Movies I Watched This Week (3/31/25 - 4/6/25)
plus, Ben Kaye's Opera Corner!
PRE-ROLL
BEN KAYE’S OPERA CORNER!
I love opera. I think most-to-all live performance in the states should be subsidized by the government (primarily in an effort to actually make this art affordable for the public), but if I were to only pick one medium to receive that kind of federal bankrolling, it would be opera, which practically demands maximalism to succeed. i’ve been frequenting Chicago’s Lyric Opera for a while now, and the grandeur of the staging mixed with the lush, full orchestrations make for a worthwhile experience even if the particular production isn’t always up to snuff.
this is all to say that this past weekend I saw Missy Mazzoli and Royce Vavrek’s “The Listeners,” under the direction of Lileana Blain-Cruz. it was an odd one! there’s a tendency with modern opera to have scores that lean more into atmosphere than proper melody1, and that was definitely on the forefront of Mazzoli’s score. I also think the text itself remains rather thin, succeeding more as a mood piece reveling in interesting themes of groupthink and cult mentality more than something with actual interesting narrative shape to it. the staging was fun, the vocals were outstanding, and the moments of full choral power throughout made the whole evening worth it. more modern opera, please!
BEN KAYE’S TV CATCH-UP CORNER!
THE STUDIO: unsurprisingly, i’m a sucker for the TV Show About Movies. alongside its very funny and biting commentary on the industry, there’s a very fun and stylish rhythm that creators Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg have implemented as the go-to engine for the show, and it does wonders in terms of pace, tone, and altogether comedic energy. i’m having an utter blast with it (Episode 2 undoubtedly one of the best episodes of television this year).
THE WHITE LOTUS:I don’t watch “The White Lotus,” but my wife does. Please email me or comment below your thoughts on the season so I can pass them along to her.
THE MOVIES
WHAT RHYMES WITH MAGDALENA? (2024, dir. Jose Perez). watched on screener.
wrote about this one for Cine-File. found this to be utterly charming in both its throwback aesthetics and its contemporary sensibilities. a hangout movie about refusing to commit for fear of stability. Chicago indie film forever! and hey, friends of the blog Em Modaff and Jack Seijo pop up in this one! neat!
THE DAY THE EARTH BLEW UP: A LOONEY TUNES MOVIE (2025, dir. Peter Browngardt). watched at AMC Evanston.
what a joy to see these delightful goofballs - Daffy Duck and Porky Pig - up on the silver screen! kind of crazy to think that this is the first ever fully-animated Looney Tunes feature film released in theaters (that isn’t a glorified clip show) and it wasn’t even distributed by Warner Bros! what a country! anyway, this thing is just silly gags and gorgeous 2D animation for 90 minutes, and I had a blast seeing this on the big screen. if this was the norm for children’s cinema, I wouldn’t be terrified about taking my kid to the movies in a few years. before the movie was a trailer for a crappily-animated CGI film about talking sneakers called SNEAKS. I do not want to take my son to see SNEAKS.
CLEAR NIGHTS (2024, dir. Paulo Filipe Monteiro). watched on screener.
wrote about this one for Cine-File. sometimes you sign up to write about a movie and then you realize halfway through that, huh, this movie really isn’t your speed, so you use that assignment as a challenge to write positively about a movie you otherwise Just Don’t Really Like That Much. also, the Chicago Latino Film Festival website describes this as a film told “mostly through body movement and dance” which I can assuredly say is An Absolute Lie. misinformation is running rampant across the internet!
SCREAMBOAT (2025, dir. Steven LaMorte). watched at AMC River East.
my good friend (and exceedingly talented playwright and video essayist) Zach Barr invited me to a late night screening2 of what has now become a fascinating trend in the microbudget horror genre; hastily thrown-together horror films capitalizing on cartoon characters recently released into the public domain. on the heels of WINNIE THE POOH: BLOOD AND HONEY and POPEYE THE SLAYER MAN comes SCREAMBOAT, the “what if Steamboat Willie were a slasher film?” movie that nobody asked for. outside of the gleeful mission of giving the Walt Disney corporation a big middle finger, the film itself is pretty abysmal; it looks bad, the jokes are bad, the performances are bad, the murders aren’t very fun. David Howard Thornton certainly commits to the bit as Steamboat Willie (I mean look at that damn costume lol), but that can only get you so far in a film that’s begging to be less-than-90 minutes.
that’s it for this week! what did you watch this past week? what public domain character should they make into a slasher film next? what’s for dinner? see you next time!
