Alden Ehrenreich | First Impressions

One of the most hotly-anticipated horror films in recent memory, Weapons begins with seventeen third-grade children in a Pennsylvania town mysteriously waking up at 2:17am one Wednesday and running from their homes into the darkness. The shocking, unexplained disappearance and imagery of an empty classroom alone suggest an allegory of school shootings, and we ask what else can be read into the film, and discuss the depth with which it handles its themes. We have our issues with Weapons but enjoy it very much all the same, and find a lot to like. It’s probably just a little overpraised.

Two weeks later, with the film still on his mind, Mike opens up further discussion and proposes that maybe there’s more to it than he gave it credit for – or that you have to be American to properly get it.

Listen on the players below, Apple Podcasts, Audible, Spotify, or YouTube Music.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

I hem, haw and get all the actors’ names wrong. Mike is there to pick up the pieces and make lucid comments. We find much to mull over in Solo, which José finds the best Star Wars film since The Empire Strikes Back and Mike finds overlong and depressingly dull. Our discussions take in the merits and flaws of the film’s visual design, its relationship to the saga’s history and fans, Ron Howard’s earnestness, the way the film builds a lawless world to develop and reconfigure Han Solo, and more. Is it a textured film with interesting rounded characters played by good actors or is is dull and unstructured? Two very different points of view on the film.