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Channel 366

CHANNEL 366: I’M A VIRGO (2023)

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“I’m a Virgo” streams exclusively on Amazon Prime (subscription required)

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Jharrel Jerome, Olivia Washington, Walton Goggins, Kara Young, Carmen Ejogo, Mike Epps, Brett Gray

PLOT: Cootie, a 13-foot tall black man, tries to find a purpose in Oakland, while idolizing a real-life superhero/media sensation known as “the Hero.”

Still from I'm a Virgo (2023)
Jharrel Jerome (as ‘Cootie’), Olivia Washington (as ‘Flora’). Copyright Amazon Studios, Courtesy of Prime Video

COMMENTS: How do you find shoes for a 13-foot tall teenager? And how do you support him without him eating you out of house and home? If you care about the answers to these stupid questions, then “I’m a Virgo” is not for you. If, on the other hand, you’re curious as to how giant Cootie is going to carry on a romantic affair with the normal-sized Flora—who experiences time at about ten times the speed of other people—then have I got a series for you!

“I’m a Virgo” is, on the one hand, a charming story of a sweet, naive man-child coming-of-age in a world that’s not always kind to the differently-heighted. Since this is a Boots Riley joint, it’s also a left-wing political allegory, with a citizen-led rent strike occupying a major subplot. The series is, unexpectedly, also a satire of superhero culture; in Riley’s eyes, these icons of law-and-order are nothing more than propagandist for the status quo . Cootie, meanwhile, is the ultimate image of the Other; he’s a minority of one even within his own minority group. And there are ample, literal lectures about the evils of capitalism. Most of the time, these are far too on-the-nose, as compared to the subtler satire seen in Riley’s debut feature Sorry to Bother You, where such critiques arose naturally as an organic part of the plot. But I can at least say that these lessons are far livelier (and more hallucinatory) than the similarly didactic Marxist monologues that occasionally pop up in ‘s Dziga Vertov movies of the late 60s and early 70s.

And, since this is, again, a Boots Riley joint, it’s also a work that explores these weighty issues by diving into a deep well of absurdist satire. If you thought the premise of a 13-foot man roaming the hood was enough madness for one series, Riley disagrees. We also get the story of the Hero, a homegrown Oakland version of Batman, who runs a comics empire during the day and fights crime at night from his headquarters, and whose elevator moves the building up and down instead of shuttling people between floors. He and Cootie aren’t the only remarkable humans on the block: about half the cast has hidden superpowers which are gradually revealed. The series also features a group of tiny people about as big as your finger, as well as a religious cult devoted to Cootie (who is indifferent to them). Remarkably, Riley ladles out the insanity with a steady hand, sprinkling his twisted creation with bold, surreal flavors, but never overwhelming the core story or making his characters seem anything less than psychologically real (regardless of height).

The extended length of the series format is both a blessing and a curse here. On the plus side, Riley has plenty of time to explore numerous oddball cul-de-sacs without taking time away from character development; for example, the smidgen of crazy grace that comes with a pirate broadcast of an animated series-within-the-series, a digression that would feel too far afield in a feature. Almost an entire episode is devoted to the Hero’s bizarre lifestyle; there’s so much richness here, in his fear of assassination by ninjas, his relationship to his subordinates, and his search for the perfect mate, that a spin-off series devoted to this complex character would be most welcome. On the other hand, it’s always troubling when the first season of a series like this wraps up awkwardly, tying up some loose ends but leaving others flapping in the breeze. Unfortunately, “I’m a Virgo” falls prey to this syndrome in the final episode; it’s particularly disappointing that the Hero ends his too-short arc in anticlimactic fashion. Overall, however, this is a small complaint for Riley’s extraordinary sophomore effort, and one that Amazon can easily make moot if they decide to pick up “I’m a Virgo” for round two. This bizarro Oakland neighborhood has too much craziness left to explore to leave after a mere seven episodes.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…an epic and surreal story that is part fairy tale, part parable, and utterly unique. Evoking the same off-kilter filmmaking style as his feature film debut, Riley has delivered one of the weirdest streaming series in recent memory that pulls together statements on unemployment, racial bias, exploitation, and class warfare within the guise of a comic book-themed superhero adventure. I’m A Virgo is weird and weirdly wonderful.”–Alex Maidy, JoBlo (contemporaneous)

Channel 366

CHANNEL 366: DEAD RINGERS (2023)

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DIRECTED BY: Sean Durkin, Karena Evans, Karyn Kusama,

FEATURING: , Britne Oldford, Poppy Liu, Jennifer Ehle, Michael Chernus, Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine

PLOT: The Mantle Twins, Beverly and Elliot, open a new “bespoke” birthing center in Manhattan, while Beverly pursues a new relationship and Elliot copes with her jealousy through self-destructive behavior.

Still from Dead Ringers (miniseries) (2023)
Courtesy of Prime Video

COMMENTS: Amazon Prime’s six-episode adaptation of David Cronenberg‘s Dead Ringers features twin gynecologists, a powerhouse central performance, an affair with an actress named Genevieve, an atmosphere of dread, and nothing else in common with the original. Plotwise, it’s about as far away from Cronenberg’s story as the 1988 film was from the real-life story of the Marcus twins.

This difference, of course, is not only welcome but necessary. We wouldn’t care to watch a new “Dead Ringers” that had no other purpose but to take advantage of modern split screen technology or reflect contemporary mores. Adaptations need to bring their own narrative and thematic spins to justify their existence. The miniseries’ gender-swap of the twins from men into women here isn’t arbitrary or demographics-driven. The sex change makes perfect contextual sense; although we lose the background creepiness of unethical male gynecologists, the fact that these Mantles can actually get pregnant—a factor that the script leverages with its typical delightful devilishness—fully compensates for the loss. In fact, the options it opens up are so intriguing that I now want to see a third adaptation of Dead Ringers where the Mantles are fraternal twins, brother and sister. Think of the implications!

Most of the praise for “Dead Ringers” quite rightly centers around Weisz’s magnificent performance, which is every but the equal of ‘. (Expect an Emmy nomination for Weisz, even though Irons was snubbed by the Academy in ’88.) Weisz slides effortlessly between Beverly and Elliot, making each one distinct while creating a believable sibling dynamic. The twins’ distinct personalities are established quickly as the sarcastic pair shut down a male creep at a diner, and at almost no point in the series’ entire run will you be confused as to which twin is which. The simple but effective visual conceit is that Beverly ties her hair in a bun, while Elliot’s mane flows freely; the hairstyles reflect their personalities. Beverly, more nuanced and reflective, is the main focus, while hedonistic, co-dependent Elliot is, at times, almost the stereotypical “evil twin.” Overall, the miniseries Mantles are better developed characters, a function of more time spent with them (we even meet their parents in one episode). The extended runtime also allows the story to take some diversions: a satire of 1%ers through an amoral opiate heiress financier, a bit of science-fictiony unethical genetic experimentation (“what Frankenstein shit are you up to?”), and a brief dip into gynecology’s unsavory racist history, as well as an unnecessary and somewhat disappointing subplot with the Mantles’ obsessive housekeeper, whose mysterious plots have less payoff than we might hope.

While the original movie verged on horror, the miniseries focuses more on depraved drama, although it has plenty of birthing gore and other “sick” moments that will make you squirm with discomfort or disgust—both physical and moral. If that sounds like a Cronenbergian attitude, it sure is. But the feminine spin and unexpected twists make this a fresh trip into gynecology Hell. Reacquaint yourselves with these mirror-image Mantles; you’ll be glad you did.

Footnote: in an example of “how to quote 366 Weird Movies without actually quoting it,” Alison Herman writes in her Variety review that “‘Dead Ringers’ recycles the film’s most indelible image, decking out the twins in blood-red sets of scrubs.” (Actually, Herman’s observation is almost certainly a coincidence, but we’ll take it as evidence of our subliminal influence on movie criticism.)

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“It’s a measure of this seductive horror show that you want to watch these weird sisters carry on, and on.”–Jasper Rees, The Telegraph (contemporaneous)

Channel 366

CHANNEL 366: COPENHAGEN COWBOY (2023)

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Angela Bundalovic, Andreas Lykke Jørgensen, Li Ii Zhang, Jason Hendil-Forssell

PLOT: Miu, an 18-year-old girl with mysterious powers, becomes involved in the Copenhagen crime scene after being sold to a pimp’s sister as a “lucky coin.”

Still from Copenhagen Cowboy, Season 1 (2023)
Copenhagen Cowboys. COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2022

COMMENTS: If any Refnheads are somehow unaware of the quiet debut of six episodes of slow, stylized, depravity from Denmark, well… you’re about to be thrilled. Refn continues the style he’s honed through Drive (2011), Only God Forgives (2013), and The Neon Demon (2016): minimalist plot development spiked with bouts of brutal violence, glowing primary color lighting, and noirish criminality, adding a stronger-than-usual dose of stylish conceptual weirdness.

Angela Bundalovic, in a performance that can only be described as “restrained,” centers the movie in an inscrutable charisma. Rail-thin and clad in baggy clothes, Miu begins as an androgynous figure, opening with a scene where a gaggle of Eastern European women take snips off of her bowl haircut for luck. (It’s surprising to learn waifish Bundalovic is actually 27-years-old; she almost looks too young to be Miu’s professed 18.) Later attempts to sexualize Miu will fail; she’s neither feminine nor masculine, but (perhaps literally) alien. Standing quietly and staring with an unreadable expression is her signature move. Circumstances will force her hand and, through clever editing and choreography, reveal her to be a deadly hand-to-hand fighter. That it’s believable that this stick of a chick could pulverize manly men in single combat is a testament to the quiet confidence she exudes. By the time a corrupt criminal lawyer who knew her from before she was sold to the brothel encounters her again, we aren’t surprised that his face betrays more than a tinge of fear. Miu is one badass lady, and season one does not approach the limits of whatever power she possesses.

“Copenhagen Cowboy” languorously makes its way through various red-and-blue-neon-lit chambers, as Miu migrates from the hellish brothel to a Chinese restaurant, with a stopover at a pig farm. The series indirectly explores immigrant experience in the EU, as nearly all the main characters, whether Eastern European or Asian, are undocumented and driven into a common underground criminal counterculture. As the series goes on, a worthy adversary for Miu emerges: a decadent, lily-white, aristocratic moneyed family. They have closets full of perversions: ritual sadism, a phallic sex cult, and strong hints of incest. Are they the indigenous Danish elite, feeding on the underclass? Perhaps, but it turns out that they, like Miu, may be alien to this world, products of witchcraft—or worse. That sounds like a lot of plot development—and we haven’t even mentioned the Chinese gang, or Miu’s brief stint as a drug dealer—but everything spreads sparely across the series’ six-hour runtime, with reveals coming in drips. And fear not, there are plenty of weird adornments to Refn’s moody backgrounds: a man who only communicates in pig squeals, a dead sister resurrected, Miu’s face flowerized.

Probably the biggest issue with the series is its incomplete nature. Episode 6, “The Heavens Will Fall,” hints at answers to Miu’s origin while leaving the actual nature of her newest occult antagonist up in the air. Refn has some pull with a small audience, and brings Netflix a niche prestige they enjoy, but his following isn’t big enough to make a second season a sure bet (about two-thirds of the streamer’s series get picked up for round two, with prospects dropping significantly for a third go). Ending “Copenhagen” on what is, by Refn standards, a cliffhanger is a gamble. It would be disappointing if we didn’t get to see where Miu’s winding path takes her next.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…so weird, it’s shocking Netflix took a risk on it… fans of the unpredictable, the bizarre, and the deviant will be delighted to see the streamer investing so heavily in the auteur’s flights of phantasmagoric fancy.”–Nick Schager, The Daily Beast (contemporaneous)

(This series was nominated for review by Parmesan74 (letterboxd). Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

Channel 366

CHANNEL 366: JUNJO ITO MANIAC: JAPANESE TALES OF THE MACABRE (2023)

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DIRECTED BY: Uncredited

FEATURING:  Bill Milsap (English dub)

PLOT: Twenty short, dreamlike horror stories from manga artist Junjo Ito, spread out over twelve episodes.

Still from junjo ito maniac japanese tales of the macabre (The Hanging Balloons)

COMMENTS: A woman’s sneering face appears in a monsoon of psychedelic mandalas, singing along to the raucous theme song as various scars and deformities flicker across her visage. A nail-chewing boy in a yellow raincoat climbs out of an abandoned refrigerator and into the vertical-hold challenged stories playing on a TV set across the alley.

Those are the opening and closing sequences of “Junjo Ito Maniac,” and they set a maniacal tone that the content they bookend rarely matches. Not that the actual stories lack for deranged imagination; any anthology containing the tale of an angelic blond salesman in a bow tie who peddles mounds of deadly, addictive ice cream to children isn’t short on creepy inventiveness. But there are two basic problems with the series. One is the animation itself, which, despite the rambunctious promise of the opening and closing numbers, often isn’t really animated. It’s usually a succession of stills where only the characters’ mouths move. Ito’s images are often eerily beautiful, but the series comes off as too cheaply produced to do them justice. The other issue is that the majority of the stories, some of which run for just over five minutes, are often inconclusive, feeling like simple statements of surreal premises rather than fleshed-out horrors. Their brevity does, perhaps, makes them more dreamlike; their economy means they tend to serve best as bedtime snacks to fuel snippets of nightmares.

The biggest exception is the one must-see episode in this collection, “Layers of Terror.” At a mere fifteen minutes, this twisted psychological parable about a mother who longs to return her child to a state of infantile dependency delivers its meaty anti-moral through a grotesquely literal (and bizarrely impossible) metaphor. Other highlights include “The Hanging Balloon,” about an unlikely apocalyptic plague of floating heads with nooses attached, and “Tomb Town,” a story that starts promisingly with a trip to a neighborhood completely overrun by tombstones. The series assays an effective variety of horror moods, from the prominent surreal horror to stories evoking the spirits of (“Library Vision”) and Charles Addams (“The Strange Hikizuri Siblings”) to ironically cruel fables (“The Bully”). Even though few of the entries are solid hits, the  diversity of textures coupled with the ultra-short format makes “Maniac” an assortment of poison bon-bons worth sharing with your best friend… or enemy.

As a bonus, the conclusion of each episode includes a few short spoken sentences of a continuing story about a man driven mad by bugs that seem to be… well, you can find out for yourself. Aside from that perk, the episodes can be watched in any order, or selectively skipped.

Junjo Ito is perhaps best known to readers here as the original author of the killer-spiral horror story adapted into the live action feature Uzumaki (2000). He’s a prolific manga storyteller in Japan, alternating between short story collections like these, longer works like “Uzumaki,” and collections featuring recurring characters (including the bewitching Tomei, who appears in one story here, and impish nail-chewing teen Soichi, who appears twice in “Maniac” and also anchors the closing segment.) “Junjo Ito: Japanese Tales of the Macabre” was created by Studi Deen, who had released a previous collection of Ito shorts in Japan, in collaboration with Netflix, who owns exclusive streaming rights.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“It’s humorous, terrifying, weird, beautiful, and disturbing all at once.”–Kate Sánchez, But Why Tho? (contemporaneous)

Channel 366

CHANNEL 366: GUILLERMO DEL TORO’S CABINET OF CURIOSITIES (2022)

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DIRECTED BY: , , Catherine Hardwicke, , , Guillermo Navarro, , Keith Thomas

FEATURING: , , Kate Micucci, Tim Blake Nelson, , , Ben Barnes, Rupert Grint, , , Eric André, Charlyne Yi, Andrew Lincoln

PLOT: Guillermo del Toro curates eight short tales of supernatural horror, mostly from young directors.

Still from Guillermo Del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities (2022)

COMMENTS: At the start of each episode, Guillermo del Toro waddles in from a pool of darkness and stands before his prop cabinet, pulling out a small item relevant to the plot of the upcoming feature and a figurine representing the episode’s director. In heavily-accented, hard-to-understand English, he chokes out a few  stiff sentences about the story. Rod Serling or he is not; but fortunately, del Toro proves a much better curator than host.

Other than the esteemed Vincenzo Natali, del Toro and the producers choose mostly up-and-comers to script and direct the eight episodes. Although perhaps it shouldn’t, given del Toro’s Hollwyood pull, it comes as a small surprise that these short features are largely acting showcases. The series standout is Academy Award-winner F. Murray Abraham as a clever but understandably-weary coroner in “The Autopsy.” Tim Blake Nelson, lending an earthy believability and even a little sympathy to his bitter xenophobic caricature in “Lot 36,” is also worth a mention, while “The Outside” is entirely built around Kate Miccuci’s nerdy-but-secretly-sexy persona. Essie Davis, as a bereaved ornithologist, also carries “The Murmuring,” Jennifer Kent’s marital-drama-cum-ghost-story. Then, there are a couple of cameos to appeal to cult movie fans: Crispin Glover in “Pickman’s Model” and Peter Weller in “The Viewing.” The relative star power on display here lends respectability and brings in viewers from outside horror fandom: mainstream critics were particularly drawn to the “The Murmuring”‘s realistic depiction of a husband and wife tiptoeing around their issues while burying themselves in their studies of bird-flocking behaviors on a esque island.

When we first saw the names attached to direct, we were salivating over the inclusion of Ana Lily Amirpour and (especially) Panos Cosmatos (as well as the prospect of Crispin Glover in an H.P. Lovecraft adaptation). Those two directors do deliver both weirdness and quality, but the other episodes are all worth watching. Even the least of them have something to offer, usually in the acting department. The Glover episode is “Pickman’s Muse.” As previously mentioned, it’s a adaptation of the “man is driven mad by peering into the Beyond” variety that is eerie and atmospheric, but Continue reading CHANNEL 366: GUILLERMO DEL TORO’S CABINET OF CURIOSITIES (2022) →