10 Pieces of Content I Loved, Liked (or Loathed)
Sam writes about 10 things from the pop culture world that thrilled, tickled, transported, touched, or, perhaps, triggered him — September 2022 Edition
(1) BARBARIAN!!!
There exists a recent trend in which a sketch comedian writes a horror script in their spare time, and then turns out to be a Hitchcock-ian horror film artisan. Jordan Peele was the model the past five years… ENTER: Zach Cregger, who cut his teeth with silly but sometimes clever YouTube “dude-have-you-seen-this-totally-sick-vid-bro?” sketch comedy as part of the Whitest Kids U’Know in the late aughts.
Cregger is laser focused on keeping his audience dangling from a string like Kyrie with a Spalding Wilson, and in an effort to deconstruct the tropes, he first clearly understands and embraces them. Chef Cregger sprinkles in a dash of tremendous stunt casting in Bill Skarsgård, an athletic and formidable performance from our would-be final girl Georgina Campbell, a creepy-ass basement (wait, should we go down there or nah?), smug Justin Long, gentrification and white flight, and some Zillow humor, to make his sinister stew. Well, hand me a spoon by God, because I’ll be helping myself to this particular concoction again and again.
PS: by FAR the most fun I’ve had in a movie theater since, ironically, Get Out, so make sure you watch with a rip-roaring raucous crowd instead of by yourself at home like weirdo.1
(2) Indiana Jones & Short Round in 2022
Harrison Ford hugged it out with his Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom2 co-star Ke Huy Quan3 backstage at the #D23Expo, and I—having been raised on poor quality Indy DVDs like many older millennials—experienced significant emotion(s) upon seeing this photo crop up on my timeline.
SO much time for love, Dr. Jones!
(3) Speak No Evil
With our second horror entry here, spooky SZN apparently arrived one month early. This feel-awful psychological thriller from Danish writer/director Christian Tafdrup (A Horrible Woman) shook me to my already rotten core. Acquired by the horror streamer SHUDDER (available with your friendly neighborhood AMC+ subscription) at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, Speak No Evil tells the story of a Danish and Dutch family4 meet-cute-ing on vacation in Italy and becoming best buds all too quickly. Months later, the free-spirited Dutch family extends an invitation to the more conservative Danish one for a holiday weekend at their countryside home. However, it doesn’t take long before things every so slowly descend to frustration with misunderstandings. The Dutch hospitality rapidly turns unnerving for the Danes, and they find themselves increasingly caught in a web of their own politeness in the face of eccentric—or is it deliriously depraved—behavior. While this premise may sound suspiciously like Meet the Fockers, SNE has a bit more go in its giddy-up.
The script penned by Tafdrup is a masterclass of slow-burn, tension, social anxiety, and perhaps most crucially, our desire to be liked, polite, and AT ALL COSTS unoffensive to our hosts. You will squeamishly squirm in your seat, wring your hands raw, shout at your screen for our protagonists to just get the hell out of there, and yet, just like our Danish heroes, you’ll keep coming back for more. Believe me when I say, it’ll leave your tongue tied by time the credits roll…
(4) LOOT (i.e., let Maya Rudolph cook)
Apple TV + is filling out its content roster with sweet and pleasant comedies like Ted Lasso and Maya Rudolph’s LOOT. Loosely (or rather tightly) based on MacKenzie Scott (f/k/a Mrs. Bezos), LOOT follows Rudolph’s Molly as she finds herself a ten-figure beneficiary of a messy divorce from a tech titan (played by Adam Scott, harkening back to Step Brothers-levels of douchery). With Matt Hubbard and Alan Yang at the helm (30 Rock; Parks & Recreation; Master of None), LOOT crafts its well-financed image in the first two—the laughs are plentiful if not particularly deep. Hubbard and Yang do, however, clearly understand that Rudolph is the heir apparent to Lucille Ball and gift her some belly-shaking physical comedy set pieces (one of which relates to Hot Ones which left me [and Rudolph’s character] in tears). Come for the chuckles and rich people bourgeois porn, stay for a burgeoning new star in Joel Kim Booster.
(5) I’m a little worried, darling…
Plenty of digital ink has been spilled about the messy Venice Film Festival premier of Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Worry Darling. I’m only going to spill a little more, because by far my favorite part of this oil spill of a film release is Chris Pine having to listen to Harry Styles talk about film.
“You know my favorite thing about the movie is that it feels like a movie,” opines Styles, which is truly tremendous stuff. Hearing this, Pine’s eyes glaze over as he stares into the middle distance, empty and seemingly pondering the litany of tiny decisions that brought him to sitting in this particular chair in Venice. Pine has now supplanted Sad Affleck (and previously Lonely Park Bench Keanu) in existentialism memes. I am become death, darling.
(6) PEARL: a musical nightmare in technicolor
The THIRD horror flick in this month’s 10 Things. Who needs October?! Ti West shot this prequel to his 70s slasher/exploitation thriller X (released earlier this year) during its filming5, and this movie has more in common with Singin’ in the Rain than Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Mia Goth portrays the titular Pearl (as she did an older version in X), and it’s among the best horror movie lead performances—both villain and final girl—I’ve ever seen. Goth’s voice is sugar sweet and breathy like Marilyn Monroe (discussed, tragically, a bit later herein), but as the psychopathic show tunes reach their crescendo, we transition from Singin’ in the Rain to Raining Blood.
(7) Blackbird
If you like prison dramas and true-crime, and who in the Year of Our Lord 2022 doesn’t, crime writer Dennis Lehane (The Wire; Mystic River) and Apple TV + have you covered (sometimes under mounds of dirt in a Mid-Western cornfield grave). In Black Bird, Paul Walter Hauser, left, stars as a would-be serial killer and Taron Egerton as the charismatic convict assigned by the FBI to befriend him so as to illicit a damning confession and commute his sentence. This taut premise is merely the blood-soaked prison floor on which Hauser and Egerton build their powerhouse performances. Hauser, in particular, preys on our empathy to protect those that are chronically bullied and draw us, helplessly and unwittingly, closer to his deceptively gentle Larry whose savage tendencies bubble just below his calm surface. Egerton, on the other hand, plays his cocky former star athlete gun-runner Jimmy with the charisma of a young Brando (and yes, I understand that comparison is hyperbolic verging on irresponsible, but he’s THAT good). Black Bird’s best scenes feature these two titans sitting across from one another, quietly talking, both confident in their own way, just trying to work each other out. And we get to watch the fireworks.
(8) Rings of Power
I’m hesitant to talk about the plot here given that we started our adventure back to Middle Earth this past month and are mid-way through the first season, but I do need to talk about how magnificently majestic this show looks. You can almost literally feel the Bezos money oozing from the screen vis-a-vie its production value, and I find Tolkien’s playful prose and hopeful sensibilities to be a welcome glimmer of hope in the nihilistic era of Game of Thrones. More to come on this one later…
(9) Errr, BLONDE?
Clocking in at just under three hours, Andrew Dominick’s Blonde, while an incredible visual and stylistic achievement as his films tend to be, made me feel a little icky in all the wrong ways. If you’re looking for a consistent aspect ratio/color palettes/film stock, psychologically sound characters, or uncomplicated sexual politics, I’d strongly recommend clicking on another Netflix thumbnail. Dominick seems primarily interested in style and less concerned with Marilyn Monroe’s (f/k/a Norma Jean) factual history. Viewers are treated to 180 minutes of trauma porn as we watch Monroe subjected to sadistic psychological and physical abuse, but to what end? I would have preferred that Dominick personally come to my home and punch me in the face while yelling “DADDY ISSUES!”6
I should mention Ana de Armas, who is transformative—although her Cuban accent occasionally peaks through—and seems like she went to hell (i.e., 1940s male-dominated Hollywood) and back to accurately realize this script on screen. Armas’s performance transcends the simple measure of good and bad, but Blonde left me feeling similar to Monroe: empty, lonely, and wanting to self-medicate.
(10) Ethan Hawke talking about and/or doing literally anything…
One of the founding fathers of “My Boys,” Ethan Hawke is occasionally recorded talking about movies or the process of making movies, and I always make time to watch any such clip. This month’s edition is Hawke discussing the germ of an idea that eventually became Before Sunrise, Hawke’s decades-long collaboration (featuring two sequels) with Richard Linklater (shoutout Houston!) and Julie Delpy.
Just damn delightful. His passion for film is contagious. I will follow you to the ends of the earth, my dude.
Absolutely no disrespect to watching movies by yourself at home like weirdo. I consume the majority of my content this way, usually with one or both of my sweet pups Harper and Harry snoozing next to me.
TOD is the second best Indy movie and you’re kidding yourself if you believe otherwise. The Last Crusade—which, other than the thrilling River Phoenix (RIP) opening sequence, is actually quite boring by Indy standards—is overrated and tenuously held together by Sean Connery’s performance. TLC is an amazing movie, of course, but in terms of Indy, it’s third (and if KOTCS didn’t shit itself in the last third, maybe even fourth).
Astounding this year in Everything Everywhere All At Once.
Never occurred to me that these two countries are like Texas and Tennessee, totally drivable. Continents are weird, man.
Shooting two movies simultaneously in two different periods (the 40s/70s) with one actor playing three characters has to be extraordinarily difficult. Shouts to one of preeminent horror sickos, Ti West.
In case Dominick’s publicist subscribes to In the Can, and given that Dominick seems to be uninterested in nuance, this is a joke. I do not wished to be punched in this face.