More of a little announcement / thought piece this week.
As you can see I’m posting this on a Saturday, rather than the usual Friday. Moving forward I’ll be posting on Saturday rather than Friday. This is mainly just to reorganise things so that it doesn’t fall at directly at the end of the work week.

Which brings me to the joy of playing around with time - in the more specific sense of watching a film when you wake up in the morning, instead of the much more classic night time affair. Even an early morning cinema trip is rendered surreal when you walk out of the cinema into daylight rather than darkness. The shift from the cocoon of the film world and the reentry into reality made all the more stark.

What’s nice about a film first thing in the morning is that your mind is still in that malleable space between sleep and full alertness, the inverse of how people recommend reading fiction to get into that space before sleep. This is bridging the gap between dream and reality with someone else’s dream. A visionary tether that guides us gently into full world mode.

Give it a whirl and see you next Saturday.

Bry

Please enjoy

Bry

FILM: PROJECT HAIL MARY
2026
Dir Phil Lord & Christopher Miller
2 hrs 36 mins

The title of this newsletter really says it all. Since I caught this on Amazon a couple of days ago, I’ve been raving to everyone about it, and I’m truly sad I missed it in the cinema because I can only imagine it amplifying the experience at least tenfold. It is truly a lesson in simplicity and writing, not just writing but taut writing. There’s not a redundant scene in this film and the editing and the pace all whirl you through the story brilliantly, like someone being led by a very confident and competent dance partner spinning through space, lofted by pure feel-good, science fiction / action energy.

As you’d expect from a film based on an Andy Weir book, the story is smart, it’s funny, and Gosling was made to play this character. It’s the perfect channel for his brilliant comedic performances and just his pure charisma. He plays an everyman, someone who never wanted to be a hero and yet finds himself in this spectacular position.

In fact, at various points throughout the film, he reiterates the idea that he doesn’t want to rise to the challenge, he doesn’t want an occasion to rise to - in fact he’s a highly qualified scientist - choosing to teach science at school, somewhere he can feel safe. His delivery and timing of his delivery of his lines and actions is just fantastic. It’s such a pleasure to watch him be that good and relishing every moment. He’s in every single scene in the film, and he leads it fantastically well.

The choice of framing, the lighting, and just the design of the environments on display make the film very believable. Everything is tactile and ‘normal,’ for lack of a better word. It’s practical and technical in the technical spaces we veer into. The production design, everything contributes to the sense of a world that you really buy into. It’s not fantastical in any way, and yeah, you buy it completely. Every scene is art directed brilliantly. Everything feels very real, very lived in. Greig Fraser’s camera work really adds to that sense as well. Nothing is too pristine. It’s a very textured image, he’s letting light fall away naturally. Doesn’t feel too clean, which I think a lot of films can fall prey to, so you really are presented with an image that is utterly believable. Which sets up the more ‘extraordinary’ elements which come later. And I don’t want to spoil those but this is to say that it’s in those scenes that the heart of the film lives. It’s awesomely wonderful, warm filmmaking.

Please enjoy

Bry

FILM: EDEN
2025
Dir Ron Howard
2 hrs

What I like about Ron Howard's film is that it deals with a common theme or a common goal and how it can usually fall apart, succumbing to humanity's inertia, I suppose. The idea is that people move away from the world, as it were. They go to an isolated spot where they can start afresh, but in their quest to start fresh, they bring all the things that make us human and make them, them. All the good and the bad. When you even bring a few people together in a scenario like that, the worst parts of our nature can become revealed, especially in an isolated, harsh, and violent land like an island in the Galapagos. Gradually the environment can tear down our more civilised layers and the true animal nature can be revealed. This is the heart of Eden for me. A paradise that becomes spoiled, by our own nature. Even when the character's goals are to work towards the exact opposite.

The film is based on a wild, an utterly wild, true story with varying, conflicting accounts of what actually happened. If it wasn't true, you would find it over-the-top. But according to this source, it all happened largely as per the film. Ron Howard again is using his unique skills in bringing stories based on true events to the screen, as he did with Apollo 13, Thirteen Lives and In the Heart of the Sea. All of these films are about people up against nature in some ways, up against our own human nature in this case, as well as the nature that surrounds them on the island. He's got an adept hand at capturing those stories in a very emotionally honest way. But still heightened in the way the best filmmakers can, without making it feel dishonest. It's gripping even before the threads start to fray and the tides of descent creep up on the beach. Seek it out.

Please enjoy,

Bry

Ridley Scott is the filmmaker I’m alluding to in the intro. From his very first film, “The Duellists,” right up until his most recent, the thing that connects them all is his supreme ability to put texture in front of the camera.

For example, in the interior scenes in Tyrell Headquarters, there are light ripples off water projected across the set. He puts rain wherever he can. He layers in extras in front of the camera, in front of the action. He uses smoke, all of these things, to add depth to the frame, to add visual interest, a sense of a crowded, polluted future megacity.

I remember seeing in a behind-the-scenes that Bud Yorkin, who co-financed Blade Runner, was over Ridley’s shoulder during the shooting. He said from take to take he couldn’t tell the difference, but Ridley obviously could. He was trying to explain it to Yorkin, saying, “OK, well, in the background of the last take this was off. In the foreground this was off,” so he’s considering every single aspect of the frame and how all of those elements come together to create and build the world that the story takes place in. One layer of paint at a time.

In Thelma and Louise, he uses the dusty, heat-beaten terrain to add the same effect, sweat on the actors, beaten, used, and dirty costume design. You can practically smell the petrol fumes as they speed through their adventure. In Alien, you have the condensation, the grime of the ship, the used-futureness of a spacecraft as oil rig, a future tanker in deep space. The filthy, greasy end of a dirtier company.

In his epics set in the past, 1492, Gladiator, Robin Hood, Kingdom of Heaven, he art-directs the air with snow, pollen, incense, droplets. Anything to add to the look he’s going for. There are very few “clean” frames when it comes to exteriors; even in American Gangster, he dresses the air with dust motes, or something that’s not quite snow, not quite rain.

Even Nolan, a big fan of Ridley’s, has taken some of his techniques for The Odyssey, particularly the scene with the giant warriors. If you didn’t know better, you might think this frame was lifted from a Ridley Scott picture.

Please enjoy

Bry

FILM: The Long Walk
2025
Dir Francis Lawrence
1 hr 48 mins

What you’ll notice about the film is that it wastes no time getting into the meat of the story. We’re introduced to the central characters through the main character, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman’s son, Cooper Hoffman, and he becomes our entry point into the world. Through him, we meet the other characters, who are all partaking in the long walk, which is a sort of really slow, ‘Running Man’-style contest that’s broadcast. The contest is incredibly simple: the last person to be alive after the long walk wins one wish and riches beyond their imagination, as the characters describe it. Theories about the long walk are revealed throughout the film, what it’s actually all about, whether or not people have a choice. The information and ideas are released very gradually, building a bit of a snapshot of the larger state of the world after ‘the war’ has ended.

I’ve always been a big fan of Francis Lawrence, but I have yet to really see his Hunger Games series of films, and this is a kind of not-too-dissimilar concept. What I love about it is that it’s so straightforward. It is a strong central conceit, and he lets it play out in its straightforwardness. There are no extraneous cutaways, for example, to people watching the broadcast, and the only real hints of it that we get are quick intercuts to the camera lenses mounted on vehicles, or the fact that, at night, the scene has to be lit by a moving rig on the back of a truck or tank. It’s all very self-contained. We’re placed in the role of the contestants, so we don’t see, nor need to, anything of how the rest of the world or the rest of the country experiences it as a show.

The only ‘TV’ theatricality is the appearance of The Major, who screams equal parts motivation and scare tactics at the group of contestants, like an interstitial bad guy reminding the audience and contestants what’s at stake. Lawrence’s approach is very stripped back, almost mechanistic, in a good way. His strict framing and almost pure ‘documentation’ of the events make the atmosphere all the more dread-filled. The film marches on and commands us to keep up, taking in the horrors that unfold as more contestants succumb to the softness of their humanness. It’s a lean and powerful watch that gives Lawrence’s sandbox a strict border to exhibit just how clean a storyteller he is.

Bry

Maybe not the most likeable character in cinema, he certainly does a lot of things that aren’t admirable, but he holds a special place in my view as someone who stands by their ‘plain view’ of the world so steadfastly. Or should I say, it’s admirable how uniform his persona is, in the sense that even though we know he will say and do things he doesn’t believe in to get what he wants, he is remarkably pure in that pursuit. We can bank on it.

So the good things we can draw from this are that he is true to himself. He is very much his own person. He is definitely not concerned with what others think - in terms of him being liked or disliked. Even though he crafts a persona to help get what he wants, the image of the father raising his son alone.

He is also diligent, determined beyond belief, and upfront. He calls out true cruelty when he talks about how the head of the Sunday family beats his daughter and doesn’t shy away from confrontation. He believes in what he believes in and is encouraging to those who are switched on - those he recognises as having a similar spirit or drive to him. People out there making it happen.

There is a lot to take from Plainview and a lot to leave behind too, but even in this bitter, misanthropic character, we can plumb great things.

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.

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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 :)

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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.

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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.

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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.