Most of us want to connect and be understood. Most of us want to feel less alone in the world. It’s why we read books and watch films. Taichi Yamada’s novel “Strangers,” a ghost story set in Japan, may not be my story, and yet it spoke to me on a profoundly personal level. As Harada, the melancholic screenwriter, wanders back to his childhood home on the outskirts of Tokyo to reconnect with his parents, I was transported to my own childhood home, pulled into my own past. His story was becoming my own, and that is what I needed to put on the page.
Filmmaking is always exposing, but for this movie to work, I knew I had to dig further into my own life than I had before in my work. I needed to be specific, hoping that honesty would unlock the universal themes of the piece. It is worth stating that this is not an autobiography; unlike the protagonist, my parents are still alive, but the story offered the scope for me to examine loneliness and loss, and how these experiences shape our childhood and ultimately define the adults we become. It allowed me to explore my understanding of love, both familial and romantic, and how those dual aspects can inform each other, for better and worse.
Unlike the original source material, there was never a question that I would keep the central character straight. If this was ultimately a story about love, then it was important to me that it would portray queer love. I had been looking to say something about growing up gay in the 1980s for some time and how that experience haunts many of us like a ghost, but I hadn’t found the right story until now. Telling any queer story can be a challenging experience. The pressure of representation can be a heavy burden, but I knew I wanted my focus to be narrow, to the experience of a distinct generation of gay men who grew up in a certain time and place. Again, specificity became the mantra.
The script came together during the pandemic: trapped in my apartment, separated from family, fearful of what might happen to the world and everyone in it. I dug deep into my own memories: photos, diaries, music. Many of my own stories became Adam’s. And as I wrote about my protagonist returning to his family home, it was my own childhood home I pictured. And then, as we prepared the production, I made the decision to shoot in that actual location, a place I hadn’t been back to in more than 40 years. I wasn’t totally prepared for how it would make me feel, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.
It was a strange experience working in that space, shooting scenes in my parents’ old bed or around the Christmas tree in a version of my old front room. I felt dragged backwards and forwards in time. I developed eczema again, something I hadn’t had since I was young. The body seems to remember. I wasn’t the happiest of kids. Interestingly, it seemed to have an effect on many of the cast and crew too, all navigating their own complicated relationships with their pasts as the film’s themes emerged throughout the production. Again the specific seemed to be becoming universal.
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Paul Mescal, left, and Andrew Scott star in “All of Us Strangers.”
(Searchlight Pictures)
Editing was a long process. For months my editor and I were locked alone in a room trying to craft the unusual tone, the liminal space in which the film exists. With it came the growing anxiety that in sharing this film, I would be revealing too much of myself. As we shared cuts, I could sense how over-sensitive I was to any criticisms of the film, feeling it was, in effect, a criticism of me. But if I wanted the film to radiate a certain vulnerability, then it had to contain my vulnerability too.
Now the film is out and seemingly connecting with audiences. It is reassuring to know that perhaps we did something right. We managed to excavate a feeling that others can recognize. We found the universal in the personal. It has allowed people to reflect on their own lives and the important people within it.
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I’ve been asked if I feel liberated somehow now that the film is out there. That is a hard question to answer just yet. I do feel that making the film has given me a greater understanding of the nature of love and its power to soften the harder edges of life, but it has not been an easy ride. Nor, perhaps, should it be. Making any kind of art is often both as joyous and as painful as life itself, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep trying.
I’ll end with a quote from Jung. “Real liberation comes not from glossing over or repressing painful states of feeling, but only from experiencing them to the full.”
Forget the “video game movie” curse;The Mortuary Assistantis a bone-chilling triumph that stands entirely on its own two feet. Starring Willa Holland (Arrow) as Rebecca Owens, the film follows a newly certified mortician whose “overtime shift” quickly devolves into a grueling battle for her soul.
What Makes It Work
The film expertly balances the stomach-churning procedural work of embalming with a spiraling demonic nightmare. Alongside a mysterious mentor played by Paul Sparks (Boardwalk Empire), Rebecca is forced to confront both ancient evils and her own buried traumas. And boy, does she have a lot of them.
Thanks to a full-scale, practical River Fields Mortuary set, the film drips with realism, like you can almost smell the rot and bloat of the bodies through the screen.
The skin effects are hauntingly accurate. The way the flesh moves during surgical scenes is so visceral. I’ve seen a lot of flesh wounds in horror films and in real life, and the bodies, skin, and organs. The Mortuary Assistant (especially in the opening scene) looks so real that I skipped supper after watching it. And that’s saying something. Your girl likes to eat.
Co-written by the game’s creator, Brian Clarke, the movie dives deeper into the demonic mythology. Whether you’ve seen every ending or don’t know a scalpel from a trocar, the story is perfectly self-contained. If you’ve never played the game, or played it a hundred times, the film works equally well, which is hard to do when it comes to game adaptations.
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Nailed It
This film does a lot of things right, but the isolation of the night shift is suffocating. Between the darkness of the hallways and the “residents” that refuse to stay still, the film delivers a relentlessly immersive experience. And thankfully, although this movie is filled with dark rooms and shadows, it’s easy to see every little thing. Don’t you hate it when a movie is so dark that you can’t see what’s happening? It’s one of my pet peeves.
The oh-so-awesome Jeremiah Kipp directs the film and has made something absolutely nightmare-inducing. Kipp recently joined us for an interview, took us inside the film, discussed its details and the game’s lore, and so much more. I urge you to check out our interview. He’s awesome!
The Verdict
This isn’t just a cash-grab; it’s a high-effort adaptation that respects the source material while elevating the horror genre. With incredible special effects and a powerhouse cast, it’s the kind of movie that will make you rethink working late ever again. Dropping on Friday the 13th, this is a must-watch for horror fans. It’s grisly, intelligent, and genuinely terrifying.
A former executive at Live Nation, the world’s largest live entertainment company, is suing the company, alleging that he was wrongfully terminated after he raised concerns about alleged financial misconduct and improper accounting practices.
Nicholas Rumanes alleges he was “fraudulently induced” in 2022 to leave a lucrative position as head of strategic development at a real estate investment trust to create a new role as executive vice president of development and business practice at Beverly Hills-based Live Nation.
In his new position, Rumanes said, he raised “serious and legitimate alarm” over the the company’s business practices.
As a result, he says, he was “unlawfully terminated,” according to the lawsuit filed Thursday in Los Angeles County Superior Court.
“Rumanes was, simply put, promised one job and forced to accept another. And then he was cut loose for insisting on doing that lesser job with integrity and honesty,” according to the lawsuit.
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He is seeking $35 million in damages.
Representatives for Live Nation were not immediately available for comment.
The lawsuit comes a week after a federal jury in Manhattan found that Live Nation and its Ticketmaster subsidiary had operated a monopoly over major concert venues, controlling 86% of the concert market.
Rumanes’ lawsuit describes a “culture of deception” at Live Nation, saying its “basic business model was to misstate and exaggerate financial figures in efforts to solicit and secure business.”
Such practices “spanned a wide spectrum of projects in what appeared to be a company-wide pattern of financial misrepresentation and misleading disclosures,” the lawsuit states.
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Rumanes says he received materials and documents that showed that the company inflated projected revenues across multiple venue development projects.
Additionally, Rumanes contends that the company violated a federal law that requires independent financial auditing and transparency and instead ran Live Nation “through a centralized, opaque structure” that enables it to “bypass oversight and internal checks and balances.”
In 2010, as a condition of the Live Nation-Ticketmaster merger, the newly formed company agreed to a consent decree with the government that prohibited the firm from threatening venues to use Ticketmaster. In 2019 the Justice Department found that the company had repeatedly breached the agreement, and it extended the decree.
Rumanes contends that he brought his concerns to the attention of the company’s management, but his warnings were “repeatedly ignored.”
At the centre of Madhuvidhu directed by Vishnu Aravind is a house where only men reside, three generations of them living in harmony. Unlike the Anjooran household in Godfather, this is not a house where entry is banned to women, but just that women don’t choose to come here. For Amrithraj alias Ammu (Sharafudheen), the protagonist, 28 marriage proposals have already fallen through although he was not lacking in interest.
When a not-so-cordial first meeting with Sneha (Kalyani Panicker) inevitably turns into mutual attraction, things appear about to change. But some unexpected hiccups are waiting for them, their different religions being one of them. Writers Jai Vishnu and Bipin Mohan do not seem to have any major ambitions with Madhuvidhu, but they seem rather content to aim for the middle space of a feel-good entertainer. Only that they end up hitting further lower.
