ISSUE #112
BEAM FROM THE BOOTH | GRAND RAPIDS FILM SOCIETY
[EDITED BY: SPENCER EVERHART & GRIFFIN SHERIDAN]
Welcome back to BEAM FROM THE BOOTH, the official newsletter of the GRAND RAPIDS FILM SOCIETY!
TONIGHT (9/15) at 8:00pm, don’t miss the kick-off to our CLIQUE FLIX series with 1988’s HEATHERS.
This special series was the brainchild of our own Breana Malloy, so it’s only fitting that she tell you a bit more about it.
Plus, we’re thrilled to have local film critic Joshua Polanski make his Beam debut with a report from TIFF 2025.
Enjoy!
A CLIQUE FLIX FOREWORD
[BY: BREANA MALLOY]
This series, at first glance, may scream “cult classic/campy movies,” but it delves deeper than that. These films explore hard-hitting themes focusing on the shift from adolescence to adulthood, suicide, depression, conformity vs individuality, betrayal, etc. — while showcasing a cultural shift in a niche of storytelling. We are screening three American “teen films” from different decades that show the evolution of the teen film genre. Before the first film in the series, Heathers (1988), there were the teen films of the 1970s (Grease, American Graffiti, Meatballs) and early 1980s (any John Hughes movie) that focused more on the comedy and/or drama genres. At the beginning of this era, in the early ‘70s, horror films began to gain more popularity. So by the time the late 1980s rolled around, horror started to influence other forms of filmmaking.
Which leads us to our series: Heathers and Jawbreaker (1999) were a turning point — and the inspiration — for a new era of teen movies that utilize dark comedy. Dan Stein, who created Jawbreaker, was actually inspired by Brian De Palma’s high school horror Carrie (1976) and Heathers itself, taking an even darker turn with his teen-filled black comedy. As our series moves into the 2000s, with Ghost World (2001), you can start to see the effect of the 90s grunge era in these teen dark comedy films as well as the influence of more mainstream coming-of-age films (Clueless, Dazed and Confused, 10 Things I Hate About You). This led to the style of teen films we know from the early 2000s/2010s (Lady Bird, Juno, Submarine), which arguably started with Ghost World. Since then, teen films have continued to evolve and adapt. A great example is Bottoms: it displays many characteristics of all three films in our series while also highlighting a new deviation in American teen cinema.
With all of this said, the series is an examination of the teen film and its primary genres. It’s a fascinating exploration of the ways in which film is influenced and how it changes with society.
NOTES FROM THE 2025 TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
[BY: JOSHUA POLANSKI]
My preference at film festivals is always for the obscure, the non-English, the experimental. It may feel novel or cool to see the big titles with the biggest stars before their release, but I know I will have another opportunity to catch titles like Hamnet, The Testament of Ann Lee, and Eleanor the Great on the big screen. I’d much rather spend my time seeing films that I may never have a chance to see on a big screen (or even a small one!) again.
That’s why I spent my time at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival writing about movies like Aki, the mostly silent Anishinaabe documentary; Magellan, the latest masterpiece from slow cinema’s dearest Lav Diaz; and Karmadonna, a gore-feast from the obscene mind behind A Serbian Film.
TIFF is not known for the innovative or edgy. It’s one of only two festivals labeled as “non-competitive” by the International Federation of Film Producers Associations (FIAPF), and Toronto proudly calls itself an audience festival. The pre-show advertisements reflected this with various organic call-and-responses and audience flattery with a cheeky commercial making fun of horror movie tropes.
As a critic, I usually need to see at least a few of the better-known titles simply for financial reasons. They are way easier to get paid to write about for obvious reasons and editors often will make assignments beyond your personal tastes and interests. TIFF’s heavy popular favoritism also makes this inescapable.
The 50th iteration of the fest had an unmistakable political overtone. Some of this was the timing with sadly deteriorating American-Canadian relations, the Charlie Kirk assassination, and the anniversary of 9/11. Every screening began with a land acknowledgement short video narrated by a First Nations filmmaker. An official volunteer who attended one of the public screenings I attended wore a pin in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza prominently on his shirt. Many films I saw were also political in substance, theme, and/or style: the world premiere of Palestine 36, a film that dares to imagine Ukraine after the war, and the dictatorship blueprint The Wizard of the Kremlin to name just a few of them.
I saw 24 films at TIFF 2025 in 16 different languages over the final seven days of the festival. My multi-outlet coverage of the 50th anniversary of the festival can be found (along with the rest of my writing) on my website.
Sacrifice
Romain Gavras, finding new levels of fame after the sensation of Athena and his (former) romance with Dua Lipa, tries to follow in the footsteps of his father, Costa-Gavras, with commercially appealing anti-status filmmaking only this time he has the advantage of working with a cast of bigger names and bigger bags of cash.
The richest and fanciest people on earth gather for an exorbitant (and wasteful) charity event in a mine in Greece when a group of Nordic eco-terrorists or “Green ISIS,” led by Joan (Anya Taylor-Joy), interrupts the symbolic event with assault rifles and stories about volcanic sacrificial activities. Hollywood’s lamest of lame ducks, a washed-up and cancelled action star named Mike Tyler (Chris Evans), is their chosen “hero” in a plot that has way too much meta-commentary to be interesting as an environmental critique.
The black comedy only works when it satirizes the celebrity gala life. The kitsch and myopic-celebutante perspective feels like the mandatory sophomore album about navigating fame and fortune following a world-crushing debut. One can even imagine Sacrifice as a response to the exorbitant life of indulgence Gavras may have stepped into with his notoriously always-vacationing ex, though the lifestyle is, of course, not exclusively a Lipa trad.
The comedy quickly becomes insufferable when the terrorists take the hostages away from the salt mine and trek to the volcano. The myth they tell of a princess, a king, and a hero—one hostage for each—loses itself in a duplicitous metaphor for filmmaking. The technical ambition of Athena, which used an impressive oner and a non-stop moving camera to replicate the turmoil of urban war, is aborted for a Hollywood house style that works ironically when imitating the glitz and glam that fabricate these stars in the first place.
Unlike the best political films, Sacrifice ironically finds itself on the wrong side of the status quo. The eco-terrorists end up being, well, crazy terrorists. No one is likable and certainly not admirable. They co-opted the Black Lives Matter slogan “No Justice! No Peace!” to despicable effect and the “sacrifices” are personal and individual rather than collective and social, implicitly echoing the lies of venture capitalists that “we” are the ones who need to change our lives to save the climate rather than their companies.
A Useful Ghost
A Useful Ghost from Thai director Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke was fully unknown to me. I went to my screening not even knowing its title, that the director would be present, or anything about its genre. Turns out that A Useful Ghost is about lost souls inhabiting factory machinery and consumer products to tie unresolved threads of love, grief, and revenge. One spirit, Nat (Davika Hoorne), possesses a vacuum cleaner to look after her widower, an affable and self-described “academic ladyboy” March (Witsarut Himmarat). The ghost visual effects couldn’t be simpler, instilling the film with an affectionate arts-and-crafts personality. Those left behind sometimes perceive the ghosts as people and these people, in a clever design choice, always have funky and unnatural hair colors. Nat’s possession of a vacuum—a symbol of “traditional” domestic gender roles—projects her caregiving intentions, although Boonbunchachoke chooses to simply replicate rather than interrogate these roles.
Nat also uses her vacuum nozzle to suck on his nipple. Family, co-workers, and complete strangers show a propensity to awkwardly interrupt the “intimacy” scenes between March and ghost-Nat. Their interruptions reiterate the interdependency of city life and bring the community focus—something interrupted by factory life, where workers die and become ghosts—back in an amusing though ultimately underdeveloped manner.
Boonbunchachoke’s feature debut is bizarre, at times stomach-pinching hilarious, and always uncomfortable. It’s also unlike anything I’ve ever seen. And, for better or worse, that’s the kind of film I hope to see at festivals like this.
Project Y
A Thelma & Louise story set in Seoul’s Gangnam district, Project Y is the best new Korean film I’ve seen so far this year.
Real-life friends Han So-hee (Gyeongseong Creature) and Jeon Jong-seo (Burning) play two sisters down on their luck and left with no other means than robbing a really bad man out of really dirty money. Their chemistry comes naturally and so does their action. Neither Mi-sun (Han) nor Do-kyung (Jeon) spend much more time getting beaten up than they do beating people up. They are also always smoking, as is everyone else in the film for that matter, and it has the double effect of making them appear cool and troubled, perhaps even poor. The incredulous amounts of burning cancer sticks they smoke visually connect them to poverty and life on the edge, a creative choice that adds more than an accent of empathy to their new gangster lifestyles.
The women-centric project doesn’t stay clear of gender politics. A sizable chunk of Project Y runs the gamut in sleazy sex worker establishments run by awful men. The sisters work adjacent to the industry and never do sex work themselves. With onscreen skin and eroticism heavily weighed to one side, the camera struggles to avoid the dreaded male gaze. The violence against women balances out with the violence women impose on men and women alike.
Project Y also has a dirty streak for a mainstream film if you look closely: sexy masks, lip biting, a close-up of a woman’s spit dropping to the floor, oral fixations, and even implied cucking. Nothing is ever too explicit and some of these actions are depicted without immediate sexual energy, but, in sum, they amount to a comparatively kinky film for mainstream audiences. It’s refreshing to see a national industry like South Korea’s subtly moving more toward subversion and maverick storytelling rather than running away from it like ours.
UPCOMING EVENTS
HEATHERS (Lehmann, 1988)
[CLIQUE FLIX]
WHEN: Monday, September 15th, 8:00pm
WHERE: The Wealthy Theatre
JAWBREAKER (Stein, 1999)
[CLIQUE FLIX]
WHEN: Monday, September 22nd, 8:00pm
WHERE: The Wealthy Theatre
GHOST WORLD (Zwigoff, 2001)
[CLIQUE FLIX]
WHEN: Monday, September 29th, 8:00pm
WHERE: The Wealthy Theatre
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Until then, friends...
