HBO’s “Fantasmas” from Julio Torres

January 2, 2025 by Leave a Comment

The best way to enjoy Fan­tas­mas is by know­ing as lit­tle about it before­hand as pos­si­ble. For­tu­nate­ly it’s well nigh impos­si­ble to sumarise so noth­ing you’ll read here will in any way spoil your expe­ri­ence of watch­ing it. 

Osten­si­bly, we’re in a dystopi­an future where every­thing we over 30 something’s had feared has appar­ent­ly come to pass. Every­thing you do is done via your mobile and every­one leads lone­ly lives lived in con­junc­tion with their robot friend come but­ler in exis­ten­tial isolation. 

This is the vista that for­mer Sat­ur­day Night Live per­former Julio Tor­res presents us with as we fol­low what seems to be a video diary of what has become his life. 

He’s an out of work actor slash etc with a per­son­al man­ag­er who is actu­al­ly just role play­ing as his man­ag­er, but is it doing it so con­vinc­ing­ly that she seems to believe that she real­ly is his man­ag­er, and she spends her days try­ing to con­vince him to shell his soul so that he can final­ly afford to pay the rent. 

But the key to life in this world is your Proof of Exis­tence stamp, and he’s res­olute­ly deter­mined not to cave in to the man and get one, so that he can par­take in all of the activ­i­ties that are expect­ed of you here.

It’s both a cel­e­bra­tion of and a pas­tiche of a Gen Z world times a hun­dred that’s only loose­ly con­nect­ed by this nar­ra­tive, and is real­ly just a suc­ces­sion of bril­liant­ly realised skits per­formed by a hand­ful of celebri­ty actors, who are all clear­ly in on the joke, includ­ing Steve Busce­mi, Amy Sedaris, Paul Dano, Emma Stone (who also pro­duces, again, as she did on The Curse, mak­ing her as impres­sive a pro­duc­er as she is an actress) and Natasha Lyonne.

This is the most refresh­ing­ly orig­i­nal and con­sis­tent­ly daz­zling show on tele­vi­sion, and feels like the brighter and slight­ly lighter com­pan­ion piece to Apple’s Sev­er­ance. But looks can be deceiv­ing. Fan­tas­mas is a close as you’re going to get to a show that’s gen­uine­ly Beck­et­t­ian. Enjoy. 

Watch the trail­er for Fan­tas­mas here:

Sign up for a sub­scrip­tion right or below and I shall keep you post­ed every month on All the very best and worst in film, tele­vi­sion and music. 

Filed Under: Television Tagged With: ,

“Anora” Delivers That Happy Ending

December 5, 2024 by Leave a Comment

Ano­ra is the eighth fea­ture from Amer­i­can film mak­er Sean Bak­er, and won the Palme D’Or for Best Film at Cannes this year. 

He moved in from the periph­ery and into the spot­light with his fifth fea­ture, Tan­ger­ine, which was shot entire­ly on an iPhone, a 5S to be pre­cise, in 2015. But it was his next film, The Flori­da Project from two years lat­er, that caused the main­stream world to real­ly perk up and take notice. 

Bak­er grav­i­tates towards society’s out­siders, prin­ci­pal­ly any­one work­ing in or on the fringes of the sex trade. But rather then mor­al­ize or sen­ti­men­talise them, he treats them as what they are, per­fect­ly nor­mal, every­day peo­ple who just hap­pen to work in the mod­ern day ver­sion of the old­est pro­fes­sion in the world.

Ano­ra is the Chris­t­ian name of Ani, a Brook­lyn based strip­per from a Russ­ian lan­guage fam­i­ly of emi­grants, who hail from some­where in the east of Europe that, under­stand­ably, the film mak­ers refrain from specifying. 

She hooks up with Ivan, a glo­ri­ous­ly gauche and imma­ture son of a Russ­ian oli­garch, and before you know it, they’re an item. At which point the film takes a turn, and we sud­den­ly find our­selves in the screw­ball come caper world of Lubitsch and Wilder, albeit one with a dis­tinct­ly mod­ern and gar­ish hue. 

There are so many dif­fer­ent ways the film could have tripped up and fall­en over its own feet, and an obvi­ous com­par­i­son would be with the oh so dull Tri­an­gle of Sad­ness (reviewed by me ear­li­er here), but Ano­ra pulls the whole thing off with impres­sive panache. 

It strikes the per­fect bal­ance between the demands of con­ven­tion­al farce, where stock char­ac­ters for­lorn­ly pur­sue their dif­fer­ent objects of desire, whilst giv­ing those con­ven­tions a gen­uine­ly orig­i­nal twist by posit­ing them all against the back­drop of a very believ­able and con­tem­po­rary, not to say threat­en­ing, set­ting. Cru­cial­ly, it all rings glo­ri­ous­ly and entire­ly true. 

At over 2 ¼ hours long, they could com­fort­ably have cut that first act by 10 or 15 min­utes. You don’t need 30–40 min­utes of unbri­dled and breath­less hedo­nism to under­stand that, at some point, some­one is going to have to pay for all this. But remark­ably, the film nev­er flags thereafter. 

The rea­son that Ano­ra works so suc­cess­ful­ly is thanks to the per­for­mances that Bak­er and his cast com­bine to con­jure up. They all, with the pos­si­ble excep­tion of Ivan’s moth­er, man­age to elic­it not just empa­thy but actu­al sym­pa­thy. All they are each doing, in their own pecu­liar way, is try­ing to deal with the par­tic­u­lar hand that they’ve each been dealt. Espe­cial­ly Ani, played by Mikey Madi­son. Who, it almost goes with­out say­ing, is, quite sim­ply, a revelation. 

You can see the trail­er for Ano­ra here.

Sign up for a sub­scrip­tion right or below and I shall keep you post­ed every month, on All the very best and worst in film, tele­vi­sion and music!

Filed Under: Film Tagged With: , , ,

New Albums from MJ Lenderman and Jack White

November 8, 2024 by Leave a Comment

MJ Len­der­man is best known as the gui­tarist and co-song writer for the neo grunge Amer­i­cana band Wednes­day. But with Man­ning Fire­works he defin­i­tive­ly steps out to announce his arrival as a solo artist of gen­uine stature. 

Man­ning Fire­works is actu­al­ly his fifth solo out­ing but it’s a sig­nif­i­cant step up from any­thing he’s done hith­er­to and has, quite right­ly, been met with uni­ver­sal acclaim.

Think Pave­ment meets Teenage Fan­club via Dino Jr., where Len­der­man and his alter egos inhab­it a low key, white trash world that’s glar­ing­ly un-roman­ti­cised. And in which local losers live out their non exis­tences in over-lit, wall-stained motel rooms, watch­ing cable TV and smok­ing weed.

But dig beneath that sur­face and you unearth a seri­ous­ness and grav­i­tas as Len­der­man makes a gen­uine effort to face up to, or to at least get a bet­ter under­stand­ing of where that exis­ten­tial ennui is com­ing from.

Once you find out that he’s recent­ly split up from his long-time part­ner and fel­low Wednes­day band mem­ber, Kar­ly Hartz­man, that expla­na­tion, it seems, is blind­ing­ly obvious.

But to his cred­it, instead of wal­low­ing in his pain Len­der­man qui­et­ly masks the source of his angst, and his songs remain enig­mat­i­cal­ly elu­sive, sep­a­rat­ed by a thick pain of mist­ed glass. His is a world that remains pleas­ing­ly out of focus. Com­fort­ably one of the albums of the year. 

Jack White seemed to be a man liv­ing the musi­cal dream. After the White Stripes split up in 2011, he found­ed his own record label, Third Man Records, to record and release albums by his favourite and often long-for­got­ten artists. While embark­ing upon any num­ber of impres­sive side projects, includ­ing the Racon­teurs and the Dead Weath­er. 

And he released his first cou­ple of solo efforts, Blun­der­buss in 2012 (reviewed by me here) and Lazaret­to in 2014 (which I reviewed here), both of which were met with jus­ti­fied acclaim.

But since then, the wheels seem some­how to have ever slight­ly come some­what off. There’s noth­ing egre­gious­ly wrong with the three solo albums that he’s released in the inter­im. And in prin­ci­ple, we try to applaud artists when they con­scious­ly seek to force them­selves out of their com­fort zone and into new territories. 

But each new release was begin­ning to sound increas­ing­ly less like an actu­al Jack White album. And the sus­pi­cion that all was not well was only accen­tu­at­ed by many of the pub­lic appear­ances he made on the var­i­ous talk shows, togeth­er with the increas­ing­ly shrill decrees that were ema­nat­ing from his base in Nashville. 

So what a relief it is to sit down and lis­ten to his new album, No Name. It wouldn’t be com­plete­ly accu­rate to say that this is exact­ly the album we might have expect­ed him to have released in the imme­di­ate after­math of the dis­band­ing of the White Stripes. But it wouldn’t be a mil­lion miles off either. 

All of that vir­tu­oso, genre-stretch­ing, son­ic bom­bast has been put to one side and what we’re served up instead are 13 tracks that have been stripped down to their bare essen­tials before being blast­ed nois­i­ly into the regal stratos­phere. Wel­come back. 

Watch MJ Lenderman’s She’s Leav­ing You:

And Jack White’s That’s How I’m Feeling

Sign up for a sub­scrip­tion right or below, and I shall keep you post­ed every month on All the very best and worst in film, tele­vi­sion and music!

Filed Under: Music Tagged With: , ,

“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice”, Yawn, Shrug

October 3, 2024 by Leave a Comment

Greil Mar­cus, famous­ly, lament­ed that no one had so ful­ly betrayed their innate tal­ent as enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly as Rod Stew­art. No doubt Stew­art will be rais­ing an eye­brow at this, as his lat­est para­mour wraps her legs around his neck in whichev­er of his coun­try estates they are cur­rent­ly reclin­ing in. But it’s hard not to view Tim Bur­ton as his cin­e­mat­ic equivalent.

Because for all their mate­r­i­al suc­cess, they must both know, at some lev­el, that it was nev­er meant to have been about the money.

Burton’s prodi­gious raw tal­ent was imme­di­ate­ly spot­ted and very quick­ly he was able to direct his first fea­ture, Pee-wee’s Big Adven­ture, in 1985 at the age of 27. And over the next ten years, he made Beetle­juice (‘88), Bat­man (’89), Edward Scis­sorhands (’90), Bat­man Returns (’92) and Ed Wood (’94). 

Which looked like he’d struck that ide­al com­bi­na­tion of doing one for the stu­dio, fol­lowed by one of his more per­son­al projects. The stu­dio pic­tures man­aged to make mon­ey while still bear­ing his very par­tic­u­lar per­son­al stamp, and allowed the stu­dio to jus­ti­fy fund­ing the more idio­syn­crat­ic fare that Bur­ton was clear­ly more inter­est­ed in. 

But in the 30 years since mak­ing Ed Wood, Bur­ton has made around a dozen oth­er films most of which are nei­ther one nor the oth­er. Some of them look like they start­ed out as per­son­al pet projects, but quick­ly grew to become bloat­ed stu­dio pic­tures. Oth­ers were clear­ly designed to fund what came in between. 

None of them are bad films. Burton’s not capa­ble of mak­ing a bad film. They’re just not ter­ri­bly inter­est­ing. And now this, the so say long await­ed sequel to Beetle­juice. 

If you were try­ing to be char­i­ta­ble, I sup­pose you could say, isn’t it great to see all that tal­ent up on screen? Willem Defoe, Jen­na Orte­ga, Justin Ther­oux and Mon­i­ca Bel­luc­ci join Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder and Cather­ine O’Hara from the orig­i­nal. But it’s hard not to con­clude, what a shame they weren’t giv­en a bit more to get their teeth stuck into.

I hope they all enjoyed the expe­ri­ence of the shoot and were suit­ably com­pen­sat­ed for their time. And the stu­dio put a huge amount of heft into their mar­ket­ing efforts, so hope­ful­ly they’ve recov­ered their invest­ment and won’t feel the need to blame any­one for the film that resulted. 

But it’s hard not to be a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ed that Burton’s best film, Bat­man Returns, turns out to have been one of the stu­dio films that were sup­posed to have been fund­ing his more per­son­al projects, all those years ago. 

You can see the trail­er for Beetle­juice Beetle­juice here

Sign up for a sub­scrip­tion right or below, and I shall keep you past­ed every month on All the best and worst in film, tele­vi­sion and music!

Filed Under: Film Tagged With: , ,

“Kneecap” and “Oddity” Both Hit Their Mark

September 5, 2024 by Leave a Comment

There are two films out at the moment both of which are sur­pris­ing­ly watch­able. First up is Odd­i­ty, an Irish hor­ror film.

I’m very much not a hor­ror fan and our abil­i­ty to pro­duce com­pe­tent­ly made low bud­get genre films here in Ire­land is, with­out putting too fine a point on it, uncon­vinc­ing. So I seat­ed myself on the aisle, con­fi­dent that I’d be leav­ing after about twen­ty minutes. 

What a plea­sure to be proved so thor­ough­ly wrong. As its writer direc­tor Dami­an McCarthy is the first to admit, it makes no attempt at break­ing the mould and is quite con­tent to rely on the usu­al assort­ment of well-worn tropes and types. 

What’s a girl to do?

A women is on her own in a large, sprawl­ing house in the mid­dle of nowhere, and when she goes back inside from the pitch dark­ness after retriev­ing some­thing from her car, there’s a loud knock at the door. 

It’s a man who has, he tells her, just escaped from a lunatic asy­lum, and he’s come to warn her that while she was in her car, he saw some­one enter her house. That man is in there now!! All she has to do is let this wide-eyed lunatic in, and he’ll go in, find him and save her. 

What’s she to do?

For once, the fact that there’s so lit­tle that’s orig­i­nal about the film is exact­ly what makes it so enjoy­able. Odd­i­ty hits each of the age old marks just so, so that the brief bursts of gen­uine if mild anx­i­ety are imme­di­ate­ly tem­pered by know­ing recog­ni­tion. Deliv­er­ing just the right mix of sus­pense, the super­nat­ur­al and pure hokum. 

Tight­ly script­ed, well-act­ed and with excel­lent use of sound, Odd­i­ty is one of the few films it’s worth both­er­ing going out to the cin­e­ma for this summer. 

My expec­ta­tions around Kneecap were even low­er, and I plant­ed myself in the aisle seat of the front row, expect­ing to remain there for no more than 8 or 9 min­utes. Once again, how nice to be proved wrong. 

Instead of the usu­al suc­ces­sion of unfun­ny skits per­formed by embar­rass­ing­ly wood­en pop pup­pets in a film con­spic­u­ous­ly devoid of any­thing approx­i­mat­ing an actu­al plot, Kneecap boasts impres­sive per­for­mances from one and all. And not just from Michael Fass­ben­der, whose gen­er­ous par­tic­i­pa­tion must have helped con­sid­er­ably in get­ting the project off the ground. 

Kneecap are, osten­si­bly, a hip-hop trio from Belfast on a mis­sion to spread the word on the Irish lan­guage. Impres­sive­ly, all three offer up pol­ished and at times even sub­tle per­for­mances that sug­gest their future is more like­ly to be on a sound stage than in the record­ing stu­dio. And the film is pro­pelled by pacey direc­tion in a con­fi­dent­ly plot­ted sto­ry that expert­ly fields its pol­i­tics with informed aplomb. 

It’s instant­ly dis­pos­able of course, and no one’s going to be lis­ten­ing to that kind of sub-Beast­ie Boys music in 12 months’ time, but the film deliv­ers an instant hit with incred­i­ble ener­gy and gen­uine humour. And so long as you go in with appro­pri­ate­ly low expec­ta­tions, you’ll be as pleas­ant­ly sur­prised as I was. In short, it’s a riot. 

Odd­i­ty won an audi­ence award at this year’s SXSW and Kneecap did the same thing at this year’s Sun­dance. You can see the trail­er for Odd­i­ty here:

And the trail­er for Kneecap here:

Sign up for a sub­scrip­tion right or below, and I shall keep you post­ed every month, on All the very best and worst in film, tele­vi­sion and music!

Filed Under: Film, Uncategorized Tagged With: ,
Next Page »