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MIRACLE MILE Screen Comparisons – Checking KLSC’s New 4K-Scanned Restoration Against Their 2015 Disc
This article contains several comparisons which contrast the older Kino Lorber Studio Classics Blu-ray transfer (2015) with their new 4K-sourced restoration. The frames aren’t necessarily exact matches, but should give a solid indication of the visual differences.
Steve De Jarnatt’s beloved apocalyptic romance Miracle Mile is returning to Blu-ray in a stunning new 4K-restored Blu-ray. Like De Jarnatt’s other cult classic Cherry 2000, Kino Lorber Studio Classics has previously released the film on Blu-ray before, but is reintroducing it to the format with a new master, extras, and packaging.
Comparing the Transfers
Even more than with Cherry 2000, this edition represents an across-the-board improvement. The 2015 disc was advertised as “newly remastered in HD”, while the new HD master is sourced “from a 4K scan of the original camera negative” (the difference in language seemingly suggesting that the older transfer was from a later generation print).
The “slider” images below allow for a quick comparison of the stills from both discs by color, cleanliness, framing, but are downscaled and not representative of the full 1080p resolution. These are only illustrative of differences, and not definitive, especially in terms of resolution and clarity.
For a truer direct comparison, it’s recommended to download the image files and view them at full size on a large monitor with 1080p or higher resolution. You can download all images at full resolution in a single file zipfile below:
Definition/Film Grain
The prior release was extremely “chunky” and noisy in its presentation of grain, but the new disc has a much finer detail that’s much clearer, even on the same Blu-ray format. As much of the film takes place at night, this is especially evident in much of the nocturnal, low-lit shots.
Left: Old 2015 / Right: New 2024 
Left: Old 2015 / Right: New 2024 
Left: Old 2015 / Right: New 2024 
Left: Old 2015 / Right: New 2024 
Left: Old 2015 / Right: New 2024 Print Damage/Restoration
In reviewing specific frames I found many instances where various bits ans blobs in the 2015 print are no longer visible – either cleaned up or, more likely, not present in this new scan.
Left: Old 2015 / Right: New 2024 
Left: Old 2015 / Right: New 2024 Contrast/Blowout
The refined contrast pulls in some additional detail that was previously lost to blowout, such as the highlights on this phone booth, and the billowing, cloudlike texture of this explosion.
Left: Old 2015 / Right: New 2024 
Left: Old 2015 / Right: New 2024 But on the other side of the spectrum, darker colors and blacks look more defined as well. That seems notable since there’s usually a push-and-pull between balancing both extremes effectively.
Left: Old 2015 / Right: New 2024 
Left: Old 2015 / Right: New 2024 Other Characteristics
The framing has been slightly adjusted, pulled back a smidge wider but also introducing a slight letterbox (note the slim black bars on the top and bottom of the screen).
Left: Old 2015 / Right: New 2024 Color differences aren’t especially pronounced, but occasionally the newer print surprises.
Left: Old 2015 / Right: New 2024 
Left: Old 2015 / Right: New 2024 
Left: Old 2015 / Right: New 2024 To bring it all home, here’s a particular shot that I felt packed in a lot of comparison points in a single image: more vibrant color, sharper grain texture, blowout mitigation (the blue sky, Fat Boy’ head) and of course the adjusted framing. Even the rows of lights that pepper the background seem more focused.
Left: Old 2015 / Right: New 2024 Conclusions
This is an across-the-board improvement. If you’re a fan, the only thing that might dissuade me from buying this new edition is the possibility that a true 4K UHD disc might follow (it doesn’t seem unlikely).
Besides the new new master, this updated edition 2-disc release comes packed with a slipcover and reversible art, and numerous additional extras including new restrospectives and interviews, as well as two of de Jarnatt’s early short films (which also appear on the re-release of Cherry 2000), and subtitles (which were omitted on the original release), making it overall a much more complete and definitive edition.
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LIZA: A TRULY TERRIFIC ABSOLUTELY TRUE STORY is a Truly Terrific Absolutely Great Documentary
“I was expecting all the pretty things I’d heard about…and I got a lot of them.”
Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story has been an anticipated release following glowing reviews out of its Tribeca premiere last year. The film starts with a somewhat candid, yet charming version of the great Liza Minnelli before vintage camera footage takes over, showing her in home movies with friends being carefree and joyous, with each clip saying more about the real Liza than any interview segment possibly could. This is quickly replaced with news footage of her mother, Judy Garland’s, death, surprising the audience by the way it plunges into perhaps the most famous aspect of Minnelli’s life. As the film proceeds, it becomes clear that this was the best place to start since, in many ways, the death of Judy Garland was the beginning of Liza Minnelli.
Director Bruce David Klein gives an inside look into the life of the actress and performer known simply as Liza. Through interviews with friends and collaborators, such as Mia Farrow and Michael Feinstein, and the late Chita Rivera, Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story gives great personal insight into one of the most influential and legendary stars of the 20th century.
Folks expecting the kind of typical behind-the-scenes tell-all might be somewhat disappointed. Liza is not the typical documentary in that it doesn’t chronicle its subject’s life in the traditional linear way, nor is it the kind of gossip fest most would wish it to be. The two biggest areas of interest when it comes to Minnelli’s personal life have always been her relationships with her ex-husbands and with the equally legendary Garland. In these moments, interviewees speculate about her relationship with her famous mother, while Liza only offers the briefest mentions on the subject. She says even less about the men in her life beyond commenting: “Some of them weren’t men at all.” And yet, Liza does have its highlights as a documentary, especially when it comes to Minnelli’s past as an addict. The star’s struggles with substance abuse have been well-documented and it’s here where she’s at her most upfront, even commenting: “How lucky I was to have gone through all of the bad stuff that I’ve gone through because it prepared me for the rest of my life.” Liza might not be the kind of fodder lovers of True Hollywood Story would have eaten up back in the day, but it’s a surprisingly honest portrait of a legend that favors Liza the person over Liza the icon.
There’s a poetry to the approach Klein takes with Liza, choosing to present the film as a memoir with chapter breaks, spotlighting the memories and experiences in Minnelli’s life that helped shape her. Liza is about the life lessons the star learned along the way, be they about performing or living, and how she was taught them. There are moments of great vulnerability at watching Liza talk about how she conquered her stage fright through godmother Kay Thompson while crediting her understanding of dance to Bob Fosse, and the way she interpreted songs in a manner that mimics Charles Aznavour. She shares how she learned to navigate the press at an early age. In one vintage clip, a reporter asks Liza what she thinks about the critics who call her ugly, to which she comments that there are different kinds of ugliness. In hearing her recount these and other formative milestones in her life, it’s almost impossible to believe that there wasn’t always a legend inside just waiting to come out. But Liza takes no credit for herself, giving it instead to those who inspired and shaped the multi-faceted entertainer we know today by simply saying: “I learned by watching.”
Liza does feel a bit scattered at times, especially in the detour it takes with Minnelli’s relationship with designer and best friend Halston, which feels more inserted than genuinely explored. The film rebounds, however, by clinging to its strength, which is Liza recounting the profound effects being Liza Minnelli had on her life and what inhabiting such a huge persona taught her. It’s hard to ignore the fact that more of the talking feels like it comes from the likes of Farrow, Feinstein, Ben Vereen, Fred Ebb, and others than from Liza herself. Perhaps this is why when Liza ends, it does so somewhat abruptly with a feeling that we’ve only just begun. That’s fine. With a reported memoir on the way for 2026 (those of you wanting the hot goss may just get it yet), Liza, as always, will be back.
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Unearthed’s FEED is a Heaping Helping of Shock Cinema
Unearthed Films’ latest disc release hits online stores this week and it could be one of their strangest titles yet, and that’s saying a lot for a label known by extreme horror fans for releasing such downbeat masterworks as A Serbian Film and The Untold Story. Directed by Brett Leonard who also helmed 90s cyberpunk flicks The Lawnmower Man (1992) and Virtuosity (1995), this Aussie film also has the American director going down under for another dark cyber infused tale.
The film in question, Feed follows Australian cop Phillip (Patrick Thompson) who belongs to a special unit that hunts the worst of the worst from internet chat rooms. When we meet Phillip, he’s just coming off a consensual cannibal case that didn’t go quite as expected, and he’s just starting to fray at the seams. Looking to get back in the saddle and looking for leads, he gets an odd vibe from an American “feeder” website. Now for those not in the know, being a “feeder” is fetish that involves someone who derives sexual pleasure from feeding someone, usually until they are overweight and dependent on the feeder. This film has our suspect feeding women not only until they are bedridden, but until he literally kills them with food while streaming and documenting online for his paying customers.
THE FAT LADY FROM FEED MIS MILGATE AND ALEX PHOTOS BY PETER CARRETTE ICON IMAGES (C) 6.2.2005 It’s a morosely fascinating premise that is peppered with some bizarre character work, that all feels like everything has been punched into overdrive. Take for example our cop protagonist Phillip, who seems to imbue every toxic movie cop stereotype imaginable. He’s a drunk, he has a lot of rough sex with a girlfriend half his age, whom he also beats up. When he’s caught crying in the bathroom, he’s denied traveling to America to investigate the case, but he of course like any movie cop, goes anyway. This is opposite our antagonist, who never misses an opportunity to monologue and get naked to show off his various religious tattoos. He’s also got this weird bro-ey pseudo feminist philosophy, that he never misses a chance to mansplain, how what he is doing is actually empowering women and going in the face of unrealistic beauty standards.
The film even has the two debating one another in scenes that feel somewhat surreal and firmly rooted in the early aughts cinema with how you’re supposed to believe our alcoholic cop would just stand there and debate a serial killer in a very Seven-ish sort of way, instead of shooting him in the face. That’s a film this film has a rather large debt to, because while Seven spent the runtime alluding to the heinous things John Doe did, Feed is more than happy to let you gaze into the abyss. It’s not an easy watch either, as we see Michael force feed his 700 pound naked victim weight gain slurry with a funnel. But just when you think that’s as hard as it goes, trust me it still has some crumbs left in the cookie jar for the sickos.
As far as the film goes in its portrayal of obesity and beauty standards, I would say it’s slightly dated and fucking bizarre to be honest, but that’s part of its charm. I don’t exactly know what the intention here is, there are scenes of explicit rough sex with Philips’ waif like girlfriend running side by side with Michael slathering a 700 pound naked woman in chocolate sauce, which is jarring as it is surreal. The more time we spend with both men, we come to the realization that both are just different flavors of terrible. So I feel like this film exists simply for shock value, and it achieves that locking the viewer in with its story of two lunatics on either side of the law fueled by the most toxic of masculinity I’ve seen on film in a hot minute. That said in its defense it’s pretty damn entertaining in the same way as something like The Sadness.
Feed is essentially like Seven’s creepy drunk uncle. It’s familiar enough, but it goes hard and dark, fueled by heaping helpings of surreal melodrama and gore. I feel like an unexpected side effect of the heightened performances is they manage to take the edge of some of the more grisly moments. If you know what you’re signing up for given the distro, you should definitely be good and ready coming into this film. It’s not for the masses no doubt, but for those who enjoy transgressive and extreme cinema this one for the most part is a solid and amusing watch. I will even give it bonus points given the film’s full frontal male nudity to female nudity ratio is about even, given the fact the film is about a man who runs an adult site for men.
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PRESENCE Puts a Haunting Spin on Supernatural Thrillers
Steven Soderbergh’s first foray into Horror has more than visual trickery up its unseen sleeves
Stills courtesy of NEON. We glide through an aged suburban house as a family of four inspects their new surroundings. Study their reactions as they take in a new idea of “home.” Watch over their shoulders as mother Rebekah (Lucy Liu) deletes large batches of incriminating work emails; father Chris (Chris Sullivan) calls a “lawyer friend” to discuss spousal incrimination; son Tyler (Eddy Maday) brags about the cruel prank he helped pull on a classmate in order to fit in; and as daughter Chloe (Callina Liang) does homework, lost in tragedy. Over long stretches of Presence’s opening moments, we do nothing but watch. Until director Steven Soderbergh reveals we’re not just unassuming voyeurs. Chloe disappears into another room, but we don’t follow–we stay, as our spectral presence rearranges Chloe’s belongings before hiding in her closet, awaiting her horrified reaction to come.
Presence, shot in secret by Soderbergh and writer David Koepp before an unveiling at Sundance last year, has a devilishly simple high-concept hook: it’s a haunted house film from the point-of-view of a ghost for the entire runtime. It’s a technical premise befitting the experimental auteur and the blockbuster scribe of Panic Room and Jurassic Park. Those expecting a dread-filled creepfest in the line of Paranormal Activity may leave Presence disappointed; those with an open mind, though, will find rewarding terrors–and surprising pathos–lurking in the shadows of Soderbergh’s first outright attempt at horror.
The most rewarding aspect of Presence is how Soderbergh and Koepp continue to evolve the nature of their shift in perspective across the film’s runtime. Even past the opening reveals that Soderbergh’s camerawork belongs to the titular “Presence,” Soderbergh and Koepp use the barebones fundamentals of screenwriting–particularly the gradual reveal of real-time information–to gradually alter the audience’s literal and emotional relationship with the film onscreen. We shift from observers and voyeurs to an invasive presence, with a delicious tension mined not from if the threat will strike this poor family, but when and how. Much like last year’s slow-burn slasher In a Violent Nature, Presence openly plays with our expectations of horror villains, forcing us to re-evaluate why we demand certain bloodshed from these films when it’s openly telegraphed that disturbing satisfaction will surely arrive down the line.
But as we study Chloe, learning more about the tragic, extremely lonely mourning she’s going through–our presence feels alien, and we instinctively want to turn away from such uncomfortable intimacy (which our closeted specter often does in key moments). While Presence does pack in a few creative scares to sate its audience, Soderbergh and Koepp’s lean 85-minute experiment is, for the most part, more a paranormal drama in the vein of A Ghost Story or Personal Shopper–exploring the emotional crux of life after death, and why we feel compelled to believe in ghosts. In execution, Presence draws you in with the promise of horror–but doesn’t reduce itself to another plain-faced “we are the monsters,” capital-T Trauma metaphor. Rather, Soderbergh’s cinematic specter allows us to see just how much this broken family keeps from one another, building a dramatic tension that’d be rewarding to watch outside of any horror movie trappings.
Rebekah and Chris are so mismatched as parents and partners, and it’s fascinating to see how each parent’s relationship with their children grows and withers in such limited space. Liu, as a headstrong and blunt financial advisor, seems to dispense affection to those who earn it–namely her swimming champion son Tyler–leaving her totally ill-prepared for how to handle daughter Chloe’s loss and grief. In a way, Rebekah relegates herself to a similar place of icy comfort as Sandra Hüller in The Zone of Interest, ignoring the suffering or gazes of those around her lest she be forced–against all odds–to take any sort of culpable action to change things and, in doing so, acknowledge her perfect world is anything but. In contrast, though, Chris Sullivan is there to sweep in from the wings as the Horror movie Dad we all wish we had. Unable to get a grip on his family’s interpersonal conflict, he still manages to be there for Chloe in her darkest moments as a vulnerable voice of validation or comfort–a tender performance that echoes the best of Michael Shannon in Take Shelter.
Watching such interior domestic drama, our place as spectator-spirit feels like an odd ghost out, the elephant in the room that, like Chloe’s grief, Rebekah’s secrets, or Chris’ inefficacy, takes up so much space despite everyone’s desperation to ignore it. Presence finds such emotional ambiguity in its characters–loving their flaws as much as their strengths–that makes our allegiance to them so difficult to pin down or categorize, yet we empathize with them on such a gut emotional level. We struggle to understand what threats face this family, seemingly find them, seemingly become them, until we come to another absolutely terrifying moment that turns us back into helpless viewers–where such unbearable tension comes from knowing what’s wrong, wanting to help–but we can only watch, and watch, and watch.
In such a dizzying amount of time, Soderbergh and Koepp transform us from spectator to invader to emotional prisoner–and yet, somehow, there are still more staggering and suspenseful forms to take.
Presence’s central conceit is far from an irresistible gimmick–it’s an essential aspect of itself, whose form eventually mirrors its ghost in a deeply unsettling search for purpose until all tragically becomes clear upon reflection.
Presence hits theaters on January 24th courtesy of NEON.
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BYSTANDERS: A Brutal and Refreshingly Feminist Take on the Rape/Revenge Subgenre
Bystanders is not your typical rape revenge-o-matic. Mary Beth McAndrews’ feature length directorial debut subverts the more lurid expectations, while making sure not to dull the edge of her hyper relevant, razor sharp take on this subgenre. The film hit VOD yesterday and what the film lacks in budget, it more than makes up for in its ideology and creativity.
Bystanders centers on Abby (Brandi Botkin), a timid senior in high school who is invited to a college frat party at a remote cabin in the woods with two of her female friends. Unbeknownst to her the bros throwing said party, plan to not only drug and sexually assault Abby and her friends, but afterward hunt them down for sport. Director Mary Beth McAndrews manages to walk us through the inciting events in the first act, without forcing us to endure the assault. She does this in such a way to not rob the act of the weight it necessitates to fuel the audience buy in, and propel the back half of the film. This is not only thanks to how Mary Beth paints this scenario, with a few, but heavy brush strokes, but also thanks to Bob Wilcox’s take on the ringleader of this endeavor, Cody, who feels like a slimy Gen Z David Hess.
It’s while the affluent entitled rapists are attempting to hunt and kill the women they just assaulted, that Abby runs into the road flagging down a car with our titular bystanders Clare (Jamie Alvey) and her boyfriend Gray (Garrett Murphy) who appear to be a pair of normal folks fresh from a wedding reception. It’s how they factor into this film and their expertise that allows a third party to not only add their commentary onto the situation, but for them to intervene on Abby’s behalf. This allows the film to avert one of the tropes of the sub-genre, where after the protagonist is sexually assaulted, she must then regroup and formulate a plan of revenge after the fact. Here however, the revenge is served hot to go, as the bystanders turn out to be not so bad at dispatching Abby’s attackers.
It’s this and the lack of gratuity in the rape that I think fixes two of my biggest pain points with rape/revenge as a subgenre. First we as an audience are forced to endure the assault of our protagonist stripping both our avatar on screen and by proxy the audience of their power and agency, while the antagonists are allowed to move on. The victim and the audience are then forced to endure the aftereffects of the assault, regroup, heal, and watch as our heroine plans her attack with the audience in tow. This film instead circumvents those beats in favor of riding that momentum right into that final act, allowing the audience a bit of a reprieve, but not letting them completely off the hook.
That said Bystanders is a brutal and refreshingly feminist take on the rape/revenge sub-genre, that shows a complete grasp of how these films need to work, while updating the formula for a new generation. This is not only thanks to Mary Beth McAndrews’ script and competent vision executed here, but the performances of her cast, that delivered something more dimensional than you’d expect. Bystanders still has the heft of a sleazier revenge-o-matic, but one that’s traded those more exploitative bits and its nihilistic helplessness for a more empowering narrative, that manages to offer up some hope for its viewer when all is said and done, which is not what you expect from this subgenre.
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Two Cents Takes on Shakespeare and Hitler with TO BE OR NOT TO BE
Ed, Elizabeth, and Frank spent January 20 celebrating one of funniest and most groundbreaking comedies ever made.
Two Cents is a Cinapse original column akin to a book club for films. The Cinapse team curates the series and contribute their “two cents” using a maximum of 200-400 words. Guest contributors and comments are encouraged, as are suggestions for future picks. Join us as we share our two cents on films we love, films we are curious about, and films we believe merit some discussion. Would you like to be a guest contributor or programmer for an upcoming Two Cents entry? Simply watch along with us and/or send your pitches or 200-400 word reviews to [email protected].
The Pick: To Be or Not to Be (1942)
It feels right that Two Cents should have chosen Ernst Lubitsch’s classic To Be or Not to Be for the penultimate selection in this month’s classic screwball comedy series. Given the darkness of this January 20th, a comedy about Hitler invading Poland during WWII feels more than appropriate. It’s understandable that the premise of such a movie could turn people off, especially with the state of things today being what they are (only three of us contributed to this week’s column). Still, Lubitsch’s 1942 masterpiece remains exactly the kind of tonic that is so very much needed in times like 2025. Starring Carole Lombard (in her final role) and Jack Benny, the movie features the pair as the husband and wife heads of a Polish theater troupe in Nazi-occupied Warsaw who hatch a scheme to infiltrate the Gestapo and thwart their plans using a wide assortment of cloak-and-dagger antics that lead to hilarious results.
– Frank Calvillo
The Team:
What I’m perhaps the most surprised by with the screwball comedies I have been exposed to by my programming teammates thus far is the almost heist film level complexity of plotting that they seem to have, with To Be or Not to Be being no different. Ernst Lubitsch writes/directs Carole Lombard, Jack Benny, and Robert Stack (primarily known to me as the Unsolved Mysteries guy, so this was a bit of a shocker) in a harrowing exercise: trying to make a comedy in and around Hitler’s invasion of Poland. It was easy for this modern viewer to forget the setting since no attempt was made to even use differing accents much less languages. Everyone blasts into the rapid fire dialog in “of the time” English, which I assume no studio in the 1940s would have even conceived of doing differently. But language quibbles aside, To Be or Not to Be does have many twists and turns more akin to something like an Ocean’s 11 type film than any kind of sweeping romance or classical drama.
The funniest element that speaks the loudest today is how our heroes, trying to root out a Nazi plot and escape with their lives in a spy game of double crosses executed by professional hams, err, actors, can repeatedly rely on every Nazi’s simpering need to kiss up to their Führer and appear as blindly loyal to him as possible, damn the evidence. No Nazi in the film can have a sense of humor, tell a story, or slip in the slightest with regards to their loyalty before one of our heroes can exploit their misstep. The sycophancy is off the charts, here played for laughs at the expense of the invaders, but telling to modern audiences that a race to the bottom of the boot licking barrel is the stuff of derisive comedy, not the building blocks upon which to found a life or a society. To Be or Not to Be is twisty, turny, filled with gags and smart writing and humorous quagmires our heroes must rely on their skills to escape from. But it’s also clearly poking fun at Hitler and his gestapo and their countless failings as ring kissers par excellence. Let’s learn a lesson or two from Lombard and gang and not blindly follow our leadership until we’re no more than history’s villainous punchline.
I assumed I had seen this film before, but as I watched To Be or Not to Be this weekend, it seemed new to me and not what I remembered (maybe I saw the Mel Brooks remake as a kid). The 1942 B&W comedy pairs Carole Lombard (My Man Godfrey) with radio/TV’s Jack Benny as a couple of famous Warsaw actors, the Turas. A younger Polish airman (baby-faced Robert Stack) serves as a romantic distraction for Ms. Tura from her marriage to a man who doesn’t think she’s as talented as he is. But after the Germans invade Poland, priorities shift and both Turas become involved in an espionage plot.
I’m more familiar with Benny through clips of his old TV show, so it’s fun to see him play this kind of character. Most of the scenes involving Benny have the beats of a Marx Brothers film; the jokes come quick, and you might still be laughing when the next one is made. Lombard is more understated in her role, although she still gets her own laughs.
The Lubitsch film has screwball elements – characters pretending to be someone they’re not, recurring gags, moments of slapstick – but the reality of war permeates the work. The threat of death makes this a black comedy more similar in theme to something like Elaine May’s A New Leaf (next week’s film under our Screwball 101 theme) than the previous two films we’ve discussed this month. For instance, the Shylock monologue Jewish actor Greenberg (Felix Bressart) recites gains more emotional heft in the differing context of each recitation: first, to show he knows it and feels unappreciated in his current theatrical role; secondly, as a response to the German invasion of Poland; and lastly, to distract German officials while the rest of his troupe performs a getaway. Lubitsch’s film may be thematically heavy, but never maudlin.
It’s hard to remember when I first saw To Be or Not to Be. In many ways the movie feels like one of those titles that has always been a part of my cinematic foundation. As I said before, this is a film that could give folks some pause what with the fact that it treats a very real human tragedy as fodder for a slapstick comedy romp. But the comedy in Lubitsch’s film is so well executed that it easily sweeps the audience away with its various innuendos, moments of befuddlement, and overall farcical nature. The gags here are plentiful and potent with every actor showing great comedic timing and playing off their counterparts superbly. Disguises and improvisation between Benny’s egocentric actor and the German officials he’s trying to fool prove a true comedy engine while Lombard’s ability to slide into the role of a lovestruck fake Nazi sympathizer is the perfect showcase of her comedy skills. Almost none of the jokes fail to deliver whether they be Benny’s character’s reference to himself as “that great, great actor” or the way Sig Ruman’s Nazi Colonel remains hopelessly and sidesplittingly confused throughout.
But the brilliance of To Be or Not to Be lies not just in its laughs, but in its daringness. Understandably, the film’s aim and execution comes across as somewhat surreal. The horrors inflicted by the very figures Lubistch’s movie was sending up were incredibly real, and for some, there was no comedy to be found in making anyone on that side out to be fools who could be easily manipulated. But the film cleverly takes the incredibly terrifying reality of the day and attempts to break down its frightening power through laughter. As a comedy, the beats and the timing would be stellar even if it wasn’t tackling such a dark subject at hand. The fact that it takes on the threat of Nazi Germany through laughter not only makes the film even funnier, but it allowed audiences the chance to strip away the power so many had given to that side. It’s remarkable that a high-profile studio film with two top stars leading the way should be as bold as this one was while also taking great care not to shortchange the very real danger of what the world was facing. It’s no wonder that To Be or Not to Be made it into the National Library of Congress and was remade by Mel Brooks in the early 80s to great effect. Perhaps now more than ever, Lubitsch’s film remains one of most important ever made.
A JANUARY OF VINTAGE LAUGHS!
In an effort to combat the January blues (not to mention other devastating events taking place that month), the Two Cents crew here at Cinapse have decided to dive into the world of classic screwball comedies. The likes of Carole Lombard, Ernst Lubitsch, Barbara Stanwyck, Jack Benny, and Elaine May are all on deck to chase away those winter blues with a collection of movies that range from the romantic, to the scandalous. Spend the month with us and some side-splitting laughs from the masters who made the genre the riotous (and slightly subversive) staple that it remains to this day.
Join us by contacting our team or emailing [email protected]!
1/27- A New Leaf
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Indian Cinema Roundup: GAME CHANGER and DAAKU MAHARAAJ Redefine”Political Action”
On this edition of Indian Cinema Roundup, a pair of action-packed Telugu-language films featuring major stars, and now showing in US theaters. Both films feature visionary leaders striving toward justice with a mix of political action and action as politics, and lean into the trope of flashbacking at the midpoint to provide additional historical reference to contextualize and motivate the contemporary story.
Both films are tremendously enjoyable, and while the box office has clearly favored the (slightly) more grounded vigilante epic Daaku Maharaaj, I preferred the clever maneuvering and one-upmanship central to the deliriously bonkers Game Changer.
Either way, your ears will be happy with the energetic, hard-driving, dance-infused music of composer Thaman S, who created the soundtracks for both films.
GAME CHANGER, dir. S. Shankar
Ram Charan, best known as one of the co-leads of the massive worldwide hit RRR, stars in S. Shankar’s (Enthiran) Telugu language directorial debut, the politically charged Game Changer.
Hotheaded Ram Nandan (Charan) is a firebrand led by a sense of righteous fury, trying to look out for the community by punishing wrongdoers. Inspired by his love for the beautiful Deepika (Kiara Advani), who shuns his violent methods and ask-questions-later approach, he channels his anger into public service by becoming a district collector – a position with a lot of practical power to effect change, which he wields effectively as a sort of supercop in many humorous and over-the-top action-packed sequences.
Ram’s bureaucratic ascent puts him at odds with the corrupt local government led by the Bobbili clan, especially the scheming Bobbili Mopidevi (S. J. Surya), the son of the Chief Minister who seeks to set himself up as the next CM.
While this plot might not seem particularly exciting, it’s executed in such a deliriously entertaining and indulgently crowd-pleasing fashion, packed with devilishly sly political maneuverings, absurd humor, high melodrama, and of course tons of show-stopping musical interludes which are brilliantly colorful and brimming with energy.
In a gag that seems pulled from the farcical Z-A-Z style of movies like Airplane!, Ram’s right-hand man is a guy who always walks and stands sideways, never looking directly at those to whom he’s speaking – because, he explains, he came out of the womb sideways. “Jokes” like this are all the more wild for appearing infrequently in a semi-serious political story, creating a mishmash of tones and styles which I find to be charmingly Indian-Asian, but I know some viewers could find disorienting.
In a trope that’s somewhat common to many Indian blockbusters, the film is halved by an intermission which then changes perspective to tell another story which gives context to the main conflict. We roll back a few decades and learn the untold story of the origins of the Bobbili clan’s political party and rise to power – with Charan playing a dual role of Ram’s father, a political influencer whose righteousness and hunger for justice we can see echoed in his son.
Personally I loved this and embraced the goofiness along the the excellence. It’s only January and there will undoubtedly be better movies than this in 2025, but I can’t imagine what could top this as a straight-up banger.
DAAKU MAHARAAJ, dir. Bobby Kolli
While I personally loved Game Changer, it underperformed at home and audiences seem to be more engaged with the competition, Daaku Maharaaj, starring Nandamuri Balakrishna, aka NBK. This seemed to be reflected in my own screenings, where Game Changer had a sparse turnout and Daaku Maharaaj was greeted by a loud and boisterous crowd who cheered and whooped in key scenes and in some of the more suggestive dance moves.
Nanaji (NBK) takes on a job as the driver for a wealthy estate, where the family and their fearless patriarch are dealing with fallout from opposing the powerful gangsters who are trying to use the land for illegal activities including drug production.
The driver’s interests and reasons for infiltrating the family extend far beyond simple employment though, and he has his own reasons for wanting to not only help the family, but protect their precocious young granddaughter. NBK has a sweet chemistry with the young girl who is his charge, creating a central beating heart that powers and informs the story. It soon become clear that Nanaji is no mere chauffeur, but an utterly badass guardian angel who fights back against the baddies guerrilla style – not only that, he’s backed by an loyal army of people who love him – a king with no kingdom – the “Daaku Maharaaj”.
Like Game Changer, the film follows the common Telugu/Indian film trope of completely changing gears and introducing a twist right off the intermission. The film flashes back to tell the origin story behind the Daaku Maharaaj and his followers; then follows in tying it forward to the contemporary storyline with lots lots of twists and angles in both timelines. It’s a solid grounding, telling how a concerned civil engineer took on the plight of a poor remote village without access to water. Its people were essentially enslaved to a mining operation for their survival, and he became their champion.
While not as deliriously entertaining as Game Changer – which is in my mind the superior film of this pairing – I also found a lot to love with Daaku Maharaaj. It’s kind of like an Indian version of Man on Fire… if you found out halfway through that Man on Fire was a sequel to Malcolm X with Malcolm secretly leading an underground army.
A/V Out
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WOLF MAN is a Lackluster Slice of Lycanthropy
Leigh Whannell’s return to the Universal Monsterverse lacks bite
After the disastrous attempt to reboot the Universal Monster brand under the blockbuster-tilted Dark Universe Umbrella, a shift was made to take a more considered and intimate approach to revisiting creature features such as Dracula, The Mummy and yes, The Wolfman. Partnering with Blumhouse, the independent film company renowned for carving out success with low cost but popular productions within the genre space (Paranormal Activity, M3gan, The Purge, The Black Phone). The collaboration hit a home run with their first outing, The Invisible Man. A timely reimagining of the tale weaving in themes of abuse, gaslighting, and powerplays into a genuinely tense thriller. Well the films writer/director Leigh Whannell (Saw, Insidious, Upgrade) is back, helming another entry to the expanding UM/Blumhouse stable, this time with an updated take on lycan lore.
The film opens in the woods of Oregon. A father and son hunting together, and a brief encounter with a mysterious predator. Safely making it home, the son witnesses the beginning of his father’s soon to be obsession with this creature in the woods. 30 years later and Blake (Christopher Abbott) now lives in San Francisco with his wife Charlotte (Julia Garner) and their daughter Ginger (an effective and authentic turn from Matilda Firth). Despite a strong bond with his daughter, Blake’s relationship with his wife is strained. When he receives confirmation that his long missing father has been declared officially dead, he suggests a return to his childhood home to settle his father’s affairs and spend time together as a family. As they get close to the farmstead, an incident occurs on a forest road plunging them into a dire encounter with a creature in the wilderness. Seeking refuge on the family farm, the trio barricade the doors against the monster outside, only to find a threat emerges within, as Blake begins to act strangely, and undergoes a strange transformation into a more primal force.
What’s admirable about Wolf Man is a determination to repurpose the mythology behind this creature feature into something more intimate and poignant. Centering the film around a family, already challenged in its stability and variances in levels of intimacy, and upending things with encounter with this lupine menace An ominous dread builds as a ‘sickness’ consumes Blake and his inner, primal nature comes to the fore. The slow creeping shift (both physical and psychological) into this lycan state is well portrayed, both by the practical effects work and the performance of Abbott himself. Its considered and effective body horror at play. Where Whannell really finds his footing is in crafting long sequences and building tension, including a standout sequence involving a greenhouse roof. The sound work and cinematography both impress, both notably employed in a series of sequences that flip perspectives between the human world and the lycan one.
While these components work, there are fundamental problems with the film that undercut its potential. The narrative is simple yes, but underdeveloped. The characters and their arcs are poorly scripted while dialogue is excruciatingly clunky at times. The main issue is that this feels like a film with misplaced priorities. The Invisible Man dealt with resonant themes that serve as the foundation of the film, and served as a way to leap off into a creature feature. Here, themes of generational trauma (yes, a horror film yet again used to explore trauma) feel to tacked on to a threadbare plot and dynamic as a way to try and connect the film and events to an audience. It’s a muddled approach that undermines its success. The script from Whannell and Corbett Tuck is just under-baked and predictable, clunkily weaving in subtext, and paying insufficient attention to its small cast. Abbot gets plenty to chew on (no pun intended) with his role, but Garner suffers, with her character being pretty sidelined. Charlotte seems poised to come to the fore as the film advances, but never really reaches that level. The finale falls rather flat too, again stemming from insufficient buildup as well as a lackluster resolution. It’s not all bad, but taken as a whole, Wolf Man is just all too lean and lacks bite.
Wolf Man tears up cinemas from January 17th
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WOLF MAN is a Ruff Watch
The Wolf Man has had a rather tumultuous trip to the silver screen now in its second contemporary theatrical incarnation. Originally planned to star Ryan Gosling, when this film was going to be directed by Derek Cianfrance (Blue Valentine/The Place Beyond the Pines), due to the strikes, the pandemic and the success of The Invisible Man, the project defaulted to Leigh Whannell, who once again co-wrote the film with his wife Corbett Tuck. Given my love of the Saw and Insidious franchise, I will watch anything Whannell puts out there. But folks, including myself, have been sort of holding their breath about this project since the film had a pop-up presence at Halloween Horror Nights last year (which I attended), which was short-lived due to the fan reaction to the creature design on display.
The film itself attempts to look at generational trauma through the guise of a werewolf narrative, but it does so with the subtlety of a jackhammer. In the first act the film basically says the quiet part out loud when we first meet our protagonist and new star Christopher Abbott, who plays the sensitive, unemployed writer/stay at home super-dad Blake. He’s been drifting apart from his wife, so the pair do the worst possible thing you can do in a film in the horror genre – go to a remote cabin in the woods to hopefully regroup and rekindle their relationship. Now the film does subvert expectations by not even letting us have that scene where the family unpacks in the new place, sharing a moment of quiet affirmation before all hell breaks loose. But the family doesn’t even get to the cabin before they encounter the film’s titular wolf man, which here for all intents and purposes feels more like a wendigo or bigfoot and spend the rest of the film running for their lives.
While I did enjoy the more folk horror tone of the film, given the direction Whannell takes, it does so while really leaning more into the body horror. The grotesque transformation here is a slow and painful one that takes place during the duration of the film, pulling a page from Cronenberg’s The Fly. This would also explain the iteration of the creature from Halloween Horror Nights, but you really need the context, that it’s more of a work in progress than the final form. While I definitely bought the relationship of Christopher Abbott and his delightful spitfire of a daughter (Matilda Firth), it’s his wife Charlotte played by Julia Garner, who falls completely flat while channeling a distracting True Blue era Madonna – both look and acting-wise. She never quite gets the audience on board, before she is tasked with carrying the narrative to completion.
See, one really cool, albeit, really strange part of the film is when we periodically go to Blake’s wolf POV once he is bitten. We experience not only his heightened senses and Bluey-like color viewing schema during his transformation, but his loss of understanding of human language, making him an animal running on pure instinct. There’s also a few other weird K9 influenced scenes, like where he pees in the house and gnaws on his own limbs. It’s moments like these that only get stranger the more you dwell on them after the fact, and wonder why the film wastes time doing this, rather than giving more time to developing the characters. There’s also a final reveal in the film that’s about as revelatory as the Khan reveal from Star Trek into Darkness, the only way you won’t groan through this is if you’ve slept through the first act.
Wolf Man is yet another not so great take on the classic Universal Monster that will probably kill any chance we have of getting a sequel to The Invisible Man. Speaking of which, I stayed till the end of the credits because I was half expecting a post credit stinger where Elizabeth Moss pulls up at the end, to recruit Charlotte for a team of women whose exes had turned into monsters. But I think the problem here is this film forgets the humanity that made Invisible as great as it was, it wasn’t a monster film first and foremost, it was this exploration of paranoia and domestic violence and later turned into one of the best damn monster films ever. Here the film starts off with this take on generational trauma, that doesn’t quite develop before we’re forced to deal with the monster it birthed. I feel like more time with the characters and possibly a different approach by Garner could have salvaged this film, that just doesn’t develop anywhere near the emotional stakes of Whannell’s previuos effort. Instead you’ve got a gnarly somewhat forgettable wendigo movie, which isn’t terrible, but isn’t what I was hoping for.
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WOLF MAN Nails Dread, Stumbles on Substance
The newest from 2020’s Invisible Man director has flashes of brilliance, but often stretches beyond its reach thematically.
Christopher Abbott as Blake in Wolf Man, directed by Leigh Whannell In 2020, the ongoing saga of Universal attempting to figure out how to leverage their “monster” brand seemed to have found an answer: Leigh Whannel. The Australian writer-director’s take of The Invisible Man showed a strong ability to modernize even the lesser loved corners of the horror icons, tapping into both fresh themes but also honoring the classical sense of dread and tension that felt like melding both iconic and modern sensibilities. It helped that between Invisible Man and his earlier Upgrade, Whannel was developing a promising track record for high-end entertainment on modest budgets.
So it seems like a no-brainer that Whannel take up the task of updating the other slightly dusty corner of the Universal canon: the Wolf Man. And unlike Dracula, Frankenstein, or even the Invisible Man, there is no literary template the movie is drafting off of (or in some cases, explicitly ignoring.) The origins of the franchise is the original 1941 classic, and other than the handful of sequels that followed, it has only technically been tackled again once: Joe Johnston’s moody but often dull 2010 remake.
All this to say, there is very little historical or pop cultural lore that Whannell is working against, giving him even more space to create something his own. Unfortunately, Whannell has set maybe unfairly high expectations for himself, as his end product in the new Wolf Man is heavy in atmosphere and some impressively nasty moments, but lacks the emotional or social depth of his other work. There are moments of the Wolf Man that are so masterfully crafted, one camera shift in particular, that you want it to be transcendent overall. But every time the film tries to transition out of dread and drift into a more personal narrative, it clangs against its own ambition. As a result, the end product is probably his slightest effort to date, but still filled with moments that stick to bones.Discarding essentially all of the original film’s lore, the new Wolf Man centers on Blake (Christopher Abbott,) who grew up in a compound in the Oregon wilderness with his militia adjacent father. In the woods is a fabled wolf man, a lost hiker who succumbed to a disease that leads to a loss of human characters, who Blake’s father is obsessed with capturing. Once as a child (and in a killer opening sequence), Blake and his father had a very close encounter with the wolf man, which clearly left deep scars on Blake as he grew up.
After growing up, Blake moved away, married, and started a family: wife Charlotte (Julia Garner) and daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth). But out of the blue, Blake is summoned back to the wilderness after the pronounced death of his father. As a bonding experience, Blake takes Charlotte and Ginger along with him. But soon things go off the rails when the family encounters the Wolf Man, who in an attack scratches Blake. This leads to him transforming, infected by the same disease, meaning the family is in danger both in and out of their secluded wilderness home.
(from left) Ginger (Matilda Firth) and Charlotte (Julia Garner) in Wolf Man, directed by Leigh Whannell.
There is an efficiency in how simple Whannel keeps the storytelling. There are long stretches, especially as Blake’s transformation begins, where the film remains dialogue-free. It instead leans on pure dread and tension, leaving the audience to witness Blake’s descent into becoming less and less human. This is when the film is humming, leaning into Whannell’s strengths for visual composition and scene structure. At one point the film visually transitions from Blake’s perspective to Charlotte’s, ceding the film to her, in a glorious triumph of almost entirely visual filmmaking.And then the film tries to drudge up subtext, and the wheels fall off. Without getting into explicit spoiler territory, though the film itself telegraphs most of its next moves, the film attempts to dig into generational trauma and the means by which parents pass off their worst selves to their children. This a deep vein for horror to explore, as proven by it being a theme in seemingly every high-minded horror movie for nearly two decades now. The problem lies in Wolf Man fumbling the delivery. The acting itself mostly maintains the center, but it is working with a script that is heavy with thudding dialogue and the shallowest characterization. By splitting the difference of keeping itself satisfied to be a simple narrative but also wanting to gesture towards larger concepts it doesn’t seem equipped to grapple with. The end result frustrates, as it excels at one speed and falters at the other. And the clanging gears when it tries to shift can distract.
Abbott in particular is having a lot of fun with his transformation acting, physically embodying a man who is losing control of himself. He is buoyed by Garner doing good work as someone who finds themselves in an unimaginable scenario but having to maintain their composure for the sake of her family. You just wish these performances were in service of something more in tune with its strengths, rather than cramming two tones that can’t coexist. Perhaps doomed by his own past successes, Whannell has made a film that both highlights his strengths and his weaknesses, and here’s hoping he leans more fully in the former for future outings.
