Cloud (2024) – Review
Quick Thoughts:
- Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa has crafted an “action thriller” that is loaded with surprises, tension and dread.
- Internet reselling seems horrible.
- Hire reliable assistants.
- Masaki Suda is excellent, and he plays his puzzle-box character to perfection. He’s impulsive, instinctual, unassertive, resourceful, and completely unknowable.
- Since it’s a Kurosawa film, expect a heavy dose of loneliness, isolation and technological woes.
- It made me very happy.
The best thing that can be said about Cloud is that it’s on its own wavelength. Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Pulse, Cure, Tokyo Sonata, Chime, Serpent’s Path – he has an amazing filmography) has always wanted to make an action film, but he wasn’t interested in flashy combat or expert sharpshooters, so he’s placed a bunch of “ordinary” people into a deadly situation and let them loose. The action in Cloud is ugly, fast and almost comical, which is exactly what Kurosawa wanted. The point isn’t to showcase sexy revenge plots; instead, the violence leads characters down open-ended paths that are far from optimistic.
The film revolves around a character named Yoshi (Masaki Suda) who works at a clothing factory during the day and resells goods at night. He’s not the type of guy who waits hours outside a store to snag an exclusive item; instead, he instinctively pounces on good deals and occasionally lets his impulses guide him towards purchasing pallets of “designer” purses and hand-crafted figurines. He rarely discusses his methods, but the opening scene where he buys surplus “therapy machines” from a desperate couple which he then flips for a large profit – shows he isn’t afraid to financially cheat people.
There are seemingly only three people in Yoshi’s life, and they are his girlfriend Akiko (Kotone Furukawa), a fellow online seller Muraoka (Masataka Kubota), and his factory boss Takimoto (Yoshiyoshi Arakawa). Akiko won’t move in with him because his apartment is too small, Muraoka is mad at him because he won’t invest in a startup, and Takimoto is flummoxed by the disciplined man who refuses promotion offers. The captivating thing about the lone wolf Yoshi is that he’s direct in a cold manner that adds a layer of ambiguity to the seemingly ordinary guy. In an interview with Cinema Daily US, Kurosawa mentions that since Yoshi is Japanese, “his feelings of joy, anger, sorrow, and pleasure are not so clear.” The lack of clarity becomes a problem as his nonchalant demeanor rubs people the wrong way which leads to steel cables being placed across his bike path and dark figures lingering behind him on buses.
After a big sale, he dispassionately quits his factory job (while turning down a promotion) and moves to a suburb that provides extra space for him to work. His reselling business becomes successful enough that he hires an assistant (Daiken Okudaira), and loads his spacious house with a swanky espresso machine (that rarely works) and dozens of boxes. Yoshi’s isolated tranquility doesn’t last long as a car part is thrown through a bedroom window, and the investigating cops don’t seem happy with his reselling business.
What follows is an examination of mob mentality, ugly violence and capitalism gone awry. An interesting tidbit is that Kurosawa is friends with an online reseller, and their relationship adds a level of realism to what Yoshi is doing. Also, by wanting to feature “muddled, unrefined, and realistic violence,” Kurosawa makes the violence hard to stomach as there’s no heroics or guns-ablazing theatrics. Yoshi as a character is intriguing because what he does is morally dubious as he resells knockoff goods at huge prices while hiding behind the online alias “Ratel.” However, he can compartmentalize his bad deeds, and since he’s one of many online resellers (who do the same thing), is he that bad? The guy is a mystery and a bit of a blank slate, so it’s up to the audience to decide what/who he is.
Cloud offers a unique journey and if you want to watch a master filmmaker direct his first “action” film, I totally recommend that you check it out.
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The Movies, Films and Flix Podcast – Episode 638: Aliens (1986), James Cameron, and Xenomorph Goo
You can download or stream the pod on Apple Podcasts, Tune In, Podbean, or Spreaker (or wherever you listen to podcasts…..we’re almost everywhere).
If you get a chance please make sure to review, rate and share. You are awesome.
Mark and Norbert discuss the 1986 classic Aliens. Directed by James Cameron, and starring Sigourney Weaver, Bill Paxton, Michael Biehn, and lots of goo, the movie focuses on what happens when the Weyland-Yutani Corporation makes another greedy mistake. In this episode, they also talk about James Cameron, smart ideas, and alien goo. 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!
You can download the pod on Apple Podcasts, Tune In, Podbean, or Spreaker.
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The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025) – Review
Quick Thoughts:
- 1. It’s a four-star MCU film
- 2. Vanessa Kirby, Pedro Pascal, Joseph Quinn and Ebon Moss-Bachrach have excellent chemistry and can easily anchor future MCU films.
- 3. Paul Walter Hauser steals the show
- 4. The cinematography, production design and costume design are A+. It’s one of the best-looking MCU films.
- 5. It’s nice watching a group of people who like each other.
Directed by Matt Shakman (WandaVision, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Game of Thrones, You’re the Worst), The Fantastic Four: First Steps is an amiable superhero movie that avoids the group-dynamic drama that plagues The Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy and Thunderbolts. By leaving out Norse Gods, brilliant jerks, daughters of purple maniacs, former villains and deadly spies who suffer from crippling depression, The Fantastic Four: First Steps eschews drama and instead focuses on a group of likable people as they attempt to save the world. It’s a bit predictable, but what’s surprising is the team never has to be assembled or reassembled; instead they work well together and genuinely like each other.
The film opens with a scene that shows how Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal), Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby), Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn) and Ben Grimm Ebon Moss-Bachrach) got their powers (cosmic nonsense), and then quickly moves onto a montage that showcases their first battles with Giganto and The Mole Man (played beautifully by Paul Walter Hauser). It then jumps four years into the future, where they’re beloved by the public and have defeated most of the major supervillains in the world.
Since several Fantastic Four films have been made, Shakman decided that he could skip an origin story movie and instead tell a story about a well-oiled superhero team who are forced to battle an ancient planet eater. The most interesting choice by Shakman and writers Josh Friedman, Eric Pearson, Jeff Kaplan and Ian Springer was to make The Fantastic Four: First Steps as straightforward as possible. The plot revolves around a character named the Silver Surfer (Julia Garner) traveling to Earth to warn humanity of its impending demise. The Surfer works as a herald for Galactus (voiced by Ralph Ineson), a cosmic being who crunches planets to fulfill a never-ending hunger. The news isn’t fantastic, and it forces the Fantastic Four to do everything in their power to prevent a large alien from smelling Earth’s dirt (in a great scene) and eating their home. This includes confronting Galactus in space, and making decisions that are felt worldwide.
I don’t want to spoil anything else, just know that the rest of the movie features a stretchy guy, a human fireball, a large rock, and an invisible powerhouse battling a large cosmic being, who really wants a baby. There are several fun action set pieces and it’s nice watching Vanessa Kirby proving that she looks awesome while putting her hands in the air and hoping that the VFX crew don’t make her look silly. While researching the role Kirby talked to Shakman about Sue’s powers, and the two talked about “refracting light through prisms, and what altering the light of molecules does when you look at it.” This practical knowledge allowed Kirby to look like she knew what she was doing while pretending to use her magical powers. It’s little things like this that make The Fantastic Four: First Steps a top-tier MCU film, and a lot of credit needs to go to Shakman for putting together a cast who have fantastic chemistry.
Special mentions need to be given to the production design, costume design and musical score by Michael Giacchino. One of my favorite things about the film is that it takes place on “Earth 828,.” and can look however it wants to look. Production Designer Kasra Farahani (Loki – which also looks great) excels at creating worlds where advanced technology and retro design blend to create unique locations and visually interesting sets. The costume design by six-time Oscar nominee Alexandra Byrne is fantastic, and each actor looks perfect in their bespoke tailored clothes. The highlights of Byrne’s costuming work are sweaters and cardigans that Ben Grimm (a walking rock) wears as he cooks dinner or buys his favorite cookies from a local spot. It makes me happy that the person who won an Oscar for Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2008) designed clothes for a rock man.
The biggest issue with the film is related to the biggest character in the Marvel Universe. Galactus has always been one of my favorite characters; he’s a cosmic force who destroys planets and tasks cool-looking heralds (Morg!) to find him edible planets. He’s such a gigantic character that it’s hard to do much with him because he’s a Kaiju-sized blob of VFX. It’s nice that he’s not a giant cloud in this iteration, but when Galactus is introduced, it means only one thing – that a planet will potentially be eaten. He’s a credible threat (and Ralph Ineson is great), after so many world-destroying threats in the MCU, it would’ve been nice to give the Fantastic Four a smaller villain who only wants to eat 13% of “Earth 828.”
Final Thoughts – If you’re looking for an MCU film about capable people being capable, you’ll love The Fantastic Four: First Steps.
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The Movies, Films and Flix Podcast – Episode 637: Star Trek: First Contact (1996), Borg, and Holodecks
You can download or stream the pod on Apple Podcasts, Tune In, Podbean, or Spreaker (or wherever you listen to podcasts…..we’re almost everywhere).
If you get a chance please make sure to review, rate and share. You are awesome.
Mark and Niall discuss the 1996 sci-fi sequel Star Trek: First Contact. Directed by Jonathan Frakes, and starring Patrick Stewart, Alfre Woodard, James Cromwell, and a bunch of Borg, the successful sequel is the highpoint for the Next Generation crew. In this episode, they also talk about even-numbered Star Trek films, holodecks, and Swedish Borg. 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!
You can download the pod on Apple Podcasts, Tune In, Podbean, or Spreaker.
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You can download or stream the pod on Apple Podcasts, Tune In, Podbean, or Spreaker (or wherever you listen to podcasts…..we’re almost everywhere).
If you get a chance please make sure to review, rate and share. You are awesome.
The 2025 Mid-Year Random Awards! Mark and Megan hand out awards to their favorite 2025 movies, performances, moments and scenes. In this episode, you’ll hear them talk about Companion, Presence, Black Bag, The Ballad of Wallis Island, One of Them Days, Sinners, Eephus, Warfare, The Surfer, Dangerous Animals, 28 Years Later, Ghost Killer, Jane Austen Wrecked My Life and many more cool movies. 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!
You can download the pod on Apple Podcasts, Tune In, Podbean, or Spreaker.
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Sorry, Baby (2025) – Review
Quick Thoughts:
- Director, writer, and star Eva Victor has crafted a fantastic film that expertly blends humor, trauma, warmth, suspense, isolation, and compassion
- I hope it’s remembered come awards time
- Naomi Ackie, Lucas Hedges, and John Carroll Lynch are wonderful
- Betty-Anne from Letterkenny is in it! Kelly McCormack is great.
- Lamb of God lol
There’s a moment in Sorry, Baby when the central character Agnes, (Eva Victor) is having a panic attack and can’t catch her breath. She pulls her car into a restaurant parking lot, and the owner (John Carroll Lynch) comes out to tell Agnes that she can’t loiter in his lot. When he sees she’s having trouble breathing, he helps calm her breathing and then makes her a sandwich. What’s great about the scene is that the guy is gruff as hell (and hates his trash collector neighbors), but he listens and shows genuine empathy towards a person who needs it (even though he doesn’t like her name). It’s a great moment that blends sadness with humor and is just one of the fantastic character interactions in the Eva Victor- directed movie.
Sorry, Baby focuses on what happens when a “bad thing” happens to a promising grad student named Agnes. The tragicomedy unfolds over several years that take place in five nonlinear chapters with different titles like “The Year of the Questions” and “The Year of the Bad Thing,”. What’s interesting is that while the movie is occasionally harrowing, Agnes’s journey is loaded with humor and will make you want to grill some hot dogs (or open a sandwich shop). The supporting work from Naomi Ackie, John Carroll Lynch, Kelly McCormack, and Lucas Hedges (who, between Lady Bird, Mid90s, Boy Erased, Waves, Honey Boy, and Sorry, Baby, is an A24 allstar), is pitch-perfect and proves that Victor is a director to watch.
While Sorry, Baby is centered around Agnes and her life before-and-after the “bad thing,” the heart of the film is the friendship between Agnes and her best friend Lydie (Naomi Ackie – on a great run with Blink Twice and Mickey 17). The other 2025 A24 film about friendship (conveniently titled Friendship) goes to some soap-eating places, but this friendship is healthy and filled with love. Ackie and Eva Victor have excellent chemistry, and the friendship between their characters feels lived in and organic.It makes sense that first-time director Victor scheduled the first week of shooting to establish the pair’s friendship, because their chemistry made Victor’s life easier, and they are very funny together.
The nice thing about the humor in Sorry, Baby is that it feels organic, because it comes from a person who uses humor when dealing with good or bad situations. At times, it’s used as a deflection technique (there’s a great joke about being “tall”) during stressful situations with doctors, college employees, lawyers and coworkers. At other times, her jokes (“Is it my baby?”) come during moments of happiness and surprise. The jokes balance out the serious themes because they are an obvious coping technique for Agnes.
Much of the movie takes place inside an isolated cabin that becomes its own character throughout the five chapters. One thing I noticed is that Agnes’ isolated home feels both safe and nightmarish. Whenever Lydie is around, the place feels like a cozy cabin surrounded by cozy woods. However, when Agnes is alone, every creak, crack, and crunch makes you think the movie has become a horror film. Victor deliberately made the place seem both “cozy and terrifying,” and I don’t think I’ve been more stressed out this year while looking at a door. Cinematographer Mia Cioffi Henry (check out the Mitski music videos she shot) does a fine job of shooting the front door from other rooms, which gives it an alienated and dangerous feeling.
To write the film, Victor traveled to Maine and sequestered themself in a cabin for a two-month writing session. The isolation paid off as the screenplay juggles a plethora of emotions while never feeling overly written. Victor can make an elevator ride wildly stressful, so it’s not surprising that the nonlinear screenplay successfully walks a tightrope and never lets the comedy or trauma make the movie plummet to the ground. It’s fun knowing that Barry Jenkins (Moonlight, If Beale Street Could Talk) talked Victor into directing the film, and that Eva shadowed Jane Schoenbrun while they were making I Saw the TV Glow. All the hard work paid off, as after the award-winning Sundance screening, A24 bought the film for $8 million and put their weight behind it.
Final Thoughts – Sorry, Baby is an inspiring piece of cinema created by a person who put a lot of work into making something original and unique. Watch it!
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Ghost Killer (2024) – Review
Quick Thoughts:
1. Director Kensuke Sonomura has crafted a fun showcase for his exciting fight choreography.
2. There’s a great gag involving salt.
3. Watch the Baby Assassin franchise.
4. Masanori Mimoto, Akari Takaishi and Mario Kuroba are wonderful
5. The world needs more movies like Ghost Killer. I love it when silly ideas are taken seriously.
Directed by Kensuke Sonomura, the action director of the Baby Assassins franchise (and many more films), and written by Yugo Sakamoto (who directed the three Baby Assassin films), Ghost Killer is a wonderful supernatural action comedy that features cursed bullet cartridges, apartment destruction, and a college student teaming up with the ghost of a hitman to battle an anti-social organization. The world needs more movies like Ghost Killer because it takes a high-concept idea and treats it with respect.
The film kicks off with a fast-paced action scene between a hitman named Hideo Kudo (Masanori Mimoto – The badass Frog from Yakuza Apocalypse) and a gang of knife-wielding opponents who fall prey to Kudo’s fast hands (and multiple stab wounds). To celebrate the victory, Kudo lets down his guard to smoke a post-murder cigarette and is shot by an unknown assailant. While he lay bleeding out, his grudge-holding blood covers the expelled bullet cartridge on the ground next to his body. This attaches his soul to the bullet cartridge and bonds them together. After being kicked around Tokyo, the cartridge is picked up by Fumika Matsuoka (Akari Takaishi), a college student who justifiably freaks out when she learns that the grudge-bearing soul of a hitman is attached to her. After discovering she can’t escape (and salt exorcisms don’t work) the “genuine ghost” because he reappears in front of her whenever there’s a 15 meter distance between them, Fumika decides to work with Kudo by letting him possess her body so he can kill the person who killed him – which will set his soul free.
The most interesting part of Ghost Killer is that a world-class hitman uses an unathletic college kid as his vendetta machine. When it comes to trained fighters, they know how it feels to absorb strikes, and they’ve trained their bodies to deliver punishment. However, the mild-mannered Fumika has never been close to a fight, and the first punch she lands makes her say, “That really hurts.” After each fight, Fumika is left bruised and battered, but she also really wants to get rid of the hitman ghost attached to her, so she endures broken ribs, bruised knuckles, and bloody noses. Her battles put her in the crosshairs of an “anti-social organization” that justifiably wants to kill her because she’s teamed up with the vengeful ghost of a deadly hitman.
During Hideo and Fumika’s supernatural adventures, they come across Riku Kagehara (Mario Kuroba), a hitman frenemy associate of Hideo who helps them murder people and clean up their bodies. The film builds to a warehouse brawl where the ragtag crew battles an endless barrage of gangsters led by famed stuntman and action choreographer Naohiro Kawamoto, who has a beautiful, rapid-fire brawl with Mimoto.
In the Baby Assassin’s franchise, Takaishi’s character Chisato is an absolute maniac, so it’s fun watching her play a normal (non-murder-y) college kid in Ghost Killer. Also, in Baby Assassins, Saori Izawa does most of the heavy-lifting during the fight scenes, but in Ghost Killer, Takaishi battles abusive boyfriends, jerk influencers, and a plethora of gangsters. It’s fun watching her take center stage, it’s enough to satisfy my Baby Assassins cravings as I wait for Baby Assassins 3.
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The Movies, Films and Flix Podcast – Episode 635: The Bikeriders (2023), Jeff Nichols and Denim
You can download or stream the pod on Apple Podcasts, Tune In, Podbean, or Spreaker (or wherever you listen to podcasts…..we’re almost everywhere).
If you get a chance please make sure to review, rate and share. You are awesome.
Mark and Andy discuss the 2023 crime drama The Bikeriders. Directed by Jeff Nichols, and starring Jodie Comer, Tom Hardy, Austin Butler and a lot of denim, the movie focuses on what happens when a guy watches The Wild One (1953) and decides to start a motorcycle gang. In this episode, they also talk about excellent accents, motorcycle movies, and the excellence of Jeff Nichols. 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!
You can download the pod on Apple Podcasts, Tune In, Podbean, or Spreaker.
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Hot Spring Shark Attack (2024) – Review
Quick Thoughts:
1. It’s the kind of film that features characters eating submarine sandwiches whilst inside a submarine.
2. It’s about ancient sharks that can squish themselves through pipes so they can eat tourists.
3. It features the best shark punching since Lara Croft: Tomb Raider – The Cradle of Life.
4. It’s very silly.
5. If you’re looking for a random double feature, check out Evil Does Not Exist and Hot Spring Shark Attack. Both of the wildly different films feature important water, tourism, and corporate greed.
6. Writer-director Morihito Inoue has crafted a knowingly silly film that wants to entertain
7. Check out the website for screening information
The nice thing about the 80-minute Hot Spring Shark Attack is that it embraces chaos and wears its silly concept on its sleeve. It’s far from focused, but you can sense that director Morihito Inoue was laser-focused on making sure his crowdfunded film brought the goods. Inoue is a big fan of shark cinema, and his low-budget action comedy delivers an admirable amount of shark action and features the most shark punching you’ll ever witness in a single movie. It also features a helicopter explosion caused by a methane-spewing shark who comes across a tactical unit dubbed the “Anti-Hot Spring Unit,” who don’t realize their bullets will cause a massive explosion (it’s wild).
Taking place in the Japanese coastal city of Atsumi (The Monaco of the East), the film starts as a Jaws ripoff (in a loving way) by focusing on ancient sharks squishing their cartilage skeletons through pipes to eat spa goers who are enjoying the famous Atsumi hot springs. It then evolves into something akin to Sharknado as the hot water-loving sharks start attacking the denizens of Atsumi. It all culminates with an underwater battle between a buff guy nicknamed “Macho” and a large crown-wearing king shark.
Drawing inspiration from Jaws and Sharknado, Hot Spring Shark Attack is a lo-fi shark film that is loaded with an incredible amount of energy. On top of everything already mentioned, the movie features Influencer murder, anti-shark submarines, submarine sandwiches, weight-lifting montages, and sharks that require the smallest amount of hot spring water to pop up anywhere (seriously, anywhere). In a standout scene, an industrious shark sets a trap for tourists at the bottom of a playground slide and swallows them whole as they come down it (and it’s great).
Hot Spring Shark Attack pinballs around at a breakneck pace and feels like a collection of scenes slapped together. With a title like Hot Spring Shark Attack, it’s unfair to expect a focused experience. However, the looseness of the storytelling gives the movie a chaotic vibe, which doesn’t help the overall flow. The result is a loving homage to shark cinema that features knowingly cheeky performances from Daniel Aguilar (Shin Godzilla), Shôichirô Akaboshi, and Takuya Fujimura (One Cut of the Dead).
Final thoughts – I’ve now seen a movie featuring talking sharks squishing themselves through hot spring pipes to eat influencers – and I am very happy.
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The Movies, Films and Flix Podcast – Episode 634: Speak No Evil (2024), James McAvoy and Pointless Remakes
You can download or stream the pod on Apple Podcasts, Tune In, Podbean, or Spreaker (or wherever you listen to podcasts…..we’re almost everywhere).
If you get a chance please make sure to review, rate and share. You are awesome.
Mark and Lisa discuss the 2024 remake Speak No Evil. Directed by James Watkins, and starring James McAvoy, Mackenzie Davis, Scoot McNairy, and a stuffed bunny, the movie focuses on what happens when a family has a terrible vacation. In this episode, they also talk about toothless remakes, Blumhouse Productions, and plaid shirts. 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!
You can download the pod on Apple Podcasts, Tune In, Podbean, or Spreaker.
Movies, Films & Flix 