Monday Miniatures: Addictions, Accidents, and Actors

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 Oct. 27-Nov. 2, 2025:

Ballad of a Small Player, directed by Edward Berger

How I watched it: In theaters (Landmark Pasadena)

After the back-to-back hits of All Quiet on the Western Front and Conclave, not to mention TV success with Your Honor and Patrick Melrose, Berger is playing with house money. So, he took all that capital and wagered it on a seedy little story about an addict who believes he can out-play his addictions. These stories are as old as time, cautionary tales about people who just need one more go at whatever it is that has trapped them. 

In this case, we are following Colin Farrell as Lord Doyle. His game of choice: baccarat. The city: Macao. If you’re not part of the gambling world, you may not know the associations with Macao, which I have read described by professional poker players as a literal hell on earth. Note that these poker players still willingly and often joyously travel to Macao, the lure of the payday worth risking damnation. It’s a wonderful setting for a movie about losing oneself, losing one’s soul, and the long road to redemption.

I like this movie. It is gorgeously shot, Farrell delivers a tremendous performance, and there is something morbidly fascinating in watching the slow-motion car wreck that is this character’s life. That said, I wanted more. The further I get from All Quiet, the greater it grows in my estimation. Conclave was an airport page-turner elevated to high art. Berger has greatness in him, but this movie – apart from a couple sequences, including a scene on a dock at low tide – falls short of its potential.

It Was Just an Accident, directed by Jafar Panahi

How I watched it: In theaters (Alamo DTLA)

This year’s Palme d’Or winner, I will have much more to say about this in the coming days, weeks, and months. This is a major work from a master filmmaker. It is both emotionally involving and intellectually challenging. It presents a number of ideas, then trusts the audience to come along as it explores each of those ideas in depth. It doesn’t condescend to the audience or offer any easy answers. Rather, it dives deep into the unknowable, the unwinnable, and the irredeemable. Love this movie.

John Candy: I Like Me, directed by Colin Hanks

How I watched it: Amazon Prime

I never really considered myself a John Candy fan. He’s in a number of movies I like and a number of movies I dislike. I find the “I like me” speech in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, which gives this doc its title, quite powerful while finding that film intensely irritating. From everything I have seen, Candy is best in small doses, lest his particular schtick grow tiresome. I am in the minority in this opinion, and John Candy: I Like Me makes a strong case for me to revisit the late actor’s work or dive deeper into some movies I have not seen.

This is a nice movie about a nice man, but it gets repetitive quickly. There are only so many ways to say that Candy was a charming, gregarious man who was comedically gifted but had a hole in his heart due to the death of his father at a young age. He tried to fill that hole with the love of the masses but found that love fickle, unsustainable, and unsatisfying. It’s a fairly classic Hollywood story. There are some good interviews here, and if you love Candy, you’ll love this movie. 

My five favorite John Candy movies, in alphabetical order: Brewster’s Millions, in which he plays Richard Pryor’s best friend who can’t fathom what Brewster is doing or thinking (he’s also a catcher, which was my position, so points for that); Cool Runnings, which is probably my favorite lead or semi-lead performance of Candy’s; Home Alone, in which Candy has two brief but pivotal and hilarious scenes; JFK, in which Candy matches the over-the-top nature of the film around him to a T;  Rookie of the Year, in which Candy takes the Bob Uecker role of sportscaster tasked with providing the play by play to absurd circumstances.

Haunters: The Art of the Scare, directed by John Schnitzer

How I watched it: Amazon Prime

Haunted houses terrified me as a kid. As much as I have always loved horror movies, it has never occurred to me that I might enjoy being the victim in one. I’m still not a fan of haunted houses, but I’m a big fan of people “puttin’ on a show!” so to speak. Half of Haunters is a wonderful documentary about the people who dedicate much of their lives to building the biggest and best haunts that they can, as well as the trials and tribulations they encounter.

It is undeniably endearing to watch people in their home garage, putting together plywood, paint, and a dream to bring joy through terror. Are they weirdos? Frankly, anyone who wears it as a badge of honor to make someone piss herself or pass out is a little bit of a weirdo. I’m not here to judge. People sign up for these experiences, and it’s not unreasonable to think that even in those cases, the customer goes home happy.

Now, that’s half the movie. The other half is about extreme haunts – one in particular – run by people the weirdos of the normal haunts might call doggone freaks. Hilariously, the people who run the extreme haunts think the other extreme haunters also are freaks. If you’re unfamiliar, extreme “haunts” (hard to call them haunted houses really; there’s nothing ghostly or spooky about them) often feature actual torture like waterboarding and electrocution, as well as sexual humiliation and all manner of psychological torment. Not my idea of a Saturday night, but again, no judgment.

Except for the folks at McKamey Manor. The movie offers the plurality of its screentime to proprietor Russ McKamey. McKamey Manor is considered the most extreme “haunt” in the nation. People come from all over the world to be brutalized by its wicked ways. The movie plays both sides a little bit, giving McKamey ample time to answer his critics, but McKamey’s own words are the most damning. People obviously want his services, but that doesn’t make the manner in which he provides them okay.

Overall, I like prefer the half of the doc that’s about mostly good-natured people (although, there’s still some troubling stuff in there, too) sharing their love of Halloween, rather than the half about borderline sociopaths who really don’t have a connection to anything except their own depravity.

Sisu, directed by Jalmari Helander

How I watched it: Disney+

I was aware of Sisu. I had heard it was a bloody good time, emphasis on bloody, from some action movie fans I trust. I just never felt a real push to prioritize it over anything else, but I caught the trailer for Sisu 2 (aka Sisu: Road to Revenge) before another movie in theaters and figured: If the sequel’s coming, I might as well catch up with the first one.

It is precisely the movie I assumed it would be, which is to say it is the Hobo with a Shotgun of World War II movies. I see why people had fun, I see what is supposed to be fun, but I can’t say I had much fun. It is perfectly competent at being the movie Helander wants to make. That’s not a type of movie that really appeals to me, except in as much as it might be fun to elbow your buddies, point at the screen, and say, ‘Woah, did you see that?’

The story follows a Finnish soldier turned prospector who discovers gold, then encounters Nazis going scorched earth on his country in their retreat. The Nazis try to steal the gold, and the man, Aatami (Jorma Tommila) goes full John Wick on them. We’ve seen it before, blowing up Nazis obviously never gets old, but the movie doesn’t have anything else to offer. Maybe that’s fine.

Goodnight Mommy, directed by Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz

How I watched it: Amazon Prime

As I mentioned last week, I figured I would pretty quickly catch up with The Devil’s Bath directors Fiala and Franz’s critically acclaimed Goodnight Mommy. It took me just a couple days, and here we are. This is an excellent film, supremely creepy, and I highly recommend it. If you have not seen it, I recommend skipping the rest of this piece until you have seen it because I intend to get a little spoilery, and the film is best seen blind.

Okay, warning over, now it’s on you. I generally try to avoid spoilers in my writing because I think people should have the opportunity to discover a film’s mysteries in the way the film intends. I am talking about spoilers with this film because I had the film’s twist spoiled for me before I saw it, and it is an interesting case study in how thrillers with big twists work and are constructed.

First off, the film is over a decade old, so I can’t be too mad about having it spoiled. I had 11 years to watch it. I didn’t. That’s my fault. However, I watched the movie with the twist in mind the whole time, and when you have it in mind, it’s impossible not to filter everything through that lens. It’s like the second time you watch The Sixth Sense. You’re looking for the clues. You’re trying to spot what you missed. Some things become incredibly obvious. Now, imagine that’s your first viewing of a film.

There is a debate online around spoiler culture and whether it has gone too far. And, there are people who believe that virtually any discussion of a movie beyond and sometimes including its mere existence constitutes a spoiler. Honestly, those folks just need to get off the internet. On the other hand, I am sympathetic to the desire to discover a movie while watching a movie. I prefer to know as little as possible going in, and I think we can all agree trailers are giving away too much these days.

Some folks argue that a movie should work whether you know the twist or not and that if it relies on a twist for its success, it is an inherently bad movie. I disagree. Is The Sixth Sense still a good movie on the 10th viewing? Absolutely, because it is an expertly crafted piece of cinema. However, it is a fundamentally different movie than the one the filmmaker intended.

That was how I felt watching Goodnight Mommy with the foreknowledge I had. It is fundamentally different. Character motivations are different. Story beats are different. Acting choices mean something else entirely. It is no longer the movie the filmmakers made, and that’s a bummer.

Monday Miniatures: Killer Klowns from Streaming Services

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 Oct. 20-26, 2025:

Is This Thing On?, directed by Bradley Cooper

How I watched it: In theaters (TCL Chinese, as part of AFI Fest)

The first of two films I was able to catch at this year’s American Film Institute Festival in Hollywood, Cooper’s latest is his best film yet. I was lukewarm on A Star Is Born and did not care for Maestro, both of which felt a little forced and programmatic. Is This Thing On?, by contrast, feels real and lived in, with a genuinely moving emotional core.

Will Arnett and Laura Dern star as a couple getting divorced who, in their separation, discover or rediscover parts of themselves that seem to make them whole. Arnett and Dern were in attendance for a Q&A after the screening I saw, and Arnett, in particular, seemed moved and a little bashful about the well-deserved praise he received for his work in the film. Both Arnett and Dern are spectacular.

I hope to write more about this film in the future, so I will keep my comments here brief, but suffice it to say that this really feels like a movie by, about, and for adults. It doesn’t condescend. It doesn’t lower itself for a joke. It doesn’t judge its characters. It presents, honestly and truthfully, the difficulties of reaching middle age and wondering what any of it means anymore.

Will Arnett and Laura Dern at AFI Fest after a screening of Is This Thing On?

Ghost Elephants, directed by Werner Herzog

How I watched it: In theaters (TCL Chinese, as part of AFI Fest)

Two Herzogs always have existed: Narrative Herzog and Documentary Herzog. I don’t think it’s controversial to suggest that of late, Documentary Herzog is the superior filmmaker. While I liked Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans and My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?, movies like Queen of the Desert and Salt and Fire are largely forgotten misfires. Meanwhile, docs like Grizzly Man, Encounters at the End of the World, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, and Into the Abyss are masterpieces of the form.

Ghost Elephants might not quite reach those heights, but for a filmmaker who has scaled Mount Olympus, scaling Everest is still pretty cool. Herzog, editor Marco Capalbo, and executive producer Andrew Trapani were on hand for a post-screening Q&A that was funny, charming, and enlightening in ways only Herzog can accomplish.

The film, a collaboration among Herzog, National Geographic, and scientist Steve Boyes, follows Boyes in his quixotic quest (a hallmark of Herzog’s films, both narrative and documentary) to track down the titular ghost elephants, fabled descendants of the largest elephant ever hunted and killed, making them descendants of the largest land mammal ever. The filmmaking is simultaneously grand and intimate, hauntingly elegiac and rollickingly adventuresome. 

Herzog, as ever, is more interested in the nature of the quest rather than the quest itself. This is not about accomplishing the goal of finding these elephants, which Herzog gets Boyes to admit probably won’t result in any profound, mystical understanding of the world. Rather, it is about accepting that the world is profound and mystical and the best we can do is exist in it, be part of it, and occasionally be awed by it.

Werner Herzog and Co. after a screening of Ghost Elephants at AFI Fest.

Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, directed by Scott Cooper

How I watched it: In theaters (AMC Universal)

There are three major types of music biopic. There’s the “Dewey Cox needs to think about his entire life before he plays” type, skewered so well in Walk Hard and exemplified by Walk the Line, Elvis, and a whole host of others. There’s the experimental “artist as an idea” type, such as Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There or Gus Van Sant’s Last Days. And, there’s the snapshot variety, using a single moment or period in a performer’s life as a stand-in for that artist’s particular genius.

Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere is this third type, focusing on the year between “Born to Run” and “Born in the U.S.A.” when The Boss sat down, picked up an acoustic guitar, and got serious about his depression while writing and recording the Nebraska album. This is my favorite type of music biopic, and this film is a good reminder why.

By narrowing the focus, Cooper, who also wrote the film, based on Warren Zanes’ nonfiction book about the same events, is able to dive deeper into the individual moments and to allow the film around those moments time to breathe. It shouldn’t feel like such a luxury to spend 15 quiet seconds on a balcony at sunset, but it does because we’ve grown so accustomed to films setting a breakneck pace while trying to jam entire lives into two-and-a-half hours. By the end of those movies, it’s rare to feel like you’ve spent one authentic second with the subject. Here, it feels like we’re in the room with Bruce Springsteen for two hours.

I was never a big Springsteen fan, though I appreciate his music, so I’m maybe not the one to judge how close star Jeremy Allen White gets to evoking The Boss. I can say, however, that White readily evokes the spirit of a man whose past has finally come to bear on his present. From what I can tell, Cooper hews pretty close to the facts, with the exception of an invented (or composited) love interest. In doing so, the filmmaker offers an emotional insight into the artist that is rare and poignant. And, that’s all anyone can ask from a movie like this.

Weapons, directed by Zach Cregger

How I watched it: Amazon Prime rental

I think it would be fair to call this a Clown Horror (TM), in a manner of speaking, in which case it kicked off an accidental festival of clown movies. I did not intend to watch four in a row, and frankly, I didn’t even realize I had until I was done. Just the way it worked out. I also did not know this would be on HBO Max so soon after I paid $10 to rent it on Amazon. Also, just the way it worked out.

When Weapons came out in theaters, I saw it opening weekend and had a great time. Since then, it became a box-office smash, a critical darling, and a fan favorite. I have seen multiple sites touting this film for the Best Picture race and lauding it as one of the best films of the year. That’s not the movie I saw that first weekend, so I knew I would have to revisit it. Now that I have, I’m here to tell everyone to cool your damn jets.

Cregger is an undeniably talented filmmaker. The way he sets up the camera, the way he uses genre convention as a tool rather than a crutch, the way he toys with audience expectations – it’s all tremendous. I enjoyed Barbarian in much the same way. I look forward to whatever he does next. All that said, folks, this movie is incredibly flawed. The logic of its world is nonsense, its handling of marginalized characters is a problem (much like in Barbarian), and by Cregger’s own admission, the movie isn’t nearly as deep as people want it to be.

It’s particularly frustrating to see the praise heaped on this entertaining but ultimately silly movie after the polite but muted response afforded to the far superior The Long Walk, which is actually the movie people claim this movie is. And in a year with true horror masterpieces like Sinners and 28 Years Later, it’s baffling to hear Weapons brought up in the same breath.

I don’t want to come off as though I didn’t like this movie. I did. In particular, Josh Brolin and Julia Garner deliver tremendous performances, Cregger’s filmmaking is top notch, and the premise is deeply unsettling and intriguing. In my opinion, however, from a story standpoint, Cregger chooses the least interesting of all options to play out that premise. As a result, the third act is a mess, and the ending, while perhaps viscerally satisfying on some level, is tonally disjointed and thematically inert.

Clown in a Cornfield, directed by Eli Craig

How I watched it: Shudder

Yet, for all the words I just spent pouring water on the world’s Weapons enthusiasm, it remains leaps and bounds better than the other three movies I watched in my Clown Horror (TM) marathon. Which is not to say Clown in a Cornfield doesn’t have its charms. It surely does. Namely, while the title promises but one clown in a cornfield, the film in fact delivers many clowns in that cornfield. This was a twist I wasn’t expecting because, as you may have guessed, I was and am completely unfamiliar with the award-winning YA horror novel on which this movie is based.

I am a little embarrassed to admit that I did not realize Craig’s first feature was the classic Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, one of the great horror-comedies of all time and one of my personal favorite movies ever in either genre. Had I been aware of that, I would have striven to see this movie in a theater rather than catching up with it on streaming. I had wanted to see it on the big screen but just didn’t make it.

Clown in a Cornfield is not as accomplished as Tucker and Dale, but it is witty, gory, and tremendously fun. I hope we get more from Craig, who has made just two features in the 14 years since his debut, his last being 2017’s Little Evil. 

The Black Phone, directed by Scott Derrickson

How I watched it: Peacock

I watched this as a means of deciding whether I would check out the sequel that is currently in theaters. Now, having seen it, I’ll probably skip the sequel, at least in theaters. Derrickson and co-writer C. Robert Cargill are the filmmakers behind Sinister, Marvel’s Doctor Strange, and the “Dreamkill” segment of V/H/S/85, which takes place in the same universe as The Black Phone. I greatly enjoy their work, and there’s plenty to like here, but it’s a little shaggy.

Ethan Hawke makes a wonderful villain, and the child performances from Mason Thames and Madeleine McGraw are excellent. While light on scares, the movie is high on tension, and the parts grounded in the real world are sufficiently upsetting as to create a sense of dread and unease throughout the proceedings. My issue is that the supernatural elements don’t really jibe with the real-world elements, to the degree that you could largely lift them straight out of the movie and it wouldn’t change much.

Of course, the movie is premised on phone calls from beyond the grave and premonitions in dreams, but I submit that those are actually the weakest elements of an otherwise gripping thriller. Those pieces also contribute mightily to the shagginess I referenced, since it feels like multiple stories are going on at once that never cohere in a satisfying way. I see why Derrickson and Cargill were attracted to this material (the film is based on a short story by Joe Hill), but I hope they get back to the less-is-more thrills of their earlier hit, Sinister.

Terrifier 3, directed Damien Leone

How I watched it: Peacock

Speaking of a filmmaker who could benefit from a less-is-more approach, I give you Leone and the most recent entry in his Terrifier series. But, of course, “less is more” would hardly be the point of these films, so I digress.

These films exist to push the boundaries of gore and audience endurance. The filmmakers hope that people will vomit or pass out or whatever else. That’s the point. And for gorehounds, this series represents a badge of honor that says, “Look what I can handle!” Not one of these movies is a good film, in the traditional sense (you know, well developed characters, coherent storytelling, and competent camerawork and editing), but we can play fair. Let’s judge these on the basis on which they are made.

So, does this movie push the boundaries of extremity and gore? Not really, at least not beyond where the previous two movies took things. The first film is best remembered for its inverted splitting in half of a nude woman. We should pause to note that actress Catherine Corcoran, the inverted woman in question, recently announced a lawsuit against the producers of the franchise, alleging breach of contract, unsafe working conditions, and sexual harassment, specifically pertaining to this scene. I would urge gorehounds to keep this in mind when revisiting that first film.

The second film ups the ante by flaying a high school girl and keeping her alive (in the face of all known science) long enough to be discovered by her horrified mother, who is then killed. People will point to the shower scene in this third film as the pièce de revulsion, but there is nothing in the shower sequence as viscerally upsetting as those first two kills I mentioned. Kudos to Leone, at least, for having one of the victims in this case be a nude man who gets sawed in half starting at the genitals. Of course, there is still a nude woman in the scene to get sliced and diced, but baby steps.

What are its positives? At 125 minutes, it’s almost 15 minutes shorter than the second film. I mean that sincerely. These movies are plotless, formless excuses to eviscerate human bodies. At the two-hour mark, you’re no longer testing audience endurance; you’re testing audience patience and interest. What else? Given the financial success and cultural impact of these movies, Art the Clown has absolutely been elevated into the pantheon of great horror villains, alongside Freddy, Jason, and Michael Myers.

All that said, fuck sexual harassers. Pay Catherine Corcoran what she’s earned.

The Devil’s Bath, directed by Severin Fiala and Verokina Franz

How I watched it: Shudder

Fiala and Franz are an Austrian duo best known for their horror thriller Goodnight Mommy, which I have yet to see, though that may be rectified by the end of this week. I say that because based on The Devil’s Bath, I am incredibly interested in what these filmmakers have done and what they plan to do next. Be forewarned, The Devil’s Bath is not a “good time” in the strictest sense of the meaning, but it is a rewarding time.

Set in Austria in 1750, the film is based on historical records of the time, telling a true story that also stands in for a broader societal phenomenon, which I won’t spoil here. Anja Plaschg stars as Agnes, a woman who marries into a rural fishing village and finds herself crushed by the monotony of her day-to-day existence. Today, we would call that depression, but frankly in our treatment of Agnes’ symptoms, we haven’t come as far as one might hope in 275 years. Which is to say, Agnes’ treatment is mostly her husband and mother-in-law telling her to get over it.

The film also deals with the weight of religious belief and the ways faith becomes both a crutch and a justification for one’s actions. In costume and art design, the film has a tremendous verisimilitude, which reminds one of Robert Eggers’ The Witch, though I greatly prefer this film. This is a bold, challenging movie that won’t be for everyone, but if anything I’ve said sounds at all intriguing, I would encourage you to check it out.

Carrie, directed by Brian De Palma

How I watched it: In theaters (Million Dollar Theater)

A masterpiece that remains a masterpiece and only becomes more of a masterpiece when you see it on the big screen. This was my first time seeing Carrie in a theater and with an audience, and it’s an experience that I cannot recommend enough. Even if you’ve seen it a dozen times or more over the years (I estimate I’ve seen Carrie 25-30 times, largely thanks to how often it played on TNT in the ’90s and 2000s), you owe it to yourself to see it in a theater with a crowd.

I saw this at the Million Dollar Theater in downtown Los Angeles as part of the L.A. Conservancy Last Remaining Seats programming, which strives to highlight the city’s historic theaters. This screening was part of the Conservancy’s inaugural Halloween event, Last Remains. The evening also included a lovely tribute to Diane Keaton, who was among the Conservancy’s longest-serving board members and dedicated much of her life to preserving L.A.’s history and architecture.