Keanen's Film Blog

Mail is a real pain in the ass. Either the local numbnuts deliver your parcel three blocks off the mark, or you try to send electronically, only to find that you need to set up a trusted SMTP relay. In the case of either problem, you likely won’t figure it out until months after the fact. There’s a reason a rampage is called “going postal”.

Poor Kevin Costner. He is tasked with delivering the entire nation’s mail on the old shoeleather express. If any package is misdelivered, he gets the blame. No vehicles, no electricity, no help of any kind. With certain non-trivial problems, all you can give it is your best effort.

As a connoisseur of video games and the artistic goods of Japan, I heard about Kojima Hideo-san’s extravagant foray into the world of Postman, the majestic and not-at-all-pretentious Death Stranding, wherein you play as Kevin Costner’s vision of a parcel carrier. There is also a video game called Postal, wherein you don’t have to deliver a thing (see end of first paragraph).

But this is no game, this is a serious examination of what it means to be an American, through the lens of our mailman and savior.

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It’s impossible to be an edgy hipster filmmaker without making a few enemies, so how Anno Hideaki succeeded at anything is a mystery, but the world is glad he did.

The original Godzilla movie was a parable about the experience and effects of invasion. What this parable represents is so fundamental to Japanese culture that by now, Godzilla is passe, even schlock. You’ve probably seen clips of the ridiculous battles between rubber suit performers in the Godzilla sequels. The franchise is out of control.

Anno-sensei knows this, which is why Neon Genesis Shin Godzilla is not about the drama of a giant lizard, but the process of dealing with the giant lizard. It’s the smartest possible approach to the franchise, and as is usually the case with this caliber of talent, it’s a masterpiece.

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ThanksKilling 3 is the sequel to ThanksKilling (2008) and the ill-fated ThanksKilling 2. T3 is about one man’s quest to build the year-round seasonal theme park Thanksgivingland, in spite of the inter-dimensional monsters and Muppet-like characters that try to stop him. Like Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990), the film pays tongue-in-cheek homage to its roots while consistently delivering scares, laughs, tears, and family-unfriendly fun.

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Nobody really cares about boring films released decades ago. Certain films of the 20th century pride themselves in being different and detached from the nucleus of the Hollywood market, for all the self-congratulatory puff independent thought is worth.

In contrast, Trash Humpers is a relatively recent and poignant contribution to the postmodernist genre. Unlike the typical output of “mainstream” outsider filmmakers, Korine held nothing back in delivering a spectacular mess of a film that knows what it is and speaks to its core audience. This one is good because it’s exactly what it says on the tin.

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Love Streams is a semi-autobiographical documentary film about John Cassavetes drinking himself to death. Financed by the esteemed Cannon Films, Cassavetes was given free rein to do whatever the hell he wanted, and the result is one of the greatest independent films to ever come out of Los Angeles.

Works of postmodernism such as this were unusual in America before the ’90s, so the support of a studio accustomed to producing overcooked Hollywood schlock makes the flick doubly unusual.

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