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.
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