Category Archives: Outtakes

Movie-related whatnot

Outtakes

Shock without the Jock

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Screams from the Tower

by Brandon Thomas

When was the last time a teen comedy made a sizeable impact? Where’s Gen Z’s The Breakfast Club? Their American Pie? Their Superbad? Is Screams from the Tower the next teen classic? Well, no, but it is a sweet, charming entry into the genre.

Best friends Julien (Richie Fusco) and Cary (David Bloom) share a love of radio and a similar dream: to get their own show on the high school radio station. When that dream becomes a reality, the boys bring together friends both new and old and begin to challenge the limits of what two high school seniors can get away with on a high school radio station.

As a more character-focused film, Screams from the Tower isn’t interested in gross-out gags to keep the audience invested. There aren’t any larger-than-life set pieces that will have people rolling in the aisles (or on their living room floors). While writer-director Cory Wexler Grant does lean into a few instances of broader comedy, the majority of the laughs come from character interactions and relationships. 

Despite being sold as a dual lead film, the focus ultimately lands on Fusco’s Julien. At first glance, Julien comes off as a dime-a-dozen smartass slacker. As the film moves along, the layers of Julien’s character are peeled away, we see that this isn’t true at all. Sure, Julien is crass and abrasive, but he’s also sensitive and loyal. Fusco walks a delicate line – never allowing Julien to become the target of the audience’s ire while also not letting him off the hook for his behavior. 

At the same time, the film really sings when the ensemble – or parts of it anyway – are together, bringing the radio show to life. Grant is clearly inspired by the heyday of radio shockjocks from the ‘80s and ‘90s – most notably Howard Stern and Don Imus. The characters don’t go where Stern and Imus did with their schtick, but they certainly dabble in their own high school-level controversy. It’s also a hoot to see the boys and their show have a foil in the radio station’s overseeing teacher (Sara Sevigny). While a high school teacher might not wield the same power as the FCC, it does give the movie a sizeable jolt of drama 

Screams from the Tower may not bring the same level of notoriety or impact as a Hughes or Apatow film, but it does operate in its own lane of sweetness and charm.

Outtakes

Half Hallucinogens, Half Pepperoni

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Pizza Movie

by George Wolf

First off, pineapple is the all-time greatest pizza topping. And I am not on drugs.

I can’t say the same for Monte and Jack. They are most definitely on drugs, and a pizza is all that might save them from their worst nightmare coming to shove a chainsaw where it most definitely does not belong.

That’s just a tiny sample of the batshit craziness delivered by Hulu’s Pizza Movie, an outrageously R-rated gross out and stoned out comedy that rises above some dry stretches to land several set-pieces of outright hilarity.

Jack (Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things) and Monte (The Goldbergs‘ Sean Giambrone) are college nerds. Jack’s unfortunate mishap as the football team mascot made both of them targets of constant bullying, even from Lizzy (Becky‘s Lulu Wilson), an old friend who’s now trying to run with the cool kids.

After one of their regular dorm room beatdowns jars a tin of ten-year-old drugs loose from the ceiling, the boys partake. And the ride begins.

A YouTube video from the drug’s inventor (Sarah Sherman) tells the guys they’ve got several stages of trippiness coming, including Nothing but the Truth, Bad Words, The Old Switcheroo and more. And if they don’t want to experience that last stage with the chainsaw enema, they better wolf down some ‘za in a hurry.

Oh, and Lizzy thought the drugs were mints and took some, too.

Writers/directors Nick Kocher and Brian McElhaney (from the SNL writers room) craft their feature debut as if Edgar Wright took Scott Pilgrim and the Superbad guys to college for a drug-fueled class on practical blood splatter effects.

Leaning on a winning ensemble that perfectly sells the vibe, Kocher and McElhaney move through the six stages of balls tripping like levels in a video game, keeping the intensity up with a succession of quick cuts, camera swipes and rapid fire gags. From psychotic R.A.s out to banish all partiers to the wasteland of Gralk Hall, to tenacious Snackatron food drones to a college band performing only “clown-core vomit opera,” the barriers between Monte, Jack, and their Lord of the Pies delivery two floors down keep piling up.

And I haven’t even mentioned the “Makin’ It” dance sequence and the butterfly named Lysander Featherhemp that’s voiced by Daniel Radcliffe!

Yes, it’s nuts, and sometimes in a can’t-catch-your-breath funny kind of way. Not everything lands, of course, but Pizza Movie doesn’t slow down long enough for any cold spots to linger. Just let them pass, another piping hot slice of WTF will be in your face any second.

Outtakes

Hits and Misses

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Blazing Fists

by Hope Madden

Just when you think you’ve figured filmmaker Takashi Miike out, he does something to remind you that, with more than 100 films to his credit, crossing every conceivable genre and several languages, you probably have not.

This week’s feature, Blazing Fists (also known as Blue Fight: The Breaking Down of Young Blue Warriors) delivers a weird mix of the ponderously earnest, the slyly comical, and—at long last—smashingly choreographed violence.

The film is loosely based on the autibiography of Mikuru Asakura, who serves as producer. We follow Ikito (Danhi Kinoshita) and Ryoma (Kaname Yoshizawa), who meet in juvenile detention. Things are terribly tidy and motivational speakers come by. One guard is rude.

Onward! Ikito’s father is in prison awaiting trial but never mind that because it goes essentially nowhere. The point is, the young men’s motivational speaker has convinced them that if they are undeterred in their preparation, they can do anything. So, they’ve decided to make it to the speaker’s MMA show, Breaking Down.

Cue the training montage (the first of several). On release, Ikito and Ryoma take jobs close to a gym. Job skill and training montage! But a colorfully dressed gang of bullies wants them gone. And there are love interests, but only for the bullies. Plus some kind of insane, leather clad Yakuza style gang, and a snotty rich kid who kickboxes for college. Everyone wants to fight!

There is too much Karate Kid style “boys learning something today,” too much bruised masculinity, and enough dialog heavy/reaction heavy scenes to bring every hint of momentum to a screeching halt.

Blazing Fists does boast a handful of Miike’s playfully weird scenes with random characters—usually oddly dressed old men—to inject a bit of fun into the film.

Miike can do just about anything: horror, samurai action, kid-friendly action, police procedurals, yakuza, fisticuffs action, historical drama, supernatural, grindhouse, surreal. He’s even done a musical! But the straight up sports drama does not seem a good fit for the genre maestro.

Miike avoids the obvious rags to riches climb to the top story arc that serves so many sports films. Instead, he squeezes in every possible beat and cliché into his 2-hour running time. Each trope is placed willy nilly. They certainly feel less predictable, strung together with no discernible rhyme or reason. They also never serve their generally accepted purpose of building tension.  

Blazing Fists feels either like a long-form episodic program smashed into 2 hours, or like every sports film ever made, also smashed into 2 hours. Neither option makes the film any easier to watch.

Outtakes

Girl Power Activate

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The Serpent’s Skin

by Rachel Willis

Channeling films such as Carrie and The Craft, director Alice Maio Mackay brings a new take on women with power in her film, The Serpent’s Skin.

Fleeing from her transphobic home life, Anna (Alexandra McVicker) moves to the city to live with her sister (Charlotte Chimes). An intense opening scene lets us know how bad things are for Anna at home, so as she settles into her new life, you can’t help but hope she’ll find acceptance.

Anna finds more than acceptance as she reckons with newfound powers that allow her to defend herself in unexpected ways. When she meets Gen (Avalon Fast), a woman with similar powers, the two form an instant bond.

The film treads familiar ground as Anna and Gen learn both the depth of their power and the ability to harness it.

Mackay is fond of montages. Several occur in the film’s quick runtime. Some of those feel more relevant than others. Anna learning the ropes of her new job is a montage we could have done without. The time would have been better spent deepening her relationship with Gen or fleshing out ancillary characters.

Mackay writes with Benjamin Pahl Robinson. Their dialogue is clunky and repetitive, and it’s not always delivered with the right tone or emotion. While there are a few decent actors among the cast, the two leads are often the weakest of the bunch.

It’s not always clear why some of the events occur as they do. Mackay’s metaphor gets muddy as Anna and Gen deal with the consequences of their power. The filmmaker’s quest to mine new ground seems to obscure the larger theme.

It’s disappointing that The Serpent’s Skin isn’t as strong as it could be, because its allegory is both important and timely. 

Outtakes

Running Dry

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The Well

by Adam Barney

Scarcity of resources always brings out the worst in humanity. With everything that is going on in the world right now, the conflict at the heart of The Well feels more plausible than ever.

In Hubert Davis’s film, society has collapsed and almost all of the world’s water has been contaminated with a deadly virus. Deep in the woods, Sarah (Shailyn Pierre-Dixon) and her parents guard a homestead that has the most valuable resource – a well with unlimited water that is safe to consume. When the filter for the well goes bad, Sarah must help her family by venturing out into the world to try and find a replacement part.

Sarah’s journey leads her to a cult led by the enigmatic Gabriel (Sheila McCarthy), who has held her ragtag group together on the promise of leading them to salvation. Sarah must not only navigate the dangers of the unforgiving world, but decide who she can trust when everyone is out for their own survival.

The Well is going to feel very familiar to anyone who has been watching the deluge of post-apocalyptic movies and shows released over the past decade. It doesn’t really offer anything new or unique, the plot largely unfolding as you would expect with characters that won’t stick with you too long afterward the closing credits. While it is well shot and acted, The Well ’s limited budget keeps the action in the woods. The film’s pace is slow, and it doesn’t really create much tension along the way. I like the idea of the world that The Well is trying to create, I just wish it offered up something more entertaining or memorable.

Outtakes

Wide Open

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Dream Story

by Hope Madden

It takes chutzpah to choose to follow Stanley Kubrick, but Florian Frerichs is undeterred. His Dream Story, based on the same novel as Kubrick’s 1999 film Eyes Wide Shut, mines the sordid tale of high society orgies for a few different ideas.

We are still focused on the bored, rich, and horny, though.

Set in Berlin, where it does feel at home, Dream Story follows Jakob (Nikolai Kinski), a wealthy doctor. After putting their precocious, opera loving son to bed, Jakob and his wife Amelia (Laurine Price) reminisce about a recent night out.

When Amelia admits to a powerful, unfulfilled longing for a stranger, Jakob’s marital contentment begins to feel like foolishness.

What’s a guy to do but visit a secret, cloak-and-mask orgy?

While most of the story beats echo those from ’99, there are some clear differences. Dream Story is indifferent to Kubrick’s themes of the grotesque heartlessness of the wealthy. In Eyes Wide Shut, the rich are so accustomed to treating everyone as a commodity and everything as a transaction that they’ve lost their humanity.

Frerichs is more concerned with the “dream” in Dream Story (a title derived from the English translation of writer Arthur Schnitzler’s original title). Upon hearing of his wife’s unsatisfied lust, it’s as if Jakob wakes from the dream of a loving bond. Now, insecure and hurt, he wanders as an almost childlike outsider looking to be a bad boy.

Frerichs amplifies the dreamy quality of the film with fanciful moments—Jakob’s operatic fantasies and instances when he breaks the fourth wall, for example. There’s also a trippy animated sequence to deepen the spell.

Frerichs, who adapts Schnitzler’s 1929 novella Traumnovelle with frequent collaborator Martina van Delay, also enlists bloody imagery. This he does less for the sake of horror and more to signal Jakob’s own mortality. Frequent callbacks to the death of a patient in Act 1 keep the doctor’s preoccupation with his own morality top of mind. His quest to do something debauched, springs from a sudden sense of all he’s wasted being faithful to a woman who may not even want him.

Dream Story is, in the end, more of a love story. In carving out so clearly a new path with the material, Frerichs delivers a whole new reason to watch. 

Outtakes

Fearless Oscar Predictions 2026

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Who ya got: “Sinners” and its record-setting 16 nominations or “One Battle After Another” and 13 nods?

There are other deserving nominees, to be sure, but these two films have dominated the movie year 2025 and much of Awards Season 2026. There is no reason to think it won’t continue come Oscar night.

Which is better? Wow. What day is it? Let’s just say we have extra love for the split in the Best Screenplay category this year, where they both can collect the hardware.

And what a great year for Horror! Don’t forget del Toro’s visionary “Frankenstein” nabbed 9 nominations, Amy Madigan’s Aunt Gladys gets recognition for “Weapons” and “The Ugly Stepsister,” Emilie Blichfeldt’s beautifully brutal debut, is up for the Best Makeup and Hairstyling award. All well deserved.

So let’s dig in:

Best picture

  • “Bugonia”
  • “F1”
  • “Frankenstein”
  • “Hamnet”
  • “Marty Supreme”
  • “One Battle After Another”
  • “The Secret Agent”
  • “Sentimental Value”
  • “Sinners”
  • “Train Dreams”

Should win: “Sinners” or “One Battle After Another”

Will win: “Sinners”

Best Actress

  • Jessie Buckley, “Hamnet”
  • Rose Byrne, “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You”
  • Renate Reinsve, “Sentimental Value”
  • Emma Stone, “Bugonia”
  • Kate Hudson, “Song Sung Blue”

Should win/Will win: Buckley. Probably the surest bet this year.

Best Actor

  • Timothée Chalamet, “Marty Supreme”
  • Leonardo DiCaprio, “One Battle After Another”
  • Ethan Hawke, “Blue Moon”
  • Michael B. Jordan, “Sinners”
  • Wagner Moura, “The Secret Agent”

Should win/Will win: Jordan

Best Supporting Actress

  • Elle Fanning, “Sentimental Value”
  • Inga Ibsdotter LilIeaas, “Sentimental Value”
  • Amy Madigan, “Weapons”
  • Wunmi Mosaku, “Sinners”
  • Teyana Taylor, “One Battle After Another”

Should win: Mosaku

Will win: Madigan

Best Supporting Actor

  • Jacob Elordi, “Frankenstein”
  • Sean Penn, “One Battle After Another”
  • Stellan Skarsgård, “Sentimental Value”
  • Benicio del Toro, “One Battle After Another”
  • Delroy Lindo, “Sinners”

Should win: Lindo – how does he not have an Oscar by now?

Will win: Penn*

*Hope disagrees. Her last shred of faith in humanity says Lindo will pull it out.

Director

  • Paul Thomas Anderson, “One Battle After Another”
  • Ryan Coogler, “Sinners”
  • Chloé Zhao, “Hamnet”
  • Josh Safdie, “Marty Supreme”
  • Joachim Trier, “Sentimental Value”

Should win: PTA or Coogler

Will win: PTA

Original Song

  • “Golden” from “Kpop Demon Hunters”
  • “Train Dreams” from “Train Dreams”
  • “Dear Me” from “Diane Warren: Relentless”
  • “I Lied to You” from “Sinners”
  • “Sweet Dreams Of Joy” from “Viva Verdi!”

Should win/Will win: “I Lied to You”

Original Score

  • “Bugonia,” Jerskin Fendrix
  • “Frankenstein,” Alexandre Desplate
  • “Hamnet,” Max Richter
  • “One Battle After Another,” Jonny Greenwood
  • “Sinners,” Ludwig Göransson

Should win/Will win: Göransson – the integration of music in Sinners was masterful.

Animated Film

  • “Arco”
  • “Elio”
  • “KPop Demon Hunters”
  • “Little Amélie or the Character of Rain”
  • “Zootopia 2”

Should win/Will win: “Little Amélie or the Character of Rain”

International Film

  • “The Secret Agent,” Brazil
  • “It Was Just an Accident,” France
  • “Sentimental Value,” Norway
  • “Sirât,” Spain
  • “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” Tunisia

Should win/Will win: “Sentimental Value” in a category so stacked that neither “No Other Choice” or “The President’s Cake” could crack it.

Documentary Feature

  • “The Perfect Neighbor”
  • “The Alabama Solution”
  • “Come See Me in the Good Light”
  • “Cutting Through Rocks”
  • “Mr. Nobody Against Putin”

Should win/Will win: “The Perfect Neighbor“

Casting

  • “Hamnet”
  • “Marty Supreme”
  • “One Battle After Another”
  • “The Secret Agent”
  • “Sinners”

Should win: “Sinners” or “OBAA”

Will win: “OBAA”

Best Sound

  • “F1”
  • “Frankenstein”
  • “One Battle after Another”
  • “Sinners”
  • “Sirāt”

Should win: “Sirāt”

Will win: “F1”

Cinematography

  • “Frankenstein”
  • “Marty Supreme”
  • “One Battle After Another”
  • “Sinners”
  • “Train Dreams”

Should win/Will win: “Train Dreams” in another category brimming with excellence.

Original Screenplay

  • “Blue Moon,” Robert Kaplow
  • “It Was Just an Accident,” Jafar Panahi, with script collaborators Nader Saïvar, Shadmehr Rastin, Mehdi Mahmoudian
  • “Marty Supreme,” Ronald Bronstein and Josh Safdie
  • “Sentimental Value,” Eskil Vogt and Joachim Trier
  • “Sinners,” Ryan Coogler

Should win/Will win: Coogler

Adapted Screenplay

  • “Bugonia”; Will Tracy
  • “Frankenstein,” Guillermo del Toro
  • “Hamnet,” Chloé Zhao and Maggie O’Farrell
  • “One Battle After Another,” Paul Thomas Anderson
  • “Train Dreams,” Clint Bailey and Greg Kwedar

Should win/Will win: PTA

Live Action Short Film

  • “Butcher’s Stain”
  • “A Friend of Dorothy”
  • “Jane Austen’s Period Drama”
  • “The Singers”
  • “Two People Exchanging Saliva”

Should win/Will win: “Two People Exchanging Saliva”

Animated Short Film

  • “Butterfly”
  • “Forevergreen”
  • “The Girl Who Cried Pearls”
  • “Retirement Plan”
  • “The Three Sisters”

Should win: “The Girl Who Cried Pearls”

Will win: “Butterfly”

Visual Effects

  • “Avatar: Fire and Ash”
  • “F1″
  • “Jurassic World Rebirth”
  • “The Lost Bus”
  • “Sinners”

Should win/Will win: “Avatar: Fire and Ash”

Production Design

  • “Frankenstein”
  • “Hamnet”
  • “Marty Supreme”
  • “One Battle After Another”
  • “Sinners”

Should win/Will win: “Frankenstein”

Film Editing

  • “F1”
  • “Marty Supreme”
  • “One Battle After Another”
  • “Sentimental Value”
  • “Sinners”

Should win/Will win: “F1”

Makeup and Hairstyling

  • “Frankenstein”
  • “Kokuho”
  • “Sinners”
  • “The Smashing Machine”
  • “The Ugly Stepsister”

Should win/Will win: “Frankenstein”

Costume Design

  • “Avatar: Fire and Ash”
  • “Frankenstein”
  • “Hamnet”
  • “Marty Supreme”
  • “Sinners”

Should win/Will win: “Sinners”

The 98th Academy Awards will take place March 15th, 2026.

Outtakes

Off the Rails

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Ghost Train

by Rachel Willis

Several strange incidents at a subway station spark the curiosity of a YouTube content creator in director Se-woong Tak’s film Ghost Train.

To understand the real issues surrounding the rash of bizarre occurrences, Horror Queen Da-kyeong (Joo Hyun-young) bribes tales from a station master (Jeon Bae-soo) with fancy spirits (some of which I wouldn’t mind trying).

As the station master spins each yarn, we’re privy to what really happens to each person at the center of the individual tales. At times, what we’re shown during the movie is not what appears on the surveillance tapes the station master shows to Da-kyeong.

There are several unsettling concepts at work to help unnerve the viewer. A woman who repetitively bangs her head against the train door sends passengers scurrying to another car. This is a motif that pops up at different moments, helping to create an atmosphere of dread.

Each of the station master’s stories has a uniqueness that makes the movie flow like an anthology horror. However, the style and atmosphere remain consistent, setting a creepy tone throughout.  

The framing story is the movie’s weak link. The Horror Queen herself isn’t nearly as compelling as the individuals in the station master’s tales. Da-kyeong’s nemesis at work is a stereotypical mean girl, and her work love interest is about as interesting as a blank sheet of paper. It’s with impatience that we wait for the next of the station master’s tales.

However, as the film enters the final act, the framing story picks up steam. As Da-kyeong learns more about the station and its history, her story starts to get its teeth.

Unfortunately, those teeth are never quite sharp enough to explain the overall mystery around the ghost train. While there are a lot of memorable and interesting parts, they never quite come together as single narrative. That said, the movie is creepy enough to remain interesting, and overall, an intriguing series of ghost stories.

Outtakes

What Makes You Beautiful

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Sweetness

by Hope Madden

Back in 1982, German filmmaker Eckhart Schmidt released The Fan, a horror thriller about a teenage girl obsessed with a pop music star. It’s a wild, weird, uncomfortable technopop ride, and I admit I expected (hoped?) Emma Higgins’s Sweetness would be a kind of American update.

Because The Fan is so very weird, yet somehow relatable.

Higgins’s film is very different, and a touch more on the believable side. Kate Hallett (Women Talking) is Rylee, unpopular high school kid with an obsessive crush on Floorplan lead singer Payton Adler (Herman Tømmeraas). His pouty pretty face covers nearly every inch of her bedroom walls and ceiling. Her headphones are always in, his emotional vocals drowning out the mean girls in class, her father’s overly eager girlfriend (Amanda Brugel), and everything else Rylee doesn’t want to hear.

When bestie Sidney (Aya Furukawa, Fall of the House of Usher) leaves Rylee behind after a Floorplan concert, she meanders alone until being struck by a car driven by the very impaired object of her affection, Payton Adler!

Totally worth it!

What follows is a crooked path lined with the faulty logic of the young and the twisted imagination of a filmmaker who’s spent most of her career embedded with pop stars. Higgins has directed scads of music videos. That’s probably why the music for this film is so unnervingly authentic, exactly the kind of thing that would make a troubled teen swoon and believe her life had been saved.

Even if she’d, in fact, just been run down by a car.

Furukawa and Tømmeraas both shine, one as a semi-vacuous but still good friend, the other as a good-looking opportunist with a drug problem.

Hallett anchors the film with a sort of wide-eyed yet world wearied performance that’s as heartbreaking as it is frustrating.

Higgins never laughs at or Rylee and her youthful obsession. Though the movie doesn’t wallow in the maudlin, avoiding angst at all possible turns, the filmmaker demands that we empathize with this girl in a way that’s both moving and nightmarish.

Stylish cinematography and slick production design emphasize the pop music stylings, but the film is hardly all glossy exterior.

There are some telegraphed moments and a couple of convenient contrivances, and anybody seriously shocked by Rylee’s choices definitely needs to see The Fan. But there’s a twisted, broken little heart here and Higgins and Hallett want you to witness it.

Outtakes

Role Reversal

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Untitled Home Invasion Romance

by Hope Madden

Jason Statham is doing what Jason Statham does in a new thriller hitting screens this week. But did you know that Jason Biggs, known mainly for being a likeable dork who makes bad decisions, is doing just that as well this week?

Actually, with his latest film Untitled Home Invasion Romance, Biggs does stretch a new muscle. The American Pie star directs. It’s his first go behind the camera and, much thanks to a game cast and a surprisingly dark script from Joshua Paul Johnson and Jamie Napoli, he delivers an unexpected delight.

Biggs plays Kevin, an actor known best for his role in erectile dysfunction treatment ads. But Mr. Softy has decided to play rough. Just play, though. In an attempt to win back his wife (Meaghan Rath), he’s planned a weekend getaway where another actor (Arturo Castro) will pretend to break into the house, giving Kevin the opportunity to play the hero and win back Suzie’s love.

It backfires, obviously. And indeed, the set-up is so obvious you may be tempted to give up on Untitled Home Invasion Romance. I was. But stick it out, because not only does the film get zanier by the minute, but Biggs manages an impressive feat of tone, humor, and sly feminism.

Rath delivers nuanced comedy with a restrained but important physical performance. The action in the film is big and showy, but the comedy is a bit more low key. Micro, even, like the micro-aggressions both Suzie and police chief Heather (Anna Konkle) tolerate from the men around them who insist on taking care of things.

At a certain point, the underlying comedy of sexual politics takes over the larger-than-life home invasion plotline, but Biggs and cast have done such a wonderful job of charming and alarming that it feels both wildly out of place and exactly necessary.

A comedy this likeable and smiley, that’s simultaneously twisted and dark is tough to come by. Because a lot of people meet grisly ends, and most of them are actually pretty nice. Not the lawyer, though. Screw that guy.

Credit Biggs for stretching. Not the performance—Kevin is, to the letter, your garden variety Jason Biggs character. But the director knows how to wring a little something different out of his work.