‘Destroyer’ Director Karyn Kusama on Showing a New Side of Los Angeles and Nicole Kidman [Interview]

Posted on Friday, January 25th, 2019 by Jack Giroux

Few directors today make genre movies as intimate Karyn Kusama. The director of The Invitation, Girl Fight, and Jennifer’s Body gets real up close and personal to her characters, especially the protagonist of her latest film, Destroyer. Detective Erin Bell — a bulldozer of a character played by Nicole Kidman — is not a character you can take your eyes away from.

The character originated from the co-writers of The Invitation, Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi. Like that party-in-the-hills-gone-terribly-wrong horror story, the screenwriting duo and Kusama tell a complex story gracefully with Destroyer, which is an equally dense crime story and character story. Recently, we discussed Kidman’s performance as Bell, shooting in Los Angeles, corrupt cop movies, and more with Karyn Kusama.

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‘Big Man Japan’ To Be Remade by Columbia and Producer Neal Moritz

Posted on Monday, June 6th, 2011 by Russ Fischer

If you liked the down on his luck superhero elements of the Will Smith film Hancock, but weren’t as much into the ‘gods and love’ story that dominated the second half, you should give some attention to Big Man Japan. That is Hitoshi Matsumoto‘s 2007 Japanese mock documentary about a guy who can grow to gigantic size and fight monsters, but has to deal with a sagging public image. (It was released in Japan as Dainipponjin.)

Big Man Japan is weird fun, full of goofy CGI, and has one of the most batshit crazy endings I’ve seen in some time. (The end really plays with the film’s intentional similarity to Ultraman, and given that the rest of the film has things like a giant monster with an eye-tipped penis tentacle, the fact that the end stands out as really crazy should tell you something.) So, naturally, an American studio is going to try to produce a remake. Read More »

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