River Cities Reader Podcast

River Cities’ Reader publisher Todd McGreevy talks with WQUD GM Aaron Dail re recent highlights, both online and within Issue N° 1018. The first one-and-a-half minutes that you don’t get to hear concerns Dail’s admiration of Bruce Walters’s Buried Stories profile on Helen Van Dale for the latest issue: Buried Stories: Helen Van Dale (1893-1951) And that’s Walters’s illustration of the notorious “Queen of the Looney Underworld“ in Rock Island circa 1920s. Good work, Bruce. Consume Mainstream Propaganda at Your Own Risk Kathleen McCarthy laments the 2013 Smith-Mundt Modernization Act’s repeal of the original 1946 Smith-Mundt Act, which prohibited government and media from using its own funds to gaslight its own citizens. Dail especially likes McCarthy’s typification of “this cabal of megalomaniacal perps and pervs” as “The Precious,” perhaps because it captures the Gollum-esque quality of said perps and pervs particularly well. McCarthy also touches upon Julian Assange’s continuing plight as a prisoner, in solitary confinement for more than a decade. in Belmarsh Prison in the UK. Assange is essentially imprisoned on an administrative violation, for having skipped bail on charges that were later dropped, and awaiting extradition to a nation of which he is not a citizen. Should the extradition prove successful, McGreevy says, there’s no reason not to think that Assange won’t die on American soil. His ongoing persecution is, more than anything, a warning to would-be whistle-blowers who might have dirt on the government and want to alert people to it. 324 Main Street Disaster Timeline and Receipts Ezra Sidran PhD’s history of The Davenport Hotel, from its construction in 1907 to its collapse last May. Knowing what we now know about the Hotel catastrophe, it makes one very angry to know how it took so long for an accounting to be made — and at the cost of three lives, moreover. No NACs for You!: After Pushback from 32 Congressional Representatives and 23 State Treasurers, the SEC Withdraws Proposal to Create IEG and NYSE Driven Natural Asset Companies Corey Lynn celebrates the decision by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) not to allow the creation of “Natural Asset Companies” (NAC), a completely new investment class, and explains why it is important why the combined clamor of congressional representatives, state authorities, and the public kept a nefarious monetization and management plot from unfolding. Reader Events Calendar: Your Key to Quad Cities’ Culture Everything you need to know what’s going on in the QCA.

Mike Schulz, Dave Levora, and Darren Pitra can’t get enough other, and their time away was pure agony. For the next fifteen minutes and change, that pain is forestalled. Incidentally, The Last Picture House is showing Oscar-nominated short films, both live-action and animated. Ohhhhhhh, boy. Concerning the films: * Lisa Frankenstein, written by Diablo Cody, directed by Zelda Williams, and starring Kathryn Newton, Cole Sprouse, Liza Soberano, Henry Eikenberry, Joe Chrest, and Carla Gugino. Cody has been the author of much “twee dialogue” back in her Naughts heyday, but it works fine here, with the story set in 1989. Sadly, director Williams, the daughter of the late Robin Williams, undermines the story with terrible camera shots and listless pacing. Best save for streaming, if you must. * The American release of Out of Darkness. Released in the UK in October 2022 as The Origin, the film, described by director Andrew Cumming as “a paleolithic horror film,” stars Safia Oakley-Green, Chuku Modu, Kit Young, Iola Evans, Luna Mwezi, and Arno Luening and concerns how stone-agers deal with a mysterious, possibly unearthly antagonist. Schulz really liked this film, which did not reveal itself as set in a different time and/or planet — the ol’ M Night Shyamalan twisteroo. Streaming now; go find. Ooga ooga. * The Teachers’ Lounge, directed by İlker Çatak and starring Leonie Benesch, Michael Klammer, Rafael Stachowiak, Anne-Kathrin Gummich, and Eva Löbau, Schulz was happy that this film was set in present-day Germany, and not another go-around with Nazis. Lounge is set up as “the inverse of every inspirational teacher movie you’ve ever seen,” a “nasty thriller” with an idealistic teacher continually being let down for two hours. Streaming now; macht schnell. Regarding previews: * Madame Webb, directed by S J Clarkson and starring Dakota Johnson in the title role, alongside Sydney Sweeney, Celeste O’Connor, Isabela Merced, Tahar Rahim, Mike Epps, Emma Roberts, and Adam Scott. Levora wants to see this film with Schulz, because he expects him to hate it most beautifully; currently, the film stands at 13% on Rotten Tomatoes. * Bob Marley: One Love, directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green and starring Kingsley Ben-Adir, Lashana Lynch, James Norton, Tosin Cole, Aston Barrett Jr, Anthony Welsh, Sevana, Hector Lewis, Michael Gandolfini, Nadine Marshall, and Henry Douthwaite. It’s set in a narrow frame of time, which promises a tighter focus; but, given the Marley family’s participation in the production, one’s expectation as to serious baloney getting dropped is minimal. * Land of Bad, directed by William Eubank and starring Liam Hemsworth, Russell Crowe, Luke Hemsworth, Ricky Whittle, and Milo Ventimiglia. Action thriller. Nothing known by Schulz about it, so he’ll be encountering this fresh. “Lisa Frankenstein,” “Out of Darkness,” and “The Teachers’ Lounge”

Mike Schulz, Dave Levora, and Darren Pitra get into the documentary The Greatest Night in Pop, streaming on Netflix, which looks back forty years to the recording of “We are the World” and everything behind the scenes to which Eighties audiences were not privy — such as Paul Simon scoping the room full of stars and dead-panning a line to the camera that one will not repeat, as it’s so murderously funny. Yes, Dave, it was a mistake to get rid of your Netflix account. On to other matters: * Argylle, directed by Matthew Vaughn and starring Henry Cavill, Bryce Dallas Howard, Sam Rockwell, Bryan Cranston, Catherine O’Hara, Dua Lipa, Ariana DeBose, John Cena, and Samuel L Jackson, has received mostly dismal reviews, and Schulz agrees with their conclusions of cruminess. Schulz isn’t a fan of Vaughn and his Kingsman series, calling them “obnoxious, hyperactive, and dumb” — bad news for any moviegoer who appreciates those very qualities. Those who can withstand, if not actively crave, a certain degree of kineticism, however, are in for a let-down, as Argylle is sluggish compared to the Kingsman movies, with two otherwise hyper-charged (and bonkers) set-pieces arriving some two hours into the film. Other than that, the whole affair is an unfortunate waste of time and talent, with plenty of plot-twists to leave a viewer less invested in the narrative than they were before the last revelation, and a cat whose very existence on-screen is a glaring distraction. (Is it CGI? Is it a real cat? Is it real until it becomes CGI?) Considering that Vaughn had big plans for this film, with two sequels in the works, the fact that the first installment has so far made $40.4 million against its $250 million budget suggests that “in the works” is where those follow-ups may remain. By year’s end, the only sound Vaughn will be heard making will be “AAAAAARG!-ylle.” * The Zone of Interest, written and directed by Jonathan Glazer, loosely based on the 2014 novel by Martin Amis, and starring Christian Friedel, Sandra Hüller, Ralph Herforth, Daniel Holzberg, Sascha Maaz, Freya Kreutzkam, and Imogen Kogge. The film is a domestic drama whose background happens to be the Auschwitz concentration camp, and whose foreground protagonist is Rudolf Höss (Friedel), whose responsibilities as camp commandant interfere with his roles as an emotionally-present father and husband. Sounds like Schulz will see it again, as he thought initially that Glazer had run the concept into the ground in the first fifteen minutes, leaving him another hour and forty-five minutes to go. Upon sharing notes of his viewing with his sister, who was of the same mind about Zone, they both realized there were scenes that had made a profound impression upon them — moments of horror that implicate the viewer along with the protagonists who behave as if the extermination of whole populations means they might have to work an extra weekend. “I think it’s genius, even though I didn’t care for it the first time” has to be praise for the ages; so, too, is, “I don’t know exactly what I’ve seen, but I’ve got to see it again.” * Scrambled, directed by and starring Leah McKendrick, also features Ego Nwodim, Andrew Santino, Adam Rodriguez, Laura Cerón, and Clancy Brown. Schulz went into the film not knowing who Leah McKendrick was or what was her deal and walked out in love with her and considerably better-versed in the whole process of egg-extraction for the purposes of in vitro fertilization. The film manages to be hilarious and sober about the whole process, and McKendrick turns in an indelible serio-comic performance. “I wish more people knew about [the film]” is Schulz’s conclusion. Can’t wait to see it. As for other films one might be impatient to see: * Lisa Frankenstein,

Mike Schulz, Dave Levora, and Darren Pitra celebrate Schulz getting his car back, which cramped his style for at least a week in the preceding month. Schulz said he had been wondering why there weren’t too many movies for him to review in January, and then it hit him: The writer’s strike is still being felt by us all. Anyway, to the movies! * Origin, directed by Ava DuVernay and starring Jon Bernthal, Vera Farmiga, Audra McDonald, Niecy Nash-Betts, Nick Offerman, Blair Underwood, and Donna Mills. Origin is about Isabel Wilkerson, who wrote a study in 2020 called Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which describes racism in the United States as an aspect of a caste system,.and Wilkerson’s efforts to get past a huge personal tragedy and adapt Caste as a film. It’s very meta, in case you didn’t wonder. It will be playing The Last Picture House presently, which seems like the perfect place for such a film. * Nimona, an animated science fantasy adventure comedy drama directed by Nick Bruno and Troy Quane, featuring the voices of Chloë Grace Moretz, Riz Ahmed, Eugene Lee Yang, and Frances Conroy. This was a catch-up film for Schulz, as it’s been on Netflix since January. Nimona, based on the graphic novel by cartoonist ND Stevenson, has a hugely entertaining script by Robert L Baird and Lloyd Taylor, and is worth watching. * American Symphony, a documentary directed by Matthew Heineman, concerning a year in the life of musician Jon Batiste, his music career, and his wife’s struggle with leukemia. This was another catch-up for Schulz, as the film hit Netflix back in November 2023. In the time since Schulz didn’t see it, Symphony had been nominated for a ton of awards, and won quite a few of them. The only Oscar for which it’s nominated is Best Original Song, “It Never Went Away,” by Batiste and Dan Wilson. * Flamin’ Hot, directed by Eva Longoria in her feature-length directorial début, and starring Jesse Garcia, Annie Gonzalez, Dennis Haysbert, and Tony Shalhoub, is a “completely harmless” affair, neither awful nor great. Worth mentioning is the fact that Diane Warren, who is also up for a Best Original Song Oscar, has been nominated fourteen times before — nine of them w/n a ten-year period — but has never won it. Will her Cheetos song turn the tide for her? As for previews: * Argylle, directed by Matthew Vaughn and starring Henry Cavill, Bryce Dallas Howard, Sam Rockwell, Bryan Cranston, Catherine O’Hara, Dua Lipa, Ariana DeBose, John Cena, and Samuel L Jackson, is also a meta afffair, and based on its buzz on Rotten Tomatoes, it’s not getting a lot of love in the lead-up. Schulz doesn’t like anything Vaughn has done, so it’s all uphill for him. * Scrambled, directed by and starring Leah McKendrick, also features Ego Nwodim, Andrew Santino, Adam Rodriguez, Laura Cerón, and Clancy Brown, and concerns Nellie Robinson (McKendrick), who decides to freeze her eggs after a break-up. McKendrick based her story on her own experiences with egg-retrieval. No telling which way the critical weather vanes are pointing. Seems worth a watch, given its reception last March at South by South West. * A film that has garnered a lot of anticipation is The Zone of Interest, written and directed by Jonathan Glazer, loosely based on the 2014 novel by Martin Amis, and starring Christian Friedel, Sandra Hüller, Ralph Herforth, Daniel Holzberg, Sascha Maaz, Freya Kreutzkam, and Imogen Kogge. It answers the question, Is love possible among people who have the Auschwitz concentration camp right next to their backyard? “Origin,” “Nimona,” “American Symphony,” and “Flamin’ Hot”

Mike Schulz, Dave Levora, and Darren Pitra yearn for the return of the sun before Levora commends Schulz on the number of Oscar picks he got right. Schulz demurs, saying he beat last year’s record by one, and that averages out to about an eighty-percentile grade. They then discuss the particulars of the Oscar nominations, which you can hear at the following podcast. Concerning the films that he managed to see this past week: * ISS, directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite and starring Ariana DeBose, Chris Messina, John Gallagher Jr, Masha Mashkova, Costa Ronin, and Pilou Asbæk, about Russian and American astronauts who are ordered by their respective ground-controls to take over the International Space Station, as Earth is now engaged in World War III. A brisk thriller that reminds Levora of 2010: The Year We Make Contact, albeit minus monoliths. * All of Us Strangers, directed by Andrew Haigh and starring Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal, Jamie Bell, and Claire Foy, is a “fantastic heartbreaker” about correcting one’s present torments by coming to terms with one’s past. As for previews, there is Origin, directed by Ava DuVernay and starring Jon Bernthal, Vera Farmiga, Audra McDonald, Niecy Nash-Betts, Nick Offerman, and Blair Underwood. Origin is about Isabel Wilkerson, who wrote a study in 2020 called Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which describes racism in the United States as an aspect of a caste system,.and Wilkerson’s efforts to get past a huge personal tragedy and adapt Caste as a film. It sounds an awful lot like Adaptation., doesn’t it? That was Spike Jonze’s portrayal of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman’s efforts to adapt Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief, a book that defies obvious ways of translating its subject matter to film. As far as Schulz can see, Kaufman needn’t worry that DuVernay, who also wrote Origin’s screenplay, is trying to steal of patch of his peculiar turf. Aside from that, Toho International is re-releasing Takashi Yamazaki’s Godzilla Minus One, albeit without color — Godzilla Minus One/Minus Color, they’re calling it. If you loved the color version, and you’re not ambivalent about modern-day black-and-white films, then you’ll probably get into it all over again, one assumes. . . “ISS” and “All of Us Strangers” The 2024 Academy Awards Nominations

Mike Schulz, Dave Levora, and Darren Pitra would have met up last week, 01/11, but for road conditions, which prevented Schulz from making it to the studio for his klatch with the Deez. No such distractions this week! Of course, this means lightning-round recaps of everything Schulz has seen this week and last. Let’s get to it, why don’t we? * Mean Girls, directed by Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr (in their feature directorial débuts), from a screenplay by Tina Fey, and starring Angourie Rice, Auliʻi Cravalho, Christopher Briney, Reneé Rapp, Bebe Wood, Avantika, Jenna Fischer, Tim Meadows, Busy Philipps, and Fey, this remake is based on the Broadway musical, mind you, not Mark Waters’s 2004 original. This may account for the confusing responses to everything on-screen that the film has drawn so far. Contemporary accounts have audiences laughing at the film rather than with it, because the characters in Waters’s film didn’t break into song when the tension became too much. This response seems to cut along generational lines, as those who were raised on the original film weren’t told beforehand that there was going to be singing in this remake! They thought it was going to be a straight-up remake, or reboot, of a film that is, in many viewers’ eyes, close to comic perfection. Which is an unfortunate misperception, because this Mean Girls, on its own merits, works better than, say, the recent adaptation by Blitz Bazawule of The Color Purple. Since Jayne and Perez Jr’s stakes aren’t the same as Bazawule’s, they didn’t have to worry about nuances so much, and they cut a number of songs from the stage production — a decision which Schulz applauds. It sounds like the whole production went into this film clear-eyed: Fey asked her two daughters about how certain pre-21st-Century conventions would play today, and she devised explanations to make such plot-points as the pre-social-media Burn Book plausible in the present day and age. Schulz was pleased by such intelligent choices, and enjoyed the film — even if, ironically, all that forward-thinking was lost on the millennial part of the audience. On a $36 million budget, it’s made $42.2 million so far, which must disappoint a few producers, considering the original made $24.4 million out of the gate and closed the year grossing $129 million worldwide. Oh, well. . . * The Beekeeper, directed by David Ayer, stars Jason Statham, Emmy Raver-Lampman, Josh Hutcherson, Bobby Naderi, Minnie Driver, Phylicia Rashad, and Jeremy Irons. There’s nothing hateable (or hateful) about its premise: Statham is a beekeeper/secret assassin living in Rashad’s garage until Rashad loses everything in a phishing scam and takes her own life, for which Statham is initially arrested. Once he’s cleared, he resolves to take revenge on the phishers. Good so far. So how did Ayer botch the execution? Apparently, screenwriter Kurt Wimmer must answer for the lines he gives to Irons, who plays the phishing cabal’s leader, and he sounds like Peter Serafinowicz’s agency-director character trying to take out Pickle Rick. Wimmer has so much else for which he must answer, plot-wise; and since it doesn’t offer any camp kicks from out of the carnage, Schulz deems the whole enterprise a “foolish” undertaking. * Night Swim, directed by Bryce McGuire (his feature-film début) and starring Wyatt Russell, Kerry Condon, Amélie Hoeferle, and Gavin Warren, concerns a haunted swimming pool. Talking about it last time, our trio thought Schulz would hate it, and were laughing merrily at the very concept. (Will we ever get a haunted escalator?) Well, Schulz liked Night Swim, dammit. Russell plays Ray Waller, the family patriarch who has MS and finds the pool’s waters take the pain away — at the expense of every other living thing around it. Including — well,

Since Mike Schulz, Dave Levora, and Darren Pitra last spoke, Schulz has seen a bunch of stuff. The sheer volume of viewed material, therefore, necessitates a lightning-round approach to their discussion. But not before Levora recommends to Schulz Netflix’s Blue Eye Samurai, which does sound compelling, and Schulz touches upon his Best of/Worst of list for 2023. Moving on: * Maestro, directed by Bradley Cooper and starring Cooper, Carey Mulligan, Matt Bomer, Maya Hawke, and Sarah Silverman, is streaming on Netflix. A well-wrought disappointment, focusing on the marriage of Leonard Bernstein, portrayed by Cooper, and his wife, Felicia Montealegre (Mulligan), and how LB’s bisexuality complicated their lives. Marital dramas are all well and good, but, since the film’s subject composed the music for (among other works not even touched upon) West Side Story, there’s really on so much of that one can take, sad to say. A viewer wants a sense of the nature of the subject’s accomplishments, which separate them from every other person on the planet whose relationships need work. * Migration¸ an animated adventure comedy directed by Benjamin Renner and featuring the voices of Kumail Nanjiani, Elizabeth Banks, Keegan-Michael Key, Awkwafina, and Danny DeVito, is as super-fast, clever, funny, and done, much like Schulz’s observation of it. Onward! * Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, directed by James Wan and starring Jason Momoa, Patrick Wilson, Amber Heard, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Randall Park, Dolph Lundgren, Temuera Morrison, Martin Short, and Nicole Kidman, Schulz found it “generically bad,” a painful pronouncement for any film, if you think about it; but, since we’re talking about a super-hero film, that sounds like the kiss of death. Considering the film’s box office take-in ($272.3 million) versus its budget ($205–215 million), Lost Kingdom appears to have been smooched up and down with bloody lipstick traces. * Anyone but You, directed by Will Gluck and starring Sydney Sweeney, Glen Powell, Alexandra Shipp, GaTa, Hadley Robinson, Michelle Hurd, Dermot Mulroney, Darren Barnet, and Rachel Griffiths, is an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing — yeah, yet another one. Levora made the mistake of assuming his wife and her girlfriends wanted to see this for the Shakespeare of it all. Nope. Since she’s an English teacher, she feels honor-bound to watch every adaptation of Shakespeare’s works that come out. She makes it sound like a goddamn chore. Were her friends as stone-faced in their resolve to get this over with? Hearing this was particularly painful for Schulz, who produced a Prenzie Players production of Much Ado about Nothing, and found out about the adaptation only after he began watching the film. If the girls were of a mind about the film as Schulz, though, then they should have found it to be “insanely clever,” “really filthy,” “cleverly plotted,” with just the right amount of Shakespeare to make the buffs swoon over the spin Gluck takes with classic characters. Levora, however, reports that they enjoyed it enough, but perhaps not enough for the expense of seeing it. Best wait for it to stream, apparently. * The Iron Claw, directed by Sean Durkin and starring Zac Efron, Jeremy Allen White, Harris Dickinson, Maura Tierney, Holt McCallany, and Lily James, was “as sad as you would expect, but not as sad as it should have been,” according to Schulz. The film concerns the tragedy of the Von Erich wrestling clan, whose six sons either died way too soon, committed suicide, or got to remain behind to witness it all (Kevin, the last man standing). Durkin reportedly refused to include Chris Von Erich’s story in his script because the story was already enough of a bummer, and one more tale of suicide presumably would. . . have. . . sunk the story. . .?

Dave Levora tells Mike Schulz and Darren Pitra that Godzilla Minus One is his N° 1 film-pick; and the only place a person could get the full effect of the film, per Schulz, is The Last Picture House. Schulz likened the film’s ending to It’s a Wonderful Life — he couldn’t stop crying by the end— whereas Levora was able to hold it together, but still felt great for the experience. He also pointed out to Schulz that Godzilla Minus One cost approx $15 million to make, and so far, it’s made $70.7 million. That’s the acme of success, isn’t it? So what does that tell us about the films of 2023 that were made for three times as much and drew back a quarter of their budget? Other than filmmaking demands a strong story for all that technique and all those FX to have any impact? With that in mind, Schulz discusses Wonka, directed by Paul King and starring Timothée Chalamet, Calah Lane, Keegan-Michael Key, Paterson Joseph, Matt Lucas, Mathew Baynton, Sally Hawkins, Rowan Atkinson, Jim Carter, Tom Davis, Olivia Colman, and Hugh Grant. Schulz expected to have his time wasted at the very least, and that he’d hate it at its worst. The problem here was, King did an okay job — quite like his work on the Paddington films, that “storybook goofiness” that made those films enjoyable. Chalamet, as Willie Wonka, won’t make you forget Gene Wilder’s portrayal from the 1971 film. Nor does he make you forget Johnny Depp’s misbegotten turn — you’re going to need something much stronger to erase that atrocity. Chalamet portrays him as a nice character who just wants to make everyone happy with his confections. Unfortunately, Chalamet can’t sing, he can’t dance, and he can’t convey much personality — y’know, that thing called “acting”? Happily, everyone else was able to pitch their performances at a level where you can buy into the world King has constructed: Hugh Grant as an airborne Oompa-Loompa is something to see, even if you have to wait for his arrival. The songs, though not exceptionally memorable, were enjoyable for as long as they were playing. Presumably, Schulz observes, the sequels will get into how Wonka turned into a weird, child-torturing psychopath. Something one must remember about the ’71 original is, even though Roald Dahl, a pretty mordant author who hated director Mel Stuart’s adaptation, adamant that he soft-balled Dahl’s material, Willie Wonka and The Chocolate Factory remains the early-Seventies equivalent of the Saw franchise. King’s film — and, to a lesser degree, Tim Burton’s 2005 Charlie and The Chocolate Factory — makes sure to, uhhh, saw off the edges so that no kid will grow into adulthood with the sight of a chicken getting decapitated playing on a loop in their head. Then there’s The Boys in the Boat, directed by George Clooney and starring Callum Turner, Joel Edgerton, Jack Mulhern, Sam Strike, Alec Newman, Peter Guinness, Luke Slattery, Thomas Elms, Tom Varey, Bruce Herbelin-Earle, Wil Coban, Hadley Robinson, Courtney Henggeler, James Wolk, and Chris Diamantopoulo. This is another biographical sports drama, this one concerning the University of Washington crew that represented the United States in men’s-eight competitive rowing at the 1936 Summer Olympic games in Berlin. This is set to open Christmas day, mind; Schulz caught a preview showing. Those men in the men’s eight are complete blanks, portrayed as virtual nonentities who somehow get to command a screen and distract viewers from the likes of Jesse Owens (Jyuddah Jaymes) — y’know, the reason why people still talk about the ’36 Olympics? The film follows the old “underdogs triumph” formula from which every other biographical sports drama has drawn their structures. Schulz was offended by The Boys in the Boat because it played like Forties propaganda for white American troops to get sufficiently motivated to take on the Nazis, without any African-Americans around to complicate their feelings.

Mike Schulz once again celebrates the very existence of The Last Picture House — and with reason! — before he discusses with Dave Levora and Darren Pitra the movies he has seen. Because that’s what Schulz is there for. What else is a movie critic going to do except critique movies in whatever format demands it? To whit: * Eileen, directed by William Oldroyd and starring Thomasin McKenzie, Shea Whigham, Marin Ireland, Owen Teague, and Anne Hathaway, is a “nasty, nasty noir thriller,” with the titular Eileen Dunlop (McKenzie) as a young woman working in a corrections facility for teenage boys. In walks Rebecca Saint John (Hathaway), who adds a whiff of posh and intellect to the joint, and sets Eileen’s imagination ablaze. One of them is trouble on wheels. And the other? About to get run down. And just in time for Christmas, too. * The Boy and the Heron, directed by Hayao Miyazaki and voiced by Soma Santoki, Masaki Suda, Ko Shibasaki, Aimyon, Yoshino Kimura, Takuya Kimura, Kaoru Kobayashi, and Shinobu Otake (Japanese dialogue) or (if you prefer the English version) Luca Padovan, Robert Pattinson, Karen Fukuhara, Gemma Chan, Christian Bale, Mark Hamill, Florence Pugh, Willem Dafoe, and Dave Bautista. This is the N° 1 film in the country, believe it or not. Schulz, who is not a big fan of Miyazaki’s work, would prefer it otherwise, judging from his “doesn’t do anything for me” shrug. Like Godzilla Minus One, it’s set in war-torn Tokyo — just no Godzilla in this one. It does have an intensely dis-satisfying ending, which should have Miyazaki film lovers debating it fiercely for the next few decades. As for previews: Because someone, somewhere, thought it would be a great idea to mine this particular lode when the last thing of value that was drawn from it over fifty years ago, there’s Wonka, directed by Paul King and starring Timothée Chalamet, Calah Lane, Keegan-Michael Key, Paterson Joseph, Matt Lucas, Mathew Baynton, Sally Hawkins, Rowan Atkinson, Jim Carter, Tom Davis, Olivia Colman and Hugh Grant. It’s getting positive notices, which might otherwise expect from the director of Paddington. Still — why?.. . “Eileen” and “The Boy & the Heron”

Mike Schulz is given a moment to extol the virtues of the new Last Picture House before he discusses with Dave Levora and Darren Pitra the movies he has seen — as is their weekly wont. To whit: * May December, directed by Todd Haynes and starring Natalie Portman, Julianne Moore, Charles Melton, Cory Michael Smith, Elizabeth Yu, Gabriel Chung, Piper Curda, DW Moffett, and Lawrence Arancio. Streaming on Netflix, the film is loosely inspired by the story of Mary Kay Letourneau, who had an affair with her sixth-grade student and went to prison on two counts of felony second-degree child rape. Moore portrays the Letourneau character, while Portman plays an actor who’s contracted to portray her in a film and who treks down to Savannah, Georgia to study her in greater depth. The film starts off funny, as the characters all lack a critical self-awareness, but becomes “a blend of tones” that makes Haynes’s film more than merely a rote tragedy or a point-and-laugh comedy. Given that Haynes’s career spans four decades and includes a lot of great material (Safe, Velvet Goldmine, Far from Heaven, I’m Not There, the Velvet Underground documentary), it’s worth seeing on his participation alone. * Godzilla Minus One, directed by Takashi Yamazaki and starring Ryunosuke Kamiki, Minami Hamabe, Yuki Yamada, Munetaka Aoki, Hidetaka Yoshioka, Sakura Ando, Kuranosuke Sasaki, and Sae Nagatani. Schulz cites the film as being in his Top Ten for the year. (Will we have Schulz’s Top Ten list sorted out before December 31?) Made in Japan, with a soundtrack that’s subtitled, not dubbed-over, Godzilla Minus One is already the highest-grossing Japanese live-action film of all time in North America, having topped $14.36 million at the domestic box office. It’s also got some real emotional and intellectual heft to it, as it’s set during the final days of World War II, and concerns the survivor’s guilt of a kamikaze who chickens out before he can undertake a suicide attack on behalf of Japan. Levora thinks the basic premise of “a kamikaze pilot with survivor’s guilt” is intriguing enough on its own. Schulz assures him (and us) that Yamazaki, who also wrote the script, builds upon that premise to make Godzilla’s catastrophic interventions in Tokyo life feel something more than merely inadvertent. There have been movies where Godzilla became kind of the hero, owing to the vagaries of a given plot. Here? Not so much. Godzilla was born of atomic fire, and he’ll hang around and stomp and spit out explosions on stuff long enough until every human underfoot understands that basic fact. (Pitra really loves Schulz’s review, wherein he says, “I’ve got words for Godzilla.” Per Schulz, his spoken words were considerably saltier than what he lays out in print.) Kamiki, who plays Kōichi Shikishima, the pilot, finds he’s lost his family during the war, and becomes attached emotionally to a co-worker, Noriko Ōishi (Hamabe), and an orphaned baby, Akiko (Nagatani). They provide a “rooting interest” for the film itself, as the four or five scenes of destruction ℅ Godzilla are stunning enough for one to hope that no innocents are around when ‘Zilla gets indigestion. Levora sounds astonished at Schulz’s claim that the film was so moving that it left him in tears. About how many monster movies do you know that can be said? Not many! * Dream Scenario, directed by Kristoffer Borgli and starring Nicolas Cage, Jacob Jaffke, Tyler Campellone, Julianne Nicholson, Michael Cera, Tim Meadows, Dylan Gelula, and Dylan Baker. Borgli’s script has Cage portraying Paul Matthews, an unremarkable biology professor who one day starts appearing in the dreams of people around the world. Borgli plays the premise straight for the first hour, but, according to Schulz,