Roger Ebert

Fantasia’s not all blood and guts; there are plenty of laughs to be had among the fest’s voluminous genre offerings. Horror and comedy, after all, go together like chocolate and peanut butter, or machetes and human flesh. The three films in today’s dispatch pay homage to previous horror-comedy maestros like Peter Jackson, Joe Dante, and more, with a welcome double dose of Canadian treasure Steven Ogg sprinkled in the mix.

But before we can Ogg-le one of Canada’s best character actors, it’s worth flying over to Estonia to see one of the fest’s most riotous, chaotic surprises: Sander Maran’s musical-horror-comedy-romance “Chainsaws Were Singing.” Much like “Hundreds of Beavers” last year, “Chainsaws” carries with it a kind of anarchic DIY-indie energy, somewhere between Chuck Jones, “Monty Python,” and “Brain Dead.” The essential skeleton holding its two hours of chaos together concerns a “Texas Chainsaw Massacre”-like family of maniacs, including the sadistic but softhearted Killer (Martin Ruus), who sings about how much he likes flowers while he tears through unsuspecting victims with his trusty chainsaw. His latest victim is Maria (Laura Niils), a young girl who’s just fallen in love with the heartbroken Tom (Karl Ilves) before being snatched away from him and thrown in the Killer’s van. Bolstered by new love, Tom gets picked up by a wacky driver named Jaan (Janno Puusepp), who gleefully becomes his sidekick on his adventure to rescue his newfound paramour. Amputations, bukkake, and lesbian hedgehog attacks ensue.

As with the rough-and-tumble vibes of its presentation — Raimi-esque crash zooms, wild Dutch angles, run-down props and costumes that really sell the ‘made for five euros’ vibe of the whole thing — the songs themselves are charmingly unpolished, characters squeaking through increasingly absurd and bawdy lyrics with boundless enthusiasm. And the dumber the jokes get, the more they work: buffoonish cops blast away with reckless abandon while holding donuts in their mouths, and nearly every vehicle Tom and Jaan exit seems to explode behind them for increasingly dubious reasons.

That said, “Chainsaws” does lose a bit of gas in its middle act, as the threadbare structure struggles to sustain itself over two hours. We get long stretches in between songs, and some superfluous interludes including woodland bukkake-worshipping cults that don’t seem to add much to the overall story besides a staggering refrigerator-based money shot. The Killer’s family dynamics also get a little shaky, and a running joke about Killer’s incestuous brother-couple Pepe (Ra Ragnar Novod) and Kevin (Henryk Johan Novod) teeter a little too uncomfortably into outright homophobia. Still, it picks right back up by the time Tom stages his rescue mission, and the last half hour lends more focus to the blood-splattered nonsense. It’s not perfect, but it’s certainly one of the most delightful watches of the fest. (See it with an audience, especially when they start clapping in rhythm to some of the ditties.)

The latest from Canadian filmmaker Lowell Dean (“WolfCop”), “Dark Match” takes its name from the industry term for a non-televised wrestling match meant to excite crowds before the main event. That’s a fitting name for the film itself, really, as it feels like a warmup more than a full meal. It’s got its charms, mind you: Dean’s stylish camerawork and sly script really throws you into the ring in its opening minutes, using an ’80s-style TV promo to introduce us to our scrappy set of amateur wrestlers. Most notable among these is Miss Behave (Ayisha Issa), whose ambitions for a title are stymied by her rivalry with popular, white rival Kate the Great (Sara Canning) and the fact that, well, audiences aren’t primed to root for a Black female wrestler. But she and her fellow underdogs agree to a dark match at a remote estate in the middle of nowhere for heaps of cash. It’s there that a fellow wrestler (Steven Ogg) recognizes the man in charge: The Preacher (WWE legend Chris Jericho), a charismatic washout who’s since assembled a cultlike following here. Only too late do they realize that the five element-based matches they’ve agreed to aren’t just being televised: they’re demonic rituals meant to summon Satan from the depths of hell.

There’s a lot to like in “Dark Match,” at least conceptually: Issa makes for a capable, fun lead, and the supporting performances from Ogg and Michael Eklund (as the team’s weaselly promoter) carry a lot of the film’s scrappy energy. The matches themselves are bloody fun, living somewhere between “GLOW” and “Saw” as the ring gets modified with flamethrowers, broken glass, and giant blowing fans that can trap and eviscerate each contender. But there’s a feeling that Dean and co aren’t going hard enough on the craziness; there’s a groundedness to the suspense that makes it feel more like “Green Room” than something more ostentatious like the premise and ’80s trappings require. Jericho makes for a mighty presence when he’s on screen, but he’s mostly sidelined until the end, which is a shame considering the marquee name he brings. That’s probably a consequence of the stacked cast; the opening throws a lot of names and characters at you, but the match-by-match structure means character conflicts and beats often get pushed to the wayside or resolved far too early. (Still, there’s a fun gag including one of Behave’s compatriots, a luchador-like wrestler who’s taken a vow of silence, that approaches the kind of silliness this should have worked towards.) Dean puts forth a game effort, but “Dark Match” doesn’t quite earn its championship belt.

Still, we’re not done with Steven Ogg, as our number two (heh) entry in his Fantasia double-bill, “Scared Shitless,” brings us squicky, shitty Joe Dante creature-feature energy. Ogg plays Don, a down-on-his-luck plumber living with his layabout son Sonny (Daniel Doheny), whose mother recently passed of a stomach bug, turning the boy into an anxiety-ridden germaphobe. To shake Sonny out of his hypochondriac funk, Don decides to drag his boy along to his newest call: a plumbing problem in a remote apartment complex. Bad night for this kind of test, though, as the building is plagued by Don’s most pernicious porcelain problem yet: a genetically-modified creature secreted home by Dr. Robert (Mark McKinney, “The Kids in the Hall”). It’s now on the loose and out for blood, hiding in the pipes and ready to execute some disem-bowel movements on every unsuspecting tenant.

To its credit, “Scared Shitless” is exceedingly lean at a cool 76 minutes; with its clean if unremarkable cinematography and unassuming low-budget charm, it’s a future Tubi Original in the making. Director Vivieno Caldinelli makes great use of Brandon Cohen’s leakproof script, giving us just enough setup of the characters and situation (Julian Richings makes a suitably oily appearance in the cold open) to get down to the bloodletting with little fuss. The victims don’t get much to do before they’re dispatched, really, but who cares? What little screentime they get is filled with fun gags like an older couple whose freaks definitely match (complete with the husband drawing “SLUT” in lipstick over his chest for date night) and another victim who gets pulled halfway down the commode headfirst. (The creature effects, courtesy of Canadian VFX legend Steven Kostanski, are stellar, though the design leaves a little to be desired — it’s mostly just a toothy tentacle reminiscent of a million ’80s horror creatures of the apst.)

Ogg and Doheny have enviable father-son chemistry, Ogg in particular bringing his signature underbite intensity to his love and passion for toilet maintenance. However, Doheny struggles to keep the same energy with concierge Patricia (Chelsea Clark), who becomes an erstwhile companion/love interest in the latter half. Even so, the “Gremlins” energy abounds in this one, making for a sprightly, splattery romp you won’t have to flush twice.

On Mondays at the Wayfarer Studios offices, there’s a tradition during meetings in which everyone in attendance has to answer the same question: What’s something that’s bringing you joy that has nothing to do with work or family? This is the sort of thing that has the potential to be painfully precious—a strained attempt at bringing some warm-and-fuzzy energy to the soullessness of the workplace—but the folks here at this Los Angeles production company take it seriously, especially its co-founder Justin Baldoni. The tradition was started by Wayfarer’s CEO Jamey Heath, an award-winning music producer, but it resonates with Baldoni, who radiates a positive vibe and seeks it out in others. 

“We’re family,” Baldoni, 40, tells me on a recent Monday at their Beverly Hills offices. “As I was building this [company], it just became clear that what he had as a human, and the way he handles himself in the world and in business, was what we were striving to be as a company. If we want to have real change in the industry, we have to try to be the change. We’re going to fail all the time, because we’re humans and we’re perfectly imperfect. But what he brings is that innate joy and zest for life.”

Everybody goes around the room listing things that are bringing them joy—someone’s looking forward to a vacation, someone else heard an inspiring story—and the friendly vibe in the room is palpable. I’m here to profile Baldoni—the onetime “Jane the Virgin” star who has rebranded himself as a filmmaker about to release his biggest movie to date, “It Ends With Us,” in a few weeks—and I’m conscious of the fact that office visits from a journalist sometimes compel employees to be on their best behavior. Still, if the idea of such feel-good meeting exercises seems cringey, it’s clear everyone at Wayfarer has bought in.

That true-believer attitude starts at the top. Baldoni is nothing if not a man who has faith in his mission to create something new at Wayfarer, preaching a gospel of creating films and series of substance in an age of deadening social-media overkill. That philosophy is embedded in the company’s very moniker. “‘Wayfarer’ stands for the journey of the soul,” explains Baldoni. “It’s named after the Wayfarer in a book called The Seven Valleys and the Four Valleys, which comes from the Baha’i Faith, which is my faith. It’s the journey of the soul, trying to figure life out. Whether you are a believer in God or whether you’re spiritual—whatever you are—it’s that journey of just trying to understand the world around us and yourself in the process.”

Those who only remember Baldoni from his years on “Jane the Virgin,” where he played the hunky love interest Rafael Solano, may find all this a bit much. Didn’t that dude just take off his shirt a lot? (Baldoni was shirtless previously on “Everwood” as well.) Much has changed since then—including a popular 2017 TED Talk in which Baldoni articulated the conflict he felt between the traditionally manly roles he played on television and the sensitive, vulnerable guy he felt he was. The Justin Baldoni you meet in 2024 is an outspoken feminist and budding mogul who’s convinced that Hollywood needs to let go of its exhausted, empty CGI-driven action flicks and move toward more emotionally fulfilling films. And he thinks “It Ends With Us” could be part of that future.

Don’t get Baldoni wrong: He loves event movies. In a screening room earlier that day, he tells me how much he treasures “going and sitting in a dark room with people that we don’t know and having a shared experience. I remember crying in ‘E.T.’ I remember sobbing watching ‘Lion King’ in the theater and hearing other kids crying. I remember being in high school and having that experience with ‘Titanic’ and then later on with ‘The Notebook’ and feeling like I wasn’t alone. Having a place, especially as a young man, to be able to emote in a dark room: ‘I can cry and other people are crying. We shared this moment in time together.’ For me, it’s poetic.”

In his TED Talk and in his subsequent book Man Enough: Undefining My Masculinity, Baldoni promotes a modern manhood that’s in touch with its emotions and rejects outdated notions of what his gender requires of him. In recent years, plenty of telegenic men have peddled themselves as “You see, ladies, I’m sensitive” feminists, many of them coming across as cynical, disingenuous attention-seekers capitalizing on a trend. But Baldoni, who’s been married to his wife Emily since 2013, is refreshingly candid about just how flawed his attempts to be enlightened are. And, blessedly, he’s not proud of himself for his progressive views—in fact, he’s careful to be modest, knowing that he can screw up as much as the next guy. But the passion he brings to his “Man Enough” campaign—which includes a long-running podcast—is equal to his evangelizing for a different type of movie experience. In fact, he sees them as intertwined.

“Human emotion is not something that we should be running from,” he says. “If somebody wants to go to the theater and just have a mind-numbing experience, then there’s a lot of movies for them. But if they want to see a Wayfarer movie, then my hope is that five, 10 years in the future, they know they’re going for that reason—they’re going to get the action or the adventure or whatever the story is about, and then they’re also getting the substance that allows them to connect with that part of themselves. I don’t think that that’s utopian—I don’t think that that’s too aspirational. We need meaning—we’re a country that has been living off junk food, and look at our health overall. I think movies are the same way—what we ingest, what we focus on, what we think about is who we become. It might be a lofty idea and it might be disruptive in terms of the normal studio model, but I think that’s where it’s going. I think that’s where cinema has to go.”

Wayfarer has been producing movies for only a few years, including Baldoni’s second directorial effort, 2020’s “Clouds.” On its website, the company declares its priority of “championing inspirational stories which unite as true agents for social change.” Recently, Wayfarer financed “Will & Harper,” the crowd-pleasing Sundance documentary featuring Will Ferrell and longtime friend Harper Steele on a road trip after she came out as transgender. But the company isn’t just interested in traditional inspirational films, as witnessed by the fact that Wayfarer was involved in this year’s “The Garfield Movie.” What prompted Baldoni to put his muscle behind that animated cat flick, which seems to be standard Hollywood product? “We went in as investors because it had an amazing father-son storyline,” he explains, “and it tied into masculinity and my work with ‘Man Enough.’ We saw that as an opportunity. Have you looked at ‘Inside Out 2’? I took my nine-year-old daughter and my six-year-old son, and I cried, and it started conversations with me and my kids. That’s what we need—that’s what we’re craving.”

As is probably obvious, Baldoni is an earnest, enthusiastic guy. He’s exceedingly handsome but weirdly approachable. And if you get him talking about Wayfarer’s ambition to create more nourishing commercial cinema, he’s practically an evangelist for his vision. When I comment on his near-missionary zeal, Baldoni responds, “I think that the only way to start anything that [has] the chance of success is if the person who is starting it believes in it with everything that they have. Life is so delicate and short and fragile—and I’ve spent so much time contemplating mortality and spending time with people who didn’t have time on this planet—that I view it as a sacred gift, as silly as that sounds.”

This conversation is happening in Wayfarer’s parking lot. He’s just driven me from the screening room to the offices, but he doesn’t get out of the car yet because this is something he wants to talk more about. “Time I view as my most valuable resource,” he continues. “If I’m going to spend my time doing something, I have to believe it. Starting these things—whether it’s trying to get a movie off the ground or starting this business—I genuinely believe that there is a way that we can make some difference in the industry and affect people. I’m always focusing more on the effect. It’s like a movie—to me, the movie starts with the ending and then you work backwards. If you have an amazing ending and you can stick the landing, you can reverse-engineer and create the story. That’s how I think it is with starting a company or a film or my work with masculinity: What is the impact?”

When Baldoni’s acting career was going through rough patches—he still remembers the casting agent who said he wasn’t getting a particular part because his eyebrows were too distracting—he started investing his time in making shorts, discovering a passion for filmmaking. He’d rarely felt attractive enough to be an actor, anyway: “I was the ugly-duckling nerd kid that didn’t have a date to any dances until I was a junior in high school.” After tearing his hamstring, losing college scholarships for soccer and track, he sunk into despair. To compensate, he got buff. 

“What got me out of the depression was lifting weights,” he recalls. “I put on almost 20 pounds of muscle in that six, seven months before I left for college. I remember that feeling—I was like, ‘Oh, now I feel strong.’ I didn’t know at the time that I was just masking and delaying the inevitable [mental] healing process that I would have to go through in my 30s. But it was the combination of that and then getting to college and parts of my face growing with the other parts of my face—I maybe became a little more symmetrical—but I was still never the hot guy.”

Among his early directing projects, in 2012 he created “My Last Days,” a documentary series focusing on people with terminal illnesses talking about life, which profoundly reshaped his view on the importance of maximizing one’s time. When he was cast on “Jane the Virgin,” he used his downtime to work on his feature directorial debut, 2019’s “Five Feet Apart,” a tearjerker based on a true story that starred Haley Lu Richardson and Cole Sprouse as young people with cystic fibrosis. The indie film was a smash, and Baldoni followed it up with another true story, “Clouds,” with Fin Argus, Sabrina Carpenter and Madison Iseman, about a teenager with cancer. Dismiss those films as touchy-feely, Baldoni doesn’t care.

“I make movies that I would want to see,” he says. “I come from the school of very commercial cinema. I wasn’t going to the theater to watch arthouse indie movies. I grew up with very commercial films. And I believe that most human beings are hungry for a connection and want to feel, because I think everything in this world is orchestrated in a way that’s making us feel less.” 

His third film is his most high-profile, although it certainly sounds akin to his previous two in terms of taking on emotional subject matter. “It Ends With Us” isn’t based on a true story but, rather, Colleen Hoover’s wildly popular 2016 novel. The drama stars Blake Lively as Lily, a woman who falls for Ryle (Baldoni), a seemingly nice guy who ends up displaying abusive behavior. (Around the same time, Lily reencounters an old flame, Brandon Sklenar’s Atlas.) I haven’t seen the film, but the fact that its charitable partner is NO MORE tells you that “It Ends With Us” will be tackling issues that are at the core of Baldoni’s “Man Enough” mission while also speaking to the social causes that are crucial to Wayfarer. 

Sight unseen, “It Ends With Us,” which is being released by Sony, is an intriguing early-August release. This summer has been underwhelming commercially, save for some reliable I.P.-driven films like “Inside Out 2,” “Twisters” and “Deadpool & Wolverine,” which have been blockbusters. Can a romantic drama adapted from a bestseller starring Lively find its audience? Initial box-office tracking suggests it could be a sleeper hit, and Baldoni is convinced there are viewers hungry for something like “It Ends With Us.”  

In the Wayfarer conference room after everyone else has cleared out, Baldoni tells me, “When I spoke to Sony, [I said], ‘I believe that there are not enough tentpole movies for women—and I believe this [movie] could be an experience for women. I believe if we make it right, they will come—they will cry and they will laugh.’ This was before we had any big stars attached—I just genuinely believe that that’s possible with this movie. I’ve always felt it. Now, what that looks like is different—for me, I don’t put a number on that. Most everybody else is putting the commercial-success expectations on the movie—I just want it to be a movie that a lot of women go see, and they bring men with them, because that’s important.”

Baldoni likes to talk about embracing imperfection, recognizing that all of us make mistakes all the time. In his pursuit of being a more conscientious man, he’s had to confront a classic Hollywood stereotype of the demanding male director as genius and ultimately authority. It’s easy to fall into that trap. “There are always moments where I step back and go, ‘Oh wow, I was on autopilot there and I need to course-correct,’” he says in regards to his life in general. “What’s interesting as it relates to making movies is that I think I’ve been so afraid to accidentally become one of those tyrants. If anything, I think I’ve gone the opposite direction and at times not trusted myself enough. On my first movie especially, I realized in some ways I was too passive. I’ve never raised my voice and yelled on a set—it doesn’t mean I haven’t had big feelings and been angry, but I’ve never raised my voice. That’s not my style. I’ve been around that, and I’ve been on the other end of it, and it feels terrible—it kills the creativity of everybody around you.”

It’s interesting that not only did Baldoni decide to take on a supporting part in “It Ends With Us”—his first acting gig in a while—but that he chose to play the dark, troubled Ryle. Wasn’t he tempted to portray the sensitive Atlas? Why would he want the role of the type of guy he’s spent his public life railing against?

Initially, it was Hoover, the book’s author, who told him she thought he’d make a good Ryle. He was surprised. “I was like, ‘Could I play this guy?’ But her thinking that I could was enough to shift that in me, to where I went, ‘Maybe she sees something that I don’t.’ And as I started developing the project, I started asking women, ‘What is it that you like so much about the book?’ And so many of them said, ‘Ryle.’ I thought the answer was going to be ‘Lily’s empowerment,’ but so many women liked the relationship between her and Ryle. There was a little bit of a fantasy element to it—he was likable and charming, and a little bit dangerous. I think what Colleen probably saw is that the way that I live and who I try to be—sometimes unsuccessfully—could help make Ryle more likable. This isn’t a story where there’s some archvillain—this is a human story, where there’s true love between the two characters. You have to be invested in the relationship between Lily and Ryle, or the movie doesn’t work.”

Baldoni has come a long way from being the beefcake beauty on “Jane the Virgin,” where his frequent shirtlessness became part of the show’s appeal. In his TED Talk, he took playful potshots at his own pin-up image and his uncomfortable relationship with those shirtless scenes. But while he’s careful to avoid “It Ends With Us” spoilers, there is one thing he can reveal, albeit sheepishly: He does take off his shirt in the movie.

“I had a lot of anxiety about it,” he admits, laughing. “I had been training not to look good for a while—I’ve been training to feel good and, honestly, I’ve had some back issues. I wasn’t able to move the way that I used to or run the way that I used to. As I was getting closer to 40, I noticed my metabolism changing. I have two kids, and I’m not sleeping as much. I thought to myself, ‘I haven’t even had time to work out—how am I going to do this?’ So I was nervous about it because of the way he’s described in the book. I felt an obligation to try to look similar to the way that the fans [thought of] him, but I didn’t want to be shirtless in every scene.”

While he prepares for the “It Ends With Us” press tour, he’s also thinking about Wayfarer’s future. At the meeting I attend, he and his team discuss upcoming projects, including “Will & Harper,” which will be getting an awards campaign from Netflix. And, of course, there’s his live-action Pac-Man film, which was announced in 2022. Baldoni can’t go into much detail—I got a glimpse at some initial ideas, but I can’t talk about them—but he does see the movie as continuing Wayfarer’s commitment to films of substance. “We have the idea of what it can be,” he says, “but how do you make it meaningful? Figuring out how to make a big tentpole, four-quadrant kind of family action-adventure movie for both a nine-year-old and a 60-year-old? That’s exciting to me.”

Earlier, when everyone went around the room in the meeting talking about what’s bringing them joy, Baldoni shared his relief that he’s at the end of a health scare that started more than a month ago. He’s doing better now, but he had to be in the hospital for a week, which made him think about his life. It also validated his wife’s insistence that he needs to start taking it a little more easy. 

“I’ve been listening to my wife for 12 years about slowing down, and it wasn’t until maybe this last two years ago that I’ve really been taking that to heart,” he admits. “But [“It Ends With Us”]—acting and directing—it was a challenging film because of the amount of hats that I was wearing. Then you end up in the hospital with some random infection and you’re like, ‘Oh, got to slow down.’”

Baldoni says he doesn’t have nightmares about the film tanking or no one liking it. “The things that keep me up at night have more to do with wanting to make sure that I have enough time, uninterrupted, with my family after this. [“It Ends With Us”] has been a gargantuan [undertaking] for a few years, and they really need me—they need their daddy. I’ve told my agents—I told my team—I’m not going to direct anything for a while. I’m going to take a break.”

Stereotypical old-school men might scoff at that suggestion of taking your foot off the gas. But Baldoni is trying not to listen to that impulse. “The only way I’ll ever be able to really function in this industry—an industry that doesn’t care about time, doesn’t care about your schedule, doesn’t care about your plans, doesn’t care about your dreams or your hopes—the only way that I know that I’ll be able to have my joy and be happy in this business is if I expand and contract. Everything in life is expansion and contraction—the waves, our breath, everything. There’s a moment of expansion, and then we have to contract. And I’m entering this next phase of contraction so that I can be the man that I really want to be and be the dad that I really want to be.”

Earlier in the day, Baldoni had told me that he didn’t want to be indispensable at Wayfarer—he wanted to trust the people he hired to run the company without him necessarily being involved in every single aspect of every single project. As our time comes to a close, he returns to that idea. 

“The studio was set up in a way where that [freedom] is possible for me, but in the event that there is success, it’s going to require me saying no to a few things,” he confides. “Which, as a person who was said no to so often, there’s fear of, like, ‘Oh, what if I’m going to miss it?’ — that FOMO of ‘This might be the chance.’ But there is power in [saying no]. It all changed for me when my wife asked me, ‘What is enough?’ When I was writing the book and editing ‘Clouds’ and finishing ‘Jane,’ I was doing so much, and she was like, ‘Well, when is it going to be enough? What’s enough?’ That was not a question I was prepared to answer. And the answer is, ‘It’s never going to be enough until we decide it is.’”

Justin Baldoni looks at me. “That’s where we are now as a family. This is enough for right now. And then we’ll move on to the next thing.”

The musical biopic genre is so staid, so humdrum, it’s difficult to imagine anyone having a wildly different take on it. In his directorial debut, British-Irish writer/director Rich Peppiatt, however, doesn’t just want to dismantle structures. He wants to obliterate them, whether it’s what constitutes acceptable music, politics, protest or language. While most biopics are made with an eye looking backwards, recounting the events that made the subject who they are, Peppiatt’s rebellious, comedic lark “Kneecap”—a portrait of the real-life titular Belfast hip-hop band, whose potent music galvanized a movement to save the Irish Gaelic language from legal banishment—looks at their fight from the moment of its inception of their present resistance. 

Following a neorealist spirit, Peppiatt enlisted the real-life members of Kneecap to play themselves. In it, DJ Próvaí is a music teacher, who, after seeing Liam Óg “Mo Chara” Ó hAnnaidh and Naoise “Móglaí Bap” Ó Cairealláin live, desperately wants to record them. The lads, however, have a few problem: The mother of Liam’s girlfriend, a cop, is determined to shut down their shows, Noise’s mother is lonely and despondent, his father Arlo (Michael Fassbender)—a member of paramilitary organization for independence—has been in hiding from authorities for years. In between rampant partying, scenes of sex, drugs, and rock and roll, the trio of men stand up for the right for their music, their heritage, and their language to exist in an energetic and rambunctious imagining of their origins. 

RogerEbert.com spoke with Peppiatt at the Hotel Thermal during the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival to speak about the first time he saw Kneecap, the film’s neorealism, and the impact he hopes the biopic will have on oppressed communities. 

This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

You first saw the band play in Belfast back in 2019. What was that experience like?

You know, my favorite band growing up was Rage Against the Machine. And to me, the politics have gone out of music—not completely, there’s always political acts—but Kneecap just really threw me back to that period of a band who’s politics first. They didn’t care about the consequences of the positions they took on things, and they were going to use their platform to sort of press the case for their causes. Kneecap, even back then in 2019, were that. I just love the energy about them. There were a thousand young people there in Belfast watching them even back then, who were just obsessive. They knew every word that they were rapping in a language that I didn’t realize anyone actually spoke really, other than a few farmers out in the countryside. 

To me, it was like: Hang on, there’s all these young people who are engaging with a language that I thought was pretty much dead. And there’s something in that story, right? I don’t know what that story is, but we had this political backdrop that there was a big fight to try and get political recognition of the Irish language because despite it being the language of Ireland in the north of Ireland, it wasn’t recognized, which is crazy. It had been erased completely from any official recognition. I just saw this connection between this politically serious battle and these boys on stage throwing drugs into the crowd causing absolute bedlam, but doing it through a language that few people spoke. 

I’m someone who has always struggled with languages, right? I failed at French. At school, I was just terrible at languages and I’ve kind of had this really negative view that: Oh, those sad losers. I freaking hate languages. But they were making it cool. They’re making the Irish language cool. If someone had been rapping in French near me when I was learning French at school, then I might have taken it more seriously. And then by the time I’d actually met them and engaged with them on the film, I decided to start learning Irish. I was in my first Irish language class, and they went around the room and asked: Why are you here? Half of the people were there because they were Kneecap fans. That’s crazy. Suddenly you realize that this is beyond the music; they’re having this real world cultural impact. That to me just felt special. How many bands can say that? I was hooked.

How did you hook them? What was the conversation like to bring them on board?

It took a few months to nail them down. They are the worst communicators on Mother Earth [Laughs] I’ve had their email address. But it might as well just go into the ether. I bumped into a random girl who used to go out with one of them, and the minute I was like: Do you still have Nisha’s number? And she was like: Yes. I got Nisha’s number and called him and was like: I’m the dude who’s been emailing you. He was like: I dunno, we get lots of emails, mate. I asked if they could just meet me for a pint, tonight. They met me and I just bought them drinks all night. And if you buy them drinks all night, they’re pretty much set. I could’ve said I got a bank robbery, and they would’ve been ready. So I said I wanted to make a movie, not a documentary. I wanted them to be in it and I wanted them to play themselves in it. It was nothing. 

So there wasn’t any hesitancy from them, in terms of playing themselves? Because to my knowledge, they hadn’t acted before. 

There was never ever really a discussion about anyone playing them. They’re such charismatic guys, it would’ve been weird to take a band that at the time, remember no one had really heard of them, they were a local band, and recast them. Now if we’re talking about Oasis, then maybe you’d get someone to play them. Also, I think the biopic genre has been run over so many times, and there was something quite cool about the idea of a biopic in real time rather than looking back at a band at the end of their careers, or who are dead or whatever. But rather doing a proper band almost in real time as they are growing and doing their story with them in it. 

I don’t think even I believed that it would come together in the way it has. Last week they released their debut album and the film is coming out in a few weeks time. So it is happening in real time. I don’t think I’ll ever make a movie that will feel the way this film feels in terms of the experience of making it with them, of being at Glastonbury over the weekend with them and seeing 30,000 people going mad about them. I’ve got no musical talent whatsoever. But being part of this film is the closest I’ll ever get to that. Do you know what I mean? And so I’m very grateful. They’re also my best mates. It’s a lonely place sometimes directing, but to be in a situation where you’re making it with friends, in that way it has a collaborative spirit. 

What was it like actually filming in Belfast? I had to think having those surroundings must have given the film a unique vibrancy. 

Well, Belfast is the graffiti capital of Europe. It has like this natural palette of color that just gives energy. There’s color everywhere. Living there means that you’re not really breaking in the place. For years before we were filming it, we were writing it thinking: that might be a location, that might be another one. You were spotting things and you were recording the city as you went. Beyond that, there’s something about shooting in your home city. I don’t know. It’s somewhere that we all have a lot of affection for. That feeling transfers to the screen. In a weird way, where you choose to shoot and how you choose to shoot, all connects to your lived experience of that place in a strange way. It’s a character in the film. And it’s a protagonist rather than an antagonist.

I’m wondering if having familiarity with their surroundings made it easier for the band to be in character, so to speak. 

I think so. That familiarity of place helps in a way. I also think that sometimes it’s forgotten that there’s more difficulty for them to have to play versions of themselves than it is if I’d come to them and said: Look, we’re gonna do this film and you’re gonna be like sixth-century knights. That would be easier because you can completely disassociate who you are, put on a helmet, get on a horse and do your thing. But to say I want you to play yourself and put who you are up on that screen and let everyone judge is a very brave thing. 

People think: Oh, they play themselves. It’s an easier thing. I don’t think it is. I think it’s harder. Because it makes you have to really look at your own self and question your own self and the decisions you make. You’re not a character, it’s actually you. For Nisha in particular, that was very hard because his storyline with his mother is true. His mother killed herself. That’s something that comes up at the end, there is a ‘rest in peace’ during the credits. We’re always thinking about what happened when we were writing the script. Things like that were difficult, where real life crosses over into story. For him to then have the bravery to get on set and have someone play his own mother, who had a couple years before killed herself, was something I’ve always admired.

Knowing how personal these stories were, was there then hesitation bringing a big star like Michael Fassbender in? Because he could easily distract from the neorealist aspects. 

We never really thought about that. It is interesting though, a couple of the reviews, and the reviews have been massively positive, say they feel like he’s miscast or that having him there is slightly jarring. There was one review that said: You have Michael Fassbender and you use him for like five minutes. Are you fucking crazy? [Laughs] You know what I mean? He’s in least 20 minutes of the film. 

There was no real calculation about that. It was a matter of us needing an Irish speaking actor. There’s not many. We wanted to shoot as high as we could and for the boys, it was Michael Fassbender. He’s a hero because he played Bobby Sands in “Hunger.” In Belfast, in particular, he’s revered for the way that he did such justice to someone who’s a legend. We got in contact with him and he was very quickly on board. He was more fanboying off them than they were fanboying him. That was quite amusing. 

But look, people will have their own interpretations of it. People are welcome to feel as they feel. But Michael was always very generous in what he brought to the production. He made everyone raise their game because we all went: We’ve got a real thing here. Do you know what I mean? As the boys say, even the catering got better. [Laughs] Also, he’s been in the game long enough to know that he didn’t want to make this a Michael Fassbender film. He was always like: Look, I’m gonna be a bit tough about promo and marketing. But because he knows better than us about how the marketing of these things work, it was funny when we got through to that stage, you could see how it turned. 

Now that we’ve all become great friends, he absolutely loves the boys. It was a pleasure to work with him. When you have him on your monitor, as a young director making his first narrative feature, and you’re looking at Michael Fassbender, and you’re seeing the control he has over his performance, you just understand when you look at that moment, why he is such a huge star and one of the best character actors of his generation. It was a real privilege for me and a real moment of going: You’re a real film director.

We didn’t always get on, me and him. We had some blowups, and I was standing on a beach going: I’m having an argument with Michael Fassbender. Now we’re real. That was great fun. And then we’re sitting in the pub afterwards, as us Irish do, we have a couple of pints, and it’s all done. We move on to the next day.

Were there any specific reasons for the blow-ups?

Not really. As with everything, when you are in a creative process, people have different ideas of things. When you’re passionate and you care, you stand by your position. I have no problem having arguments with people. I hate the idea that people don’t want to have an argument. If Michael had stood there and gone: Whatever you want, man. I don’t really care. Do you want me to do this? Do you want me to do that? Whatever you want. It doesn’t matter to me that—that matters a lot less than someone standing there and going: No, I want to do this because this is what I think my character would do. That’s two people really engaged in a film. That’s what it’s all about.

I want to return back to how Kneecap’s music has affected their audiences. I often struggle with how much impact film really has on the world. What impact do you hope this film has?

That depends geographically to a degree. I think it will have a different impact on an English audience compared to an Irish audience. There’s never been a film that’s been made about young people in the north of Ireland that focus is not on the Troubles and not on what’s passed but is about the state of affairs for young people. Kneecap is a band. But they’re also a kind of a movement in a way. They have this following, and it’s amazing when you go to places like Glastonbury and now 30,000 people are in that crowd, and they are not all from Belfast. There’s people from all around the world. There’s something about them that I can’t really put my finger on that connects with people because they’re men of the people. They’re not rock stars. They’re just average lads. I think people really like that. 

One thing about sharing the film in America as much as we have is the amount of people, particularly in the African-American community who have come to us and said they really connect with the film in a way that would never have occurred to us. Do you know what I mean? We were just making it for Ireland. And finding that they’re connecting with certain things and understanding the mindset of these kids really intrigues me. 

Traveling around with the film, every audience seems to find a different thing that connects with their lived experience or of their indigenous culture and how that’s been treated. Hopefully the lasting impact is reminding people that if they don’t protect their own culture through learning their language or telling their stories and things like that, then it will die. English is such a hegemonic thing. It’s becoming more and more hegemonic. That’s not a good thing because once a language or once a culture goes, there’s no bringing it back. It’s kind of like the environment. It’s gone. Hopefully amongst all the sex, drugs and hip hop that comes through strongly.

From the way Chris Nashawaty breaks it down in “The Future Was Now: Madmen, Mavericks, and the Epic Sci-Fi Summer of 1982” (Flatiron Books, $29.99), you can either thank or blame the summer of 1982 for how Hollywood blockbusters are made these days. “Star Wars” may have been the box-office champ that changed the moviegoing game. But that film, along with the success of we-are-not-alone flicks “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “Alien,” made studios realize that science fiction puts more butts in seats than they realized.

That summer gave us everything from “Rocky III” to two crowd-pleasers about prostitution (Ron Howard’s sophomore comedy “Night Shift” and the Burt Reynolds-Dolly Parton musical “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas”). But, for Nashawaty, it’ll always be about the Big Eight: “E.T.,” “Poltergeist,” “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan,” “Conan the Barbarian,” “The Road Warrior,” “Blade Runner,” “The Thing,” and “Tron.”

Of course, that summer will always be known as “The Summer of Spielberg.” Already riding high from directing “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” the previous summer’s monster hit, the filmmaker solidified his status as Hollywood’s can’t-miss golden boy by dropping two box office draws. Both these films were inspired by Night Skies, a sci-fi horror script Spielberg commissioned John Sayles to write, about unsympathetic aliens (and a sympathetic alien named Buddy) wreaking havoc on a family’s farm. 

Ultimately, Spielberg decided to make a very personal movie about Buddy. He got with screenwriter (and Harrison Ford’s then-girlfriend) Melissa Mathison and devised a story about a lost alien and the children of divorce — just like Spielberg — who protect the little visitor. And we all know how audiences here and worldwide responded to that. 

Still eager to make a horror film, he co-wrote, produced, and allegedly directed the supernatural chiller “Poltergeist. Even though Tobe Hooper (“The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”) is billed as the director, Spielberg has admitted he was too damn hands-on during production. During the 12-week shoot, Spielberg was there all but three days.

“Future”’s best passages have Nashawaty recounting Paramount’s sordid history making “Khan.” The studio wanted to make a sequel to the long-awaited “Star Trek: The Motion Picture,” especially since the movie, successful as it was, was detested by fans and the cast. Creator Gene Roddenberry, who produced the first film, got a bit cranky when the studio demoted him to a consultant. Even though “Khan” is considered the best “Trek” movie, Roddenberry had beef with the production, possibly leaking to the press that Mr. Spock would die.

And then there was “Tron,” a strange neon curio that came out of Disney, which was not the feared and powerful media empire it is today. Still stuck on re-releasing animated classics and making silly comedies (“The Apple Dumpling Gang,” anyone?), the Mouse House didn’t know what to make of writer-director Steven Lisberger’s video game-inspired adventure and the groundbreaking special effects he needed to get it all done. And, yet, they let him do it anyway. Unlike the IP-jacking Disney of today, the Disney of the ‘80s was far more willing to take a chance. 

In other parts of the world, George Miller was working on the “Mad Max” sequel “Warrior,” looking to correct all the mistakes he made the first time around. He got studio backing from Warner Bros, which was a true step up from the botch job American International Pictures did when they barely released a pitifully dubbed “Max” over here. In Spain, Arnold Schwarzenegger and director John Milius were hard at work, bringing the maximum pulp of “Conan” to the screen. Nashawaty portrays both men as blustery, determined, larger-than-life figures, hoping this movie will shoot them to A-list status.

While he salutes the films that were blockbusters and modest hits, Nashawaty gives special attention to “Blade” and “Thing,” the big losers out of this octet. He begins “Future” by recalling the sad day — June 25, 1982 — when both movies played to empty auditoriums, mainly because critics trashed the hell out of them. (Nashawaty refers to the day as “the worst day in the history of film criticism.”)

Nashawaty echoes what fans of both “Blade” and “Thing” have been saying for decades: people were just not ready for these ambitious flops. And neither were the people involved in making it. Director Ridley Scott drove everyone, from star Harrison Ford to the producers & studio execs who were footing the bill, nuts in his mission to make the most stylish, most existential, futuristic noir ever made. Meanwhile, John Carpenter got Kurt Russell and others to come to British Columbia and freeze their asses off making “Thing,” a grim, paranoid gorefest that even Carpenter knew would crash and burn while “E.T.” dominated the box office. (He tried convincing the studio to push it back to Halloween — a more familiar time for him, of course.) F/X innovator Rob Bottin worked so tirelessly on “The Thing”’s stomach-churning effects, he ultimately checked himself into a hospital for, among other things, exhaustion.

Nashawaty, a former writer and critic for Entertainment Weekly who’s now Netflix’s editorial director on film, appears to be building a nice rep for returning to our VHS favorites of yesteryear and verifying all the backstage myths and legends surrounding them. His last book, 2018’s “Caddyshack: The Making of a Hollywood Cinderella Story,” confirmed that the production was, in fact, an endless coke orgy where they took some breaks in-between snorting to make a movie. 

Drugs are hardly mentioned in “Future” — all the players involved, from the filmmakers to the higher-ups — are mostly square. They’re all too focused on their projects to engage in excess and hedonism. However, Oliver Stone does admit he was blitzed on coke and shrooms when he wrote Conan’s batshit-crazy first draft. “It reads like the work of someone who’s been up for two weeks straight,” writes Nashawaty.

Nashawaty writes with fervent, respectful geek passion, bouncing from one narrative to another as he chronicles these films that obviously mean a lot to him. Thankfully, he’s still a journalist. When he pontificates about the brilliance and popularity of these pictures, at least he has the documented evidence to back it up. 

As much as it’s a fun page-turner, “Future” also reminds us that Hollywood is no longer as bold and risk-taking as it once was. Instead of finding talented, eccentric dreamers to create their next summer hit, desperate studios just recycle the same IP repeatedly. Nashawaty points out that, except for “E.T.,” these films have been remade, revamped, spun-off, and given sequels. Studios don’t even wait to drop them during the summer months. “We find ourselves, for better or worse, living in one endless summer,” laments Nashawaty. 

At least for him and so many ‘80s babies who experienced that cavalcade of sci-fi at their nearest multiplex, they’ll always have that summer.

10 NEW TO NETFLIX

“Bone Tomahawk“
“The Boy Next Door“
“Fifty Shades Darker“
“Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire“
“The Hateful Eight“
“The Inspection“
“Land of Bad“
“The Teachers’ Lounge”
“Trolls: Band Together”
“Wicked Little Letters“

18 NEW ON BLU-RAY/DVD

“Abigail“

If Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett‘s “Scream” films were the duo known as Radio Silence’s stab at Wes Craven, their follow-up is their best attempt to mimic the art of John Carpenter. Like so many of that master’s films, it’s a thriller about people trapped in an impossible situation. But “Abigail” lacks the grit and teeth of the master’s best work, often feeling too polished to be effective. Still, there’s just enough to like here, especially in the great ensemble, including another memorable Dan Stevens genre performance (you really NEED to see what he does in the upcoming “Cuckoo”). Ultimately, “Abigail” is a reasonable weekend rental, even if it fails to live up to the potential of its premise.

Buy it here 

Special Features

• Deleted & Extended Scenes
• Gag Reel
• Blood Bath – Soak up the slaughter alongside the cast and crew with this dive into the deep end of Abigail’s body pits, where practical FX reign supreme and there’s no such thing as too much blood.
• Hunters to Hunted – Get up close and personal with Abigail’s abductors as the cast divulges the details behind how they got into character to collectively create a unique crew of criminals.
• Becoming a Ballerina Vampire – Abigail actor Alisha Weir, choreographer Belinda Murphy, and more members of the creative team take up the task of transforming a seemingly sweet little girl into a vicious vampire.
• Directing Duo Matt & Tyler – Directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett lead this look at the actors, ideas, and environment they put together to create a set that’s fun while still being fearsome.
• Feature Commentary with Directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin & Tyler Gillett and Editor Michael P. Shawyer

“Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy“

It’s hard to believe it’s been 20 years since San Diego stayed classy. Paramount is celebrating the anniversary of what is arguably Will Ferrell‘s biggest cultural footprint with a stellar 4K release that includes multiple versions of the film, commentary, and tons of special features spread over three discs. Seriously, this is Criterion level special features for “Anchorman.” How’s the movie hold up? Pretty darn well for a flick that’s almost old enough to drink, largely because of the improvisational fearlessness of one of the best comedy ensembles of its era. I’m still a “Step Brothers” guy when the topic of the best Adam McKay comedy comes up, but a rewatch of this edition made me realize it’s a closer race than I remembered. 

Buy it here 

Special Features

• DISC ONE – 4K BLU-RAY
  • THEATRICAL VERSION of the film
  • DOLBY VISION/HDR PRESENTATION
  • Audio: English – DTS HD Master Audio 5.1 Surround, French – Parisian, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish – Castilian Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround
  • Subtitles: English, English SDH, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French – Parisian, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Spanish – Castilian, Swedish
• DISC TWO – BLU-RAY
  • THEATRICAL AND EXTENDED VERSIONS of the film branched
  • Commentary by Adam McKay, Will Ferrell, Lou Rawls, Andy Richter, Kyle Gass, Paul Rudd, David Koechner, and Christina Applegate
  • Deleted & Extended Scenes
  • Bloopers
  • “Afternoon Delight” Music Video
  • ESPN SportsCenter Audition – Ron Burgundy
  • Audio: English – DTS HD Master Audio 5.1 Surround, French – Parisian, Spanish – Castilian Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround
  • Subtitles: English, English SDH, French, Spanish
• DISC THREE – BLU-RAY
  • WAKE UP RON BURGUNDY: THE LOST MOVIE
  • Intro-Commentary with Will Ferrell and Aaron Zimmerman
  • PSA
  • Award Speech
  • Raw Footage “Good Takes”
  • “Afternoon Delight” Recording Session
  • Interviews
  • Specials
  • Cast Auditions
  • Table Read 6/2/03
  • Rehearsals
  • Playback Video
  • Commercial Break
  • Trailers
  • Audio: English Stereo
  • Subtitles: English, French, Spanish Latin American
• ADDITIONAL CONTENT
  • Rigid board slipcase
  • Poster
  • 5 x Art Cards
  • 5 x Character Cards
  • Channel 4 News Sticker
  • The Many Months of Burgundy’ Booklet
  • Capacity Envelope

“Anselm“

It was heartening to see the masterful Wim Wenders premiere two films at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival. His best narrative feature in years, “Perfect Days,” received more fanfare, but this 3D documentary, now available under the Janus Contemporaries branch of the Criterion Collection, made for an interesting companion. It’s a delicate, almost somber portrait of Wim’s friend Anselm Kiefer, a painter and sculptor whose work grapples with the complex history of his country. Of course, Wenders doesn’t make standard bio-docs, and his film almost marries his art with that of his subject’s, especially in 3D. Janus/Criterion includes a 3D Blu-ray in this release, by the way, for those with such technical capabilities.

Buy it here 

Special Features

• Meet the Filmmaker, a new interview with director Wim Wenders
• Trailer

“The Boy and the Heron“

If you thought Hayao Miyazaki’s Oscar winner was gorgeous on the big screen, you really need to see it in 4K. This release from GKIDS and Shout is a stunner, a reminder of how beautifully timeless this film already feels. The Dolby track also reminds one of the stunning grace of Joe Hisaishi‘s score, one of my favorites of the decade. The special features here are also strong, including storyboards and interviews. This will likely be Miyazaki’s final film, and it will go down in history as one of the best closing acts in film history. Note: There’s a steelbook edition with excellent cover art but the same special features as the standard 4K release.

Buy it here 

Special Features

• DOLBY VISION/HDR PRESENTATION OF THE FILM
• DOLBY ATMOS AUDIO TRACK
• Feature-Length Storyboards
• Interview with Composer Joe Hisaishi
• Interview with Producer Toshio Suzuki
• Interview with Supervising Animator Takeshi Honda
• Drawing with Takeshi Honda
• “Spinning Globe” Music Video
• Teasers & Trailers

“Brokeback Mountain“

The story of “Crash” becoming one of the most hated Best Picture winners of all time often doesn’t include the film that almost everyone thought would win that night, especially after its director, Ang Lee, took home his first trophy: “Brokeback Mountain.” Based on the short story of the same name by Annie Proulx, this drama is still incredibly powerful, thanks in large part to Lee’s nuanced direction of his performers, especially Oscar nominees Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger, whose snub for the Oscar for Best Actor actually felt like the biggest crime of the night to this critic (as much as I also love PSH’s work in “Capote“). Ledger’s work here is unreal, a captivating portrait of a man struggling with his place in the world.

Buy it here 

Special Features

• NEW 4K MASTER FROM THE ORIGINAL CAMERA NEGATIVE
• NEW Audio Commentary by Film Historian/Writer Julie Kirgo
• Sharing the Story: The Making of Brokeback Mountain (20:47)
• From Script to Screen: Interviews with Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana (10:53)
• A Groundbreaking Success: Featurette (17:13)
• Directing from the Heart: Featurette with Ang Lee (7:27)
• On Being a Cowboy: Featurette (5:44)
• Music from the Mountain: Featurette with Gustavo Santaolalla
• Impressions from the Film: Photo Slideshow
• Theatrical Trailer and TV Spots

“Captain Phillips“

Speaking of Oscar crimes, it will never make sense to me that Tom Hanks was snubbed for even a nomination for his performance in this chilling thriller from Paul Greengrass, the director of “United 93.” Hanks plays Richard Phillips, the captain of the Maersk Alabama, which was hijacked by Somali pirates in 2009. There’s no anniversary here, but Sony has deemed it the right time to drop a Steelbook 4K version of the movie nonetheless. Maybe it will allow for a greater appreciation of Hanks’ work here, especially in a scene late in the film that haunts me, the one in which Phillips finally realizes he’s safe and the tension that he’s been carrying in his body literally comes out through all of his muscles. It’s a reminder that Hanks somehow went from one of our most honored actors in the ’90s to one of our most underrated two decades later.

Buy it here 

Special Features

• Commentary with Director Paul Greengrass
• Capturing Captain Phillips – in-depth behind-the-scenes featurettes on making the acclaimed film
• Theatrical Trailer

“Civil War“

This is a tough one. As is often the case when I catch up with a film that has produced such incredibly divisive responses, I see both sides of the debate here. On the one hand, Alex Garland’s film is an ambitious, gorgeously shot piece of filmmaking. On the other, bigger hand, for this viewer, it’s a provocation that often feels ungrounded, as if it’s never taking place in the real world. The reading that the film is more about journalism than the zeitgeist works, but only to a certain extent when Garland peppers his script with references to places like Crawfordsville (which is not an accident). Ultimately, I don’t think Garland fully has a grip on what he’s trying to say with “Civil War,” but he’s strong enough at the craft of filmmaking as a director that I was never bored watching him reach for it.

Buy it here 

Special Features

• Torn Asunder: Waging Alex Garland’s Civil War Six-Part Documentary
• Theatrical Trailer
• Amazon Blu-ray Exclusive: Director and Cast Q&A

“Diary of the Dead“

Man, I miss George Romero. One of the best directors of all time (not just horror, any genre), Romero reshaped the American filmmaking landscape. But by the time this 2007 film was released, a lot of people were taking the master for granted. The reboot of the “Dead” films in “Land of the Dead” was pretty well-received, but the lack of star power for this fifth film “of the Dead” led to it being largely ignored. Sure, it’s no “Dawn of the Dead,” but few movies are, and it’s a reminder that Romero was taking risks with form (making a found footage movie) and playing with interesting ideas late into his career. 

Buy it here 

Special Features

• Feature commentary by Writer-Director George A. Romero, Director of Photography Adam Swica, and Editor Michael Doherty
• For the Record: Feature-Length Documentary on the Film’s Cast, Crew & Creation
• The Roots: The Inspiration for the Film
• The First Week: A Visit to the Set
• Familiar Voices: Cameo Outtakes
• MySpace Contest Winners: 5 Zombie films from Filmmaker Fans
• Character Confessionals

“Farewell My Concubine”

One of the best films of the ’90s was given a lavish 4K restoration and re-released last year in a new director’s cut that I reviewed here. My admiration and love for Chen Kaige‘s epic period piece should be clear enough in that 4-star review, and so I was happy to learn that Criterion would handle the home release of that version of the film. Everything in that review remains the same, of course, and the physical version includes a few archival pieces (an interview from its theatrical and a documentary from its DVD release) along with a new conversation about the movie between a scholar and a producer. It’s a slight release for Criterion, but the film alone makes it worth owning.

Buy it here 

Special Features

• NEW 4K RESTORATION of the original director’s cut, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
• New conversation between Chinese-cultural-studies scholar Michael Berry and producer Janet Yang
• Documentary from 2003 on the making of the film
• Interview from 1993 with director Chen Kaige conducted by journalist Charlie Rose
• Trailer
• New English subtitle translation
• PLUS: An essay by author and scholar Pauline Chen

“The First Omen“

What a stunner. Not only is this one of the best debuts of the year, it’s one of the best major studio horror films in many years. Taking place before the action of 1976’s “The Omen,” this superior film stars Nell Tiger Free (“Servant”) as an American novitiate named Margaret Daino, who has come to serve at an orphanage in Rome in 1971, where, well, things are getting weird. Something very wrong is happening at Vizzardeli, but Arkasha Stevenson‘s film is more interested in creating a haunting, unsettling mood than it is in the specifics of the plot. The practical effects rule, Aaron Morton’s cinematography is gorgeous, and the editing by Bob Murawski and Amy E. Duddleston is some of the best of the year. This is a fearless piece of filmmaking, filled with artistry and ideas in ways that modern horror is too rarely allowed to be. See it. 

Buy it here 

Special Features

• The Mystery of Margaret – Join director Arkasha Stevenson and stars Nell Tiger Free, Bill Nighy and Maria Caballero as they dive into the character of Margaret, her relationships with other characters, and how she’s manipulated while trying to solve the film’s horrifying mystery.
• The Director’s Vision – Director Arkasha Stevenson talks about her love of horror films, the opportunity to expand on The Omen legacy, and crafting The First Omen entirely through a female lens. She also describes shooting in Rome, and the cast recounts working with Arkasha.
• Signs of The First Omen – Join the director and talented artists as they reveal some of the symbolism within the set designs and the costumes. Learn how the use of practical effects blurs the line between what is real and what is not in The First Omen’s terrifying world.

“The Last Stop in Yuma County“

Do you miss the work of the Coen brothers? What about the wave of filmmakers trying to be Quentin Tarantino after he broke through? I’ve got a movie for you. While “Fargo” and “Pulp Fiction” wannabes led to a bunch of junk, Francis Gallupi’s throwback feels fresh and, most of all, fun. The fantastic Jim Cummings stars as a traveling knives salesman who arrives at the titular remote gas station in the 1970s, where, well, things go very wrong. Jocelin Donahue, Sierra McCormick, Alex Essoe, Barbara Crampton, and the iconic Richard Brake star in an unpredictable, violent, funny, strange piece of work. You know, the kind they used to make more often.

Buy it here 

Special Features

• Three audio commentary tracks
• Making-of featurette

“The Man From U.N.C.L.E.”

Crawling to just under $50 million in the States, this Guy Ritchie film was considered a failure on its release in 2015. However, it almost immediately developed a vocal fan base, people ready to proclaim it a misunderstood masterpiece. To this day, when those social prompts pop up about movies that deserve a sequel, this film almost always surfaces, probably second only to “The Nice Guys.” So fans of this loose version of the ’60s show of the same name will be happy to know that Arrow heard their cries and gave Ritchie’s flick the VERY special treatment, complete with a new transfer, special features, and awesome packaging. New interviews and featurettes are joined by all the archival ones from previous releases, making this one of the season’s most impressive physical media releases. 

Buy it here 

Special Features

• Dolby Vision/HDR presentation of the film
• Original lossless Dolby Atmos sound
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• Brand new audio commentary by critics Bryan Reesman and Max Evry
• The Hollywood Way – brand new interview with co-writer/producer Lionel Wigram
• A Lineage of Bad Guys – brand new interview with actor Luca Calvani
• Legacy of U.N.C.L.E. – brand new featurette celebrating the original 1960s TV series and its influence on the 2015 movie, featuring Helen McCarthy, David Flint and Vic Pratt
• Cockneys and Robbers – brand new featurette exploring director Guy Ritchie’s oeuvre, featuring Kat Hughes, Hannah Strong and Josh Saco
• Spy Vision: Recreating 60s Cool, A Higher Class of Hero, Metisse Motorcycles: Proper and Very British, The Guys from U.N.C.L.E. and A Man of Extraordinary Talents – five archival featurettes exploring the making of the film
• U.N.C.L.E.: On-Set Spy – four archival, bite-sized featurettes going behind the scenes on the film set
• Theatrical trailer
• Image gallery
• Double-sided fold-out poster, featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Dare Creative
• Illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing by Barry Forshaw, and a reprinted article from CODEX Magazine on the film’s cinematography
• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Dare Creative

“Perfect Days”

A nominee for the Oscar for Best International Feature Film, this gentle character study felt like a comeback for one of the best filmmakers of all time in Wim Wenders. The director of “Wings of Desire” and “Until the End of the World” co-wrote and directed the story of Hirayama, played with gentle grace by Koji Yakusho, who won the Best Actor Award at Cannes last year. Hirayama spends his days cleaning toilets in Tokyo, taking solace in the little things in life as the film about him deftly reveals details about his past. Without ever succumbing to melodrama or the sense that it’s looking down on a menial worker, “Perfect Days” is a captivating gem. It’s also worth noting that the Criterion edition now available includes an interview with the charming Wenders and a short by the filmmaker, available exclusively here.

Buy it here 

Special Features

• 4K DIGITAL MASTER, approved by director Wim Wenders, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
• HDR PRESENTATION OF THE FILM
• New interview with Wenders
• Interview with actor Koji Yakusho
• Some Body Comes into the Light (2023), a short by Wenders, featuring a new introduction by the director
• Interview with producer Koji Yanai, founder of the Tokyo Toilet project
• Trailer

“Risky Business“

One of the best movies of the ’80s, this was still a very unexpected inclusion in the Criterion Collection, but a very welcome one. For those not as old as this writer, it’s hard to fully explain what a seismic announcement of a star it felt like when Tom Cruise slid across that floor. And a reappraisal of this film as a smart, sexy, thrilling piece of work is long overdue. To that end, Criterion includes a 4K restoration of the director’s cut and theatrical release overseen by director Paul Brickman and producer Jon Avnet, who also returns for a new interview about the movie. Archival features imported for this release include a commentary featuring Cruise himself and fascinating screen tests of the actor and his gorgeous co-star Rebecca De Mornay. You can see the future star even then.

Buy it here 

Special Features

• NEW 4K RESTORATION of the director’s cut and the original theatrical release, supervised and approved by director Paul Brickman and producer Jon Avnet, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtracks
• DOLBY VISION/HDR PRESENTATION OF THE FILM
• Audio commentary for the original theatrical release featuring Brickman, Avnet, and actor Tom Cruise
• New interviews with Avnet and casting director Nancy Klopper
• New conversation between editor Richard Chew and film historian Bobbie O’Steen
• The Dream Is Always the Same: The Story of “Risky Business,” a program featuring interviews with Brickman, Avnet, cast members, and others
• Screen tests with Cruise and actor Rebecca De Mornay
• Trailer
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by film curator and critic Dave Kehr

“Run Lola Run“

There was a brief window in the late ’90s and early ’00s when it felt like international cinema would be embedded in American filmmaking more seamlessly than it ended up being. “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” was the apex of this, but don’t forget the arthouse success of Tom Tykwer‘s riveting “Run Lola Run,” a movie that won the Audience Award at Sundance on its way to an Oscar nomination almost a year later. Franka Potente stars as Lola, who does a lot of running in an effort to get the money to save her boyfriend. Recently given a theatrical release in 4K to mark its 25th anniversary, that version now comes home from Sony, accompanied by the special features from its initial physical release.

Buy it here 

Special Features

• Audio Commentary with Director Tom Tykwer and Actor Franka Potente
• Audio Commentary with Director Tom Tykwer and Editor Mathilde Bonnefoy
• Making-Of Featurette
• Still Running Featurette
• “Believe” Music Video
• Theatrical Trailer

“Taxi Driver“

A solid candidate for one of the ten best films of at least the ’70s (and maybe longer), Martin Scorsese‘s thriller remains one of the most influential films of all time. Robert De Niro gave an instantly iconic performance as Travis Bickle, who comes home now in a steelbook collector’s edition that houses a 4K version of the film that has been restored from the original camera negative. The standard Blu-ray that’s also included comes with a ton of special features, including commentaries by Paul Schrader and Scorsese himself, and much more. This is a must-own collector’s edition of a true masterpiece.

Buy it here

Special Features

• DISC ONE – 4K BLU-RAY
  • Restored from the original camera negative, presented in 4K resolution with Dolby Vision
  • English 5.1 + mono
  • Making Taxi Driver Documentary
  • Storyboard to Film Comparisons with Martin Scorsese Introduction
  • Animated Photo Galleries
  • 20th Anniversary Re-Release Trailer
• DISC TWO – BLU-RAY
  • Feature presented in high definition, sourced from the 4K master
  • English 5.1
  • 40-Minute Taxi Driver Q&A featuring Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster and Many More Recorded Live at the Beacon Theatre in New York City at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival
  • Commentary with Director Martin Scorsese and Writer Paul Schrader Recorded by the Criterion Collection
  • Commentaries by Writer Paul Schrader and by Professor Robert Kolker
  • Martin Scorsese on Taxi Driver
  • Influence and Appreciation: A Martin Scorsese Tribute
  • Producing Taxi Driver
  • God’s Lonely Man
  • Taxi Driver Stories
  • Travis’ New York
  • Travis’ New York Locations
  • Theatrical Trailer

“Twister“

In anticipation of the success of “Twisters,” Sony released the 1996 Jan de Bont original in a sharp 4K release that includes a new interview with the director and a solid (if not spectacular) audio track for the film. Almost three decades later, “Twister” is goofier and better than you remember, a reminder of Bill Paxton’s excellence and De Bont’s skill at pacing a blockbuster like this one. The dialogue can be clunky, but people didn’t come to “Twister” for character work then, and they’re not going to care now, especially with a 4K picture to really amplify what works about the movie.

Buy it here 

Special Features

• NEW The Legacy of Twister: Taken by the Wind – Jan de Bont discusses the groundbreaking film
• Audio commentary by Jan de Bont and Visual Effects Supervisor Stefen Fangmeier
• Featurettes:
• Chasing the Storm: Twister Revisited
• Anatomy of a Twister
• HBO First Look: The Making of Twister
• Van Halen “Humans Being” Music Video

“The Zone of Interest“

The Oscar winner for Best International Feature has now been given a physical Blu-ray release from A24 that’s available exclusively through their shop. Special features for a film like this can be tricky in that it doesn’t really support standard EPK nonsense. So A24 has given it a different treatment, taking the project seriously with physical postcards and a 32-minute documentary instead of the typical, choppy featurettes. To this viewer, “The Zone of Interest” feels like more and more of an essential film of its era with each passing day, a major piece of work that will stand the test of time.

Buy it here 

Special Features

• Postcards with stills photography by Agata Gryzbowska and Kuba Kaminski
• A short documentary on Aleksandra Bystroń-Kołodziejczyk 
• A recording of “Sunbeams” (written and performed by Joseph Wulf)
• 32-minute making-of documentary “Filming Zone,” directed, edited & photographed by Filip Skrońc

TORONTO–Academy Award-nominated British filmmaker Mike Leigh (“Secrets and Lies,” “Naked”) is set to receive this year’s TIFF Ebert Director Award at the 49th Toronto International Film Festival, which will run September 5-15th, 2024.

In a press release from the fest, TIFF has announced Leigh amongst three other esteemed honorees receiving a TIFF Tribute Award at this year’s festival. He returns to the fest for the World Premiere of his 23rd film, “Hard Truths,” screening as part of the Special Presentations program. Reuniting with his “Secrets & Lies” star Marianne Jean-Baptiste, the film is, as Bleecker Street describes, “a tough but compassionate and intimate film about family life that marks his return to a contemporary setting.”

Named after legendary film critic Roger Ebert, the Award has gone to celebrated visionaries such as Martin Scorsese, Claire Denis, Ava DuVernay, Wim Wenders, and the late Agnès Varda. Past recipients who received the TIFF Ebert Director Award since the TIFF Tribute Awards were introduced include Spike Lee in 2023; Sam Mendes in 2022; Denis Villeneuve in 2021; Chloé Zhao in 2020; and Taika Waititi in 2019.

In addition to Leigh, Canadian filmmaker Durga Chew-Bose (“Bonjour Tristesse”) will receive the TIFF Emerging Talent Award (presented by Amazon MGM Studios). The TIFF Variety Artisan Award will go to French songwriting and composing duo Camille Dalmais and Clément Ducol, in honor of their score for the Netflix-bound Jacques Audiard film “Emilia Pérez.” 

In addition to those recipients, the TIFF Tribute Awards plan to honor Amy Adams, Cate Blanchett, and David Cronenberg at a gala fundraiser on Sunday, September 8th, at Fairmont Royal York Hotel. Sandra Oh will serve as Honorary Chair. 

“It’s a true honour to welcome Mike Leigh back to the Festival and present him with the TIFF Ebert Director Award,” said TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey in a press release. “Leigh has long been acknowledged as one of cinema’s great artists; Roger Ebert himself praised Leigh’s ‘sympathy, penetrating observation, and instinct for human comedy.’ “Hard Truths” is both a summation of that work and a bold move forward.”

Any performance vying for being the best of Colman Domingo’s distinguished career has a high bar to clear. The actor first began as a kind of utility player in cinema, playing small, vital roles in films by Spike Lee (“Miracle at St Anna” and “Red Hook Summer”), Steven Spielberg (“Lincoln”), Lee Daniels (“The Butler), and Ava DuVernay (“Selma”). In the meantime, he oscillated between stage as actor-playwright and television. 

Domingo’s career gained steam with his incredible turn on stage in “The Scottsboro Boys,” and then found further momentum with his starring work in the post-apocalyptic series “Fear the Walking Dead.” Ever since then, he’s been on an exceptional hot streak: the loving father in “If Beale Street Could Talk,” a code-switching pimp in “Zola,” a slide trombone player in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” villainous turns in “Candyman” and “The Color Purple,” an Emmy-nominated performance in “Euphoria” and an Oscar nominated turn for Best Actor in “Rustin.” Domingo has played every character imaginable, stretching himself beyond measure while enchanting audiences with a dramatic dexterity his films can barely contain. 

And yet, astoundingly, he has never been better than in Greg Kwedar’s A24 distributed drama: “Sing Sing.” The script, adapted by Kwedar and Clint Bentley from the Esquire story about the Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) program — an initiative to provide incarcerated individuals with the space for healing through staging performances of plays — is among the most delicate and caring he’s ever received. The camerawork by cinematographer Pat Scola and Kwedar understands and captures his boundless capacity for invention. The character of Divine G, a playwright and incarcerated man seeking parole, is multifaceted and aching — representing his richest character yet. Placed at the center of a deep ensemble involving Paul Raci as program director Brent Buell, Sean San José as Divine G’s best friend Mike Mike, and an unforgettable Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin as himself — a hustler and dealer who forms a close bond with Divine G — Domingo has found a cast of characters capable of playing with the same verve and attentiveness as him. The result is a vital, humanist portrait that shows Domingo at his most tender, his most broken and his most empathetic. 

RogerEbert.com met with Domingo at the Peninsula Chicago to talk about the collaborative spirit on “Sing Sing,” dancing with the camera, and whether he’d ever do a comedy. 

This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

As I was preparing for this interview, I was thinking about how long you’ve been working. And I tried to remember what I first saw you in, and the first film that came to mind was “Red Hook Summer.”

Wow. That’s a real deep, deep dive!

You’re in what, I think, is among Spike’s three best double dolly shots.

Isn’t it fantastic? And it’s wild because I always tell people I got one of Spike’s best dolly shots. It’s so character and story driven, and emotional. 

Yes! 

And I can still remember the day we did it because he was leaning out of his car and when I showed up to set, he was like: So, you ready? You ready for this? You ready for the dolly shot? I said: I’m good. I’m good. He was like: All right, I’m just making sure you’re ready. And then we did it. I’ll never forget it, really. I knew I needed to build on the dolly, and pull up all of the emotion in one take. And we did that, and Spike lost his entire mind. [Laughs] So I think what he used was the first take. 

Oh wow. 

It was the first and then it was on to the next one.

I think the one in “Red Hook Summer” is the closest he’s ever gotten to matching Melvin Van Peebles’ take in “The Story of a Three-Day Pass.” You can feel the room, the characters, along with the external and internal emotions of the character. In any case, I saw “Sing Sing” back at TIFF, and have loved it ever since. How did you work your way into this character? I know the person you play, Divine G, has a story by credit. Did you lean on him to build the character?

I found my way into this story, I think, in a more unique way. I didn’t have to do a deep dive into the prison industrial complex. I had to take a bit more of myself and put that into the given circumstances. Because what I knew about Divine G was that he went to the performing arts high school in New York. I didn’t go to performing arts high school. I’m a performing artist. He’s very bookish and well studied. He spent most of his time in the law library. When he was on the inside, he was advocating for others and was in service to other members of his community to advocate for their liberation, believing that the system could work while knowing that the system had not served him. 

So that taught me a lot about him. He’s someone who’s filled with hope and still has that creative spark, being a founding member of this RTA program. I didn’t have to do a lot of observing pf him. I wasn’t trying to mimic him. I needed to take what I knew and build a character with that and build someone that’s based off of him — but make him more of an every man so the audience can see themselves in him. Because it could be anyone of us that’s wrongly accused of something. 

So I wanted to make sure that that was clear. For me, it was about doing that deep dive and then really bringing a bit more of myself. Honestly, I know for sure, and I can actually articulate it now because I saw the film for the second time just the other day, what I saw was a very unmasked performance, something that is a bit more raw and a bit more closer to myself than I ever imagined. It was just very human. I didn’t have to pull that out, like with all the research of “Rustin,” which was required to be him. I could be more internal, which was a great exercise. It stripped me a bit more bare.

You’ve mentioned in other places that you didn’t sign up for this project, you helped to build it up. I was wondering if you could talk about the difference between the two.

That’s funny. I guess that’s a different way to put it. Because when I signed up for this, there was an offer and there was an invitation for me to be a part of building this. That’s different from being cast. Anybody who knows me, they know that I have my own production company — I’ve made my own way in this industry as a director, as a writer, and all the different things that I do. They wanted that. They were like: We want you to help us think about this, to help us interrogate the work and help us wrestle with the language. Help us build this. And so I had an opinion about everything: the scenic design, the staging, the text, craft services, flowers. Which is beautiful. That means we’re really building this in a community sort of way. When I see the film, I don’t know where one person’s work ends and another one’s begins because it was really creating a brain trust and sharing and giving all that you had. 

With some projects I’m required to leave one part of myself behind. I’m like: Oh, well, I’m not directing this. So I’ll just keep my opinions to myself as a director. I’m like: How’s that being staged? You’re putting the camera there? [internally] Don’t say anything. Just do your work as an actor. But with this it was like: No, Colman, what do you think? So I would ask: What story are we telling here? What are we doing here? Where’s that? What lens are you on? I see the whole of this and it’s such a deep, deep collaboration that I feel my fingerprints on every frame.

So this aligned more to your background as a playwright and director. It’s fascinating how this film sort of challenges what we think of auteur driven filmmaking, it’s more nakedly collaborative. 

This is what I think is Greg Kwedar’s superpower. This is an auteur film. His way of doing it, he’s someone who is questioning a lot and feeling and figuring it out. He puts brilliant people all around him, people who may not have done this before or have had this position — but he’s interested in everyone finding out and figuring this out together. I think there’s something really dynamic and beautiful about that. He’s a director who’s willing to say: I’m not sure. Let’s try to figure that out together. He doesn’t come in knowing every single thing, which I think is the most liberating thing on the planet. 

I stand behind people like that because I know that they’re curious to help figure it out. They build the room with smart people. I’ve been in rooms with President Obama or at a dinner with Obama. I see the way he gets information from people. He knows he’s smart and he wants to build with other smart people: What are your ideas? I think that’s what makes a great leader. That’s why I really applaud Greg Kwedar for what he’s done.

His curiosity is evident, especially with regard to how the camera observes performance. This film has so many long takes that allow the actors to play a bit. Do you prefer longer takes and the ability to riff, so to speak?

I think so because I’m that actor that when directors call cut too soon, it sends a chill up my back because I know I always have more. That’s not to say that I’m going be flagrant with the use of time or anything like that. But just keep that camera going a little bit longer because there’s probably a little bit more. I’m also probably even thinking about your cut. If I turn my head here and a camera operator doesn’t rack focus, I want to flip a table. [leans into the mic] He laughs, he laughs! He doesn’t mean that angrily.

But it’s true. I’m trying to offer up something. I know where the camera is. I know what’s happening. I’m always saying: I need a camera operator to dance with me. If you’re just saying, I’m going to stay locked here and then I move close and you don’t come and get in my eyes when you see the emotion coming, we’re not serving each other. Are you just gonna stay there? I was giving you this. You could move in, baby. I got you. I don’t know if that’s gonna happen on the next one.

This is a film that I feel like really gets to what you love to do as an actor. 

I think so. And I also think that’s Pat Scola’s cinematography, his handhelds and what he does with natural light — he’s unabashedly going and looking at the landscape of the human face. And with that, maybe because his lens sometimes is so close, I felt more vulnerable. I could not give a large performance. It had to be subtle and nuanced. I felt that he was looking into my soul. I’ve never said this before, but I do believe it’s some of my best work. 

It’s all the elements that were set up for me to be as vulnerable and as honest as possible. And also with my castmates, we really played off of each other because they were just coming from an honest place. These men who have this lived experience, they were offering that as well as the skills that they’ve learned on the inside. And so I wanted to meet them where they were and where they stood. We created something beautiful and dynamic that was really sincere. That’s the word I often say, it feels sincere. And it feels gentle. It doesn’t feel like the film is trying to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes. We’re trying to strip back and reveal even more. So that’s what I feel like I’ve been a part of. That feeling has been consistent from the beginning and in the way we’re releasing this film. 

And with regard to meeting your castmates halfway, many of them in these long takes are also exploring memories and experiences and bringing them to the surface. What’s your responsibility as a scene partner during those moments?

To be generous and gentle, and to never judge. Judgment is like death to creativity. When you’re standing and you think a person’s supposed to do something or you think a scene is supposed to be a certain way, I’ve never been that person. I always show up to a scene open and available. Even though I’ve done my research, I know the texts, I know probably even what the colors of the scene might be — it’s the exploration, to be challenged with something new and different. That’s what I got from working with Clarence, Sean San José — who happens to be my best friend, as well — or Paul Raci. We all sort of get off on the fact that we’re not exactly sure what the other person’s going to give. There’s a sparkle in our eyes and a sparkle in our performances. That’s what I hope to get pretty much every time I get on set. I hope for that moment.

In terms of building the moment and the energy, of course, this was shot in a decommissioned prison. Could you talk about how that space impacted your performance and your approach?

In every single way, man. The first time I went to my “holding cell” I kept getting lost. I think I’m really good with directions. Not in a prison. Because by design you can never figure your way out. Everything looks alike. I would always have to have a PA take me to the bathroom because I couldn’t figure out the way back. That’s by design. These things play with you psychologically, you’re in this loop and maybe you’re going to be in this loop for the rest of your life. That’s the way I took it. Maybe it’s kind of poetic in a way. 

I’m sure it’s by design, even the lack of air. It didn’t feel like the air was moving in this space, especially when you get into these small cells. You look at these cells, you’re like: This isn’t for a person. No matter what they’ve done, it doesn’t feel human. I don’t know how rehabilitation can happen in this environment. It doesn’t feel like a place where hope is poured into. That’s why this program in particular, RTA, coming into this space is like that big hand of love coming in and saying: Hey, it’s not over. We can give you tools to get better, for you to heal communities and heal your spirit, to work on your trauma and work on the stuff you’ve done. 

But in the space I was in, I didn’t feel any of that. It felt like the antithesis of it. So it did get me to think about it differently. I always took my breaks outside. I had to go outside and get some sunlight and get some fresh air. At the end of the day, Sean San Jose, who plays Mike, Mike, and I would go for a walk. We would go back to the town of Beacon and go for a long walk down by the water. We needed that. You realize what such a simple thing, needing to go outside for a walk, does for you. You don’t get that there. If you do, it’s very controlled. It doesn’t feel like a place where life springs.

At this point in your career, you have a lot more freedom in what you get to choose. Is there a guiding ethos to the roles you decide to take?

I think if people look at my entire career of the past 33, 34 years, they’ll see that I’ve had that ethos since I was 21 years old. They will go back and look at me being in “The Scottsboro Boys,” they will look at “Passing Strange,” they will look at the film work and the tv, whatever it is, and see the line. I want to be purposeful. I want it to be intentional and mindful with the work that I do. I feel like what I have is a gift. I’ve been gifted with this, to do well with it, and to tell people’s stories and to tell complex stories about African American men in different ways. I don’t take that lightly, man. I really don’t. I really do feel like I’m in service. And it’s guarded me and allowed me to be honest. When people are like: Oh, but you did a zombie show. I’m like: Yeah. But it was about our humanity. I did the best of the best. I did “Fear The Walking Dead,” which is about who are when the shit hits the fan.

Yeah. It wasn’t D-level schlock. 

I’m like: Nah. I didn’t pander in any way with my career. That was eight seasons of a character that I really cared about, and I was fighting for his humanity and fighting for mine too. While I was doing it, I became a television director and a producer as well. Everything is in concert with what I believe my soul desires to do. It makes sense that I did “The Color Purple,” “Sing Sing,” and then did pickups with “Rustin,” three things that are very humanist. And I will continue to do that. 

I’m about to go do a comedy with Tina Fey — ”The Four Seasons.” It’s just about relationships in our fifties. If that isn’t humanist, I don’t know what it is. But it’s a comedy; it’s a swing for me. It’s doing something different. But it’s still very much about who we are. I would write that as a playwright on my board: Who are we? Who are they? What are they trying to be? What happens if they don’t get what they need? These are the questions that I’ll always have with every character, with every play, with everything I direct. Because I think that’s what keeps me so grounded. That’s what I know my purpose is. I sometimes wish I could do something that just paid a lot of money. But then I would just feel mad. It’s not for me.

That was one of my questions. Because I know that one of the last times you visited Chicago, you took an improv class. Would you ever do a comedy? 

I love comedy. I feel like I’m a pretty funny person. I got good timing. My comedy started with Shakespeare and romantic comedies and stuff like that years ago. I feel like, now, maybe I’m in a place where I’m ready to keep expanding, but still with that same ethos. Who doesn’t want to do a romantic comedy? I would. I wanna be in love. Why not?

But again, at the end of the day, when I read a script, there’s something in my gut where I know I have to do it. I’m curious about it. It’s going to break me open in some way. It’s gonna change me in some way. I feel like just relating to the RTA program and “Sing Sing,” as well, it’s going to bring something out in you. You’re kind of nervous about it. You’re a little scared about it. But that’s part of the journey. 

I feel like I’m building more life skills with every single thing I do. I feel like I’m becoming, hopefully by the time I’m 70, a more complete, evolved individual because I believe I have those tools with my work. My work shows me and teaches me about who I can be and what I want to be in the world. So I’m still building and evolving into that man because I have this incredible work and this foundation that’s been built. It’s kind of cool.

“Hundreds of Beavers,” a boldly bizarre, nearly wordless slapstick comedy about a 19th-century trapper doing battle with nature, exceeds expectations in every way, including the promise of its title. By my count there are thousands of beavers in this movie. Thousands! And oh, my goodness, they are nasty buggers. The BADL (Beaver Anti-Defamation League) will be out in force once they get word of this motion picture, which depicts an army of beavers building a dam into a bad guy lair to rival the volcano fortress in “You Only Live Twice” and the title structure of “Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom.” 

The hero, trapper Jean Kayak (played by Ryland Brickson Cole Tews – I can’t wait to see that name wrapping around a marquee), doesn’t get in there until the final section of the movie. Until that point, Jean’s got his hands full trying to survive in an icy mountain forest that looks as if somebody reimagined “The Revenant” as a black-and-white cartoon starring Popeye the Sailor Man. During regular visits with a merchant (Doug Mancheski) where Jean exchanges pelts for tools, the trapper falls for the man’s daughter (Olivia Graves), who acts demure but is quite randy. The price of marrying her is (ta-dum!) hundreds of beaver pelts. So there’s a love story, too, kinda like in the videogame “Donkey Kong”.

The film’s writer, director, editor, and main visual effects artist Mike Cheslik has taken a page from other filmmakers who lean into budgetary constraints rather than fight them. “This is a punk lo-fi look,” he said in an interview with No Film School. “This is our style, man.” The non-human mammals featured in this movie—beavers and horses and raccoons and skunks and such—are human performers in mascot suits with zippers up the back. They have big round Disney-animal eyes and and walk on their hind legs (or march or trudge or stroll or skip). There were likely no more than a dozen of the “creatures” on set at any given time—according to Cheslik and producer Kurt Ravenwood, the entire budget of the film was $150,000, not including deferred labor costs—so what you’re looking at is one of the best inadvertent advertisements for the idea that you can create entire worlds on the cheap if you have a strong vision and turn what are usually thought of as liabilities into strengths.

The result is reminiscent of a mindset demonstrated, to wildly different ends, in David Lynch’s “Eraserhead,” Robert Rodriguez’s “El Mariachi,” and the parts of Wes Anderson movies where he shows you, let’s say, the Grand Budapest Hotel, and it’s obviously a miniature building on a miniature mountain, and not only is the movie not pretending it’s a real structure, the storybook-ness of the image is the point. Figurative, metaphorical or just plain sketchy images made with love and presented with pride have a totemic power that overcomes petty concerns about “production values” and plugs into the pleasure centers of the brain. This truth eludes far too many low-budget filmmakers who try for a “Hollywood look” and sadly achieve the cinema equivalent of a five-year old trying to dunk a basketball. “Hundreds of Beavers” understands this on a deep level.

In that spirit, many of the movements of people and animals in the movie are no more “realistic” than those of the little cutout-looking characters on “South Park.” And that’s what makes them funny. Jean shimmies up and down very tall trees, inchworm-style. Sometimes he’s nude when he does it. (Don’t worry, parents; the naughty bits are hidden by the bark he’s scraping against.) There’s a horse that’s blatantly just two performers sharing a “horse costume” that’s barely a costume. You can tell a character or creature has died because their eyes become huge X’s. It’s like in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” where they couldn’t afford real horses so the actors just skipped around the English countryside banging coconut halves together to suggest “hoofbeats.”

Cheslik hails from the “if it makes me laugh, I’ll do it” school of comedy filmmaking. The opening section, a musical montage, has just one non-animated character, Jean, whose applejack addiction destroys his life; the rest are drawn in the manner of underground “comix,” seemingly with fat-tipped markers. Period-specific facts and customs collide, Mel Brooks-style, with modernity. The merchant’s daughter tantalizes Jean with a half-inch glimpse of forbidden ankle, then escalates to a pole dance. The beavers occasionally wear clothes, including hardhats and reflective vests. One is seen carrying a clipboard. They appear to have invented electricity, the assembly line, and video surveillance. 

Cheslik has cited older forms of movie slapstick as influences, from the silent work of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton to the sound-era comedy of The Three Stooges and Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy (referenced here in the form of two “detective” beavers investigating the string of beaver “murders” committed by Jean; they’re dressed to suggest Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson played by Laurel & Hardy played by beavers). Tews, a high school friend of Cheslik and a filmmaker himself, is a physical comedian of rare precision, giving a performance as vivid and fearless as the best of Jim Carrey and Bruce Campbell. The poster is modeled after one of the posters for the 1963 slapstick epic “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.” 

Real-world laws of physics rarely apply. Jean is shot through the air like a rocket and survives falling hundreds of feet from trees or being crushed by giant objects and pops back up to have another go. When famished characters stare at a potential food source, there’s a brief dissolve and you see that they are imagining a man-sized turkey drumstick or slice of pepperoni pizza.  

Another unifying stylistic force here is the video game, which gives shape to Jean’s quest and sub-quests. As the hero tries to learn how to survive, trap, and rack up pelts to win the hand of his love, there are regular cutaways to a map of trap lines and a numeric ticker showing his progress. The film’s climax is the part of a game where a player battles the “big boss.” 

This is a rare movie that invents its own incredibly specific kind of visual language and expects the audience to study it and become fluent (and by the end, they have). The video-game logic of the “learning” montages is the most modern touch in an otherwise proudly retro motion set of influences. Like other great video game-ish movies, including “Run Lola Run,” the “Matrix” franchise, “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” and “Edge of Tomorrow,” but even more so, “Beavers” commits to that kind of storytelling, at times even seeming to “skip ahead” in a sequence in the manner of a player who impatiently resets a game rather sit through an avatar’s death throes again. 

Cheslik’s increasingly abrupt cutting-away to something else has a cumulative comic power that makes the totality of the movie even more energetic than it might have otherwise seemed. If Jean gets injured making the same mistake again, there’ll be a cutaway mid-scream, then even earlier during the next scream; the next time you might not get a scream at all, just a cut to the aftermath.

This is richly imagined escapist entertainment, a fun machine that opens up rarely used neural pathways and gets you thinking about what cinema could be, in addition to all of the things it already is. Future generations of low-budget filmmakers will derive inspiration and comfort from it. It’s one for the ages: a dam fine movie.

It’s unusual for a show to lead its credits with the executive producers of the program but the names behind Amazon Prime Video’s “Batman: Caped Crusader” justify top billing. For fans of everything animated Dark Knight, Bruce Timm is a legend, one of the men who so thoroughly shaped the history of Bruce Wayne that decisions he made on his animated programs and characters he co-created (like Harley Quinn) would forever alter the mythology of superhero history. He was the head producer behind “Batman: The Animated Series,” a true game changer in animated entertainment, along with numerous other great animated properties like “Batman Beyond,” “Superman: The Animated Series,” and the phenomenal “Justice League Unlimited.” His stamp on “Caped Crusader” means a great deal, but it’s amplified by his partners here: Matt Reeves (director of “The Batman”), J.J. Abrams, and Ed Brubaker, one of the best living comic writers, a man who knows this character inside and out, and brings a hard-boiled aesthetic to “Caped Crusader.” Of course, a talented crew can still misfire, but I open with this one to illustrate the pedigree behind this show. It’s the real deal. And they don’t miss.

“Caped Crusader” is a playful journey through origin stories that have been well-told, but not always in this specific manner. For example, Harley Quinn returns to her roots as a psychologist named Harleen Quinzel (Jamie Chung), seen as Bruce Wayne’s shrink before revealing her villainous intent in a later episode. Harvey Dent (Diedrich Bader) is not yet Two-Face, just an aggressive district attorney. Even Batman is a mysterious figure on the fringe of Gotham, a vigilante being tracked by Commissioner Gordon (Eric Morgan Stuart) and his daughter Barbara (Krystal Joy Brown). The Bruce Wayne (Hamish Linklater) here is a figure in the shadows, something that returns him more to the original Detective Comics iteration of a crime-solver, often closer to noir than action.

While origin stories are undeniably overdone, the return to the basics here feels fresh after years of moody Batmen in film and television. It allows the writers to be playful with characters they’re reshaping in a way that marries versions of them from generations ago to something that would play for all audiences today. For example, in the premiere, Penguin is rebooted as Oswalda Cobblepot (Minnie Driver), a crime lord so truly evil that she’s willing to murder one of her own children to get what she wants.

The version of Catwoman here is pretty familiar, but Christina Ricci is still having a blast with her, and the writers get to have some fun with lesser Gotham villains too, like Gentleman Ghost (Toby Stephens), Firebug (Tom Kenny), and a spectacular episode involving Clayface (Dan Donohue), returned to his origin story from the ‘40s as a failed actor named Basil Karlo. In a time when superhero culture seems dominated by multiverses, there’s something charming about a property that seeks to recreate what comic book readers fell in love with almost a century ago.

The voice actors all deliver, especially Ricci, Chung, Brown, and, most importantly, Linklater. The star of “Midnight Mass” brings the necessary gravity to Batman without overplaying any of it, even adding a little vulnerability to a character who is constantly seeking a vengeance (for the murder of his parents) that can never possibly be satisfying. Fans of Timm’s animated properties know that Linklater has some pretty big shoes to fill in that this is one of the first major properties for which the recently passed voice actor Kevin Conroy won’t be wearing the cape. Linklater both puts his own stamp on it and feels consistent with what we expect from this character, which is all fans can ask for.

“Caped Crusader” isn’t perfect. A couple of the first-season episodes feel a bit flat, but it’s a relatively small percentage, and something that can be said about most animated hero shows. The animation can sometimes also cross that threshold from retro into dull, but, again, it’s only an occasional complaint. Every time that “Batman: Caped Crusader” slips, it quickly regains its footing. It helps to have people like Timm, Reeves, Abrams, and Brubaker to be there to pick it up.

Whole season screened for review. Premieres on August 1^st.

Alex Cox burst onto the film scene 40 years ago with “Repo Man,” a science-fiction satire starring Emilio Estevez and Harry Dean Stanton, with a theme by Iggy Pop and a soundtrack heavy on punk rock. He went on to make the music biopic “Sid & Nancy,” the modernized spaghetti western “Straight to Hell,” the political satire “Walker,” the minimalist character study “Highway Patrolman,” the Jorge Luis Borges adaptation “Death and the Compass,” and the Jacobean-styled “The Revengers Tragedy,” loosely adapted from the same-named play. With each new project, Cox moved a bit further outside of the mainstream. He hasn’t made a traditionally funded independent film since “Revengers” in 2002. 

Cox’s latest is a crowdfunded project that ends its Kickstarter campaign July 29. Though puckishly titled “My Last Movie,” it’s “a Western adaptation of Nikolai Gogol’s Dead Souls which takes place in southern Arizona and Texas in the 1890s and will be shot in Spain and Arizona, and it’s a super low-budget film.” It’s his third crowdfunded feature in the last 20 years, the other two being “Bill, the Galactic Hero,” based on Harry Harrison’s novel, and “Tombstone Rashomon,” which retells the story of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral from multiple perspectives. I talked to Cox about the new movie, the evolution of independent filmmaking during the last four decades, and his definition of the word success.

So, how literally are we supposed to take the title “My Last Movie”? 

Well, I mean, it could be my last movie. I haven’t made a movie for nearly 10 years, you know. In another 10 years time, I’m going to be nearly 80. So there’s a possibility that it will be my last movie. 

The original funding goal was $75,000. And you’ve exceeded it, right?

Oh, yeah. That [budget] was to make the film with glove puppets. If you have real actors, you have to pay them more.

What was it about this material that appealed to you?  

It’s just a great story. It fascinated me that Dead Souls is the first part of what Gogol intended as a trilogy, but he could never even complete the second book. He destroyed the second draft [of the second book] multiple times and never even got into the third draft. There are fragments of the second draft, including the miserable childhood experiences of the protagonist, which are just great. and we’ve included those in the script as well.

How do you transplant an 1842 Russian novel to the United States and turn it into a Western?

The book is about a man who is acquiring the names of dead serfs. The book was written during the [era of] serfdom, which I guess you could say was equivalent to slavery and that still existed in Russia when Gogol wrote the book. The year that the the American Civil War began, serfdom was abolished in Russia. So Russia actually preceded the United States in abolishing slavery by a few years. At the time that serfdom existed, it was possible to acquire a large number of serfs, and if you acquired enough—I don’t know exactly how many you had to have—you could be an aristocrat of sorts. Maybe you’d even be a prince, who knows? And so the protagonist of Dead Souls, Chichikov, is acquiring serfs. but because he’s doing it on the cheap, he’s actually acquiring the names of dead serfs, who he then going to present to the requisite authorities in order to acquire glory in Czarist Russia. My protagonist is acquiring the names of dead Mexicans, because he has a way of turning the names of dead Mexicans into money, or thinks he does.

Interesting. I can already see that this unmade project has a lot of similarities with previous work that you’ve done, including the sort of purgatorial aspect that some of your some of your films have, and also the sense that morality is merely an abstract construct for a lot of people. 

When Gogol was trying to go about writing the three books, the first one was supposed to be about bad people, the second one was supposed to be about good people, and the third one was supposed to be about paradise. But he couldn’t even get the second one completed, because it’s much easier to write about bad people than good people. It’s also more entertaining and much more dramatic. And imagine writing about heaven—how boring that would be, you know? 

Hell is definitely more cinematic.

And more literary as well. It’s more interesting and more painterly. I mean, there are lots and lots of paintings from the Middle Ages about Hell, but there aren’t as many paintings of heaven.

How long did it take for you to decide, ‘I’m going to have to fund these movies some other way, because the system as it stands is not giving me what I need”?

It used to be back in the olden days, 20 years ago or more, you would fund a film from sales. You’d make a domestic sale and you’d make foreign sales. You’d do this via a sales agency. Sometimes, you know, a production company or a studio would fund the film and then distribute and then and then sell it later to a distributor. But that model of funding films seemed to become increasingly difficult and increasingly rare and also very anodyne. The type of films that were getting made via that model. tended to be romantic comedies, and romcoms didn’t seem like a very interesting possibility to me. And then my friend Phil Tippett crowdfunded the first third of his film “Mad God” and I thought, Wow. When Phil did that, I thought, This is the way to go.  

You had a kind of a remarkable and in some ways unlikely run in the’ 80s and’ 90s where you were able to get these really uncompromising films funded and seen. What has changed to make it harder?

The early ‘80s was kind of the end of the ‘70s, and the ‘70s was the continuation of the ‘60s, and there was still a movement of independent film then. In those days, there was what they called the New American cinema, which included people like Monte Hellman and Dennis Hopper and Bob Rafelson and Hal Ashby. There were these very, very interesting films being made often by American directors and their equivalents in Europe, and also in Britain, with people like Lindsay Anderson. It was a fantastic time to be making films. And at the time, conventional entities like studios and television companies were interested in making feature films. 

But another thing is, when I was doing them back then, they were negative pickups for the studios, and the studios didn’t have anything to do with the production of the film, and that was part of the appeal as well: it was a way for the studios to get certain kinds of films made but avoid working with the unions. I mean, we didn’t think of ourselves as union busters when we were making “Rep Man,” but we were. The negative pickup deal was also a way for [studios] to learn how to make ‘independent films.’ Universal would then go on to invent  a thing that was like an independent film company—called Focus Features, say—which was totally studio-owned but made ‘independent films.’

Then the industry changed, because once the studios figured out the mechanics of making a lower budget independent film, the last thing they wanted to do was work with independent filmmakers, you know, because they much prefer to work with dependent filmmakers. Then independent filmmakers went off on a different route, and for a little while films were funded by record companies or by TV companies. Then we went the route of trying to divide the cost of the production between the domestic production company or distributor and foreign sales. When that dried up, then came crowdfunding.

I’ve seen a lot of really interesting super low-budget films in the last decade or so, but it seems like their problem is always getting seen. How do you break through the noise?

I wonder as well. The means of production are within the hands of the filmmaker now that we can shoot on video rather than on celluloid. It’s much cheaper to make a film in that sense. But distribution is another matter. You know, I made a film for Roger Corman called “Searchers 2.0” and Corman had plenty of money, but he didn’t have a distribution company. Distribution of the finished film was dependent on who Corman could find to distribute it.

I remember that one. It was made for, maybe not used-car prices, but trailer home prices.

Yeah, yeah—I think that one was done for about $200,000. That is because $200,000 was the [Screen Actors’ Guild] super-low budget level. If you wanted to get SAG actors at the lowest possible rate, then your budget couldn’t exceed $200,000, and so that became the top level for super low-budget films.

What are you doing at the moment, just as your regular gig?

Oh, I don’t have a regular gig anymore! I mean, I never really had a regular gig at all. Except when I was teaching at Colorado University-Boulder—that was a regular gig. I taught at CU Boulder for four years. That was the only full time job that I’ve ever had. Everything else has been project by project. Sometimes I do commentaries for DVDs or make little videos to present DVDs. For a while, I was introducing films on the BBC in England. But I’ve never really had a proper job. My wife made me get a job at CU Boulder because she said we needed to make money, we needed to have a regular income, and I could only think of two jobs that I was capable of doing. One was a gas station attendant and the other was a university professor.

What’s happening with the “Repo Man” sequel that we heard about earlier this year?

Oh, I’ve been doing that for a long time. Every 10 years I write a new script because every 10 years things are different. This is like the fourth “Repo Man 2” that I’ve written in the last four decades. And I’m still trying to raise money for it. The producer is Lorenzo O’Brien, who produced “Walker” and who wrote and produced “Highway Patrolman.” He was also the producer of the series “Narcos.” The lead actor, if we’re able to get him, is Kiowa Gordon, who I like very much. We are constrained by only having the domestic rights to the United States “Repo Man” sequels. Remakes and series [rights] reverted to me about four years ago, but we don’t have foreign. So [to make a sequel] we have to find an investor who will go for a US-only distribution [deal]. In theory, that would be a good deal, because the US is by far the biggest market for the ‘Repo Man” phenomenon.

So do the terms of the original contract mean you could make a “Repo Man” sequel but you couldn’t show it outside of the United States?

We [could, but we] would have to sell it to Universal [first], because they own the foreign rights to a “Repo Man” sequel. 

In theory, could Universal do a “Repo Man” sequel with some other director and only show it internationally, not within the United States?

Ironically, because of my contract, the only person who can direct a “Repo Man” sequel is me, so they’d [still] have to buy the foreign rights! 

It all sounds very complicated!

It is complicated, isn’t it? But we are pursuing some interesting possibilities of finding some way that we can fund it, just from the US distribution [rights]. But the thing does not exist yet, except as a screenplay.

How many people need to see a movie for you to feel as if you succeeded overall, in whatever sense? Is there any number of viewers under which you would conclude, “Oh, well, that didn’t work out”?

No. Just making it is success enough. I mean, you can’t control how many people see it. How many people have seen ‘Repo Man’? How many people have seen ‘Tombstone Rashomon”? Pretty much everybody has seen “Repo Man,” yeah? Comparatively few people have seen “Tombstone Rashomon.” But I like them both equally, so that doesn’t make any difference. If you’re a film artist, if you’re actually a creative, artistic, independent filmmaker, you make films for yourself, and the pleasure is in the making of them, and in the collaborative process. And then, in the distribution, well— whatever happens happens.

That sounds like a healthy attitude.

It’s the only attitude you can take at the end, because you can’t really control distribution. And if you worry about how many people saw it, you’re not going to have any fun. You’re going to be filled with regret, and you’re going to value things that maybe aren’t so valuable. 

But you know, the theater experience hasn’t gone away. There are still art cinemas, you know. There are still repertory theaters. It all still exists. People like to go to the cinema and they like to see things that aren’t just Marvel Comics movies. There is definitely hope.