Heads or Tails? (2025): The filmmakers behind Tale of King Crab (which we have yet to see) have signed John C. Reilly to play Buffalo Bill Cody in a film based on a real-life horse taming competition between Italian and American cowboys. We are taking Variety at their word when they describe it as a “surreal Western” without further elaboration. It will show up at festivals next year. Read more at Variety.
“Nyaight of the Living Cat”: Takashi Miike will “executive direct” this anime series about a virus that turns people into cats. Miike’s big pull quote: “This laugh-out-loud, panic-inducing anime was born to bring happiness to everyone on Earth. I hope you enjoy it.” Coming in 2025 via Crunchyroll. We first heard of it from Fangoria.
Piece by Piece (2024): Read Gregory J. Smalley’s review. A musical biodoc of Pharrell Williams, but done complete in Lego-vision and featuring some surprisingly trippy animation. The DVD and/or Blu-ray includes a new exclusive interview with Williams and director Morgan Neville (not specified whether it’s in Lego or live-action format). Buy Piece by Piece.
WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE:
No Pod 366 next week, as the crew takes federally-mandated time off to celebrate the holidays. (It will be a late Saturnalia for Greg, but he hopes Saturn forgives.) But we’ll have plenty of written content, as El Rob Hubbard supplies a Happy End (1967); Shane Wilson brings you some Christmas Toys (1992); and Giles Edwards investigates 1973’s Alabama’s Ghost (from the enigmatic Fredric Hobbs). Onward and weirdward!
FEATURING: Andrea Laing, Michael Shenefelt, Sharon Blackwood, Asher Alexander, Jesse Malinowski
PLOT: The killer yule log is back and looking for Zoe, who finds herself stranded in the Christmasy town of Mistletoe, which is planning their first annual Yule Log festival: can Zoe overcome her fear of being bashed in the head by an evil flaming log and embrace the spirit of Christmas, finding love with one of town’s clumsy hunks?
COMMENTS: Adult Swim Yule Log, which dropped without warning in December 2022, had serial killers, aliens, ghosts, and a miniature plantation owner who lived in a fireplace in addition to its centerpiece: a flying, flaming, homicidal yule log. This sequel, which dropped without warning in December 2024, seemed unlikely to top all that insanity. And, wisely, writer/director Caspar Kelly doesn’t even try: instead, as the insouciant subtitle suggests, he pivots from an absurdist comedy with genuine moments of horror to a flat-out comedy, delivering a work that simultaneously parodies horror sequels and Hallmark Christmas rom-coms, with just enough bizarre touches to keep the franchise on brand. The result is a film that, while not as constantly surprising and weird as the original, is every bit as entertaining and watchable.
There are some nods to the previous installment (a trip inside a refrigerator that mirrors the trip inside the fireplace, gratuitous cameo appearances by beloved characters in the last scene), but you do not have to have seen the first one to enjoy this: if you’ve seen any horror sequel and a trailer for a Hallmark Christmas movie, you’ll be up to speed in no time. In fact, forget most of what you know about the first movie and just think of the Yule Log as an immortal slasher like Michael Meyers or Jason (despite being the most ridiculous inanimate horror villain since the Death Bed). Zoe, the final girl of the part 1, was understandably traumatized by the experience, so much so that she now carries a woodcutter’s axe with her wherever she goes—a running joke that gets funnier as the movie goes on. Her obligatory gay best friend suggests she needs a change of scenery to leave the memory of the horror behind her. Unfortunately, due to bad luck and possibly the machinations of a man in a Santa suit (whose character I never actually figured out), she finds herself stranded in Mistletoe, a Christmas-loving town peopled mainly by clumsy hunks who make every stroll down Main Street a never-ending ordeal of meets cutes. The movie takes on a meta tone as Zoe realizes that she is in either a horror movie or a Hallmark movie—and that she has, to some extent, the power to chose between them. The cinematography neatly goes fullscreen and full color for the romcom sequences, then narrows the frame to letterbox format and darkens in grade when the horror is predominant. This motif is employed well so that it always surprises you when it happens—but then you forget about the dual format, and it surprises you again the next time it happens.
Although she was the putative protagonist of the first movie, Andrea Laing particularly didn’t stand out in what was more of an ensemble film. Here, she stretches and impresses as she switches back and forth between plucky horror heroine and emotionally vulnerable romantic lead. And writer/director Caspar Kelly proves he can succeed at whatever he sets his mind to. If you cut out the Yule log related elements to leave only the Hallmark parody, you’d have one of the wackiest comedies of 2024, something with genuine box office potential. Despite the fact that this odd little TV movie will be seen by relatively few, it would surprise me if neither Laing nor Kelly expanded their profiles after this. Laing has talent, and Kelly may be outgrowing the Adult Swim sandbox—it’s time to branch out. True, AS gives Kelly a blank check for whatever weird project that swims through his strange mind, which is commendable; but there is an entire non-basic-cable audience of cinephiles (i.e., feature film snobs) out there who are missing out on a real original’s demented creations. You can’t take the Christ out of Christmas (because who wants to sing mas carols and open mas presents under the mas tree?); but you can take the Adult Swim out of Adult Swim Yule Log. Can you imagine seeing Yule Log 3: Wreck the Halls, starring Andrea Laing, in the cinema in two years?
FEATURING: Sarah Zanotti, Sam Brooks, Katherine Morgan, Moiba Mustapha
PLOT: Mary suffers a traumatic brain injury during a car crash and thereafter is convinced her husband isn’t the man he says he is.
COMMENTS: Kd Amond pulls off an impressive stunt with The Unraveling. Her latest film skates around genre labels like her protagonist skirts around certainty: the film isn’t really horror, though it flirts with the genre—and the same goes for thriller, drama, romance, science fiction, and, unfortunately for us, weird. This refusal to be pigeonholable (Merriam, get me on the line) is a credit to Ms. Amond, even if it risks alienating fans of specifically horror, thriller, drama, romance, science fiction, and weird movies. We are presented with and, especially, left with a wiggly specimen of narrative, whose unreliability and oddness ultimately makes sense but raises the question: What is The Unraveling for? And, for whom?
Mary’s navigation of domesticity is vexed, as her husband (played by Sam Brooks, sporting a haircut I wish I had half the confidence for) fluctuates between a bit too understanding and a bit too controlling. We’re somewhat reliably informed that she recently suffered a traumatic brain injury: hence, her conviction that her husband is not who he says he is, and that her actual husband is a mysterious voice at the other end of her phone, speaking from a parallel reality. We are told she has difficulty with specific faces—while she may respond positively to the voice of her “husband” from another room, immediately upon seeing him she thinks him an impostor. So her days are filled with apprehension and confusion, beginning each morning when she wakes up in a bed with someone she is certain she doesn’t know.
Obviously throwing a baby into the mix is exactly the wrong thing to do, but that becomes a major plot point for the third act. Now, by this juncture the genre nearly tips into the realm of lifetime melodrama (or, considering the introduction of snowscape to the remote home’s exterior, perhaps even Hallmark). While following this pachinko of a plot line, I succumbed myself to Mary’s confusion: where are events heading? That I continued to invest myself in the film’s digressionary tendencies is a credit to Sarah Zanotti, who imbues Mary with a quietly desperate humanity.
To unravel a piece of knit-work is termed “frogging”, and leaping into a metaphor here, frogging is an apt one for Amond’s film. All the ducks, diving, and dodging of a frogger in their efforts to return to an error-free stage of the project are a bit exhausting. In that way, The Unraveling handily conveys its subject’s experience; but the open question I had at the finale was: Has this been worth the energy?
PLOT: An extended family has gathered at a lakeside retreat to take the annual Christmas card photo, but one woman notices that their mother is missing.
COMMENTS: The good news is debuting director Kerr shoots certain scenes with real flair. The film opens on a three-minute tracking shot of a woman trying to herd a family of about 16 or so people, presumably to the location of the titular event. But everyone seems to have their own agenda: soccer balls get thrown in anger, adults keep backtracking, and of course the children all zig-zag cheerfully in and out of frame. The accompanying sound mix begins as a low rumble of wind; gradually indistinct conversations and bird chirps seep into the mix. The procession arrives at the appointed spot and the camera sticks in place, but the low-key chaos continues as everyone mulls about instead of assuming their positions for the photo. The diegetic babble of family conversation overcomes the gentle drone. This is Kerr at her best, generating subtle unease from mundane events. It looks spontaneous, but must be carefully choreographed.
Notably, there is no figure in the assembly that might serve as matriarch of the clan. That fact is the closest thing to a plot hook to be found in Family Portrait. After the opening scene, the movie changes to a series of conversational vignettes about the family and some lovely shots of Hunt County, Texas hill country. (This is the type of slowcore cinema that takes time out to watch an ancillary character silently smoke a cigarette in real time.) Most of these early scenes don’t amount to much besides briefly sketching out the assembly; a notable exception is a discussion of an old family photograph which had been repurposed by a third party, ending with the observation “you can’t always trust photographs.” A crucial bit of information is dropped when we learn that a distant cousin has just died from a mystery illness. Suddenly, one of the family, Katy, notices that her mother is missing—-but no one else seems concerned about mom’s absence in the slightest. (Look for a couple other “lost” souls and “disappearances” sprinkled throughout the movie.) Katy’s quest to find her mother rises to an obsession, merges with her desire to get everyone together for the photograph no one else seems interested in, and funnels into a low-key panic attack. Other reviewers have emphasized the “surrealism” of the film’s finale, but this is overstated: the ending is an odd bit of alternate reality, circling back to the opening in a transformed fashion, but nothing profoundly weird pops up. More importantly, by the ending nothing has been resolved—and, in fact, precious little has even been suggested.
In many respects Family Portrait resembles Picnic at Hanging Rock, which also dwelt on a mysterious disappearance. But whereas Peter Weir‘s classic presents a pastoral mystery with no solution, Family Portrait dives even further into abstraction, offering a pastoral scenario in which the mystery is whether there is any mystery at all. The acting is competent and the sound mixing and cinematography in this indie are superlative, giving some scenes a real punch; I just wish the script had provided the viewer a little more guidance. Without more perspective and thematic teasing, the is-mom-missing-or-not ambiguity was not enough for me to hang my hat on.
The director’s statement about the film give some backgrounds and hints about the ideas that were going through her head when she made Family Portrait, and may prove helpful to some who are bewildered by a movie that comes close to being an experiment in non-narrative cinema.
COMMENTS: Trekking through an endless expanse of desolate desert, Juan meets a man leading a train of burros. Juan explains that he’s going to Comala searching for his father, Pedro Páramo, to fulfill his mother’s dying wish. The traveler knows Pedro Páramo—pretty well, it turns out—but warns Juan that the village is deserted and his father is long dead. Juan nevertheless enters the town and finds lodging with a psychic woman who just happens to be an old friend of his mother’s (and, naturally, of Pedro Páramo). In the eerie silence of the abandoned town, strange things begin happening; then, with little forewarning, the movie shuttles us into flashbacks from Pedro Páramo’s life.
These flashbacks are presented in an entirely different style and tone from Juan’s experiences during what turns into an eternal night in Comala. The town is now drab, dusty, and decrepit, lensed in weathered browns and worn grays, but in its heyday it was lush and green and thriving. The flashbacks flow in a nonlinear stream, and there are brief moments of disorientation as the audience figures out who the characters are and at what stage of life; but the past holds no spectral magic, unlike Juan’s present. An unflattering portrait of Pedro Páramo emerges: an ambitious man, driven by greed and lust, who brings tragedy to the town. He fathers many children (mostly though seduction, adultery, and rape), kills many rivals, and has a contentious relationship with the town priest, who has as much reason to resent him as to fear him. Pedro Páramo seems to represent Mexico’s landed class, and will clash with a group of armed peasant rebels—although he chooses not to fight them, but tries to negotiate while hoping for a chance to betray them. You search in vain for a reason to like Pedro, but even his genuine loves, for a rapist son and for his childhood sweetheart, are tinged with perversity and instinctual evil.
While both parts of the film—the magical realist ghost story and the completely realist generational saga—are engaging in their own way, there is a serious imbalance between them that turns into a major flaw. The film is caught between two worlds, but chooses one over the other, as it abandons Juan’s mystical experiences in Comala at about the halfway point—just as they reach a peak coinciding with a vision of a cyclone of naked bodies spinning in the desert air over the town square. I am not sure how the original source novel handled the frequent switching between Juan and Pedro’s perspectives, but it feels wrong here; as we watch the second half of Pedro Páramo’s story play out, we keep expecting to return to check in with Juan, and that never really happens. His absence is particularly hard to take if the part of the movie that really interests you was the encounters with the town’s many ghosts, rather than the tragic backstory.
This odd pacing decision is a blow to the film, but not a fatal one. By the time Juan disappeared from the story, I still wanted to see how his father turned out in the end. Like most petty tyrants, he comes to a bad end, but only after too long of a life spent enjoying the fruits his wickedness.
Pedro Páramo was adapted from a famous and influential 1955 Mexican novel by Juan Rulfo, which was lauded by writers like Gabriel García Márquez and Jorge Luis Borges. It has been adapted once before, for Mexican television. Prieto, the acclaimed cinematographer of Brokeback Mountain, Killers of the Flower Moon, and Barbie chose this novel as his feature directing debut. Naturally, the film looks amazing, and the cast of Mexican actors unknown north of the border put in excellent work, particularly the stoical Manuel Garcia-Rulfo in the title role. The film debuted at the Toronto Film Festival and then was snatched up by Netflix, who did it a disservice by not giving it a U.S. theatrical release (therefore making it ineligible for awards season consideration). At least more people will have the chance to view it on the mega-streamer—assuming they can find it buried in Netflix’s content graveyard, international art film quadrant.
