Monday Miniatures: Spooky Season Begins

Welcome to Monday Miniatures, where I tell you about some of the stuff I’ve been watching in the past week that I wouldn’t otherwise get to share.

The week of Sept. 29-Oct. 5, 2025:

Short Cuts, directed by Robert Altman

One Battle After Another, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

How I watched them: Short Cuts - Rented DVD from Vidiots; One Battle After Another - In theaters (AMC Glendora - IMAX)

It feels natural that during a time of discussion around Anderson, Altman would be very much on the mind. As One Battle After Another continues to find its audience – slowly but surely making money at the box office, as if that’s a thing that should matter when discussing art – I find myself wanting to dig into the Altman canon in a way I never had. Short Cuts was probably the last masterwork I had yet to see, and this was an auspicious time to see it.

I am not saying anything new by observing that Short Cuts, based on a series of Raymond Carver short stories, contains much of the DNA for what would become PTA’s Magnolia a scant six years later. A sprawling cast? Check. Interlocking narratives? Check. The emotional turmoil of simply being alive? Check. Deus ex machina in the form of a rare but nominally possible freak occurrence of nature? Remarkably, check. That’s a lot, but do both movies have Julianne Moore, you ask? They sure do.

Having watched the two movies so closely together, however, also has highlighted the key difference between the two. Anderson’s film is bathed in emotional catharsis, spilling over with characters desperate for release who largely experience that release. Altman, who was 68 when Short Cuts premiered, has no such sentimentality. Magnolia is the work of a 28-year-old filmmaker who thinks he has everything figured out. Altman knows he doesn’t have it figured out and neither do any of the people in his film.

There is not enough space here to dissect everything going on in Short Cuts, but it is a profound work about the emptiness of a life without connection. Broadly speaking, the movie is about couples – those falling apart, those coming together, and those already disconnected. It’s about the pain of not being seen and existing in a world where everyone else wants to be seen, too, but can only look at themselves. It’s a dark, bitter, sad movie, and I can’t recommend it enough.

Kundun, directed by Martin Scorsese

How I watched it: Rented DVD from Vidiots

Until this week, this was the only Scorsese-directed narrative feature I had never seen. I recall renting it in freshman year, but a two-hour-plus movie about the Dalai Lama was a tough sell in the dorms. No excuses for why it still took so long to catch up with it, but I am, of course, glad I finally did. The film slots nicely into the Scorsese mode of exploring the pluses and minuses of religious belief and dogma, right alongside The Last Temptation of Christ and Silence.

Given my impression of this film as lacking much cultural impact – we can get into the reasons why in a second – I was surprised by how many of the beats I recognized largely through cultural diffusion. The film’s episodic structure means that often, things happen that seem to have no relation to what came before, but in the end, they add up to a satisfying and impressive whole.

Beyond the film itself, Kundun is an interesting artifact to revisit at this time of great political censorship and self-censorship out of fear. As possibly the most prominent piece of Free Tibet art ever made, the film of course upset the Chinese government. Disney, the film’s distributor, not for the last time capitulated to the totalitarian regime out of self-interest and self-preservation, agreeing to bury the film’s release and not promote it.

Disney supervillain and ex-CEO Michael Eisner once told the Chinese government, regarding Kundun: "The bad news is that the film was made; the good news is that nobody watched it. Here I want to apologize, and in the future, we should prevent this sort of thing, which insults our friends, from happening.” I’ll translate: “Unfortunately, a brilliant artist had the gall to make provocative art, but don’t worry because we made sure no one would get to see. We are sorry you had to be confronted with the truth of your own ugliness. We won’t let it happen again, lest it harm our bottom line.”

Censor, directed by Prano Bailey-Bond

How I watched it: Amazon Prime

From a film that was censored to a film about censorship, Bailey-Bond’s Censor tells the story of a screener working for the British Board of Film Classification during the height of the Video Nasties scare in the ’80s. There are a lot of fun nods and references in here for anyone familiar with that particular hysteria, but the main thrust of the story is Enid’s (the wonderful Niamh Algar) growing psychosis over a little horror thriller that bares a striking similarity to the real unsolved disappearance of her sister.

The performances are excellent, the atmosphere, mood, and tension are all top notch, and I really enjoy the twist ending as a logical extension of the story being told. But here’s the thing: What are we to take thematically from a film that on its surface seems to be anti-censorship but that tells the story of a woman being driven mad as a result of watching the very violence she’s censoring? Does that not, on some level at least, suggest that some images are too horrific to see?

Now, the film absolutely raises good points about mass hysteria and who gets to decide what has artistic value. But I think Bailey-Bond can’t quite hang onto the reins of the story she’s telling and the intention gets away from her just a bit in the final act.

Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum, directed by Jung Bum-shik

How I watched it: Amazon Prime

This film may have been a bit of a time-of-day victim. I had heard a lot of good things about Gonjiam, particularly about how scary it is, but I found myself underwhelmed. That said, because I often have to squeeze movies in when I can, I can’t always choose the circumstances under which I watch them. All of which is to say: I watched this movie during the day, and I bet it’s 20 times scarier at night.

There are absolutely scares and thrills here, but they felt somewhat muted. There’s also an order-of-operations problem at play in that I watched this 2018 film a couple weeks after watching 2022’s Deadstream, which has roughly the same premise. Obviously, Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum got there first (and is, in fact, based on a real location), but the territory felt a little previously trodden for me. Had the order been flipped, this film likely would have benefited.

All that said, there’s plenty of juice in the squeeze here, following a YouTube streamer and his fans/volunteers as they explore a notoriously haunted abandoned mental hospital. The filmmakers have about as much fun with the premise as one can imagine, and for sheer scale, this knocks Deadstream out of the park. I had a good time, but for maximum effect, I may revisit this again one dark and dreary night.

Zombeavers, directed by Jordan Rubin

How I watched it: Amazon Prime

Part of the long lineage of horror comedies that start from a funny title and work backward to create a film, Zombeavers at least delivers on the promise of its title. We get zombies that are beavers, and they lay siege to a cabin inhabited by six of the least likable movie characters you will ever meet. They are intentionally the most vapid, useless people on the planet and are meant to be a source of ridicule for the audience, but as a result, there’s really nothing to root for in the movie.

Rubin lets us know he’s in on the joke from the very beginning, casting Bill Burr and John Mayer – yeah, that one – as truckers hauling toxic waste. They engage in some of the worst movie banter ever, hit a deer with the truck, which causes some of the toxic cargo to spill into the river, and we get zombeavers. The beaver puppets are pretty dang funny, but there are better horror comedies to spend your time on.

The Blackening, directed by Tim Story

How I watched it: Netflix

Speaking of which, check out Story’s film, written by Dewayne Perkins and Tracy Oliver and based on their sketch, for an example of horror comedy done right. Three-dimensional characters we like and care about, genuine scares, a script with a ton to say about colorism, black spaces, and the place of black art in mainstream culture – and it’s consistently laugh-out-loud hilarious.

This is my second time seeing the film, and it only gets richer upon repeat viewing. Character moments mean more, the story is deeper than it first appears, and you catch way more jokes you missed the first time because you were too busy laughing at the jokes that came before. The Blackening will absolutely join the pantheon of horror comedies I revisit every October, along with Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, Cabin in the Woods, and others.

Monday Miniatures: The PTA Project and an Animated Masterpiece

Welcome to Monday Miniatures, where I tell you about some of the stuff I’ve been watching in the past week that I wouldn’t otherwise get to share.

The week of Sept. 22-28, 2025:

The Master, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

Inherent Vice, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

Phantom Thread, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

Licorice Pizza, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

One Battle After Another, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

How I watched them: The Master - Blu-ray; Inherent Vice - Amazon Prime; Phantom Thread - Amazon Prime rental; Licorice Pizza - Amazon Prime; One Battle After Another - In theaters (AMC Americana at Brand XL)

The second half of my Paul Thomas Anderson rewatch is complete, ending with a screening of One Battle After Another on opening night. I will have a full review of the film up this week, as well as some thoughts on the whole PTA catalogue and hopefully some other fun bric-a-brac. For the moment, I will say the new film is one of the best films of the year, certainly in the top tier of PTA works, and a movie people will be talking about for a long time.

Flow, directed by Gints Zilbalodis

How I watched it: 4k DVD

The only non-PTA film I had the chance to watch this week, this is my third time seeing Flow but first at home after seeing it twice in theaters. In addition to being one of the best films of last year, it was also one of my favorites, so the moment Criterion announced they would be releasing a 4k edition, I knew I would be getting it. The DVD was released Tuesday of last week and my pre-order arrived Friday. I immediately popped it in.

I chose to watch with the new Zilbalodis commentary track, which offers a ton of insight into the way the filmmaker thinks about character development and using action to move a story forward. He also shared the difficulties in working independently with open-source software – high-definition animation files have a tendency to overwhelm a PC – but also the freedom to tell the kind of story he wanted in his way.

After seeing the film in theaters, I called Flow one of the most gorgeously animated films ever made, and seeing it in 4k has done nothing to change that opinion. The richness of the background details, the smooth camera moves, and the beautiful interplay between light and shadow all come through wonderfully on this transfer. There remain shots in the film – even after listening to Zilbalodis explain how they were done – that I can’t fathom how they were done. I can’t wait to dig into the director’s other work, which is also included in the set.

‘Horror. Terror. Death. Film at 11’: On Joe Dante’s Piranha

You know it’s a Jaws ripoff. I know it’s a Jaws ripoff. Director Joe Dante knew it was a Jaws ripoff. Super producer Roger Corman insisted it be a Jaws ripoff. Hell, it even came out the same summer as Jaws 2, much to the chagrin of the executives at Universal. But, which movie are we still talking about today? It ain’t Jaws 2. It’s Piranha.

Dante’s gloriously handcrafted B-movie creature feature remains as entertaining, outlandish, and subversive as the day it was released. The director was on hand Friday at Vidiots in Eagle Rock for a screening of the film in celebration of the 13th anniversary of Scream! Factory, a boutique DVD label specializing in mostly ’70s and ’80s horror.

“You gotta remember, this was a Vietnam War picture. This is a picture made during the war,” Dante told a sold-out house of rapt admirers. “It’s got a lot of political undertones, which can’t help but be overtones.”

It’s hardly surprising Dante and co-writer John Sayles – the pair would collaborate again on 1981’s The Howling – came together to make such a straightforwardly political film. Both men represented a kind of independent-minded, ‘60s free spirit radicalized by the Vietnam War, so of course they brought that into their art. What is more surprising is how entertaining they were able to make the film on a shoestring budget and a short schedule.

This is accomplished largely by cranking the mayhem and carnage up to 11, in that perfectly Corman-esque way of throwing ever more blood at the screen. The thing about Jaws is that the shark attacks are quite visceral and memorable, but they are few and far between. In total, five people and a dog die in Jaws. In Piranha, five people are dead before the real action is even underway.

Now, it should go without saying that Piranha is not a perfect film by any stretch. It’s a tremendous amount of fun, but it’s still flawed in the way so many B-movies of its ilk are flawed. The acting is occasionally suspect, some of the effects shots don’t hold up, and the plot is a structural mess in which many things happen just for the sake of having them happen. And getting back to the mayhem of it all, the film has two climaxes when surely one would have sufficed. 

At the same time, there’s not a thing I would change about it. That’s the magic of this brand of filmmaking, and seeing it in a packed house only makes that magic more powerful. Yes, we laugh together at the absurdity of it all, but we also cringe together and cover our eyes at the moments that still horrify. As he would later prove with Gremlins, Dante is a master of making you chuckle with delight then scream in terror within the same breath.

And, that brings us to the first of the film’s two climaxes: the summer camp. One of the fascinating things about the movie is that the heroes, played by Bradford Dillman and Heather Menzies, are always a step behind the piranha. In the first place, they are the ones who inadvertently release the genetically modified killer fish into the river system. Then, they spend the rest of the movie following a trail of corpses.

The Dillman character’s daughter is attending a summer camp downstream where, naturally, the kids are earning their swimming badges on this fateful day. So, it becomes a race against time to get to the camp and save the kids. But, here’s the wild thing about Dante’s film: They don’t make it in time. And they’re not just a little late. The piranha have a veritable feast on a couple dozen 8- to 12-year-olds and some counselors before the heroes show up to pull the body parts out of the water.

At this point, it’s worth mentioning the piranha exist in the first place as an army experiment intended to destabilize Vietnamese river systems as part of the war effort. And, the army is largely concerned with ensuring this secret never becomes public knowledge. Allegorically, we understand the campers as stand-ins for the young men sent off to die in war. In actuality, though, it’s just viscerally upsetting to watch a lot of preteens screaming at the top of their lungs as they are eaten.

Had that been the ending, it would have been enough. Instead, in true Jaws fashion, we must have the civic leader who knowingly serves up the community as a buffet for the carnivorous fish. In this case, it’s the resort owner played by Corman stalwart Dick Miller, who not only insists the lake is safe but is, in fact, in league with the army. It’s as if Mayor Vaughn and the shark were business partners.

As must happen, all hell breaks loose. It’s carnage on a scale heretofore unimagined. In one of the film’s great satirical jabs at a nation that had spent more than a decade watching young men return from Vietnam traumatized, maimed, and worse, the event is covered by the local media in alarmingly deadpan fashion: “Horror. Terror. Death. Film at 11.” It’s a great laugh line, but it’s also a damning indictment of the media in 1978 and how far we have not come since.

The film spawned one direct sequel – pun intended – and a pair of remakes. I have almost certainly seen the also-Corman-produced 1995 remake more times than I have seen the original simply because it was the Piranha film of my youth. I also saw Alexandre Aja’s 2010 remake, Piranha 3D, in theaters. It’s a lovely night at the movies, but the CGI fish make one miss the tactile nature of Dante’s rubber puppets.

In the end, I think that’s the lasting legacy of Piranha. Sure, it’s a ripoff, but it’s also a film in its own right, made by true artists who said, “If we’re going to steal, we may as well steal the best we can.” And, their best was so strong that nearly 50 years later, people still gather to laugh and scream together on a Friday night.

Dante summed it well in his Q&A before the screening: “It’s a completely different business as, as you may have noticed, it’s a completely different world right now. It’s a completely different America right now, and we’re all in it together. And that’s why we gather in places like this to have shared experiences because that’s all we have left.”

A brief word on Scream! Factory

It should be self-evident but bears repeating regardless: If you can’t hold it, you don’t own it. In an era of streaming, when so many films are just instantly available with the click of a button, it is worth remembering how many films are not available. Whether it’s because an executive decided the rights weren’t worth the cost or the film simply never made the leap from one technology to the next, the history of an art form is shrinking before our very eyes. Media consolidation and corporate conglomeration do not take place for the benefit of the consumer.

Physical media mean more now than they ever have, and this is true across all art forms, by the way. Wait for the day your favorite musician no longer appears on Spotify, and you’re going to wish you’d kept a few of your old cassettes and CDs.

Scream! Factory, which partnered with Vidiots to present Friday’s screening, is the horror sub-label of home video distributor Shout! Factory. These kinds of boutique labels are cropping up more and more as the only places to find certain titles that would otherwise be ignored by the big studios and distributors. These companies do the work of restoring, preserving, and making available the history of the medium, and their efforts are worth recognizing and applauding.

After the film screening, I dropped by the small pop-up store Scream! Factory had set up inside Vidiots. I snagged a 4k restoration of Brian De Palma’s Carrie and blu-rays of personal favorite Tales from the Hood and cult classic Sleepaway Camp. With horror season right around the corner, I can guarantee each of these discs will be getting a spin very soon. I say all of this just to say: If you love something, preserve it.

Monday Miniatures: Back to School Means It’s PTA Season

Welcome to Monday Miniatures, where I tell you about some of the stuff I’ve been watching in the past week that I wouldn’t otherwise get to share.

The week of Sept. 15-21, 2025:

Hard Eight, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

Boogie Nights, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

Magnolia, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

Punch-Drunk Love, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

There Will Be Blood, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

How I watched them: Hard Eight and Magnolia - Amazon Prime rentals; Boogie Nights - Paramount+; Punch-Drunk Love - Criterion Channel; There Will Be Blood - DVD

With my most anticipated movie of the fall less than a week away and a series of pieces planned here for the release of Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest feature, now seemed like an opportune time to revisit each of the director’s nine previous films. I will be diving deeper into these films in separate articles later this week, so I’ll reserve comment for that. For now, let it be enough to say that this rewatch has been an absolute delight, Anderson is not only one of our most important but our most deft filmmakers, and my expectations for One Battle After Another could not be higher. 

Images, directed by Robert Altman

How I watched it: Rented DVD from Vidiots

I paired this with There Will Be Blood, which features a dedication to Altman, who was a mentor and inspiration to Anderson. It’s easy to see the influence in their sprawling, kaleidoscopic ensemble pieces like Altman’s Nashville or The Player and Anderson’s Boogie Nights and Magnolia. But even in something more internal and esoteric like Images, you can see the way the camera moves and actors are placed within a scene influencing the filmmaker Anderson would become.

Of course, Images is, itself, heavily influenced by Ingmar Bergam, in particular the Swedish master’s Persona. Altman would revisit this theme of fractured psyches a few years later in the more lauded Three Women, which I found a tad inscrutable. Images is a nervy little thriller with an excellent leading performance from Susannah York, whom I know best from They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? but whom you may recognize from the Christopher Reeve Superman films.

Overall, I  prefer Altman at his biggest and boldest, allowed to paint on his grandest canvases. If nothing else, Images serves as proof of Altman’s wonderful versatility, even at this early middle stage of his lengthy, prolific career.

Malice, directed by Harold Becker

How I watched it: Tubi

What my grandmother would have called hooey, this was the last Aaron Sorkin-penned script I had yet to see, and now having crossed it off the list, I understand how it could have fallen to the bottom of the priority stack. If I could say anything for it, at least in the Sorkin universe, it might not be as bad as Being the Riccardos. At least he followed it up with the unbroken run of The American President, Charlie Wilson’s War, The Social Network, Moneyball, Steve Jobs, and Molly’s Game, while also sneaking in two fantastic television shows (The West Wing and Sports Night; no need to talk about Studio 60).

Sorkin doesn’t deserve all the blame here, as the underbaked script was co-written by Scott Frank, who was nearly three decades away from cementing his own TV legacy with The Queen’s Gambit. The overdirection? That belongs to Harold Becker of VisionQuest and Sea of Love fame. The appalling acting? Lay that at the feet of Nicole Kidman, Bill Pullman, and the usually reliable Bebe Neuwirth. 

Alec Baldwin comes out unscathed with a performance that taps into everything that would come to define the Baldwin on-screen persona: calm, cool arrogance in the face of nearly universal distaste. A year after Glengarry GlenRoss proved Baldwin could be relied upon to deliver chunky monologues about how great he is and much the rest of the world should thank him for that greatness, here, he gets the now-iconic “I am god” monologue. It’s as good as you’ve heard and mostly worth the price of admission.

Beyond that, there’s not much to recommend in this erotic thriller that is neither erotic nor thrilling and a noir pastiche in which the mystery is solved quite accidentally. Everyone involved had done better before and would do better again.

Corman’s World, directed by Alex Stapleton

Piranha, directed by Joe Dante

How I watched them: Corman’s World - Tubi; Piranha - In theaters (Vidiots)

I watched the documentary Corman’s World about legendary producer Roger Corman in anticipation of catching the Corman-produced Piranha at Vidiots, where Dante was on hand to discuss the film. I’ll have more to say about that in a separate piece. The documentary is the exact kind of hagiography one might expect, and that’s not a bad thing. There are worse folks in Hollywood to lionize, after all. We get some great interviews with Dante, Martin Scorsese, and longtime collaborator Jack Nicholson, who credits Corman for giving him work when no one else would.

The thing I wish there were more of: the movies. At the time this film was made in 2011, Corman had literally hundreds of credits to his name. It would be unreasonable to dig too deeply in the span of a 93-minute documentary, but one wishes Stapleton and Co. had zeroed in on a few choice examples, Piranha perhaps foremost among them.

Corman was well known for his ability to shoot quickly on tight budgets, but it would have been fascinating to highlight more of the specifics on how he accomplished that. Instead, the film focuses more on Corman’s status as the father of the New Hollywood movement, giving directors like Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, and more their early shots at filmmaking. It’s a fair focus, but it ultimately means the film settles for surface-level appreciation rather than rigorous study.

12:08 East of Bucharest, directed by Corneliu Porumboiu

How I watched it: Rented DVD from Vidiots

A key film in the Romanian New Wave, this comes a year after The Death of Mr. Lazarescu put the nation’s cinema on the map at Cannes and a year before the Palme d’Or-winning 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days conquered the Croisette. Porumboiu’s film is perhaps smaller in scope than either of those two efforts, but it is no less ambitious.

The original Romanian title of the film literally translates to “Was it or wasn’t it?” As the film ultimately makes clear, the question refers to whether the small town of Vaslui was involved in the 1989 revolution that deposed dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. The 12:08 of the international title refers to the time of day when Ceausescu gave up power. Up for debate is whether the people of Vaslui protested in the streets before 12:08 p.m. or celebrated in the streets after in the safety of a nation free of its dictator.

Porumboiu uses his characters to ask vital questions about who benefits from a revolution, who gets left behind, and what any of it means anyway. It is an incontrovertible good that Ceausescu was removed from power, but it is fair to ask what kind of nation should spring up instead.

The Man Without a Past, directed by Aki Kaurismaki

How I watched it: Rented DVD from Vidiots

This was probably the most popular Kaurismaki title I had yet to see, and it may be my favorite of all his films, or at least right up there with Le Havre and Fallen Leaves. Kaurismaki is the ultimate humanist in that in his best works, the vast majority of people are decent and kind, while systems and bureaucracies serve to oppress and deny.

Here, a man played by Markku Peltola arrives in Helsinki via train and is immediately mugged and beaten within an inch of his life. As a result, he develops amnesia. So, with no identification and no memory, he begins to slip through the cracks of society. The community members around him, many of whom find themselves also forgotten by society, become his saving grace.

At every turn, he is thwarted in his attempts to apply for benefits, to find work, to navigate the legal system simply because has no name and no past. It is not enough that he is a human being, alive and real, sitting right before you. Systems are not set up for this, and it should come as little surprise that it takes a human to understand humanity. As our economic and political leaders further push algorithms and artificial intelligence on us, we would do well to remember this lesson.