Please enjoy

Bry

SHOW: Widow’s Bay
2026
Dir Hiro Murai et al
Creator Katie Dippold

I’m currently on episode 3 of the Apple TV show Widow’s Bay, and I’m hooked. Episode 3, for me, is when it really gets going in terms of all the elements working together. In a funny set of episodes already; Ep 3, for me, is stand out, absolutely hilarious, but it’s the uneasy categorisation of the show that is so impressive. It could be lazily described as a horror comedy or comedy horror, but the way that the writers and the creator, Katie Dippold, have tonally navigated those waters so well, so effortlessly, is really to be admired. Hiro Murai’s direction is superb. The atmosphere that they conjure up, the New England fog-shrouded horror, is really palpable and textural, even beautiful in the show. They’ve managed to make the town or the island itself a place that you would equally love to live in and do anything to escape from.

You can see from the very first episode that it has nods to John Carpenter’s The Fog, and it’s quite John Carpenter-like in its direction, in the sense that it really takes its time. It’s not overly covered the way you might expect a TV show to be. It’s very masterfully done. Similarly to Hiro’s episodes of Barry, he lets things play out in their entirety, using that to land both the laughs and the screams. Everything is just very choiceful in terms of angles and lenses. You can feel the rigour that he approaches things with, the craft, and how brilliantly that works with the sharp writing. There is no getting out of situations easily, as no characters are playing things knowingly. It’s not a show that’s self-aware or a winky “this is a horror, but also we know it’s a bit silly.” It’s not like that at all. It’s just like life, really. Life isn’t just one note, and this is a story that certainly isn’t.

It moves nimbly between genuinely frightening, tinged with a saltwater smell of dread, to really funny and quite poignant moments. The range is huge. It’s brilliantly done, and when you realise how difficult it is to make something that’s even one note, it becomes utterly crystal clear that what they’ve managed to achieve with this is impressive on a whole other level.

Please enjoy

Bry

FILM: Rose of Nevada
2025 Dir Mark Jenkin
1 hr 54 mins

I watched the trailer for the film, and it seems to be in keeping with the stylistic choices of his previous films. His first being Bait, which landed him on the map, and his second being Enys Men. Sadly, stupidly, I haven’t seen either of those, but I’ve always watched him keenly, because, like I said in the intro, he makes his films very much in his own, very uncompromising, very his own voice. Every one of them is his and you can spot it a mile off.

What makes Rose of Nevada the most intriguing to me, maybe because, like I said, it feels the most accessible within his world construct, but also it’s very much the kind of film that I would be drawn to anyway. It’s got a high concept, it’s got science fiction elements, it has horror elements, and it looks and feels incredibly atmospheric.

And perhaps it’s because Mark Jenkin not only writes and directs but edits, scores, photographs and sound designs his films, shaping all or many of the major creative layers of a film, that makes his films so unique. I think that’s what makes his stamp so visible and so distinctive and so recognisable. From the instant you see a couple of frames, a couple of seconds of his films, you get the sense that this is handcrafted, this is from the mind and imagination of a person. He has such a grasp and such a finger on all of those different disciplines within each of his projects, that it can’t help but have his DNA all over it.

A couple of the unique signifiers of a Mark Jenkin film: he shoots all of his films on a Bolex and he post-dubs all of his films. So he prefers to do all the dialogue recording in post, which gives his films a kind of uncanny effect. It’s something about the atmosphere of the voice coming from a different location that feels a bit dislocated, and it creates a really unique effect. Obviously, that’s how they used to do it back in the day, before sync sound and before recording sound on location, so that’s probably one of the most distinctive things you’ll first notice. Then there’s the 4:3 [ish] aspect ratio and the gritty texture of the 16mm film.

Everything just feels a bit more handcrafted, a bit more tactile, a bit less precious, even though everything looks beautifully composed and obviously everything is very considered. It just feels more like someone is crafting a film, like the way a painter might paint on a canvas in their studio. It feels like Mark Jenkin is kind of painting with his techniques to bring his scripts and his ideas to life in very much his own way, and that is very, very exciting to me. It is very attractive to me, and I’m really excited to see this film. I hope everyone who’s interested in this goes and checks it out too, because these are the kind of unique films that people remember and that leave an impression and inspire people to make things their own way. Not everyone can fit into a certain system or a certain methodology, and with today’s technology and all the knowledge out there, it’s just more proof that people can make things their very own way. I really respect that, and I think films like this, especially, will be inspiring for people to see.

Bry

Maybe the most adapted short story writer is Richard Matheson. Many of his novels, as well as a large number of his short stories, have been the basis for film adaptations.

Duel, Spielberg’s ABC Movie of the Week, was adapted into a screenplay by Matheson himself from a short story he wrote. Others include Button, Button - filmed as The Box by Richard Kelly (of Donnie Darko fame), and Steel, adapted as Real Steel - the robot boxing film with Hugh Jackman.

Many of Ted Chiang’s short stories have been optioned, with Arrival (based on “Story of Your Life”) being the first to be brought to the screen by Denis Villeneuve.

Philip K. Dick is also heavily adapted, both his novels and short stories - most famously “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” becoming Total Recall, and “The Minority Report” becoming, you guessed it, Minority Report.

When you read the shorts mentioned here - or any short story from these authors - you can immediately see the richness of the worlds: broad brushstrokes of huge concepts across a very economical number of pages. It’s incredibly inspiring in terms of finding a tone and approach for a larger project, right there in a handful of pages. If you can think of any other short stories that were adapted, or that you’d recommend, let me know in the comments!

Now, not to place myself in the same echelon as those writers 😂 , I present my own short story:

The Shape.

I’ve never felt the sensation of my mind wanting to do something and my body not doing as it was commanded. But that was happening right now. As much as I wanted to tell my friends about what I had seen, in my very own living room, my fingers wouldn’t type the language, symbol by symbol that my brain conjured up seemingly in full swathes. Consciousness that deciphered language out onto a keyboard every other moment of any other day, almost overlapping or preceding my inner monologue as it ‘spoke,’ subvocalising words. But whatever that mysterious system is, it was broken. Today, day 245 out of 365. Normally that’s how I feel about days. But today is special and it’s a Wednesday. It’s the first day I saw THE SHAPE. I could write any other combination of words - ‘hey how are you,’ for example. But not the words I wanted. I even found it difficult to express to myself what I was seeing. Like what I imagine people feel just before dying. Seeing something extraordinary coexist with the domestic. Whatever it was it consumed me. I had no time for anything else in that moment. The moment the light from its surface was sent to my retinas and my brain tried to make sense of the signals it received as it didn’t fit the map of reality that it had gotten used to, all I felt was a strange awe. I could attempt to describe it here but without seeing my shape, the shape - you wouldn’t really feel it. But that brings up a good point, am I the only one with the shape in my house? Would others be like mine if they did have one suddenly show up, scrambling their brains as to what lay before it. Who knows? But for now here’s a primer. The surface was black like a rough rock surface but flat and geometric. Its form was so seamlessly attached to the floor as to look like it was pushed through it from the other side - non-destructive. A black limpet phone conferencing device. That’s the thing it most reminded me of. The most earthly parallel I could think of. For anyone unlucky enough to spend extended hours in a corporate meeting room you’ll understand the shape’s geometry immediately, like a slightly bulged incredibly shallow tripod. The iconography of technology that lets disinterested people speak with other disinterested people. And like that device, it drew you in closer. Conference devices usually did so out of failure, this, it seemed to me, was drawing me in by design. I could feel that draw immediately as suddenly the idea of me telling people about it fell away from my mind. And all I could think about doing was being with it. So clean, so spidered out, gripping the floor in its black perfection. The Shape.

I’d barely noticed the day become night - as I lay limp on the sofa staring at it. As extraordinary as this was - it was time for bed. So much time had passed and even though I’d done nothing, I felt vaguely fulfilled. Pre-occupied but with nothing to show for the time spent. Yet no emptiness I might normally feel after doing nothing. Guilt maybe more than emptiness, but there wasn’t even a trace of that here. Maybe the warm, numbed buzz of anaesthesia. A vague glow of happy in that numbed state. As the sun came up, I awoke with a feeling I hadn’t had since Christmas morning deep in childhood. That need to go into a room to check if some mythic figure had delivered dreams impossibly down a chimney - wrapped perfectly. I leapt out of bed, the first time I’d done that as long as I can remember. Probably since those Christmas mornings way back in time. I had mystery and awe now to lure me out. I didn’t even think about work, or what I would say to them as an excuse. I’d figure it out. I ran to the living room, the domestic details shrouding this other thing, so exotic but so at home here as I crept in through the living room door, half expecting it to be gone, hoping it wouldn’t be. And there it was in the dawn light - looking even more mathematically perfect, the coolness of the light rendering it more science-fiction. I realised I had an odd feeling, before I could even articulate it to my mind. I was glad it was still here - the feeling it provided me at total odds with its arachnid, teleconference aesthetic. I wanted it to remain, I’d been alone too long I’d solemnly realised. This was another day I wouldn’t call a number, this was the beginning of another day worthy of a name. This is Thursday and I got to spend it with The Shape. My Shape.

I’d spent most of the day with it, like all the intervening days. I ran my fingers over its impossible surface. Like a rock in the sun. Slightly warm. The closer I got to it, the more neutral I felt. Calm. I read once that a capybara emits a hormone that relaxes other animals. Why those incredible pictures of it exist surrounded by creatures that would normally maul it without a second thought. That idea struck me as I felt its stone face against my hand, how when I was close to it I felt numbed out or zen, or however the colour of empty space might be interpreted as an emotion. That’s how I felt. Lacking for nothing, not searching for anything. All ok on the inside. Zero. Another thought caught me later as I sat on the sofa, looking at the shape. From this angle it could be mistaken for a large, 3 tentacled, starfish - but dipped in crude oil and left to evaporate to dryness at midday. Parallel to that thought, another existed, overlapping. A memory of a girl I had passed in the street last week, wasn’t more than a flash and nothing graphic. But somehow, I was instantly primed as if she was here in the room. The initial flash of a fantasy continued, elaborating. Expanding outwards in ways I wasn’t really in control of. Before I knew it, the wetness of the stain between my legs brought me back to reality. Me on the sofa, breathless. It there, unstaring. The giver. The Shape. The warm blackness of My Shape.

It hadn’t crossed my mind, hunger. That was now as strange to me as the shape first was. But now the shape was home. It was the thing I wanted to be near always. If I was counting my old way I suppose I’d say that this was day 324. But today was a Friday and today was special like any day with the shape was. More and more I felt at, not quite peace with it, but with everything. Peace is not the right word. I felt provided for. But I didn’t know how. Not in a mother way - but somehow. I wasn’t really curious about the how of the shape or anything else logical. I was surprised even observing my own thoughts about it. Any curiosity was just replaced with a feeling of distraction or focus or a fusion of both. Even though I was feeling a different feeling - I knew it was different, but just like when I tried to type a message about the shape to my friends, my thoughts were walled off from body in some way. It was not unpleasant. If anything, this bubble, was comforting. All I wanted was here and somehow the shape gave me whatever I needed. Mid-foamed mouth, a sound, all low and air came from the living room. I tore the toothbrush out of the minty chasm of my mouth and ran to the shape, where I knew - hoped - the sound had to have come from. As I ran through the hall I caught the thin skin on the back of my hand on some unknown sharp edge. Wincing, I made it to the living room where the sound had long since faded. I looked down, my reaction is how I’d imagined feeling if I’d missed my babies’ first words. Looking down, I noticed the after effect of the errant sharpness. A gash through translucent white skin. A single drop of blood dripped away from it, pretty cinematic, I thought. Then, the strangest thing since the shape first appeared happened. It was even stranger than realising that even though I still went to the bathroom, I couldn’t remember the last time I ate or drank. This was possibly more strange than the shape’s arrival, as that was a physical object and physical objects do exist. But this was something altogether different. The dangling bead of blood moved backward, towards the gash. Retracing its exact wet slither. Then the gash, thin and small as it was, closed, skin pulled together like an invisible zip had stitched it. Before I could even start to comprehend how this was possible, the cut was totally healed. The head I was trying to figure things out with lifted itself to look to the only thing that could make this happen, The Shape. My Beautiful Shape.

I can’t remember the last time I saw another person, not that I necessarily missed them. I had all I needed here. Strange as it may seem. I had also long since stopped sleeping in my bedroom, instead laying close by The Shape. Which had become warmer as time went on. And let out those occasionally deep airy sounds. Like a whale’s voice note, suspended, transported over a watery network. I didn’t know if it was communicating or if it was decompressing in some sense. But the sounds seemed to grow more regular now. The dominance of the shape in my thoughts was absolute. I had nothing to fret over or fear anymore. The edges of my thoughts un-infringed by things that might disturb this odd peace I’d felt descend over me, over time. The idea of this voice in my head, being me, being a self had quickly faded, and for once - no desire, no wanting, no planning was taking place in the background. I just knew I was happy here with my shape and that’s all I needed. I was content I suppose you could say. Then it happened. The Shape, changed Shape. A long deep sound reverberated through me, not loud but intense like how an earthquake is. Waking me, from a dream about falling. The sound went on longer than usual, connecting deep in my chest. Then the air stood still, silence. The top of the shape, opened into a dark circle. As if no light could go there. I’d never seen the total absence of light before, it looked like a cheap visual effect. Too perfect to be real, too odd for my mind to understand exactly what was happening. But it looked like the most perfect circle I’d ever seen. A circle of nothing. Not consciously choosing any particular sequence of motor actions, I found myself with my face directly above this void. Like a compulsive wave - checking your phone because you had a phantom vibration or finding yourself touching the same sequence of apps, repetitive for no sake but to block something else out. That’s how my actions felt now. An absolute peace washed over me. Like how I imagine you are when you’re brand new. Or when you’re on the verge of death. Finally - there’s nothing more. The void was now up to my arm pit. Warm honey. I looked back on nothing. Every worry, every desire, every mistake - all faded away. Like a house of cards that you spent your life on pushed over by you. Wanting to fade into destruction, whatever that idea is that lurks in me. This was the purest action. Then internal speech, thought, time all fell away. I fell away. Fell away. There wasn’t me and The Shape any more. Just The Shape.

Becky! It’s time for school, we’re going to be late! She took after me, her dad, always running late for everything. Jona wasn’t much better but he was improving. I was running around with that pre-meeting anxiety, Jane was in the other room probably feeling something similar, Tuesdays were our meeting heavy days. Becky, Jona! Let’s go! No answer. Jane was quiet too. She was just in the next room. I peeked up the stairs, usually there would be sound - the rush of the morning. Jane too seemed to be making no disturbances in the kitchen either. I had toast in my hand, but I felt it leave quite suddenly. It bounced on the floor, making a mess but I didn’t care. It had my attention, whatever it was. There on the stairs, grasping them like a spider or something, but flat to the ground. Black. I couldn’t take my attention off it. And I knew somehow in that moment, Jane was looking at the same thing in the kitchen, and Jona and Becky too - were probably in the middle of staring at theirs. Their…Shapes.

Please enjoy

Bry

The silent film villain twirling his moustache is somehow in our collective imagination but it’s kind of a myth. That image originated from stage melodrama, not any one specific film. What’s cool about silent cinema specifically is it has to do some much leg work quickly, so any visual shorthands, especially where faces are concerned, were used. And the humble moustache became incredibly useful for that, e.g. the idea of the villainous moustachioed mastermind.

Chaplin understood this better than most. He took the toothbrush moustache [the name of which I only discovered doing research for this], then just a neat unremarkable style, and used it to signify so much about his most famous character. His Tramp is pathetic and dignified, silly and subversive all at once. The moustache being central to that.

Then in the 1930s the moustache shifts gears, think Clark Gable [pictured at the top of the article] Errol Flynn, Douglas Fairbanks. The moustache stops being shorthand for certain types and becomes part of the star’s identity. This is more about putting a stamp on the star’s personality rather than signifying any kind of character type, specifically.

Then Hitler happened, and the toothbrush moustache was basically finished - I’d know ‘the toothbrush’ as ‘the Hitler.’ Chaplin knew what he was doing with his film The Great Dictator. By 1940 the two most famous faces wearing that style were a beloved comic and a mass murderer, and the film exploits those contrasts beautifully.

The postwar years were more clean cut, which meant that when a moustache did appear it started to carry a lot more significance. It became iconic of hardship, difference or just of time having passed. But then things shifted once again and in the 70s it became deeply embedded in the culture. Think Burt Reynolds or Tom Selleck. The hair became less purely decorative and more embodied masculinity, more rogue agent.

This continued right up to the modern day, with the moustache falling in and out of favour. But is still carries a lot of visual significance - e.g. DiCaprio’s character in One Battle After Another, sporting a grown out handlebar. This could be short hand for his ‘washed-up-ness’ letting himself go, not staying ‘trim.’ It also harks back to his revolutionary roots, a modern counterculturist. The moustache says a surprising amount in lot in cinematic terms.

Please enjoy

Bry

The above image was released as a teaser for the A24 film earlier this year, with the trailer soon following. Having watched the trailer and been massively excited that they had made a film adaptation, of an image essentially, I delved into the history of where this idea spawned from. Propelled along by a smiling satisfaction, knowing that only in 2026 could a film have its roots in a ‘meme,’ I looked back through the modern history of this meme masterpiece. I love this world we live in - genuinely. Some might turn their noses up over a project not based on a best-selling book or the latest culturally iconic game, but I love that something with such a small start can pull in people’s imaginations so powerfully. That’s the lure of pure concept.

This is the original photo - pre-meme - that was taken in 2002, years before the image started circulating on 4chan.

It wasn’t until 2019 that the meme was born, when the image was posted on a thread calling for “disquieting images that just feel ‘off.’” People then started to write the story themselves in response, birthing the lore. That eventually lead to the image paired with just enough story to birth a truly horrific idea - that you ‘slip’ out of this reality into the Backrooms - a seemingly infinite liminal space, that holds god knows what. It’s the mystery of it and its unheimlich nature that makes the idea so captivating. Plus, it’s such an oddly banal space - real yet unreal. Nothing looks overtly ‘horror’ about it at all - just a creepy emptiness with no end.

The internet does was it does best and traced the original photo back [it took 20 years +] to one that was taken during construction of HobbyTown USA in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. The venue is now so visited they have a poster requesting people not to disturb the peace. Below is the meme that included a short paragraph that set-up a whole world to be explored.

Based off this, Kane Pixels [Kane Parsons] made a 9 minute short film and posted it on YouTube in 2022. That caught fire and expanded the concept in sharp and smart ways. Millions of views later, the short and subsequent series on YouTube caught the attention of A24 and now here we are. I’m excited to see the film - check out the original short and trailer below.

Please enjoy

Bry

FILM: HAPPY AS LAZZARO
2018 DIR ALICE ROHRWACHER
2 hrs 07 minutes

I’m a big fan of this director. Her name is Alice Rohrwacher. I first heard of her on a Hinge date. He was surprised that I, a filmmaker, didn’t know her. Embarrassed yet determined I went home, and watched all her films that weekend. I was grateful for having discovered her world of magic. So this week I would like to recommend three of her films: The Wonders, Happy as Lazzaro and La Chimera. Whether it’s a bunch of lovable grave robbers, led by Arthur - played by Josh O’Connor in La Chimera (which for me, felt like a beautiful love story, or a search for it) or fable-like retelling of exploited farmers in Happy as Lazzaro, her worlds are imbued with a sense of wonder and the divine.

Everything feels permeable, the past and the present, realism and magic, living and the dead. In the coming of age film, The Wonders, a young Gelsomina who is from a poor beekeeping family is drawn into the modern allure. A TV show arrives in her village and invites local farmers to showcase their products for a competition. Naturally she enters her family’s honey without her strict father knowing. What unfolds is a pull between tradition and modern life and Gelsomina in the middle. Across her filmography, everything is observed with naturalism and yet the scenes feel enchanted. Each film is quietly political yet unwilling to lose its poetry. Tactile and earthy, every film makes you feel like you can touch the magic, because you actually can - it is in our every day. You just have to notice.

Alice’s blend of magical realism and Italian neorealism is a mesmerising experience. For me, she is up there with the greats of Italian cinema.

Please enjoy

Bry

SHOW: Generation Kill
2008 Creator David Simon
5 episodes, approx 68 mins each

The first thing you’ll notice about the show is its unique rhythm. Maybe because I’m conditioned to expect ‘war on film’ to feel a certain way - amped up and dramatic -this pace felt oddly disturbing in the best possible way [similar to Garland and Mendoza’s Warfare]. Because, instead of slow-mo heroics, here we have normal-ish dudes chatting while distant bombs are levelling a city. Even the camera work is unadorned. It’s practical, just like the mission at hand. And a lot of the time the lens is just soaking up this machine-gun barrage of killer dialogue, spouting from a group of men from all creeds and backgrounds, barely held together by officers who seemingly have their heads a bit more screwed on. Though as things progress, we quickly realise that there doesn’t really seem to be a plan. Maybe an illusionary one, always in the distance through the dust and static of radio chatter.

All the human foibles are at play - guys doing things to please their higher-ups, and those commanding officers doing things to impress their higher-ups, and so on. It’s a fiasco - a failure of the chain of any kind of command.

Based on the book by Evan Wright, this feels close to how I imagine a modern war like that must have felt. Guys itching to see action, but then nothing much really happens. Until suddenly it does. But then, at the end of it all, they question everything - the why of it all. It’s honest - brutally so, probably - and the military doesn’t come off particularly well. It’s dark-hilarious-a messed-up scenario navigated by messed-up characters. But it’s in that messed-up-ness and messiness that humanity springs to life. A lot of the time, it could be a play - scenes staged in their own little environments before the next set change, be it a moving Humvee or a bombed-out building. That’s a big compliment to the entire team: the excellent direction of Susanna White, who helmed most of the episodes, and to the writing team led by Simon and Ed Burns. Not a second of the show is anything but compelling. Seek it out and you shall see - you can’t turn away from it, at least not till the very end.

Please enjoy

Bry

FILM: Dune: Part Three [Teaser Trailer]
2026 Dir Denis Villeneuve
2 mins 29 seconds

The shot above is just one of many in the trailer that hints at Denis’ vision for this final chapter in the Dune trilogy. The mood is even darker, more battled hardened - maybe more sombre, and everything feels incredibly well designed. As with every film in the trilogy, every detail is meticulously fine tuned - from the pattern on a glove to the texture of an awning.

Those small details matter enormously in a world like Dune. When you believe in the tiniest details, and when everything looks practical, lived-in, and purposeful, something clicks. You begin to understand how this world works. You understand its rituals, and the beliefs that sit behind them. From there, everything expands outward: you buy the design, you buy the world, you buy the belief system, and ultimately, you buy the characters.

That’s what makes it so powerful. The storytelling builds from the smallest details to the most epic themes, until everything fuses into one incredibly rich and transporting whole.

There isn’t a design or shot that doesn’t have a beautiful patina on it. Everything is layered with intricate texture, even if that is grit suspended in the air. It’s the Dune world but expanded - made even more unique. It’s gorgeous. Verve, without trying to have verve. Just framing things simply and directly, but with costume, atmosphere and lighting - colouring in the most beautiful of images.

Linus Sandgren picks up DOP duties from Greg Fraser [he won the Oscar for Dune Part 1 ] this time around. With Denis revealing they shot the majority of the film on film this time, with a significant amount of sequences shot on IMAX. The Arrakis dessert meanwhile was still shot digitally - to get that crispness that Denis said he was always after. At a trailer event he also mentioned that this will be a very different Dune film, a different pace and cadence. He wanted to give people an unexpected film from what has gone before. This is very much a thriller he said.

Enjoy the trailer, if you haven’t seen it and enjoy it again if you have.

Please enjoy

Bry

FILM: Gugusse et l’Automate (aka The Clown and the Automaton)
1897 Dir Georges Méliès
1 mins 14 seconds

Le Voyage dans la lune, 1902, is Georges Méliès’ most famous work - the story of a voyage to the moon, where the rocket ends up jammed in one of the moon’s eyes. Even if you haven’t seen the film, you’ve probably seen that image. Again one of those visuals that has embedded itself in collective visual consciousness somehow. But before he made that sci-fi epic, that has been influential ever since it was released over 120 years ago, he made another sci-fi film about a man playing with and then battling a ‘robot’ of his own making. The film was just rediscovered this year and restored to its former glory. Link to watch is below :)

Georges Méliès started his career as a magician and illusionist, before making over 500 short film works in about a decade and a half. Blending practical theatre sets and props with the stop-motion effects afforded by motion picture photography, he crafted cinema into the medium that can achieve almost anything that can be imagined.

Méliès was ruined financially by his feature length excursions and World War 1. He became a toy seller to make a living, and destroyed many of his original negatives, presumably in a state of anger and frustration, given the situation.

He and his works faded away from view until they were rediscovered in 1920 - and he has been celebrated ever since as a trailblazer of what narrative film could be. Like a turn of the century James Cameron.

Enjoy the film :)

Please enjoy

Bry

FILM: Roofman
2025 Dir Derek Cianfrance
2 hrs 06 mins

Tatum plays real-life thief Jeffrey Manchester, who, after a successful run of jobs, eventually finds himself hunkered down inside a Toys R Us. Yep, as I mentioned, if this wasn’t real, you’d think they’d jumped the shark. But that’s just the skin over a vastly more deep story that sees someone torn between selfishly surviving and being a ‘good man.’ Doing the right thing at the cost of losing everything. Cianfrance has described the film as a ‘sad clown story’ about a man masking deep pain with humour and bravado.

Cianfrance’s approach deglosses the world and places events in prosaic everydayness. Contrasting with the high concept, the set and settings are based very much in overcast reality. The costume and the cast within them inhabit a lived-in feeling. Even Channing is less striking than his usual model self; he feels more of an ‘everyman’ here than he has before. What ‘wrongly’ sets him off into his life of crime is a desire to not just provide for his children but to give them the toys they want. The great storytelling irony is the place sells the toys he couldn’t provide at the film’s beginning is the same place he finds shelter when everything falls apart.

There is a commercial-industrial complex that hangs over the film. Cianfrance has logos dotted throughout the film’s landscapes [aside from the two major corporations that are central to the film]. They linger there, like a figure haunting and taunting the people who feel they can’t provide or live that - whatever that is.

This is an engrossing story that is truly wild and much more gut-wrenching than you’d expect. Enjoy :)

Please enjoy

Bry

FILM: THE FLORIDA PROJECT
2017 Dir Sean Baker
1 hr 51 mins

Willem Dafoe plays Bobby, the manager of a motel near the Disney World resort in Florida — in such a lovely and comforting performance, it makes you want to be a better person. He takes on much more than the role of manager; he’s a guardian, someone trying his best to look out for everyone. Doing the best he can to upkeep a scenario that’s crumbling beneath him, beyond his control. Much like the premises he’s caretaker of, trying to patch up the paintwork, clear stuff out of the pool. Except it’s not as easy when it’s people’s lives, especially Halley’s. A single mother trying to keep a roof over her and her daughter Moonee’s head - struggling week to week to pay the rent. Resorting to sometimes extreme lengths to do so. It’s Baker’s willingness not to judge as a filmmaker that takes us along on the journey without our own judgments overshadowing proceedings.

All the while, when we’re in kids’ world everything is great. They’re free to roam around the area, no curfew, no one watching over them, except Bobby. Sheltered from the darkness creeping in from the edges. On the fringes, just out of the influences of Disney’s huge resort they might as well be on Mars, so far from the once in a lifetime magical experience designed for kids and yet they are constantly having fun, and getting into trouble. They’re creating their own theme park from the mundanity of the world around them. It’s only when Baker lets the adult world seep in that we understand just how dire the situation is. This is usually in the form of Bobby trying to keep an eye on the kids, despite also trying to run a business. The subtlety of the adultness is exactly as it might be perceived or not perceived as a kid. Something disguised as fun, but is actually something entirely different, once you see it from an adult’s perspective.

It’s really delicately done - and Baker’s signature literally in the form of the same typeface he’s used for his last 5 films warmth for fringe tales and characters shines through via his ‘seemingly’ effortless style. This is a magical film about childhood. A childhood shielded from the sometimes darkness of the adult world, not by a theme park designed to keep the real world out, but by imagination and one wonderful adult in particular.

Please enjoy

Bry

Heat
Director Michael Mann
Painter Alex Colville
[1967 - ‘Pacific’]

What’s great about referencing a painting is that they’re not as accessible as, say, a music video or another popular film. They're more ‘hidden’ as reference and so can inspire a lot more without it feeling like one filmmaker is ripping off another.

Blade Runner
Director Ridley Scott
Painter Edward Hopper
[1942 - ‘Nighthawks’]

Whereas the first painting was used for one specific shot in Heat, the painting referenced by Ridley for Blade Runner was more for the overall look / mood or palette.

The Exorcist
Director William Friedkin
Painter René Magritte
[1954 - ‘Empire of Light’]

Friedkin used the Magritte painting [sold in 2024 for a record $121 million] as a reference for the now iconic shot of the arrival of Father Merrin.

Great artists steal.

Please enjoy

Bry

FILM: TRUE ROMANCE
1993 Dir Tony Scott
1 hr 59 mins

True Romance’s spirit is best summed up in its score by Hans Zimmer. Heavily inspired by the music used in Bad Lands, another film involving young lovers on the run. You can hear the similarities below.

But it’s the wonder and bright playful energy of the melody that tells you all you need to know. It captures that feeling of being enraptured by something, where your everyday reality is suddenly transformed by the appearance of this one person who you, suddenly, can’t seem to do without. The adrenal, hormonal rampage that love floods your system with depicted in the kinetic crime plot of a couple being pursued for the bag of cocaine they’ve accidentally stolen. Told in that heightened, truly romantic - even wistful Scott way - drawn from with the sensibilities of a distinctly Tarantino script.

All the while, it’s the unlikely pairs pure devotion to one another that connects us to them, even though the violence that lunges at them threatens to tear them apart. It makes you wish, in some way, for what is a very human need, someone to be there with you - through the ups and downs and to be truly and almost naively devoted to each other. Even in a slow motion gun fight that kicks up down into the air - fluttering, bloody and beautiful.

Please enjoy

Bry

Cinema relies on the realness of the performances from the actors in front of the camera, no matter whether the film is meant to be science fiction, horror, or fantastical in nature. Even if it’s meant to feel like a very real portrayal of a reality akin to ours - if we sense that the performance is even a percent disingenuous, it kicks us out of the trance.

It’s strange to realise, then - and we all know this on some level even if we’re not consciously paying attention - that the cinematic language which gets us to a “real” feeling is, in fact, completely unreal when compared to our experience of reality. Take, for example, a scene we’ve all seen countless times: a character is sent a letter by another. When character A reads the letter from character B, the voice-over is in character B’s voice - not character A’s. In reality, when we read, we read in our own voice (or at least the sub-acoustic render of our internal monologue). This choice doesn’t break the reality for us; it strengthens the emotional connection to the characters’ relationship.

Another simple example is the wide shot. We are physically at a distance from the characters, yet we hear the dialogue as if they were right next to us. Again, it’s not real, but we forgive it — we don’t even notice it — because it’s part of the cinematic language we’re all fluent in, even if we don’t know it. The reverse is rarely used: a close-up where the dialogue sounds far away.

This grammatical element seems to appear most often in heist films. A single monologue or dialogue is split across multiple locations but delivered by the same character. One sentence might be spoken on a street, another on a plane, another in a car, and then back inside a building. It propels us through the film, making usually exposition-heavy dialogue more compelling because there’s more dynamism in the edit.

Of course, plenty of films break the grammar laid out here. But it never ceases to amaze me how much we forgive the portrayal of reality when we’re in the rapture of cinema - engulfed in a language we somehow know without ever being explicitly taught it.

Please enjoy

Bry

This has still got to be one of the ‘coolest’ opening scenes and introductions to a character. And I like all great shots do, they tell us something about the character or move the story along. They aren’t cool for cool’s sake and the frame above, that introduces us to blade, is a perfect example of that. He steps into the blood drenched underground club - untouched by even a drop of the red rain. Not only does this tell us he’s separate from the vampires in the club - it tells us lots of other things - character traits we can learn from. He’s incorruptible, that’s for sure. Even though he is, in many ways, the most powerful vampire - he chooses to fight against them, not be corrupted by them. He has strong principles that he bends for no one.

The other main thing we can learn from Blade, is, that even though his compulsion to thirst for blood is deeply ingrained in him at a genetic level, he chooses not to give in to his nature. He’s steadfast and vigilant against the drive woven into his DNA. He has systems in place like his regular injections given to him by his consigliere, Whistler. He keeps himself in check, so that he doesn’t give in to his lower nature - even when his life would be much ‘easier’ if he just let it be. We can all change our nature, we can all choose to transform who we have a genetic predisposition to be, through systems and habits.

He has a singular, personal mission. That gives him his ‘why’ in modern personal development terms. That means he’ll never get confused or distracted - and that means he can keep to all his habits and systems. In this mission he’s totally self-less, putting his body on the line to help others. We don’t need to all be driven by merciless revenge against vampires - but having something that maintains us, when all else fails, seems like a good idea, another thing we can borrow from him.

Final point is that he’s an extreme character, we don’t need to be extreme to learn from him. It’s these kind of principles that are built into characters that can help serve us on some imperceptible level. He’s at war with himself and he wins it one day at a time and that is one of the reasons why he is, ‘cool.’ Why he is an attractive, interesting character - at least to me.

Please enjoy

Bry

FILM: SIRĀT
2025 Dir Óliver Laxe
1 hr 55 mins

SIRĀT is a unique experience because the filmmakers have managed to use sound and music in a way that’s as vital to the film as the music is in 2001. Obviously music and sound is critical but here it’s 90 percent of the experience. It’s incredibly visceral, very sensorial, and I haven’t seen anything like it in the cinemas in a long time. My friend and I got tickets to see a special preview of it at the IMAX in London with the director doing a Q&A afterwards. He introduced it by talking a lot about wanting people to switch off their minds and experience the film through their bodies, rather than thinking logically or critically. He wanted people to just feel it. It really is like that, especially on a huge screen with a big sound system.

I don’t want to say too much about the film because I think it’s actually best seen, best felt, best experienced going in with knowing as little as possible about it. The film has had many comparisons. I don’t really want to touch on them so much, but when you do see it, you’ll see what people are talking about. It’s trucks in a desert, intense, so the obvious surface level comparisons are clear. What I loved about it is that it captures the transcendent feeling of being surrounded by music and sound in a rave. You’re in this hallucinatory state just like some of the characters are in the film. You’re apart from the world, but deeply connected to the natural elements around you. It’s a film that’s part survival, part outward search for a loved one but also an inward search into what keeps us going. What’s keeps us dancing in the emptiness, surrounded by chaos that can appear at any moment.

Please seek it out in the biggest screen possible when it comes out in the UK and US next month.

SIDE NOTE: I’m not sure about you but when I have something I want to work on I can find myself going to my browser to procrastinate. Opening up tabs to delay getting stuck into it, whatever it happens to be. So I made this Chrome extension that, unlike web blockers, doesn’t actually block anything. It simply asks you to input projects you’re currently working on, like ‘write screenplay’ or learn French’ and asks you which websites are time sucks for you. Then, the next time you go to one of those sites - it’ll just nudge you by asking if you’d rather spend 15 mins on your project rather than go procrastinate for 2 hours. All of that is to say that it’s called Traction and is available for free on the Chrome web store right now. Any notes or feedback on it would be greatly appreciated. And if you find it useful please leave a rating. It’s been a little side project I’ve been working on the last couple of weeks - hope you enjoy it.

Bry

FROM EDITION #115 FILM ONE: SUBURBIA [SubUrbia]

1996 Dir Richard Linklater

2hrs 1 min

Seeing this late at night, unidentified, probably as a 13/14 year old - I thought wow that’s me and my friend’s lives. Hanging out together on the streets at night, entertaining ourselves and dreaming of what we’d one day become. This is Linklater’s 4th feature and he’s really honing his Linklater-ness. He’s captured that hang out feeling again that he nailed in Dazed and Confused. That space that teenage plans occupy, how everything seems super important when it comes to socialising.

The film takes place over the course of a day, and it seems like it’s one like any other until their old high school classmate [who’s become a successful musician] returns to their neighbourhood. As a teenager - the atmosphere of it really stayed with me. The seemingly endless days of being that age in summer. Even though I grew up in a small town in Ireland, the feel of it felt like our own little world. The themes were universal, the characters you could relate to in some sense. The costume design felt like the kind of clothes you wanted to wear at that age.

It was all like us. It was also the film where I feel in love with Giovanni Ribisi. Linklater is the master of this kind of cinema, the story that feel effortless, that feels like reality in the best kind of way. The ultimate hang out movie.

TL;DR: Richard Linklater’s film puts us right into the world of a group of teenagers trying to entertain themselves.

*Available for a small rental fee on Amazon, Apple, Google and YouTube in the US and the UK.

Fact: Based on the play of the same name, written by Eric Bogosian. You might not recognise the name but you’ll recognise the face.

FILM TWO: KIDS

1995 Dir Larry Clark

1 hr 31 mins

Again, the perfect film to come across late at night when you’re a teenager. And whatever shit you were up to at the time, suddenly paled in comparison to the stuff these kids were up to. I think it took me a few times to actually watch the entire film because I kept coming to it at different points over many months of it being broadcast. Then I’d have to talk to friends, asking them about it and between us we’d figure out what the title was or look in the newspaper to check the TV listings. Then I’d check the listings again and try to plan to watch the whole thing.

It’s a shock to the system seeing this film - while like our little teenage world - this was the ultra hardcore version. Kids in NYC, getting into fights, raping younger teenage girls - it’s brutal. Made all the more so by the ticking clock structure where Chloë Sevigny’s character Jennie has to track down the 17 year old Telly - to warn him that he has HIV. The reason she knows this is that he’s the only guy she’s slept with and she’s just tested positive for the disease. Meanwhile, Telly is on a rampage to try and sleep with as many virgin’s as possible, as he weaves his way through random friend’s apartments, parties and fights.

The screenplay was written by Harmony Korine who would go on to explore youth apathy and brutality in many of his other films as a director. The film also gave a lot of younger actor’s a huge launch pad because of how good and controversial the movie was. A very young Rosario Dawson appears alongside Chloe in their first ever film roles. The film feels like it was made by and for young people. Especially at the time - it feels real, which makes the horror of the situation all the more potent.

TL;DR: Larry Clark’s film shows us the not so innocent side of kids lost on the streets of New York.

*Available right here

Fact: Korine wrote the script when he was 19. He was dating Chloe at the time they were in pre-production, which led to her being cast.

FROM EDITION #155 DAVID LYNCH’S WEATHER REPORT 12/12/22

2022 Dir David Lynch
1 min 09 secs

I remember tuning into this series a lot during Covid. It was a real beacon of hope and comfort in those days where uncertainty was pretty much the dominant emotion. But any time I watched David tell us the weather in LA, I felt better about everything. There was a lovely consistency to the output. Hair always perfect, mostly short but also long with a beard - nice to see David succumbing to the freedom that lockdown afforded in letting things grow a bit wilder than usual. But there was always the same shirt, sunglasses that were sometimes there, sometimes not. For me though it was the catchphrases that made me the happiest. They were sometimes altered a little, and the little random titbits thrown in here and there added some spice to the anthology. Theses were mainly centred around what song he was thinking about that day.

The series continued from 2020 through to 2022. But amazingly, he had started doing weather reports all the way back in 2005 - where he would phone in to a local radio station. He then continued doing them on his own website until 2010. Then brought them back on YouTube during the pandemic.

DAVID LYNCH’S WEATHER REPORT 06/01/21

2021 Dir David Lynch
1 min 18 secs

I think this is the coolest David Lynch has ever looked and he was always a cool guy. What I love about the setting of these pieces is the little hints of the outdoors and the minimalist backgrounds. The yellowish wooden cupboard doors the dominant background element. But the series did start in a different location which looks to me to be a basement studio of some kind.

He also opted for a more set-up camera, which would eventually evolve into the more casually held iPhone set-up you can see in the videos above. I think he made a great choice because the iconic ones come across as friendly, warm and inviting.

I now invite you to take a look back at these wonderful weather reports and then revisit some of your favourite David Lynch films.

FROM EDITION #147 FILM ONE: VOX LUX

2018 Dir Brady Corbet

1 hrs 54 mins

Last week I talked about Brady Corbet’s first film, The Childhood of a Leader - he followed up the inception of a dictator with the inception of a superstar pop star. Again, I like that everything in the film feels grand in some way - from the opening and closing titles, messing with our expectations of what opening titles should be and where they should appear. Like his first film too, I enjoy how things don’t feel overly lit, the image, though beautiful, isn’t overly manicured or colour corrected within an inch of its life.

The handling of the blocking, and the performances feel like Bresson in places - a huge compliment. There is a cool distance about the film, as if we’re a bit numb like the characters we’re following, as they deal with events in recent history. As I said, there is an implied largeness to the film, like a really dark version of Forrest Gump - the central characters feel connected to or somehow have influence on world events. I really enjoyed the mood more than anything - it has an early millennial feel to it, in parts reminding me of Gus Van Sant’s Elephant. My friend Narghi wholeheartedly disagreed with me though so maybe not for most people.

TL;DR: Corbet’s second film takes us into the dark voyage of a pop star as she navigates the first decades of the 21st century.

*Available for a small rental fee on Apple and Amazon in the US and the UK.

Fact: Rooney Mara was originally cast to play the role Natalie Portman plays.

FILM TWO: ATLANTICS

2019 Dir Mati Diop

1 hr 46 mins

One film my talented filmmaker friend Narghi did rave about to me is Atlantics. So the reason I’m recommending is purely down to her unrelenting insistence and the fact that it is a very good film.

As I mentioned, this film leans heavily into a world that is at once ours, but also one where hexes, mysticism, and possession are possible. Superstitions can be manifested, just another fact woven into the fabric of everyday life - as tangible as sweat on a hot misty day by the beach. The mood here is established mostly on a foundation of Matt Diop’s excellent use of Fatima Al Qadiri’s score. It feels ethereal - light, a cloak of magic over the beautiful yet jagged realism of the environment the film is set in. It’s a film whose elegant simplicity suddenly becomes magical in the best possible way. It’s the filmmaking equivalent of a Rinko Kawauchi photograph - another world captured in the hazy mirage of a sunset.

TL;DR: Mati Diop’s Cannes winning look at love and the possibilities of life beyond the realities of the everyday is a mysterious thing to behold.

*Available to stream on Netflix in the US and the UK.

Fact: This is one of the first films released by Netflix to be given a Blu-ray release via The Criterion Collection.

Please enjoy

Bry

FILM: The Big Blue
1988 Dir Luc Besson
2 hrs 48 mins

This film is part love story, life-long male bromance - slapstick humour, zany cartoon-like characters and questionable but very loving relationships with Dolphins. It’s a wild time to spend with larger than life characters who are utterly dedicated to the world they inhabit - that of free divers, who live on the edge between life and death, separated by the salty meniscus of the ocean. But the film explores the inverse of what you might imagine - the idea that in pursuit of deeper and deeper depths, they become more and more alive. They fall in love with cold darkness - they become themselves down there. At those depths, the pressures of the realities above the surface disappear, all responsibilities vanish and you can truly be at peace.

I love films where you can tell there is an operator behind the camera, there is a tactility to the filmmaking. This film is full of that - imperfect helicopter shots, the camera moving in the gimbal, sweeping over the ocean. It’s slightly messy, but it’s beautiful. The costume design, the late 80’s period and the sun shimmering off blue white sea gives this film that feeling of first holiday’s abroad. It made me get nostalgic for day-go colours that Agassi might have worn. It made me remember the feeling you got [if you’re a certain age] or seeing brightly coloured plastic Swatch watches in airport shops - before being told no by your parents. Looking back at these plastic gems in glass cases as you walked to your gate to catch your flight. The feel of heat between plane and terminal building as you stepped into a new foreign climate.

This is a film about the pursuit of something beyond the ordinary. A literal submergence of yourself, completely, in something you’re in love with. Going beyond what others think is reasonable to feel something you can’t even explain to them. And the realisation that only one other person can understand it, and it’s your closest friend and fiercest competitor.

Please enjoy

Bry

“Anyone who has ever been privileged to direct a film also knows that, although it can be like trying to write ‘War and Peace’ in a bumper car in an amusement park, when you finally get it right, there are not many joys in life that can equal the feeling.” Stanley Kubrick

“To make a film is very, very hard. To make a good film is an almost impossible task.” Steven Spielberg

Two of the greatest filmmakers of all time, acknowledging how difficult it is even to make a ‘bad’ film. Which goes back to the word miracle in the title. Every film is a combination of thousands of decisions, by hundreds of people, over the course of a couple of years [usually] and all of this shepherded by the director - who at the end of the day is just human. And that’s just a very general overview. Starting with the germ of the idea, the writer or writer / director - has to have the thought in the first place. Or be open to the idea arriving if you subscribe to that way of thinking. Then, they have to give it enough time to form into something even semi-coherent. Then they have to be excited enough about it, to pour hundreds or thousands of hours getting it to a draft where the studio, and everyone behind it, is happy enough to go for it. That process alone involves convincing a whole slew of people that this thing your mind invented is worth their time and money. And if it’s an expensive film, it’s worth the huge investment that it may or may not return. Filmmaking is a financially very risky investment - but with great risks come great rewards and all that.

So now, they’ve managed all of that process and next comes pre-prod. All the key people involved have to be available, they have to be keen on the project, and by some strange alchemy all their collective contributions formulate into the essence of what this film could be before any cameras roll. And all this collective work has to be in service of the vision of the director. They all have to be ‘in’ the same film as the saying goes. And if you’ve ever been in a meeting of more than 7 people, discussing anything - you can see how tricky this can be.

Ok, so at the end of pre-prod, we have all the actors, key above and below the line people on board and all singing from the same hymn sheet. Now into production.
Back when there weren’t 20 inch hi-def monitors showing you exactly what the digital cinema camera is seeing, you had to trust the DOP, the machinery and film stock immensely. Using a film, shot on film, as an example. Consider the ballet that almost every shot involves, let alone a technically challenging one. The light from the scene has to pass through a lens onto a strip of film moving at 24 frames per second [normally] and the light has to have been judged by the light meters and DOP to be strong enough to expose the image correctly to give the scene the desired look. Too dark and the actor’s performance is lost, too bright and it hasn’t got the mood they’re after. Now imagine John Knoll, shooting Braveheart. Mel Gibson is riding a horse across uneven terrain, towards camera in slow motion, and the entire shot is pin sharp. That means the camera department planned out the entire stretch of movement, putting focus marks onto the focus dials, and judging that they’ve nailed the focus off a less than sharp video feed, probably black and white in 1995. Add on top of that, the fact that all that has to function while the actor / actors deliver the desired performance. Not to mention any of the other departments, like sound, costume, make-up, art department. All these elements have to work together and any can make a take unusable.

Then once you’ve captured all these individual shots that ‘work,’ they have to stitch together into sequences that work, then these sequences have to stitch together into acts that work, then the acts stitch together to make the film. Each a kind of fractal of the overall film. The themes, story, all contained within each stage and building on top of one and another to deliver the story as first envisioned by the writer / director and hopefully better than they could have first conceived. And most importantly - to deliver emotionally - no matter what that emotion may be. It’s an almost impossible achievement to make any kind of film, let alone one that connects with audience at a huge scale. Film is a miracle and miracles require the almost blind faith of everyone involved, right from the beginning.

*Just a few announcements

This will be the last film newsletter until the New Year, but I will potentially share a little project I have been working on in the meantime so keep an eye out for that.

So thank you again, so much, for reading my thoughts over the past year, it’s been a privilege, as always, to do these. I wish you all a wonderful time over the next couple of weeks and a New Year where potential is realised and inner peace grows closer. Love you guys.

Please enjoy

Bry

FILM: BOOGIE NIGHTS 🍆
1997 Dir Paul Thomas Anderson
2 hrs 32 mins

One of the amazing things about this film is that it features a song that I know from Transformers: The Movie - You Got The Touch by Stan Bush. A song that Mark Walhberg’s Dirk Diggler covers in an attempt to cross over into a music career. It’s a great track and one that thematically tells us a lot about the film. It charts the rise of Dirk, as he becomes an icon in the industry with his special ‘talent,’ but it also maps the changes in his character just as well as the industry as a whole, during the transition from film to video. A change that takes the ‘art’ out of the whole endeavour - one that is feared and resisted as long as possible by producer Jack Horner [played by Burt Reynolds].

To him, it cheapens what he and his cast and crew are trying to do. The evolving tastes of more amateur, more gonzo style, as it would come to be known, threaten his domain. There are a lot of parallels being made here between porn filmmaking and mainstream filmmaking. Even more relevant now, with the evolution in technology and ai, meaning that almost everyone has a high-quality film camera in their pocket and could, in theory, make a film. This is great to me. But also, that technological leap plus streaming means there is much, much more being produced and does the lower barrier to entry lower the overall quality? Who knows, but that’s the idea that Jack and his team are trying to fight back against. If amateurs can film themselves having sex, is it as ‘artful’ as the porn the team is attempting to making? Boogie nights is a PTA classic, as dynamic and energetic as its protagonist - with one of my all time favourite PTA endings.