Nick Johnston

6 days ago | vanyaland.com | Nick Johnston

If there was one movie that represented the “stiff upper lip” attitude that some industry folks had during the pandemic, it was Gina Prince-Bythewood’s The Old Guard. That feature — a Netflix Original that presumably everyone would have forgotten about had it been released alongside its expected competition — became positive proof that Streaming Was The Future. It looked like a summer blockbuster, quacked like a summer blockbuster, and who cared if you were watching it in your home?

1 week ago | vanyaland.com | Nick Johnston

It appears that, sadly, Ethan Coen is still down bad. After trying to steal Rose Glass’s lightning with Drive-Away Dolls last year (Love Lies Bleeding accepts no substitutes), Coen and his co-writer Tricia Cooke are back at the “lesbians in genre situations” motif they’d already strip-mined for HONEY DON’T! (hereafter stylized as in lower-case because that’s fucking annoying).

1 week ago | vanyaland.com | Nick Johnston

Venting time: this fall’s one-two punch of Stephen King adaptations are perhaps the most irritatingly similar movies scheduled near each other since… probably The Prestige and The Illusionist. But it’s even worse because of how much DNA they share. Aside from the fact that both are based on King books, they’re also each about televised competitions with life-or-death stakes in dystopian America, and, importantly, have movement-centric titles.

1 week ago | vanyaland.com | Nick Johnston

The first thing I noticed when I logged onto a press day with Sean Baker was the exquisite selection of posters he had on the walls behind him. The iconic one-sheet for Dracula Has Risen From the Grave and the impeccably designed poster for Fleshpot on 42nd Street (handsomely restored by Vinegar Syndrome only a few years ago) are the most prominent, but it’s the third one he draws my attention to. It’s for Anita: Swedish Nymphet, which he has a theory about.

1 week ago | vanyaland.com | Nick Johnston

Can you believe it’s been nearly twenty years since Spike Lee and Denzel Washington last worked together? Even crazier, can you believe that Highest 2 Lowest, their latest collaboration, is only the fifth time they’ve teamed up (If you’re counting at home, that’s Mo’ Better Blues, Malcolm X, He Got Game, and Inside Man)?