The Nostalgia Documentaries

I've noticed that several of the prominent documentaries I've watched over the last few months fall into a specific category, and seem to be targeting the same audience.  These are documentaries that spotlight performers and entertainers who became prominent in the 1970s and 1980s, with narratives that largely serve as retrospectives of their careers.  This includes "Pee-Wee as Himself," "Cheech & Chong's Last Movie," and "Devo."  Though biographical documentaries have always been common, lately it feels like everyone from that era is getting one.  Over the past few years we've had documentaries about Val Kilmer, Anthony Bourdain, Sly Stone, Christopher Reeves, Steve Martin, Albert Brooks, Jim Henson, John Candy and multiple Beatles tributes.  Plenty more are on their way soon.

Now, some of these documentaries are very good.  "Pee-Wee as Himself" stands out as one of the best, not only because it reveals Paul Reubens' private life and struggles as a persecuted gay man in the 1980s, but also because of the adversarial relationship that Reubens had with the documentarian Matt Wolf, which is on display in their interviews.  However, most of the others follow a similar pattern of either having the documentary subject reminisce about their life and career, hopefully offering an entertaining personal account of what it was like to live through their successes and failures, or if they're deceased, piecing together this information through interviews with their friends and family.  There are a few that fall into the category of exposes or tell-alls, like the Martha Stewart and Bill Cosby documentaries, but these are fairly rare.  

Instead, most of the nostalgia-centered docs are all about evoking good feelings and providing an excuse to traipse down memory lane.  I've been fascinated with some of these, because these celebrities come from an era where I was aware enough to understand who they were, but often too young to really grasp the historical context in which they existed.  "Cheech & Chong's Last Movie," for instance, did an excellent job of not just getting across who Cheech and Chong were in their heyday, but the counterculture of the '70s that they were a part of.  I also like the framing device of the two old stoners going on one last imaginary road trip together, occasionally picking up other interviewees as their passengers.   Alternately, I have a much harder time with music documentaries like "Becoming Led Zeppelin" and "Pavements" because music culture remains ever elusive for me.  I think you have to be an existing fan to really appreciate what they're doing. 

Fundamentally, there's nothing wrong with spending a few hours listening to Steve Martin or Lionel Richie tell stories about the good old days, but I do feel that some of these biographical documentaries get awfully indulgent, to the point where some of them are pretty obviously just vanity projects.  The more ambitious, hard-hitting historical documentaries are much more rigorous about their research, and often much more critical of their subjects.  I prefer the documentaries where the subject is deceased, because the filmmakers are often willing to paint a less flattering portrait, with more shadings and more nuances.  One of my favorite documentaries remains "Mr Best Fiend," Werner Herzog's wonderfully candid look at his tumultuous friendship with the Austrian actor and madman, Klaus Kinski.  

I love seeing extraordinary individuals getting the spotlight, and learning more about what was really going on behind the scenes for certain moments in pop culture, but I find myself raising my eyebrows more often lately when I learn who the subject of a new documentary is.  I'm not going to name specific names, but it often feels like if one documentary about a particular performer is successful, everyone in their cohort is suddenly next in line.  Frankly, not everyone needs a documentary, though in the vlogging age I suppose there's the material for anyone to make their own.

It's going to get very interesting in a few decades when we're all old enough to be nostalgic for any years where social media was active.  I guess I should just enjoy this era of nostalgia docs while it lasts.  

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My Top Ten Episodes of 2011-2012

Below, find my top ten episodes for the 2011-2012 television season below, in no particular order.  And a few spoilers ahead, including that one episode of "Breaking Bad." 

Game of Thrones, "Blackwater" - The first real "Game of Thrones" battle episode feels positively small scale now, especially considering the way it was contrived to skip most of the expensive battle scenes because we stuck to Tyrion's limited POV.  But still, what an event!  Cersei gets to be maternal, Tyrion gets to be inspirational, and at this point getting so many disparate characters in kinda close proximity to each other was something to cheer about. 

Parks and Rec, "The Comeback Kid" - It's the one with the ice rink.  Leslie launches a comeback push for her city council campaign while Ben takes up claymation and Andy and April adopt a dog.  And all of this culminates in a trip across a slippery frozen arena, set to Gloria Estefan's "Get on Your Feet," that is one of the most hysterical things that "Parks and Rec" ever came up with.  By this point in the show's run, the laughs could come from anywhere.  And they did.

Breaking Bad, "Crawl Space" - The emotional lowpoint of the fourth season, where Walt gradually comes to learn how badly things are going with both his allies and his enemies.  The tension ratchets up as the danger grows and Walt's options shrink, until there seems to be only one way out.  The final shot where the axe drops is one of the best of the entire series run, capturing a chilling moment where Walter White seems to have gone over the edge at last.  

Community, "Remedial Chaos Theory" - Witness the birth of the darkest timeline.  This is truly an episode for the nerds who are willing to patiently sit through the first few cycles of the story, which are fairly similar to each other, in order to reach the chaotic joys of one-armed Jeff and evil Abed.  Stuffed with meme-worthy lines, references, and in-jokes, the episode breaks all the rules and is one of the best examples of the experimental side of "Community." 

Mad Men, "Commissions and Fees" - Jared Harris's performance as Lane Pryce was one of my favorite parts of "Mad Men."  This episode is his swan song, a bleak, wintry farewell that has some truly heartbreaking scenes and existentially unnerving imagery.  This is also very much a Don episode, where we watch him take care of business with the understanding that a few wrong moves will put him in the same boat as Lane.  And the Jaguar shade is legendary.  

Girls, "Pilot" - I didn't like "Girls" much from what little I saw of it, but I always appreciated the pilot episode, where we're introduced to the exasperating Hannah Horvath, who has a very long way to go on her path to maturity.  From the very beginning, her awfulness and her privilege are clear, but I was also struck by the candidness of how she's portrayed.  I was also relieved that the production values were better than Lena Dunham's feature, "Tiny Furniture."  

Sherlock, "A Scandal in Belgravia" - This episode set off a storm in the fandom about the sexuality of the characters and the show's treatment of the female characters.  This version of Irene Adler is incredibly sexual, self-contradictory, and ultimately a fantasy ideal of a love interest for Sherlock Holmes.  And there's nothing wrong with that in this context.  I still count this as one of the best episodes of the show - juvenile sure, but awfully entertaining.    

Louie, "New Jersey"/"Airport" - What I loved about "Louie" was Louis C.K.'s ability to capture very specific moods and tones.  In this case, a misadventure strands him far from home, forcing him to call up a friend for a ride in the middle of the night.  And this leads to one of the best things I've ever seen special guest star Chris Rock do, acting as the disappointed, responsible adult who lectures Louie all the way home on how he's too old to be acting this stupid.   

Doctor Who, "The Girl Who Waited" - The quality of "Doctor Who" was hit-or-miss in every era, but I stuck around for the occasional episodes like this, the ones that told time travel stories that really took advantage of the show's fantastic concepts and characters.  Here we meet an embittered version of Amy Pond who was forced to wait too long for her rescue - creating a moral dilemma for the Doctor and Rory as they try to find a way to resolve the situation.  

Black Mirror, "15 Million Merits" - Finally, the episode that began my obsession with "Black Mirror," back when it was a Channel Four production.  I accidentally stumbled across a pirated version on Youtube, and thought it was a web series.  I didn't know who Daniel Kaluuya was, or Jessica Brown-Findlay, and I'd never heard of Charlie Brooker.  I just knew that the episode was one of the most effective pieces of science-fiction I'd seen in ages, and I wanted more.  

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About That "Dexter: Resurrection"

Spoilers for "Dexter" and "Dexter: New Blood" ahead.

The original "Dexter" series aired on Showtime back when I had no access to premium cable television.  I only watched the first few seasons, which I liked, but nothing after the fourth season - the one with the Trinity Killer.  However, I definitely got wind of the franchise's ups and downs over the years - the botched ending of the series with Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall) becoming an Alaskan lumberjack, the 2021 sequel miniseries, "Dexter: New Blood" that tried to give him a more dignified exit, and finally last year's "Dexter: Original Sin" prequel show.  I didn't watch any of these, but I was finally persuaded by good reviews to give the latest entry in the "Dexter" saga, "Dexter: Resurrection," a fair shot.  And I'm thrilled that I did.

I had absolutely no trouble getting up to speed with what Dexter Morgan has been up to for the past ten years, which comes down to trying his best to stop being a serial killer.  In "Resurrection," however, he's back to bad habits.  Dexter goes to New York City to help his now adult son Harrison (Jack Alcott), who has gotten himself mixed up in a murder.   Inevitably, Dexter becomes an active killer again, despite becoming friends with his new landlord Blessing (Ntare Gumo Mbaho Mwine), and despite the warnings of Dexter's deceased father Harry (James Remar), who hangs around as a personification of his conscience.  Unfortunately, Dexter's ex-pal Angel (David Zayas), is also in town intent on proving that Dexter is a murderer once and for all.  He's helping the detective in charge of investigating Harrison, Claudette Wallace (Kadia Saraf).  Dexter also inadvertently stumbles into a peculiar group run by the billionaire Leon Prater (Peter Dinklange) and his formidable henchwoman Charley (Uma Thurman). 

"Dexter: Resurrection" feels like a series reset to get the main character back to his original status quo, but to the credit of returning showrunner Clyde Phillips, it does a good job of showing how Dexter naturally arrives at this point, and emphasizes that he has changed over the years.  This ten-episode first season spends a lot of time helping Dexter process all the drama and upheaval he's been through, and getting his priorities straightened out.  He wants to be a good Dad.  He wants to be more human and connect to other people.  At the same time, the show treats the audience to a ton of new kills, new serial killer rivals, callbacks, fanservice, and guest stars galore.  This is easily the most star-studded "Dexter" project to date, with Peter Dinklange absolutely stealing the show every time he's onscreen.  I am sorely tempted to write a spoiler post for this season, just so I can gush over some of the other performances, but I'll leave you to discover those for yourselves.

One very good choice was cutting down the complications in Dexter's life so Harrison is his main concern.  They have an interesting relationship to watch, and Jack Alcott has no trouble shouldering the plot for long stretches, thankfully.  I also like the move to a New York setting, which puts Dexter out of his element, but creates all kinds of new opportunities for culture clashes and new character dynamics.  Dexter's past is always on his mind, and sometimes in his face in the form of Angel, but being in New York gives him a chance to shed some old baggage and sort out what he actually wants moving forward.  Dexter's snarky internal monologues were always a fun part of the show, and here they're snarkier and more entertaining than ever.    

And really, that's what caught me the most off guard about "Dexter: Resurrection."  It is so much more fun than I remember the original "Dexter" being.  The macabre, winking opening sequence may be gone, but that same toothsome verve keeps rearing its head throughout this season, which features all kinds of wild twists, loads of black humor, and cheerfully implausible things happening in every episode.  Sure, you could nitpick the plot holes, or you could suspend disbelief and just enjoy watching Dexter outsmart his adversaries with improbable smarts and foresight, narrowly getting away again and again.  And unlike a lot of other sequel series and legasequel series, the formula still works great here.  I hope to see more of Dexter Morgan and friends soon.

  

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About That "F1" Movie

I will preface the following remarks with the disclaimer that I know almost nothing about auto racing, race cars, or what distinguishes Formula One from any other type of racing.  I know that it's not a casual sport, with most of the cars and teams being sponsored by major auto manufacturers with deep pockets.  And fortunately, this is pretty much all you need to know going into "F1," aka "F1 the Movie."

Joseph Kosinski has proven that the success of "Top Gun: Maverick" wasn't a fluke, and he's done it by making a film that establishes a pretty clear pattern of how Kosinski makes a hit.  You make a movie in a nearly extinct action sub-genre, put an aging movie star at its center, have the story be about passing the torch and one last shot at glory, and pretty the whole thing up with cutting edge movie effects to amp up the spectacle.  It's not just a matter of putting Brad Pitt into an F1 racing movie, but boiling all the tropes of racing movies down to their most basic forms and presenting them in a shiny new package.  The version of F1 we see depicted onscreen is very idealized - women and minorities are conspicuously represented - as the U.S. Air Force was in "Top Gun: Maverick," with any political or cultural barriers to entry only vaguely alluded to.  And since the movie couldn't have been made without the participation of the FIA, the governing body of F1, that's no surprise.

I'm also certain that the racing itself doesn't remotely resemble what actually happens on a real Formula One race track.  Pitt plays Sonny Hayes, a maverick racer-for-hire who is constantly using dangerous tricks and stratagems to gain an advantage.  He's recruited by an old racing teammate, Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem), as a last ditch effort to save the floundering newbie APXGP team, which Ruben bankrolls.  The team's other primary driver is the talented, but green Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris).  They also have the risk-averse Kaspar Smolinski (Kim Bodnia) as team principal, and F1's first female technical director, Kate McKenna (Kerry Condon), in charge of the cars.  Sonny joins the team and promptly clashes with all of them, but also provokes them to do better.  We watch as they figure out how to work together over the course of an eventful season, chasing victory despite many defeats and setbacks.  There are injuries, disqualifications, ghosts of the past, and plenty of interpersonal frictions.  There's also a secret saboteur in the mix, naturally.  

The pieces of the movie are all very artificial and very familiar, but this isn't a bad thing.  All the old tropes work to the film's benefit, and "F1" turned out to be exactly what I wanted in a summer movie blockbuster.  The performances, the filmmaking, and the execution of all the predictable twists and turns are fantastic.  "F1" is absolutely the kind of movie that you want to see on the biggest screen possible to really immerse yourself in the experience of watching all those beautifully staged race sequences where the cars are barrelling down the track at unfathomable speeds.  There's a first person POV sequence in the last race that is downright breathtaking to behold, and DP Claudio Miranda should be up for every cinematography award in a few months.  The script is bare bones and the characters even moreso, but you buy that Sonny Hayes is getting away with all of this because it's Brad Pitt, looking as handsome and  charming as ever.  And Javier Bardem is a pro at making the implausible behind-the-scenes troubles seem plausible, because he's terribly convincing every time he announces that something else has gone wrong.

"F1" is a sports movie, but it's also a process movie.  What I appreciated the most was getting an up-close and detailed look at the cars and the racing, even if much of it was romanticized and cleaned up for the silver screen.  Half of what sells the racing is spending so much time with dedicated professionals behind the scenes who are obsessed with improving their race times by mere tenths of a second.  It's sitting in on strategy meetings, board meetings, and press conferences.  It's watching APXGP lose race after race, but learning a little bit more each time.  Kosinski embraces being a maximalist storyteller, and ensures that the sizable budget is well spent.  Unlike a lot of other movies this summer, you can see every dollar onscreen.  "F1" is also a long movie, but it earns its running time, and in the end the filmmakers earn the happy ending that could only happen in the movies.  

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Rank 'Em: "Mission: Impossible"

I'll start off with the caveat that I don't count myself as a "Mission: Impossible" fan.  I've seen most of the later movies only once apiece, and there are several I just flat out dislike.  However, when the series was good, it was good, and some of these entries definitely deserve a few kudos.  So here, from best to least, are my rankings of the "Mission: Impossible" movies:

1. Ghost Protocol (2011) - It's all set pieces.  And it's all set pieces orchestrated by Brad Bird, who is so great at balancing action and character and humor.  There's a playfulness to this installment that works so well for me, and helps to set the franchise apart from all the other spy franchises of the time.  And while Tom Cruise is indisputably the star, the team is great - Benji is promoted, Jeremy Renner's William Brandt makes a fun newbie, Paula Patton is a delight, and everybody gets their moment.  

2. Mission: Impossible (1996) - The franchise kickoff is very much a '90s Brian DePalma thriller, and barely feels of a piece with the rest of the series.  It's much more grounded, much more twisty, and doesn't care if the audience can keep up with it.  Still, it delivered the big set pieces as well as anybody.  This is also the "Mission: Impossible" movie where Tom Cruise's ego is the least on display, even though this is the first movie he produced.  I wish we'd gotten a few more entries like this one.  

3. Mission: Impossible III (2006) - After a nice long hiatus, this was a pleasant surprise.  J.J. Abrams isn't great in the director's chair, and the script has some groaners, but what distinguishes this movie is that it has one of the franchise's truly great villains: Owen Davian, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman.  Also, Ethan Hunt' relationship with Julia is the only romantic relationship in the series that ever really worked for me, even if it still feels like Cruise is trying too hard to seem like a human being.  

4. Rogue Nation (2015) - The first of the Christopher McQuarrie directed films that set the formula for the rest of the series.  It feels like it was originally planned as a grand finale or a potential handoff point to another leading man, which might be why it comes across as so celebratory and satisfying.  Rebecca Ferguson makes her first appearance as Ilsa Faust, and the opera sequence is a franchise highlight.  This is also the last "Mission: Impossible" film where I felt the humor worked for me.

5. Fallout (2018) - Here's where I'm going to get in trouble.  I have absolutely no beef with the action sequences or the spycraft or the performances in "Fallout."  This is the one with Henry Cavill and his mustache as the main villain, and he is impeccable.  However, this is also the one where the attempts to sell Tom Cruise as a romantic lead were so grating that it completely took me out of the movie.  Some view this as the pinnacle of the franchise, but it's when I started looking for an escape hatch.  

6. Dead Reckoning Part One (2023) - That title is just hilarious in retrospect.  I enjoy Hayley Attwell as the new love interest, but the movie is a bore whenever it's not in the middle of one of the action sequences.  Fortunately, the ones in this movie are pretty good, and especially the train crash.  However, I take exception to the AI doomsday plot, which is just badly written science-fiction that doesn't feel like part of this universe.  Audiences weren't pleased either, going by the box office.

7. Mission: Impossible 2 (2000) - The motorcycle duel!  The gratuitous slow motion with doves!  Thandiwe Newton looking all winsome!  Bellerophon and Chimera!  It's the John Woo entry into the "Mission: Impossible" series, and it is goofy and ridiculous, and it presages a lot of the franchise's worst habits.  There's Cruise already showboating shamelessly in the opening sequence.  There's the gratuitous use of mask reveals.  I have a soft spot for this one, but I won't pretend it's any good.

 

8. The Final Reckoning (2025) -  I didn't like it.  I think it's good that we're done for now.  

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Getting "Inside the Actors Studio"

This is a late tribute to a television program that fell off of my radar some time ago.  "Inside the Actors Studio" was once the flagship program of the Bravo network, back when they were trying to be a more classy arts channel, before the "Real Housewives" era.  It quietly aired for 24 years and amassed 277 episodes.  I knew that the host, James Lipton had passed away in 2020, and I assumed that "Inside the Actors Studio" had ended as well.  However, I didn't know about the show's move to the Ovation Network in 2019, or the final season that featured interviews by a revolving collection of different hosts.  As far as I'm concerned, the show ended in 2018 after 22 seasons, with Lipton's final interview with Ted Danson.  

I watched a ton of "Inside the Actors Studio" in my college years.  It was one of a very few long form interview shows that survived on the air into the 2010s.  The other major one was "Charlie Rose," which ended in 2017.  "Inside the Actors Studio" was more fun, of course, because it featured well-known actors and other celebrities.  Its format was dictated by its origins as a seminar for the Actors Studio Drama School, of which Lipton was Dean Emeritus.  He sat with each interviewee on a stage and went through their whole career, from soup to nuts, intent on provoking thoughtful discussion, and treating acting (or directing or stand-up comedy) as serious artistic work.  Every episode ended with questions from the real students of the Actors Studio seated in the audience, and the famous Bernard Pivot questionnaire.  The show's detractors found it all stuffy and self-serious, but I loved that the interviews were put in an academic context, lending them an air of gravitas and importance that we didn't see anywhere else on television.

Of course, it was very easy to make fun of the show, and to make fun of James Lipton, who took it in stride and gamely played himself in many parodies and guest appearances on other programs over the years.  He became a beloved celebrity, who I was happy to see every time he popped up on "The Simpsons" or "Conan O'Brien."  His professorial persona was so theatrical and larger-than-life, it might have seemed ridiculous if it weren't backed up by those meticulously researched, thoughtfully conducted interviews with everyone from Roseanne to Steven Spielberg.  The comedian interviews were often my favorites, because it was a chance to see silly people like Robin Williams and Mike Meyers take a pause and give some serious, honest answers about their craft, if they were so inclined.  Mike Meyers did, and Robin Williams elected to perform a comedy set for ninety minutes, riling up the audience to the point where it took Lipton more than ten minutes to ask his first question.  Bravo replayed that episode a lot.  

I stopped watching "Inside the Actor's Studio" roughly around the time I stopped paying for cable television.  It was never appointment television for me, but rather a show I watched when the interviewee was someone that I recognized, or it happened to be on when I was channel surfing.  I feel like the show peaked around 2003, when it started doing the group interviews for the casts of television shows, and some stars like Tom Hanks and Val Kilmer started coming back around for second interviews.  The best interviews were with the performers and creatives who had a substantial body of work behind them, and some of the later shows were with interviewees who were only there because they were popular at the time.  Jennifer Lawrence famously turned down a chance for an interview in 2013, around the time the second "Hunger Games" film was released.      

In 2025 the show has largely fallen out of the cultural consciousness.  This was inevitable considering the age of the program, but it's likely also because it's one of those series that is not streaming anywhere officially and is thus difficult to access.  Amongst the data hoarders, it's one of the most commonly sought-after programs, and pirated versions of various interviews are constantly popping up on Youtube and other video platforms.  I'd love to be able to see some of the early episodes myself - a lot of those director interviews with the likes of Norman Jewison and Stanely Donen sure would have come in handy - but the full archive only seems to be available to students of the Actors Studio.   

And finally, yes, no, attention, stress, laughter, leaf blowers, unfuckingbelievable, screenwriter, apiarist, and "Welcome."  

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Watch Out for "Weapons"

Zach Cregger's new horror film "Weapons" is a very satisfying film to watch, even if you're not a horror film.  Telling a single story from multiple perspectives is a tricky proposition, but if it's done well, it's so much fun to watch all the pieces fall into place, and all the reveals and payoffs play out.  It also helps that "Weapons" has one of the best hooks for a horror movie that I've come across in a long time.  In the Pennsylvania town of Maybrook, we are told, seventeen children from the same third grade class mysteriously vanished in the middle of the night, all at the same time.  They simply got out of bed, ran out of their homes into the darkness, and disappeared.

The action picks up a month later, when the school reopens.  Starting with the missing children's teacher, Justine Gandy (Julia Garner), we follow the POVs of six different characters who are either investigating what happened, or inadvertently stumble across pieces of the truth about the disappearances.  Justine is drawing a lot of ire from angry and frightened parents, including Archer (Josh Brolin), one of the fathers.  She's also concerned about a child from her class who didn't disappear, Alex Lilly (Cary Christopher), who appears withdrawn and isolated.  Other major characters include Justine's policeman ex-boyfriend Paul (Alden Ehrenreich), the school principal Marcus (Benedict Wong), Alex's eccentric Aunt Gladys (Amy Madigan), and a local drug addict and petty thief, James (Austin Abrams).  

"Weapons" had a fantastic teaser trailer that showcased the film's inciting incident, where the missing children are running through the darkened streets at 2:17 AM.  This is one of those rare cases where the movie is as good as the trailer, much better than I expected.  Zach Cregger does a great job of orchestrating his nightmare imagery, jump scares, and thrilling reveals to build on each other, leaving some parts of the story on cliffhangers that don't get resolved until later.  It's similar to how his first film "Barbarian" was put together, but "Weapons" is better written with a much more compelling group of characters.  It helps that the budget and the caliber of the acting talent have both gotten a boost.  However, the storytelling is the main event.  I love how multiple characters come to the same conclusions via different routes.  I love the use of jump cuts to get laughs.  I love that the real protagonist of the film isn't revealed until the last third of the film, and that the villains are as funny as they are terrifying.  And boy are there some potent terrors in this one!

Much of the chatter that I've seen around "Weapons" so far has come from people trying to read hidden meanings into the film ("the real villain is alcoholism!"), and I think that's a result of the worldbuilding being as good as it is.  Without ever drawing too much attention to it, you can see the way that characters are separated by class and social strata, with hints of more complicated histories everywhere.  By using all these different POVs, you get to spend time in each of these characters' private worlds, and see how they think and react.  In the first part of the movie with Justine, notably, all the other POV characters appear, but some are on the edges of the frame, or not quite in her field of vision.  And as the movie goes on, it becomes clear how very important things can be overlooked by those who are only focused on what they want or care about.         

All the performances are good, but I want to single out Cary Christopher and Amy Madigan, who shoulder a significant amount of the film, and do a great job of it.  I'll refrain from being mean to a similar film from last year that "Weapons" reminds me of, but Amy Madigan's performance is exactly how the creepy/funny line should be handled in a film like this.  Aunt Gladys has surely secured her place in the horror movie pantheon.

Finally, despite the participation of so many kids, this is not a horror film for kids.  Many of the deaths are pretty upsetting, which I appreciate is warned for right up front.  However, there are no naked hijinks like there were in "Barbarian," and the ending is - well let's just say it's a little out of left field for a horror film, but in a good way.  I heartily recommend "Weapons" for all your scary movie needs.  It's easily the one I've enjoyed the most this summer.  

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