Rather than dwell on the dire situation we are all currently in — and it is resolutely dire for everyone who isn’t already exploiting traditional power structures — I’m just going to open with two pieces of advice: There’s no shame in adjusting your psych meds, because they are helping synapses do a lot of heavy lifting; and more than that, pay attention to whoever seems to be just fine with what’s happened over the past few weeks, and adjust your trust accordingly. It’s a terrifying world right now.
Which, oddly, has enabled some degree of comfort to come from the most unexpected of places. Not quite the sci-fi epic you might hope for, Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe (currently on Paramount+) is a sharp and funny exercise in mapping the limits of the human desire for nachos and sex. Few things warm the heart like Beavis finding new facets to life in his unexpected relationship with Siri, and few things chill the soul like the wall of insistent stupidity Butt-Head has built around himself. “Way existential,” as the great cultural theorist Cher Horowitz said in Clueless.
Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes
Like its slightly older sibling One Cut of the Dead (essential viewing, streaming on Shudder), Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes (on Amazon Prime Video) is a raucous Japanese experiment in the limits of “single-take” cinema and the skills of a small cast to take an inventive concept and make it work for outside viewers. For some reason, there’s a two-minute shift between a coffee shop’s TV monitor and the owner’s upstairs TV. Now, you don’t necessarily think that two minutes is a period of time that can make a difference in our modern, fast-paced lives, but don’t worry — the filmmakers have seen all the movies you have as well, and they’re way ahead of the rest of us. This is a sweet and smart sci-fi/comedy that feels like the nimblest of Doctor Who.
Offseason
If you’re feeling exhausted by people and overly subject to generational trauma, Mickey Keating’s new film Offseason (Shudder) delivers eerie atmosphere. (Naturally, the apocalypse is Florida-based.) It’s also got perfectly steeped unease and a great turn from horror stalwart Jocelin Donahue (The House of the Devil, Insidious: Chapter 2, Doctor Sleep) as a woman who has been drawn to the coastal island that figures into her strained and suspicious relationship with her late mother. The vibe is very Messiah of Evil with some Fulci feels mixed in, and it’s resonant in unexpected ways. It also gets at the very specific kinds of obstinacy that come from Floridian menace and the way the populace responds to it.
Similarly, Joshua Grannell’s directorial debut, 2010’s All About Evil, has finally gotten a full-on home video and streaming release, thanks to Shudder. Best known as San Francisco’s preeminent drag icon and horror hostess Peaches Christ, Grannell has a great hook for this delightfully nasty film. When librarian Deborah (Natasha Lyonne, giving till it hurts) inherits her father’s rundown old theater, she learns firsthand how unpredictable and messy the exhibition game can be. But when security-camera footage of her slaughter of some rude-ass patrons is mistaken for a new style of slasher movie, all of a sudden she’s at ground zero for a new artistic movement built on the baroque murder of awful people. This is a horror comedy for every moviegoer who has ever wished that people would leave their phones alone, or at least recommit to the social contract. The cast is stuffed with camp icons, but what registers is how strong the idea and script are. Let’s hope for more films from Peaches Christ, because even if she is content to be the Charles Laughton of drag directors, society needs her more.
Speaking of folks who society needs desperately, Bo Burnham — in commemoration of the one-year anniversary of his exceptional Netflix special Inside — released The Inside Outtakes on his YouTube channel. It’s an hour-and-change of material that didn’t quite fit the form that evolved during the making of his magnum opus of pandemic art. There are some variations on some things we know from Inside, but the majority of these stunning outtakes are possibilities for different ways things could have gone. The songs are just as good (“The Chicken” and “Five Years” are both bangers), and I can’t help but get swept away all over again at how perceptive and wrenching the whole experience is.
Netflix has been in a bit of a pickle as of late (and that’s just with the queer community, to say nothing of its subscriber situation), and it’s tempting to view its Stand Out special as an attempt to try to make peace after the network’s insistence on supporting transphobic fossils Dave Chappelle and Ricky Gervais over its own employees. The special, which packs more than 25 performers, introducers and icons into a little more than an hour-and-a-half, can’t help but feel rushed — and that’s not including the several notable comedians, including James Adomian and Fortune Feimster, who are depicted onstage at the beginning of the special but whose sets are nowhere to be found. There’s a lot of queer comedy gold here, and particular faves include Scott Thompson, Eddie Izzard, Gina Yashere, Joel Kim Booster and Patti Harrison’s staggering Stevie Nicks impression. Even so, it’s been surfacing on social media from audience members who attended the taping at L.A.’s Greek Theatre that vocal support of the trans community was edited out of the broadcast (barring MC Billy Eichner’s explicit calling out of Chappelle and Gervais and a couple of other instances). Booster’s solo special Psychosexual is the crown jewel of the beleaguered streaming platform’s Pride Month programming, building off his triumph as screenwriter and star of Fire Island earlier in the summer. Let’s hope that rather than invest in calcifying brainstems and antiquated attitudes, Netflix will invest in voices that are actually at risk given the continually horrifying developments in this country.
The Mystery Science Theater 3000/RiffTrax crew is near and dear to my heart, and I’m loving the former’s new streaming Gizmoplex platform. But among their recent offerings is a film so bent on unmaking the world that I can’t even recommend it in a conventional fashion. This is a film so surreal, messy, confusing and cobbled together with the tendons of joggers in hell that to speak of it is to go mad. I speak of Munchie, and I daren’t say its name aloud for fear that a Dom DeLuise-dubbed puppet will coalesce into existence before me and drag me into tax-shelter insanity. Blessings to the families of Jonah Ray, Hampton Yount and Baron Vaughn, because they are doubtlessly still recovering from the experience of riffing a tear in the very fabric of existence. To try to watch this film in its original form could break the already tenuous strands that hold reality itself together.
