorgeous.

A pair of runaway teens boost a car, find a gun, take a dip, and encounter a sinister-seeming stranger along the way. All the elements for a run-of-the-mill crime-centric thriller are in place, but the way Barclay arranges and exploits said elements results in something so far from the norm it will get a stranglehold on your senses and keep them there long after the credits roll.

Narratively, that’s all you should know going in, but technically I’d be remiss if I didn’t clue you in to just how good-looking and expertly-structured Backstroke is, felt to me like a young Jeff Nichols directing an undiscovered Cormac McCarthy short story, and if you know me you know dropping those two names in the same sentence is pretty much the greatest compliment I’ve ever given in this column.

Oh, and the last three seconds? You’ll never, ever forget them. Promise.

I say this on occasion because we cover some truly outstanding filmmakers on the rise here, but Robbie Barclay’s name needs to be etched into your filmic database right now. This dude isn’t just legit, he’s LEGIT. You simply can’t watch even a minute of Backstroke without seeing that he’s the best kind of filmmaker: a natural one. Expect giant, big, world-shaking things from him.

This is another stellar film that world premiered over on Short of the Week. 

This week, the gents of Junkfood Cinema, as part of their ongoing Summer of 1987 series, discuss the action trash-terpiece American Ninja 2: The Confrontation.

Without being too confrontational myself, allow me to remind you all that ninja movies are a lie. Ironically, that expert-level deception is the most ninja-accurate thing about them. However, any film that portrays ninjas as the heroes–be they children, surfers, or teenage mutant turtles–is akin to painting a cute little teddy bear on a tomahawk missile.

In feudal Japan, ninjas were covert agents recruited from the lower class to carry out missions of espionage, sabotage, and assassination. They were guerrilla fighters whose tactics were looked upon as totally dishonorable by, say, the samurai. In the 1980s, it was b-movie custom to feature villains with an army of lethal ninja henchmen at their beck and call…this is accurate. However, these same movies would frequently feature heroes also classified as ninjas, and often these would be the titular characters…this is the lie.

Having any hero in a movie referred to, or refer to themselves even, as a ninja is like rooting for the stormtrooopers in Star Wars. Ok, fine. Yes, Finn in Force Awakens makes this analogy shaky, but consider the fact that Finn had a crisis of conscience that lead to his defection from his armor-clad death squad; only after which did he win the audience’s allegiance.

This type of defection proves to be too-little-too-late for Danny, the redheaded (literally) miscreant from the first TMNT film whose association with The Foot Clan aides them in beating Ralph half to death and burning down April’s home.

So was it a systemic ignorance of feudal Japanese caste systems that propelled us to turn a blind eye to this paradox and consume ninja movies like candy during the 80s and early 90s? Not at all. It was instead the rise of a specific sect of shinobi. This clan emerged during the Reagan Dynasty, and for all their contributions to culture, they are immortalized on no elaborately painted scroll. I speak of course, of the legendary mall ninja.

What is a mall ninja? A mall ninja is a villain, therefore historically accurate. They are hired by character actors and other greasy baddies to protect their illicit empires that are not always, but definitely always, funded by the distribution of narcotics. The mall ninjas have their own code, the tenets of which are thus:

• We will attack the hero in broad daylight
• We will never attack as a group, but rather one at a time while the others
  encircle, watch, and inexplicably sway as they wait for their turn to fail
• We will kidnap any scientist
• We will kidnap all scientists
• We will kidnap any woman romantically linked to the hero no matter how
  recent that romantic attachment
• We will fight poorly despite our ostensible martial arts training
• Our ninja uniforms need not be necessarily black and can, in fact, come in neon colors (see tenet#1)
• Our ninja uniforms will conceal our faces, not for tactical advantage, but
  instead to conceal that we are always stuntmen and not actors
• Our deaths, not our fights, will provide the primary entertainment source for
  these movies

That code of dishonor is exactly why American Ninja 2: The Confrontation is wildly enjoyable, and in fact why we would, at any time, sit down and watch any installment of the American Ninja franchise starring (at various points, dependent upon the particular sequel) Michael Dudikoff and/or Steve James; both of whom are much a ninja as they are Japanese.

Want to hear more not-so-clandestine thoughts about American Ninja 2? Including why it should have been secondarily titled Super Ninjas, why we want to see Michael Dudikoff in La La Land, and the Ninjaland theme park we are constructing, listen to this week’s Junkfood Cinema!

As a special treat, anyone who backs JFC on Patreon will have access to weekly bonus episodes covering an additional cult movie, a new movie in theaters, or a mailbag episode devoted to your submitted questions! During Summer of 87, there will be an entirely separate Summer of 77 miniseries just for Patrons! Have a couple bucks to throw in the hat, we’ll reward you!

On This Week’s Show:

• Appetizers [0:00–2:12]
• The Main Course [2:13–51:09]
• The Junkfood Pairing [51:10–53:13]

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Less an abundance of flaws than an absence of anything that works especially well.

Wonderstruck is not a “bad” film. The people involved, from director Todd Haynes to cinematographer Edward Lachman to a cast that includes veterans Julianne Moore and Michelle Williams (for the whole five minutes or so that she’s in it) and a trio of youngsters—Ben (Oakes Fegley) and Jamie (Jaden Michael) in the 1970’s and Rose (Millicent Simmonds) in the 1920’s—are all clearly skilled at what they do. And yet, the film still just does not work. Watching it is like opening a pastry box from a really good bakery only to find it empty inside. Wonderstruck fails to inspire wonder or any emotions at all. Bad movies, like literal train wrecks, are quite often capable of holding our attention even if it’s for all the wrong reasons. But there is no train wreck here; everything is okay, just okay—so totally normal that it’s not okay at all and is instead horrendously boring.

There are many battles to choose from with this film. The pacing is often incredibly slow, especially for what is ultimately a children’s movie. You would think that the parallel narrative structure – Ben runs away from a Minnesota hospital in 1977 after losing both his hearing and his mother and goes searching in New York City for his father while Rose runs away from home to the Big Apple to meet her idol, actress Lillian Mayhew, in 1927, – would leave the film with an excess of plot. That’s not the case though as instead too much of the plots feel redundant in their similarities often giving way to overly long montages cross-cutting between the two.  One example sees both children exploring the Museum of Natural History and offering up their similar reactions to the same features. On the rare occasion it adds some insight to the characters, but for the most part, it just adds to the running time. (Really? Meteorites are cool regardless of when you’re a kid? You don’t say?)

The rationale behind the film’s visual style choices—1927 is black & white while 1977 is at times warmly tinted, like some sections of the movie are being shown on a computer with f.lux left on—is pretty self-explanatory. And of course, aurally, there’s the added connection between the silence (that is, lack of diegetic dialogue) of the ’20s sections and Rose’s deafness. Still, it’s more of an “I see what you’re going for” deal as opposed to a “you 100% got there.” On some level, I can even understand why this is the case. If the film committed to the aesthetic of ’20s cinema—for example, the exaggerated makeup and acting—it would make the contrast with inter-cut ’70s sequences distracting and unpleasantly strong, and the whole inter-cutting thing is kind of the point of the narrative, the thing that tries to keep it from being lesser Hugo. So it’s a catch-22.

Brian Selznick‘s script is an adaption of his novel, his first such endeavor, but there’s something off about it raising the possibility that maybe he’s not the best at adapting his work for the screen. Wonderstruck is Selznick’s first screenwriting credit, and even if it wasn’t, authors adapting their work to films is a turbulent designation with plenty of highs and lows. There were certain sequences, particularly near the end of the film, where I couldn’t figure out why the narrative was handling things a particular way until I imagined it as if it were written in a book at which point it made sense. It still doesn’t work particularly well cinematically, but I can understand why it is the way it is.

And once you finally do make it through to the end, the film’s “Ah-ha!” moment is much more accurately an “uh-huh” moment. Wonderstruck clearly aims for a “big reveal” moment, but it draws back the curtain to reveal a plot the narrative equivalent of Swiss cheese. I cannot even describe to you the note on which the film ends, because what at first seems somber-ish (I guess?) is followed by an upbeat ’70s hit played blasting over the end credits, followed by a mawkish children’s choir rendition of “Space Oddity,” leading me to conclude that somber wasn’t the intended closing note. Unless that is, the film is aiming for emotional whiplash.

Unfortunately, the most intriguing thing about Wonderstruck is how so many seemingly guaranteed elements could come together as a whole that for some reason still doesn’t function quite right.

A profound and morose take on contemporary Russia from the director of Leviathan.

You could go as far back as Shakespeare to truly witness just how important a work of drama’s setting can be to the central themes and storytelling being told by the given author. Take, for example, “The Tempest,” one of the Shakespeare’s most accomplished works, which takes place on an isolated island. That isolation, the feeling of nothingness withered with a sense of loneliness, is used as a powerful political statement on colonialism and Western civilization’s unhealthy addiction to settling land for political gain.

All of this brings us to Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Loveless, a profound and morose take on contemporary Russia from the director of Leviathan, a film that made waves back in 2014 and which included a scene with its main characters playing a game of shoot the darts on a poster of Vladimir Putin. Putin is barely mentioned in this latest endeavor from Zvyagintsev, but his shadow looms in every frame.

The film’s separated couple, Boris (Alexei Rozin) and Zhenya (Maryana Spivak), are soon to be divorced. All they have to do is sell their apartment, and then they’re off. They both refuse to take custody of Andrey (Matvey Novikov), their 12-year-old son; a lonely boy stuck in the middle of the egotistical fight between these two reprehensible human beings. Even adoption is spoken of as an option for Andrey. Zhenya had an unplanned pregnancy at 18 and, to escape her paranoid mother’s wrath, decided to marry Boris at a young age. As you can imagine, it was not love at first sight. To Zhenya it was escape at first sight.

Zhenya barely acknowledges her son’s presence at home, but when she does, it is only done through verbal abuse. In a particularly powerful scene, the divorcees have another heated exchange in the living room, the camera slowly panning away, into Andrey’s room and his powerfully moving sobbing face. It’s an image that will haunt the rest of the movie. There’s a detachment and resentment in the way the 12-year-old boy behaves that is inescapable. The last we see of him is when he runs out of his room, backpack in tow, and leaves the apartment building. Going where? We’re not sure, but one imagines the words “anywhere, but here” roaming around the young boy’s mind.

The carelessness of Zhenya towards her son, the scornful neglect of abandonment, is so profound that it takes two days for her to realize that he hasn’t been home for the last 48 hours. What does she do? Phone Boris. Even with their son missing they still bicker, and it continually happens this way throughout the film. Authorities are not helpful and claim the boy will; the stats show they say, come back in “7-10 days” when he realizes that he “has it good at home.” The parents don’t say a word. The police forward them to an all-volunteer organization which helps find missing children.

The search goes on, but so does the bewilderment of these “loveless” people. Which is where the film’s Russian setting comes in. Russia should be considered a major character in “Loveless,” as Zvyagintsev tries to show a society rotting at its core, one quite akin to the one we live in America, where people are hungry and desperate to climb the upper echelons of societal class and, you know, win, whatever that might mean, even if they might have to sell their soul, and dignity, in the process. Make no mistake about it, Zvyagintsev’s decision to include multiple scenes of people glued to their cell phones, taking selfies, taking pictures of their food, is an indictment of the detachment, the vanity, the selfishness if you will, of a culture very much akin to our own.

Loveless is, in the end, about western civilization turning into a numb, unemotional populace, one in which it is a burden to take care of a child and that your happiness becomes more important than that of your baby cub. The political establishment looms large in the film, like a big brother watching over these characters’ every step, watching lives be destroyed, but not caring one bit about the outcome.

Bong Joon-Ho teams with Netflix for a saccharine “monster movie.”

One of the fundamental filmmakers of the Korean New Wave, Bong Joon-ho is among a group of filmmakers responsible for the renewed interest in Korean cinema. His expert blend of dark humor and horrifying drama can be seen in such early classics as Barking Dogs Never Bite and Memories of Murder. In 2006 Bong released The Host, his eco-horror film which is considered one of the best monster movies of the new millennium. With The Host, Bong used a sea monster ravaging the streets of Seoul to comment on environmental abuse by the United States military. His first collaboration with Netflix, Okja, sees Bong returning to the themes and subject matter of The Host, this time with a somewhat sunnier approach.

Okja is technically Bong’s second English-language feature, yet most of the first act takes place in rural South Korea. Unlike his previous American-made film Snowpiercer, Okja really does feel like a true Korean film. It often blends Bong’s famously dark and comedic tones with the pure absurdity often associated with Japanese filmmaker Sion Sono (specifically of Love & Peace). One can certainly call Okja a monster movie, yet that assumption is someone inaccurate. Yes, there is a giant “super-pig” that tears through a Seoul shopping center, but the real monsters in Okja are the humans.

The film opens in 2007, where a brace-faced Lucy Mirando (Tilda Swinton), the CEO of the Mirando Corporation, seeks to re-brand with a new project. Twenty-six “super pigs” will be sent to different homes across the world and in ten years time, the best pig wins. Skip ten years, and we join Mija (Ahn Seo-Hyun) in the mountains with her beloved Okja. The ten-year-old super pig looks somewhat like the lovechild of a manatee and a hippopotamus. Once the viewer adjusts to Okja’s appearance, there really isn’t anything monstrous about her. She’s kind of like a big puppy: hungry, playful, and eternally loyal. Reenter the Mirando Corporation who sends Dr. Johnny Wilcox (Jake Gyllenhaal) to throw a sash over Mija’s shoulders and take her beloved friend back to New York City. Enter the Animal Liberation Front, who are part Symbionese Liberation Army, part Reservoir Dogs, to take Okja back.

Okja is a film of vast sensibilities. There’s a fun romp about bumbling eco-terrorists and a love story between friends, but what hits the hardest is the film’s take-down of the meat industry. It is all fun and games for a while, but once the Mirando Company begins their experiments, things get terribly dark fast. As the final act approaches Bong has already charmed his audience. So what better time to start hammering in some ideologies about how terrible we are for eating meat? Scenes in an animal testing facility are particularly disturbing, but it’s when we get to the slaughterhouse that Okja will make you feel particularly awful for ingesting that bacon with breakfast.

Swinton seems to be in complete synchronization with Bong. Okja marks the pair’s second collaboration and first with Swinton serving as producer. The actress’s continued fascination with costume and appearance is fully utilized here, where Swinton plays both malicious a CEO with a Barbie-like smile plastered on her face, as well as her dastardly twin-sister. The rigor with which Swinton approaches each movement allows her to fit perfectly in Bong’s wacky world. Gyllenhaal, on the other hand, matches Swinton with a performance that is completely unhinged. His Dr. Wilcox is zany and wears his desperation in every gesture.

In its moments, Okja bombards the audience with socio-political commentary on the meat industry and society’s need to consume. While rarely subtle, this commentary succeeds due to its relevance to the love story at the film’s center. Once again, Bong proves that he is a master of dark comedy, a true environmentalist, and a man with a big heart.

The troubled history of Walt Disney’s great experiment, and the grotesque implications of the live-action remake of “Night on Bald Mountain.”

The first time my mom saw Fantasia was at the Stanley Theatre, a Vancouver cinema and Vaudeville House that first opened 1930’s. The Stanley’s this glamorous neoclassical building with an art deco crust. These days, it’s difficult to imagine that kind of space as a movie theater. Fantasia was the last film to play at the Stanley and, as a swan song, it was a perfect choice. The film had multiple theatrical re-releases and had become a programming staple. Furthermore, Fantasia would have been the perfect showcase for the Stanley’s impressive projection and sound systems, which were among the best in the city. I can’t imagine a more gracious denouement than the Franz Schubert “Ave Maria” sequence, which, in addition to featuring one of the most ambitious shots in animation history, is nothing short of transcendent.

It’s easy to understand why Disney is pilfering its back catalog. Alice and Wonderland made over $1 billion worldwide and this year’s Beauty and the Beast raked in $1.2 billion. That’s not exactly a deterrent. I suspect the live-action Mulan, Tim-Burton-helmed Dumbo, and Lion King remakes will do just fine at the box office. And sure, there’s something flagrantly money-grubbing and creatively fetid about Disney’s self-cannibalization, but these films are mostly harmless. That said, there’s something particularly odious about Disney adapting segments from Fantasia, as is intended with “Night on Bald Mountain.” Conceptually, Fantasia is utterly unique; it’s cinematic poetry, not linear storytelling. To mangle and contort torn-up parts of  Fantasia into a live-action feature-length film would be to fundamentally and grotesquely alter what set it apart.

Fantasia was Walt Disney’s brainchild: a logical extension of the Silly Symphonies, and an ambitious demonstration of what the studio (and animation) could accomplish. What began as a cartoon short to signal boost Mickey evolved into a feature film. For the three of you that are unfamiliar with Fantasia, the film consists of eight distinct animated sequences set to classical music arranged by Leopold Stokowski (or rather, his shadow), performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra (with the exception of “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” which was performed by session musicians at Culver Studios). When the film opens, players take their places, instruments are tuned, the lights go down, and we are greeted by music critic, and master of ceremonies Deems Taylor. The familiarity of the concert hall disintegrates into a liminal space, accented by colored light and shadow, and slowly, we are transported; to dreamy miasma, to the dawn of life, to a mythic past.

The film holds the distinction of being the first commercial motion picture to be shown with stereophonic sound. “Fantasound,” a collaboration between Disney and RCA Records to create a high-quality multichannel soundtrack, was revolutionary, prompting one Variety review to herald it as “[eclipsing] anything previously attempted in mechanical sound entertainment.” It was also hilariously expensive. To play the soundtrack, Disney technicians had to equip theaters with the elaborate Fantasound system, which meant Fantasia had to be booked as a touring road show. This, coupled with the fact that the film couldn’t be released overseas because fucking World War II was happening, resulted in a disappointing opening box office. A handful of re-releases later and Fantasia has grossed $76.4 million in domestic revenue, making it the 23rd highest-grossing film in the US when adjusted for inflation. Even so, Fantasia’s reputation as a flop that lost the modern equivalent of $15 million on its initial release persists.

Walt Disney had planned to keep Fantasia in permanent release. The idea was that as new sequences were created, they would be exchanged for one of the original eight and the viewer may never see the same film twice. Preliminary work was done for several pieces including Wagner’s “The Ride of the Valkyries,” and Rimsky-Korsakov’s “The Flight of the Bumble Bee.” But the idea was scrapped due to the project’s scope and mixed critical and audience response to Fantasia itself (The Nation’s Franz Hoellering called it “a promising monstrosity”). The closest approximation to Walt’s vision was in 1947 when “Peter and the Wolf” was shown as Fantasia’s opening feature. The short was originally included in Make Mine Music (1944), which like Melody Time (1948), is not so much a conscious Fantasia successor as shit we need content, but all our animators are either drafted or making propaganda. And so, Disney ditched his dream of an evergreen Fantasia. To quote Walt: “Fantasia is an idea in itself. I can never build another Fantasia. I can improve. I can elaborate. That’s all.”

In 1980 the LA Times reported that a new version of Fantasia was in the works from integral Disney animators Mel Shaw and Wolfgang “Woolie” Reitherman. The tritely named Musicana was to be an international tour de force, featuring music, imagery, and folklore from around the world. True to form, a segment set in China based on professional childhood ruiner Hans Christian Anderson’s “The Nightingale,” and animated by none other than John Lasseter, was to feature Mickey. Unsure of Musicana’s commercial viability, Disney execs passed on the project for Mickey’s Christmas Carol. A featurette about Musicana, which foregrounds the artwork created during development, appears on the Blu-Ray of Fantasia 2000. Speaking of which…

In the winter of 1999, by the grace of Fantasia’s successful 1991 home video sales, a true-blue sequel arrived. Fantasia 2000 was the pet project of Walt’s nephew Roy E. Disney. The score was provided by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus under the direction of MET conductor James Levine. In the place of my beloved, charming Deems Taylor, a roster of celebrities introduces each segment. Their presence is often cited as the film’s weak point, and while this is entirely justified criticism, I’d like to remind the jury that there’s a gag in Fantasia where some members of the orchestra loudly struggle a massive percussive wind chime.

Developed during the late-millennium CGI overthrow of traditional animation, Fantasia 2000 awkwardly (*cough* “The Pines of Rome”) acts as “a case study of shifting artistic techniques at the studio.” Notably, while the intention was to realize Walt’s vision of a continual Fantasia with the film being a “semi-new movie,” in the end only a restored version of “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” was retained. Like its predecessor, Fantasia 2000 featured technical innovations and was the first animated feature-length film to play in IMAX Dolby Digital surround sound. While critically well-received, not unlike the original, Fantasia 2000 was grossly expensive and tanked at the box office. From a financial perspective, it was, to quote then-CEO Michael Eisner, a “folly.”

Meanwhile, development of a third film was shelved in 2004 for reasons unknown (read: a cocktail of the great and terrible Eisner being a skeptic of the Fantasia concept and his indirect ousting of Roy Disney). The segments, some of which began development in the 1940s, were later released as standalone shorts, including, “Lorenzo,” “One by One,” “The Little Matchgirl,” and Salvador Dalí’s beautifully bonkers “Destino.”

There are presently three bastard live-action spin-offs. The first is 2010’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, a film that somehow stars Nic Cage and Alfred Molina and still succeeds at being frightfully dull. Named after the original segment and featuring one scene about it, the film is primarily about a MacGuffin ring and some hum drum about being the chosen one. Roger Ebert called it “a much better film than The Last Airbender, which is faint praise.” But there it was: “Jay Baruchel taking over a role once played by Mickey Mouse,” in one of the first films of Disney’s back catalog strategy. The second film is called The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, and it’s slated for 2018 and is directed by Lasse Hallström of A Dog’s Purpose infamy. Now, I hear you: this is clearly an adaptation of the E.T.A. Hoffmann novel, not the “Nutcracker Suite” sequence from Fantasia with its seasonal dancing fairies, fish, flowers, and mushrooms. Be that as it may, the public reaction disagreed. And while I want to credit Fantasia for having so successfully cemented the Suite in the cultural conscience, it’s both telling and troubling that folks are assuming that the film is a live-action remake.

Which brings us to the live-action adaptation of “Night on Bald Mountain.” Now, I love Satan as much as the next girl and would be the first in line to see a feature-length film about the Slavonic Chernobog (it could premiere on Walpurgis Night!). And I love the sequence: I love his deliciously articulated hands; I love the weightiness of Bill Tytla’s animation; I love the gradual creep, the Boschian frenzy, and the enormous satisfaction when a recoiling Chernabog hears the bell toll as dawn breaks. I don’t particularly like that the writers of the upcoming adaptation were responsible for Gods of Egypt. I’m not into their alleged plan to retcon my beloved mountain-satan-party-god into a misunderstood anti-hero. But what worries me most is that this project threatens to jam a round-shaped peg into a square-shaped hole. That its existence, and more importantly, the creative regurgitation it represents, cheapens the source material and delegitimizes any potential for another bonafide Fantasia film.

If there’s no dialogue in the live-action adaptation, I’ll happily eat my shoe.

In a 1940 review, The New York Times described Fantasia as “something which dumps conventional formulas overboard and boldly reveals the scope of films for an imaginative excursion.” In the adjacent review for Sky Murder, the critic observes: “Let a Hollywood producer launch a film series and very shortly the stories, as they appear, become as formalized as…checkers.”

Well. There it is.

Perhaps, as a swan song, “Ave Maria” singled the close of more than just the Stanley Theatre.