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Hello there, and welcome back to the disc Connected. I'm here with Michelle
Kisner, who is a writer, contributor on multiple physical media releases, and
also a local critic in her scene. Michelle, thanks for doing this all
right. Appreciate you asking me on it. It's a it's an honor.
Actually, I've watched other episodes of this because you have a lot of cool
people on here, so I was like, Wow, he's asking me.
Wow, I had no idea that. I mean, that's that's amazing to
hear. I mean, honestly, I can't even remember what clued me onto
in the first place. It might have just been Kat Ellener knowing who you
were and through it, it seems like her tendrils get into people and then
suddenly the network just grows and grows. Yeah. Yeah, she's like one
of my favorite people in the scene too, just like really just really nice
and down earth and like easy to talk to and willing to, you know,
lend out a helping hand for people that are like new into the scene
because it's kind of hard to get into this kind of like area because everybody's
very protective. Well because it's like kind of like I don't know, it's
like a little bit of like a gig economy too, And some people do
this as their entire job, so you know, they're all their income is
from doing these type of things, so you know, there's that kind of
dynamic going on. And I have a day job, so it's not as
economically important for me. I'm just doing this as more like I just enjoy
writing about films, not saying they don't either, but the money aspect isn't
in consideration for me, so I see why it's like that. But she's
great about getting new people into the scene that you know might like be overlooked.
So yeah, for certain people, it definitely can be a competitive arena
unfortunately. But either way, there's lots of ways that we've seen multiple new
people come out of the scene over the last handfull of years. And I've
appreciated all of your pieces I've been able to read so far. You've got
a couple coming out, so yeah, I absolutely wanted to have you on
one of the things that I first just want to ask, like, how
did you first get into film, because obviously you've got a pretty wide breadth
of knowledge on it. So you know, growing up, I'm like,
I'm forty three, so I'm like an elder millennial. I'm like the oldest
you can be be a millennial still. So I grew up in a small
town, had a little mom and pop rental shop, but mostly Blockbuster was
the main thing, you know, when you were I grew up in Idaho,
so it was like kind of like middle of nowhere. So Blockbuster was
the perfect you know, middle of nowhere places. That's where their bread and
butter was because they were the only game in town. But I just love
movies. My father actually was a huge movie buff he's passed away, but
he would watch every single movie that came out in the theater. He always
had like the newest whatever was out at the time, like the newest VHS
player. I remember he was always doing the thing where like you had the
two VCRs and he would like rent movies and then burn them onto the to
the other movies. So like we had a huge collection of those ep you
know, like vhs or five movies on each one that took forever to get
to the movie that you wanted to watch. He also loved horror, and
I from a very young age, was exposed to all types of hard movies.
Probably so I shouldn't have been, but it just, you know,
instilled in me this huge love of horror and cult films. Nice. That's
I mean, honestly, it's astonishingly close to the way I grew up.
I grew up in a very small town with mostly just Blockbuster and then another
tiny little mom and pop. But either way, like it's such a small
population, the only way at least in my town they could stay open was
mostly offering these super mainstream films, so I never I never got a lot
of the indie underground things until I was older and could seek them out myself.
So yeah, those small towns. Blockbuster was king for sure. But
I mean, you've got just the ones that you've written on so far.
It seems like we're gonna get into individual visual titles. But what was the
first one that you contributed to? Actually, the first one, I have
them like in a stack next my things. I could remember. The first
one I ever contributed to was Tangerine for Second Sight. And that was the
one. Yeah, that one right there, Cat that produced that one,
and she asked me to write for them. And I was very uttered because
I loved Tandry. I love that movie. And that was the first one,
you know, it was It was very stressful to me because I was
like, man, this is like my big chance. I got to really,
you know, write a good essay. So I was like just toiling
over this essay, just editing it, editing in it, and you know,
and she was very like open about like here's some things that could help.
You know. It was fantastic experience all the way around. And then
I don't know, it just was this crazy thing that they sent me my
cap you know, my contributors copy, and I was like this is like
a permanent, like you know, version of this movie that people will own
and my name will be in it, and oh, you know, it's
just like it's just a cool way I feel like to to contribute to this
medium I love so much, which is cinema, Like I can, I
would, you know, write about it. Let's extol the virtues of it.
Let's you know, open these movies up and expose them to everybody.
And I just after I did that first one, I was like, this
is where my passion lies. I adore Sean Baker. He is somebody that
I've been honored to have on the channel before. And when I first heard
that this was coming out, I pre ordered it day one. This is
like one of those dream releases. Never thought anybody would give this much respect
to Tangerine, and then your essay in this is astonishing for somebody that I
clearly had never heard of before this. It is such a great dive into
who Sean is on his sets from everything that I've heard, and really gives
a deep dive into what is to come from him because so much of his
stuff is you know, even diving, like candid camera stuff where there's real
people mixing with the actors, and not many people are doing that. And
the way that you write about it, it captured it perfectly, so I
can see why people wanted you to continue. Clearly, one thing that I
had to ask because you, like me, are not really attached to a
job film city. We're not, you know, in La or New York,
and it can feel quite different from everything I've been told. And I'd
like to hear from your perspective. Do you get any sense of how isolating
this industry can be, because that's one thing I think from the outside looking
in people can't really grasp until they've actually worked as part of it. Yeah.
So yeah. The area my region is the Detroit region, and I
love the city of Detroit. I don't live in Detroit. I live about
i'd say, like thirty minutes outside of it, but in the suburbs called
Metro Detroit. But I do go to Detroit all the time. I was
just in Detroit yesterday. I'm back. The thing is, when you're a
critic and a smaller city, you're oftentimes like the last that they think of,
so La and New York and those kind of big cities, they go
straight to them, and then we get kind of like whatever they want to
give us. For the most part, we get a lot of the big
Hollywood, big studio press screenings. Like I still, you know, work
as like a regular critic on top of being like the freelance essay writer type
thing. And it's just that, I guess, and it kind of made
me realize where my passion lied, because when you're a critic, especially in
the big cities, when you're in those big critic groups, there's a kind
of a little bit of expectation that you're help in Hollywood out and they repay
you by, Hey, you can come to this party and take a picture
with Tom Hanks or something like that. But like, that's not I don't.
Like I love actors and stuff, but that's not the part of the
film that Like, I just don't care about meeting famous people and all that
kind of stuff. You know. Half the time, it's like, don't
meet your heroes anyways. I would rather just know them as their characters,
right, I don't want to schmooze with them. I don't need a picture
with them. I don't need poll quotes all the time. Not to say
there's anything wrong with that, but it's just not my jam. I guess
I would rather write about a film a different type of way than just trying
to get on the movie poster or you know, be an influencer and have
them send me free stuff like It's that's kind of not the part of criticism
that I like, which is which is nice when you are in a smaller
region, it's, uh, you don't have to deal with that as much
because they're not sending Tom Cruise over to Detroit to you know, promote a
movie. Right, He's going to be an la. So you just get
the movies right, and you just get the press screenings, which is okay
by me. That's all I want. I just want the movies. I
don't want all the stuff around them. I'm kind of a private person a
little bit. I'm very introverted, So I don't like doing interviews with famous
people. I'd say no to those kind of things. I don't like doing
commentaries because I think I have a weird voice and I just get nervous and
I have at anxiety and stuff. I just want to write, you know,
write it down and you read it. That's my That's the thing I
like to do with with that. Do you have any fun or interesting story
so far, are people discovering your writing on any of these physical releases that
you've just been touched by and seen them respond to. You know, It's
kind of funny because sometimes, like I'm in a lot of you know,
film collecting groups because I also collect films, and sometimes I'll see somebody post
like that they enjoyed this a certain release that I worked on and they liked
the essay, and I'm like, oh, hey, that was me,
and they're like oh, you know, like yeah, they get a little
excited, you know, like I don't want to you know, a movie
celebrity or anything like that, but it's just nice to know that somebody read
what you wrote and enjoyed it and it touched them, you know. And
I have a pretty active Facebook page and I get a lot of feedback through
that, Like people will get the release and they'll DM me, you know,
and say, hey, I got this release and I read your essay.
It was great. I never thought about these certain aspects and or it's
a movie that they loved their whole life that they could never find and finally
it's like a four K, you know, crazy release and they're just like
wow, this movie I loved. I've never seen it like this before.
I've never seen it so Christine and give it so much care, and now
everybody's writing about it, and you know that's it's more like one on one
I get that type of feedback less so like getting you know, acknowledged in
a whiter sense, you know, yeah, which, yeah, it definitely
can make it seem sort of isolating. And sometimes just seeing you know,
paying attention to how people review some of these. Quite often the reviews for
the physical releases will be like, here's how the film looked, and these
are the special features. Nothing about the special features, So it's it's always
nice for people to pay extra close attention to those and actually write about what
they got out of those as well. Yeah, because I actually write reviews
sometimes too for movies in that way, and I always try to say something
about every single little piece that somebody contributed, even just to say hey,
I enjoyed it, you know, like I don't need, you know,
I don't need to like break it down in like a five paragraph thing about
a booklet, but I'll just say, hey, I read it, and
I enjoyed this take that you had on it and that's that. And I
enjoy when I read something else's review and they just give me a little nod,
like, hey, I read a review her essay and I liked it,
and I'm like, sweet, well, you mentioned some of these titles
getting a crazy four K release, and one of the big ones you've been
able to write on Isle from Vinegar Syndrome. This getting a VSU is still
wild to me. The fact that somebody took the time and energy and the
money, I mean, the fact that this takes so much work to make
a release like this, and you got to be a part of it.
And in your essay you're talking about how you saw it when you were so
young, and I just love stories like that. So I mean, how
do you feel about something that affected you when you were younger? Now you
know, three and a half decades later, you get to write and share
that passion with the world. I know. You know. When I got
an email asking me if I wanted to contribute to Daryl, I was like,
over the moon. I was like, because Daryl's one of those core
memory style movies for me where it's just this little aspect of it just stuck
in my brain forever and it was the whole position part where you know he's
playing it and he's going and he's going around and he's like crazy, get
at it. I don't know why that's stuck in my head. But the
funny thing about it is when I wrote that essay, I had so many
people contact me and say that exact thing was stuck in my head. And
some of them were like, I don't. I didn't. I thought I
made that up. I didn't think it was an actual movie. I thought
it was like a fever dream or I've been trying to find out what the
hell this movie was where I saw this kid playing a shame for so long,
and now I've figured it out, you know, like through that.
But it's it's just fantastic. Especially I love revisiting films where you know,
I saw him as a kid and I have this really strong memory about it,
and then I I rewatch it with a different eye, which is the
critical eye, you know, and I find most of the time they're richer
than I remember. There's so much stuff I missed as a child, so
much, you know, context and subtext and and all that kind of thing,
and they're just it opens the film up into a completely new film almost
to me. And that happened with Daryl because you know, I ain't seen
Darryl in a really long time, and that's why I jumped. I was
like, man, I would love to write about that and really, you
know, interrogate with myself why I had this memory of it. And when
we watched it, I was like, Wow, there's actually a lot of
cool stuff going on in Darryl. I mean, yeah, it's like,
you know, a cheesy eighties movie at the end of the day, it's
it's a little goofies for kids, you know, but there's a lot of
deeper themes going on in that film, you know that I never noticed as
a child. Well, one of the things that really jumped out about your
essays you write about autism a little bit and how the d D specifically is
a part of this and messing with the scientific side of things, and that
it is super personal to me for multiple reasons. I got two kids diagnosed
with autism, and then I originally my first job with the government was with
the DoD And knowing you know nowadays you and I are both federal employees,
how do you had how do you feel, you know, writing about something
that you're technically kind of a part of Yeah, you know, because so
I used to be in the military. I was in the Air Force for
ten years and I did air traff patrol then and then I got a military
and I worked for the Air National Guard and I still do air traffic control,
but as a civilian on the d D side. So you know,
I've seen like how military mine works from the inside, and I've also seen
how it works from the civilian side. So and you know, and I
don't want to and a lot of people will, you know, have issues
with you working for the federal government. And I get it because we the
federal government does some shady shit all time. So you know, I get
it. But you know, I got paid the bills. You know,
I got you know, I got to exists within capitalism. Maybe I could
do a different job, but it's the only job I know how to do,
to be honest. So it's like a really technical thing and we're in
high demand. So but it was just interesting to see, you know,
Darryl's the thing with Darryl is they're trying to make Daryl into a weapon when
he's just a child, and they don't understand why he is the way he
is when he's just being, he's just becoming human. And to become human
is to gain empathy, and to gain empathy is to not want to kill
anyone. So they they messed up, I guess with Daryl by making him
a child, because the way a child sees the world is just is just
through love and compassion. And I was just really drawn to the idea of
Darryl becoming more and more human as the film progressed, and the d D
losing their control over him because they can't control the human spirit. They can
only control money and items, and you know, and and you know.
It's also like the idea of like when you're working at a job and like
your body is like the physical labor, they own your body. Basically,
they own the labor that you are giving them for eight hours or whatever.
And when you're in the military or you work for the Fed, like it's
even more so. They own you. They own everything about you. You're
just a number to them, You're nothing to them, and they will replace
you immediately to get the mission done right. So I just thought it was
an interesting angle with Darryl that I had never Obviously i'd never thought of as
a kid because I was just a kid. But now that I'm an adult
that's gotten more knowledge, I was like, Wow, there's like a whole
other world going on in this film that I never really saw before, right
you. I mean, that's perfect segue because you had mentioned your Facebook page
is pretty active, and that is my only interaction with you so far before
this moment today is through your Facebook page and everything that you've written, everything,
all of your interactions with people. There's something about it that's so welcoming.
And there's a lot of people in the film community that keep the shit
out of everything and I hate it. And one thing I'd love to hear
your take on as somebody from a smaller town, how do you feel about
film criticism, the state overall of film criticism in twenty twenty four, Because
obviously you can view it as water down through the internet essentially, you can
view it as being hot take heavy, you can view it as people just
doing you know, clickbait headlines. There's so many different bad things that can
happen, but overall, film criticism seems to be richer than ever if you
find the right people. So I just love to hear what you think on
that. So one of the good things about film criticism now, I think
is that it's more diverse. There are more voices. Sometimes you'll hear older
film critics, like a lot older, like maybe like in the boomer kind
of generation, a little gen X there. I guess there's some dismay about
the idea that anyone can be a film critic. Now. I'm a perfect
example of this. I didn't go to college for a film I couldn't afford
it when we were poor when I was growing up, but I was able.
I literally when I started writing seriously, I wanted more knowledge. So
I just went online and looked at a film course and looked at the curriculum,
and I just bought those books and read them. Like I can't afford
college, but I can afford you know, secondhand books. And then you
go online. There's a huge resource of like you can look up any type
of subject and get like as much knowledge as you want for free. Essentially.
Yeah, so there's no gatekeeping now with like you have to have a
college degree or a journalism degree. Not to say that those aren't important,
because they are, but uh, there's you know, anybody can be a
film critic. You can start a blog, watch a film, write about
it, post bam, you got to review up and you're a film critic.
Are you could be the least knowledgeable film critic ever, but you're still
a film critic. You still have and I you know, you know,
you have a view on a film and you wrote it and you critiqued it.
And I think a lot of there's like a lot of the old guard
is I don't want to say, scared, nervous that they'll be you know,
replaced. And I can kind of and understand it because there are a
new there's a new type of critic and they're kind of mixed, you know,
influencers, and uh, there's a lot of you know, strife with
the influencers because it's sometimes it's hard to tell if they really like a movie
or if the studio is just paying them to say they like a movie,
or they're scared to say negative things about films because they don't want to lose
their sponsorships. So I understand the trepidation, but I also think it's overall
it's better that more people can be a part of this and not have to
go through like all this stuff to just you know, write about films.
Some people just have this, like as when I was growing up, I
just had to urge to write about stuff. I would read something and I
would want to write about it, and I never got rid of that urge,
and eventually it's into being a film critic. But I do think there's
a tendency for people to want to be the person with the hot take,
because negativity gets more attention in this that gets you more social currency. Right
now, for some reason, I do think there's a little bit of an
issue with media literacy. I think a lot of people, it might be
a younger person think only because they just haven't seen a lot of stuff.
Right. The more things you see, the more it opens up your vision
on things and more life experience you get. But a lot of people I
find are watching films and taking everything literally that happens in the film as what
the film is about, when obviously, yes, there are the literal events
that are happening on the surface level, but there's also themes and subtexts and
allegory. And I think maybe the proliferation of like Marvel films and stuff where
everything's very good bad, you know, black white, there's no gray area.
In these time type of films, people are having a little bit of
trouble, uh, you know, watching a movie that has, you know,
a protagonist that might not be a good person, or something that doesn't
have a redemption arc, or maybe some people maybe the villain is a mixture
of good and bad, you know. I think people are a struggle on
a little bit with that. And I also don't like where people say if
you like a movie, that makes you a bad person, right, Like,
like if you watch a movie that's a bad a bad person and you
like it, that you're somehow you know, saying it's okay to be a
bad person. Like, but you know that's fake, right that None of
that stuff's real. These are not real situations. So you can explore different
types of feelings, some of them even evil, bad, you know,
upset, scared, you know, you can explore a gamut of emotions through
a film that you wouldn't experience and realize that's the whole point of watching a
movie is to experience something outside of your normal you know, life. So
that's that's my thought. I overall think film criticism is going to be fine.
It's just going through a transitional phase, and you know, everybody gets
upset when stuff changes. So the media literacy is a great point. And
I think that even further than that deep seated, I think we're gonna start
seeing a problem with a just plain literacy problem. There's so many people that
will I've seen especially in like some of these I hate to go back to
social media, but like Facebook threads where people see either an article posted or
a review posted of a film and read the first paragraph, and first off,
not even truly read the first paragraph, but they're only responding to that
paragraph, but then like missed words in sentences and not actually understanding what was
being portrayed there. And I don't know how like we can recover from some
of that. It's going to take a long time. Yeah, I mean,
I mean there's just like there's a lot where people will share an article
and it's very obvious they only read the title of the article and that we
need the body of it. And there's a lot of Another thing I don't
like. Well now I'm just like ranting, but you know another thing I
don't like. It really grinds my gears is people that talk about movies they
haven't seen in a definitive sense. I cannot stand that. And I've had
so many times because I go to press screening so I see stuff early,
and people will legit argue with me about my view on a film, like
you haven't seen it, what do you what are you arguing with me about?
Like watch the movie first. Everybody's like there will be like all these
threads with people being pissed about a movie it's not even out. This happened
with Civil Wars so much. I was like, just can we just wait
for the gag dang movie to come out and let's all watch it, and
then watch once we've seen it with our eyeballs, we can discuss what happened
in the movie. Or Another thing I'll see is somebody will have not seen
a movie and they'll read somebody else's review and then they'll use that review to
argue with you, and you're like, you haven't seen it, I don't
know it. Just really it's one of my biggest, absolute, biggest pet
peeves. There's people who haven't seen a movie, like having a definitive opinion
on its quality or talking about what's happening in it with and they don't have
context. You know, well, and that happens with contemporary films all the
time. But as somebody that works in physical media every day, the amount
of people that do that for films that have been around for decades that they
clearly haven't seen almost feels worse. And it feels like, I don't know
if it's a generational thing, but I feel like we passed down this level
of gatekeeping where somebody gate keeps themselves and they're not allowed to admit that they
haven't seen a movie. Yeah, it's like, we're not gonna excoriate you
for not having seen something, just admit it. Yeah, I see.
I do see that a lot where people, you know, well, I
think some of it is because sometimes if you say you haven't seen something,
everybodys like, oh, you know, and I might. You know,
there's hundreds of thousands of movies, and you only live so long and I
worked, you know, eight hours a day every day, like you only
watch so much stuff, and sometimes I have holes and I'm one hundred percent
open. I'm like I all the time. Like last year, I was
like, watched Cliffhanger for the first time, and everybody was like, you
know, their heads were like I just never seen Cliffhanger. I don't know
what to tell you. Man, I never saw it. Now I've seen
it. Now I'm as cool as you. We're all cool now. You
know. It's not even that kind of a movie. I know. I
mean, I liked it, but it was like I just you know,
I'm I'm still a good person even though I didn't see Cliffhanger, right right.
Uh well, speaking of good people, not exactly. That was just
my attempt at a funny transition. Why don't you tell everybody about fatal termination
because I love that in what you've written about, this comes out of nowhere
compared to Tajerine and Darryl, and this is a fun piece. Yeah so
so uh errow era error four four four. I felt like I said to
me for US four force. Uh. They actually were interesting because this was
early on in my essay career and I like cold call them, you know,
with an email. I just send me an email with a bunch of
my work and I said, hey, I know you guys are up and
coming, just starting out. I would love to write essays for you.
And they were very open to it. They were super cool. They also
have a lot of women working on their stuff. I mean it's it's I
believe it's two men that run in. But they hire so many women to
write things, write things for them, do art design, like, they
hire a lot of women. And I was like, hey, and I
told them, I was like, you know, to my specialties is you
know, Hong Kong cinema and Japanese cinema. And so they said, well,
here's a list of what we have coming out. Which one you want
to write on? And one of them was Fatal Termination and the other one
was, uh it was a Funky Force, both the Funky Forest films.
Yeah, And I said, all right, you know, so, uh,
Failed Termination that movie was just wild. The thing with Failed Termination was
just the sheer audacity of everything that's going on in that movie. And it's
famous obviously because of the stunt involving them like literally hanging a child outside of
a moving car. Now, when you first watch it, it's edited very
well, it looks more dangerous, I think than it was. Not to
say you know that it wasn't reckless as fuck to do that, but when
you when you I rewatched that scene a couple of times and I realized they
had, like was it undercranked it so it looked like they were going slower
than it looks and then it made it look faster. But that kid is
obviously like scared out of her mind, she is. And I tried to
look up like about that kid. I couldn't really find anything. I'm like,
did she survive? Like do other stuff? Like I still traumatized.
I was really worried about her well being after that, like, just go
to therapy. It just it's just such a harb And a lot of Hong
Kong movies are like that though. They're just the wildest shit that wouldn't roll
now. But it's but it's great that they it got made so you get
to see it, you know, and it's just you don't see that kind
of recklessness and just out of pocket stuff, you know. And I really
enjoyed writing about that one. That was a fun one. It's a good
piece and one that explains just the the overall tones behind some of these choices
much more than people consider, I think when watching some of these films,
because yeah, that scenms wild, but no, really that scene is wild.
Think about what had to be like fifteen at least people had to sign
off on that, and the child's parents says, we're okay with it.
I don't know if they just gave them a bag of money or like,
she'll probably be okay. I don't you know. I know, you know.
And a lot of Hong Kong films are fun just because of the tonal
whip black you get from them, because every almost everyone I watch, it's
just it'll be like slapstick comedy and then like, uh, and then all
of a sudden, they'll just like graphically murder somebody and then they'll be like
essay scene and then it's back to the comedy, and then there's like people
slipping on banana peels, and then somebody's get stabbed in the throat three minutes
later, and it's like you're just like try to hold on and figure out
the buck's going off movie. And it's like I love them for that.
It's great. I do as well. And yeah, Funky Four's Workforce was
another release from Air four four four, and then uh, the other two.
I mean you got two coming out from Arrow that were just recently announced
too. You got new Witnesses, Yeah, Mute Witness and uh Mute Witness.
I absolutely loved writing on I was, Uh, just it's it's such
a you know, speaking of tone switching. That's another movie that that does
it. It's you know, it starts out like pretty gram, I would
say, and then it transitions into like a comedy of pretty much you know,
like and I was, you know, it's just a lot of people
aren't ready for that. But I think that's kind of what makes infamous.
I think it's that a little bit of that tone switching. And that one
I had fun writing about because I did a piece that was basically exploring mute
women in cinema. So I picked some films that I thought were interesting,
like older films that work up to like when Mute Witness came out. The
exploration of why you know, filmmakers are attracted to mute women, what it
means, you know, thematically in each film that I picked working up to
Mute Witness. So that was like a more fun, kind of like esoteric
style essay which I like to do. Sometimes sometimes I do those types and
sometimes I do a really pointed one that's like just directly about the film,
but sometimes I like to explore kind of around the atmosphere, the context or
other films I kind of play into this like over over reen like theme,
you know that the film is trying to convey. And then narc coming out
as the second HD release, opening it down on four K, that's a
pretty big deal. Yeah. And you know, I wouldn't say I.
I write about crime films a lot, So I felt like that one was
a really good challenge for me because I don't usually write about, you know,
mafia style films or crime films. It's just not that I don't like
them, it's just, you know, not my wheelhouse. And I was
like, wow, I would really enjoy stretching my legs with this one,
and and and write about it. And and Narcis is such a intense film
and it's filmed more art house than you would expect. And in rewatching that,
I discovered that I don't dislike early two thousand aesthetic as much as I
thought I did. And it's actually become nostalgic to me. I used to
like, not like the way they looked. I felt like they looked techy,
But upon revisiting it, I realized that it's a really specific style and
of stout editing, of color choice, and it's just and not gets like
such a. It's such a dark film, and it's more about two men
trying to come to terms with things they've done in the past and how it
affects their future and trying to atone for things, and that sometimes no matter
how hard you try, like you can never escape those feelings of regret,
you know. And and it has such a powerful ending. It was just
it's just such a good film, you know, and it deserves a really
nice release like that. And I was, you know, and I was
really happy to write about it. I loved exploring something that I usually don't,
you know. I'm stoked that both of these specifically are getting releases.
I feel like Mute Witness has been ripe for rediscovery for quite some time,
and now we got this release coming out from Arrow. It just dropped on
Shutter and now finally people are talking about it. I'm like, yes,
finally you can understand what we've all been talking about. This movie is amazing
you. Clearly by looking behind, you love physical media like a lot of
us. What kind of stuff do you collect or are you into pretty much
all types of films or what do you what are you buying? Yes,
it's kind of like a running joke on my Facebook that I have really eclectic
tastes because I will I post my hauls every once in a while as I
collect them over the month or so, and it's always like it'll be like
a vintage seventies porn, a Disney movie, and then it will be like,
you know, a nineties movie, and then an award winning documentary,
and then like some like dumpster trash I found at the thrift store that's like
nobody's ever heard of. I just I'm blind by a lot of movies too,
And you think that, you know, I would come up across a
lot of stuff I don't like, but I don't. Strangely, I would.
I can count on one hand the amount of times I've blind by the
film and I was like, I hated it. Like it's just I feel
like it's fun. I don't know. I'll just go through my collection and
then just pick out a random movie I haven't seen and watch I'm like,
oh wow, it was amazing. And I when my boyfriend comes over,
we have movie night, and another little thing that people like on my Facebook
page, I call it my boyfriend picks a movie night because he'll just go
and my boyfriend is not a film buff. He likes films, but he's
not like into it like I am at all. So he just picks movies
like the cover looks cool, you know, stuff like that, and then
and I find it it's a cool way to like explore my collection through the
eyes of somebody else, the way they would choose a film. And I
love watching them go through and he'll hold it up, you know. And
a couple one time it was a sallow and I've seen Salo. He had
a message and he's like, Oh, what's this. It's like some kind
of art house film. I was like, yeah, yeah, let's watch
it. And he's just like the whole movie, right, And it's just
fun to like see him expose himself to things like that, and it's you
know, it's it's fun. I only I don't really collect a whole lot
of formats, like you know, I don't. I have some vhs and
I have a couple of laser discs, but it's almost pretty much DVD,
Blu Ray, and four K. And I'm not a big double dipper.
If I have something on Blu Ray, I won't upgrade it to four K.
I only upgrade DVDs. I have to the higher because it's just it's
already too much money and I just have to give myself some kind of like
boundary. So I so broke. You know. Uh, what are what
are some of the releases of the last couple of years that have blown you
away? Man? Recently? I really liked the four K of Conan that
came out through uh Arrow, That was an absolutely beautiful release. I bought
that, Uh the Donna Dead release? Who did? Who did that second
site? Yeah? That big old monster collection. I ate that collection up.
It was cool because it had versions of don Dad never really seen too.
Like there was like what they call it the library version or whatever.
Yep, Uh, I want it and it was absolutely pristine. Uh like
transfer, Man, that's the best I've ever seen that movie. Look the
I think it was with a second site that came up with that big ass
drive Yea. I bought that. I absolutely love that set. That set
was cool because uh Diaboli DVD sometimes they sell like dinged you know, copy,
so I got like some money off of it. And the ding was
literally this tiny like little chip in the corner. But you know, I
collectors like, oh I don't want it. My question. I'm like,
send me all the dentist ship, Like, even if it's a little ripped
or whatever. I'll I'll just throw that slip cover away. I'll buy all
that dent and stuff. I love that release. The four K for show
Girls from Vinegar Syndrome. Love that release. Uh, that's God. That
movie is just amazing to me. It's just the thing that it would just
get this giant release like that, right, you know, but that's the
fun of We're like in the golden age of collecting in my opinion, right
now, what else did I like? Oh? I really liked Vinegar Syndromes.
Freeway release. That's a really underrated movie. I feel like I feel
like people used to talk about it a lot when it came out, and
then like just you just never heard about it. And that was funny.
That was one of the movies my boyfriend picked for Boyfriend Picks movie night,
and he was blown away. He loved it. He was like, what
the hell is this? I was like a Freeway. So I enjoyed watching
him, you know, give his mind blown by that. That's a few
that I've liked recently. Well. On the on the opposite end of the
spectrum. As a critic, you're watching mostly contemporary films, So what about
on that front, what are a couple that have made you really excited?
Then? And then following that up, what do you think is like the
I don't know the best way to say this, but like, where do
you think movies are currently headed? Because obviously we go through pihs and lows
of different trends, we go through different types of movies being made, and
we were very prudish for a while, and one of the exciting things right
now is where it seems like for a little bit we're open to talking about
more taboo subjects. Yeah, so you know, the past couple of years
were weird, right because we had COVID. So you know, when COVID
hit twenty twenty, that was the weirdest year for movies ever, and it
was actually really good for movies that probably wouldn't have got a spotlight normally because
the big studios were holding their stuff back because they wanted to make sure people
had butts and theaters to see them. Right, So there's a lot of
low key stuff coming out. I feel like there's a lot of So the
Marvel movies are kind of like petering out right. You know. I feel
like in the general the superhero genre is kind of like cresting downward slope.
Yeah, so now we're seeing them trying to replicate that with other franchises.
Right, So now we have the legendary Godzilla movies, which I'm famous for
not liking, and I didn't like Gazila Versus Kong either, But we also
have stuff like Dune. Like Dune isn't something I would really think of as
like a tent pole big summer really, dude, you know, it's more
like this, you know, philosophical, kind of like nerdy sci fi thing,
right, but they kind of have to market things. Like it's all
big franchise stuff. It seems like there's a lot of remakes coming out,
reimaginings. That's even kind of hit video games too. There's a lot of
remasters. But I feel like maybe it's like probably a little cheaper I guess
to remake something or remaster something then to create something new. And also,
you know, it's hard to get something new out there and people go see
it because theaters are so expensive. People want to be careful with their money,
so they'll go see something they know they'll like, right, because somebody
wants to spend fifteen dollars and hate whatever you're watching for two hours, right,
so they're not going to take a chance on something that they might not
like. I go see pretty much everything in the theater, so you know,
I see stuff I don't like. I like, I have that like
AMC plus thing or whatever. So it's it's actually it's you know, if
you want to watch movies a lot, I'm not like sponsored by them or
anything. I just I'm just cheap. So and you can, like,
you know, see a lot of movies for a little bit of money.
But people that don't have that, you know, and especially people that have
kids or you know, partners. It could cost you like a hundred bucks
to go to movies, and you go, you spend a hundred bucks,
and everybody's like, oh boo, it sucked, right, you know,
I don't want that, So they have that to deal with. I've noticed
also that they're re releasing a lot of older films in theaters, which actually
is cool because there's some movies I never saw theatrically that I get a chance
to now, So that's cool. But I don't think like movies are dying.
I feel like, you know, a lot of people are saying,
you know, cinema's dead all that. A lot of people that say that.
If you ask them how many new movies they seen this year, it's
not a lot. Right. You have to look for those movies. You
have to search, you have to put the effort in to see the good
stuff. And there's still good stuff being made. There's still weird shit coming
out. I just watched Sasquatch Sunset yesterday, who's fucking weird. It's about
for a sasquatch and like you're just watching them live their lives. It's like
sasquatch vibes and nobody talks. They just grunt the whole movie. There's no
dialogue, right, that's weird. You know. That's getting a theatrical release.
Though. I saw a movie called Hundreds of Beavers earlier this year,
and it's weird. It's like a silent film, you know, with people
in beaver suits and at me cartoon stuff. It's weird. Nobody really talks
that either, you know. But if you go, if you look for
this stuff, there's really interesting artistic, creative stuff being made. But you
gotta look for it. You can't just write off all modern movies are bad
if you don't put the effort into watching them, I guess is what I'm
trying to say. Well, and people seem to react to the I don't
know that probably thirty five movies that gets marketed to them very specifically throughout the
year. Every year, there's more than like three hundred fairly like not just
indy like shot on an iPhone in somebody's backyard, but three hundred well thought
out, scripted with the crew type of films coming out at least every single
year. It's hard to keep up with for anybody. But if you're just
gonna write everything off because of those thirty movies that got marketed towards you,
you're probably the one with the hot take there. Yeah, you know,
I get it because everybody has limited time, But you know, right,
and I'm in a little bit of a privileged position because I get press screeners
and stuff, so I see things early. I see things people probably normally
wouldn't. And there's other people that do a lot of film festival type stuff,
which I don't do as much because my job it's hard for me to
get time, right, But they see even more stuff. Sometimes those things
don't even get picked up by distributors. They just it's just a movie and
ether right, it's just in the cloud until somebody picks it up. So
there's a lot of stuff out there, And I just wish which people would
spend more time, you know, take a chance every once in a while,
you know, and see something that you think you wouldn't like, and
then maybe you might exprise yourself, you know, And I get you know,
no everybody has fifteen bucks to throw, you know, throw in a
garbage if they don't like it. But I feel like, even when I
see movies I don't like, I learned something I learned about, Like why
don't I like it? I like to really, you know, deconstruct what
about it I didn't like, you know, and so you still learn a
little something from it even if you hated it. Well, that's maybe probably
the best way I can end this is we we talked earlier about, you
know, so many people are film critics nowadays and not being able to go
to film school, Like you had said, how did you learn to to
not? What's the best way to do this? Like there is a very
specific way to criticize film that isn't just I like it or don't like it?
Right, And it is a talent. It is something that you can
learn. It is something that can be taught. It is something that people
have learned in school. It is something that people I have learned through varying
types of degrees. But in all reality, how did they specifically? Like
you can go on YouTube and learn a lot of this, So how did
how did you go about it? How did you learn specifically the critical language?
Yeah, I honestly, I literally just bought books about it. I
bought books about literary theory, critical theory. How there's whole books about how
to write film reviews, Like literally, there's just a whole book about how
to construct There's a smaller book that's literally just how do you construct your your
film review? Like what do you like? The literal? Grammatic in format?
And I read those. I just any kind of critic I loved.
I just ate their stuff up. You know, I read as much as
I could. And honestly, the best thing I could tell people that are
trying to break in the film criticism is you need to read. I'm sorry,
but you got it. You just go online and type in top ten
books about film criticism or you know, literary theory, and just like buy
those books you used, which I did. It's way cheaper. You can
just go on Amazon and buy or if you don't like Amazon because they're like
a corporation and they're evil, you can go to your local bookstore, right,
your small bookstore, your use bookstore, and they always have like a
film section, and you can go on there and just buy books about films
and read them. That's all I did, was honestly, just read the
stuff and then practice writing right right, right, right right. I write
every single day, even if it's just a little bit, you know,
And I've been a critic, I would say, a professional critic for like
ten years, and I'll read reviews I wrote ten years ago and I think
they're awful. But that's how you learn you're not. You can't be good
at something unless you're bad at it first, right, And it's all practice,
and you can learn how to write better and have somebody who you respect
as a writer if they have the time, Hey, can you take a
look at my review and tell me what you think of it? And don't
get upset when people criticize your stuff. I had people you know, when
I first start out writing, they were brutal about how my writing style was,
and it blow out your ego. But you need it. You need
that like brutality to make yourself better. You build yourself back better. Right,
That's a good point. One thing you brought up there that I would
hate to just let go by, you know, talking about being voracious readers
of critics that you like who are something inspired you. Well, you got
Roger Ebert, and you know, people like to disparage him, I think,
but he was like the critics critic. He watched everything he had.
And it's funny because, like one of my favorite genres is horror, and
he was pretty famously not into horror movies and he would you know, write
some films that are considered horror classics. He like pooped on. Right.
So I like Walter chaw is a contemporary one. I like he's incredibly articulate,
very smart. I love the way that he he pulls from history right
to like contextualize films. Actually, I saw Southern Comfort that they just put
out and he did a commentary on it. It was fantastic, absolutely riveting
commentary. He's another one I like. I like Cat's work a lot too.
She writes, I liked her takes on sex and women and feminism and
how all these things kind of like merge together because it's it's hard to find
women writing about sex. I find for some reason, probably because there's a
negative connotation when any type of woman tries to own sexuality or talk about sex,
it gets like perverted or people look down on him because oh, women
shouldn't talk about those things. And I love that she's very open about those
type of things. Yeah, those dropped us off the top of my head.
Some critics. I really enjoy Walter Shaw. I was gonna throw out
too for anybody that's listening if you are liking his stuff. Not only has
he done a couple for vinegar syndrome, now I think he's doing all kinds
of stuff for deaf Crocodile. He's been on like a handful of their releases
because Craig's a big fan of Walt. Yeah. Kat is a good pool.
She is. There's so many things you can say about Kat. She's
helped a lot of people, She's touched so many different releases. She's been
prolific in multiple venues at this point, so it's really easy to have her
name just come up continuously, and I mean, honestly, it seems like
you're taking some steps to be there yourself. I've appreciated your work, and
I hope to see hell of a lot more of it over the next couple
of years. I appreciate it. I appreciate you having me on too,
happily. If anybody wants to follow Michelle, have all the links for everything
in the description below and just yeah, thanks for hanging out and hope we
can talk again, all right, see it? Thank you, Thank you
for listening to the Disconnected podcast. There's one big thing that you could do
to help the show, and that is to leave a rating and review on
the podcast service of your choice. Thank you. I am Adam Lundy,
co host of They Live by Film, a podcast dedicated to bringing you film
discussion and interviews from around the world. Every week, my co hosts Chris
Haskell, Zach Bryant, and I discuss a wide range of films, from
monumental classics like Vertigo and the Rules of the Game to the craziest schlockiest movies
ever made like Deathbed and everything in between. We are also a looking enough
to have sat down with some of the biggest players in the boutique Blu ray
and film restoration game. If this is your thing, then come hang out
with us every Thursday at seven pm Eastern wherever you normally stream your podcasts,
and now as part of the Someone's Favorite Productions podcast network