Screen Memories: The Odyssey, In the City, The Samurai and the Prisoner
This is a free post from Larry Fitzmaurice's Last Donut of the Night newsletter. Paid subscribers get one or two email-only Baker's Dozens every week featuring music I've been listening to and some critical observations around it.
That form copy above is going to change a little in the future, because starting today I'm launching a new column for this newsletter specifically focusing on film and TV. I reckon this will run once every two weeks; perhaps it'll run weekly if I end up watching a lot of stuff during one specific week (which happens more often than not, tbh).
In about three weeks or so, this column will also be largely paywalled—so if you like what you see, I highly encourage you to take advantage of the "birthday layoff" sale I'm running. We're talking 39% off the first six months of a monthly subscription, or the same discount off of a year of the annual subscription. You can grab the monthly sale ($1.83/month) here, and the annual sale ($18.30) here. You won't regret it, and you'll be keeping this 100% independent publication alive and well, too.
OK, without further ado:
The Odyssey [Christopher Nolan; 2026]
Allow me to offer a very insincere apology for not being too into this one...I generally have no quarrel with Christopher Nolan beyond generally agreeing with the increasingly clichéd assessment that he makes smart movies for people who do not routinely seek out smart movies; another, less mean way to put this is that, when it comes to organizing wow-inducing spectacle, he's a less intellectually feeble Spielberg (clearly no less afraid of sex, though!). I've had a few people ask me IRL "But did you see it in 70mm IMAX?!?," as if the images captured on the screen itself somehow are imbued with greater meaning when transmuted into an increasingly grailed format...the bottom line is that I found The Odyssey to be quite sluggish in terms of pacing, compared to the zippy and quippy (and, ironically, slightly longer!) Oppenheimer. All praise to my goat Samantha Morton for being the only one who brought any real heat to this picture, albeit in the now-standard Nolan role of "Crazy woman that can maybe and only be saved by a man's kind words"; I enjoyed the sequences of sheer toppling horror (the Cyclops, the giants, etc) but otherwise found myself zoning out more often than not, as well as largely unimpressed by the intellectually facile themes that were, again, more capably driven home by Oppenheimer. As many have said online, I do hope that he decides to finally do his take on The Prisoner next (side note, I have been slowly watching The Prisoner on Criterion and will undoubtedly be offering up some observations here when I finish up).
The Informant! [Steven Soderbergh; 2009]
My wife disliked The Odyssey even more than I did, which also provoked her to raise one of her particular bugbears when it comes to thespian concerns—specifically, that she doesn't think Matt Damon is a good actor. I'm neither here nor there on the subject in general, at worst he's typically a fratty everyman whose good looks do some very heavy lifting (The Martian was perhaps the strongest example of his general effectiveness in that area); after she took her opinion to a group chat, one of our friends brought up The Informant! as an exception to this rule, which I remembered liking a lot but she didn't remember watching at all (I swear that we watched it together a long time ago, still). So we threw it on again when returning home from the theater (it is, somewhat improbably, free to stream via a rando's YouTube account), and it is indeed a very strong example of Damon playing excellently against type, all nervy deception and pathetic flop-sweat. Soderbergh—who at this point is very certifiably the Philouza of the Sundance era—was generally cooking with this one, it's a solid mix of his adeptness making slow-decline character studies (there's a strong correlation between this one and Beyond the Candelabra) with the if-you-think-this-is-horrible-wait-until-you-find-out-it's-actually-real-life quasi-dramatizations (Side Effects, Unsane, even Kimi fits into this a little bit). On the whole a much better film than, say, this year's The Christophers, which felt like a real waste of Michaela Coel's talents as well as the kind of thing Soderbergh could lens in his sleep (derogatory).
The Fence [Claire Denis; 2026]
The best Denis in years? Maybe since High Life at the very least? (I did find myself faintly amused by Both Sides of the Blade, one of the funnier let's-make-a-movie-during-COVID attempts in which both filmmaker and subjects seemingly lose interest in whatever it is they're trying to do intermittently throughout production.) I'm not going to be one of those people who's annoyingly talking too much about "late style" here but I suppose it applies, I'd much rather be talking about da gawd Matt Dillon making some fascinating choices throughout along with the increasingly capable Tom Blyth turning in a performance that's way scarier than I'd expect from him...and, of course, all respect duly paid to Isaach De Bankolé, who could read the classifieds and still have me transfixed. Festival crows hated this it seems, and in terms of distributing they're dumping it just like the dumptruck doing its thing at the end of this one; a shame, but what do you expect.
The Samurai and the Prisoner [Kiyoshi Kurosawa; 2026]
I appreciate that, right when Kiyoshi Kurosawa has become an increasingly beloved filmmaker Stateside for a very specific vibe that threatens to pigeonhole his actual filmography in the vein of the dreaded "Cronenbergian" tag, he comes forth with this patient, gorgeously shot, and totally enrapturing period piece that is highly reminiscent of Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood (no coincidence that Kiyoshi intro'd the latter at IFC recently!). Despite being very much a tonal swerve from him, I also think that The Samurai and the Prisoner is very much still of a piece with a lot of Kurosawa's thematic preoccupations, chiefly the sinking feeling of observing that the space between hell and the world around you seems to be constantly closing in itself...as it turns out, across many centuries we've been provoked to look at the landscape surrounding us and wonder why people and things seem to constantly get worse. I was very touched by the slightly optimistic note this one ended on, even though I'm not really a tea drinker myself.
Bolt Driver [Nick Corirossi; 2021]
Friend Of The Newsletter Colin Joyce recommended this one to me after I was, yet again, singing the praises of The Napa Boys; content-related spoiler alert, I have an interview coming with Nick Corirossi and Armen Weitzman for this very here publication soon...this nasty and poorly-EQ'd piece of work is free for streaming right here if you're curious, I thought it was highly interesting and very unsettling, as much related to its obvious homage to Taxi Driver as it is to this astounding recent piece of reportage from fellow Friend of the Newsletter Ezra Marcus. I'd say this one was hard to truly love—again, the sound mixing is terrible, and I found some of the verité footage captured of mentally ill homeless people in Los Angeles to be of questionable taste—but I did appreciate what it was going for, much less a comedy and much more just kind of how the world is these days, which is a tough thing to contemplate in general.
Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass [David Wain; 2026]
If I have one complaint about this otherwise extremely funny film, it's that it looks absolutely terrible to the point where it is at points visually hard to watch...The Napa Boys was shot in nine days on a shoestring budget during a goddamn wildfire and somehow has more effective cinematography than this! Not too much complaining from me otherwise though, Marino and Wain are still a pitch-perfect writing team when it comes to the sublimely stupid, I could list all the gags here that I loved and feel like I'm still missing a bunch, Zoey Deutch is somewhat of a stealth MVP here in how capably she sells even the stupidest material, overall just a great ensemble cast. Surprisingly good year for comedy overall! Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go stick my foot in a doorway for 90 seconds straight. If you missed my recent interview with Wain, Marino, and Craig Wedren, you can read that one right here.
www.rachelormont.com [Peter Vack; 2024]
Very rare for me to DNF something but, then again, I wasn't a captive theater audience for this one, so fairly easy to shut off. (I would've watched the whole thing, truthfully, but it infuriated my wife enough that the plug did have to be pulled.) Excuse the easy joke but they should really call him Peter Hack at this point, everything you'd expect this to be it basically is, complete with Curtis Yarvin(?!?) making a brief appearance. Betsey Brown's performance seems specifically engineered to make the audience say slurs out loud, which adds to the "TRIGGERED MUCH?!?" faux-provocations that this film and associated works engage in...this does seem like it is the last gasp of whatever "Dimes Square culture" was trying to make itself, and good riddance; in terms of stuff from this sphere, I'd say this was way worse than the mildly-irritating-but-not-without-its-merits The Code, which at least felt coherent (and also featured several scene-stealing performances from this guy). Let's all move on from this attempt at a movement ASAP, please!
Interior Motives
My wife was so furious after www.rachelormont.com that we had to make a bit of a tonal change almost immediately...I'd had Interior Motives on my list of things to check out so we threw it on, and in the days since it's been pretty much all we've been watching. The concept is ingeniously simple—host Ben Mora (whose social media presence I've always appreciated) and two guest stars take a look at pictures of peoples' bedrooms (as well as other assorted living spaces—fridges, cars, workstations, you get the picture) as they try to guess the age, location, gender, and sexual identity of said residents. More than anything else, I'm very impressed by Mora's presence as a host; he's natural and convivial, two qualities that are not guaranteed at all from skilled posters, and he's able to conjure a general hangout vibe that works very well for me despite my not being too into podcasts or YouTube in general. We're basically watching every episode at the moment, the above ep with Cakes Da Killa and DJ Miss Parker has been a standout to me thus far; as a millennial with somewhat of an interest in comedy, I also enjoyed the John Early and Kate Berlant episode. (Let's do a brief Maddie's Secret sidebar, why not: I enjoyed it quite a bit and found it very impressive but think there's a bit of OOMF Syndrome in terms of how it's been received by people at large, to me it's very much not a comedy and just a really sad and devastating story about eating disorders, I felt somewhat lucky to have watched it at home via a screener because I'd heard that audiences were cackling throughout, which...not that kind of movie! In fact, I'd actually argue that the actual comedic moments in Maddie's Secret are slightly jarring in how they stand out amidst everything else, effective as they may be. As someone who's watched a fair amount of '80s TV movie melodramas, it was an uncanny replica of that tone and style; obviously, Superstar: the Karen Carpenter Story comes to mind as well, although that film reaches a level of transcendent tragedy that is—and this isn't a knock, it's just how it is—just slightly out of reach here. Overall, a very impressive filmmaking debut from Early, who seems to have avoided the plague of First Time Feature From a Comedian-itis that's been so prevalent over the last decade that a comedian actually tried to make a movie about said plague itself.)
In the City [Season 1 + Reunion]
We fell behind on this midtempo curiosity of the Bravo-verse during vacation, but finally caught up over the last week or so...on the whole, one of the flimsier reality TV constructions in this recent vein, initially structured around the fallout of the Amanda and Kyle separation before that narrative took a very specifically different turn. Throughout this season, I found myself unreasonably locked in when it came to all things Danielle, who's officially become the Scheana of the Summer House universe in the general sense of embarrassment you feel while watching her do anything; Kenny (who, let's call it what it is, was basically a girlfriend-trafficker throughout this season, let's hope Whitney wakes up to her situation at some point) basically became my mortal enemy, although I enjoyed watching his MRA-ness get totally throttled by good ol' HubbHouse, who is for all intents and purposes the apex predator of this series (and was much more entertaining here than on recent seasons of Summer House, where her willingness to chew scenery became too obvious and grating amidst all the other attendant chaos). Some interesting parallels between this show and The Valley, which also follows aging millennials failing to get their shit together due to pure and uncut male toxicity; the main difference is that The Valley is quite frequently difficult to watch because of how vicious and terrible the men are (one would argue that chemical castration would be too kind a sentence for someone like Jesse Lally) and how easily they dominate the women around them. The men of In the City, comparatively, are easily neutered by the women in the mix, and I can't deny that it was frequently satisfying to watch an entire dinner table turn against the show's anointed Disgusting Brothers. A second season is very much up in the air seemingly; I could care less either way, although I'd love to get a chance to figure out what exactly Nick Barber's deal is, so fingers crossed I guess.
