Oh, c’mon now. That’s the BEST part.
Kin-dza-dza (1986) - dir. Georgiy Daneliya
Vladimir (nicknamed “Vova”) comes home one fall day in 1980’s Moscow. He’s immediately sent back out to the store for bread. Just outside the market, a young man carrying a violin stops him, pointing to an old man, barefoot, that seems to be in distress. They speak to the man, who claims to be an alien, wants to know the number of our planet, and shows them a small device that ‘moves in space’. Vova, skeptical, presses a button on the device at random, and he and the violinist find themselves on the planet Pluke in the Kin-dza-dza star system. Now they must figure out how to get back home.
What follows is just over two hours of an absurd, but ultimately sweet-natured satire that feels like gentler version of Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, as Vova and the violinist encounter the strange Plukians with their ridiculous social classes and customs. The humor is clever and low-key and more than a little silly. But you grow attached to our hero pair, as well as a few odd characters who they run into along the way.
Now, I am not a Russian or Georgian living in 1980’s Moscow, so MOST of the satire is flying over my head. It’s obvious that things are being poked fun at, but as usual, a modern Western audience will likely lack the context to fully understand exactly what that is, and much nuance will be lost.
But no matter. The laughs are frequent, if not particularly intense. This is a film of goofy amusement with soft, sappy center. Of equal fun is the whole design and look of the film. Plukian sets and costumes are seemingly made of old pieces of scrap, and most of the props look like things you’d find in a ‘Found Object’ sculpture garden. All of which lend a pleasant lo-tech charm to the proceedings.
I also note the the director remade this film as an animated feature in 2013 called Ku! Kin-dza-dza, altering things a bit to make it more kid-friendly (though there’s nothing in the original that would be deemed inappropriate for most folks). I’d be very curious to see it.
3 out of 5 barely-understood criticisms of capitalist societies
For those wondering about the obscure nature of some of these, the local indie theater’s monthly feature is a confusing program of what they’ve dubbed ‘cold-wave’ films, namely European and particularly Eastern European sci-fi made in / around / or adjacent to the Soviet Union. Many of these films have only been restored/rescued and given wider releases in much more recent times, so it’s the first chance many western audiences will have had to see them.
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That plot sounds like it could’ve been written by Stanislaw Lem.
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Ok. I really must either stop writing on my phone or really REALLY commit to proofreading.
The theater’s program is not “confusing”, but rather “continuing”.
Maybe I should just turn off autocorrect.
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The Criteruon channel, in honor and remembrance of David Lynch, has made David Lynch: The Art Life available to stream fro free, no account needed, until the end of the month.
Highly recommended.
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We watched the strange & very entertaining Coup! with a fantastic Peter Sarsgaard a couple of days ago. Naturally, I’d forgotten all about it 
Class wars are always fun to watch.
I recently stumbled across the “Jaime Oliver Channel” on ROKU.
I don’t know how long Roku has had a Jaime Oliver Channel, but some of his recipes look good and are fairly easy.
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A Real Pain. Is a good movie, and you should watch it. Kieran Culkin is amazing. And scary.
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On our list. Is it streaming yet anywhere?
On a Paramount+ binge.
Tulsa King S2, Mayor of Kingstown S2 & S3, Landman. Then on to Lioness and The Agency.
Good Stuff.
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It’s streaming on Hulu.
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Excellent! Thx for letting me know 
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Bitte 
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We watched The Substance last night. Had heard only a little about it, except that Demi Moore won the Golden Globe and it was about an aging woman who took ‘something’. YIKES!!! WOW!!! Not at all what we expected. Moore and Margaret Qualley were both very good; Dennis Quaid was…. well…. Dennis Quaid. But…… a musical or comedy???
This is not a genre we are usually going to watch, but we stuck with it as it got more and more bizarre. I guess it’s a ‘be careful what you wish for’ theme, and likely fits the definition of a dark comedy…… heavy emphasis on the dark. Maybe these awards need to be more critical of what categories they allow films to compete in, or maybe add more categories?
It is a good movie, and Culkin IS amazing. I was also really impressed when I learned that Jesse Eisenberg wrote and directed it as well as starred.
I’d post a full review, but honestly, the movie, for a host of coincidental reasons, hit way WAY to close to home for me, and I don’t think I can judge it in a way that would make sense to anyone else. I think it’s a real achievement, but I have a couple of glaring issues about how it presents and handles mental illness, and how it uses Jewishness as a ‘setting’, rather than a culture. But again, that’s more to do with my own experience, which isn’t universal.
If the trailer appeals to you, you’ll probably like the film quite a bit. It does fall into a bit of indie-film schmaltz toward the end, but it’s generally earned.
I will be very curious to read others’ opinions on it.
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Wolf Man (2025) - dir. Leigh Whannell
In an opening text crawl, we’re told that in the Oregon wilderness, hikers go missing and are said to have gotten “hills fever”, or, as the native tribe called it “man with the wolf face.” Then we cut to 11 year old Blake, hunting deer with his survivalist nut job father. Dad is severe, has a volitile temper, and is obsessed with a father’s “duty to keep his child safe” to the point he just succeeds in terrifying the poor kid. Suddenly, the hunters become the hunted as they are stalked through the woods by… something, in a great tense sequence.
Jump to 30 years later and Blake is grown, with a daughter and journalist wife in San Francisco, trying hard not to repeat his dad’s mistakes. Receiving notice dad has died, the family go up to the old farm to go through it. Things do not go well.
This is all adds up to a decidedly mixed bag. Director Leigh Whannell had two really excellent previous efforts in 2018’s creepy sci-fi Upgrade and 2020’s domestic violence/stalker themed The Invisible Man. The latter, in particular, took the central idea of the premise and put a thoroughly modern (and unexpectedly bloody) twist on things. Wolf Man tries the same trick, subbing in generational trauma as the issue du jour.
It half works. After the opening sequence, things bog down with some of the most wooden, on-the-nose dialogue I’ve ever heard. It was just characters stating the themes of the movie out loud to one another. Over and over.
Then, a little more than half way through, there is a moment, and you will know it when it arrives. When the talking stops and things get REAL. It was enough to make both my partner and me, and just about everyone else in the theater, to cringe in horror, pulling our knees to our chests and grabbing at one another, desperately wanting to look away. It is not a jump scare. It’s just REALLY effective. And, mostly, the film maintains that adrenaline rush right through to the end.
It’s like there are two halves of the film. In the half where the characters talk, it’s an overly simplistic ‘horror-as-trauma’ metaphor executed in the least subtle way possible.
When they shut up, it becomes a tense, shocking, exciting spectacle, with some half-great performances and some truly fantastic effects work. It may be the best transformation since An American Werewolf in London.
If you like horror, you should definitely see it. The fun outweighs the flaws.
3 out of 5 isolated farmhouses with no cell service.
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Also on our list. Speaking of wolves, have you seen Nightbitch yet?
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I have not. I’m very curious to see how it compares with Bitch, a 2017 movie with a VERY similar premise, that takes things in a thriller/black comedy direction, as opposed what is apparently Nightbitch’s more straightforward comedic tone.
Bitch is a fun ride that I generally liked when I saw it.
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