Everything old is new again | First Watches: March 2025
Some old movies, new to me: featuring bio-weapons, a red Hulk, toxic relationships, and even an alien visitor!
I started the year by re-living the three classic Wallace and Gromit animated shorts from the 90s. They are hilarious and full of heart, though also oddly eerie. The characters’ hometown is more of a ghost town; its villains are dead-eyed, unfeeling creeps. Yet everything’s wrapped in cosy homeware and British witticisms.
In trying to find a theme tying these four first watches together, I realised that this unnerving kind of emptiness often accompanies nostalgia; you’ll recognise it if you’ve ever seen those soft-focus reels on Instagram cycling through images from your childhood.
Perhaps it’s something to do with sacrificing the possibility of new ideas in favor of old ones, (such as in the MCU, which is increasingly obsessed with reanimating its past), or because even the best of our memories are attached to moments of pain.
Memories (1995)
Director Koji Morimoto is a true visionary.
Thank goodness I managed to see this at the cinema as part of a special screening (thanks Yorck kinos!). These three anime shorts, collected as Memories, are awe-inspiring in terms of their creativity. Two, especially, are very much my cup of tea; both chaotic in completely different ways.
Director Koji Morimoto is a true visionary: “Magnetic Rose” (originally a manga published in 1980) is beautiful and horrifying. It’s a slow, dangerous space epic that easily qualifies for a full feature rendition. We follow a corporate freighter, The Corona, as it stumbles upon a decaying space station. We see a clash of styles: hard sci-fi vs. classic architecture. Inside, two engineers find the crumbling remnants of rooms — and memories — occupied by a famed opera singer. The men become increasingly confused and experience disturbing visions. It also gets harder for us to discern reality from fiction.
It’s followed by an action-packed bio-weapons mishap, “Stink Bomb”, from director Tensai Okamura. It’s a breakneck tonal shift with jaunty music, silly characters and over-the-top voicework. Nobou Tanaka (Hideyuki Hori), swallows a mystery pill to help him overcome his flu symptoms. Unawares, the city now considers him an unstoppable killing machine. In an effort to escape whatever’s causing everyone to keep dropping dead, he rides his scooter toward a highly populated area. Wild chase antics ensue! It’s huge fun.
First two were great; art style, music, and pacing. But I didn’t care much for the third short. Namely “Canon Fodder” from director Katsuhiro Otomo. It has that rough and tacky look of an educational film disguised as a fun cartoon. Your teacher would wheel it out on the TV as a lame treat. Regardless, I see that it’s a clever commentary on government systems, war, and aimless, violent patriotism.
A whole city’s economy built for one purpose; firing canons. At what?
Captain America: Brave New World (2025)
Isn’t it about time we just had fun again?
Last year, I watched The Marvels and couldn’t believe how far the MCU had fallen. It looked like a tightly budgeted kids TV show akin to Power Rangers. The camera work was lazy, the choreography clumsy, and its costuming came from a fancy dress store. The story, too, was a scrambled mess. I had fun watching it though, in disbelief at the unprecedented scale of its crumminess.
That’s where Black America Mega Franchise Sequel Spin-Off 4: Same Old World differs.
It doesn’t look as cheap (which is not to say it looks great) and its story, though uninspired, is easily followed. It is safe. It has a great score. It’s action is dependable. And it tries quite hard to echo the film that first made people sit up and take the MCU seriously: The Winter Soldier.
Its problem is that none of its characters matter — at least, not to audiences who haven’t watched a bazillion Disney+ shows as homework. The last we saw of Captain America was in Endgame (2019), who handed his shield to Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie). Since then, “The Falcon” title has been handed over to hottie Jaoquin Torres (Danny Ramirez). It isn’t clear why Sam is working for the President, or how he can hurl his vibranium shield vast distances without ever having taken the super serum that made Steve Rodgers so strong.
But, oh well? Isn’t it about time we just had fun again and let go of all that plot-heavy interconnectedness that’s burdened these movies since the MCU began!
Actually — no. Director Julius Onah goes to great lengths to resurrect story threads from The Incredible Hulk in 2008 and 2021’s much maligned Eternals movie. As such, there is simply too much talk. And the dialogue holds no weight!
Without Harrison Ford, this would be very flat and boring. He’s practically the main character!
Queer (2024)
A melding of souls, let’s say.
I missed last year’s big bisexual tennis tournament, Challengers, from director Luca Guadagnino, but I did catch Call Me By Your Name (2017), in which Timothée Chalamet fucks a peach, and A Bigger Splash (2015), wherein a muted Tilda Swinton reunites with her former lover (Ralph Fiennes, in nothing but shorts).
My impressions of him as a director so far, have been mixed. His films leave a mark, certainly — they create feeling, or a mood — but they do not seem always to hang together logically. Queer is no exception.
The environments are a stage, everyone’s hot, flustered, hungry, horny, and terribly flawed, which leads to some devastating performances. This begins as an enthralling slow burn, a patient character study: clumsy, handsome, addicted William Lee (Daniel Craig) falls for the boyish but belligerent Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey). This includes the intimate blowjob scene Andrew Garfield recently described as “beautiful”. It captures the heart-racing discernment required, as a gay man, to read the cues set out by a closeted partner. But later, things start to lean on surreal imagery, descending into abstract, surprisingly Lynchian territory. This feels retro in its form, not just its setting.
Queer doesn’t have a beginning, middle, and an end in the traditional sense; it starts strong, stays that way for a while, then collapses in on itself as soon as a cartoon snake jolts this flick out of indie territory, straight into the feel of a Hangover spin-off. After that, things get trippy, largely because the characters explore the psychedelic properties of a new drug. It’s exhausting to follow, even to recall, especially as everyone was juggling such gradual, inspired dialogue beforehand.
I’m not keen on the love scene that looks like something ChatGPT dreamt up, but I can appreciate what it was going for. A melding of souls, let’s say.
I’m not sure I can dislike it solely because it’s not what I expected. I just can’t help feeling there’s a lot left unexplored — not least, the miserable realisation that our experiences might hold significantly more meaning than… theirs. It’s available on Mubi.
The Landing (2013)
Stuffed with uncertainty and dread.
The Landing is a short, but mighty film set in the 60s. It wastes absolutely no time. Every scene serves a purpose. Every transition feels effortless.
Director Josh Tanner gets the absolute best out of very little, primarily by slicing and dicing the timeline of his story and incorporating striking imagery. All of which is knitted together neatly, and dramatically, by the awesome composer Guy Gross (who scored three seasons on the space adventure Farscape). He lends the film a foreboding aura, stuffed with uncertainty and dread; but also, moments of quiet.
A sci-fi obsessed kid, living on a remote midwestern farm with his militaristic father, stumbles upon a horrifying conspiracy when an unidentified flying object crash lands on their property. Unbeknownst to him, his whole life will be impacted.
The small cast are on point. Their acting is appropriately intimate. Many moments are recontextualized later on, revealing themes of repressed trauma and a loss of innocence. Much of the emotion is left brewing, unspoken, though heavily implied with subtle gestures and lingering eye contact.
It’s incredibly rewatchable at only 18 minutes long. It behaves like an episode of some marvelous TV show, and yet the whole ordeal feels especially grand and life-altering. What did the boy’s father find in the spacecraft? Does it pose us a threat? Brace for mystery and intrigue, but don’t worry, answers will come.
They are, however, the kind that’ll make you feel gross about the human race.
I also saw:
- Companion (2025) — Quite unpredictable. Dares to have fun with the concept and, I suppose, asks us if we’re behaving like robots vs. living with full autonomy.
- Slaxx (2020) — A fashionable pair of killer jeans murders everyone in a fashion store. Totally silly, with a very strong moral compass.
- Conclave (2024) — Fascinating characters, effective pacing; the runtime didn’t enter my mind. Loved the speech about “certainty”.
- Black Dog (2024) — Follows a handyman riding a motorcycle with his dog in the sidecar; it’s essentially a gritty reboot of Wallace and Gromit.
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