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| Peter Dinklage in The Toxic Avenger |
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. 1-7, 2025:
Caught Stealing, directed by Darren Aronofsky
How I watched it: In theaters (AMC Burbank 16)
Fun but ultimately empty is how I would describe Aronofsky’s latest, a scuzzy romp through the criminal underworld of 1998 New York City. I had a great time while I was watching it, and I think Austin Butler is a movie star, but I left the theater feeling like I’d enjoyed a wonderful buffet of desserts and wishing I’d had a full meal.
For a long time, I would have called Aronofsky one of my favorite directors. Requiem for a Dream was an absolute revelation to me the first time I watched it, and his first five films (Pi, Requiem, The Fountain, The Wrestler, and Black Swan) comprise one of the most emotionally arresting and visually inventive filmographies of the past three decades. Noah is a biblical epic with ambitions that outstrip its accomplishments, and Aronofsky feels a little lost in all the CGI. And, I love mother!, but now, eight years on, its box office failure feels like it may have broken the director a bit.
It all led to The Whale, which despite its two Academy Award wins, feels like the most anonymous movie Aronofsky has made. And now, we get Caught Stealing, which is less anonymous than it is a well executed imitation of other filmmakers and films, specifically Martin Scorsese, Guy Ritchie, and a whole host of post-Quentin Tarantino ’90s crime films. It’s not bad. It’s a lovely time at the movies. But, it’s not the director I fell in love with all those years ago.
The Toxic Avenger Unrated, directed by Macon Blair
How I watched it: In theaters (Alamo Drafthouse DTLA)
I am glad I watched the original Toxic Avenger the previous week, as this film is loaded with so many winking nods and knowing callbacks that it feels almost required in order to have a passing understanding of Blair’s remake.
Blair won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance with his debut feature I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore, which is a good film that I liked but which I believe is mostly remembered for representing a watershed moment in the shift to streaming supremacy. Netflix bought it out of Sundance and put it straight onto its streaming service a month later, bypassing theaters entirely. Before that, the idea of the top prize winner at Sundance not playing in theaters would have been unthinkable. Now look where we are.
As suggested by the “Unrated” portion of the title, Blair’s followup effort has endured a similarly strange release journey. After premiering at a number of fall festivals in 2023, the film was deemed by one distributor “unreleaseable” due to its violent content. This is absurd on the face of it, as the film is no more violent than a John Wick movie, which suggests to me distributors were scared off by the film’s tone and its environmental message.
Blair nails the Troma tone, the practical gore effects are fun (even the poor CGI shots lend a Troma-esque quality), and Peter Dinklage is inspired casting as the unremarkable custodian who becomes Toxie. In fact, the whole cast is wonderful, including Jacob Tremblay and zola. star Taylour Paige as Toxie’s allies and Kevin Bacon and Elijah Wood as the nefarious enemies.
An interesting change for this updated version is that in the original, the gym rat bullies and the corrupt politicians polluting the town are separate antagonists. Here, they are one in the same, with Bacon playing Bob Garbinger, a corrupt business tycoon running a fitness empire built on supplements that not only don’t work but which in fact poison the town. Bacon is a perfect meathead, playing a type that will seem all too familiar to those of us living through the current moment.
I had a great time with this movie. It honors the original while improving upon it and finding something new to say using a classic character, which is about the best we could ask for from any remake.
Ms. 45, directed by Abel Ferrara
How I watched it: Criterion Channel
This was not my speed. I appreciate Ferrara’s whole thing and that many people jibe with it, but it’s not for me. I find it thematically shallow and exploitative for the sake of exploitation, particularly this film, which concerns a mute seamstress (Zoë Lund) who is sexually assaulted multiple times and goes on a bloody rampage of revenge through the dilapidated streets of early ’80s New York City.
The whole rape-revenge genre is fraught, of course, and Ferrara just isn’t the filmmaker to have a sensitive or nuanced take on the material. He seems more interested in contriving an ending in which he can have Lund dress up as a sexy nun – with a gun. It’s all a little boys-only boarding school fantasy. Lund is fine as the lead, but she doesn’t have anything interesting to do.
Dangerous Animals, directed by Sean Byrne
How I watched it: Shudder
This is a movie about a serial killer who uses sharks as his weapon of choice. If you didn’t know, now you know. Heckuva premise. I had wanted to catch this one in theaters when it was out earlier this summer but could never work it into the schedule. So, when it premiered on the Shudder streaming service Friday, I watched it first thing.
It starts off with a bang, then takes its foot off the pedal for a large chunk of the first half. We get some ho-hum character development and some hokey dialogue, but our heroes, played by Hassie Harrison and Josh Heuston, are certainly likeable enough by the time we get to the bloodletting. And, if we’re being honest, that’s what we’re all here for in the shark-wielding serial killer movie, yes? Well, on that front, it delivers.
Jai Courtney plays that killer in a performance that’s pitched to the back rows, and it’s perfect. He’s having so much fun that he practically insists the audience have fun, too. We get a few cutaway shots to Courtney by himself, celebrating his latest kill, and while I will leave you to discover the details yourself, trust me when I say those moments are worth the price of admission in and of themselves.
Again, the movie does drag a bit until the final act, and because much of the action is set on a quite small boat, some of the sequences can start to feel a tad repetitive. There are only so many ways to stage an escape on a set with three basic looks. I will say that one of those sequences features an escape from handcuffs that I have never seen before and which absolutely shocked me in the best way. Points for originality there. Overall, despite a relatively brief runtime (98 minutes), the movie could have been tighter, but the promise of the premise is fulfilled, so it’s well worth a watch.
Hamilton, directed by Thomas Kail
How I watched it: In theaters (El Capitan, Hollywood)
If you have followed the site at all over the past five years, you will be aware of my abiding love for Hamilton, both the musical and the filmed stage production, which has been available on Disney+ since 2020. This past weekend, Disney finally released it into theaters, as had always been the plan until the pandemic hit. I will have more on this in a separate piece on the site this week, so be on the lookout for that. Until then, all I will say is that if you can see this in theaters, do see it. It’s magical.
Weekend at Bernie’s, directed by Ted Kotcheff
How I watched it: AMC+
This rewatch was inspired by the season finale of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s excellent AppleTV+ show The Studio, in which Rogen and Co. must parade around the passed-out-drunk executive that owns their studio as though he is alive and awake. Bryan Cranston won an Emmy this past weekend for his work in the episode, which is a tremendous feat of physical comedy.
That feat derives directly and almost whole cloth from the work of Terry Kiser as the titular Bernie in this ’80s farce par excellence. I couldn’t guess how many times I have seen this movie, which we owned on VHS when I was growing up and which was in fairly constant rotation. As a child,I loved Andrew McCarthy’s wacky, fun-loving Larry. Of course, as adults, we gravitate toward the anxious, put-upon Richard (Jonathan Silverman). But, on this watch, I specifically paid attention to Kiser as the dead body at the heart of the film, and he is magnificent.
There are some jokes that don’t stand the test of time – In an ’80s comedy? You don’t say! – such as when the fake suicide note suggests Larry is going to get a sex-change operation, which he immediately equates to being called a drag queen. Unfortunate stuff, and frankly, a little out of sync with where we were even in 1989. But, generally speaking, it’s all in good fun, and if you can’t laugh at the sight of a lifeless corpse water skiing, you might be as dead as Bernie.
Interesting to note Kotcheff had one of the more prolific and versatile careers of his time, bouncing among period dramas, thrillers, action, and comedy with a fair amount of facility. He is responsible for filming one of the great Australian masterpieces in Wake in Fright, a terrifying descent into madness that I highly recommend if you have not seen it. But, he certainly will be best remembered for launching the Rambo franchise with 1982’s First Blood, a more interesting, introspective movie than you remember it being.
Kotcheff died in April this year, just three days after his 94th birthday. Rest in peace to a talented journeyman who left his mark on the industry.
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