A lot of people on Twitter were very, very excited today when the trailer for Weird dropped.
Weird: The Al Yankovic Story is …. well, the plot is right there in the title. It’s the Al Yankovic story. Since Yankovic has reportedly managed to avoid drugs, alcohol, and all of the other usual rock star debauchery, one can imagine that this will be a music biopic unlike any other.
Playing the title character is Daniel Radcliffe. Radcliffe, I have to say, has had a varied and interesting career ever since his former franchise ended. I guess one of the advantages of having Harry Potter money is that you can afford to take a few risks when it comes to picking your films. Good for him. We need actors who are willing to take chances.
Here’s the trailer. Weird will stream on Roku later this year.
Don’t Worry, Darling is one of the most anticipated films of the year. Not only is it Olivia Wilde’s second film as a director but it also stars two of the hottest performers around right now, Florence Pugh and Harry Styles! Set in the 1950s, Don’t Worry, Darling is described as being a psychological thriller, one in which a wife discover some dark secrets not only about her husband but also about the seemingly perfect community in which they live.
Today, we celebrate May Day with this short film from 1974. A Good Days Work: Selling is all about how exciting it is to work in a fish market. I guess these film were made so that children in school could mentally prepare for the careers that were ahead of them and, indeed, I imagine a few kids in 1974 probably grew up to work in a New England fish market.
Anyway, I find this short film to be kind of moody and …. I don’t know, weird. The grainy images and the voyeuristic children are, to be honest, kind of unsettling. There’s a lot of ennui to be found in this film. Though it’s not the film’s fault, it’s hard to watch anything that was filmed in New England without expecting some sort of weird Stephen King thing to start happening. But, at the same time, it also taught children about fish markets so I guess that’s a good thing.
Today, the Shattered Lens wishes a happy 76th birthday to the one and only John Woo! And what better way to celebrate than with a scene that we love? 1993’s Hard Target was not only John Woo’s first American film but it’s also one of the few films to make perfect use of Jean-Claude Van Damme (not to mention Wilford Brimley and Lance Henriksen)!
Today’s scene is hard Target’s epic shootout and chase scene. Nearly 30 years later, it’s still exciting to watch.
4 Or More Shots From 4 Or More Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!
Today, the Shattered Lens wishes a happy birthday to Texas’s own Wes Anderson! It’s time for….
4 Shots From 4 Wes Anderson Films
Moonrise Kingdom (2012, dir by Wes Anderson, DP: Robert Yeoman)
The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014, dir by Wes Anderson, DP: Robert Yeoman)
Isle of Dogs (2018, dir by Wes Anderson, DP: Tristan Oliver)
The French Dispatch (2021, dir by Wes Anderson, DP: Robert Yeoman)
At this point, the big news about the Oscar race is that there are a lot of contenders and there’s probably even more on the way. We’re still far away from being able to make any definite predictions, though Scorsese and Spielberg always seem like good bets. Everything Everywhere All At Once is also emerging as a possibility, despite it’s early release date. Could it be another Mad Max: Fury Road? It all probably depends on whether or not the precursors are willing to do their part.
Anyway, here are my predictions for April. Be sure to check out my predictions for February and March as well!
Best Picture
Babylon
Empire of Light
Everything Everywhere All at Once
The Fabelmans
I Want To Dance With Somebody
Killers of the Flower Moon
Next Goal Wins
Rustin
She Said
Till
Best Director
Damien Chazelle for Babylon
Chinoyne Chukwa for Till
Martin Scorsese for Killers of the Flower Moon
Steven Spielberg for The Fabelmans
Taika Watitti for Next Goal Wins
Best Actor
Colman Domingo in Rustin
Brendan Fraser in The Whale
Tom Hanks in A Man Called Otto
Joaquin Phoenix in Disappointment Blvd.
Brad Pitt in Babylon
Best Actress
Naomi Ackie in I Want To Dance With Somebody
Cate Blanchett in Tarr
Danielle Deadwyler in Till
Margot Robie in Babylon
Michelle Yeoh in Everything Everywhere All At Once
This screeenshot above is from the trailer for Chip n’ Dale: Rescue Rangers, which finds Chip and Dale estranged but forced to once again work together. It also features Peter Pan looking like he just spent a night drinking at Bada Bing.
This movie will be be streaming on Disney+, starting on May 20th!
Solarbabies is a film that has a reputation. And it’s not a good one.
First released in 1986, Solarbabies is one of those post-Mad Max films that takes place in a post-apocalyptic desert society. There are no more trees. There is no more rain. Order is kept by force. The people are oppressed. Outsiders live in desert towns that have names like “Tiretown.” Children are forced to grow up in a combination of a prison and an orphanage. The orphanage’s Warden (played by Charles Durning) mourns for the way the world used to be, before it became a sun-drenched nightmare without plants or water. The fearsome Grock (Richard Jordan) makes sure that all of society’s rules are followed and the viewer knows he’s a bad guy because he wears a leather trench coat even when it’s over a 100 degrees outside. (Grock never sweats. If only the same could be said of the Warden.) The evil Professor Shandray (Sarah Douglas) experiments on living subjects. It’s a grim, grim world.
However, hope arrives in the form of a glowing orb! A ten year-old deaf boy named Daniel (Lukas Haas) finds the orb and, after regaining his ability to hear, he names it Bodhi. When Darstar (Adrian Pasdar) realizes that he can use Bodhi to protect the people of Tiretown, he steals the orb and runs off with it. Determined to retrieve Bodhi, Daniel chases after him
How will Daniel survive in the desert? Well, luckily, he’s not alone! Daniel was a member of the orphanage’s roller hockey team, the Solarbabies. Terra (Jami Gertz), Jason (Jason Patric), Metron (James LeGros), Rabbit (Claude Brooks), and Tug (Peter DeLuise) strap on their skates and roll out into the desert. Pursuing them is Grock and his stormtroopers.
Meanwhile, somewhere in the desert, an old man named Greentree (Frank Converse) hopes to help the world recover. Greentree looks like a thin version of Santa Claus and he hopes to bring rain and trees back to the Earth. Yes, his name is Greentree. There’s not really much room for subtlety in the world of Solarbabies.
Now, as I said at the beginning of this review, Solarbabies has a reputation. Today, it’s probably best known for being the film that nearly bankrupted Mel Brooks. Yes, that Mel Brooks. When Brooks originally signed on to produce Solarbabies, it was envisioned as being a low-budget sci-fi film that would not have any spectacular special effects. However, Brooks became convinced that Solarbabies had the potential to be a Star Wars-level hit so he increased the budget. He also brought in Alan Johnson to direct the film, despite the fact that Johnson was a choreographer who had only directed one other film and had no experience with science fiction. (Johnson’s previous film had been a remake of To Be Or Not To Be, which starred Brooks and featured Solarbabies’s Charles Durning in a supporting role). At Brooks’s insistence, the film was shot in Spain to save money. Unfortunately, no sooner had Johnson and the film’s cast arrived than Spain was hit by a series of unexpected storms that caused production to shut down. Even when the rain stopped, disagreements between Johnson and the cast delayed the film even further. The footage that was shot satisfied no one, leading to expensive reshoots. In the end, Mel Brooks invested close to $20 million dollars in the film, even taking a second mortgage out on his house. When the film was finally released, it was a critical and box office disaster, though Brooks later said that he did eventually break even after Solarbabies was released on DVD.
So, yes, Solarbabies has a bad reputation and it could be argued that it deserves it. Tonally, the film’s a mess. For a film that appears to have been made for a “family” audience, parts of the film are surprisingly violent Scenes of the Solarbabies playing LaCrosse and cheerfully crossing the desert are mixed with some surprisingly graphic scenes of Grock and Shandray torturing prisoners. Bodhi is a cute and glowing orb who gives Daniel back his hearing and then later brutally kills a lot of bad guys. Jason Patric, Jami Gertz, and Charles Durning all seem to be trying to take the film seriously while Richard Jordan and Sarah Douglas give performances that feel more appropriate for a Hammer horror film. Solarbabies is a bizarre mix of sincerity, sadism, and camp. Nothing about it makes much sense.
And yet….
Listen, I can’t help it. When I watched it last week, I enjoyed Solarbabies. For all of its many and obvious flaws, it’s a hard film not to like. It’s just so thoroughly ludicrous and messy that watching it becomes a rather fascinating viewing experience. It’s hard not to, at the very least, be entertained by the sight of the cast roller skating through the desert. A LaCrosse team battling futuristic Nazis for possession of a glowing orb that can cause rain to fall from a cloudless sky? As far as I’m concerned, it’s impossible not to enjoy that on some level.
Of course, I seem to be in the minority as far as that’s concerned. Alan Johnson never directed another movie after Solarbabies, though he did direct some of those really cool GAP commercials that aired in the early aughts. You know the ones that featured people enthusiastically dancing in khakis? That was him! Those commercials are kind of a guilty pleasure themselves. (Of course, because Mel Brooks nearly didn’t lose his house producing them, they’re not quite as infamous as Solarbabies.) But still, Johnson stared his directorial career by directing Charles Durning to an Oscar nomination in To Be Or Not To Be and he ended it by directing Durning in a box office flop. Well, no matter! I enjoyed Solarbabies and I don’t care who knows it.
Christina Ricci, whose performance was one of the highlights of the first season of Yellowjackets, plays a menaced mother in the upcoming supernatural thriller, Monstrous. The trailer below features Ricci’s character, her son, a rather ugly monster, and a really big car. Apparently, this film was produced by the Chicken Soup for the Soul people, which somehow just makes it all the more creepy.
(Seriously, whenever I see that anyone owns one of those “Chicken Soup” books …. well, I wouldn’t say that I silently judge them but the temptation is always there. Of course, you have to understand that I don’t really like soup to begin with. Someone once told me to have some chicken soup because I had a cold and I was like, “Yeah, I don’t have anything to do with soup so you’re advice is worthless and I’m still sick!”)
Anyway, the Chicken Soup brand is all about inspiring true stories so I guess maybe the monster is going to have a good life lesson to impart. We’ll find out on May 1st!
A lot of people on Twitter were very, very excited today when the trailer for Weird dropped. 
Through the Shattered Lens