Dempsey Bryk’s Crash Land, with Finn Wolfhard

I love movies about boys having feelings, and doing them with each other, and at each other. So you see, “Crash Land” concussed me. Rammed a Harley into my heart. Hit me in the nuts, even.

Calling a movie my “favorite” out of Southwest Film & TV Festival 2026 seems illegal, or at least gauche. Wouldn’t be professionally—read this in a George H.W. Bush voice—prudent. But I feel fine saying that I imprinted upon “Crash Land,” writer-director Dempsey Bryk’s feature debut, like a baby bird during my fall screening season. Now, after introducing its world premiere during SXSW last week, I simply cannot shut up about it.

In “Crash Land,” three teenage best friends—Lance (Gabriel LaBelle), Clay (Noah Parker), and Darby (Billy Bryk, the filmmaker’s IRL brother)—spend their dead-end days filming “Jackass”-style stunt videos in the scrubby bowels of rural Canada. They’re not particularly good at stunts, mind you, yet the guys approach their art with operatic reverence.

Then Darby kicks the bucket mid-stunt. To prove to their hometown—nay, the world—that his life had meaning, the boys set out to make the ultimate stunt movie. Enlisted in the effort are squirrelly Sander (Finn Wolfhard), their cameraman hanger-on, and art-loving Gemma (Abby Quinn), the only girl in town who can stand to be around them.

Cue the slapstick, the grand theft auto, and yes, the grieving.

Like our heroes, “Crash Land” refuses to be anything but itself. The comedy basks in the off-kilter rhythm of Bryk’s script and the boys’ “Letterkenny”-adjacent dialogue. I say that as a person who doesn’t even care for “Letterkenny” that much; more of a “Shoresy” guy, m’self. There’s a hard cut to a funeral scene that got my biggest cackle of the fest.

Plenty of laughs also spring from Lance and Clay’s commitment to knowing not a single thing about movies. Parker carries the film’s heart; LaBelle shines playing a little idiot caveman white-knuckling his way to maturity.

The emotion, though. That’s the sauce. Give me more movies about boys getting in touch with their emotions.

To head off any eyebrows sent into orbit: No, I’m not saying that dudes are an underserved cinematic demo. Surely, we approach a “Mission: Impossible” franchise reboot built around Mr. Beast more imminently than nuclear war, for which you can currently RSVP through Eventbrite.

Instead, I’m interested in movies that pull and knead at how we define masculinity. Boys, as you might have read, are not OK. We need to show them a new, better shape, and not in a “Clavicular pounding his face with hammers” way. If that doesn’t seem like a worthwhile pursuit for da movies, you probably got here by mistake, thinking this newsletter was Turning Point USA. If we want better boys, we’ve gotta feed a better example into the eternal feedback loop between media and real life.

Now, our “Crash Land” boys … though they be loud, and they also be dumb, they’re full of soul that flows freely between scruffy, smelly selves. Even when aggression gets a little high, and they’re showing their literal asses like metaphorical baboons, these guys plainly love each other. Darby’s death almost immediately inspires Lance and Clay (and sure, Sander) to deal with their grief through creation. Nut-tapping, wall-destroying creation, but creation all the same.

That involves dark nights of their souls. Going inward forces the boys to say unsaid things about their dreams and desires apart from each other, places where you can’t take your buddies. Is there life outside of flaming tires? Apart from each other?

None of this examination could happen without Gemma, filling the Darby-shaped hole in Lance and Clay’s lives. A woman’s work is never done. Though Gemma does have her own arc, the character’s primary role as vulnerability doula for these doofs is probably the element of the film most vulnerable to criticism. Valid! And yet, I find it quite effective that the boys can grow only by learning from her and embracing a more feminine perspective on life. This film knows that masculinity is incompatible with misogyny.

The aforementioned “Jackass” looms large over “Crash Land”; Bryk would be the first to point that out. Hopefully this won’t surprise you, but I have cried at least once while watching every “Jackass” movie. You don’t have to love their puerile, fleshy delights to recognize those giggling goons love each other so, so much.

A dudely ethos of care runs also through “Crash Land,” too. The on-screen bonds feel genuinely conceived. During our post-premiere Q&A, Bryk gushed about the fulfillment to be found in making a movie with your best friends. Also, Wolfhard mentioned that he drank his own piss, but that’s neither here nor there.

No, stories about earnest, sensitive masculinity don’t have to involve amateur stuntmen. They can look like “Lord of the Rings,” “The Outsiders,” or heck, “Magic Mike XXL.” All you really need is testosterone, intimacy, and zero shame. But admit it: Dudes throwing themselves through walls probably helps with that last one.

(No word on distribution or a release for “Crash Land” just quite yet, but let this be your signal to watchlist it.)

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“Black Orpheus” (1959, dir. Marcel Camus): Why did they bother making “Hadestown” when this vibrant, aching adaptation of the Orpheus myth already existed? And with fabulous bossa nova sounds instead of grating Popeyes muzak? This film also stars a woman who looks like Sade’s Wario. The anthropomorphized concept of death wears Donnie Darko pajamas. All upside. (Streaming on HBO Max, Criterion Channel, and Kanopy)

“Mississippi Masala” (1991, dir. Mira Nair): When you see young Sarita Choudhury making young Denzel Washington swoon in this, the sins of “And Just Like That” seize every cell in your body. How did those writers squander her magnetism so badly? She and Kim Cattrall should arm themselves and storm the HBO offices, Jan. 6 style. (Streaming on HBO Max, Criterion Channel, and Cinemax)

“Hard Target” (1993, dir. John Woo): Action movies don’t star Belgian black-belt ballet boys anymore. Bring that back. Jean-Claude Van Damme contained such multitudes—why, it would’ve been foolish of him to assume he couldn’t do a Cajun accent in this movie. Not saying he does it well. Just that it makes sense he’d try. (Available on digital)

“First Blood” (1982, dir. Ted Kotcheff): This getting flattened over time into macho slop is such a tragedy, because it’s such a righteously angry, anti-authoritarian movie with real sensitivity toward its protagonist. Who knew! Not me. I wanna give Johnny Rambo a hug. (Streaming on Tubi, Kanopy, and YouTube)

“Velvet Goldmine” (1998, dir. Todd Haynes): Picked this old fave to show a few pals for my birthday. May the glittering green space gem that turns you gay pass through all our hands one day. Also, I found this deliciously bitch-ass David Bowie quote about it from 1999:

“When I saw the film I thought the best thing about it was the gay scenes. They were the only successful part of the film, frankly. It didn’t understand how innocent everyone was then about what they were getting into. (Pause.) Also, there was a lot more shopping.”

(Streaming on Criterion Channel)

“The Bride!” (2026, dir. Maggie Gyllenhaal): Hear me out. This would have been a better movie if Maggie Gyllenhaal took out all the Frankenstein stuff. Sit with that. I’m right. Anyway, we won’t appreciate this movie until it’s on Tubi in 2046. (In theaters)

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None of us are TV executives. Unless you are? If you are a TV executive,,,, hello. I’m not doing much this week. But assuming that AT LEAST none of you occupy a C-suite office at Hulu: We’re all pretty fuckin’ bummed that the streamer nixed its planned “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” reboot.

With Sarah Michelle Gellar and Chloé Zhao involved, the “New Sunnydale” pilot seemed promising. Or at least worth a shot! Sigh. A recent Vulture article provided some business-side context that made me think, “Well … I don’t have to like it, but OK.”

Read it here.

…

I know we literally just talked about “Crash Land,” but I returned to the hallowed waveforms of City Cast to break down more films to watch out for from SXSW. Just in case you like hearing my voice? IDK. I think it’s a nice voice, on the whole.

Listen to it here.

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