F This Movie!

Fifty Before '50: Niles/Essanay, Part II: The Edison Theater

fthismoviepodcast@gmail.com (fthismovie.com) — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 05:00:00 -0500

by JB

What a wholesome little conclave.

Last week I wrote lovingly of the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum in Fremont, California. It is a special place that I enjoyed visiting. The museum also encompasses an original Nickelodeon theater that showed silent movies from 1916 to 1924 when it was “replaced” by a bigger theater next door, The Edison. The Edison showed movies from 1924 until 1956, when an unfortunate fire burned it to the ground. Years later, the museum people noticed the original Nickelodeon was still standing, purchased it, renamed it “The Edison” and set about restoring it to its 1916 glory. Their efforts are ongoing, and you can contribute to this worthy cause.

Every Saturday night, the museum staff show silent movies on film with live piano accompaniment. It’s the berries! I attended two Saturdays ago. Here are the films we screened, with my comments. Pop yourself some corn, click on the links below (I carefully scoured the interwebs for the VERY BEST versions of these little gems), throw your laptop image and sound onto the biggest screen you can find, and you can recreate this wonderful night at the movies. Hire a big, tall Victorian woman to sit in front of you, wearing an impossible, huge, turn-of-the-century, Sunday-go-to-meeting-style hat... and then politely ask her, “LADY, PLEASE REMOVE YOUR HAT!”

The Immigrant (1917)

The evening started with one of the twelve films that Charlie Chaplin made after he left Essanay for the Mutual Film Corporation in 1916. Mutual offered him more money. The total contract for $670,000—that was $10,000 per week with a signing bonus of $150,000. That’s the equivalent of $20 million in today’s money. Chaplin was expected to produce 12 two-reel comedy films over a 12-month period. It wound up taking 18 months.

The Immigrant is a very funny film with a dash of social commentary. I love when the immigrants aboard ship see the Statue of Liberty for the first time, the titles tell us “The Land of the Free,” and the immigrants are quickly herded behind a thick rope like cattle to be processed. Subtle!

The Baloonatic (1923)

This celluloid hodgepodge was made when Buster Keaton was about to “graduate” to feature films. It represents Keaton’s attempt to use all the gags he had written down in his little notebook before he moved on to the stricter narrative requirements of longer movies. This probably explains the randomness of much of the film, and that randomness is one of the reasons I love it; it moves from carnival to sky to woods to lake and back to sky. The plot, such as it is, is just a laundry line upon which Keaton hangs his inventive gags. Considering the title, Keaton sure spends a lot of time in a BOAT.

What Price Goofy? (1925)

Charlie Chase is largely forgotten today, and that is a shame because his films were very funny. (Check out Mighty Like a Moose or Movie Night if you ever have some spare time.) This film was a particular highlight at The Edison screening. Besides being very funny, the audience was experiencing the joy of discovery. I experienced that as well, as this was the only film screened that night that I had never seen. Is that a LEG sticking out of that bundle?

That’s My Wife (1929)

Apparently, on nights that feature comedy shorts, it is a tradition at the Edison to end with a Laurel and Hardy film. This one did not disappoint. One of only a few films by the boys that sees Stan Laurel donning drag, I think the audience at The Edison was surprised by how racy parts of this film were. A necklace falls down the back of Stan’s dress, and the boys keep trying to find out-of-the-way-places in a nightclub where Ollie can retrieve it. I love the line when Ollie is caught groping Stan in a phone box, and Ollie calmly explains to a shocked onlooker, “Believe it or not, we were calling Philadelphia.”

Music was provided by Bruce Loeb on the piano and he did a terrific job, underscoring the films and the jokes. Basically, he was engaged to play a 90-minute solo recital. Bravo, Bruce.

I wish more theaters, aside from reparatory theaters, art houses, and museums, would feature silent films. The sixty or so patrons who visited this 100-seat gem last Saturday were having a great time! It felt good to laugh with strangers. Perhaps one reason that silent comedies remain so popular is that, aside from clothing and hairstyles, human behavior remains remarkably consistent.

For any of my readers who happen to live in the Fremont area (or just don’t mind the drive), The Edison turns over its programming next weekend to silent horror movies, all featuring live music accompaniment and horror-themed comedy shorts. This Saturday, October 3, The Edison features an all-shorts program, including The Haunted House with Buster Keaton and Haunted Spooks with Harold Lloyd; October 10 features the 1922 Nosferatu; October 17 features the 1920 Cabinet of Dr. Caligari; October 24 features 1928’s The Last Warning; and Halloween features a screening of 1924’s Dante’s Inferno.

Another series that runs through October is Spooky Fridays. The Edison will screen Little Shop of Horrors (1960) on October 2, The Milpitas Monster (1976) on October 9, Abbot & Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) on October 16, House on Haunted Hill (1959) on October 23, and the original Night of the Living Dead on All Hallow’s Eve Eve.

Oops. Gotta go. My wife and I are planning to call Philadelphia!

Reel Talk: Our Plans for Scary Movie Month

fthismoviepodcast@gmail.com (fthismovie.com) — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 12:00:00 -0500

by Adam Riske and Sonia Mansfield

Adam and Sonia chat about their excitement for Scary Movie Month. What are you all planning to watch in October?

Adam: We’re back, and I’m pumped because it’s almost Scary Movie Month, one of the best months of my movie-watching year where I normally (irrationally) decide I can only watch horror movies for 31 days. I have a few screenings planned at repertory theatres already, know what movies I’m covering for podcasts/commentaries/articles at F This Movie, and I’ve set aside my stack of DVDs I want to either revisit or watch for the first time. I can’t wait to get into it. How about you, Sonia? Have you started your Scary Movie Month preparation yet?

Sonia: October is the best month of the year. It’s my birthday month (Libras, rise up!). Fall is officially happening, which means the weather is delightful and everything has pumpkin in it. Plus, it’s Scary Movie Month, so a lot of folks are talking about spooky stuff. I usually give myself a theme for Scary Movie Month. In the past, I’ve worked my way through the Halloween or Nightmare on Elm Street movies, or I've just watched a lot of movies about vampires. One year I only picked movies from Patrick and Heather’s book In the Search of Darkness. This year I’m torn between two themes. Maybe you and the F This Movie community can help me decide.

A new show called Crystal Lake drops in October, and it's about the origins of Jason and Pam Voorhees, with Linda Cardellini as Pam Voorhees. This makes me think it’s a perfect time to work my way through the Friday the 13th movies. I’ve seen the first three multiple times (they were on cable a lot when I was a kid), but I’ve skipped a lot of the other sequels.

The other idea is I just go all in on witches. I thought Practical Magic 2 would have great witchy vibes and ease me into October, but I kinda hated it.

Adam, what do you think? Also, I’d love to hear how you decide what to watch. Now that practically everything ever made is available, it’s getting harder to make choices.

Adam: I kind of like the witch idea. I know I’ve accidentally watched a ton of vampire and werewolf movies during Scary Movie Months prior and didn’t realize I was doing that until near the end of the month. It’s fun and offers a lot of variety under a broad subgenre.

It’s funny you ask how I’m deciding on what to watch because up until a couple of weeks ago I was very structured in what I was watching. Everything was falling into a category or a project I was trying to complete like watching movies from 1998 or movies from 2006 that I wasn’t writing about for 2K Replay or they were movies I was covering at F This Movie or repertory screenings etc. It was good for taking the guesswork out of what to watch but also kind of took the fun out of watching movies. It became work and I felt guilty or like I was wasting my time if I was stuck watching something that didn’t fit into one of those boxes. I’m trying to have as little of a plan as possible this October.

I’ve also tried to watch 60 horror movies during Scary Movie Months in the past. It was the number I felt like I really went all-out on horror but didn’t get burnt out on horror over 31 days. I’m not sure (for mostly work and playoff baseball-related reasons…go White Sox hopefully!) I’ll get to 60 this year but I’m kind of curious how many I watch by winging it more than I have in the past.

That said, I do have a bunch of ideas of what I plan to watch. I’d really like to catch up on 2026 horror next month. I’ve seen the big things like Obsession and Backrooms, but I’ve missed movies like Buddy, Evil Dead Burn, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, etc. I also have tickets purchased for a few repertory screenings like Aliens (in 70mm!), Se7en, Ernest Scared Stupid, Grindhouse, and the annual Music Box of Horrors marathon. I revisit some movies every October, like The Blob (1958), The Last Man on Earth, Bubba Ho-Tep, and the Tales from the Crypt movies, Demon Knight and Bordello of Blood. I also have a stack of movies I own I want to give another spin, like An American Werewolf in London, Hannibal, and Monkey Shines, to name a few. I just don’t want to make a list and feel like I have to check things off like I’ve done in the past.

Now that you’ve had many Scary Movie Months under your belt, what is your favorite part of the month typically? It can be movie-related, something at the site, general Halloween goodness, etc. Also, have you established any Scary Movie Month quirks? I know one of mine is that by October 5th I’ve either thought I’ve fucked up my whole month with no chance of recovery based on picking one of two bad movies to watch upfront and/or I get sad the month is almost over even though it barely has started.

Sonia: My biggest quirk probably isn’t that unusual. I spent waaaay too much time debating what to watch, switching from streamer to streamer before I finally end up watching one of Scary Movie Month regulars, like The Love Witch, a Halloween movie, or a Vincent Price movie (usually The Masque of the Red Death or The House on Haunted Hill).

This is why I like a theme. It makes it easier for me to narrow down my choices. But I get what you’re saying. It sucks when watching a movie feels like homework.

I have some 2026 horror to catch up on, too. I need to see Backrooms and Hokum. Also, I want to rewatch Obsession, a movie I loved the first time. I have a feeling it will hit harder with a second viewing. I’ve also got my eyes on the new releases Resident Evil and The Other Mommy.

I’m jealous of that Aliens screening. That’s one of my favorites, but another one of my favorites is screening in San Francisco: Poltergeist in 35mm. I can’t resist an opportunity to see it on a big screen with a crowd.

My favorite thing about Scary Movie Month is reading everyone’s 7-word reviews. It goes without saying (but I’ll say it anyway), the F This Movie community is pretty hilarious. It’s also a great place to get some movie recs.

By the way, I like to imagine that you and Patrick will watch Hannibal together, and you’ll just do your Mason Verger impression the entire time. If you do that, can I Zoom in? I just want to listen. You won’t even know I’m there.

What’s your favorite part of Scary Movie Month, Adam?

Adam: That’s a tough one. One of the peaks for me is the morning of the Music Box of Horrors marathon. There’s a lot of fun anticipation there. Or really anytime I go to see an 11:30am weekend matinee of a horror movie at that theater during October, because it means afterwards I can go to some nearby horror collectible stores/coffee shops and/or the bars that turn themselves into haunted houses over by Wrigley Field, which is within walking distance of the Music Box.

Another standout is when Patrick and I record our F This Movie commentary track with Mike to kick off Scary Movie Month (we always get Pizza Hut beforehand and it’s like peak silliness all night) and when Patrick and I record our Scary Movie Month podcast and go over our month-to-date Scary Movie Month watching/7-word reviews, etc.

I try to pepper the month with a lot of Halloween season activity (e.g. seasonal farmers markets etc.) so I’m keeping the spirit alive since it’s such an endorphin booster. I also kinda love Halloween night, but not because of Halloween (by the 31st I’m usually ready to wind down and move on), but because I start to get really excited for November and December especially. Q4 is my favorite time of year with Scary Movie Month kicking off the Holiday season.

I’m also looking forward to watching the Fat Albert Halloween Special, which I found on DVD for $8 at a resale shop. Should I admit that? Is Fat Albert also canceled, or just Bill Cosby?

This reminds me. Until now, I completely forgot I have to start decorating for Halloween/Scary Movie Month soon!

Question for you…since I love love love your ‘working at a movie theater’ stories…do you have any memorable October/horror movie experiences from when you worked at a theater?

I remember when I worked at Blockbuster that The Blair Witch Project came out on VHS around Halloween and we got all of these other tapes for a bonus feature-type documentary called Sticks & Stones, which was on the shelf next to Blair Witch in hopes people would rent both. After Halloween, no one really rented either, especially Sticks & Stones. By the next year, we got a memo to not return the extra copies of Sticks & Stones we couldn’t sell off (as previously viewed tapes) but to…destroy them??? That night after work me and my fellow coworkers were like “Uh, should we hit them? Unfurl the tape?” We eventually just started chucking them onto the roof of the building. The location is now a T-Mobile. I wonder if VHS copies of Sticks & Stones are still up there, having braved 27 years of Chicago winters.

Sonia: I like to think that someone who works at T-Mobile climbed up on the roof and upon discovering those tapes they decided not to jump. You saved lives, Adam!

Obviously, a lot of horror movies come out in October. This meant that every October customers would ask me if a specific movie was scary, and it would go something like this:

Customer: “Is Halloween 5 scary?”
Me: “Well, it’s a horror movie, so, umm, yeah.”
Customer: “Do you think I could handle it?”
Me: “I don’t know you, but, umm, no?”

And scene.

My theater had Leprechaun 2, and almost no one bought a ticket for the entire week. *cue Mark Jones voice* The movie had a short run. When the projectionist was breaking down the film (meaning the projectionist unspools the giant reel of film onto smaller reels for transport), he noticed that two of the reels were in the wrong order! The few people who did see it, didn’t even notice. My coworkers thought it was hilarious, but I was bummed for those Leprechaun fans. They didn’t see the movie as director Rodman Flender intended.

Thanks for talking about Scary Movie Month with me, Adam.

Now it’s your turn, dear readers. What are your Scary Movie Month plans? How do you decide what to watch?

TIFF 2026 Rankings

fthismoviepodcast@gmail.com (fthismovie.com) — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 05:00:00 -0500

by Joel Edmiston
Well, TIFF is over and I am back to my regular life. Just one shift at my nine-to-five and it already feels like things are normal again.

Feels weird writing this article to be honest. What a silly thing I just did for a week and a half. Even doing this slapdash ranking feels odd. These are just 21 movies I watched. Anybody could’ve watched them. I guess, yes, they were all at the same film festival, and yes, I saw them early, so I suppose I am allowed to write this article without getting all existential, if that’s even what I’m doing. For some reason, I am picturing the readers of this article to be all the contractors in their 60s that I saw at Home Depot today, me telling them “So at number 21, I have Fjord, which may be controversial since it won a big prize in France,” and them looking at me saying, “OK, little buddy.” But, no, this is a movie site. It’s not that deep, Joel. I saw 21 movies at a film festival and I am putting them in order, based on my enjoyment.

I am writing a little bit about each of the movies I haven’t written about in my previous round-ups. Unfortunately, it started getting tough securing tickets for the victory lap screenings of the buzzed-about movies, so I wasn't eating great for a few days. I fear that if you are reading my work for the first time here, you will think I’m a very negative man. The bottom four in this list all have lil blurbs and then you don’t hear from me for a bit. Please know, I love movies. I liked most of the movies I saw this week. Luckily, on my last day I was able to snag a couple good ones, including the big winner of the People’s Choice Award, La Bola Negra. For good measure, I will provide some extra words about my number one.

A couple of the ones I didn’t end up getting to: River, Arrested Memory, The Face of Horror, Club Kid I Play Rocky, Elsinore. The first four I do wish I’d seen, and then with I Play Rocky and Elsinore I have some FOMO about simply out of obligation.

21. Fjord (dir. Cristian Mungiu)

I saw this on the first day of fest and I famously forgot to write about it, realized this before publishing, and remained staunch. I did not care to write about it. Its high approval rating has certainly contributed to my growing disdain for it. I simply just do not get what people like about this movie. The subject matter is pedantic and none of my business. I will not judge anyone who liked it, but it did nothing for me. Well, it kind of pissed me off, but not so much that I am gonna yell about it. It's all good. I’m fine.

20. The City of the Living (dir. Edoardo Gabbriellini)

In a festival full of dramas hellbent on upsetting me, this one made me very sad. I did not care for that feeling. The movie ended and I thought to myself “Can we just not?” Like, can we just not make me sad like that? Who do I need to hug? Everyone do me a favor. Hug the filmmakers in your life so that I am not so sad next year. I get it. The world is fucked up, but damn, this was sad and it made me want to take a long, cold shower.

19. Trees Are Watching (dir. Bahman Ghobabi)

Another bummer. I really wanted to like the haunted chair movie, but it did nothing for me. Also, it seems like there’s some generative AI stuff in here, so it's not just the subject matter that's a bummer. Hey, there is a good scene where Eva Green fights a chair, but why does a movie with a scene like that in it gotta take itself so seriously?

18. Ink (dir. Danny Boyle)

This one starts strong, but as the movie goes on, I started to realize that the delights of the first half were all style and no substance. The ideas here about Rupert Murdoch's effect on society are presented to us as if it's some brilliant observation the movie’s just thought of and I just sat there like “Ya dude, we know. I agree it’s fucked but we’ve been saying this shit for a while.” And then it just keeps making the same point. Disappointing that Danny Boyle made this, not just because of the generative AI (but seriously what the hell guys). I will say, I don’t think the first half would have been as entertaining if it weren’t for him. He clearly still has a semblance of a fastball. I just hope he’s gotten this type of thing out of his system.

17. Rogue Trooper (dir. Duncan Jones)

16. The Spiral (dir. Paolo Strippoli)

15. Toy Gun Bandit (dir. Rémi St-Michel)

14. Woman Unknown (dir. May el-Toukhy)

13. God Bless You, Mr. Kopu (dir. Alex Liu)

12. Possible Love (dir. Lee Chang-dong)

11. Ladies and Gentlemen, Brian Mulroney (dir. Matt Rankin)

10. The Only Living Pickpocket in New York (dir. Noah Segan)

9. Anchors Aweigh (dir. Matt Barats)

8. Half (dir. Samjad)

This one’s a total ripper. A pair of twins get robbed and left for dead, but guess what? They have Wolverine powers (or I guess they’re vampires maybe?) and all their wounds heal overnight and now they’re gonna go fuck up the lowlifes who fucked them over. Awesome fight scenes and a handful of despicable villains who you want to see get their shit rocked so badly and then they do and it rules.

7. La Bola Negra (dir. Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi)

While I didn’t weep like the two people on either side of me, it’s undeniable that this movie packs a huge emotional punch. I think had I seen this earlier in the week, I may have been a puddle. Had it been a little longer, I may have been a different kind of puddle. A puddle of piss. This movie is long and I don’t think I could’ve held it any longer. The washrooms at the TIFF Lightbox are so far away from the theatre. It was the longest walk of my life. My knees nearly buckled and then at the urinals I felt like Austin Powers in that scene in the first Austin Powers movie when he takes a piss for the first time after being frozen for 30 years. But yes, the movie is long, but it kind of needs to be. It’s telling three stories, and all of them need time to breathe. I fear rushing through any of the character stuff in the first half would be detrimental to what the second half achieves. I found the way in which the three stories are connected to be quite clever, even though it’s eventually told to us in a rather obvious scene of exposition. But hey, at least this movie sort of does a variation on James Cameron’s “put your exposition in a car chase,” but instead of a car chase, it’s Glenn Close.

6. The Debut (dir. Jesse Eisenberg)

5. Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother (dir. Basam Tariq)

4. Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo (dir. Takashi Mikke)

3. The Stunt Driver (dir. Michael Dowse)

2. Tender Loving Care (dir. Mike Leigh)

1. Wild Horse Nine (dir. Martin McDonagh)

I’ll admit it feels kind of lame that in a festival full of movies from all over the world from so many filmmakers and genres, my number one is probably the most mainstream of the lot. What can I say? It really got me. I’m a fan of Martin McDonagh, but I really think he’s operating on all cylinders here, combining the strengths of all his works and shedding the things I’ve complained about with him. While funny and well-paced, I’ve always found his scripts a bit writerly at times, which makes me think about him rather than his characters. Wild Horse Nine is totally engrossing, which, yes, is in large part due to the performances, but I think it’s McDonagh’s most coherent screenplay yet. I rewatched In Bruges last week and I loved it, but I did at times feel like it was about the universal experience of feeling guilty about being a hitman. Wild Horse Nine makes the inner turmoil of its violent main characters more relatable, more lived-in, truly heartbreaking. It is also an urgent piece of work. Never in a heavy-handed way, but this is about our times, who is complicit in fascism, how to act when resistance feels pointless, what we can do to reckon with our own actions or inaction. It’s not always hopeful, and its stand-up-and-cheer moments always have a tinge of moral questionability, but it is hilarious and the laughs don’t ever stop, even in the hardest-hitting scenes. The true reason this is my number one is because it is the answer to the question “What do I most desperately want to be released widely, so that I can watch it again?”

Thank you for reading.

Weekend Open Thread

fthismoviepodcast@gmail.com (fthismovie.com) — Sat, 26 Sep 2026 02:00:00 -0500

Review: PRIMETIME

fthismoviepodcast@gmail.com (fthismovie.com) — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 05:00:00 -0500

by Rob DiCristino

In which our Robert Pattinson summer transitions to our Robert Pattinson fall.

In the decade and change since he wrapped up his work on the Twilight saga, Robert Pattinson has quietly put together one of the most eccentric and fascinating filmographies in Hollywood. He’s become a favorite collaborator of auteurs like Christopher Nolan, David Cronenberg, Werner Herzog, Bong Joon Ho, and Hayao Miyazaki. He’s boosted newcomers like Josh Safdie and Robert Eggers, and he’s even strapped on the cowl of The Goddamn Batman just for good measure. Though he’s blessed with leading-man good looks and impossible charm, Pattinson has eschewed the path of conventional A-listers like Brad Pitt and George Clooney at every turn, resisting easy paychecks from brainless actioners and romantic comedies — unless they’re absolute freakshows like this year’s underrated The Drama — and taking the road less traveled. Good thing, too. A “normal” acting career would be a waste of Pattinson’s left-handed, cock-eyed potential, and our cinematic landscape is a far better place thanks to his unwavering commitment to the offbeat and the absurd.

It should be no surprise, then, that Pattinson’s flavor of four-quadrant drama would be renowned documentarian Lance Oppenheim’s narrative debut, Primetime, a sleazy, strung-out thriller that chronicles the rise of 2000s NBC tentpole To Catch a Predator and its star, Chris Hansen. Eager to dethrone Lost as the gold standard in Must-See TV, Hansen (Pattinson) weaponizes America’s lurid fascination with its own depravity by drawing would-be child sex predators into the “homes” of youthful decoys like Dan Plumb (Skyler Gisondo) and Del Harvey (Phoebe Bridgers, in her acting debut) before exposing them live on camera and turning them over to the police. Hansen’s smug self-assurance makes him the ideal mouthpiece for a nation of deluded malcontents, an audience of hypocrites and moralizers too oblivious to admit their own complicity in the perversions of their society. Along with ruthless producer Andie Bender (Merritt Wever, channeling Faye Dunaway in Network), Hansen plumbs the depths of the Heartland for the sickest monsters he can find.

But as Oppenheim and screenwriter Ajon Singh illuminate with endless perverse pleasure, flop-sweated attention seekers like Hansen need not look very far for sickness and depravity. Hansen’s serial philandering already has his picture-perfect marriage to Mary Joan (Anna Faris, in a rare dramatic turn) hanging on by a thread, and his unscrupulous approach to Predator’s production standards — including selling branded thongs that read “Contents Are Over the Age of 18” on the show’s official website — leaves many of his targets rightfully questioning the sturdiness of his particular high horse. As Predator’s popularity builds to a fever pitch, Hansen and his team find themselves uncomfortable bedfellows with its Extremely Normal and Well-Adjusted fanbase — overfunded redneck police departments, kill-crazy online vigilantes, NBCUniversal program director Jeff Zucker, etc. — who lead them to their biggest score yet: Rockwell County, Texas’ Assistant District Attorney and budding sexual predator, Bill Conradt (Alex Winter; yes, that Alex Winter).

Combining the withering social commentary of Paddy Chayefsky with the grimy nihilism of Dan Gilroy’s masterful Nightcrawler, Primetime tosses out the conventional “Based on a True Story” playbook in favor of something darker, nastier, and infinitely more excoriating. This isn’t the tale of a journalist who loses his integrity — NBC Nightly News’ Stone Phillips (Bill Heck) never tires of reminding Hansen that he’s always been a hack and always will be — or a parable about the bold lengths that Good must go to in order to bring down Evil. No, everyone on the Predator team revels in their abhorrent opportunism, from Hansen — who believes catching a well-connected sicko will absolve him of his own transgressions — through Bender — who joyfully admits to a rival producer that she doesn’t care much for “the feel-good stuff” — all the way down to “Decoy” Dan Plumb, who’s willing to play as many hairless twinks as it takes for him to get a SAG card. Only Bridgers’ Del Harvey grows a conscience, but her revolution is so muted and incidental that we barely notice it at all.

Primetime’s detractors will argue that it lacks any substantive insight into human nature or investigative journalism, especially in the wake of David Osit’s 2025 documentary on the same subject, Predators. That may be a fair criticism! But Oppenheim and Pattinson are not crafting an archetypal tragic hero here. This isn’t the Rise and Fall of Henry Hill. Their Chris Hansen isn’t Jay Gatsby. He isn’t Daniel Plainview. The Chris Hansen of Primetime is a fucking vampire — a selfish, contemptible degenerate who embodies David Fincher’s great maxim on the human race: “People are liars and perverts.” Why does he risk his marriage to fuck random women? Because he’s a shithead! Why does he weaponize the deep-seated personality disorders of honeypot hackers like Xavier Von Erck (Matthew Maher)? Because he’s a sociopath! Audiences hoping for a psychological profile of “social deviants” like the men Hansen targets (including familiar faces like Tony Revolori and Jonathan Lipnicki) are missing the point of Primetime: We’re all culpable. We’re all guilty. It’s as simple as that.

Primetime hits U.S. theaters on Friday, September 25th.

Pauly Shore: A Career Retrospective...Buuu-ddy

fthismoviepodcast@gmail.com (fthismovie.com) — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 05:00:00 -0500

by Adam Thas
How did I get here and what exactly is happening right now?

I found myself asking this question as just a few weeks ago I watched Pauly Shore sing Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds” while groping people’s heads at Zanie’s Comedy Club. It was bizarre, and for the first few minutes I found myself feeling bad for whatever substance abuse problems Shore appeared to have. It was only after a few minutes that I realized this is his gimmick. After an hour of this comedic amalgam of written jokes, improv, Hollywood stories, and jokes that fell flat, I can admit to being entertained. I didn’t walk away feeling taken or that I didn’t get money’s worth. As we like to say here at F This Movie, it was “Fine.”

When people think about the 1990s and all the nostalgia that comes with it, there is plenty to choose from, AS much as we’d care not to admit it, mixed in with the Grunge, Movies, Boy Bands, Beanie Babies, and Pogs, there was Pauly Shore. Right there in the center of the timeline that is the '90s is the former MTV VJ turned actor that, from 1992 to 1996, released one movie a year. A lost age of mall movies made to be the perfect runtime so they could be shown over and over on cable TV post theatrical release, these teen comedies were part of the suburban consciousness of the decade.

While Shore’s celebrity has no doubt faded to obscurity at best, he’s still here. While his movie career is gone, he still has had a successful career through bit parts and voice over work. To look at his full career that spans his early days on the comedy circuit until now would require a lot more than a modest column. Like others who lived through the '90s, I’ve seen many of Pauly Shore’s movies, but haven’t watched them in decades. So I decided to give each of them a rewatch, and while no one demanded it, I give you “Pauly Shore: A Cinematic Retrospective.” (Sounds fancy enough).

Encino Man (1992): The movie that introduced the world at large to Pauly Shore. The short of it, Dave (Sean Astin) wants to be cool, and after an earthquake he and his best friend Stoney (Shore) discover a frozen caveman they name Link (Brendan Fraser) who thaws out and attends high school with them. Chaos ensues.

It's a ridiculous plot that somehow manages to make the most unbelievable thing about it that Dave winds up with the girl after spending an entire movie being a dick. After watching his movies, this is the best version of Pauly Shore we ever got. In each subsequent movie, the plot can be summed up as “Isn’t this guy annoying, let’s put him in a situation where people have to deal with him.” In Encino Man, Stoney isn’t the cool kid or the main character, he’s there for comic relief and does this while showing some moments of compassion that make him the most relatable character. He’s good in this movie and you can see why Hollywood decided to give him another shot.

Son in Law (1993): Out of all the Pauly Shore movies, this is probably the most famous of all of them, and the highest-grossing one with him as the main character. Shore plays Crawl (in every movie he has a one word name), an RA at a college where small-town Rebecca (Carla Gugino) has begun her freshman year. Things are not going well for her until Crawl shows her how to live like a young Californian. Crawl accompanies Rebecca back home to South Dakota for Thanksgiving; after finding out her high school boyfriend plans to propose to her, Crawl pretends to be Rebecca’s fiancée. Chaos ensues. When I initially saw this movie in the '90s, I remember liking it, and while it’s premise of “City-Folk come to the country” is very universally palatable, I found myself having a lot of problems with it this time around.

In Encino Man, Shore is a side character and can be an idiot the entire time, but as a leading character he needs to have moments where he saves the day, Crawl never does this. He’s an idiot who lucks through life even messing up CPR while someone appears to have a heart attack. The end scene is bonkers, in which the main antagonist is knocked out and everyone just sits down to have dinner, never addressing the unconscious man on the floor. It’s lighthearted and easy to watch, but I found this one to be a lot less funny then I did the first time around.

In the Army Now (1994): If you asked me a few weeks ago what my favorite Pauly Shore movie was, I would have said In the Army Now. Here we have Shore playing Bones, who, together with his best friend Jack (Andy Dick), decides to join the Army Reserves in hopes of saving enough money to start a stereo store. Their plans hit a snag when their regiment is called into active duty in the African country of Chad. Chaos ensues. What makes this one work more than some of his other movies is that In the Army Now has the best supporting characters. Along with Dick, In the Army Now adds Lori Petty and David Alan Grier as other members of the regiment.

While I still found this one fun, I did not enjoy it as much as I did the first time around. I also think this one had the highest expectations for me going into it, so it was a bit more of a downer for a movie I still enjoy despite it not being as much as I did originally.

Jury Duty (1995): This is the only movie of Shore’s where it was not a “rewatch” and was my first time seeing it. With a bar that was already pretty low going into it, somehow this managed to go even lower. It started off interesting enough and seemed to lean a bit more into a slapstick type of humor. Shore plays Tommy, who gets kicked out of his trailer park and discovers that if he gets on a long trial while on jury duty, they’ll put him up in a hotel. So he gets on a serial killer trial where he proceeds to do everything possible to make the trial go longer. There is nothing funny about this movie in which the peak of humor is where Pauly Shore says “Chinese” in an Asian accent. It was somewhere during the scene where Shore dresses up as a woman in an attempt to question the killer that I decided Jury Duty is one of the worst movies of the 1990s.

Unfortunately for Pauly Shore, Jury Duty is the movie that took him from being a niche movie star to a punchline. This movie is so bad that Tia Carrere, Staley Tucci, Abe Vigoda, and a dog sidekick couldn’t save it. About halfway through, I found myself wondering what it was like to be Stanley Tucci sitting in the audience during the premiere and wondering how his career had barely started and had already reached its low point.

Bio-Dome (1996): In the last of his five-year run and his final attempt to keep his movie career going, Shore stars alongside Stephen Baldwin as Bud and Doyle, two Gen X misfits who concentrate on partying while others go to college. Trying to find a bathroom, Bud and Doyle accidentally get locked in an experiment called the Bio-Dome with a bunch of scientists. Rather than admitting that being locked in was a mistake, the scientists pretend this was all planned and attempt to spend the next year with Bud and Doyle. When I first saw this in 1996, I did not like it. Maybe it was the low bar set by my previous opinions paired with the absolute low of Jury Duty, but Bio-Dome is the one during this rewatch that I liked more than before. While Stephen Baldwin is awful and Shore isn’t doing anything different than he has in previous movies, the overall movie is better. There are some funny parts to this Bio-Dome, and dare I say, has a theme.

Yes, a movie starring Pauly Shore and Stephen Baldwin is actually trying to say something about what it means to care about the environment and what scientists are up against. Please don’t get me wrong: this movie is still not good, I’m just saying it’s better than my memory serves. With the financial failure of In the Army Now, declining interest from MTV, and the absolute garbage that is Jury Duty, Shore’s stardom was very much on the decline when Bio-Dome was released. Had this been the follow-up to Son-in-Law, I think history would have been a lot kinder to Bio-Dome.

Upon leaving the comedy club, I had to walk around the back door to get to my car. There were several people standing around with various copies of DVDs for Shore to sign. He walked out and gave them all shit for not coming to get things signed at the convention across the street he was attending, but signed a few anyway. He still has his fans. If I had my copy of In the Army Now with me, I would have been one of them.

FTM 839: LAWNMOWER MAN Double Feature

fthismoviepodcast@gmail.com (fthismovie.com) — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 05:00:00 -0500

Patrick and Adam jack in to cyberspace and beyond.

Download this episode here.

Listen to F This Movie! on Apple Podcasts.

Also discussed this episode: Hard Boiled (1995), Bachelor Party (1984), Dog Day Afternoon (1975), The Masque of the Red Death (1964), Flags of Our Fathers (2006), Blood Diamond (2006), Jailhouse Rock (1957), X-Files: Fight the Future (1998), One Spoon of Chocolate (2026), Rich Flu (2026), Live Wire (1992), Resident Evil (2026)

Fifty Before '50: The Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum

fthismoviepodcast@gmail.com (fthismovie.com) — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 05:00:00 -0500

by JB

We are simply passing through history, Dr. Jones. This... this IS history.

This past weekend I had occasion to finally visit a wonderful place, the Niles Essanay Film Museum in Fremont, California. The museum stands today where the old Essanay studio once stood, famous because it birthed the career of cowboy star “Bronco Billy” Anderson (The “A” in “Essanay”*) and briefly hosted Charlie Chaplin when he was between studios in Chicago, Illinois and Hollywood, California.**

Chaplin made a total of five two-reelers at the Niles Studio in 1915: A Night Out, The Champion, In the Park, A Jitney Elopement, and The Tramp. The Tramp is the best known of these, the film where Chaplin really defined the character he would continue to play for the next 25 years. When I was but a lad, I owned The Tramp on Super 8mm film and would run it endlessly through my little projector in our basement. The final shot of the film is justifiably famous as Charlie, back to camera, walks down a long rural road dejectedly, then shakes it off and proceeds in a jaunty fashion to his future and the film’s fade out. A highlight of this museum visit was when our docent, Michael Bonham, informed me that, on our route to the museum, my wife and I had crossed the very grassland where that famous shot was filmed.

This was turning into a pilgrimage.

And I will tell you of much else besides—of barn doors and wigs and fake moustaches and equipment satchels. The Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum is brimming with original costumes, props, equipment, and cameras from the early 19-teens: posters, glass slides, zoetropes, mutoscopes, and a vintage taxicab are all part of the fun and history.

In 1916, Bronco Billy Anderson sold his percentage of Essanay and went to work for a rival studio. Later that year, the Essanay studio closed. It sat abandoned for a number of years. The Nickelodeon next to the studio closed its doors in 1924 when it was replaced by a newer, more modern theater one door down, The Edison. The Edison showed movies until 1956 when a fire burned it to the ground. (That plot of land is now the museum’s parking lot.)

The original Nickelodeon changed hands frequently over the next forty years and served time as a dance hall, a warehouse, a karate school, and a photographer’s studio. In 2002, with the efforts of the museum’s staff and many donors, it was converted back into a movie theater and still hosts screenings today.

One of the outbuildings at the studio was moved to another location in town. As time wore on and the studio fell into disrepair, it was eventually razed. The outbuilding shed across town too had seen better days, but the museum managed to preserve a single exterior barn door. It is proudly on display in the museum. How many silent film stars TOUCHED that door? Leaned on it between takes? Hauled it aside or pulled it closed? Struck a match against its rough surface? Because I touched it too. Just sayin'.

The museum is also the proud home of Keystone comic Hank Mann’s wig and moustache. I did not try them on.

I was accompanied on this trip by my lovely wife, who took many of these photos I trust you’re enjoying. Her favorite artifact was the “We Make Moving Pictures” equipment case, actually used by Essanay's crew more than 100 years ago. It’s beautiful; we wish it was available as a t-shirt. That equipment case, when brandished in 1916, could get your turned away from any high-class hotel in town. Movie people then were held in disrepute.

The docents at the museum really know their stuff. We talked to Mr. Bonham for quite a time and he gave us a personal tour of the museum, the theater, and the projection booth. This man is knowledgeable. I learned new things about the same movie history I had taught for thirty years. Thanks, Michael.

NOTE: The museum has its own YouTube Channel, which is very delightful. I warn you though, once you start clicking around this treasure trove, you will find yourself falling down the silent movie rabbit hole and surrendering all your free time!

*Anderson’s partner was George Spoor. “S” for Spoor and “A” for Anderson became “Essanay.”

**The Chicago building still stands at 1333 West Argyle Street in Uptown. Chaplin only made one film there before moving to Niles. He thought Chicago to be inhospitably cold.

TIFF 2026 Days 4-6: THE DEBUT, WILD HORSE NINE, & MORE

fthismoviepodcast@gmail.com (fthismovie.com) — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 05:00:00 -0500

by Joel Edmiston
If you read my first round-up, you may remember that beyond this year's TIFF, I have been busy this week. This has not stopped.

More things have come up and I have been running around all over the city doing this and that, all while keeping the same pace of movie watching as I did in past years, give or take a few movies. What I have fallen behind on is keeping up the same pace in writing these round-ups. As I write this intro, it is day 10, but as you may notice from this article’s title, I am doing some time-traveling to a few days ago, and so are you because I expect this will be published a couple days after I send it in. I am a bit insecure about this, but really I shouldn’t be. If you are mad about the lateness here, I am sorry. Also, I don’t think you are mad. Are you? All this pressure has been bestowed upon me by no one other than myself and I should probably stop talking about it. Running around like this on such little sleep or social interaction causes some questionable thoughts and if I wrote all of them down for publication, I predict you’d believe me to be an unwell man. A bit of time and sleep will make me feel fine about the lateness at which I am getting these articles to you readers. It’s not as if any of these movies are coming out in the next few days anyway, so it is fine. Time doesn’t matter (at all at any time, time is meaningless, everything is movies, movies is life). OK, enough of this. Time for you to read about the movies I saw.

The Debut (dir. Jesse Eisenberg)

Here’s a movie I think people will be talking about a lot in the next few months. It’s got big stars (Julianne Moore and Paul Giamatti) giving big performances, directed by a famous guy (Jesse Eisenberg) taking a big swing, and is, at times, deeply surreal and committed to the bit, big time. I don’t want to spend this whole capsule predicting how people will react to this movie, which I fear I do too much in writing these. It’s hard these days. Online discourse around movies is so loud to me, and when I’m seeing the movies early, it’s tough for me not to hear imaginary voices of the Discourse to Come. I really wish I could never think about it. Sorry, that’s a tangent, but it’s OK, because this movie is no stranger to tangents.

It stars Julianne Moore as Mona, a housewife who auditions for a local musical called Nosy Neighbors. She gets the role and turns her life upside down getting into character. It reminded me of an episode (not a particular one, just any old ep) of one of my favourite shows, Stella, where a character will go down an intense rabbit hole, fully devoting themselves to whatever new job or subculture they’ve stumbled into. At times, the humour and situations are just as ridiculous and weird as Stella and other David Wain projects, but The Debut stays grounded, keeping the characters centre stage, never fully tipping into the full-on parody for which David Wain is known. Eisenberg gets very specific about the world of community theatre, and has a lot of love for it while acknowledging the silliness of it, too. As Mona gets more into character, she starts to push back against the triteness in the script of Nosy Neighbors. “My character wouldn’t do that.” There were huge laughs at this from the premiere audience. It’s simultaneously a poke at method acting and the sugarcoatedness of musical theatre. The songs in the show within the movie pull off a great balancing act of being appropriately mawkish, while having vocal showcases and catchy choruses that would believably make for showstoppers in a long-running and successful show. They provide some pretty breathtaking moments in the movie, and some huge laughs. I gasped aloud when I saw the credit “Music and Lyrics by Jesse Eisenberg.” I had no idea he had that in him. There’s clearly been a lot of work put in here, which is what makes the surreality of it so interesting to me. I’ll admit I raised my eyebrow at some of the tangents it went on, but it never lost me. The commitment all across the board, from the script, to the direction, to the performances helps to earn its lovely ending. And you know what? I don’t care what the discourse will be about this or what my most cynical friends will say… The more I think about it, the more I write about it, the more I like The Debut.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Brian Mulroney (dir. Matt Rankin)

Here’s another very Canadian movie for me to wrestle over how much context I should give for this American-based site. I’ll tell you this… Brian Mulroney was Prime Minister of Canada from 1984 to 1993. He has a complicated legacy. When I learned about Canadian politics in school, my eyes would glaze over. I thought maybe, as an adult, I would learn to be more interested in all that minutiae, but I still find it quite boring. Luckily, this documentary knows how dull its subjects are and combats that with bright lights, psychedelia, and a sharp, puckish tone. Matt Rankin has clearly sifted through all the footage he could find about this man and has pieced together a cohesive story of Brian Mulroney’s rise to becoming the Leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, with no narration, no talking heads, just old TV footage, B-roll, and some very amusing original animation. Ultimately Brian Mulroney is still Brian Mulroney and you can only make the man so interesting and all the cinematic glitter in the world couldn’t make me fully care about everything being told to me in this movie, but it’s worth watching for the experimentation being done here. There are things in this I’ve never seen done in a movie before. It’s pulling from influences all over: from '60s and '70s Canadian children’s TV to Adam Curtis to YouTube edits by people like Vic Berger and Bad Lip Reading. I find Canadian Conservatives to be a boring, silly, often evil group of men, who perpetually beg to have the piss taken out of them, and I found this to be a fresh, innovative way of doing that.

The Spiral (dir. Paolo Strippoli)

I have been struggling with the ultra grim this week. I love horror, but I like my horror to have some playfulness, some room for me to breathe or chuckle or do anything other than pout. Here is an Italian horror movie that upset me. I will acknowledge it is handsomely-made and I really think the readers (and writers!) at this site will enjoy it more than I did, but I became quite exhausted by all the suffering. Jasmine Trinca plays the matriarch of a wealthy family who, after a traumatic incident, is visited by a mysterious woman who offers her a choice that will have disturbing repercussions. It’s Twilight Zoney, Monkey’s Paw-ish, the type of thing you’d see as a segment in a horror anthology, but stretched out and with a lot more crying, bullying, and caustic family dynamics. There’s a great scene that plays out in the aftermath of Italy winning the World Cup in 2006, but even that made me uncomfortable -- in a fun way, though. Maybe it’s because I’ve been watching too many dramas this week that I just want my horror movies to be horror movies, or maybe I’m just kinda sick of these super serious horror movies. There’s a place for them in many people's hearts. I heard from a friend that Willem Dafoe was in their screening of this and even was sitting next to his girlfriend. Apparently it seemed like he enjoyed it and I’m glad he did. I picture him grinning like the Green Goblin every time something traumatic happens to this family, and his laugh echoing through the theatre, “I love Italians!” he yells, then he retreats back to his coffin and his entourage, dressed in long, black gowns, wheel him out of the Scotiabank Cineplex.

Anchors Aweigh (dir. Matt Barats)

I was not familiar with Matt Barats, but after watching this, I was not surprised to find out his origin in the New York comedy scene, coming up with people like Conor O’Malley and Sarah Sherman, risk-takers as it were, people who swing for the fences, get weird, and often, get laughs. Barats is very funny, and I knew this within minutes of Anchors Aweigh, his bizarre, breezy, feature-length video essay about breaking up, growing up, and shipping out. He’s compiled on-the-street interviews, dramatized scenes, and footage he shot in his late teens and early twenties and presents us with an encompassing look at what I assume is a fictionalized version of himself, a dumb guy with a broken heart who doesn’t really know what his purpose is any more. It’s just barely a movie in length and concept. Had its trajectory been different, I imagine stumbling onto this watching it on YouTube wouldn’t be too different an experience from seeing it in a theatre, but I had a lot of fun seeing this with an audience of people who agreed with me about how funny Barats is.

Wild Horse Nine (dir. Martin McDonagh)

Seeing In Bruges in high school changed my life. I haven’t revisited it in a while. I am afraid, not that I won’t like it, but that I will be confronted with the young man who made that movie my entire personality. Similarly, I would not like to walk the halls of my old high school. Rewatching In Bruges would probably be the more appropriate choice if I ever get up enough courage to greet my teenage self, as it would not have anyone asking me “why are you, an adult man, walking the halls of a high school with tears in your eyes?” and the cops would not be called and I would not have to leave my apartment.

Watching Martin McDonagh’s new film, Wild Horse Nine, is as close as I’ve come to rewatching In Bruges in many years. It is not a repeat, but rather a spiritual sequel. They are similarly plotted, but Wild Horse Nine is far more wistful, thoughtful, and articulate. In Bruges is a young person’s movie and Wild Horse Nine is meeting those young people wherever they might be (for example, 33-year olds living in Toronto). John Malkovich, much like he did in Burn After Reading, plays a CIA agent who is writing a memoir. He and his protégé and friend, played by Sam Rockwell, take a break from their top secret mission in Chile (in 1973, shortly before the overthrowing of Salvador Allende) and go to Easter Island to “see the big heads.” There’s a lot of chatting, yelling, and shooting guns. Steve Buscemi is hilarious as their boss. He and Malkovich have a toxic and combative relationship that gets funnier the more you find out about them. It’s an extremely clever script that keeps things close to the chest for a while. Each new reveal packs either an emotional punch, a big laugh or both. I was so caught off guard by how good this was. I honestly feel as though I am ready to watch In Bruges again. Maybe I will tonight when I’m done writing all of this, or maybe I will go to bed.

Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo (dir. Takashi Miike)

I watched Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant the day before the festival started (feels like that was three months ago). My big takeaway from that was that Bad Lieutenant is one of the most accurate titles of all time. That man is bad. Quite bad. One of the baddest protagonists I’ve ever seen in a movie. He is a reprehensible lieutenant. I am wishing I had time to rewatch Werner Herzog’s 2009 entry, but it’s now the second movie I will watch post fest, after In Bruges. I have little memory of it, other than the primal yells of Cage and the sweat shining on his forehead. I’ve seen a handful of Takashi Miike movies and, from what I’ve seen, he seemed like the perfect guy to give us another transgressive entry in the weird, wonderful franchise that is the Bad Lieutenant movies. I fear I will never recover emotionally from some of the things I saw in Audition and Ichi the Killer.

The titular bad lieutenant in Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo is not as bad as I thought he would be. To be clear, he is bad, but I expected him to be badder. He gambles, snorts cocaine, is a terrible father, colludes with the Yakuza, and sees sex workers, but he is far more likable and rootable than Harvey Keitel is in the original. The transgression is still there. This is a movie with two serial killers; one who fucks men to death, and one who minces their enemies into actual meatballs and feeds them to the crows. It’s a gnarly, delirious, dumb, wonderful movie. It sags a bit in the middle, but its finale is big, brutal and strangely poignant. Lily James shows up as an American FBI agent, mugging with a southern accent, smoking, drinking, punching. It’s an unexpected turn from her, but I found it hilarious, and perhaps that’s not the intended response, but I’m so glad she is in this movie. I really don’t want to say much more about this. This is the kind of thing I think the sickos will really dig. And I hope you know, I say sickos with much fondness, as I am a sicko. I may not be Bad but I am sick and I love to watch lieutenants be bad.

Possible Love (dir. Lee Chang-dong)

I agree capitalism is skewed in favor of the rich and that so much of hard-working, poor people’s struggles and anxieties could be helped if rich people shared more, but when it comes to movies telling me about this, I think I prefer a thriller over a drama. Yes, there have been lots of thrillers about this: Knives Out, Parasite, and No Other Choice, for example. So honestly maybe I don’t need another one of those, but without the genre trappings that allow characters to go to extreme lengths, I feel just simply showing economic disparities can be a little heavy-handed. I guess I enjoy metaphors.

I say all this because I got a little frustrated with Lee Chang-dong’s new movie, Possible Love. It starts off strong, but as it went on, I felt like it didn’t have much more to say in its second half than it did in its first and it is nearly three hours long. To be clear, I liked this movie just fine, but I am by no means falling over myself about it. It’s about a wealthy woman (played by Cho Yeo-jeong) who is filming a documentary about a group of welders who were unfairly laid off, and who takes an interest in a particular worker and his wife (Sul Kyung-gu and Jeon Do-yeon, respectively). She inserts herself into their lives, filming their every move, even introducing them to her husband (Zo In-sung), a successful businessman who also grew up in extreme wealth. The gaping difference between each of their lives is made very clear. Despite this being quiet, observant, and delicately-paced, the points it is making are very loud, obvious, and repetitive. All that being said, the performances by the four main actors did engross me. I cared quite a bit about the less fortunate couple, even when I was getting frustrated with the script. This is one that a lot of people have been talking about on the streets. Most people I’ve talked to are really loving it, but I’ve also met some people like me, who wish it was better.

OK, I am going to get going on my rankings of everything I’ve seen. This will include everything I’ve written about so far, plus everything I’ve seen in the second half of the fest. Stay tuned for that. I am going to treat myself with grace about it, but hopefully I’ll be done soon.

Weekend Open Thread

fthismoviepodcast@gmail.com (fthismovie.com) — Sat, 19 Sep 2026 02:00:00 -0500

Review: RESIDENT EVIL (2026)

fthismoviepodcast@gmail.com (fthismovie.com) — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 05:00:00 -0500

by Rob DiCristino

This film contains scenes of explicit violence and gore.

There’s this one hallway on the ground floor of the Raccoon City Police Department that has scared me to death ever since I first played Resident Evil 2 on the original PlayStation back in 1998. OGs will know it as the west wing corridor, the L-shaped passage just beyond the double doors in the main hall reception area. It’s in bad shape; at some point, the windows were haphazardly boarded up to protect the station from intruders — unsuccessfully, judging by the mangled bodies strewn about the floor — and there’s barely enough clearance for your character to squeeze through all the wreckage. That might not sound all that scary on its own, but I’ll never forget that moment when, as I tried to sneak quietly down that dark passage with only a few handgun rounds to my name, half a dozen hungry zombies suddenly smashed through those boarded windows. To this day, when I think about my love for Resident Evil, I don’t think about the cast of characters, the convoluted plots, or the nefarious Umbrella Corporation. I think about that first scare in that dank hallway.

Watching this week’s Resident Evil — the fourth live-action iteration of Capcom’s legendary survival horror franchise — I got the impression that co-writer/director Zach Cregger feels the same way that I do. Each Resident Evil adaptation has taken its own approach to the source material: Paul W. S. Anderson’s films ignored it almost entirely, borrowing a few character names but embracing an outlandish, action-heavy tone with Milla Jovovich’s canon foreigner Alice at the center. Netflix’s short-lived television series — starring the late, great Lance Reddick — tried to rejigger archvillain Albert Wesker into a sympathetic atoner attempting to right the wrongs of his past (It’s actually way more complicated than that, but I’m already bored talking about it). And then there’s Johannes Roberts’ Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, a cheap, poorly constructed cinematic staph infection so slavishly loyal to the sights, sounds, characters, and situations of the first two games that I have absolutely no choice but to love it. I know it’s terrible, folks, but let me have my fun.

Cregger’s film, on the other hand, finds a near-perfect middle ground that replicates not the story beats or Easter eggs we know from Resident Evil, but the essential experience of playing one of the series’ best games alone in your room at night. Austin Abrams is Bryan, a medical courier who’s about to have the worst evening of his young life. Already six rounds deep into an argument with his newly pregnant girlfriend, Bryan is handed a priority-one package due for Raccoon City General Hospital, ground zero of the upcoming zombie apocalypse. Too broke — and, it should be said, too dumb — to resist the payday, Bryan sets out for the mountain community with the mystery parcel in hand. The situation goes to hell immediately, of course, and Bryan finds himself navigating a host of batshit circumstances — bloodthirsty zombies on a remote country road, mutant attack dogs in an abandoned farmhouse, contaminated rats in an underground sewer, and an ungodly abomination in a laboratory — that will be more than familiar to any self-respecting Resident Evil veteran.

And that’s all there is to it! No Chris Redfield. No Ada Wong. No unkillable, bazooka-toting chunguses or inscrutable merchants with bottomless pockets. No corporate espionage, no complicated art deco puzzles, and no inbred Aryan twins with boundary issues. Fresh off his Oscar-winning box office surprise, Weapons, Zach Cregger (and co-writer Shay Hatten) presents a taut and energetic thriller that might just change the whole playbook on IP franchise filmmaking. It would be a massive stretch to call Resident Evil a landmark in horror — its scares are effective but vanishingly few and far between — but there’s a grounded, elemental simplicity to his approach that is perfumed with the confidence of a newly-minted Visionary Filmmaker telling studio executives exactly where they can dispose of their notes. Every sequence in Resident Evil feels like a slice of gameplay between save points — not even the uber-disciplined Cregger can resist a nod to the famous typewriter rooms — a mad dash for ammo, resources, and a pathway through the hell of Armageddon.

So while Resident Evil may be painfully light on ideas and features computer-generated imagery consistent with the unfortunate budgetary practices of its European financiers — including Davis Films, the French co-producers of my beloved Silent Hill — there’s enough mean-spirited charm and gory invention in Cregger’s bare-bones third feature to render anything outside Bryan’s peripheral vision almost meaningless. Audiences tuned in to the series’ frequency will delight in watching him try and fail — mostly fail — to overcome obstacles small (a gate is secured by a stainless-steel padlock) and large (a rolling bundle of reanimated limbs is chasing him up an elevator shaft) alike. Cregger is sure to feel some pushback from a segment of the fan base who insist that their Deeply Silly and Ludicrously Melodramatic video game series be treated with more depth and gravity — a cameo from a familiar comedian/podcaster betrays Cregger’s disinterest in that approach — but for those of us who still remember that first midnight playthrough, Resident Evil will feel just like home.

Resident Evil hits U.S. theaters on Friday, September 18th.

TIFF 2026 Coverage Day 1-3: THE ONLY LIVING PICKPOCKET IN NEW YORK, YOUR MOTHER YOUR MOTHER YOUR MOTHER, and More

fthismoviepodcast@gmail.com (fthismovie.com) — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 05:00:00 -0500

by Joel Edmiston
Welcome to my coverage! TIFF is back and so am I.

It is my eleventh time going hard at TIFF, my third time with a press badge. It's off to a good start. The energy is great. There are so many people downtown (perhaps too many -- also the Jays are in town this weekend and the Sky Dome is just blocks from festival street). I’ve met and spoken to a lot of neat folks. I love locking in, talking about movies with strangers. I have gotten more than 12 thousand steps every day and I honestly don’t know how that is because it feels like I’ve mostly just been watching movies.

I’ll also bring up that this weekend has been busy for me beyond just doing TIFF. It may sound nuts, but I also filmed a short film with my friends this weekend. The timing just fell this way and for months I’ve been saying, “First two weeks of September are going to be nuts for me.” Anyway, I’m not sure if you care about all that, but it’s just some table setting if my writing seems even more unhinged than I normally am for my TIFF coverage. This festival’s original name was “The Festival of Festivals” and the idea was that it would play all the movies from throughout the world over the year. So, yes there’s been talk that Toronto doesn’t have that many exciting world premieres this year, but really that doesn’t really matter to me, because there’s still a ton of International/Canadian premieres that come here and I get to see them early and then I get to write about them and you get to read that writing and we are happy, right? RIGHT?

Oh, I just realized I forgot to write about Fjord. Cannes Palme d’Or winner Fjord. I saw it and I forgot to write about it. This may sound profoundly lazy, but I don’t really feel like writing about it. This may tell you how I feel about it. I didn’t like it very much. Other people did. So don’t take my word for it. But anyway, there are other ones I did like.

Tender Loving Care (dir. Mike Leigh)

For my first screening of the fest, I was between a Taiwanese/Japanese action and a British dramedy. Both were before 9AM, to watch with my first coffee of the day. In years past, I’d likely have chosen the action movie, Arrested Memory, and then would have spent the rest of a five-movie day on edge, fists clenched, adrenaline pumping through my veins. I’ve learned I need a soft jumping off point for a festival and Mike Leigh is the perfect guy for that. I say that knowing that his movies are often caustic, but I predicted that with a title like Tender Loving Care, I was in for something more like Another Year than Naked or Hard Truths. I was right. This is lovely, warm, and at times heartbreaking (but gently so). It stars Kate O’Flynn as Amy, a social worker recently out of a break-up, who moves in with her best friend, Rosie, also a social worker. There’s not too much else to say about the plot. Amy and Rosie talk with each other, visit Amy’s parents, drink wine, tea, sing and dance in their kitchen. My favourite parts are when we see them at work. They’re both very good at their jobs. My parents are both in that line of work. It takes a special person to make their whole job just being there for someone, especially with funding cuts and societal changes that just make their jobs harder for less money (which the movie brings up but doesn’t linger on for long). Amy and Rosie see various clients and, despite whatever they are going through personally, they are always empathetic, patient, and communicative. It really is a superpower (a rare one) and I appreciated seeing it depicted so affectionately. I’m very proud of my parents and the work they do. A few days later, I’m still thinking about this movie and it is what I say when people ask “What’s the best movie you’ve seen so far?” It’s about good people showing up for each other, good people who just want the people they love to be happy. I highly recommend starting your day with this movie.

Toy Gun Bandit (dir. Rémi St-Michel)

It’s easy to get starry-eyed, seeking to fill my schedule with the buzziest titles, the flashiest stars, the most exciting creatives. I try to remember to leave room for discovery. I, of course, a hot-dog-brained genre guy, will gravitate towards things that will make my blood pump a bit, keep me awake through these long days of seeing a thousand movies. The premise of this small, Québécois thriller intrigued me: a chaotic 15-year-old, chasing thrills, stumbles into a life of crime. As a personal aside, I am glad I chase my thrills through the movies, because as this film (as well as countless others) illustrates, crime does not pay. As my parentheses may have indicated, this movie gets swallowed up by its genre and struggles to find a reason for itself. The main character, Félix, has a chaotic edge that many coming-of-age stories don’t often highlight. This kind of guy is usually the villain, or even the comic-relief best friend. He’s played by a fearless young actor named Félix Munger, whose performance is my favourite part of the movie. His unpredictability is the driving force of the tension, which is why I was disappointed when the movie fell into such predictable territory. However, I will say, I loved the specificity of its environment. I have been around the outskirts of Québec City recently, and I remember being caught off guard by its unassuming cinematic potential. Toy Gun Bandit depicts that well, with abrasive, off-kilter characters screaming Québec swears (which if you are unfamiliar with, Google tabarnak, câlisse, and thank me later) in stark, cold, concrete settings. There are a lot of parking lots, which may speak to the film’s low-budgetness, but they feel accurate to the life of a fuck-up teenager.

Woman Unknown (dir. May el-Toukhy)

A few minutes into this one, I felt trapped. A feeling of “what have I done walking in here?” washed over me. This is an extremely upsetting, post-war Danish drama. I’ve never walked out of a movie. This one was certainly daring me to, and that’s not because it is by any means bad. It is the kind of movie that makes you feel for its main character and then puts them in the worst possible situations you can imagine and then you just have to watch. The thought of going to the Cannes Film Festival fills me with a lot of dread, because while this did not premiere there (actually this was at Venice and it won the big award), this is the kind of movie I imagine I will watch over and over again if I were to go there. I’ve found that this year especially, what with all we have going on, the upsetting movies have been particularly upsetting. I’m reminded of that one year at the Oscars, when Jon Stewart asked all the filmmakers if they needed a hug. Woman Unknown is set in Copenhagen immediately after the war, with much Nazi punishment and paranoia going on in the streets. A maid, Marie (played by Mathilde Arcel), is set to be married to her employer, a widower who runs a lucrative glove manufacturing business. It's a repressed and patriarchal life, one that seems very unpleasant for her, but when her situation is threatened by secrets from her past, her fear indicates that whatever life she escaped from was somehow much worse. There’s a lot here about how women — particularly their bodies — were and are treated as objects in war. Much of that is portrayed brutally and explicitly. I found the most effective scene to be suggestive, rather than literal: at a dinner party, Marie holds out her gloved hands for her fiancé’s coworkers. As they examine and caress the gloves, one of them says “So this is the new model?”

The Only Living Pickpocket in New York (dir. Noah Segan)

Not all movies need to blow you away. Some can be perfect for what they are, but still only be three stars. Only Living Pickpocket in New York is a jazzy crime drama about aging out of the times, but trying to set something comfortable up for the ones you love. In other words, it’s about retirement. John Turturro plays a sturdy, steadfast pickpocket who robs the wrong guy and has to spend a day ripping around the big apple to make amends. Steve Buscemi shows up; Giancarlo Esposito, too. It’s got a great soundtrack. There’s a cameo at the end by someone who has done too many cameos like this for it to feel special. There are some other nice little supporting performance and great NYC photography. What else can I say? It’s pretty good. The kinda movie you go see with your gf, bf, partner, spouse, first date, second date, etc., on a Thursday night after a dinner out (could be a fancy dinner, could be pizza, burgers, whatever), maybe a glass of wine or Coke Zero or Iced Tea or whatever, maybe you get dessert (cake, ice cream, brownie, fruit salad, or something else or all of the above) and then ya you see the movie, cuddle a bit, have a few laughs and then on your way home, you turn to each other and say “that was pretty good” and then next thing you know you’re at work the next day telling all your coworkers how “pretty good” the Turturro movie is and you may not know it, but you have set off a chain of all your coworkers on their own The Only Living Pickpocket in New York dinner-and-a-movies with their gfs, bfs, partners, spouses, first dates, second dates, etc.

God Bless You, Mr. Kopu (dir. Alex Liu)

I’ve got stock in Simon Rex. Give this guy a juicy character and he will absolutely nail it. Ever since Red Rocket, he’s been popping up in small stuff and he’s always my favourite part. This one has delights beyond Rex but I’m not sure I’d be recommending it without him. At points he reminded me of Dennis Hopper — fast-talking, know-it-all energy, edgy, enigmatic. It’s pretty thrilling to watch. He plays a sleazy American cleaning-supply salesman who travels to New Zealand to take new recruit Maf Kopu under his wing, teaching him some very unorthodox sales tactics. I won’t get into what these methods are, because I’m afraid it’d be a spoiler, but it’s a pretty original idea and works well as an allegory for colonialism. Maf is Tongan, new to the mainland, and begins to feel guilty that his company is targeting poor minority communities to sell their overpriced product. He’s played by Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi, who, despite his large stature, convincingly plays Maf’s meekness and insecurity (this guy played the main Predator in Predator: Badlands, which I’ve just found out now -- I’m not surprised, he’s a huge guy). There’s a twist at the end, which I admit I didn’t see coming, but it left me with a lot of questions, and I don’t mean the juicy kinda questions that movies are meant to leave us asking. I mean the type of questions that make me feel like an asshole or like I’m on CinemaSins, being like “Well if that happened then this other thing doesn’t make fuckin’ sense” and honestly I don’t love being that guy. These guys are funny together though and I was compelled throughout, plus there’s some violence along the way that’s well-choreographed.

The Stunt Driver (dir. Michael Dowse)

I’m curious what Americans will make of this Telefilm-funded movie with CBC nostalgia all over it, but I loved it. We’ve had some success stories here in Canada in the last year with Nirvana the Band the Show the Movie and Heated Rivalry, but this one, by the great Canadian director Michael Dowse, is even more specific about its Canadian identity. I don’t even know if Dowse has had a crossover hit (by which I mean something that people outside of Canada even know about), other than The F Word (which is mainly known for its name change to What If and a scene where Adam Driver proclaims that he just got laid and now he’s eating nachos). His movies, FUBAR and It’s All Gone Pete Tong, were perennials on MuchMusic (our MTV kinda), and I have a fondness for both of them beyond the nostalgia. Dowse has always been excellent at balancing broad, crude humour with a lot of heart and warmth that he saves for the moments where it will most catch you off guard.

In The Stunt Driver, he revs his talents full throttle. As bombastic stunt-driver Ken Carter (also known as the Mad Canadian), Jay Baruchel rips into his best performance ever, pumping pathos and depth into a character who could easily be played like Ron Burgundy, Ricky Bobby, or even Lonnie “The Hawk” Hawkins, the golfer in the show we all remember from two months ago, The Hawk. He’s got a goatee, a beer belly, a Canadian accent that reminds me of how my dad’s friends talk at 1AM around a campfire, but he’s passionate, charming and although his fear of jumping the St. Lawrence River in a rocket car is often played for laughs, it’s a fear that’s relatable, one that goes beyond a fear of dying violently in the car — it's a fear of people not liking him, a fear of not being worthy of their love. This one is based on a documentary, The Devil at Your Heels, that I really have been meaning to watch for fuckin’ years, but I just haven’t got to it. I even put it at the top of my list for pre-fest home-watches, but I instead watched Bad Lieutenant, which I’d never seen and wanted to watch before Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo on Monday (which you’ll hear about in the next round-up). Anyway! I am tempted to go and take out all that stuff about not being sure if Americans will like this, but I might keep it in, because it speaks to our inferiority complex, which this film dramatizes compellingly through Carter’s relationship with Evel Knievel (who is played by Ben Foster, an actor who I normally have an allergy to, but thought was great in this small role). So, American readers (and every non-Canadian, I should say), check this one out, come on back here and let me know what you think.

Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother (dir. Bassam Tariq)

As I’ve been talking about this one, I keep comparing it to Panos Cosmatos’s Mandy, which is catching people off guard. “The new movie starring two-time academy-award winner Mahershala Ali reminds you of that crazy Nic Cage movie?” The two things I say to that are: first of all Nic Cage has an Oscar (yes, maybe not two, but he deserves more, maybe even for Mandy) and second of all, you may think Mandy is just an insane revenge movie, and it is, but, my friend, it’s so much more. Just like Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, you may think it’s a meditative drama, and it is, but it’s so much more, MY FRIEND. It’s the kind of movie that can’t be pinned down. It’s at once a hyper-violent, revenge phantasia and a tender drama about a family learning to lean on each other. It has moments of prayer and transcendence and the next scene gives us chaos, jaggedness, and grit. You may say “Ah, sounds like a tonal mess” and hey, you might be right, but I think it pulls off the balancing act. There’s a very sharp script here and a performance by Ali that makes you never want to look away. He plays Latif, a hitman whose personal life is disrupted and suddenly has to juggle his blood, breast milk, and blades, all while finding time to pray (he is a devout Muslim). I’ll also point out that while he is juggling all this, he’s also pulling off an incredible wardrobe. Every fit he wears is remarkable. Between juggling seeing all these movies, making a short film and trying to eat three meals a day, I’ve struggled with even remembering to wear socks. OK, back to the Mandy comparison. I bring it up because I am curious what kind of reaction this will get. Certainly it’s being marketed differently. I can see it being too genre-forward for the serious-brained moviegoers, and perhaps too contemplative for the action crowd. It’s not John Wick, but it’s also not Moonlight. If you’re open to the hybrid, your open hearts will be rewarded. Not every movie can be everything, but this one certainly has a lot.

Rogue Trooper (dir. Duncan Jones)

I am not planning on saying a lot about this one, as I didn’t enjoy it very much, but also am not angry enough at it to say a bunch of mean things, and you know even if I was, that’s not really my style. I really like Moon and Source Code and have been waiting for Duncan Jones to return to form, so I will always show up. This one is a high-concept animated sci-fi-action-fantasy about a squad of synthetic soldiers on some sort of mission that, honestly, I never really understood. Maybe I am dumb, or maybe it's just that I haven’t even heard of the comic book it’s based on. There’s a lot of world-building, but the more info they dumped, the less I understood what the fuck was going on. It doesn’t help that the animation technology is, from what I’ve heard, the same tech that many video game companies use. I hate watching people play video games. It’s hard to follow when you’re not the one with the controller, and I don’t even like holding the controller that much either. Also, there’s a lot of attempted humour, and it really seems like they’re using the same humour technology as guys who do nothing but play the video games that I hate watching people play. One thing that jumped out to me in the promotional materials is that the soldiers are blue. And of course, this made me think of Avatar. I love all three Avatar movies. There are a lot of people who talk shit about the Avatar movies and when they talk about them, it is clear they’ve never seen them. I think this is the movie that they think Avatar is.

OK. I’ll be back later this week with another round-up and then eventually, I will rank them all.

FTM 838: LIVING IN OBVLIVION

fthismoviepodcast@gmail.com (fthismovie.com) — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 05:00:00 -0500

Patrick and Mike just need 30 seconds of silence.

Download this episode here.

Listen to F This Movie! on Apple Podcasts.

Also discussed this episode: Spider-Man: Brand New Day (2026), Le Samourai (1967), Le Circle Rouge (1970), Motor City (2026), Donnie Brasco (1997), The Whisper Man (2026)

24 Hours of Movies: Danny Elfman

fthismoviepodcast@gmail.com (fthismovie.com) — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 05:00:00 -0500

by Patrick Bromley

A marathon of movies all scored by one of the greats.

I don't consider it a hot take to say that John Williams is the greatest film composer who ever lived. No one's music lives in our collective consciousness the way his does. But Danny Elfman is the composer I grew up on, the one who was scoring the movies that meant everything to me as a kid. His were the first scores I remember going to music stores and buying on cassette, listening to them every night as I fell asleep. Because I've been on a huge Elfman kick lately -- both his film scores and his work as frontman of Oingo Boingo -- I wanted to program a marathon celebrating his cinematic legacy. Hope you enjoy the lineup.

10 am - Pee-Wee's Big Adventure (1985, dir. Tim Burton)

Let's begin with Danny Elfman's first film composition, an all-time banger of a score for one of the best comedies of all time. I love that director Tim Burton and star Paul Reubens hand-picked Elfman to do the music because they were fans of Oingo Boingo -- the exact kind of outside the box thinking that makes this movie such a masterpiece at every level. While I could make a case that this score established some habits for Elfman early on, the music is too lively, too exuberant, too much a vital part of the fabric of this film's universe for me to care even a little. It's the best.

11:30 am - Midnight Run (1988, dir. Martin Brest)

If Pee Wee's Big Adventure helped establish an early Danny Elfman sound, Midnight Run just a few years later demonstrated he was capable of something completely different. More guitar driven than orchestral, Elfman found the perfect sound to capture the story of a bounty hunter (Robert De Niro) attempting to bring a white collar criminal (Charles Grodin) across the country. This is a classic buddy action comedy, one of the best of the 1980s, with De Niro crushing his first comedy role (at least his first since hitting it big) and Charles Grodin proving he could steal a movie from the best of the best. I'll always be sad that we didn't get more Martin Brest movies.

1:30 pm - Dick Tracy (1990, dir. Warren Beatty)

Another very tradition Elfman score seems like a no-brainer for this, the movie designed to be the next Batman. This was the event film of 1990 when I was a kid (who remembers the ticket T-shirt?), but neither Disney nor I took into account that director/star Warren Beatty was making a highly-stylized period musical from a 1930s comic strip and that's not the same as making a Batman movie. That's not a knock against the film, just the box office expectations (it was still a hit). Beatty's three-strip technicolor palette, the grotesque makeup, a truly insane cast of actors, and Al Pacion's Oscar-nominated turn as the villainous Big Boy Caprice make this something special despite its issues (Madonna) and a solid if somewhat unremarkable Elfman score.

3:30 pm - Wisdom (1986, dir. Emilio Estevez)

Truth be told, I don't think I've seen this movie since the late 1980s and the only way to watch it now is on a Warner Archive DVD that I don't own. I remember that this was Emilio Estevez's debut as director and that he and then-partner Demi Moore play bank robbers. I also remember the bad ending. What I don't remember is a Danny Elfman score, which I'm excited to revisit in this time slot. Sometimes we gotta program One for Us.

5:30 pm - Psycho (1998, dir. Gus Van Sant)

Speaking of One for Us. No one should be surprised that I'm slotting this in right before dinner because I love it and will take any opportunity I get to change people's minds about it. For the purposes of our marathon's theme, though, I love the idea of Danny Elfman and Steve Bartek (Elfman's old Oingo Boingo bandmate) adapting and rearranging Bernard Hermann's classic score for Psycho. It's one of the only instances I can think of where an entire film score is "covered" by another composer, which makes sense because this movie is a cover of Psycho. Elfman collaborated quite a few times with director Gus Van Sant, so I think it's important that their working relationship be represented in our marathon. It won't be the last time.

7:15 pm - Batman (1989, dir. Tim Burton)

I mean, we have to include this in our Primetime Pizza slot because it's really the movie that made Danny Elfman a star as a film composer. I can still remember being a young kid and being more excited to see Batman than anything in my life and hearing that opening theme and realizing it was one of the best pieces of movie music I had ever heard. It still is. The rest of the score is terrific, too, but it's the high of that theme I'm always chasing.

9:30 pm - Dead Presidents (1995, dir. Allen & Albert Hughes)

Another pivot from Elfman and a great blaxploitation crime film/coming of age drama/war movie courtesy of The Hughes Brothers. This is one of Elfman's most underrated scores and a deeply underrated film, which got a Criterion laserdisc back in the day but which has never been released on Blu-ray and only has a non-anamorphic DVD to its name. If this movie could get in front of more eyeballs, its reputation might finally match its quality. This is a movie and a score that deserve to be rediscovered.

11:30 pm - Sleepy Hollow (1999, dir. Tim Burton)

Ok, it's getting late now and it's time to transition to horror movies. After a brief split from working together during Ed Wood, Elfman reunited with Tim Burton for Mars Attacks! and continue their long collaboration here on what I think is Burton's Last Great Movie, the one that ended his 15-year run. Johnny Depp (boo) plays Ichabod Crane as Angela Lansbury, a choice I love, while a somewhat miscast Christina Ricci plays Katrina Von Tassel. The supporting cast consists of great British character actors (mostly) and Burton makes a great homage to Hammer horror, which Elfman's score complements perfectly.

1:30 am - Nightbreed (1990, dir. Clive Barker)

The second of only three movies made by by Clive Barker, who should have directed way more because he was good at it. I like the world created for Nightbreed, I love the monsters, I love that they're the heroes, and I love David Cronenberg as the villain. I know the studio fucked with this one to the point that Clive Barker wanted to disown it, but I like it in its theatrical form. To be fair, I still haven't watched The Cabal Cut despite it being available and on my shelf for years now. Maybe it's way better. Because this is on the early side of Elfman's days as a composer, it has a similar sound to a number of his first scores, though I like how heavy he goes on the percussion here.

3:15 am - The Frighteners (1996, dir. Peter Jackson)

Peter Jackson's big studio breakthrough -- the movie that basically gets him Lord of the Rings -- will play well in the middle of the night when its zany energy will help sustain us and we'll still be tired enough to overlook its flaws. I like this movie but I want to love it and haven't quite gotten there despite Jackson's direction, cool ghost effects, a leading man Michael J. Fox (Is he miscast? Discuss.), and a scene-stealing Jeffrey Combs absolutely crushing every scene. I love so many of the elements but haven't fallen in love with the whole thing even if I feel like watching it at least once a year.

5:15 am - Shrunken Heads (1994, dir. Richard Elfman)

I wanted to be sure to include this one even though Elfman doesn't do the whole score (that's instead done by Full Moon mainstay Richard Band) but he does do the main theme. More importantly, the cult movie is directed by Danny Elfman's brother Richard, making this a family affair. This is a very weird movie even by Full Moon Standards, but we should expect no less from the director of Forbidden Zone. It's going to play great at this time of morning when we are exhausted and delirious.

6:30 am - To Die For (1995, dir. Gus Van Sant)

Our second Gus Van Sant of the marathon reveals that he and Elfman had one of the best partnerships this side of his collaborations with Tim Burton. This isn't the sort of movie one would expect Elfman to score, but I love what he adds to this brilliant satire that features my favorite Nicole Kidman performance as a scheming wannabe celebrity who hires some high schoolers to kill her husband (Matt Dillon). Van Sant didn't make many comedies, so his deft touch with Buck Henry's script comes as a surprise but a welcome one.

8:30 am - Summer School (1987, dir. Carl Reiner)

We'll close things out with one of my favorite '80s comedies and the "school" score I like even better than Elfman's work on Back to School. Plus we get to hear "Happy," a solo banger he recorded as Oingo Boingo! I was recently reading up on this movie and discovered that Roger Ebert gave it half a star. Seriously? HALF? It's worth two stars just for the gory prank sequence with Rick Baker effects work! And another two for Mark Harmon's incredibly affable leading man turn. And then another two just for Chainsaw and Dave. What I'm saying is that this is a six-star movie.

Fifty Before '50: DUCK SOUP

fthismoviepodcast@gmail.com (fthismovie.com) — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 05:00:00 -0500

by JB

This is a gala day for us. Stay tuned to the end of the column for exciting, time sensitive news.

Groucho once said, in the invaluable and long out-of-print* The Marx Bros. Scrapbook, that Duck Soup was the only time the Marx brothers ever got to work with a truly talented director. Leo McCarey was a master director who had started in the silents, directing Laurel and Hardy (frequent L & H co-star Edgar Kennedy makes an appearance here as an angry lemonade vendor) and would go on to direct the Oscar-winning Going My Way with Bing Crosby and Barry Fitzgerald.

THE PLOT IN BRIEF: The governors of Freedonia ask rich Mrs. Teasdale (Margaret Dumont) for a loan to bail out their almost bankrupt country. Teasdale agrees, but only if Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho Marx) is appointed leader. They agree and stage a lavish inauguration ceremony. There we learn that Trentino (Louis Calhern) from rival country Sylvania wishes to wed Mrs. Teasdale and place Freedonia under the Sylvania flag. He employs dancer Vera Marcal (Raquel Torres) to seduce Firefly and disgrace him. Trentino has also hired two spies, Chicolini and Pinky (Chico and Harpo Marx) to gum up the works in Freedonia.

Firefly has a secretary named Bob Roland (Zeppo Marx). Did I mention that? Bob Roland is not important to the plot.

Trentino's penchant for insult plunges the two countries into war. The warfare scenes are played for laughs, with Groucho changing into a different military uniform every time the camera cuts away from him. The brothers trap Trentino and throw oranges at him until he surrenders. Mrs. Teasdale celebrates by singing the national anthem until the brothers throw oranges at her.

I am trying to remember the name of the critic who first suggested the Marx Brothers’ personalities reflected the immigrant experience in America, and that is reflected in the different ways they use language. Groucho turns the English language into a weapon to get what he wants, Chico employs endless malapropisms and puns to get the language to work for him, Harpo refuses to speak at all, and Zeppo assimilates like crazy and speaks perfect English. I am still impressed by this theory and interpretation.

Most critics consider Duck Soup the Marx Brothers’ greatest film and I agree. It is very funny. It is unencumbered by the romantic subplots that often threaten to sink their later MGM films. The Marx brothers are not here to help the young lovers; they are only trying to help themselves. The film is stripped down to the essentials: Chico never even plays the piano and Harpo never touches a harp. Generation after generation have seen their own political situations reflected in the film’s razor-sharp parody of government and bureaucracy.

Friend of the site The Pope of Film once wrote a column on Duck Soup. He even suggested that it was one of the 50 Best American Films ever made. You can read that column here.

Duck Soup is also the only time the Marx brothers’ brand of anarchy was loosed in a political setting. Though I try to steer clear of politics in these columns, I was recently struck by something Danny Peary wrote about the film in his wonderful and amazing book Cult Movies. (Remember, in Duck Soup, Groucho plays the leader of a country.) “Groucho is a winner simply because he won’t acknowledge any defeat he sustains. Groucho’s major source of pleasure is unnerving those who do take things seriously and are afraid of losing their power or dignity [...] It is not that the jokes he tells are funny... what is funny is that he insists on letting fly with lowbrow humor in august settings. He loves being rude in public, and one of his playful diversions is to [pretend] to take offense at something innocent said to him... and then quickly insulting the person who said it.”

Gee, that sounds like a certain leader of a certain real country. To paraphrase comedian John Mulaney, Groucho is like a horse that got loose in a hospital.

NOTE TO THOSE READING THIS ON MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 14: The Regal Cinemas chain has been running a reparatory series all month called “Month of Masterpieces.” Today, September 14, at select Regal Cinemas nationwide, Duck Soup is the masterpiece du jour, with screenings running all day long. (My local Regal Theater has five showings scheduled.) Why not treat yourself to a long lunch hour and see Duck Soup... today... on the big screen? I’ll be there with a big horn to “honk along with Harpo” and annoy my fellow patrons. Regal is also showing Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys on the 15th, Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train on the 16th, Tim Burton’s Pee Wee’s Big Adventure on the 17th, and David Fincher’s Zodiac on the 18th.

*Even though it's out of print, you can still buy it used. If you've never read it, you should do that... and read it.

Weekend Open Thread

fthismoviepodcast@gmail.com (fthismovie.com) — Sat, 12 Sep 2026 02:00:00 -0500

Review: PRACTICAL MAGIC 2

fthismoviepodcast@gmail.com (fthismovie.com) — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 05:00:00 -0500

by Rob DiCristino

Midnight Margaritas, anyone?

1998’s Practical Magic is the cinematic equivalent of a boozy Galentine’s Day brunch: Like 9 to 5, Thelma & Louise, and Mystic Pizza before it, the Griffin Dunne-directed comedic fantasy/romance is far more interested in celebrating the indefatigable power of sorority than with building any complex drama or character intrigue. Believe it or not, that’s a compliment! We love to celebrate female relationships in cinema! We love watching brassy, foul-mouthed dames climb the corporate ladder! We love romantic shenanigans set in a quirky New England pizza parlor! We love suicide pacts with bisexual overtones! And you’d better believe we love a seaside Victorian lousy with horny witches! While it may have been a critical and commercial disappointment upon its original release, it’s that very same Ladies Being Gals energy that has solidified Practical Magic’s place in cult cinema history for nearly thirty years. The Owens sisters’ story is one of empowerment. Of sisterhood. Of the singular satisfaction that comes with burying an abusive fuckboy in your aunts’ garden.

So, fuck it! Practical Magic 2! Why the hell not? Here we go: A generation has passed since Sally (Sandra Bullock) lost her husband to an ancient curse that dooms each and every one of the Owens’ true loves to a brutal death. Determined to conquer her grief and safeguard her family’s future, she’s sealed off her magic and deceived her daughters (Joey King as Kylie and Maisie Williams as Antonia), both of whom have grown up in the shadow of rumors about their aunts’ (Stockard Channing returning as Frances and Dianne Wiest returning as Jet) supernatural predilections. It’s all smoke and mirrors until Kylie confesses her love to college hunk Gideon (Blue Beetle standout Xolo Maridueña), who — as if by otherworldly decree — immediately gets pancaked by a car and put into a coma. Now, with the help of an ancient text that might hold the key to dismantling the Owens family curse, Sally and her tequila-loving, ride-or-die sister (Nicole Kidman as Gilly) must reveal their darkest truths and free themselves from the shackles of this deadly spell once and for all.

But, look. I’m going to be honest with you: That couldn’t matter less. Sure, Practical Magic 2 — based on Alice Hoffman’s 2021 novel The Book of Magic and co-written by Georgia Pritchett, Kelly Marcel, and, as was the case with the first film, Academy Award-winning screenwriter Akiva Goldsman — technically has a plot. It’s about Kylie’s quest for answers, a quest that will lead her to an ancient English witch burning site and into the clutches of the duplicitous scion of a hidden Owens bloodline (Solly McLeod as Thomas Lockland). Sally and Gilly will follow her, of course, enlisting the help of charming demonology professor Ian Wright (the impossibly tall Lee Pace) with whom — and you’ll be shocked to hear this — Sally will develop a romantic relationship. But, come on. You don’t care about that at all, do you? I didn’t! My eyes started glazing over every time Gilly explained the left-handed magic that haunts the Book of the Raven or Whatever the Fuck It’s Called. I think there’s a needle that will open the cursed pages? Maybe? I’ve already forgotten.

That’s because Practical Magic was never about witchcraft. It was never about spells. It was never about the sort of convoluted technical lore that would make your local dungeon master cream in his pants. Not a single person showing up for a sequel to the “midnight margaritas” movie gives a flying fuck about Wiccan arcana, sacred incantations, or the Book of the Raven’s Beard (I swear, I saw this movie last night and I can’t remember what that thing is called). No, the people who religiously rewatch Practical Magic every fall when the leaves turn know that it’s all about the feminine vibes. It’s about the effortless chemistry between Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman. It’s about the endless warmth — and fabulous fits — from Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest. It’s about dancing around the kitchen in spaghetti-strapped tops because, for crying out loud, no one understands you like your sister. Why do these movies even bother featuring men? They’re always the most annoying part! Why kiss a stupid boy when you can hide under the covers with your best girlfriend?

Anyway, this is supposed to be a review: Is Susanne Bier’s Practical Magic 2 a quality exercise in filmmaking craft? It is not! It’s haphazardly directed, poorly edited, and features a second act so mind-numbingly boring that you’ll resent the entire British commonwealth for forcing a pair of toe-headed douchebags into your estrogen extravaganza. But none of that matters when Sandra Bullock is dropping double — sometimes triple — entendres under her breath. None of that matters when Nicole Kidman is slinking around the margins of every shot like a sex-crazed poltergeist. None of that matters when we’re reminded that sometimes a movie is just about a bunch of women who love each other. Women who support each other in moments of fear and doubt. Women who recognize that growth is the fruit of ambition, of reckless whimsy and dogged self-confidence. Practical Magic 2 celebrates the unbridled joy of connection, the confidence that comes with leaning on the people who know and love you best. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? Here it is. You’re welcome.

Practical Magic 2 is in U.S. theaters now.

2K Replay: FINAL DESTINATION 3

fthismoviepodcast@gmail.com (fthismovie.com) — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 05:00:00 -0500

by Adam Riske

Nominated for “Highest Body Count” at the Fangoria Chainsaw Awards. It lost to Slither.

• Best Scene/Moment: The Devil’s Flight rollercoaster derailment at the beginning.

• Best Song: “Tribal Dance” by 2 Unlimited.

• Best Merch: A “Final Destination 3 Movie Promo Portable Fan…” which you can bid on for $19.99. On one hand, a portable fan always comes in handy. On the other hand, it seems obvious this will be the cause of your death if you buy it.

• Director Grade: Final Destination 3 was directed by James Wong.
Great Movies: N/A
Good Movies: Final Destination, Final Destination 3
OK Movies: N/A
Bad Movies: N/A
Unseen By Me: The One, Dragonball Evolution
Overall Grade: B

• Double It with This 2006 Movie: Saw III

• Year 2006 Movies to Trailer Before Them: The Grudge 2, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, Underworld: Evolution

• Ella McCay or Final Destination 3? Ella McCay
• Mall Movie? Yes. Horror sequels are almost always mall movies.

• Only in 2006: A character brings a Panasonic PV-GS39 MiniDV camcorder on a rollercoaster.

• Scene Stealer (tie): Kris Lemche (who looks a little like The Trickster in Brainscan in this) and Tony Todd (RIP).

• I Miss (tie): James Wong-directed Final Destination movies and Tony Todd.

• I Don’t Miss: The lovefest for Final Destination Bloodlines. I don’t get it. It’s cool if you’re a fan, but yeah, I must have missed something there.

• 2006 Crush: Mary Elizabeth Winstead.

• 2026 Crush: Mary Elizabeth Winstead.

• What I Thought in 2006: I liked it. Up to that point (in 2006), Final Destination 3 was my favorite of the franchise. I didn’t understand why it was considered bad when it was first released (maybe it was just by the critics, but I thought fans didn’t like it either initially). At least that’s what my memory of it is. I’m pretty sure its reputation improved in subsequent years.

• What I Think in 2026: I’m not the biggest fan of the Final Destination franchise but I still like Final Destination 3 (it’s now my second favorite in the franchise after the original). I think it suffers from a weak finale, but Mary Elizabeth Winstead gives maybe the best performance across the whole series and the opening sequence with the rollercoaster crash is suspenseful and the rest of the set pieces are fun, too.

FTM 837: MUPPET TREASURE ISLAND

fthismoviepodcast@gmail.com (fthismovie.com) — Wed, 9 Sep 2026 05:00:00 -0500

Patrick and Rosalie got no strings.

Download this episode here.

Listen to F This Movie! on Apple Podcasts.

Also discussed this episode: The Sweet Smell of Success (1957), The Man With the Golden Arm (1955), Kansas City (1996), King Creole (1958), Love Me or Leave Me (1955), Pete Kelly's Blues (1955), Gilda (1946), Videoheaven (2026), Buddy (2026), The Sun Never Sets (2026)

Fifty Before ’50: Four by Méliès

fthismoviepodcast@gmail.com (fthismovie.com) — Tue, 8 Sep 2026 05:00:00 -0500

by JB

A few (extremely) short subjects for a boring Tuesday morning.

George Méliès is, by popular acclaim, the father of fantastic cinema. Born to a wealthy family in 1861, he eschewed his family’s boot business for a life in the theater. He invented dozens of illusions for the Theater Robert-Houdin in Paris, named for the French magician who would later supply young American Eric Weiss with his “nom de magic.” Méliès eventually bought the theater.

In 1895, he attended the Lumiere Brothers’ first public film exhibition. The Lumieres refused to sell Méliès a camera and projector, so Méliès travelled to London and persuaded Robert Paul to sell him the equipment he needed. The theater Robert-Houdin soon started showing short film programs between magic acts; most of the films directed by Méliès himself. Méliès was prolific: he made 78 short films in 1896 and 52 in 1897. He continued to make films until 1912 when a bad confluence of events essentially ended his film career.

Today, only about 200 of 500 Méliès's films still exist. Méliès destroyed most of his original negatives, thinking them worthless; the French army confiscated many of his prints during WWI; and the delicate nitrate film was subject to deterioration and fire. The majority of Méliès’ films that were preserved can be found at the Library of Congress. Méliès’ brother Gaston submitted paper prints of each frame of the “Star Films” in order to preserve copyright when he set up an American branch in 1902.

Gugusse and the Automaton (1897)

This one is the star of the show. Long thought lost forever, it resurfaced just this April and was restored by the Library of Congress. Besides being a hoot, it is the first example of a robot on film in cinema history. NOTE: Many is the day I wish I had a big sledgehammer like the one Méliès wields in the film.

Four Troublesome Heads (1898)

Yes, it seems at times that Méliès was in love with the head, specifically his own. In this film and in others like 1901’s The Man with the Rubber Head, the chief action of the film revolves around magic with the director’s own noggin. Strange.

NOTE: I love how the background music here is played on a banjo, as Méliès himself is shown playing/wielding a banjo here when his strange quartet starts singing.

The Mermaid (1904)

More magic shows. My one quibble with Méliès is that, although his films got longer and more elaborate, he never really progressed as a filmmaker. The camera is always in the fifth-row center; he is always simply duplicating the theatrical experience. He never tires of making objects and people disappear and change into other people and objects, as in a magic show. Still, its impressive that his audience never tired of these “old tricks” for some fifteen years. NOTE: The mermaid presented here longs to be part of your world.

Satan in Prison (1907)

Not the most entertaining of Méliès’ trick films, but this one rounds out our program simply because of its odd title. NOTE: That is not the actual Satan in the film. It is an actor. Enjoy.

Happy Labor Day!

fthismoviepodcast@gmail.com (fthismovie.com) — Mon, 7 Sep 2026 02:00:00 -0500

Weekend Open Thread

fthismoviepodcast@gmail.com (fthismovie.com) — Sat, 5 Sep 2026 02:00:00 -0500

Review: ONSLAUGHT

fthismoviepodcast@gmail.com (fthismovie.com) — Fri, 4 Sep 2026 05:00:00 -0500

by Rob DiCristino

In which Adam Wingard gets back to basics.

You know what? Let’s just cut to the chase on this one: Onslaught is not a very good film. It’s a crass, empty, and juvenile actioner, a reheated John Carpenter riff that sorely lacks the gritty authenticity and cynical defiance of Carpenter masterpieces like The Thing, They Live, and Assault on Precinct 13. Unlike those films, Onslaught is forced and overeager, bending over backward to be transgressive in a laughable, 2010 sort of way. Co-written with longtime partner Simon Barrett, Adam Wingard’s first independent effort since 2014 is an impotent temper tantrum from a filmmaker venting his frustration over the decade he’s spent trapped in the IP hellscape of Godzilla vs. Kong (a vibrant franchise with a real impact on pop culture; surely you have a number of favorite scenes from those memorable films!). And I sympathize, Mr. Wingard. I really do. After the critical success of The Guest and the commercial breakthrough of You’re Next, I’d have taken the big sack of money, too! But by returning to his genre roots, Wingard proves that money might not buy creative happiness.

But hang on. We’ll get there. Onslaught is the story of retired Army sniper Celeste (Adria Arjona), whose post-traumatic stress disorder has destroyed her marriage (to Jacob Scipo’s Griffin), made her a stranger to her young daughter (Blake Kennedy as Daisy), and doomed her to ownership of a run-down trailer park on the desert outskirts of a mysterious military facility. When a work emergency forces Griffin to leave Daisy with Celeste unexpectedly — interrupting an afternoon of target practice that Sarah Connor would find excessive — the struggling veteran must put on a brave face and play the part of “Mommy.” Meanwhile, in the aforementioned mysterious military facility, a trio of hulking, undead supersoldiers engineered by a third-generation Nazi scientist (Dan Stevens in elderly makeup as Dr. Kammler) and his wife (Thundering Badass Rebecca Hall as Frau Kammler) have murdered their caretakers and escaped. Guess where they’re heading? No, really. Guess. I’m going to give you three guesses. Remember, Celeste’s a sniper, and this movie is called Onslaught.

You get it. Gaudy, brainless, and deeply uninspired, Onslaught is the kind of back-to-basics passion project that recalls Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead, M. Night Shyamalan’s The Visit, and Kevin Smith’s Chasing Amy. Here’s how it works: Fed up with the machinations of major studio filmmaking — machinations that led to either commercial embarrassment or critical dismissal (and occasionally both) — an artist attempts to reassert their street cred with a project that recreates the circumstances of their original success. In this case, Wingard trades the bottomless pocketbook of Warner Brothers for the bespoke chinos of A24 and films a screenplay so low-concept that it appears almost foolproof. How could Wingard possibly fumble a gory siege thriller, especially one that boasts supporting roles from genre luminaries like The Terminator’s Michael Biehn (as Dr. Kammler’s government handler) and Die Hard’s Reginald VelJohnson (as Celeste’s irascible neighbor, Josiah). Guts? Guns? Gore? Some leather fetish bondage porn for good measure? Is this not the definition of cinema?

Perhaps it is. And perhaps I should cut Wingard some slack for at least trying to layer in the occasional theme — the big chunguses are all vets whose trauma drove them to violence; they represent who Celeste might become if she doesn’t check her anger and rediscover her humanity before it’s too late — but those half-hearted attempts are so clumsy and underdeveloped that it might have been better if he hadn’t bothered with them at all. He might not also have bothered with an entirely unnecessary subplot involving Cyrus (Drew Starkey), a Molly-loving special agent charged with mopping up the bloody messes that the big chunguses — led by UFC’s Alex Pereira as “The Butcher” — leave in their wake. He’s in an entirely different movie about a speed-addicted failson with a fauxhawk who makes no tangible contribution to anything we care even the slightest bit about. His screen time comes at the expense of meaningful development for Celeste and Daisy, neither of whom grow or change in any way whatsoever. But hey, at least that one guy got his leg sawed off!

I’m probably being too hard on Adam Wingard and Onslaught, which is ultimately a perfectly serviceable and good-looking ode to one of our great directors — the interstitial titles use the Carpenter Font, just in case you weren’t sure — anchored by an effective performance from Adria Arjona. It features enough gnarly kills to hit your #ScaryMovieMonth rotation this year, and one imagines that the experience of making something this down-and-dirty after two CGI blockbusters about a gorilla must have reinvigorated Wingard’s love for his craft — he’s notably not attached to 2027’s Godzilla x Kong: Supernova — and reminded him that good art is born of adversity. With that said, I hope Onslaught’s piss-poor screenplay and lack of any real dramatic propulsion also reminded him that just because a film is “simple” doesn’t mean it’s “easy.” Halloween is simple. That’s what makes it brilliant. The Fog is simple. That’s what makes it brilliant. Big Trouble in Little China is…well, fairly convoluted, actually, but you understand what I’m trying to say.

Onslaught hits U.S. theaters on Friday, September 4th.

Friday Night Double Features Vol. 70

fthismoviepodcast@gmail.com (fthismovie.com) — Thu, 3 Sep 2026 05:00:00 -0500

by Adam Riske and Patrick Bromley

Ten new double features to watch while you drink your Pumpkin Spice Matchas.

Double Feature 1:

Adam: #1: Midnight Run (1988)
Patrick: #2: Meet the Parents (2000)
Patrick: Trailers/Shorts: Showtime, Dirty Grandpa, The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle
Patrick: Theme: Funny De Niro

Patrick: I went obvious for our first Cinemarink double this month. Midnight Run is a pretty unassailable classic and I didn’t want to be too cutesy with the pairing. I know the trailers are a shit show but I stand by this double, having revisited Meet the Parents during FTMF 2000 month and finding it better and funnier than I remember it being and featuring a super locked-in De Niro performance. It’s become shorthand for a kind of mainstream, corporate bullshit comedy over the last 25 years – the DVD owned by the person who only owns this and The Hangover – but I liked it more than I thought I did.

Adam: That’s great. I wish they stayed with just the original. I’m not a fan of the sequels, although I like Ariana Grande so I’m looking forward to the new one a little more than I should. I’m always fascinated by Funny De Niro because he’s either totally locked in like in Meet the Parents or I’d even argue Dirty Grandpa (which is a bad, bad, bad movie) but other times at sea (have you seen The Comedian?). There’s very little in-between.

Double Feature 2:

Patrick: #1: Rhinestone (1984)
Adam: #2: The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982)
Adam: Trailers/Shorts: 9 to 5, Steel Magnolias, Straight Talk, “Islands in the Stream” Live Performance Video
Adam: Theme: Dolly Parton Tribute

Adam: I considered the idea of doing a joint Dolly Parton-Tim Curry tribute here (note: Curry passed away after I initially chose these pairings but before this column ran), but they each deserve their own and we can do a proper Tim Curry themed one in the future. Why are so many cool celebrities dying? Anyways, this is probably my double feature pick of the month because I’ve always liked Dolly Parton from afar but haven’t really dived deep into her work, musically or cinematically. I think the only movie of hers I’ve seen is Steel Magnolias, but that’s too sad to program here so I just had it as a trailer. This double will give me an excuse to finally catch up with a couple of her classics (Is Rhinestone a classic? I know it’s often discussed but as a guilty pleasure). I had to throw in her and Kenny Rogers “Islands in the Stream” into the night’s programming too because it’s a great song written by my boys The Bee Gees. P.S. I paired Rhinestone with The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas because she sings in both!

Patrick: I wanted to say that both of these movies rule but that’s probably not true even though I love Rhinestone. Best Little Whorehouse is legit great and she’s incredible in it so I’m glad you picked another musical, especially one that pairs her opposite a male co-star who a) is a symbol of onscreen masculinity at the time and b) has to sing. These movies pair so well. I should have more shame about my affection for Rhinestone but I refuse because Dolly Parton is so great in it and even Stallone’s best efforts to ruin it are unsuccessful. Losing her and Tim Curry in the same two-day span is unthinkable. All I can think to do to honor their memories is to watch their movies.

Double Feature 3:
Adam: #1: The Driver (1978)
Patrick: #2: Hickey & Boggs (1972)
Patrick: Trailers/Shorts: The Getaway, Hard Times, The Warriors
Patrick: Theme: Early Walter Hill

Patrick: I’ve kind of wanted to re-run all the Walter Hills lately so this might be the kick in the dick I need to do it. I know I mixed movies that he wrote with movies he directed but I wanted to focus on some of his lesser-known early work. Have you seen Hickey & Boggs? I know it has Bill Cosby in it, which is unfortunate in 2026, but it rules. Great buddy cop stuff. I decided to go with that over The Warriors because I assume that’s a movie everyone has seen even though I could literally watch it anytime. The Driver is so amazing, too. I never count Walter Hill among my guys because I don’t feel masculine enough to do that (same reason I don’t count John Carpenter) but he’s kind of one of my guys.

Adam: No, I’m pretty lacking in my early Walter Hill watches, too. I haven’t seen anything before The Warriors. Laughing at you saying you don’t feel masculine enough to consider Walter Hill as one of your guys. I kind of have the same thing too but maybe didn’t realize it. I like a lot of Walter Hill movies I’ve seen but it’s never occurred to me to be more than a tourist in his filmography. I’d never be so bold to claim residency. In any event, I’m looking forward to watching more unseen Walter Hills!

Double Feature 4:

Patrick: #1: Back to School (1986)
Adam: #2: Summer School (1987)
Adam: Trailers/Shorts: Better Off Dead, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure
Adam: Theme: Classroom Hijinks

Adam: There’s something a little extra fun about programming ‘80s comedy double features. I haven’t seen all of Back to School (I remember diving board stuff from when I watched it on cable as a kid but that’s it) so I’m looking forward to finally seeing the whole thing. I paired it with Summer School, which I watched ALL THE TIME on cable in the late ‘80s. I think it’s one of my first experiences seeing something with horror elements with that Chainsaw & Dave sequence. I’m surprised that part never scared me. I was intrigued. Summer School is gateway horror is what I’m trying to say.

Patrick: If I didn’t already want to do the Dolly double this would for sure be my pick of the month. I love a Classroom Hijinks comedy, and even if I don’t love Back to School (the fact that it was one of highest-grossing movies of its year will forever confound me the same way the success of Crocodile Dundee confounds me) I find it incredibly watchable. Here’s why this is a sneaky brilliant double: I have been listening to nothing but Oingo Boingo lately and programmed Back to School because it’s an early Danny Elfman score (and Boingo performs live). Guess what else is an early Danny Elfman score? Summer School! Very well done, Adam! Also, Summer School is total gateway horror. Rick Baker did the effects! I was obsessed with that scene when I was 10. I would just watch that part over and over again. It’s one of my favorite ‘80s comedies.

Double Feature 5:
Adam: #1: Made (2001)
Patrick: #2: Ticker (2001)
Patrick: Trailers/Shorts: Soul Survivors, Novocaine, ‘R Xmas
Patrick: Theme: 2001 Artisan

Patrick: I always associate Artisan Entertainment with shitty DVDs but they had some good movies too. Made is one of them. Ticker isn’t, but it’s an Albert Pyun starring Steven Seagal, Tom Sizemore, Jaime Pressly, Ice-T, and Kevin Gage. How can we not see it on the big screen at the Cinemarink? It’s one of the most Us movies ever made.

Adam: This is in the running for our FNDF episode in November because I feel like rewatching Made (the Casino to Swingers’ Goodfellas), and the cast of Ticker is insane, and I must see this unseen Pyun! Plus, we haven’t done our Ice-T episode of the year. This is lining up like the Da Vinci Code or something.

Double Feature 6:

Patrick: #1: They Live (1988)
Adam: #2: Society (1989)
Adam: Trailers/Shorts: The Stepford Wives (1975), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), The Stuff
Adam: Theme: Conform or Else

Adam: This theme is on the nose. I mean, sure, but it doesn’t excite me. I dunno. The pairing is good, though. They Live is the ultimate conformity horror movie, and I think Society would be a fun movie on the back leg of a double feature with it since it ends so crazy. I love that conformity horror makes everyone in the audience align to it but then immediately un-radicalize most of them the moment they leave the theater. Maybe I’m just speaking for myself.

Patrick: LOL you’re totally right. We’ll get all mad and worked up and then leave and go get Taco Bell and forget all of our righteous rage. Society is a great pick to play on the back end of this double because it offers a totally different flavor of horror.

Double Feature 7:
Adam: #1: Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (2026)
Patrick: #2: Seekers of Infinite Love (2026)
Patrick: Trailers/Shorts: North Hollywood, Multiple episodes of Hacks
Patrick: Theme: OMG Marry Me Hannah Einbinder

Patrick: I never watched Hacks but then I saw Teenage Sex and Death (currently my favorite movie of the year) and immediately fell madly in love with Hannah Einbinder. We have since watched all of Hacks. This double is a cheat because she only stars in one other movie and it hasn’t come out yet but we will cheat and play it at the LC. Maybe she will show up and be my friend.

Adam: I’m excited to see Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma and see how I fare in Einbinder Crushing (which could’ve been the name of a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode). You and I usually have a lot of crossovers in our top 10 lists each year and not much crossover outside of the top 10, so if you say it’s your current favorite movie of the year then it shoots up my must-see list. Plus, I really liked I Saw the TV Glow, so I really want to see the follow-up by Jane Schoenbrun.

Double Feature 8:

Patrick: #1: Pale Rider (1985)
Adam: #2: Cocoon (1985)
Adam: Trailers/Shorts: The Goonies, St. Elmo's Fire, Perfect, Lifeforce, Music Video block - “Everything She Wants” (Wham!), “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” (Tears for Fears), “Heaven” (Bryan Adams)
Adam: Theme: June 1985

Adam: I sort of selfishly put this together as an excuse to watch two ‘80s movies I’ve never seen but have always been on my radar. Hell, I’ve even seen Cocoon 2 (which I remember nothing about) but not the original. I’ve been meaning to see Pale Rider, but I get decision fatigue every time I try to figure out which unseen Clint Western I should watch next (e.g. Pale Rider, The Outlaw Josey Wales, Hang ‘Em High). This should be a really fun, time capsule kind of night between the features and trailer block.

Patrick: As much as I’m allergic to naked nostalgia this night sounds AMAZING and I’m all in just for the trailer block if nothing else. I’m not the biggest Cocoon guy but maybe it will hit differently now that I’m probably the age of all the old people in the movie. You can’t really go wrong with any of those Clint Westerns, but you should watch them in this order: Josey Whales, Pale Rider, then Hang ‘Em High is if you have time and get to it but there’s no rush.

Double Feature 9:

Adam: #1: Eddie (1996)
Patrick: #2: The Associate (1996)
Patrick: Trailers/Shorts: Call Me Claus, Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit, Fatal Beauty
Patrick: Theme: She’s Making the Decisions Now

Patrick: This one is for my friend Adam because it’s his new favorite subgenre. I’d probably want to watch Fatal Beauty the most of all of these but The Associate clearly pairs best with Eddie because it came out the same year and because she’s making the decisions now.

Adam: If you would’ve asked me at the beginning of the summer if I’d 100 percent sit down for a 1996 Whoopi Goldberg double feature, I would’ve said no but after her making the decisions now became one of our (and Rob’s) running jokes of the summer, it makes me want watch all (scratch that…one) varietals of Whoopi. I’ve seen Eddie but not for a very long time (and it might be fun to check out following the Knicks’ recent championship) and I’m currently in the mood to watch The Associate, which has never happened before. This is an interesting feeling that I’m feeling. All because of an offhand joke I made out of nowhere.

Double Feature 10:

Patrick: #1: I Love You, Beth Cooper (2009)
Adam: #2: Scream IV (2011)
Adam: Trailers/Shorts: A Bug's Life, Remember the Titans, Ice Princess, Heroes Pilot Episode, Music Videos - “Telescope” and “I Still Believe”
Adam: Theme: Hayden Panettiere Tribute

Adam: I didn’t keep up with Hayden Panettiere’s career much in recent years, but I remember her being a natural in early roles like Remember the Titans and on Heroes (I didn’t continue past the first season). And of course, she’s a spark plug in Scream VI and Scream IV, especially, which is why I wanted to pair it with I Love You, Beth Cooper (which I haven’t seen despite it having local ties and directed by my boy Chris Columbus). I’m glad we got to do a tribute night to Panettiere, but I wish we didn’t have to under these circumstances. This is a case where I didn’t appreciate someone’s work enough until they were gone and that sucks.

Patrick: It’s all so sad. I just rewatched I Love You Beth Cooper and it’s much more of a Paul Rust vehicle than a Hayden Panettiere one. She’s just saddled with “generic dream girl,” which she does well. I am excited for you to check off an unseen Columbus, though. She pops way more in Scream IV, so that’s a great call. I wish she had been in more movies and that she had an easier life. Now I’m sad. Time to put on Summer School again.

FTM 836: F THIS SUMMER (2026)

fthismoviepodcast@gmail.com (fthismovie.com) — Wed, 2 Sep 2026 05:00:00 -0500

Patrick, JB, Rob, and Adam Riske talk about a good summer at the movies.

Download this episode here.

Listen to F This Movie! on Apple Podcasts.