A Few Days with Me (1988)

In basic storytelling, there is an idea called “save the cat.”  It states that a protagonist should do something heroic in the film to help the audience get behind her and her cause.  For example, saving a cat from being stuck in a tree.  Now, it’s true that not every protagonist needs to save a cat, strictly speaking.  The problem with Clayface is that the main character, Matt Hagen (played by Tom Rhys Harries), not only metaphorically fails to save a cat, he instead kidnaps that cat, holds it for ransom, burns it, and throws its ashes into a dumpster after pocketing its owner’s money. 

That doesn’t actually happen in the film, but, point being, Clayface has a main character who is absolutely awful.  He is a mass murderer, without any justification, who likes to sexually pursue other people’s partners.  This means that we are without a strong protagonist most of the runtime.  There are a couple characters who could serve as the film’s moral center, most notably Dr. Caitlyn Corr (played by Naomi Ackie), but they don’t have enough screentime or make enough pivotal decisions. 

Horror films almost always need a strong protagonist, because in order to be scared of the antagonist, we need to be concerned for somebody’s well-being.  Not only does Clayface not capitalize on the potential for a strong protagonist, it also features an incredibly weak and generic antagonist.  David Dencik plays Markos Szabo, a mob boss that feels less like he belongs in a 2026 feature film and more like he belongs in a 1940s Looney Tunes cartoon.  Perhaps that works with Clayface being a character from Batman, a noir comic series from the early twentieth century, but that feels less like a reason and more like an excuse. 

I think 2025 was a watershed moment in recent cinematic history.

The year was littered with releases that spoke to many Americans from different backgrounds. While I think a movie like "Sinners" spoke hard truths about race relations in our current political climate against the horrors of the Jim Crow South, I think another movie mirrored our society's current strife.

Like "Sinners," "One Battle After Another" mirrored our contentious societal problems. While "Sinners" spoke to the Black experience in America, "One Battle After Another" explored the deep issues plaguing the country's immigration scene. Both films accomplish their goals in a way only movies can - through constant entertainment.

"One Battle After Another" may come across as a rowdy stoner comedy spliced with action, but the movie expresses so much more, making it one of the best movies and most diverse of the decade. Leonardo DiCaprio is the name brand of this movie, along with veterans like Sean Penn and Benicio Del Toro, but at its core, newcomer Chase Infiniti was the heart, soul, and future of this world.

Christopher Nolan is the Stephen Spielberg of the twenty-first century.  We all know this, yet the trailers for The Odyssey received a startling amount of push-back for someone who one would think had earned the trust of audiences.  Most of this push-back was openly resentful of the casting of ethnic minorities in a movie that takes place in ancient Greece – despite the reality that actual ancient Greeks probably had darker skin, and ancient Greek society had plenty of people from Africa and the Middle East.  In fact, the cast of the end-product is much whiter than the society in which this takes place.  The truth is that this online push-back came from an immature sense of entitlement, specifically entitlement to call the shots and design the film as one imagines it.  But, just like Odysseus in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, we have to learn to give up our urge to have control before we fall into a sinking ship. 

“Better than the book” is something that is rarely uttered about movies.  This, especially for a text as immortal as Homer’s Odyssey.  Perhaps “better” is not quite the right word, but at the very least, it is certainly “updated” for modern sensibilities while respecting the source material.  Ancient Greek stories often prioritized masculinity as a virtue, and more contemporary virtues like mercy and compassion didn’t feature as often as they do today.  There is nothing wrong with masculinity when it’s not toxic, but modern audiences will appreciate that this version of Odysseus can be vulnerable while also heroic, having emotional responses to the horrors he is witnessing and experiencing personal growth as a result.  Odysseus’ character arc in this story is extremely compelling and is the highlight of what is otherwise a fantastic film. 

Can we stop this? Can we stop with the cliches and tropes around demons? Spoiler warning (feel free to skip to the next paragraph), but I’m sick and tired of movies where a demon with no actual motive other than “he’s a demon” does a bunch of spooky stuff that doesn’t make any sense and then eventually the main heroes find the secret MacGuffin and barely win and everything’s back to normal. Sorry to “ruin” the ending, but if you’ve seen any demon possession movie ever, you know how this one ends already.

I miss slasher villains. Characters like Freddy Krueger, Leatherface, Chucky, and especially Jason Voorhees.  They weren’t exactly Shakespearean, and certainly those movies had problematic portrayals of women, but their antagonists at least had unique personalities and backstories.  People remember those characters way more than today’s throw-away demons.  What I really miss is classic movie monsters, from Frankenstein to Wolf Man to Godzilla to King Kong to even Tarantula.  Those characters, usually without speaking, had complex characterizations that asked us to question societal dynamics and conduct introspection.  You get nothing of the sort in Passenger.