The ’80s are back, and I’m soaking in them.

This week’s episode of Someone Else’s Movie sets it up, as my guest Carolyn Taylor — whom you’ll know from Baroness Von Sketch Show, and a dozen other things — brings Colin Higgins’ 1980 comedy 9 to 5 to the show, unpacking its only slightly satirical take on workplace sexism at the dawn of the Reagan administration (and celebrating the combined farcical power of Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin and Dolly Parton) as I try to figure out how it connects to her six-part Crave reality series I Have Nothing. (Spoiler: It doesn’t, but you should watch the show anyway.)

You can find the podcast in all the usual locations — Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify — or download the episode directly from the web and listen to it in the break room.

And then you can join me for a trip through ’80s American genre cinema at the Lightbox on Friday, where I’m launching my very first series for TIFF Cinematheque: The Disreputables, a look at films that used their pulp status as cover so they could tackle the very real social and political issues of the day, and predict where the world was going. Movies like RoboCop and The Stuff and C.H.U.D. and The Running Man — you get it, right?

It all kicks off this Friday at 6:30 pm with Kathryn Bigelow’s Blue Steel, a film that gives Jamie Lee Curtis one of the best roles of her career as a rookie cop stalked by a maniac with a  stolen gun — and not so incidentally digs into the misogyny and authoritarianism baked into Hollywood action movies of the time. We’ve got a 35mm print. It’s going to be a great night.

The ’80 also pop up in Shiny Things, since Criterion’s splendid new Blu-ray edition of La Bamba is one of several restorations I reviewed over the weekend; I also covered Orson Welles’ The Trial and Shout! Studios’ new 4K edition of Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers, if you’re curious. That column was only for paid subscribers, though, so if you want to read it … well, you know what you need to do, right?

I’ve been sitting on this week’s episode of Someone Else’s Movie for a while; there were some issues with the audio that took a long time to figure out, but the good news is I eventually found an approach that worked. You might hear the tiniest hint of a buzz in the background, but that should be the worst of it. Also it turns out a slight sense of things being just a little off is thematically appropriate to the film under discussion.

So this week, finally. enjoy Tenzin co-directors Michael LeBlanc and Josh Reichmann digging into the murk of Adrian Lyne’s metaphysical 1990 thriller Jacob’s Ladder, and find that it’s entangled with their debut feature in several intriguing ways. And I manage to come to terms with my general resentment of Lyne’s movie over the course of the conversation, so that’s nice too.

You can find it in in the usual locations —  Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify — or download the episode directly from the web and listen to it on the chiropractor’s table. Whatever feels right.

And then go check out Shiny Things, because boy have I been busy with that. Over the last few days I finally got through those celebratory Imprint boxed sets of Gene Hackman and Walter Hill, and there’s more to come — so subscribe already, jeez.

… okay, so things got a little wild and I didn’t update the blog last week. Is anyone still reading this? Am I just doing it for myself? It’s cool if I am, it’s like a journal at this point.

Anyway, last week was total chaos, but in the best way; I was not prepared for how emotionally and spiritually satisfying it is to go in front of an audience and make them happy over and over again. At this point I think I can live on projector light and applause alone. I get it now, I really do, and I kinda wanna do this for the rest of my life. I am the luckiest guy in the world.

Seriously, watch my Q&A with Deepa Mehta and Sirat Taneja for I am Sirat. Given the subject matter and the generally shitty state of, well, everyhing, we were braced for things to go south at a moment’s notice … but instead, there was an outpouring of love and support that rolled warmly over us all. It was wonderful. It was all wonderful.

But also, somewhere in there, I managed to keep Someone Else’s Movie on schedule. Last week Marusya Bociurkiw, director of the new documentary Analogue Revolution: How Feminist Media Changed the World, shared her admiration for Laura Poitras’ knockout doc All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, and today we’ve got Relax, I’m From the Future writer-director Luke Higginson tackling Michael Winterbottom’s underappreciated 2002 masterwork 24 Hour Party People … which actually winds up having quite a bit in common with his own film, as occasionally happens on this show.

So while I lie down for a bit, and start working on the next edition of Shiny Things, go check those out! They’re in the usual locations —  Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify — and here are direct links to Marusya’s and Luke’s episodes, respectively.

That’s everything, I think. How did it get to be fall again?

It’s two days to TIFF and everything is chugging along just fine, honest! Unpacking is good cardio! The heat wave has not melted my brain inside my skull at all!

(Honestly, though, moving to a house with modern climate control has been an incredible improvement. I’m still not sleeping well, because after one’s late forties that’s just not a thing, but I’m pretty sure I’m sleeping better than I have in a while. Also: Water pressure! Water pressure!)

Anyway, as I prepare to fire myself into the whirlwind of TIFF 2023, here’s a new episode of Someone Else’s Movie for ya, featuring writer-director M.H. Murray — whose excellent first feature I Don’t Know Who You Are it will be my pleasure to introduce to the world on Thursday night — on Krzysztof Kieslowski’s magnificent 1993 drama Three Colors: Blue. the one where Juliette Binoche goes swimming.

Look, if you’ve never seen it I’m certainly not going to ruin it for you. Go subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play and/or Spotify,  and of course you can also download the episode directly from the web and listen to it in the rush line.

And also! Shiny Things! This week I wrote about the manic pixie dream characters that unite Roman Holiday, Weird Science and The Flash — hey, this is my thing — and the next edition will focus on two remarkable new boxed sets from Via Vision’s Imprint line. Are you a subscriber?  You should be a subscriber.

See you around the festival. I’ll be the guy with the unearned air of confidence, trying to figure out how to take over the Talking Heads screening.

TIFF kicks off in eight days and I am just fine. I really am! We’re settling into the new place, I’m getting back into a good rhythm with Shiny Things and putting the final touches on this other project I’ve got going on with TIFF Cinematheque later this fall. You’ll see.

So why is this week’s episode of Someone Else’s Movie a rerun? Two reasons: First, it’s a great episode and I thought it’d be fun to revisit one of the very earliest episodes of the show almost eight and a half years later … and second (and probably more relevant), Children Ruin Everything is airing on The CW in the US now, and a lot of people are discovering the exquisite comic exasperation of Aaron Abrams … so why the hell wouldn’t I want to roll his episode back into the world?

Especially when Aaron picked Bill Murray and Howard Franklin’s Quick Change, one of the all-time great comedies of frustration, as a trio of over-it New Yorkers (Murray, Geena Davis and Randy Quaid) rob a Manhattan bank to fund their exit plan only to find they can’t actually leave New York City. It’s a brilliant picture with an absolutely incredible bench of character actors, and Aaron  was just wonderfully accommodating of a neophyte podcaster who wasn’t really sure what he was doing at that point. Not that I’m any more confident now, I suspect.

Anyway, it’s my gift to you all, so go enjoy it! It’s available on  Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher and/or Spotify,  and of course you can also download the episode directly from the web and listen to it on the way to the goddamn airport.

And then go catch up on Shiny Things, why don’t you? I just published a paid edition looking at Criterion’s splendid new 4K disc of Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams and their Blu-ray edition of Cheryl Dunye’s The Watermelon Woman, and there’s more coming soon. Subscribe if you haven’t already; you like movies, right? Otherwise, why are you even here?

So we moved! It was a rough day, but it’s over now and Winnie is just getting used to the idea that she has more floors to explore and protect. (She thinks she’s a watchdog, but honestly? She’s just noisy.)

And now that all of that is over, all we have left to deal with are our full-time jobs and our aging parents — so that’ll be a breeze, right?

Anyhow. I managed to get an episode of Someone Else’s Movie out this week, because sleep is for the weak, so you get to enjoy my conversation with Calgary writer-director Berkely Brady — whose creepy new thriller Dark Nature is now streaming on Hollywood Suite after its spring theatrical run — about what only feels like an incongruous choice: Garry Marshall’s Beaches.

You’ll be happy to know I kept myself from doing my Garry voice, which is pretty good but nowhere near as good as Paul F. Tompkins’ truly majestic interpretation. (This Comedy Bang Bang episode, featuring Gillian Jacobs, may be the hardest I’ve ever laughed at Tompkins’ work — and that’s really saying something.)

So you should check that out, and listen to Berkley’s thoughts on melodrama, the dynamics of female friendship, the cinema of Douglas Sirk and plenty more. It’s right there on  Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher and/or Spotify,  or download the episode directly from the web and send it to the person who knows you best in all the world. That’d be nice.

And then, eventually, you’ll find that new edition of Shiny Things I’ve been trying to write for the last ten days — the one with reviews of Blackberry and Fast X, and a giveaway for the latter! Keep an eye out for that, and if you’re not already a subscriber … well, maybe you should be? It’s pretty good.

It’s my birthday tomorrow, but … well, if you’ve been keeping up with Shiny Things you know we’re dealing with a lot of stuff, not the least of which is moving across town on Friday.

Don’t worry, we’re managing! Other than the usual existential terror that comes from boxing up nearly seven thousand discs and a very complicated AV system, everything’s been going pretty well. I even had time to release an episode of Someone Else’s Movie this morning.

The guest is director Morrisa Maltz, whose new drama The Unknown Country stars Lily Gladstone (of Kelly Reichardt’s Certain Women and Martin Scorsese’s upcoming Killers of the Flower Moon) as a young woman driving from South Dakota to Texas after her grandmother’s death, and encountering a series of family members and strangers along the way. And the movie Morrisa picked is Where Is the Friend’s House?, the 1987 breakout of Abbas Kiarostami, a filmmaker who specialized in stories of unlikely journeys.

We unpacked the interesting connections between Kiarostami’s first international success and Morrisa’s movie — which is really good, by the way, and coming to VOD in a few weeks.

So give it a listen! You can find the show on  Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher and/or Spotify,  or download it directly from the web and burn it to a CD so you can play it in your car.

And then you can catch up to Shiny Things, which I’m hoping to update this week with reviews of Blackberry and Fast X at the very least. I still owe everyone that deep dive into the Mission: Impossible films, but it turns out rewatching six movies with a cumulative running time of nearly fourteen hours is a little tricky right now. Go figure.

On this week’s Someone Else’s Movie, I’m joined by writer-director Jared Moshe to talk about a film he holds dear to his heart: The Full Monty, the 1997 sleeper about a handful of blokes in Sheffield who decide to try their hands at burlesque.

How did Peter Cattaneo’s international smash steer Jared towards making an emotionally complex sci-fi drama starring the wonderful Judy Greer as a recently widowed mom wrestling with the consequences of using time travel to save her doomed husband from a pointless death? All you have to do is listen! And then go see Aporia, which opens across North America on Friday. It’s quite good.

The rules of physics apply: You can find the show on  Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher and/or Spotify,  or download it directly from the web, with science.

And then get caught up on the latest editions of Shiny Things, which I’ve finally gotten back on a twice-weekly publishing schedule — for now, at least.

Over the last few days I tackled Criterion’s magnificent restorations of Budd Boetticher and Randolph Scott’s Ranown Westerns, found the hidden message of James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and looked at the new 4K editions of East of Eden, Rio Bravo, Enter the Dragon and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. It’s a lot, right? Subscribe and see!

This week on Someone Else’s Movie, I’m joined by The Channel writer-director William Kaufman for a ride-along with Michael Mann’s prickly, claustrophobic Collateral, the 2004 thriller that throws Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx together for one grim night driving in Los Angeles.

Collateral is one of my favorite Mann films, all twists and tension. If you’ve never seen the movie, I won’t spoil it for you — but the episode absolutely will, so go catch up before you listen!

Now, when you’re ready you can find the show on  Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher and/or Spotify,  or download the episode directly from the web like a good hostage. Enjoy!

And then you can check out the latest edition of Shiny Things, where I review Beau Is Afraid and find some curious resonance between Ari Aster’s balls-out tour de force and Peter Weir’s 1998 masterwork The Truman Show, which just got a beautiful 4K restoration from Paramount. Have you subscribed? Why haven’t you subscribed?

This week’s episode of Someone Else’s Movie is a little more current than most, tackling a movie that’s in theaters right now with a guest who also has a brand-new theatrical release.

The guest would be filmmaker Carly Stone, whose second feature North of Normal is back at the Lightbox this week after premiering at TIFF last fall; based on the memoir by Cea Sunrise Person, it’s a thoughtful coming-of-age story focused on an isolated child slowly realizing her eccentric family might not have her best interests in mind.

And Carly wanted to talk about Celine Song’s Past Lives, the quietly devastating Sundance hit starring Greta Lee as a Korean-born woman who finds herself torn between her American husband (John Magaro) and the boy (Teo Yoo) she left behind, with whom she’s unexpectedly reunited almost a quarter-century after she left home. It’s a movie about regret and hope, and the way every single one of us will inevitably wonder who we might have become had our circumstances be slightly different. It’s short but very sweet, and we’re careful not to spoil the film. Not that we could, really.

You can find the show on  Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher and/or Spotify,  or download the episode directly from the web like it’s 1999. And if you’re in Toronto, you should grab a ticket to Friday night’s 6:30pm screening of North of Normal at the Lightbox, where I’ll be moderating a Q&A with Carly and friend of the show Sarah Gadon. It’ll be a good evening.

And once you’ve booked that, get yourself caught up on the latest Shiny Things newsletter, where I use the excellent new Imprint boxed set of Roger Donaldson’s The Bounty as an excuse to catch up on the other titles Via Vision has rescued from catalogue limbo and rolled out onto Blu-ray. This one’s for the paid tier, so upgrade your subscription if you haven’t already. It’s five bucks a month! That’s like half a banana!