Weapons of Mass Migration, in the Epoch Times

WEAPONS OF MASS MIGRATION investifates illegal immigration on the ground in Panama's Darien Gap. It finds suspiicous activity on the part of cartels, the UN, and the CCP. The national security implications are serious. EPOCH TIMES exclusive review up here.

Dark Matter, on Apple TV+

Somewhere in the multiverse, there must be an alternate Chicago that is a safe, peaceful city, with high-performing schools and a thriving economy. Obviously, that is not the Chicago of our universe. It is not Jason Dessen’s Chicago either, but he is definitely trying to find it again, to reunite with his wife and son—the ones he knows. Dessen’s unwilling odyssey through the multiverse unfolds in creator Blake Crouch’s 9-episode Dark Matter, adapted from his original novel, which premieres today on Apple TV+.

Instead of becoming Richard Feynman, Dessen married Daniela Vargas and had his moody teenaged son, Charlie. It was worth it, but sometimes he wonders what might have been. The other Jason Dessen does not have to wonder. He became a hot shot physicist who built the “box” that serves as a portal between parallel universes, but he envies our Dessen’s happy family life. Consequently, he kidnaps the Dessen viewers identify with, marooning him in his own universe, so he can replace “our” Dessen with his family.

Despite his new wealth, Dessen desperately wants to return to his family, once he figures out why his life is suddenly so radically different. Amanda Lucas, the alternate Dessen’s lover and co-worker agrees to help him escape their industrialist boss, but navigating the box is a tricky endeavor. The first few doors they open nearly lead to disastrous consequences.

The box is a very cool riff on Schrodinger that sort of symbolically puts those who enter into super-position, with the help of psychotropic drugs. It is complicated to explain, but it represents some nifty speculative science fiction. Unfortunately, the characters are not nearly as interesting. In fact, they are mostly a rather annoying assembly of dull, joyless neurotics. That definitely includes Dessen—all of them.

That human factor definitely matters. It is ironic that we need to make that point regarding Dark Matter, since that is ostensibly the whole point of the series. The notable exception would be Jennifer Connelly’s various performances as the multi-Vargas Dessens. She has the most opportunities to play variations on her character, which she fully capitalizes on. Each multi-verse Daniela is recognizably similar, yet distinctive in her own ways.

The Idea of You, in Cinema Daily US

Anne Hathaway and Nicholas Galitzine bring a lot of charm ot THE IDEA OF YOU. They are terrific together, but theyhet zero support from anyone else. CINEMA DAILY US review up here.

Kitty the Killer

The so-called “Agency” is a lot like a Southeast Asian version of the La Femme Nikita covert organization. Each female assassin has a “guardian,” who is only supposed to watch over them. In practice, the watchers code-named “Grey Fox” will have to fight like heck. It sort of goes with the territory when you work for an assassination agency. They will have to fight each other when a power struggle splits the Agency. Again, this isn’t so surprising for a group of killers-for-hire. Whether he likes it or not, the new Grey Fox must look after his Kittys in Lee Thongkam’s Kitty the Killer, which releases today on VOD.

It is a bit of mess when Keng, the Grey Fox, sends Dina, his favorite Kitty, to retrieve a box from sleazy Wong, before he can sell it to the Japanese wing of the Agency. Whatever is in that box is a lot like the glowing briefcase in Pulp Fiction. Keng has his reasons for wanting it, which puts him crosswise with Ms. Violet, the Agency’s boardroom boss, who unleashes “Nina the Faceless” on Keng.

The Grey Fox handily fends off hordes of generic henchmen, but the Faceless Kitty is too much for him. As he nurses his mortal wounds, Keng carjacks poor Charlie, a nebbish office worker, forcing him to become the next Grey Fox.

Or something like that. Honestly, it’s debatable how much of this weird story really makes any kind of sense.  However, it is easy to get all the heads that get decapitated by katana swords. Charlie’s shtickiness can be a bit much, but the martial arts beatdowns are brutally spectacular. Sumret Mueangputt’s fight choreography is wildly cinematic, but also dirty and gritty.

Independent Lens: Space, the Longest Goodbye

The original Mercury 7 astronauts were test pilots, because they were expected to go up and come back down, while somehow holding their spacecrafts together. In science fiction, crew and passengers often spends millennia in suspended animation as they travel to distant galaxies. The three-year trip to Mars and back will be something in between, without the means to communicate with family back on Earth. It is a peculiar challenge that the psychologists and “human factors” specialists at NASA are trying to prepare for in Ido Mizrahy’s documentary Space: The Longest Goodbye, which airs tomorrow on PBS, as part of the current season of Independent Lens.

It is sort of hard to believe, but they did not really have people doing what Dr. Al Holland does at NASA, until he started his department in 1994. Of course, the hard-partying “Right Stuff” generation had their own ways of dealing with stress (read Tom Wolfe). There was also a deep institutional fear of confiding personal information that could potentially get astronauts scrubbed from future missions. However, Holland and his colleagues slowly gained their trust, after showing a need for their feedback, to help prepare future astronauts for longer and longer deployments on the International Space Station (ISS).

Mizrahy and Holland certainly diagnose potential problems, using the experiences of former astronaut Cady Coleman, her husband, and their son as a case-study. Hopefully, current astronaut and potential Mars crewmember Kayla Barron can benefit. The Naval Academy grad and her Army vet husband managed her 176 days in space, but they realize it will get more complicated when they have children.

Although it is still considered the stuff of science fiction, some form of deep sleep is duly considered as a method of combatting loneliness and isolation (along with virtual reality). However, Dr. Holland worries about the shock of waking up to three years of elapsed history. For instance, imagine how jarring it would be to suddenly learn the Mets won the World Series?

Viewers can learn a lot from Longest Goodbye. It certainly instills a greater appreciation for the sacrifices astronauts make. However, the pacing feels a bit languid. Frankly, Ramachandra Borcar’s politely ambient score arguably does the film a disservice. It might feel like a good match to the celestial visuals, but it has a lulling effect. Some stronger, more emotionally resonant melodies would have better sharpened viewers’ focus.

Mind Body Spirit: Mindfulness Horror

New Agey influencers might see an old manuscript and think they found the next Celestine Prophecy. Yet, those who are a little older will be leery of opening their minds and spirits, for fear of what might enter. You can disregard old folk all you want, but, by definition, they are survivors. In contrast, Anya is clearly out of her depth and in great peril right from the start of Alex Henes & Matthew Merenda’s Mind Body Spirit, which releases this Tuesday on VOD.

Having inherited a creepy old house from the grandmother she never met, Anya moved in, hoping she will finally have the space to find herself, or whatever junky New Age term she might prefer. Anya aspires to be mindfulness-yoga influencer, but she lacks the confidence to post her videos. Fortunately, she keeps her camera rolling when she discovers the secret stairway to her grandmother’s creepy storeroom of what look like witchcraft supplies (otherwise, we wouldn’t have a movie to watch).

Her old Siberian babushka also left Anya a journal, which includes a ritual the would-be yoga guru assumes will recenter the spirit in the body. Of course, any horror fan immediately suspects [currently] what this ritual is actually intended for. Anya presumes her mother severed all connections with her grandmother, because of some prejudice against her supposedly heightened spirituality, but we know better—especially since we can sometimes see the old spectral crone skulking in the background, unnoticed by Anya.

Probably the best way to watch Mind Body Spirit would be with a mindfulness lifestyle follower, who has no idea what is coming. Henes and Merenda create a good deal of tension and the details surrounding the Baba Yagi-like grandma are definitely creepy. The Russian cultural context greatly distinguishes Mind Body Spirit from other similarly occult films. However, Henes and Merenda often break the rules of the found footage subgenre, frequently having the camera move seemingly of its own accord, even into different rooms. It is not Grandma moving the camera either. I don’t want to be the found footage cop, but if you are going to do something, do it the right way.

Indeed, it is clear Henes and Merenda are trying to replicate the online viewing experience, because they periodically replicate the “buffering” effect and interrupt the action with three satirical commercials—two of which featuring “Kenzi Fit,” Anya’s vastly more successful frienemy influencer.

Frankly, those phony commercials are so perfectly on-the-money believable, they will probably anger a lot of turmeric-tea drinking New Age posers. There is a lot of sly commentary shoehorned into an impressively staged horror movie. Despite massively “cheating” in the execution of their found footage concept, the co-directors cleverly stage-managed the claustrophobic location, adroitly ushering the limited cast into and out of the camera’s field of vision, during several nifty tracking shots.

Adios Buenos Aires: Last Tangos in Argentina

Never refer to a bandoneon as an accordion. You’d be barred from entering Argentina. The smaller bellows instrument makes every melody sound beautiful and sad. Unfortunately, nothing is sadder than a depression, which had been the reality of the Argentinean economy for three years and counting in late 2001. Julio Farber has had enough, so he is immigrating to Germany with his mother and daughter. However, he has yet to break the bad news to his tango band. Despite the chaos of the Argentinazo riots, saying goodbye is hard to do in German Kral’s Adios Buenos Aires, which is now playing in New York.

Farber and his bandmates love the music, but they live off their day jobs. Their last gig only earned them a dozen empanadas, but since this is Argentina, at least they were probably delicious empanadas. After their latest vocalist quits, they try to recruit the legendary but long-retired Ricardo Tortorella as his replacement. He turns them down unequivocally when they visit his nursing home, but then arrives right on time for their first rehearsal.

Farber is hoping to liquid his assets quickly, including the car a rookie cab driver soon runs off the road, into an embankment. Of course, when Farber tracks down Mariela Martinez through her company, she admits she is uninsured. However, he allows her to pay for the damages in installments, once he recognizes how hard she works for her young deaf son. In the meantime, Martinez agrees to chauffeur Farber and his bandmates to all their gigs, so she soon gets to know them all quite well.

Indeed, meeting the band’s prickly personalities is one of the film’s greatest pleasures. The piano player, Carlos Acosta, is obsessed with numbers in a way that often gives rise to compulsive gambling. Tito Godoy is the bass player and neighborhood mechanic, who has cannibalized more parts from Farber’s wrecked car than he has fixed. Atilio Fernandez is a retired history professor, whose leftist sensibilities are inflamed by the economic crisis, even though it was the Peronistas and their ilk that got the country in its current mess.

Kral has a keen affinity for tango, having previously helmed the documentary, Our Last Tango. However, the film also vividly recreates the anarchy and anxiety of the Argentinazo era. Savvy viewers will be expecting the government’s notoriously draconian limits on bank withdrawals, so every time Farber deposits the proceeds from the sale of his assets, the pit in their stomachs will tighten. Watching the mayhem that plays out in the banks and on the streets helps explain why Argentina just elected Javier Milei, arguably the most libertarian head of state ever. Considering what the Peronistas and their various splinter parties have wrought, who wouldn’t want to try something completely different?

Yet, Kral quite deftly balances the real-life political and economic disorder with the music and the bittersweet romantic comedy. The mutual attraction that blossoms between Martinez and Farber is never driven by cute contrivances. More than anything, their shared experiences as single parents lead to sympathy and understanding.

Every significant role is perfectly cast, starting with the romantic leads, Diego Cremonesi and Marina Bellati, who develop a sweetly shy and believably awkward chemistry together. Mario Alarcon plays the great Tortorella with elegant dignity and poignant sadness. Carlos Portaluppi, Rafael Spregelburd, and Manuel Vicente are colorfully crusty as Farber’s bandmates. They get a lot of laughs kvetching, but there is a good deal of wisdom in their banter. They also look convincing holding their instruments. That is especially true for Cremonesi wiedling the bandoneon.

Tarot: There is No Future in These Cards

It is really just glorified solitaire, but we like to pretend it means something. Evidently, tarot fortune telling is related to zodiac astrology—a fact that should diminish rather bolster its credibility. When asked, my college astronomy professor used to start his answers with: “if you know anything about astrology, and I really hope you don’t…” Maybe he was more right than he realized. Since this is a horror movie, there really is something to tarot, something terribly sinister. As you might, a late-night session with the cards has fatal consequences in co-director-screenwriters Spenser Cohen & Anna Halberg’s Tarot, which opens today nationwide.

Like most college students, Haley and her friends are drinking like fish during their final Airbnb getaway before finals. It is a little awkward since she just dumped Grant, whom everyone assumed she would marry. While hoping to find a hidden liquor cabinet, they stumble across a cache of astrologic artefacts. Seeing an ominous hand-painted deck of tarot cards, they push and prod Haley, an amateur tarot reader, into telling their fortunes. She is reluctant, because readers are only supposed to use their own deck, but hey, what could possibly go wrong?

Obviously, those ratty, macabre cards are very different. For one thing, they actually work, predicting her friends’ futures in lethally ironic ways. At first, the deaths resemble those in Final Destination, before we see it is really the demonic figures from the tarot cards that are stalking them. The internet leads Haley to dodgy astrologist Alma Astryn, who is indeed familiar with the nasty tarot deck. She barely survived her first encounter with it, because she never read her own fortune, unlike  Haley. Astryn has been chasing those cards ever since.

Tarot is not a classic horror movie by any stretch, but it is energetically executed. In many ways, it feels like a throwback to the late 1990s-early 2000s post-Scream era of films, very much in the tradition of Final Destination. Think of all those movies with four hot teens and their goofball friend posing like models on the poster. In this case, Jacob Batalon plays schlubby Paxton, who is a lot like Reginald the Vampire.

Batalon does his usual schtick, but Harriet Slater and Adain Bradley are surprisingly charismatic elevating the under-written characters of Haley and Grant. Plus, Olwen Fouere, who is quickly becoming the new Lin Shaye, brings reliable weirdness as Astryn.

The Tattooist of Auschwitz, in The Epoch Times

Peacock's THE TATTOOIST OF AUSCHWITZ is a poignant love story, but it also provides remedial Holocaust education, at a time when college students desperately need it. EPOCH TIMES exclusive review up here.

The Roundup: Punishment, in Cinema Daily US

Don Lee keeps delivering what fans want in THE ROUNDUP: PUNISHMENT, the entertaining new film in the blockbuster Korean ROUNDUP franchise, the most reliable action franchise still cranking out sequels. He hits hard. CINEMA DAILY US exclusive review up here.

Chief of Station: Aaron Eckhart’s Next CIA Movie

Many movies depict CIA officers as the bad guys, but in the real world, several CIA station chiefs have been assassinated while serving their country. Tragically, Farrah Malloy will be the next to die in the line of duty. However, her widowed husband is also a CIA officer, with the know-how to find her killers and extract retribution in Jesse V. Johnson’s Chief of Station, which releases tomorrow in theaters and on-demand.

Ben Malloy just ran circles around the FSB (the former KGB) intercepting a courier drop on the streets of Budapest, where his wife is Chief of Station. Then he met her for their anniversary, but it was interrupted by an explosion. Supposedly, it was a gas leak, but Malloy soon suspects otherwise. Since the agency’s general inspector clearly has it in for him, Malloy only trusts Dez, his wife’s former colleague in the cyber division, with his findings.

Technically, he also trusts Nick, who will also soon start working in agency IT, but Malloy does not want him involved. Of course, the mysterious terrorists will inevitably target the son to get to the father.

Much like Aaron Eckhart’s last CIA movie, The Bricklayer, Chief of Station starts with a promising premise, but quickly reverts to standard issue payback VOD action. In this case, Chief is worse, because it chickens out quite cowardly, by making the FSB “friendly” rivals rather than the true bad guys. Just ask Ukraine how the FSB really conducts their business. This is not the mid-1990s. Audiences are craving Russian and CCP Chinese villains, because they want to finally see payback for their oppressive crimes. Instead, the producers apparently cared more about sales in some of most despotic territories on earth.

It is a shame, because Eckhart has the perfect cerebral grittiness for a vengeance-seeking CIA officer like Malloy. Olga Kurylenko has instant action credibility Krystyna Kowerski, an agent Malloy’s wife used to handle. However, screenwriter George Mahaffey literally drops her into the film from out of nowhere, after a full hour of Malloy lone-wolfing, just in time to save his butt.

The Fall Guy: Elvira Meets Colt Seavers

Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, was quite familiar with John Carradine’s work. She featured several of his less prestigious “films” on Movie Macabre (to be fair, The Monster Club isn’t so bad). Fortunately, he probably never noticed or cared, whereas Elvira never embarrassed easily. Whether there was tension or not, they both guest-starred on “October the 31^st,” one of two Halloween episodes of The Fall Guy, which mostly likely will not be covered in the new movie reboot—but it screens through May 5th at the Paley Center.

In the “31^st,” Seavers and his proteges, Jody Banks and Howie Munson, are working on a horror movie so schlocky, it even mortifies its star, Elvira. However, she sees a silver lining in the manly slab of masculinity that is Colt Seavers. Throughout the episode, she makes it clear she has one thing in mind, with dialogue so suggestive, it is almost single entendre.

The production contracted to shoot on-location in the spooky Deauville mansion, because the old couple desperately needs the money. Nevertheless, grumpy old Preston Deauville remains adamantly opposed to their presence, because he worries someone might discover his secret. His opinion does not change, even after his untimely death. In fact, Munson and Banks worry Deauville is haunting the production from beyond the grave.

The ”31^st” holds the distinction for featuring the only on-camera appearance of the entire Carradine acting family together in one scene, when the three Carradine brothers play servants old man Deauville reluctantly lays-off. The senior Carradine is just as regally hammy as fans would hope playing Deauville.

However, the Elvira and Colt show is what drives this episode. Frankly, it is surprisingly they got away with all the wink-wink naughtiness in early 1980s primetime. Of course, Cassandra Peterson was delighted. Reportedly, she was frustrated when producers forced her to tone her Elvira persona when she previously guested on network series. In contrast, creator Glen A. Larson and episode writer Samm Egan let Elvira be Elvira. That led to Egan getting the gig writing Elvira: Mistress of the Dark, the 1988 feature, and Elvira returning to The Fall Guy the next year, in “October the 32^nd.”

Shardlake, on Hulu

In Wolf Hall, Thomas Cromwell is the protagonist, but he is the bad guy in A Man for All Seasons. Which is more accurate? Matthew Shardlake would admit it is rather complicated, if you asked him privately. Of course, he would publicly proclaim the righteousness of Henry VIII’s powerful strategist, since the lawyer often serves as Cromwell’s unofficial investigator. Ostensibly, his latest assignment is a murder investigation in a not so reformist monastery, but his real job will be convincing the abbot to relinquish St. Donatus’s property to the Crown. Yet, the lawyer’s stubborn desire for genuine justice leads to danger in the four-part Shardlake, which premieres today on Hulu.

Shardlake is constantly underestimated, due to his spinal curvature, but Cromwell’s cocky lieutenant, Jack Barak, slowly learns better while accompanying the lawyer to St. Donatus. Somewhat awkwardly, Shardlake must sleuth out the killer of his predecessor, who was auditing the monastery on Cromwell’s behalf. His head was cleanly decapitated, but the murder weapon is missing.

Naturally, Shardlake and Barak get a frosty reception from Abbot Fabian and his Brothers because they fully understand their true purpose at the monastery. Relations grow even more testy when Shardlake openly rebukes the monks for cruelly bullying Simon Whelplay, a scrawny novice. Understandably, Shardlake identifies with the malnourished monk in training, so the subsequent murder of Whelplay further stokes his outrage.

Shardlake is not at the level of The Name of the Rose, even though it clearly aspires to be. However, it is several cuts above the average episode of Cadfael. Series director Justin Chadwick skillfully mines the gothic setting for atmospheric chills. Stephen Butchard’s adaptation of C.J. Sansom’s novel retains all juicy English Reformational politics, including the execution of Anne Boleyn, which plays a pivotal role in the mystery.

To the producers’ credit, they walked the walk, as well as talked the talk, by casting Arthur Hughes (a thesp with radial dysplasia) as Shardlake. Beyond issues of authenticity, Hughes eloquently expresses the lawyer’s passion for justice and contempt for hypocrisy.

Frankly, Anthony Boyle (in his third major series this quarter, following Manhunt and Masters of the Air) looks and sounds rather miscast as the supposedly swaggering Barak. However, Sean Bean is suitably gruff and imperious as Cromwell. Yes, he lives past the first episode, but he disappears for most of series, while the drama centers on St. Donatus.

Build, Baby, Build, Graphic “Novel”

Whenever you attend any of the major comic-cons, there is one complaint you hear repeatedly: not enough graphic novels with extensive endnotes. At least, they ought to be asking for that, because it would imply smarter graphic novels. In this case, the “novel” part of graphic novel might be debatable, but the intelligence is evident on every page. George Mason University economist Bryan Caplan makes the happy-warrior case for housing deregulation in Build, Baby, Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing Regulation, illustrated by Ady Branzei and published by the Cato Institute, which goes on-sale today.

Caplan patiently explains to readers why housing regulation, including rent control and zoning laws make housing less affordable and harder to find for average people. Of course, it is a simple matter of supply and demand, but do not take his word for it. He quotes leftwing economist Paul Krugman at length dismissing the folly of rent control. Perhaps Swedish economist Assar Lindbeck said it best: “Next to bombing, rent control seems in many cases to be the most efficient technique so far known for destroying cities.” Yet, rent control is an article of faith amongst New York politicians.

Those who have an open mind will learn a lot from Caplan. For instance, he makes a convincing case for the environmental greenness of housing deregulation, because new housing stock emits far less carbon than moldy older units. Likewise, housing deregulation can narrow income inequality and promote social mobility. According to studies Caplan cites, low-income workers are actually moving from states where wages are high to states where they are low, because any advantages in greater take-home pay would be more than offset by correspondingly higher rents. That is a significant finding.

How can you not love a graphic novel, or whatever, that features Frederic Bastiat in a supporting role? Yet, Caplan makes compelling philosophical arguments for housing deregulation from Utilitarian, Egalitarian, Libertarian, and managerial cost-benefit perspectives. Caplan tries woo the left to his cause, which is admirable, but probably futile in the polarized era of the “Squad.”

However, if you really care about the housing issue, Caplan gives you a lot of substance to engage with. A dozen or so economists, statisticians, and social science researchers make guest appearances in BBB to “discuss” their work with Caplan. Those who are still skeptical of their findings can consult the data in the endnotes. Follow the science, right? That takes you straight to deregulation.

It might sound dry, but BBB is a surprisingly snappy read. Caplan’s goofy Dad-ish sense of humor helps makes the topic accessible. Yet, it is the fascinating economic history and political philosophy that he incorporates that really keeps the pages turning.

The Long Arm of Beijing, in The Epoch Times

The CCP's transnational covert operations to silence and intimidate critis represents a serious intwernational threat to individual liberty and national soveignty. The short documentary THE LONG ARMOF BEIJING provides a revealing history and analysis their coordinated transnational campaigns. EPOCH TIMES exclusive review up here.

Mars Express, from GKIDS

Science fiction once reflected society’s concerns, but lately, it more often tries to shape and alter society’s worries instead. Horror has become a better barometer of our true collective anxieties. AI is a prime example. Horror depicts the potential deadly menace of AI in movies like M3gan. In contrast, sf tells us human beings are the bad guys, so AI constructs have more to fear from us than we do from them, in films like The Creator, Automata, The Artifice Girl, Ex Machina, and Chappie, many of which bombed at the box office. Can human and artificial consciousnesses just get along? The answer is complicated, but it boils down to probably not in Jeremie Perin’s GKIDS-released animated feature Mars Express, which opens this Friday in New York.

In the future, anybody who is anyone lives on Mars rather than the crummy old Earth. Artificial intelligence has achieved self-aware consciousness, but they are still bound prime directive programming—unless a cybernetic hacker “jailbreaks” them. Most of private investigator Aline Ruby’s work involves catching such criminals, at the behest robotics tycoon Chris Royjacker, with the help her partner, Carlos Rivera. Sadly, Rivera was killed several years ago, but they still work together, because he had the foresight to back-up his consciousness. Ruby fully accepts the back-up Rivera cyborg, but Rivera’s former family did not.

Recently, a rash of jailbreaks have led to violent robotic crime sprees. There seems to be a systemic effort to corrupt artificial intelligences. Ruby and Rivera quickly suspect it might be related to their latest case: the disappearance of a cybernetic programming student.

Mars Express is a cool-looking attempt to create a Ghost in the Shell-style world, with its own distinctive sociological take on human-AI interaction, inspired by Asimov’s laws of robotics. Perin and co-screenwriter Laurant Sarfati also shrewdly import elements of the noir detective genre. However, they inevitably return to same anti-human themes, inviting viewers to literally root against their own species.

Ironically, Mars Express is an animated film with deeply human characters. Ruby is a recovering alcoholic, who falters due to the stress of the case. Back-up Rivera yearns to reconnect with Rivera-prime’s family, but he cannot undue his former self’s mistakes or his ex-wife’s revulsion to his current physical form. (To be fair, the way his head hovers above his should, sans neck, is a bit disconcerting).

I Saw the TV Glow

Sure, it was meant for kids, but Nickelodeon’s Are You Afraid of the Dark still holds up when you rewatch it as an adult. Or does it? That is the question Owen asks regarding the fictional teen horror series, The Pink Opaque. He has reason to wonder whether it was truly fictional or maybe really real in director-screenwriter Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow, which opens this Friday in theaters.

Owen’s teen years were already depressing, even before his mother’s early death. After she succumbed to cancer, there was nobody left to intercede with his controlling and over-protective stepfather. He was fascinated by the idea of The Pink Opaque, but forbidden to watch it, because it aired after his bedtime.

Maddy, a rebellious upperclassman, is a devoted fan, so she takes pity on Owen. After one special night watching the show together on live TV, she leaves him VHS recordings of the rest of the episodes as they air. Eventually, The Pink Opaque is cancelled and Maddy runs away from home, leaving Owen to lead his lonely life of quiet desperation. Then one day, adult Owen comes face-to-face with Maddy, who will test his faith and his conception of reality.

By far, the coolest sequences in I Saw the TV are those of the show-within-the-show, The Pink Opaque. It tells the story of Isabel and Tera, two friends who only met once at summer camp, but continue to fight the series’ evil villain, Mr. Melancholy, through their shared psychic link. Weirdly, the audience will start to care more about Tera and Isabel than Owen and Maddy. Perhaps that was ironically intentional, but it creates an awkward dramatic imbalance.

The concept of The Pink Opaque and the potentially sinister role it might play in Owen and Maddy’s lives is deliciously intriguing, especially for fans of cult TV. Unfortunately, Schoenbrun is so determined not to make a conventional horror movie, The Pink Opaque’s potential for mind-bending scares is largely left to wither on the vine. Aesthetically and thematically, I Saw the TV is too much like Schoenbrun’s previous feature, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair. Essentially, both are hazy-looking meditations on social alienation masquerading as horror films.

The Roots of Evil, on MHz Choice

Many American serial killer movies predictably depict the serial killer as a Jesus-freak. In this German thriller, the serial murderer was warped by Norse mythology. It is a case that involves two seemingly contradictory yet intertwined toxic belief systems: one is old and pagan, while the other is the recently discredited Communism of the bad but not so old GDR. Two cops, one from the East and one from the West, investigate the pre- and post-Unification killings in the six-episode The Roots of Evil, directed by Stephan Rick, which premieres Tuesday on MHz Choice.

The Cold War was not kind to Ulrike Bandow, because of her mother’s unsuccessful escape attempt to the West. She and her younger brother Marc largely survived thanks to her father, an honest cop, who was killed under mysterious circumstances. That left her to largely raise Marc on her own, when their mother’s second attempt succeeded.

Not surprisingly, she followed in her father’s footsteps, serving under his old partner, Jurgen Dubbe. She prefers to do her own lone wolf thing, but she must accept a new partner from Hamburg, Koray Larssen. Maybe she should be more suspicious regarding his willingness to work in the provincial former GDR, but she has issues distracting her. Marc has fallen in with band nativist thugs, to ingratiate himself with the stepfather of his new girlfriend, Sabrina. To make things even more awkward, Sabrina’s mother, Chista Schreiber, is Bandow’s estranged childhood friend.

When a ritualistic murder victim is discovered, Bandow is alarmed by the resemblance of her wounds to some marks found on Schreiber decades earlier. At the time, she claimed to be abused by a mysterious group of men somehow related to her state orphanage. Bandow’s father and Dubbe discredited her story. Not surprisingly, Bandow’s friendship was collateral damage. However, the disappearance of a second girl quickly convinces Bandow and Larssen they have a serial killer on their hands, one possibly related to Schreiber’s orphanage.

At least Ingrid Heisler, the weird girl from the prologue, probably will not be his next victim, even though she found the first victim. Her family’s rustic lifestyle and her knowledge of runes and “the old way” apparently creates a feeling of kinship for her heavy-breathing observer. Being weird probably does not hurt either.

Many of the themes and plot elements of Roots of Evil are very much like those previously developed in Divided We Stand. Both series focus an odd couple pair of cops from West and East Germany, investigating a crime that dates back to the recently fallen Communist regime. However, Roots has a darker tone that sometimes borders on serial killer horror. It is also less preoccupied with the politics of post-Unification and culture clashes between East and West—it is still there, but it is not as fully explored. The killer’s sinister paganism is the series’ driving engine.

Regardless, Henriette Confurius and Fahri Yardim are both quite good as Bandow and Larssen. They are rock-solid handling the procedural business, but as Brother Marc, Filip Schnack’s teen angst is abrasively annoying. Cloe Heinrich is excellent as peculiar Ingrid, but Rick just cannot find the handle for her scene stalking or being stalked by the killer. Instead of building terror, these sequences are confusing and uncomfortable, in a “what am I watching?” kind of way. That is somewhat surprising, because Rick rather deftly helmed the not-classic, but still impressively overachieving Val Kilmer B-movie, The Super.

Caitlin Cronenberg’s Humane

If the future brings global starvation, we can blame Greenpeace. They successfully blocked the harvest of so-called “golden rice” in the Philippines. Genetically developed to solve the Vitamin-A deficiency in rice-based diets, the new strain could have saved millions of lives. All reputable scientific studies have established the safety of genetically-modified foods, but Greenpeace fear-mongered against it anyway. The world could use some golden rice in this dystopian film. Food is in such short supply, every nation has agreed to a “voluntary” euthanasia quota. Reportedly, America is lagging behind its death commitment, so it gets awkward when a “volunteer” tries to back out. In fact, an incredibly dysfunctional family finds they owe body to the government collection squad in Caitlin Cronenberg’s Humane, which is now playing in theaters.

Food is short and the ozone is shot, so the world government logically decides to kill off a good chunk of their populations. At least they are providing incentives for those who “enlist.” The media naturally bemoans the economic disparity in enlistment rates. However, Jared York and his second wife Mia are the exceptions. As a former war correspondent and a former celebrity chef, they are an unusually prominent couple to enlist. He just wanted to have a final dinner with his ingrate grown children before the Department of Citizen Strategy (D.O.C.S.)’s lethal injection team arrives.

The news comes as a shock to Rachel, the disgraced pharmaceutical exec, Ashley, the struggling actress, Jared, the enlistment-encouraging media commentator, and Noah, the adopted recovering addict. It turns out maybe their step-mother Mia wasn’t quite so convinced, because she suddenly bolts right before DOCS arrive. Unfortunately, the sociopathic Bob makes it clear his team must collect two bodies, so it is up to the York children to decide who the second “enlistee” will be.

Basically, Humane turns into Ready or Not, when Noah finds himself hunted by his siblings. The premise is questionable and the rapidity of their descent into savagery is jarringly precipitous, but at least Cronenberg wastes little time getting down to genre business. However, the most memorable characters are the villains. Jay Baruchel is spectacularly sleazy as the opportunistically hypocritical Jared and Enrico Colantoni is flamboyantly sinister as Bob.

City Hunter, in Cinema Daily US

Netflix's new live-action CITY HUNTER movie understands the kind of comedic figjht scenes franchise fans want and delivers accordingly. It always keeps the randy mayhem snappy. CINEMA DAILY US review up here.

Santa Fe ’24: Slide

Sourdough Creek is a town without slow music. By and large, it is also a town without pity. Mayor Jeb Carver is mostly to blame on both scores. Much to his consternation, a traveling slide guitarist challenges Carvey’s authority in director-animator-producer Bill Plympton’s Slide, which screens today during the 2024 Santa Fe Film Festival.

He is only known as “Slide,” because that is what he plays. Slide is the sort of journeyman guitar slinger who illustrates the Americana-roots music fraternity between the blues and old school country. It is the 1940s, but the former lumber town of Sourdough Creek still looks and feels like the old frontier. However, the modern world comes calling, when a Hollywood producer decides to shoot his next epic on-location in and around Sourdough Creek.

Slide’s arrival is much less heralded. His visit nearly ends prematurely, when Mayor Carver threatens to shoot him for playing slow tempos in his sin-soaked saloon. Fortunately, Carver’s twin brother Zeke intercedes, because he notices Slide’s sad songs sell more booze. They need the money for the ridiculously grandiose casino they are building, to cater to the Hollywood jet-set.

They still don’t like Slide—and he recognizes them for what they are. As a result, he befriends their sworn enemy, the human-sized insectoid avenger known as “Hell Bug,” and one of their victims, Deliliah, a sensitive vocal stylist, forced to work as a bargirl and, you know, other stuff.

Essentially, Slide is a Western, but in a gothic Americana kind of way. There are also a lot of weird fantastical elements that are perfectly suited to Plympton’s style of animation. Frankly, he is probably one of the few animators whose work is instantly recognizable. Slide is him through and through, which is cool.

Art College 1994, in Cinema Daily US

ART COLLEGE 1994 lacks the biting social criticism of Liu Jian's previous film (HAVE A NICE DAY), but its nostalgia for youthful idealism and ambition is still quite potent. CINEMA DAILY US exclusive review now up here.

Cash Out, Starring John Travolta

It is always super-awkward running into an ex, but especially so during a hostage crisis. Mason Goddard could simply release Amelia Decker if she were one of the hostages, but since she is the FBI negotiator, he is stuck with her. She almost busted him once, but she is the least of his problems in [just plain] Ives’s Cash Out, which releases tomorrow in theaters and on-demand.

Goddard really digs Decker until she foils his plan to steal a collection of rare sports cars. He escapes justice, but lands in a deep depression. As a result, he is not paying sufficient attention to the hair-brained caper his idiot little brother Shawn cooks up for the gang until it is too late. He tries to abort, but things just spin out of control too quickly.

Supposedly, they are looking for a crypto-wallet in a certain safety-deposit box, but it soon becomes clear they were set up. There is still a fateful box, but it is very different from what they were led to believe. The owner also happens to be the kind of shady billionaire smart crooks avoid crossing. However, the payoff could be huge.

The bank job-hostage crisis business in Cash Out is surprisingly well done. This is definitely another VOD thriller for John Travolta, but it could have been one of his better ones. Frustratingly, the film loses massive credibility points when the CIA and Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) take control of the response away from Decker, at the billionaire’s behest. Repeat after me: the CIA has no domestic operating authority, so if they took over an FBI operation, the Attorney General would be in the Oval Office raising H-E-double hockey sticks. This is what happens when public schools stop teaching civics.

Nevertheless, Travolta looks like he is having a good deal of fun playing Goddard. He also has decent chemistry with Kristin Davis, as the reasonably competent and intuitive Special Agent Decker. Frankly, it is rather nice to see a mainstream commercial film featuring a romantic couple who are both over fifty.

Terrestrial Verses, in The Epoch Times

Arguing with Islamist Iranian bureacrats can be an uncomfortably Kafkaesque experience, but the drama is profoundly compelling in TERRESTRIAL VERSES. EPOCH TIMES exclusive review up here.

Wonderful World, on Hulu

No matter how powerful they might be, your political connections cannot protect you from an enraged Mamma bear. An ambitious politician’s money-man learns that the hard after killing Eun Soo-hyun’s son. He beat the wrap, but he was no match for her car. However, there will be further consequences for everyone in Wonderful World, which premieres today on Hulu.

Congressman Kim Joon’s fundraiser hit Kang Gun-woo with his car, drove around with him hidden in the backseat, and then tried to secretly dump his body while he was still living. It was too late by the time Eun found him, but if he had been taken directly to the hospital, he probably could have been saved. Kim puts in the fix during the trial, but when he still refuses to apologize afterwards, Eun dispenses some poetic justice.

Apparently, Alvin Bragg is also the DA in Seoul, because a murderer like Kwon gets released, whereas the victims are prosecuted to the fullest extent. Of course, the bereft Eun hardly cares, at least initially. However, Jang Hyung-ja, an older inmate, takes Eun under her wing and revives her spirit. She too is a murderess, but her circumstances were much less extenuating. While committing a crime of passion, Jang also accidentally killed Kwon Seon-yool’s parents, for which she has always been deeply sorry. Knowing she will soon die from cancer, the older inmate convinces the soon-to-be released Eun to find Kwon and convey her contrition.

It turns out Kwon is a rather shadowy figure in his own right. In addition to his black bag jobs, Kwon has some game-changing secrets of his own. Yet, Eun starts to develop a strange rapport with him, based on their shared experiences as the victims of violent crime—unless someone is getting played.

Wonderful World has some of the elements of Gillian Flynn/Liane Moriarty thrillers, but they are often subservient to the angst and melodrama that are stereotypically associated with K-drama. Perhaps, it is worth noting the series’ enormous domestic popularity. However, straight thriller fans will find each episode is conspicuously padded-out with overwrought dramatic moments for Eun to shine. Each installment could easily lose fifteen minutes, oftentimes more.

This is indeed a showcase for Kim Nam-ju, who makes the most of Eun’s agony and outrage. Given the circumstances, it is impossible to not sympathize with her, even when she is dealing with her somewhat hypocritical jealousy over Kang Su-ho, her husband, who refused to move on from her, even though she refused to see him throughout her imprisonment. More to the point, Kim taps into some deep and dark emotions, while still staying relatively grounded.

Kimo Stamboel’s Dancing Village: The Curse Begins

They hold a dancing contest in this small Java village that is a lot like the 1930’s dance-offs seen in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They. However, in this case, the sooner dancers collapse, the safer they will be. The lucky “winner” will be damned to dance with demons forever. Mila will be lured back to her mother’s ancestral home, just in time to see the sinister ritual revived in Kimo Stamboel’s Dancing Village: The Curse Begins, which opens this Friday in theaters.

Rather suddenly, Mila’s mother was stricken with a mysterious, debilitating illness. According to a shaman, the affliction will lift if Mila returns the ancient bangle her mother took from the so-called “Dancing Village.” This would be the same village seen in the KKN films, the top-grossing Indonesian horror franchise based on SimpleMan’s novel. Since this is a prequel, you don’t need to worry about those earlier later films.

With her cousin Yuda, his friend Arya, and their reluctant guide, they find the village, but they do not receive much of a welcome. The village headman has inconveniently passed away and their spiritual leader, Mbah Buyut is out of town. Almost immediately, Mila starts having visions of Badarawuli, the demonic femme fatale. Rather ominously. The mother of her host, Ratih, also exhibits similarly severe mystery symptoms.

There is some blood and guts, but Dancing Village depends more on mood and atmosphere for its scares. This is folk horror and its folkiest. It is chillingly effective in a slow-burn kind of way. In fact, Dancing Village is probably Stamboel’s most suggestive and quietly eerie film to date, either as a solo director or working with Timo Tjahjanto as the Mo Brothers. Admittedly, some of the dancing damnation scenes are almost campy, but in a way that is still deeply creepy.

The Cull, Graphic Novel

Once again, everything that is about to go wrong is the fault of Gen Z’ers, but readers are supposed to identify with them anyway. They are the ones who get lost in an in-between dimension and they are the ones that lure a cosmic kaiju back to our world in Kelly Thompson’s graphic novel, The Cull, vol., which releases today.

Cleo still blames herself for her little brother Jake’s disappearance and presumed death, so her four best friends humor her, agreeing to meet at Black Water Beach, supposedly to film one of her final “short films” before they graduate. As they follow her into a cave in one of the massive geologic formations, they discover a portal into what they deduce is a kind of “liminal” space between dimensions.

Of course, Cleo insists on venturing inside, hoping to find Jake there. Instead, they encounter a hive mind ecosystem that welcomes Cleo’s friends and rewards them with super-powers reflective of their personalities. However, the hive mind recognizes Cleo’s emotional damage and thereby deems her a danger to the ecosystem that it must eradicate.

Her friends take exception, protecting Cleo from the collective environment. Unfortunately, when they flee back through the portal they find a kaiju-like monster terrorizing their world. They also discover time passed much slower in the liminal dimension, so they fear their families probably assume they are long dead.

Although the cosmic portal travel is somewhat different, The Cull feels very much like Paper Girls, but with less distinctive characters. Aside from Cleo, everyone in the first five collected issues sound and act like cardboard cutouts from any generic YA novel. Yet, it is the dialogue, riddled with recovery and empowerment cliches, that really grows annoying.

Max Beyond: You Can Watch the Movie Before Playing the Game

It is time again to "live, die, repeat." However, unlike in The Edge of Tomorrow, each time you die, a little of you maybe dies for real—in all of the you’s. Of course, the one that dies is definitely dead. Max Walker is a little boy with the ability to shift between dimensions. In each one, his ex-Marine step-brother Leon tries to rescue him from an evil cyberpunk corporation. Unfortunately, in every dimension, Walker’s captors manage to stay one step ahead of the rescue attempts in Hasraf “HaZ” Dulull’s animated feature Max Beyond, which releases tomorrow on digital VOD.

It is no accident the first third of Max Beyond feels like a video game. It was developed concurrently with an upcoming game. For prospective gamers, the feature serves as an introduction to the world. For viewers, we get to see Leon Walker blow dozens of Axion guards to smithereens before the company’s super mecha enforcer invariably kills him. Of course, the robotic killer is getting inside information from Ava Johnson, Max’s “doctor” (and a dead-ringer for Sarah Palin), who has him record all his “dreams” in a journal, so she can study them and anticipate his brother’s attacks.

Each time his brother is killed, Walker “resets,” jumping into a new dimension. It looks like each reset produces a cataclysmic explosion that anyone living in his current dimension ought to want to avoid. However, the various Ava Johnsons appear to be playing a collective long-game. Each reset clearly weakens Walker. She also starts to notice a cumulative ill-effect on Leon too. In fact, Max is looking so bad, she starts to have a change of heart, but she remains beholden to her evil multinational corporate masters.

There are a lot of repetitive action sequences in Max Beyond and even more questionable motivation. A good 80% of what happens in the film seems poorly thought-out. It is a shame, because when it finally starts to seriously address its multiverse business, Dulull and co-writers Paula Crickard and Stavros Pamballis have some fresh ideas to offer, particularly the personal linkage between dimensions.

Love Express: The Disappearance of Walerian Borowczyk, on OVID.tv

Walerian Borowczyk could have been another Roman Polanski. The acclaimed Polish filmmaker came to Paris looking for artistic freedom and found free love instead. The Sexual Revolution devoured many of its children, including Borowczyk’s career. The controversial auteur’s admirers look back on his inconsistent body of work in Kuba Mirkuda’s documentary, Love Express: The Disappearance of Walerian Borowczyk, which premieres Tuesday on OVID.tv.

Initially, Borowczyk was considered a fresh, new star of the avant-garde, thanks to films like Goto: Island of Love and Blanche. The boldly “transgressive” Immoral Tales was probably his biggest hit and masterwork, but it was a double-edged sword, pigeon-holing Borowczyk with producers and critics. During the years that followed, Borowczyk could only secure funding for sexually-themed films. If he did not shoot enough sex scenes, they would commission some of their own and splice them in.

Despite the nature of Borowczyk’s output, Love Express is not a naughty film, per se. It is more of a chronicle of artistic frustration. The title itself is taken from the film-within-the film of Emmanuelle 5, which was the only scene Borowczyk actually directed before walking off the shoot in a rage. As you might expect, the softcore sequel was definitely a career low-point.

To their credit, Mirkuda and company are refreshingly honest in their appraisals of Borowczyk’s films. In fact, they are quite harsh on The Beast, despite its relative success. He assembles an impressive cast of commentators, including Bertrand Bonello, Neil Jordan, Patrice Leconte (an assistant director on Blanche), Mark Cousins, and the late, great Andrzej Wajda, who knew Borowczyk way back in Polish art school.

Perhaps some of the best commentary comes from Terry Gilliam, who was clearly inspired by Borowczyk’s highly textured early animated shorts. On the other hand, it is hard to imagine the avant-garde Borowczyk operating under the Communist state film authorities, so it is frustrating Mirkuda glosses over his early years in Poland.

Fantaspoa ’24: Harakiri Squad

They are like the Dirty Dozen, except there are only four of them. Perhaps you would compare them to Snake Plissken instead. Of course, filmtwitter hacks would only know the Suicide Squad (whom the title deliberately echoes), as a point of reference. Pocketfish’s team is just a bunch of thieves, whom the Shogun regularly dispatches on suicide missions, because they are expendable (so to speak). However, when they need someone to steal a lock of hair from a demon, it makes sense to send some thieves in Ryosuke Kanesaki’s Harakiri Squad, which screens again today at Fantaspoa in Porto Alegre.

Pocketfish is a pickpocket. Dr. Poison is a questionable sawbones. Suicide Squid is the getaway expert and, when need be, their torturer. Supposedly, Geishafish is an expert in disguise, but the ambiguous genderbender always makes a point of standing out. Mizuno Heima is not part of the Squad, but he teams up with them to fight the demon, who is secretly leading his sister’s religious cult.

It turns out the demon is planning to consume all the souls in the capital, using amulets spread by the cult. Not surprisingly, Pocketfish and his gang are really out of their depth. However, their survival rate is better than that of Fox Team, the Shogun’s varsity squad.