Mindhunter

The second season of Netflix's Mindhunter is now out. If you haven't watched this already, it's truly binge worthy; but this not for the faint of heart. This is Silence of the Lambs stuff. If serial killers and the FBI profilers who track them sound like your bag, then you have found your next series. What's it all about it? This a fictional account of the birth of the Behavioral Science Unit of the FBI - fictional but it's all based on true events and real serial killers. It's fascinating stuff. The two main agents are Holden (played by Jonathan Groff) and Bill (Holt McCallany). Holden is young and naive but brilliant, whereas Bill is older, gruff, and smokes like a chimney. They have a kind of Laurel and Hardy chemistry. To understand serial killers, they interview serial killers. The first season Holden and Bill spend much with serial killer Edmund Kemper. The man who plays Kemper, I've heard, is spot on to the real thing; which makes watching this series both super fascinating and rather creepy. I binged the second season and its focus is on The Atlanta Child Murders. David Fincher is one of the driving forces behind this and David seems to have a thing for serial killers (Se7en, Zodiac). If you're a Fincher fan, this is must viewing. It's pretty dark stuff and if you have the stomach for it, catch it on Netflix.

The Boys

Here are my thoughts on superhero movies: they mostly suck. Even the good ones are just okay for me. There are a few exceptions: I loved Christopher Nolan's Batman Trilogy. I enjoyed Ant-Man and the first Iron Man, but the Marvel Universe and the DC Universe have worn me down. I don't derive much joy out of them. So for me to highly recommend a superhero series, it has to be pretty darn good. If you haven't heard of and already binge-watched The Boys, this is your next series.
What's it about? Imagine if superheroes were real and living in America, and they were corporate - action figures, their faces on cereal boxes, etc. The Boys is a dark parody of not only superheroes, but of corporate America and the Christian right. This isn't for kids. It's graphic, violent, and profane. It's also smart, funny, and rather brilliant. It stars Jack Quaid (Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid's kid), and has smaller roles by Elisabeth Shue and Simon Pegg as the big names attached. Catch it on Amazon Prime.

Crawl

Jaws is one of my favorite films of all time. I must have seen it close to twenty times (I know, ridiculous but true). There have been a lot of rip-offs over the years, some of which I have enjoyed (Piranha 3D, Lake Placid, Open Water) and some I have not (The Meg, Jaws: The Revenge). Love them or hate them, none of them are Jaws, which to me is the gold standard of water monster movies. I'm a sucker for these types of films; Jurassic Park, Alien, The Thing (remake), Halloween. The premise is simple, some monster comes along and starts killing people and people run like hell to get away. Well done, it's suspenseful riveting stuff - the celluloid equivalent to a rollercoaster. Crawl, thankfully, is well done. OMG did I have fun with this one. I was bitten from the opening credits. The open shots are of Haley (Kaya Scodelario) swimming in an Olympic pool and coming in second place in her racing heat. You know she just needs the right motivation to swim faster. How about a giant alligator?

Haley travels to South Florida to find her missing father (Barry Pepper) in a  Category 5 hurricane. She finds him trapped, injured, in the basement of her childhood home with a big ass hungry alligator, the hurricane rain water rising and no hope of getting out. Enough said. Crawl is summer popcorn fun and if you watch it in that spirit, it will grab you and pull you deep under. Enjoy. Catch it at a discount cinema near you.

The Art of Self-Defense

I wasn't going to write about this one but it stuck with me long after it was over and that's usually a good sign. I have known multiple friends over the years who have participated in various martial arts classes, Karate, Jiu Jitsu, etc., and I even have a few who teach them. I put my kids in Jiu Jitsu. They bowed out at a certain point. There is a whole culture of discipline, rituals (no shoes on the mat!), and dress that goes with martial arts clubs and all of it gets relentlessly mocked in "The Art of Self-Defense." Jesse Eisenberg plays Casey, an introverted nerd accountant who gets badly beat up by a mysterious motorcycle gang. Post hospital recovery, he stumbles across a Karate martial arts Dojo. There he enrolls in classes. His instructor, Sensei, is everything Casey wants to be; a man's man. Sensei tells Casey he shouldn't be learning the French language because the French always surrender, he should be learning a language like Russian or German. He tells Casey he should also be listening to metal, as in the musical genre, metal. It's ridiculous and hilarious and if you are looking for a goofy dark comedy that punches like a kick, The Art of Self-Defense is your movie. Catch it at a rep cinema near you.

Skin

So on the same lines as American History X and The Believer, we have yet another white supremacist story (based on a true story) with another incredible lead performance; this time it's Jamie Bell in Skin. Do we need another one of these? I would argue more than ever. I heard an interesting theory about extremist movements. They are born from, above all else, poverty. Whether it be Middle Eastern jihadists or good old USA white nationalists, the underlining similarity is angry young men (mostly men) who are poor and have nothing to lose. You take them in, feed them, and explain to them, the guy over there, the one with the different skin colour, well he's your problem - this is why you don't have any food, because he stole your job, etc. We get a glimpse of this. However the main focus of the film is about Bryon leaving his Nazi brethren behind with the help of black activist, Daryle Lamont Jenkins (played by Mike Colter) so Bryon can be with his new wife and kids. He cuts a deal with Daryle and in exchange, goes through an extremely painful and lengthy tattoo removal process to clean his skin from the hate that covers much of his face and body. It's a violent and dark film but an important and timely one. Bell is excellent in it. Catch it at a theatre near you.

The Dead Don't Die

Why does the world need another zombie film? The answer is, it doesn't. Or at least it doesn't need any traditional contemporary zombie films; AMC's The Walking Dead has destroyed my love of zombies - well almost. Since George A. Romero's The Night of the Living Dead, zombie has equaled social commentary about society's pressing issues - whether it be race relations in The Night of the Living Dead or consumerism in Dawn of the Dead - the zombie motif is usually a fun way to talk about all different aspects of humanity's cruelty and ignorance which we inflict upon one other and the Earth.
Jim Jarmusch isn't traditional and we could certainly use a conversation about climate change. Hence, The Dead Don't Die is the zombie film we need right now. In this self referential, winking at the camera world, polar fracking has put the Earth off its axis and off its rotation and the result is the dead have risen.It stars Bill Murray, Adam Driver, and Chloë Sevigny, plus there are cameos by Tom Waits, Rosie Perez, Carol Kane, Iggy Pop, Selena Gomez, Tilda Swinton, and Steve Buscemi to name a bunch. This is a fromage-homage to Romero and the entire horror geek genre - it's funny. It's not Jim's best film, but if you are looking for something goofy light, I had a lot of fun with it.
Catch it at rep theatre near you.

Paterson (2016)

I'm going to write about Jim Jarmusch's new film, The Dead Don't Die, but before I do, I must talk about Paterson. I mentioned to a friend I was going to go see, The Dead Don't Die and she told me she was a big Jim Jarmusch fan. So I asked her, what did you think of Paterson? She hadn't even heard of it. How big a fan could she be, right? I don't blame her. She has two kids and a busy life. I miss stuff all the time from writers, directors, and musicians, which I consider myself to be a big-fan of. But it got me thinking, if she missed it, then likely many others did too.
So, if you haven't seen Jim Jarmusch's Paterson, starring Adam Driver and Golshifteh Farahani, you really owe it to yourself to do so.
Jim is an arty director. He makes arty movies. They might not be everyone's cup of tea, but they are mine. Paterson could be his best movie. It's certainly my favourite film he has every made. What's it about? It's about a bus driver who writes poetry (the poetry comes from real writer Ron Padgett). He lives with his wife, who wants to open a cupcake business. Paterson goes to work every day and eats the same thing for breakfast. He occasionally stops for a beer after work at the local watering hole and writes poems in his journal. Um, yeah, that's about it. It's slow and there are no bad guys or explosions. It's a thoughtful meditation on beauty and the beauty of words. It's about love and poetry. I adored this movie. I have nothing more to say. Go watch it.
Catch it on streaming services.