YOUR MOTHER YOUR MOTHER YOUR MOTHER

People have been comparing Bassam Tariq’s latest film to Jim Jarmusch's Ghost Dog just off of the trailer. After watching Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother last night, I can confirm that the comparisons are more than understandable. Tariq himself admits to drawing inspiration from Ghost Dog.

When I watched it [Ghost Dog] a long time ago there was this feeling where I was like, 'Oh there's this man that lives in an urban environment that wants to follow some kind of ancient code - Bassam Tariq, Huffington Post

Ghost Dog / Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother

Both movies are about proud stoic Black hitmen that live by a conflicting and somewhat vague spiritual code. In Ghost Dog it’s Samurai-ism and in Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother it’s Islam with a mixture of various eastern philosophies sprinkled in. Both films also find our hitmen with targets on their backs after a job goes wrong (classic hitman movie trope). Both films also have interestingly misplaced moments of awkward/dry humor. At the start of Ghost Dog we get a quick peek in to what might have been a lost loved one while Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother opens with our main character’s wife passing away. 

Ghost Dog / Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother

Both films are rooted in hip-hop. Rza did the score for Ghost Dog and was a huge part of the promotion of it. This time around, Mahershala Ali credited Ka’s Honor Killed The Samurai album as an influence on his portrayal of Latif (I imagine an alternate world where Ka was alive to score this film).

 

Both movies even have similar opening scenes!

Ghost Dog / Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother

The major difference between the two films is that Ghost Dog is a loner. In Your Mother, Latif has to juggle his violent occupation with single fatherhood.

It should be noted that while Ghost Dog is an excellent film, it is a loose remake of Jean Pierre Melville’s Le Samourai. But what’s incredibly fascinating is that outside of the mysterious hitman living his life by a cool-sounding spiritual code, Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother takes from all the elements that Ghost Dog didn’t lift/borrow/redo from Le Samourai. There are social and racial elements to Ghost Dog and Your Mother that aren’t in Le Samourai. Bassam Tariq's movie is sort of a looser remake of an already loose remake.

Le Samourai / Ghost Dog

It also wouldn't be right to not make the obvious comparison to Lonewolf and Cub. There's an action sequence involving Ali's Latif fighting his way out of a strip club/church with a baby strapped to his chest.

Lone Wolf and Cub / Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother

On paper, Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother is very cartoonish and unbelievable. This story is set in a sort of underground world within Houston, Texas made up of Mormons, Muslim hitmen, gun-toting religious cult leaders with gold fronts and lactating ex-porn stars. Bassam Tariq somehow makes these cartoonish elements seem somewhat believable. Had another director worked with the same source material this would have been a mess. Even though this movie is filled with spiritualism and grief that is meant to be taken to heart, you have to view it on the same level as something like Hard To Kill or Commando. This is a slow-burn action movie at the end of the day. 

Now...I’m still grappling with the finale. I don’t know if it fully works but I appreciate what I think Tariq tried to do. Sensical people will write it off as silly whereas folks that like open endings will be dissecting this for quite some time. I also think there was an opportunity to go full-on John Woo in the end but it only goes half way.

At the end of the day this is a collage of Ghost Dog, Lonewolf and Cub and the residue of the failed Blade movie (both Tariq and Ali were attached to the Blade reboot before it was scrapped). I’m hardly the first person to note this but Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother is the positive result of another failed project. I would have loved to see what Mahershala Ali would have done with the Blade character but I’ll settle with this.

UPGRADE (SCORE THIS! PODCAST)

I recently appeared on the Score This Podcast to talk about one of my favorite subjects: Upgrade (2018). Listen as we talk about Jed Palmer's phenomenal score, sound design, what it means to be a cult film in 2026 and so much more.

Click here to read my thoughts on Upgrade as well.

TEENAGE SEX AND DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA

For those of you that are tired of reference/homage-heavy cinema where the director is constantly tipping their hat to their favorite directors - this might not be the movie for you. As much as I love a good side-by-side comparison, I find myself getting sick of all the Tarantino-esque movie collages out there. Teenage Sex And Death At Camp Miasma is an exception. Jane Schoenbrun gets a pass with her latest film. The basic plot centers around a young queer filmmaker, "Kris", tasked with rebooting/revamping a fictious horror franchise about a trans serial killer at a Sleepaway camp. The franchise started in the 80s when trans and queer elements in film were treated problematically. The studio responsible for the film and the sequels thinks hiring a younger queer director would make the franchise, and its queer elements, more up-to-date.

So…a film about rebooting a slasher franchise directed by a cinephile filmmaker (Schoenbrun) known for putting references in their movies (click here and here to read my thoughts Jane on Schoebrun’s other films). If you go in to a movie like this expecting to not get an obvious nod or a tip of a hat to something like Friday The 13th then you’re being disingenuous. 

Friday The 13th / Teenage Sex and Death at Miasma

 

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is full of intentional nods to everyone from David Cronenberg and Bergman…

I just find the glow of a screen to be appealing. It's something that I very naturally gravitate toward, in the way that David Cronenberg gravitates toward body horror - Jane Schoebrun, The Hollywood Reporter

Videodrome / Teenage Sex and Death at Miasma

Videodrome / Teenage Sex and Death at Miasma

Persona / Teenage Sex and Death at Miasma

Persona / Teenage Sex and Death at Miasma

Persona / Teenage Sex and Death at Miasma

Persona / Teenage Sex and Death at Miasma

To David Lynch and Shinya Tsukamoto

Tetsuo The Ironman / Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma

Between when I was a kid and watched Twin Peaks for the first time and when the show got rebooted in 2017, I just had recurring nightmares about it- Jane Schoenbrun, Inverse.com

Twin Peaks / Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma

I’m a big fan of thinking of a film as infinitely deep. I think I got that from [David] Lynch - Jane Schoenbrun, Letterboxd

Inland Empire / Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma

Chantal Akerman is often referenced in her films and this seems to be no different...

Jeanne Dielman... / Teenage Sex and Death at Miasma

The body horror elements reminded me of Dr. Caligari (1989)

Dr. Caligari / Teenage Sex and Death at Miasma

All four filmmakers have explored topics like body horror, body dysmorphia, gender reassignment, queerness and more. It makes sense that a queer filmmaker like Schoebrun would pull from these folks. Her films deal with a lot of the same topics.

These influences are also connected to each other as Bergman's imagery coincidentally influenced Lynch who influenced Tsukamoto. Tsukamoto was also heavily inspired by Cronenberg. Cronenberg and Lynch have always been compared to each other or mentioned in the same writings and reviews for decades.

I acknowledge that some of my comparisons are a little surface level but when you consider everything I've laid out - even the most seemingly surface-level comparisons have a good amount of depth no matter how basic they may seem at first glance.


Referencing something like Friday The 13th is an easy layup.  Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is really a reassessment of some of the themes in Sleepaway Camp (1983). The backstory of the killer in the Camp Miasma franchise, "Little Death", was raised both male and female by their parents. In Sleepaway Camp, we come to find out that the killer is trans. I am greatly simplifying the plots to both films in hopes you will seek them out if you haven’t seen them. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again – I’m not a fan of movies being made out of ironic/cynical film twitter or letterboxd talking points. But, again, this is the exception. Sleepaway camp found a new audience years after it’s initial release. Young queer and open-minded cinephiles took to platforms like twitter, medium and various podcasts to reassess what they felt were queer themes in the film. Every once in a while a young generation of film fans discovers an older film with a plot or subplot that was ahead of its time and not handled correctly during the film’s initial audience. Sometimes it takes young millennials or Gen Zers to catch something that Baby Boomers or Gen-Xers missed. Trans stories in film are still a bit taboo and/or misunderstood in 2026 so imagine a 40+ year old movie like Sleepaway Camp being exposed to mainstream audiences expecting to see another Friday the 13th.

There is a very meta aspect to this movie. It’s clear that elements of Kris represents Jane Schoenbrun. Kris trying to breathe new life in to a slasher film with queer themes is clearly Schoenbrun herself working this all out with her own movie. Hannah Einbinder's performance as "Kris" also mirrors her character in Hacks (an aspiring sexually fluid filmmaker that gets in to a complicated relationship with an older established female celebrity).

It’s no mystery that I’m a Jane Schoenbrun fan and Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is no different. This is her most ambitious project to date. But it isn’t for everyone. I think “outsiders” of all kinds will gravitate towards this in the same way they did to Schoenbrun’s previous films. I feel like when the dust settles on this there will be a huge generational contrast between how this it's received. Again – the young millennials and Gen-z folk that I referenced earlier with appreciate this while Baby Boomers and older Gen-xers might jus brush this off as nonsense. Considering I just missed Gen-x and am one of those older millennials raised by Baby Boomers that feels like they don’t have any connection to younger millennials – perhaps that’s why I have a potentially unique perspective on this.

DISTANCE

I’ve kept this in the drafts since the first wave of C-19 and completely forgot I wrote it. My knowledge of Hirokazu Koreeda’s filmography was pretty spotty prior to 2020. I had only seen Still Walking, Shoplifters, Nobody Knows and Like Father Like Son. After Shoplifters hit me like a ton of bricks I made it my purpose to get familiar with everything he’d done up to then (to be honest - I hadn't even made the connection that he directed all the aforementioned films I'd seen). With the world being shut down and having been laid off from a profession that got hit the hardest by covid, I had nothing to do but watch movies all the time. I made it my purpose to get familiar with Koreeda's filmography. Distance became an immediate personal favorite. I’m a sucker for incredibly heavy subject manner presented in a very dry and subdued kind of way.

Somewhere between the imagery of Ozu, the tone & pacing of Bresson and a very dark event loosely based on something that really happened lies Distance - the story about the trauma left behind from the actions of a death cult. Had this movie been made by any other director there’s a strong chance it would’ve been “edgy” & exploitative. Koreeda's execution is more reserved. Instead of focusing directly on cults and suicide, Koreeda drops us in the aftermath of everything and we’re left putting the pieces together.
In Distance, we follow the family of cult members that attempted to poison Tokyo’s water supply years ago. Things didn’t go according to plan but the cult did follow through with a mass suicide. Three years later, their family members gather at the cult’s former base to observe the anniversary of their deaths (in a way - they sort of form their own cult).

Neither Ozu or Bresson would ever make a movie like this but the visual similarities and surface-level influences are undeniable to me. 

Koreeda has never shied away from shouting out Bresson's work...

L'Argent /
Distance

L’ARGENT is like a textbook, which I review before shooting each new film of mine - Hirokazu Kore-eda, thefilmstage.com

L'Argent /
Distance

L'Argent /
Distance

L'Argent / Distance

When it comes to Ozu, Koreeda is a bit more dismissive. He has acknowledged the comparisons others have made but he clearly isn't a fan...

The motif of family in STILL WALKING is similar to MABOROSI, so perhaps that’s where the Ozu comparison comes from - Hirokazu Koreeda, therumpus.net

Early Spring / Distance

Early Spring / Distance

Early Spring / Distance

I think part of the reason Koreeda dismisses/resents(?) the Ozu comparison is partially because it is a bit lazy and predictable to compare two Japanese filmmakers that make contemplative dramas. But... Distance has some serious (surface-level) Ozu imagery to me (sorry if this makes me lazy). 

I also find it funny when a legendary director like Ozu is called influential and impactful in text form only and no one questions it or asks for a specific example, but when you show countless VISUAL similarities, suddenly everyone takes issue with it or suddenly can't make the correlation.

Early Spring /
Distance

Early Spring /
Distance

Koreeda pulled the idea of the death cult and their plan to poison Tokyo’s water supply from the real events of the Aum Supreme Cult and their attempt to carry out a chemical weapons attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995. Because Distance is loosely based on this tragic event carried out by some terrible people, the movie challenges the idea of who deserves to be grieved.

 

Grief and the idea of dealing with it has become such a vague subject. Especially in film. It’s gotten to the point where every movie is about grief in some way that it sort of lessens the definition. But Distance is one of the exceptions. Not only is the film about grief and how one deals with loss, but Koreeda complicates things by making the lost loved ones cult members who planned to kill thousands. Do they deserve to be grieved by their loved ones even if they attempted to pull off an unforgivable crime? Perhaps that isn’t for anyone outside of family to decide.

Either way this movie is a quiet masterpiece that weirdly became my comfort film during the first wave of the covid lockdown. I can't recommend it enough.

A CONVERSATION WITH DJ JOHN DOE (1200 HOBOS)

I had the pleasure of chatting with the legendary DJ John Doe of the 1200 Hobos. Listen as we talk about everything from music equipment and the recording process to movie & television samples and how they play a part in his themed tracks.

Enjoy

Zebras In America · john doe

Make sure to check out his latest mixtape; Split Shift, on bandcamp (click here to purchase)!

A CONVERSATION WITH GUY MADDIN

I had the pleasure of interviewing Guy Maddin a few weeks ago (this was supposed to happen last year but my second kidney transplant got in the way and we had to postpone). We talked about Eraserhead, L’Age d’Or, John Paizs, Canadian Patriotism, American patriotism, Kenny Omega and so much more.

This is a big deal to me as he is one of my all-time favorite filmmakers. If you haven't already, make sure to get familiar with my coverage of his work over the years on this blog (Brand Upon The Brain, The School Of David Lynch: Guy Maddin, Rumours, The Saddest Music In The World, My Winnipeg, Cowards Bend The Knee)

Enjoy.

Zebras In America · A conversation with Guy Maddin

KIDNEYS ON FILM: ONE SPOON OF CHOCOLATE

I guess we can add Rza to the list of filmmakers that thinks the only prerequisite for making a grindhouse homage is giving your movie a grainy filter aesthetic. I’m a little tired of modern directors thinking their 8 figure budget films with “un-woke” dialogue and tons of blood splatter equates “grindhouse” or an exploitation film. But missing the mark on the grindhouse genre is the least of this movie’s problems. The racial issues and social commentaries found in the Rza’s latest film really need to be addressed. My god…

Much like how I compared The Testament Of Ann Lee to Barbie in my last post, One Spoon Of Chocolate and Rebel Ridge have similar connections. Both are Rambo/Walking Tall/Reacher-coded stories about lone Black veterans trying to take down a small racist police department after the deaths of their cousins (while the immediate villains in One Spoon Of Chocolate aren’t cops, we come to learn later that they work for the police department). Seriously - it’s like the same premise made under vastly different ideologies.
Both movies missed their mark in some aspects but I can say that I mostly enjoyed Rebel Ridge whereas One Spoon Of Chocolate is kind of reprehensible. Somewhere between Rebel Ridge & One Spoon Of Chocolate lies a potentially good movie. One plays out like a centrist’s wet dream where almost no one dies (Rebel Ridge) and the other plays out like a pandering white guy making cartoonish revenge porn on behalf of the type of Black folks that are easy to impress (One Spoon Of Chocolate). You know…the type of Black folks that cheered for Django Unchained. This makes sense because Quentin Tarantino was a producer on this. Don't get me wrong. I love the idea of slave owners and slave catchers getting murdered in the most brutal way. But at the end of the day, Tarantino used slavery to fetishize Blackness and slavery and I'm just not cool with that. But that's just me...

And as a sidenote - I always get frustrated when folks talk about how much they liked Rebel Ridge because no one died when in fact someone did die. Sure it was off camera but there was still a casualty in the movie. Somehow all the evil racist cops got to live while the main character’s cousin (a Black guy) still managed to die in the story.

Anyway...

Because this is another Rza/Tarantino collaboration, you can expect lots of references and homages to older films. This might be the only thing I liked about this movie. Outside of obvious sources like Rambo and Walking Tall, Rza reaches back to everything from John Carpenter to cult horror.

It [CHRISTINE] pops up in [One Spoon of Chocolate] as the black truck.. The idea is that when that truck shows up, it's gonna be trouble - Rza, Conseuence

Christine / One Drop Of Chocolate

When I finished this script, I remember thinking about the scene of the doctor, and I said, ‘I'm going to try to find that movie, because it scared me, and I want to put fear in the audience’ - Rza, Consequence

Zombie Hol0caust / One Drop Of Chocolate

And because this is a Rza film, you can expect plenty of classic Kung-fu movie homages…

5 Fingers Of Death / One Drop Of Chocolate

In One Spoon Of Chocolate we follow “Unique” - a veteran/ex-con who goes to stay with his remaining family in Ohio only to find out he’s living in a sundown town ran by a corrupt police department and a vigilante gangs of racist white nationalists that kill Black people to sell their organs on the Black market. As a two-time kidney transplant recipient and a life-long fan of the Wu-Tang Clan, you’d think this movie was tailormade for me. But it wasn’t. As I said earlier, this movie is like a white guy trying to make a violent blaxploitation film to prove he’s down with Black people. But writer/director is Black. It doesn’t take much to impress certain lanes of Black viewers. All you have to do is murder the racist bad guy and somehow that makes things better (Rza didn’t even have the balls to show the audience if the main racist villain dies in the end or not!).

Besides his well-known love of Kung-fu movies and martial arts in general, the Rza’s personal life and other various Wu-Tang lore is all over One Spoon Of Chocolate. Naming the main character Unique is a nod to his cousin Ol Dirty Bastard’s 5% name; Ason Unique. In Rza’s pre-Wu Tang Clan days he fled to Ohio to stay with family after getting in to trouble. Some of the cast members in One Spoon Of Chocolate appeared in the Wu-Tang Hulu show as well. In my opinion this makes things all the more embarrassing because I would not want anything personal or close to my heart connected to this mess of a movie.
Things are just violent for the sake of being violent and the usage of the N-word would make producer Quentin Tarantino proud. I guess in a sense the Rza did achieve some level of exploitation. He just used Black pain and trauma to do it. It doesn’t make sense because this movie doesn’t really align with the 30+ years of socially conscious Rza lyrics I’ve listened to over the years.

What’s also disappointing is that even Rza fell in to the Get Out trope that a majority of modern Black films do these days. In the opening scene a young naive Black male walking on the side of the road is lured by a car full of flirty attractive white woman only to be set up and murdered by the film’s antagonists. It’s almost exactly like the opening scene of Get Out with Lakeith Stanfield mixed with the very real story of Kendrick Johnson.

similar opening scenes...

Get Out / One Drop Of Chocolate

moments later they’re subdued and abducted…

Get Out / One Drop Of Chocolate

Can modern Black cinema exist without some form of “watch out for the white boogeyman” trope???


Outside of real cases like the death of Kendrick Johnson who, like the victims in One Drop Of Chocolate. was murdered and had his organs stolen, Rza uses the imagery of racist white supremacist rallies as an influence which is so cheap to me...

One Spoon Of Chocolate (below)

Speaking of the film’s antagonists, Rza can’t make up his mind if the bad guys are torch-waving proud boys or wiggers. They’re racist but dress like they actually listen to Rza’s music. Now…I’m fully aware that there are plenty of white hip-hop fans that love the music and adopt the aesthetic of hip-hop fashion all while hating Black people. Just look at underground rap music forums or some of Eminem’s fans. The confused villains could have been some type of commentary on all of this. But this movie is so dumb that I can’t give Rza credit for that type of insightful commentary. I don’t even feel like getting in to the nitpicky stuff like the stupid decisions made by the characters in the movie or casting someone like Shamiek Moore as someone that’s supposed to be an intimidating tough guy. All of that is overshadowed by the cheap exploitative racist bullshit that this movie pulls off. Not only is Rza a coward for not showing the death of the main villain, but all the deaths of the Black men in the film are extra violent and realistic while the white bad guys get murdered quick and fast.


This is all so unfortunate because while Rza has made some dumb statements in the past, he is an intelligent artist with unique perspectives. The problem is none of that is on display here. 

THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE

The Testament Of Ann Lee certainly passes the look test. It’s what some might call visually stunning but it kind of lacks in the typical substance that one might expect from a biopic. Now…I don’t think director Mona Fastvold was trying to make a typical biopic so perhaps this criticism doesn’t concern her. As flawed as this movie is, I find it interesting (interesting can be a good thing). It's part biopic, part dance/performance piece and part musical.
In my personal opinion, this is the perfect response to Greta Gerwig’s Barbie. Both movies exist on some kind of a feminist spectrum, but Ann Lee is able to do so without all the surface-level “girl power”/“men are dumb simple creatures” messaging that the Barbie does. Another big similarity between the two films is that both movies are centered around female characters that have no interest in sex or romance. Ann Lee preached heavily about celibacy and Gerwig’s Barbie rebelled against the idea of the title character being the romantic interest of Ken. 

A big difference between the two films is The Testament Of Ann Lee doesn’t really think about men in comparison to Barbie. One could argue that Barbie accidentally centers the male characters at certain points. Think about it - Ryan Gosling's performance as Ken is just as synonymous with the Barbie movie as Margot Robbie. Amanda Seyfried completely carries this Ann Lee biopic. There are male co-stars but none are as memorable or as important as her. I appreciate that approach. Barbie tries to provoke and lightly troll a particular type of male at times ("film bros", misogynists, women-haters, loudmouths, jerks, etc). Ann Lee doesn't really concern itself with men. There’s nothing more silly and pointless than putting in a lot of effort to troll a group of people that already can't stand you or don't care what you do. We've reached a point where changing the gender or the race of a character in a story is done mostly now to annoying and poke at people rather than to make a genuine piece of art. There's nothing worse than grown adults like Ben Shapiro or Matt Walsh crying over updated iterations of things like The Little Mermaid or Harry Potter using female, trans or Black actors. But at the same time, I can't stand people who can only approach art from the standpoint of just bothering or annoying someone. How old are we??

The Testament Of Ann Lee certainly shows the evil that men do while still making women the center of the story. It should also be noted that the different religious sects that the movie focuses on are all based in the belief that the second coming of Christ will be a woman.

I don’t have a "fragile male ego" either. If you think men are big dumb children - fine. Just stand ten toes down on your opinion. Don't dip your toes in and out. Don’t pander to septum nose ring twitter and instagram moms that lie about their life being hard when it isn’t if you only half-heartedly feel that way. It’s phony and disingenuous.

Barbie / The Testament Of Ann Lee

I don't think any of this was intentional but even the moment where we are introduced to Ann Lee's husband is right out of the scene in Barbie where Ken first tries to dance with her...

Barbie / The Testament Of Ann Lee

To Be Clear - I enjoyed Barbie overall but a big portion of that movie plays out like it was made for people that like to mindlessly retweet and reshare lighthearted surface-level “men are dumb” posts all while adoring their husbands and wearing “boy mom” shirts. Hating men and/or thinking they’re trash is perfectly fine I guess. Just be genuine about it. I respect folks that claim to dislike men as long as they really live that life. If it’s just your online persona or something you like to profess only when you’re around other women, then you’re just corny and pandering for nothing.

 

The Passion Of Joan Of Arc / The Testament Of Ann Lee

If I had to compare Ann Lee to something else - I’d say it’s very "Robert Eggers-coded". Eggers is a heavily influenced director himself and he hasn’t done or created anything new in cinema, but I don’t know if there would be a lane for this movie to exist right now without semi-recent stuff like The Witch or The Northman.
And, similar to Eggers' films, Ann Lee has some light Dreyer imagery. While they aren’t identical in any way, the funeral scenes at the end of both films are kind of similar to me (minus the resurrection in Ordet). 

Ordet / The Testament Of Ann Lee

A big flaw with this movie is the weird run time and all the history that is skipped over. This is a highly speculative retelling of the life of Ann Lee - an influential figure in the evangelical movement during the mid-late 1700s. The film starts at her birth and ends with her death which was brought on from complications of a physical attack. In between, we follow her religious journey from joining the Quakers to branching off to the Shaking Quakers to forming her own religious sect; The Shakers. There’s a lot of religious and world history to cover in her story. I wouldn’t have been mad if this was a mini-series or a show on a streaming service for the story to flesh out more (the movie also has voiceover narration that feels like it was tacked on after the fact in order to make it easier to follow).

You should never expect a biopic to capture and address everything, but this movie has the time to drag out elements that aren’t all that necessary while speeding through entire periods of Ann Lee’s life that are incredibly important (her various times in jail, the loss of all her children, her travels outside of just New England, etc). The Testament Of Ann Lee has a runtime of 2 hours and 17 minutes which is such an odd length for a movie. I’ve been saying this since the start of this blog but a biopic needs to be an 85 minute film focused on a specific isolated period of time or it needs to be a minimum of three hours if we’re going to cover someone’s entire life like this movie does. The same core team behind this movie was also behind the almost four hour Brutalist. I wonder why Ann Lee wasn’t fleshed out the same way The Brutalist was. I would have loved to see this movie take the same approach as Peter Watkin's Edvard Munch.

I don’t really like this movie but I'm glad that it exists because it can’t be digested or critiqued by simple-minded disingenuous folks like Ben Shapiro or Matt Walsh. Male and male-centered critics that want to preemptively tear apart a movie for having feminist ideals or not making men the centerpiece can’t really process something like The Testament Of Ann Lee because it doesn’t have an evil central male character to represent all men. Again - this movie is very flawed to me but I'm glad it exists.

INFERNO LISTENING PARTY (BOARDS OF CANADA)

This isn’t exactly movie-related but my experience at the Boards of Canada Inferno listening party was quite cinematic…

I enjoyed the album very much. I’ve had the chance to digest it a few times already as best as anyone can digest a decent quality phone recording of something (I recorded the audio in full for myself for the drive home afterwards and I won’t be sharing or distributing it).

What I found most interesting about this latest album is a handful of songs did not sound like Boards Of Canada at first. But after a few bars or 20-30 seconds in - a particular chord would play or a vocal sample would get dropped and it immedietly sounded like them. I liked that. They sound new while still retaining their signature sound (one song in particular sounded like a reworking of Aquarius). It should also be noted that the majority of Inferno was somewhere between mid 70-mid 80 bpm.

One signature sound/quality that was not present for me was nostalgia. Anyone familiar with BoC knows that nostalgia is often associated with their sound but I did not feel that. Everything felt current and present. Throughout the listening there was a flaming hexagon collage projected for everyone to see which sort of felt like a basic statement of “we’re are in hell together”. While it’s still very difficult to disassociate the imagery from the event with the sounds of the album - certain aspects of Inferno felt more cold, blue and icey than they did hot, red and hell-ish.

 

Not to sound too cynical and cliche, but as an American - the world does feel very troublesome right now (to me at least). BoC has mentioned real life events like 9/11 influencing the vibe of Geogaddi (2002) so this wouldn’t be the first time that the current state of the world dictated the sound of their music

There is definitely a light shoegaze quality to some of this album. If I’m not mistaken, BoC has name-dropped My Bloody Valentine in the past as an influence. Inferno might be the first clear/non-arguable example of this (I also hear elements of Silver Apples, Slowdive and Cocteau Twins). But if anything - it sounds like they drew influence from the sounds of their last album.

Inferno feels like the perfect response to BoC’s last album in terms mixing, “sharpness” and the overall vibe. If Tomorrow’s Harness was a warning of things to come - Inferno is just a confirmation that we’re living in the world the brothers predicted for us in 2013.l (if anyone listens to El-P, Tomorrow’s Harvest going in to Inferno feels like the perfect parallel to Fantastic Damage going in to I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead).


I had a fun time. There was a great sense of community. I met a couple of Reddit, IG and Discord folks in person and had some cool conversations.
I’m looking forward to listening to a good quality version in less than a week!


Make sure to check out my Boards of Canada scratch videos and be on the look out for a very special BoC mix I have planned dropping very soon…

UPGRADE *UPDATED*

Upgrade is one of those movies that’s totally fine but you’d think it was my favorite movie based on how I talk about it and defend it all the time. I know that doesn’t make complete sense but that’s the only way I can describe it. This is the true definition of a comfort film. There’s nothing original about the story but the execution is just right. I think media consumption is suffering because a lot of people have this expectation that a movie has to be an instant classic before the final credits role. If the impact isn't felt immediately then the movie is treated like a disposable piece of nothing. Sometimes it's ok for a movie to be fun/entertaining and grow on folks over time. This has been relationship with Upgrade. I never get tired of watching it. Imagine the basic plot of Robocop with a few tweaks, more “bisexual lighting” and a fraction of the budget.

In the film, Logan Marshall Green plays "Grey Trace" - a recently widowed and disabled auto-mechanic that agrees to be the guinea pig for a controversial procedure, “STEM”, that will allow him to walk again. As the movie unfolds we learn that Trace’s paralyzation, STEM and the death of his wife are all connected.


The Robocop comparisons are super obvious but Upgrade director Leigh Whannell made a point to mention the similarities himself...

Robocop / Upgrade

With Upgrade, there's certainly a nostalgia there associated with '80s sci-fi films that I grew up with, like Robocop - Leigh Whannell, Vulture

Robocop / Upgrade

Besides the basic premise of a man turned in to a half human/half robotic killing machine, there are some very specific moments/beats between the two films that go beyond basic nostalgic influence.

Robocop / Upgrade

Some of the key similar moments between Robocop and Upgrade are even shot the same…

Robocop / Upgrade

Upgrade was also understandably compared to Venom as both movies were released the same year, each focusing on characters losing control of their bodies to some sort of outside/alien force (it should also be mentioned that Logan Marshall Green and Tom Hardy kind of look alike).

Upgrade / Venom

The movies that inspired me are the movies that I always loved. Films like the original Terminator, which is one of my favorite films. RoboCop, The Thing - Leigh Whannell, thenerdstemplar.com

Terminator / Upgrade

The Thing / Upgrade

I'm always a little apprehensive to compare anything to David Cronenberg. The older I get the more I'm finding that a lot of people don't exactly understand his films and/or his ideologies, but...Whannell does mention him as a major inspiration. Outside of the basic "gore" element, there is a very surface-level Cronenberg quality to certain aspects of Upgrade...

Cronenberg is a seminal filmmaker for me. I love the topics he covers: this messy world of the body. He finds the human body horrific, and all of his stuff gets tossed into the soup of my subconcious. Videodome, eXistenz, movies like that are there, and being able to draw on those influences is great. Usually, when I'm writing, what I do is I go, "OK, so you've got this sort of Cronenberg/Terminator thing going on. What are you gonna do with it?" - Leigh Whannell, Birthdeathmovies.com

Videodrome / Upgrade

Videodrome / Upgrade

eXistenZ / Upgrade

And I know almost every movie can be connected to Stanley Kubrick in some way, but as Upgrade unfolds, "Stem" starts to act just like Hal from 2001...

2001... / Upgrade

The subject matter of Upgrade was certainly prescient given the rise of artificial intelligence everywhere (it seems like so much of what we read and deal with online and in academia has become a hybrid of the human element mixed with AI). All the elements for a great essay on the parallels between Upgrade and modern AI are there. I’m more interested in this film on an entertainment level. It’s just a fun action sci-fi story with a great droany score. 
It has to be noted that the music for Upgrade is great and works as a standalone entity. Jed Palmer’s score would mix in perfectly between early 90s Autechre and modern-day Brian Eno.


My only complaint is that there wasn’t a part two. I know it can get tiring having to deal with non-stop sequels and “cinematic universes”, but in the case of Upgrade it makes sense. Not to spoil the film too much but the final moments of Upgrade end on a sort of cliffhanger. Sure not everything needs a sequel and you could use your imagination to think up your own Upgrade cinematic universe, but I wanted to see it for real.
*SPOILER* - the movie ends with STEM taking over Trace’s body and turning him in to the villain. At the same time - the police officer that’s tasked with trying to stop Trace/STEM is left paralyzed/immobile and in the perfect position to have a similar STEM-like procedure done to her in order to track down the new rogue STEM/Trace).
While Upgrade didn’t break any box office numbers, it still made a $14 million dollar profit off of a $3 million dollar budget and gained a small but dedicated cult fanbase. On one hand, I know Blumhouse has bigger priorities but I can’t imagine it would have been that much of a gamble to make a sequel.


Perhaps Upgrade should have been a direct-to-video release from the start. This way we would have definitely got a sequel like all the Scott Adkins and Michael Jai White DTV films that maintain a dedicated fanbase.

This is hardly a masterpiece but it remains one of my most revisited films of the last decade.