Society to Advocate for the Return of Intermissions in Movies
January 13, 2025 8:25 AM   Subscribe

FANFARE THIS WEEK... New movies: everyone's Criterion Closet buddy Pamela Anderson stuns in The Last Showgirl; "Holocaust tours, with lunch" in A Real Pain; a Hungarian-born architect immigrates to the US in bladder-busting 215 minute epic The Brutalist; running, quips in hit sequel Sonic the Hedgehog 3; a biopic of UK pop star Robbie Williams with a CGI chimp in the title role in Better Man; Sean Wang's critically acclaimed coming-of-age dramedy Dìdi; and dead-eyed Philomena Cunk asks the worst possible questions in Cunk on Life. And, in TV: Star Wars spinoff Skeleton Crew; post-apocalypse drama/mystery Silo; the serial-killer-in-his-youth prequel series Dexter: Original Sin; Netflix's buzzy new western American Primeval; post-COVID ER dramaThe Pitt; and the highly anticipated Abbott Elementary/It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia crossover.

Recently released movies Other Current Movies in Theaters, with Previous Threads Recent New Releases to Streaming with Previous Threads New Movies That Do Not Yet Have a Post
Maybe you'd like to add a post and share your thoughts? Older releases, new to FanFare:
  • Womb - Lemkin calls this "Ingmar Bergman meets Ted Chiang"
  • The Quatermass Xperiment - The 1955 Hammer Films sci-fi classic from writer Nigel Kneale.
  • The Secret Life of Walter Mitty - Ben Stiller stars in and directs this 2013 adaptation of the famous James Thurber story, previously a film in 1947 starring Danny Kaye.
  • Freaked - Alex Winter stars in and co-directs this comedy about a mutant freak farm which infinitewindow says did not age well.
  • Kamome Diner - Dramedy about a Japanese woman opening a rice ball restaurant in Helsinki.
  • La Cage aux Folles - A gay couple tries to present well in front of their son's conservative prospective in-laws. The original French film later remade as The Birdcage.
  • Dallas Buyers Club - Award-winning and critically acclaimed (at the time) drama about people with HIV/AIDS struggling to get meds makes a lot of choices that wouldn't wash in 2025.
  • The Major and the Minor - Billy Wilder romcom about a young woman who tires to save a little money by purchasing a child's priced train ticket, then finds her ruse complicated by a handsome military instructor.
  • Cycles South - "Ostensibly a documentary" 2N222 tells us, about three young men who go on a motorcycle journey in the 1970s.
  • Of Time and the City - A filmmaker looks at the history and transformation of his birthplace, Liverpool, England.
  • London Has Fallen - Is Gerard Butler gonna have to punch a motherfucker again in this action/political thriller/sequel? Spoiler: he is.
  • 1922 - A rancher conspires to murder his wife for financial gain and convinces his teenage son to participate in this Stephen King adaptation.
  • Gods of Egypt - Hollywood tried hard to sell you this fantasy epic about Egyptian gods form the director of the original version of The Crow but you've already forgotten it, haven't you?
  • Gigi - Classic 1958 romantic musical from director Vincente Minnelli.
  • The VelociPastor - Super-low-budget horror comedy about a pastor ho [because of reasons] becomes a velociraptor when angry.
  • Singles - Early 1990's Cameron Crowe hit is a time capsule of grunge, romcom tropes, beloved for its soundtrack.
  • Barfly - I don't know if you realize this, but Bukowski drank a lot.
  • AnarchyTV - low budget comedy about a young public-access TV team who hijack the station and begin broadcasting a 24-hour all nude show to avoid having their show canceled.
  • Ball of Fire - 1941 Billy Wilder romcom with Gary Cooper and Barbra Stanwyck.
  • The First Vampire in China - A decidedly silly "jumping vampire" film in Chinese.
  • The Notorious Landlady - Jack Lemmon, Kim Novak, and Fred Astaire star as American characters in early sixties London, navigating a murder mystery, a budding romance, and potential embarrassment to the US Embassy.
  • Hardly Working - Jerry Lewis's disastrous directing comeback from 1980.
  • Volcano - phunniemee continues to do the Lord's work, posting delightfully corny disaster pics with this and 2012
Previous Films with New Comments on Fanfare Current TV shows under discussion:
  • AEW Collision and All Elite Wrestling Dynamite - The Pluto Gangsta brings you the latest in wrestling.
  • Silo - Apple TV's mystery/sci-fi show is still popular in its second season.
  • Dexter: Original Sin - Paramount Plus/Showtime presents titular serial killer Dexter as a young man in this prequel series.
  • The Agency - Also on Paramount Plus is this espionage series with a star-studded cast, based on an earlier French series.
  • The Great Pottery Throw Down - Max is your home for all competitive pottery reality TV challenges.
  • American Primeval - Netflix's new hit Western limited series.
  • The Pitt - A new post-COIVD ER drama on Max.
  • Abbott Elementary - emelenjr posts the highly anticipated Abbott Elementary/It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia crossover ep.
  • Only Connect - BBC Two's long-running quiz show.
  • Creature Commandos - An adult animated series based on the DC comic. Streaming on Max.
  • Grotesquerie - The new horror/mystery/serial killer drama from Ryan Murphy (American Horror Story
Current/Recent Shows People Are Still Discussing in Recent-ish Posts Vintage TV Shows and Rewatches: Books:
posted by DirtyOldTown (54 comments total) 37 users marked this as a favorite
 
Two favors for me, if you would:
  1. Click into a link for something you've seen/read and make a comment!
  2. If you see a typo, go ahead and flag with a note and ask the mods to correct it. I would appreciate the assist.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:27 AM on January 13 [5 favorites]


I am glad to have done my part to warn you all about The Beast Within, which I'm still going "what the fuck was I thinking? Oh wait, I was thinking Werewolf Movie with Jon Snow that would be fun but was instead grim and angry-making."
posted by Kitteh at 8:28 AM on January 13 [1 favorite]


The werewolf movie with Frank Grillo is the only werewolf movie that matters.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:43 AM on January 13 [2 favorites]


As an older person with bladder issues, I can’t even get through a 90 minute film without dashing out a couple of times, so yes please on intermissions. Also the ads and previews are like 30 minutes now. I did get a big laugh at the (fantastic) Dylan movie for loudly booing the heinous Robbie Williams cgi ape preview. Everyone was thinking it!

Also, I then whispered to my wife, “who the fuck is Robbie Williams?” which a weekend NPR piece assured me is a common American reaction.
posted by caviar2d2 at 8:49 AM on January 13 [3 favorites]


phunniemee continues to do the Lord's work

notice me senpai

I watched three (3) Gerard Butler movies and two (2) Mark Wahlberg movies this past weekend. (Though this wasn't all the movies I watched total, I've been busy.) Two (2) of the Gerard Butler movies had a line about stealing someone's eyes. Five (5) of the movies could be classified in the disaster genre. Six (6) of the movies had noticably questionable accent issues, though one (1) of those I wouldn't have noticed had a friend not pointed it out. If you're wondering, "um is phunniemee okay?" the answer is yes thank you I'm great. I did one (1) social activity outside of my house, two (2) loads of laundry, sewed one (1) lovely pillow cover from scratch, shoveled snow six (6) separate times, took out my entire (err: undefined) pre-xmas stack of recycling, and fell on some ice and bruised the absolute shit out of one (1) of my knees which zero (0) of my dogs care about. If I've looked correctly at the archives, I have two (2) new things to post to FanFare.
posted by phunniemee at 8:51 AM on January 13 [5 favorites]


Raise your hand if you also did not know that Gerard Butler was the star of four different film franchises.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:55 AM on January 13 [2 favorites]


Gerard Butler is a busy man! With an accent that can't quit!

The werewolf movie with Frank Grillo is the only werewolf movie that matters.

I'm unlikely to watch it again but I will NOT take it off our server.
posted by Kitteh at 8:56 AM on January 13


I have not even seen it yet. But I have heard at least a half dozen people independently of one another describe it as "The Purge, with werewolves" and that just sounds delightful.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:01 AM on January 13 [1 favorite]


Intermission is another chance for people to buy concessions, so theater owners need to lobby for them as well. I have been going to the Met Opera's Live in HD series for a few years now where they show a live broadcast of an opera in movie theaters. I had only seen one or two operas in person before I decided to see Les Troyens. This thing is 5 hours long and had at least 2 intermissions! At one point the main characters just sit and watch an entire ballet number. Luckily, they have to stop for the intermissions in the live broadcasts. They also keep them for the recorded versions that replay on Wednesday nights.
posted by soelo at 9:04 AM on January 13 [1 favorite]


I loved Shepherd's comment that some of it is "Make America Wolves Again." It really is. Again, it is not a good movie but it is FUN. Plus: FRANK GRILLO.
posted by Kitteh at 9:04 AM on January 13 [2 favorites]


Frank Grillo is like a Sylvester Stallone who does not even know how Sylvester Stallone he is.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:08 AM on January 13 [1 favorite]


WOW, DirtyOldTown - thank you for doing all of this work.
posted by doctornemo at 9:08 AM on January 13 [3 favorites]


I don't know what's going on with the link to the Knick - it highlights like it's a link, but it doesn't actually click through or provide a link preview. I've flagged it for the mods, but maybe it's just my browser, in 2025, having issues with relatively simple HTML.
posted by Kyol at 9:14 AM on January 13


two (2) loads of laundry

Pigging hell. I've left a load of washed clothing sitting in the washer since Sunday morning.
posted by biffa at 9:26 AM on January 13 [2 favorites]


I loveloveLOVE the weekly FanFare catch-up!
posted by wenestvedt at 9:30 AM on January 13 [1 favorite]


Dang, I've only watched two movies this week.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:40 AM on January 13


So much to dig through! Nice job!

PS I did, for a split second, think that just maybe GiGi had been given the sci-fi treatment when I spotted the 2958 date, but that was clearly just a typo.
posted by kinnakeet at 9:41 AM on January 13 [1 favorite]


I've already used my one flag for this post.

Please flag it with a note and we can maybe have it corrected.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:42 AM on January 13


I don't see The Damned mentioned here, I just saw it, and it was pretty good! Nice pyschological horror period piece. Great for the winter.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 9:47 AM on January 13 [1 favorite]


We actually had tickets to see The Damned and Comrade Doll got sick, so we had to cancel. It's already come and gone now, so we will have to wait for streaming.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:48 AM on January 13


I needed something fun and light so did rewatch the other guys. It is such a fun movie that really deconstructs toxic masculinity through Mark Wahlberg. It lets him off the hook in the end, but man it really makes fun of that gruff, angry tenor.
posted by Carillon at 10:07 AM on January 13


Dog bless my husband for being the more cogent of the two of us in my recent FanFare post.
posted by Kitteh at 10:20 AM on January 13


Watched Notorious (1946) for the first time after a discussion about Ingrid Bergman last week. I was specifically interested in watching how she used her face and eye movements in her acting. Hitchcock lingered on her face long enough to show he was certainly fascinated with that aspect of her performance. (And Tony Leung is also said to use his eyes and gaze to create his characters.) But overall, apart from Bergman, the film had a lot of thin spots & I almost stopped watching after the scene in the car between Bergman (drunk) and Grant where he forcibly removes her from the driver’s seat. (Did he hit her?) That did not age well at all!
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 10:38 AM on January 13 [1 favorite]


Here's the correct link for the Knick Season 1 rewatch. I think the problem is that I used a relative link on my fanfare s1e1 comment and that broke when it was copied elsewhere (there is no href in the a tag for it).

One of my favorite ways to discover hidden gems is to watch CinemaStix commentaries. They videos are always very insightful and the recent one on The Knick is what led me to take a chance on a ten year old series that I had overlooked.
posted by autopilot at 10:38 AM on January 13


Do note that "The Brutalist" does have an intermission. And I didn't notice the length at all otherwise - it kept me totally engrossed.
posted by dnash at 11:17 AM on January 13 [1 favorite]


Okay, The Brutalist director knows what's up with adding an intermission. People gotta pee, by gum.
posted by Kitteh at 11:18 AM on January 13 [1 favorite]


Regarding Intermissions in Movies: recently we re-watched 2001 A Space Odyssey, after not having seen it since the 20th century. I was shocked to realize that it's only two fucking hours and change long! And it even has an intermission too. It just whips by... faster than many recent three hour movies we've seen lately.
posted by ovvl at 11:26 AM on January 13 [1 favorite]


I spent a chunk of early Sunday mornings for the past couple of weekends watching movies when insomnia strikes me in the middle of the night - I thought Interstellar held up all right, although I had the same sci-fi complaints as always, the story it tells is sweet just the same. But man about 2/3rds of the way through The Fugitive I started to get antsy and bored - that whole back end cat and mouse chase between Nichols and Kimble felt like they had to crank up the risk _even more_ and ... ech, it didn't work for me. Maybe they felt they had to get a little bit Die Hard at the end? I dunno.
posted by Kyol at 11:41 AM on January 13


Also the Major and the Minor is such a weird little film. I am amazed it works as well as it does given the many, many ways it could go super wrong/creepy.
posted by Carillon at 11:47 AM on January 13 [2 favorites]


We're seeing The Brutalist tonight, but I'm torn. I'm looking forward to the whole 70mm road show experience at our local movie palace, but the trailer pushed a couple "this is IMPORTANT" buttons for me and I quickly lose patience with that kind of thing.
posted by fedward at 11:54 AM on January 13 [2 favorites]


faster than many recent three hour movies we've seen lately

Oh, did you also watch Trap?
posted by phunniemee at 11:56 AM on January 13 [2 favorites]


phunniemee, my sister is legit watching Trap multiple times a week and refuses to answer whether or not she is receiving kickback cheques from Josh Hartnett
posted by Kitteh at 12:06 PM on January 13


Hartnett Georg, who lives in a cave and watches Trap 10,000 times each week, is an outlier adn should not have been counted
posted by phunniemee at 12:27 PM on January 13 [4 favorites]


she sends me screenshots to torment me
posted by Kitteh at 12:29 PM on January 13


Is it all the extremely close up shots of people's faces repeatedly for no good reason? Shyamalan, I have an inexplicable fondness for you and will watch whatever dreck you churn out, but you're not Jonathan Demme.
posted by phunniemee at 12:32 PM on January 13 [1 favorite]


it's always the one of Josh Hartnett smirking at the camera at the end

my niece wants me to stage an intervention
posted by Kitteh at 12:34 PM on January 13


my niece wants me to stage an intervention

You know who else had an addiction that hurt their family???
posted by phunniemee at 12:46 PM on January 13 [4 favorites]


HOW DARE
posted by Kitteh at 12:46 PM on January 13 [4 favorites]


Step 1 is for people like Martin Scorsese (who's otherwise great) to stop being so precious about it. Oh, so an intermission goes against the artistic intention of your 3 and a half hour-long movie? That's a shame. You know what else probably goes against that intention? Missing five minutes of the movie, entirely at random, depending on how my bladder is doing. Scorsese considers intermissions to be a "violation." I consider it a violation to be forced to watch a 3.5 hour movie while my bladder gets increasingly close to bursting.

I've got Apple TV now, though, so I can watch the movie the way Scorsese intended: in half-hour intervals, while playing Subway Surfers on my phone. Looking forward to enjoying some real cinema!

https://variety.com/2023/film/news/killers-of-the-flower-moon-intermission-violations-apple-paramount-martin-scorsese-1235771093/
posted by Green Winnebago at 12:51 PM on January 13 [4 favorites]


I watched three (3) Gerard Butler movies and two (2) Mark Wahlberg movies this past weekend.

Someone help phunnimee, they have fallen into the Chicago Manual of Style!
posted by Greg_Ace at 1:08 PM on January 13 [7 favorites]


Red Rooms, a French serial killer thriller that is 95% fresh on RT


French language yes but the film is Québécois.
posted by The Notorious SRD at 3:45 PM on January 13 [1 favorite]


Ah, good catch!
posted by DirtyOldTown at 3:51 PM on January 13


I'm waiting for the show to get through the suggestion queue, but the next thing I post to FF is going to be one extremely niche episode of television that I was reminded of this weekend.

Season 1 Episode 3 of Night Visions... It's absolutely worth the 42 minutes and you can watch it here.
posted by phunniemee at 4:47 PM on January 13


Greg_Ace should post all of Heartland.

I coudnt do it, I'd start talking like Jack.
posted by clavdivs at 5:02 PM on January 13 [1 favorite]


Greg_Ace should post all of Heartland.

That seems a harsh punishment for such a minor joke
posted by Greg_Ace at 5:14 PM on January 13


I haven't seen many movies with intermissions. The only one I can remember for sure was Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet (the original 4? hour cut). It was perhaps the first movie I was aware I was watching in 70mm (I had seen real film IMAX before). I think intermissions could be useful generally for some movies; the theaters could even move some of their before show ads which in my experience more than half of people skip them anyway by going into the theater 15 minutes after the scheduled start anway, to not increase the total time the theater is used per showing.
posted by skynxnex at 6:51 PM on January 13 [1 favorite]


Heartland ain't the worst thing I've seen. It's a pretty generic girls & horses modern-Western soap-ish TV drama that gradually turns more subtle the more you watch it. Recommended if you might like something like this. (Netflix last time I looked)
posted by ovvl at 8:17 PM on January 13


+1 to thank you for putting these posts together.

I feel like over the last few years, movies — of interest to me! — will come and go and I’ll only hear about it two years later. E.g., Netflix’s THE SEA BEAST, which is apparently good and which you’d think some of the many animation professionals I follow on social media might have mentioned, but no such luck. Checking in on Fanfare occasionally did help fight this problem (which I suspect is not just a me thing), but these summaries are next level.
posted by TangoCharlie at 9:33 PM on January 13 [1 favorite]


Look at this beautiful thing! We've added it to the sidebar and Best Of blog. I think all the corrections that have been flagged or I noticed in the comments have been fixed. Let me know if we missed anything. To make it simpler to make quick fixes, if an error or typo is mentioned / confirmed in a comment, flag the comment itself. Thank you!
posted by taz at 10:03 PM on January 13


As for intermissions they have a history in big cinema events - we just don’t do them any more. The first one I experienced before The Brutalist was during a screening of a beautiful remaster of 2001. I love long form cinema but also have a very small bladder, so I am an advocate for their return.

In the case of The Brutalist, the intermission has a countdown timer and the background image is a central plot point. I thought that was a wonderful way of not only doing an intermission in a way that is both respectful of the audience’s time but also constitutes a meaningful narrative pivot to second part
posted by treepour at 11:18 PM on January 13 [2 favorites]


Will there be choc ices?
posted by biffa at 6:32 AM on January 14


Nope, only the albatross.
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:54 AM on January 14


Thanks DOT! The books were a (chosen by me) Christmas present that I’m enjoying working my way through.

Also I use the RunPee app for timing bathroom breaks at the cinema.
posted by ellieBOA at 9:18 AM on January 14


Oh my gosh, I almost missed this! And it seems like it’s a regular thing? Thank you for the post, DOT :) this is awesome.
posted by bunderful at 8:38 PM on January 15


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