Movies, Films & Flix

Quick Thoughts:

1. Cannibal beach fight!
2. Cinematographer Noah Greenberg does a fine job capturing the beauty of the Indonesian locations
3. A badass samurai + a remote island + cannibals = A good time
4. It’s pretty much three movies in one. Don’t expect nonstop chaos. 
5. The fight choreography by Yandi Sutisna (The Night Comes for Us), Erik Rukmanila (Beyond Skyline) and Rama Ramadhan (The Raid: Redemption) is wonderful. I like knowing that executive producer Iko Uwais is handing out opportunities to young stunt choreographers. 

I love movies that feature problems on top of problems, and Lone Samurai is a great example of a lone samurai having a terrible time on a remote island. Here’s why.

1. Riku (Shogen), a badass samurai, gets stranded on an island because a tsunami broke out during a sea battle with a Mongolian armada. 
2. When he wakes up on the island, he learns that he has a hunk of wood stuck in his leg AND his sword is broken in half.
3. The guy is tired, dehydrated, injured and weaponless. 
4. After regaining his strength (and becoming cool with the local Komodo Dragon populace), he decides to build a shrine on top of the tallest mountain on the island.
5. After building the shrine, he’s knocked unconscious by a cannibal.
6. He’s imprisoned deep inside a cave system and is third in line to be eaten by the cannibals
7. One of the cannibals is played by Yayan Ruhian (The Raid, The Raid 2, John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, Boy Kills World, Skylines, Beyond Skyline, Yakuza Apocalypse, Merantau). Yayan is probably the last person a movie character would want to fight. 
8. After escaping, the lone samurai has to battle a gang of cannibals who are really tough. There is a henchman named Bone Thin (Faisal Rachman – a breakdancer and martial artist), who looks like he belongs in Only the Strong (watch it now). 
9. The final villain is named Boar (Rama Ramadhan), and he’s a cannibal tank.
10. If Riku wins, he’s still stranded on an island….

The best thing about Lone Samurai is that it takes you to some unexpected places. I normally hate comparing movies to other movies, but it’s like Bone Tomahawk, Apocalypto, 13 Assassins, Cast Away, The 13th Warrior, and a samurai film were dropped into a Vitamix and blended into a unique action-horror film that ends with a beach fight. Director Josh C. Waller came up with the “Samurai on an island” narrative after seeing a lone fisherman standing knee-deep in the water on the north shore of Oahu. He initially wanted the film to be an “entirely silent” journey that subverted tropes and featured things audiences had never seen before (according to the press notes). However, after learning that an entirely silent film wouldn’t get much funding, he edited the script and managed to cobble together some money for his experimental film. Filming on Oahu would’ve been too expensive, so he found Indonesian shooting locations and recruited the talented Team Uwais for all the fights and stunts. 

Waller’s experience as a producer most certainly helped stretch the budget, as his work on Mandy, Color Out of Space, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, and The Greasy Strangler proves he can churn out great-looking films on a budget. Waller pulled together a solid group of contributors to help him make movie magic. What’s interesting is that production was rough as he had to fire his art department, recast actors, and change the way he directs (he said he was way too “intense” on his crew). The end result is a neat experimental film that ends with a 30-minute beach brawl.

Final thoughts – Watch it. Enjoy the beach brawl.

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Mark and Jack Austin discuss the 2024 sci-fi epic Dune: Part Two. Directed by Denis Villeneuve and starring Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Austin Butler and lots of sand, the movie focuses on what happens when a manufactured prophecy created by a powerful religious force comes to fruition. In this episode, they also talk about accessible sci-fi, sandworm riding, and terrible employers. Enjoy!

If you are a fan of the podcast, make sure to send in some random listener questions (we love random questions). We thank you for listening, and hope you enjoy the episode!

Quick Thoughts:

1. The cast is pitch-perfect.
2. It has the feel of an old-school rom-com, which is nice. Director David Freyne was inspired by The Apartment (1960), Heaven Can Wait  and Sullivan’s Travels
3. The high-concept idea is stretched a bit thin, but I appreciate the world-building
4. Miles Teller is perfect as a big oaf of a guy
5. Elizabeth Olsen has a lot to do, and she does it effortlessly. 

It makes a lot of sense that the screenplay for Eternity landed on the Blacklist because it’s simultaneously high concept and unwieldy. On the surface, the idea of a deceased woman named Joan (Elizabeth Olsen) having to choose which of her deceased husbands (Miles Teller, Callum Turner) to spend eternity with is perfectly straightforward for a rom-com. However, toss in world-building, a love triangle, additional characters, rom-com tropes, and a “bureaucratic Brutalist hub that encased a chaotic tourism expo of eternities,” (thank you press notes) and you have a lot of story to cover. The good news is that Eternity is a refreshingly nice film that features solid work from Elizabeth Olsen, Miles Teller, Callum Turner, and Da’Vine Joy Randolph.

The story opens with an elderly man (who is supremely cranky) named Larry Cutler (Teller) choking on a pretzel during a gender reveal party thrown by his daughter. After dying, he wakes up on a train and is delivered to an afterlife waystation where his afterlife coordinator Anna (Joy Da’Vine Randolph) tells him he has seven days to choose where he’ll spend eternity. When he died, Larry was in his 80s, but in the afterlife he’s in his mid-30s, which was when he was the happiest during his life as he and his wife Joan (Elizabeth Olsen) had just welcomed their second child into the world. While there, he meets Luke (Callum Turner), a handsome bartender, who after dying in the Korean War, has been waiting in the waystation for 67 years so he can be reunited with his wife. The problem is that both men were married to Joan, and when she passes away several days after Larry dies, she arrives in the afterlife with both of her husbands expecting she will spend eternity with them. Does she pick her handsome first husband whom she was married to briefly and loved passionately? Or, will she pick Larry, an oaf of a guy, who after 65 years of marriage knows how to make her comfortable and happy (there’s a great bit that involves squats)? It’s a perfect setup for a rom-com because it’s absurd and allows for miscommunications, love triangles, dancing scenes, and third-act running scenes that always appear in rom-coms (think When Harry Met Sally, Jerry Maguire, The Graduate, Love Actually, and Licorice Pizza). 

An inspired idea from writers Patrick Cunnane and David Freyne was to make the afterlife waystation look like it’s inside the atrium of a large hotel (or casino) that’s filled with stuffy rooms, a convention center (filled with thousands of afterlife options), and a train station used to deliver the deceased to their afterlives. The production design by Zazu Myers (My Old Ass – wonderful movie) is inspired as the low-budget film leans into artifice by using large curtains to symbolize day and night. If you’ve ever been stuffed into a stuffy hotel room or convention hall, you’ll know how claustrophobic things can seem, so it makes sense that the waystation to the afterlife isn’t comfortable or welcoming. The goal of the in-between area is for newly deceased people to pick where they want to spend eternity. They can pick from thousands of eternities (Beach World, Capitalist World and Man Free World are some examples), and can never leave the one they pick – if they do, they’ll be tossed into a dark void where they’ll float in darkness for eternity. Making the purgatory-esque waystation worse is that drinking still leads to hangovers, and the afterlife coordinators don’t really care about the potential happiness of their clients because they’re too busy filling afterlife quotas.

At press screenings, you’re asked to share your thoughts with a representative when leaving the theater. I must’ve used the word “nice” about 20 times and I consider that to be a compliment. If you dig deeper into the world of Eternity, it could become a horror film, but knowing that it takes place in a rom-com world and stars a trio of excellent performers makes the experience supremely pleasant. Elizabeth Olsen has a lot to do, and she does it effortlessly, and you completely understand why the characters played by Miles Teller and Callum Turner love her. Of the three actors, Turner gets the least to do as the majority of the dialogue revolves around his resemblance to Montgomery Clift (dude is handsome). The MVP of the film is Miles Teller, who has an everyman charm that makes him a far-from-perfect oaf who just really loves his wife (despite complaining all the time).

Final Thoughts – It’s a nice film. Watch it.

Quick Thoughts

1. It’s been lingering in my memory and is very hard to forget (which is a good thing)
2. Director Sepideh Farsi’s decision to film the conversations vertically on cell phones was wise. Cell phone conversations make things much more comfortable and natural than a camera setup
3. I love Kino Lorber-distributed documentaries
4. It features the best doc cat of 2025.
5. Fatima Hassona was a fantastic photographer.

My favorite thing about documentaries is how they’re able to showcase and illuminate the stories of extraordinary people. Whether it’s Steve Wiebe in The King of Kong, or Timothy Treadwell in Grizzly Man, I love learning about people who spend years trying to break video game records or “protecting” grizzly bears in Alaska. In Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk, director Sepideh Farsi introduces the world to Fatima Hassona, a 24-year-old photographer who lived in Northern Gaza. Over the course of a year, the two talked over WhatsApp video chats, and Farsi edited their conversations into a compelling documentary. 

Between 2025’s The Alabama Solution and Put Your Soul in Your Hand and Walk, cell phones have become an important tool for documentary filmmakers who can’t interview their subjects face to face. The cell phones are handy filmmaking tools because in the case of The Alabama Solution, the footage humanizes the subjects who risk solitary confinement in an Alabama prison to make sure viewers can see their faces. The vertical cell phone conversations make things more intimate, which allows the subjects to feel comfortable in their surroundings. The WhatsApp video chats between Farsi and Hassona give Put Your Soul in Your Hand and Walk a welcome dose of reality and authenticity that make it an excellent watch. Farsi filmed her mobile phone with another mobile phone (interesting idea), and once you’re able to get into the rhythm of the doc, the vertical framing makes you feel like you’ve joined the call, and it also highlights Fatma’s indefatigable smile. 

The conversations are in English because Farsi can’t speak Arabic (but she can understand it), and the two talk about religion, photography, food, dreams, and the pride that comes from living in Gaza. The service and wi-fi in the area were never constant, so the two talked whenever they could. Interspersed throughout the documentary are the photos Hassona took during the bombings, which showcase the humanity of the Gaza residents amidst mass destruction. Whether it’s a child sitting in a chair in front of a leveled building, or an empty street lined with rubble, Hassona’s photography isn’t trying to desensitize people with violent images. 

The saddest aspect of the documentary is watching an optimistic person start drifting away. There are moments in the doc when Fatma admits that she can’t focus anymore and her ever-present smile becomes a shadow of its former self. Throughout the first conversations, she talks about traveling to Rome and Paris, but after a year she just wants a piece of chocolate. The original ending was a long tracking shot through the streets of Gaza that capture widespread destruction, but Farsi chose to include their final conversation in which Hassona learns that the documentary has been accepted into the Cannes Film Festival. It’s a sad moment because the hope created by the film festival quickly dissipates as Hassona died shortly after when a bomb landed on her home.

Final Thoughts – You should watch Put Your Soul in Your Hand and Walk.