I have a friend who calls it ‘Boy Trash,’ putting it in the same category as Point Break, The Rock, Face/Off, and the spiritual successor to Heat, The Town, all of which offer a basic plot, lots of action, and usually a smattering of Men’s Mental Health to make it feel like you haven’t just been watching two men run around shooting fake guns at each other for three hours. I think Heat is too good to be associated with the word ‘trash’ in any way, but if I relent and play the game then Heat is surely the alpha and omega of ‘Boy Trash,’ a divine dreamscape for any man who is tired of the world asking him to have patience and coherent emotions.

I was reminded of this when I found myself watching it (again) for a sold-out anniversary screening in central London. Sure enough, just like every other time I’ve watched it, each male character manages to fuck over his female love interest in some way or another with his own stupid, kamikaze compulsions. Chris Shiherlis (Val Kilmer) mumbles: “The sun rises and sets with her, man,” about his beautiful wife Charlene (Ashley Judd), but still destroys her life through anger, gambling, and crime regardless. Even as Trejo (Danny Trejo) lays dying he chokes out the words, “My Anna’s gone, gone.” But she’s only gone, brutally slain in the room next door, because he refuses to stop getting involved in crazy heists.

The arc of Donald Breedan (Dennis Heybert) summarizes the doomed romanticism and inevitable catastrophe of Heat better than any other in the film, despite him playing a relatively miniscule part in its plot. Freshly released from prison, Donald is subjected to a degrading life of parole, finding himself at the whims of a horrible boss at a local cafe, who steals his pay and treats him like shit. 

Yet through it all, his partner Lillian (Kim Staunton) is there supporting him, driving him to work, telling him how proud she is that he’s trying to turn his life around, loving him through the fug of downtrodden self doubt he is engulfed by.

“In the world of Heat, there are no stars, only city lights, which twinkle on indifferently in the background of every scene, like a distant father the men in the film can’t stop trying to impress”

Then Neil McCauley catches Donald unawares at work and asks him to be his getaway driver. He thinks ‘Fuck it, why not,’ beats up his boss, and heads off to get shot dead by the police. He is the quintessential male character in Heat, and maybe in all ‘Boy Trash’ movies: tragically compelled to throw it all away in an instant because consciously or not he has sworn to live by the film’s immortal maxim, as so memorably incanted by Michael Cheritto (Tom Sizemore): “The action is the juice.”

Cheritto himself has a wife, kids, and investments, but when faced with the prospect of one more bank robbery with the lads, he just can’t resist. In the world of Heat, there are no stars, only city lights, which twinkle on indifferently in the background of every scene, like a distant father the men in the film can’t stop trying to impress. There are no lofty aspirations beyond the perfume cloud of the here and now. Nothing to aspire to except the chance to live forever in one boundless moment where you act first and don’t think about the consequences, because standing still is a great way to realize that existence is too absurd and painful to bear.

Again: The action is the juice.

As a certified millennial navel gazer, I can’t help but relate to footsoldiers like Donald, Chris, and Michael. They might feel like they are raging against forces beyond their control, but really it’s just themselves. And rather than change course, their reaction is to plough their lives headfirst into the nearest wall. In reality, there is a lot of love on the table for these men, and there is much that they can actually control. They all have jobs, roles to play, friends, lovers, and at least a modicum of self determination. But they just don’t care, because they know best, even if knowing best means believing you’re the worst. 

Is this behavior mindful, considerate, or in any way conducive to long-term happiness? No. Like nearly all of the men in the film, they die violently and without ceremony, leaving behind them a trail of grief and ruin. But this is what makes Heat so great. The fact that it doesn’t try to sermonize. Not really. It is, after all, a three-hour action movie. At some point, the moral lesson has to stand aside. Instead, it leans into the adrenalizing, verboten joys of living in a way that is both selfish and self destructive. Diving deep into the various written tributes published this week, acknowledgement of this seemed lacking. Yet there is a reason why Heat has been calling a certain type of man towards it like a siren song for the last three decades.

The reason is the action, and the action is the juice. 

If you could summarize the mindset that McCauley and Hanna share, you might quote one of the former’s key lines: “I am alone. I am not lonely.” The two main characters’ all-consuming death drives eventually lead them to the only true moment of psychic connection they experience in the film: when McCauley is bleeding out with one of Hanna’s bullets lodged in his chest.

“I had to take the emotional quotient to that exact moment when McCauley is dying, and he’s fortunate enough to die with somebody [Hanna] he’s that close to, the only person on the planet that has the same kind of mindset he has,” explained Michael Mann ten years ago, in an interview with Rolling Stone to mark Heat‘s last decadal birthday. “But at the same time, he’s also the person who shot him, and that duality is not a contradiction—they’re both true.”

Whether you call it Bushido, the Art of War, or just the warrior’s code, men love an abstract set of moral and behavioral guidelines that draw them together and sanctify their mutual annihilation. In Heat, nothing else matters to McCauley and Hanna except their shared obsession, which takes over completely to the point that everything else—love, happiness, reason—falls by the wayside. It’s a hair’s breadth from being intensely romantic, like a gothic novel. Wuthering Heights with guns. Jane Eyre for the fellas. 

“Being self absorbed, reckless, and borderline insane usually does end badly”

The two characters blur the lines between protagonist and antagonist. By the end, you’re not really sure which is which. McCauley is a dangerous recidivist, willing to kill civilians and abuse women for his goals. He lives by the other big rule from Heat: “Don’t let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner.” Yet you root for him. Hanna is trying to prevent crime and capture the bad guys, yet his determination is disconcerting and hard to cheer for. He’s on his third marriage, constantly coked up, and so neglectful of his wife and step-daughter that she attempts suicide. When he and his adversary sit down for a chat over a coffee, in a scene widely lauded as one of the finest in modern cinema, it’s like two old friends with a toxic addiction problem gearing up to spur it on for what they know will be the last time.

And that’s kind of the point. No one wins. Being self absorbed, reckless, and borderline insane usually does end badly. But it’s still impossible not to idolize the heroes of Heat as they soar and thrust forward into their beloved moments, bursting out the other side of those moments like clenched firsts through the same brown paper bag, the beautiful, exhilarating moments that they live and ultimately die for, ill-fated men of action who go out on their swords and in great suits. 

In a turgid millennial world, with its eight-hour screen times and miserly way with volition, you’re largely given two choices: accept whatever shit comes your way or ineffectually complain about it. Frustrated, the latter often becomes something else, then misdirected: ire aimed at the wrong people, the ones closest to us. We lash out and fuck ourselves over then refuse to take responsibility, which just wants to make us lash out even more. We’re stuck in an endless, impotent loop, so what’s the answer? 

Maybe it’s recalibrating the way we think about the world. Realizing that the end result—a singing balance sheet, a property portfolio, a racehorse, a yacht, or a trophy partner—isn’t really the thing to aim for at all, and that actually, it’s the aiming itself that’s the whole point. Maybe it’s as simple as getting out and doing something. Putting on a gray three-piece suit, a hockey mask, or some 1990s sunglasses. Learning about complex metals, yearning, or smashing up a TV. Going out and having a life, even if it kills you.

Because if the action really is the juice, who cares how it ends?

Follow Tom Usher on Instagram @_tomusher

The post ‘The Action Is the Juice’: Why Self-Destructive Men Love ‘Heat’ appeared first on VICE.

Written and directed by Sarah Tareen, produced by S. Izmerai Siyar Durrani and executive produced by VICE founder Suroosh Alvi, Kids Fight goes beneath the surface of Pakistan’s teenage MMA circuit, and explores combat sports as a sanctuary from real-world violence. 

Members can watch Kids Fight below, uncut and in full, followed by an interview with Tareen.

VICE: What was the genesis point for Kids Fight? Did you know you wanted to tell a story about unregistered kids in Pakistan and drill down from there, or did you come across the gym first and build out from that?
Sarah Tareen: For me, Kids Fight started years ago, with a question I couldn’t shake: how do people survive what they’re forced to live through? I’d been documenting the fallout of post-9/11 Pakistan from an uncomfortably close range, from talking to students minutes after university blasts to examining hellfire missile debris while filming drone-strike aftermaths. Those experiences stay with you. They make you pay attention to the quieter, everyday survival people perform without ever naming it.

I had started training in MMA at Bashir Ahmad’s gym partly to manage my own anxiety and became a member of the MMA community. Bashir told me about his other gym, Shaheen, in Charrar Pind, and around the same time I came across a Time magazine article about it. I went there expecting a simple sparring session. What I found was a neighbourhood, a miniature universe—raw, chaotic, determined, pulsing with life, but also a stark mirror of systemic failure. Outside the gym, kids tore through the streets with the kind of fearless energy that comes from growing up uncounted and unseen by any system. In the ring, disciplined young fighters honed their skills. Vibrancy and neglect, survival and aspiration, coexisted in the same frame. And suddenly, the larger psychological landscape made sense: in chaos, people find pockets of safety, release, and catharsis wherever they can.

That’s what sparked Kids Fight. Not a statistic, not an issue. A generation carving out identity and agency against the odds. That’s the story I had to tell.

There’s a funny contrast near the start where the film goes over Pakistan’s history as a frontline country for the war in Afghanistan, then talks about residents in Lahore years later being stressed about a martial arts gym being set up locally because it might encourage kids to become violent and fight in the street. That attitude—that violence is something that’s visited upon people, rather than something that should be “organised”—is common around the world, but it’s especially interesting in a former warzone. Could you tell us a bit about the attitude towards fighting in Pakistan and the unique role that combat sports plays there?
That contrast is exactly what makes Kids Fight so interesting. Pakistan has lived through decades of conflict, so violence is part of the collective memory. And yet, when a local gym opens in Lahore teaching kids MMA, people panic. They worry kids will turn aggressive, start fighting in the streets.

The truth is the opposite. For many young men, especially those from marginalized areas, a “pissed-off” kid in a patriarchal society, lacking opportunities and protection, can be guided by martial arts. MMA gives them discipline, routine, mentorship, and a safe and controlled outlet for frustration. A place that trains kids to fight is often the safest place they know. It channels anger into structure, respect, and control. That merit-based structure teaches respect, humility, and teamwork, challenging the prejudices that often lead to real-world violence.

Attitudes toward fighting are complicated everywhere. Violence is feared, but I feel that martial arts can redirect it. It can transform aggression into something constructive. For these kids, it’s survival, identity, and growth. That tension of fear versus opportunity is exactly why these gyms, and the stories they hold, matter—especially here, where the system leaves so many behind.

The film portrays families at odds with each other. Parents want the best for their kids, but the kids will go out at night and disappear for days at a time. Some dabble in drugs. What’s driving that wedge? Do you think kids in Pakistan are navigating a different world to the one their parents grew up in?
In Pakistan, rapid social change, urbanization, poverty, and the lingering effects of conflict have created a landscape where kids, especially in marginalized communities, constantly negotiate risk and freedom. Some experiment with drugs, skip school, or disappear for days, not out of malice, but as a way to claim agency and escape pressures at home. More affluent families can try to maintain control through curfews, smartphones, or other safeguards, while many others have no such options. The tension between parental expectations and the kids’ lived realities sharpens the generational divide.

Ultimately, the kids in the film aren’t rebelling for rebellion’s sake. They’re navigating a world that demands resourcefulness, courage, and self-protection in ways their parents may never have had to. That’s the wedge: rooted in circumstance, survival, and the search for agency in a world that offers them very little.

“Pakistan has lived through decades of conflict, so violence is part of the collective memory. And yet, when a local gym opens in Lahore teaching kids MMA, people panic.”

The start of the film states there are 60 million unregistered children in Pakistan, so two out of three children there do not officially exist. What are the ramifications of that in terms of their welfare? What risks are these kids facing?
When two out of three children don’t officially exist, it’s more than a statistic, it’s a life lived entirely outside the system. No healthcare. No school. No legal protection. No proof of age, no claim to basic rights. That invisibility makes them vulnerable to exploitation, child labor, abuse, or even recruitment into criminal or extremist networks.

Every choice carries higher stakes. A fight in the street, a night away from home, or a risky job can spiral fast, because there’s no safety net. Their welfare is on the edge, and the system that should protect them is looking the other way.

What do you think not “officially” existing does to a young person’s sense of self?
When the system doesn’t acknowledge you, it’s easy to internalize that invisibility. You start feeling like your life, your struggles, even your ambitions don’t matter. Without formal identity or protection, you also lose a sense of accountability; when nothing is documented, when there’s no record of who you are or what you’ve done, the boundaries around your actions blur.

At the same time, many of these kids push back against that erasure in their own ways. They build identity through friendships, street networks, and places like MMA gyms where they’re seen, guided, and challenged. In those spaces, every act of discipline, every fight, every small win becomes a way of saying: “I exist.”

What does MMA do for kids in Pakistan in that position?
For many of the kids we followed in the gym, MMA as the underdog sport offers a way to compete, challenge rigid social hierarchies, and, in some cases, simply offer a sense of belonging. It doesn’t solve systemic inequality, but it creates a space where skill, effort, and determination can translate into recognition, hope, and a glimpse of a future that might otherwise feel out of reach. It also gives the kids the agency to leverage social mobility.

“A place that trains kids to fight is often the safest place they know.”

There are some longer shots of kids hanging out together at night, selling stickers, teasing each other. In those moments the Kids Fight reminds me of Streetwise, Mary Ellen Mark and Mark Bell’s film about homeless youth in Seattle in the mid-80s, which is similarly naturalistic and presents the kids’ lives as they are without judgement. Why was it important for you to include those scenes?
I wanted to be with these kids on their terms, listening, observing, and experiencing their world as they live it, not as objects or numbers. Those moments shaped how the film feels: immediate, lived-in, and full of contradictions. Scenes like these reveal their agency and personality, their raw sensitivity and banter—showing that their lives aren’t defined solely by risk or survival. They’re full of moments of joy, mischief, and connection amid instability, and ultimately that they’re just kids.

It strikes me that there’s no narrator or voice over. What was behind that decision?
Yes. Often in documentaries about children, you see voiceovers or talking heads speaking for them, flattening their experiences into commentary. I wanted the audience to see and hear the kids themselves to follow their rhythm, their mischief, their arguments, their laughter and let them lead and tell their own stories rather than having someone else speak for them. The film is shaped entirely by their perspective, their voices, and the way they navigate their world—raw and unfiltered. Even the camera angles are placed at the children’s level, so the audience experiences the world with them, not from above them.

Was there anything that surprised you while making the film?
What really surprised me was how open and easy-going the residents of Charrar were. We didn’t have a big crew, so we could move through homes, markets, streets, and local events with relative ease. It’s such a crazy and colourful place. I remember this kid was assisting at a barbershop when we are taking a break, and I caught him washing his hands in a questionable bucket of water and then immediately giving a client a facial. We made eye contact and he just smiled and winked! Then there was this other kid who stood next to us, took a big sack and spread it over a large block of ice, laid down on top of it, let out a sigh of relief as and dozed off to sleep right in front of our eyes. Another time, Bilal ran away with the mic set and buried it so we wouldn’t be able to find him. It was his way of playing hide-and-seek with us. He enjoyed keeping us on our feet! With Usman, we would buy him slippers and shoes, and he would throw them away as it cramped his style because he made more money not wearing them.

At the same time, their generosity blew me away. Usman came back from selling stickers on the streets, handed out sweets to the other kids, and shrugged when asked if he’d spent all his money: “I’ll make more.” Bilal once gave every coin in his pocket to a blind beggar. Watching these kids in all their chaos, mischief, and heart, was one of the most unforgettable parts of making the film.

The post Member Exclusive: Watch Our New Film About Pakistan’s Street Kid MMA Fighters appeared first on VICE.

Written and directed by Sarah Tareen, produced by S. Izmerai Siyar Durrani and executive produced by VICE founder Suroosh Alvi, Kids Fight goes beneath the surface of Pakistan’s teenage MMA circuit, and explores combat sports as a sanctuary from real-world violence. 

Over at VICE: Members Only, you can watch Kids Fight right now in full. Sign up here to become a member and get rid of the paywall—and annoying adverts—forevermore.

Alternatively, watch part 1 of Kids Fight and read our interview with Tareen below.

VICE: What was the genesis point for Kids Fight?
Sarah Tareen: For me, Kids Fight started years ago, with a question I couldn’t shake: How do people survive what they’re forced to live through? I’d been documenting the fallout of post-9/11 Pakistan from an uncomfortably close range, from talking to students minutes after university blasts to examining hellfire missile debris while filming drone-strike aftermaths. Those experiences stay with you. They make you pay attention to the quieter, everyday survival people perform without ever naming it.

I had started training in MMA at Bashir Ahmad’s gym partly to manage my own anxiety and became a member of the MMA community. Bashir told me about his other gym, Shaheen, in Charrar Pind, and around the same time I came across a TIME magazine article about it. I went there expecting a simple sparring session. What I found was a neighborhood, a miniature universe—raw, chaotic, determined, pulsing with life, but also a stark mirror of systemic failure. Outside the gym, kids tore through the streets with the kind of fearless energy that comes from growing up uncounted and unseen by any system. In the ring, disciplined young fighters honed their skills. Vibrancy and neglect, survival and aspiration, coexisted in the same frame. And suddenly, the larger psychological landscape made sense: in chaos, people find pockets of safety, release, and catharsis wherever they can.

That’s what sparked Kids Fight. Not a statistic, not an issue. A generation carving out identity and agency against the odds. That’s the story I had to tell.

There’s a funny contrast near the start where the film goes over Pakistan’s history as a frontline country for the war in Afghanistan, then talks about residents in Lahore years later being stressed about a martial arts gym being set up locally because it might encourage kids to become violent and fight in the street. That attitude—that violence is something that’s visited upon people, rather than something that should be “organized”—is common around the world, but it’s especially interesting in a former warzone. Could you tell us a bit about the attitude towards fighting in Pakistan and the unique role that combat sports plays there?
That contrast is exactly what makes Kids Fight so interesting. Pakistan has lived through decades of conflict, so violence is part of the collective memory. And yet, when a local gym opens in Lahore teaching kids MMA, people panic. They worry kids will turn aggressive, start fighting in the streets.

The truth is the opposite. For many young men, especially those from marginalized areas, a “pissed-off” kid in a patriarchal society, lacking opportunities and protection, can be guided by martial arts. MMA gives them discipline, routine, mentorship, and a safe and controlled outlet for frustration. A place that trains kids to fight is often the safest place they know. It channels anger into structure, respect, and control. That merit-based structure teaches respect, humility, and teamwork, challenging the prejudices that often lead to real-world violence.

Attitudes toward fighting are complicated everywhere. Violence is feared, but I feel that martial arts can redirect it. It can transform aggression into something constructive. For these kids, it’s survival, identity, and growth. That tension of fear versus opportunity is exactly why these gyms, and the stories they hold, matter—especially here, where the system leaves so many behind.

The film portrays families at odds with each other. Parents want the best for their kids, but the kids will go out at night and disappear for days at a time. Some dabble in drugs. What’s driving that wedge? Do you think kids in Pakistan are navigating a different world to the one their parents grew up in?
In Pakistan, rapid social change, urbanization, poverty, and the lingering effects of conflict have created a landscape where kids, especially in marginalized communities, constantly negotiate risk and freedom. Some experiment with drugs, skip school, or disappear for days, not out of malice, but as a way to claim agency and escape pressures at home. More affluent families can try to maintain control through curfews, smartphones, or other safeguards, while many others have no such options. The tension between parental expectations and the kids’ lived realities sharpens the generational divide.

Ultimately, the kids in the film aren’t rebelling for rebellion’s sake. They’re navigating a world that demands resourcefulness, courage, and self-protection in ways their parents may never have had to. That’s the wedge: rooted in circumstance, survival, and the search for agency in a world that offers them very little.

“Pakistan has lived through decades of conflict, so violence is part of the collective memory. And yet, when a local gym opens in Lahore teaching kids MMA, people panic”

The start of the film states there are 60 million unregistered children in Pakistan, so two out of three children there do not officially exist. What are the ramifications of that in terms of their welfare? What risks are these kids facing?
When two out of three children don’t officially exist, it’s more than a statistic, it’s a life lived entirely outside the system. No healthcare. No school. No legal protection. No proof of age, no claim to basic rights. That invisibility makes them vulnerable to exploitation, child labor, abuse, or even recruitment into criminal or extremist networks.

Every choice carries higher stakes. A fight in the street, a night away from home, or a risky job can spiral fast, because there’s no safety net. Their welfare is on the edge, and the system that should protect them is looking the other way.

What do you think not “officially” existing does to a young person’s sense of self?
When the system doesn’t acknowledge you, it’s easy to internalize that invisibility. You start feeling like your life, your struggles, even your ambitions don’t matter. Without formal identity or protection, you also lose a sense of accountability; when nothing is documented, when there’s no record of who you are or what you’ve done, the boundaries around your actions blur.

At the same time, many of these kids push back against that erasure in their own ways. They build identity through friendships, street networks, and places like MMA gyms where they’re seen, guided, and challenged. In those spaces, every act of discipline, every fight, every small win becomes a way of saying: “I exist.”

What does MMA do for kids in Pakistan in that position?
For many of the kids we followed in the gym, MMA as the underdog sport offers a way to compete, challenge rigid social hierarchies, and, in some cases, simply offer a sense of belonging. It doesn’t solve systemic inequality, but it creates a space where skill, effort, and determination can translate into recognition, hope, and a glimpse of a future that might otherwise feel out of reach. It also gives the kids the agency to leverage social mobility.

“A place that trains kids to fight is often the safest place they know”

There are some longer shots of kids hanging out together at night, selling stickers, teasing each other. In those moments Kids Fight reminds me of Streetwise, Mary Ellen Mark and Mark Bell’s film about homeless youth in Seattle in the mid-80s, which is similarly naturalistic and presents the kids’ lives as they are without judgement. Why was it important for you to include those scenes?
I wanted to be with these kids on their terms, listening, observing, and experiencing their world as they live it, not as objects or numbers. Those moments shaped how the film feels: immediate, lived-in, and full of contradictions. Scenes like these reveal their agency and personality, their raw sensitivity and banter—showing that their lives aren’t defined solely by risk or survival. They’re full of moments of joy, mischief, and connection amid instability, and ultimately that they’re just kids.

It strikes me that there’s no narrator or voice over. What was behind that decision?
Yes. Often in documentaries about children, you see voiceovers or talking heads speaking for them, flattening their experiences into commentary. I wanted the audience to see and hear the kids themselves to follow their rhythm, their mischief, their arguments, their laughter and let them lead and tell their own stories rather than having someone else speak for them. The film is shaped entirely by their perspective, their voices, and the way they navigate their world—raw and unfiltered. Even the camera angles are placed at the children’s level, so the audience experiences the world with them, not from above them.

Was there anything that surprised you while making the film?
What really surprised me was how open and easy-going the residents of Charrar were. We didn’t have a big crew, so we could move through homes, markets, streets, and local events with relative ease. It’s such a crazy and colorful place. I remember this kid was assisting at a barbershop when we are taking a break, and I caught him washing his hands in a questionable bucket of water and then immediately giving a client a facial. We made eye contact and he just smiled and winked! Then there was this other kid who stood next to us, took a big sack and spread it over a large block of ice, laid down on top of it, let out a sigh of relief and dozed off to sleep right in front of our eyes. Another time, Bilal ran away with the mic set and buried it so we wouldn’t be able to find him. It was his way of playing hide-and-seek with us. He enjoyed keeping us on our feet! With Usman, we would buy him slippers and shoes, and he would throw them away as it cramped his style because he made more money not wearing them.

At the same time, their generosity blew me away. Usman came back from selling stickers on the streets, handed out sweets to the other kids, and shrugged when asked if he’d spent all his money: “I’ll make more.” Bilal once gave every coin in his pocket to a blind beggar. Watching these kids in all their chaos, mischief, and heart, was one of the most unforgettable parts of making the film.

Watch Kids Fight in full now over at VICE: Members Only. Not a member? Sign up here.

The post Watch a New VICE Documentary About Pakistan’s Street Kid MMA Fighters appeared first on VICE.

In his debut feature-length film, Cohen looks at the impact of the decision 30 years on. His 400-pound father Roger is preparing for stomach-reduction surgery, his 85-pound mother Brenda is struggling with anorexia, and his brother Sammy is preparing to follow in his dad’s footsteps after beginning work at The Manor in his teens. Meanwhile, Shawny attempts to sort through the pieces the only way he knows how. While most documentaries set around strip clubs, understandably, tend to focus on the club, The Manor relegates it to scenery, bringing into focus a tragi-comic portrait of the unlikely family behind the scenes.

Originally released in 2013, The Manor opened Hot Docs, won the Tribeca Film Institute Documentary Fund, and was nominated at the Zurich Film Festival. We are streaming an exclusive uncut version now at VICE: Members Only.

Not a member? Sign up here, and get rid of the paywall forevermore. The full film is here.

The post Watch a Documentary About a Family-Run Strip Club, Raw and Uncut on VICE: Members Only appeared first on VICE.

I’ve already publicly drooled over explained a few of Lomography’s coolest film cameras. Here, I’m going to explain the difference in the types of film that Lomography sells.

the different types of Lomography film explained

Anyone who’s shot film on something even just a bit more serious than a Polaroid or Instax Mini has almost certainly shot 35mm film.

A 35mm film has a frame size of 24mm x 36mm. Yes, you read that right. The 36mm part has to do with the size of the image sensor in a 35mm film camera, which in turn affects how much detail can be relayed through the camera and transmitted to the film negatives.

Those prioritizing portability, speed, and convenience made 35mm the standard film format in the 20th century, from newspaper photographers to families on vacations. It’s the standard against which other formats are judged.

Want more detail in your photographs? You’re looking for 120 film, a medium-format film that offers significantly higher resolution than 35mm. It’s 61mm wide with various frame sizes like 60 x 45mm, 60 x 60mm, 60 x 70mm, or 60 x 90mm, depending on the camera.

Frames that big can pack a lot of detail; even more than most digital cameras. That means you can zoom in on your photographs and maintain a ton of detail.

The downside of 120 film is that you get fewer shots per roll. Get used to snapping 12 or so shots per roll of this harder-to-find, more expensive film than the 24 or 36 shots per roll of 35mm film.

You can buy 220-format film, which is more or less the same as 120 but comes in rolls with twice as many shots. As you can expect, it’s even more expensive.

Lomography is the only manufacturer still making 110 film, a compact and rarely seen film format specifically designed for use in compact travel cameras. That 110 film is 16mm wide, and its frames measure just 13mm x 17mm. That’s quite a bit smaller than 35mm film, which means less detail in your photographs.

It’s not hard to see why Lomography is the last remaining maker of 110 film. The compact, travel camera that prioritizes convenience over film quality has been supplanted by the smartphones already riding in most people’s pockets.

That’s not to say that you can’t have a ton of fun shooting 110 film, though. As with anything film, part of the romance is in the process and the look, not in the specs.

The post A Brief Guide to Lomography Film Formats appeared first on VICE.

Hal Hartley’s films are full of sad, frustrated, sensitive people who are all too intelligent for their own good, desperately trying to articulate feelings they wish they didn’t have.

Rather than shooting for the clipped, super-naturalistic dialog that is a kind of holy grail for most directors, Hartley instead winches his characters from scene to scene so that they can deliver long, perfectly crafted deadpan monologues to each other. (Many are the kind of person you feel you might like to be yourself, if only you had the time.) His films are absurd and romantic in the same way that being teenage is absurd and romantic; those enchanted years of getting absorbed in yourself and others, longing for a knottier life because you have no idea yet just how knotty life will become.

The American director, a native New Yorker, is a true one-off, something that has only become clearer as more and more years have passed since his cinema debut (Kid, 1985) in which his work has steadfastly refused to negotiate with time or the zeitgeist. He writes his own alt-rock soundtracks for his films. He directed a couple of videos for Everything But The Girl. If you’ve never seen his movies, you might have seen a clip of three people dancing to “Kool Thing” by Sonic Youth (Simple Men, 1992) in an homage to a similar scene in Godard’s Bande à part. He writes books and over the years has accumulated a cadre of regular actors, including Adrienne Shelley, Parker Posey, Robert John Burke, Martin Donovan, Edie Falco, and Elina Löwensohn.

A Gen Xer, his films never quite wore the insignia of that era ostentatiously enough for him to be swept along in nostalgic culture-industry retreads. Instead, he has loitered at the periphery, though given the context this is starting to look like an advantage. In an age of brain-lacerating tech and herdlike algorithmic group-think, Hartley stands out in ever-greater contrast as a quietly intransigent auteur force, current trends conspiring to render his filmmaking on Where to Land—his first new picture for a decade—ever more singular, thoughtful, and otherworldly.

Though the term seems a touch too loud, he is one of life’s last heroes, and a living, breathing reason to be cheerful. It was only right that VICE called him up for a chat, mainly about his new film, in which a protagonist modeled closely on himself—a metropolitan semi-bachelor who directs ‘romantic comedies’ and has lots of beguiling friends—wrestles with the task of drawing up his last will and testament, to the shock of loved ones who assume he is dying.

VICE: When I start telling people why they should watch your films, I always say first that they are so unlike anything else. Do you conceive of yourself as an outsider?
Hal Hartley: I think I knew it instinctually when I was beginning, back in the late 80s. As I made the second film and the third and the fourth and the fifth, I knew that I was delivering something for people to consider that was different in a lot of ways. I wanted to entertain, I wanted to be thoughtful, I wanted people to think and be engaged in a way that was different from other types of more mainstream entertainment.

You make certain assumptions, when you’re an artist, about who your audience might be. And you have to assume that the people who are gonna dig your work are kind of like you, but different. For instance, in my case, it’s generally people who like to read. Reading in a lot of senses has always been more of an influence upon what I do than filmmaking. 

For me, the overriding impression of your films is characters who seem to be thinking out loud, but in a way that feels like pre-written speech.
Yeah, there’s a literateness. Even people who are not terribly literate characters, who are portrayed to be uneducated and naive, I try to render them in a way where the audience feels the artifice; you can feel what I’m trying to do. Say Fay Grim, Parker [Posey] is playing a single mom who probably doesn’t have a full high-school education but she’s so naturally smart and perceptive, and she gets involved in this stuff that not even the most educated of us can understand most of the time. [In the film, Posey’s character must track down and return notebooks full of unspecified kompromat to the CIA in exchange for her brother’s release from prison, transforming her from a single mother into a spy negotiating with terrorists.] I thought, ‘Now, that’s gonna be funny and moving.’

It’s seemed for years that all people have wanted to talk about is the impact of the internet on our ability to think clearly. In today’s distraction-economy environment, the thoughtful characters of Where to Land feel even more out of step and surreal, maybe, than your characters from 25 years ago.
I’ve always been anxious to have my characters be those kinds of people who really want to have a conversation. I began writing Where to Land late enough in my career that I didn’t really have to worry about how popular it was going to be. I really wanted to make something where people think out loud, that seriously, because that is the kind of world I live in. It’s not a fantasy; nothing in Where to Land is a discussion I haven’t had in one way or the other with friends…

Even the situation with your proxy’s would-be illegitimate child?
That’s a bit of a metaphor but yeah, that’s part of my experience. [laughs] I have a lot of these sort of ‘children’ out there who would sometimes have a real belief that I owe them something. It’s weird. I have musician friends, and they get it much more.

Do you mean overzealous fans?
Yeah, and there’s a line a fan sometimes crosses where it goes from admiration to something very, very personal to themselves, and it comes out like, ‘How dare you do that to me?!’ When I was a teen, a singer called Jackson Browne did something a little bit different, he got a little bit more electric, and people were heartbroken. Girls were crying and guys were throwing their records out the window.

“People your age and younger aren’t really aware of how similar the trends are now to Europe in the early 30s, and it’s very troubling.”

To what extent is Where to Land directly autobiographical?
Nothing’s literal except the fact that [like the film’s protagonist] I did have to make my will. The conversations with the lawyer had the same tenor. I came out of my lawyer’s office, saying, “That would make a hilarious story: a guy making his last will and testament who has to determine what he owns and who he wants to leave it to.” I don’t have a niece like Veronica, but I do have younger people of that ilk. I value it a lot because I never wanted to have children but I do want to be close to youth, to know what 30-year-olds are preoccupied with.

Have you detected any differences in the wiring of 30-year-olds versus people from your own generation?
We get into that pretty quickly in the middle of the film, with the 100-year-old lady, Elizabeth, and she’s saying, “It’s always technical, how we evolve.” I had this conversation with my dad before he passed on and he said when he was a kid, him and his grandfather—the oldest man in town—did pretty much everything the same way. They used the same tools, drove the same type of vehicles… but by the time me and my brothers were young men, there was this big gulf between his assumptions and ours. Now, it’s getting faster and faster as technology changes and adapts itself on a yearly basis. I’ve had conversations with friends who are 35 and 40 and they’re only five years apart, but they each have a totally different estimation of what their mobile device is supposed to do. I have right here a mobile device I bought in 2015 and then the cool thing was that they were small, right? When I was making the film, the younger actresses—Katelyn [Sparks], Aida [Johannes]—they used to introduce me to their friends on-set and say, “Hal, show them your phone!” So I just thought it was hilarious. 

There can be so much information coming at one so fast that one can lose perspective. People your age and younger aren’t really aware of how similar the trends are now to Europe in the early 30s, and it’s very troubling. Some of us are older and lived with people who got through that, somehow. You know, the shifts towards the Trumps and Putins of the world… I’ve met well-intentioned, bright people, who are also bright about their electronics, and know how to access information. But they don’t really get the information; it just becomes a bunch of facts or events that happened in time. It feels like they don’t understand how close we are to a hundred years ago. That’s kind of what the 100-year-old philosopher in Where to Land is getting at.

She’s one of the most fascinating characters in the film, for sure.
I wanted to portray someone who thinks discursively—a bad word in most thinking now; you’ve gotta have a conviction immediately. Whereas I wanted to show someone who thinks fluidly, who comes at a subject from all kinds of angles, searching for the truth but not feeling the need to reach a conclusion, an ideology, too quickly. Really, what she’s doing there is acting out a non-ideological process of thinking.

In the film’s opening scene, the protagonist—who is playing a version of yourself—goes to a cemetery and asks about a job as a gardener there.
I was walking to the subway one day when I saw a guy doing that job. And it just moved me so much, I just said that it would be such a cool job to have. Your responsibilities are clear and there’s no negotiation involved: it’s taking care of nature.

Did you give any serious consideration to actually going into that line of work?
No, that’s probably what I was writing about in my notebook—“Don’t be sentimental; you can’t possibly think you could step out of your obligations and become a gardener.” I guess that’s part of what Where to Land is about: the impossibility of extricating yourself from the things that you have done. Other people, roughly my age, will tell me, “Hal, you cannot stop making films,” if I indicate that I have any desire to slow down.

How much time do you spend thinking about other people’s reaction to your work? 
Not a lot. After doing it so long, I kind of learned that it doesn’t matter how much I think about it. For the most part, my films have always been against the grain of certainly popular expectations, and I worried about it a lot more in the early years—but ultimately it didn’t really seem to make much of a difference. I came away from thinking that people who like what I do seem to want to see me doing things my own way. 

After 40 years of filmmaking have you developed any theories as to why you are as popular as you are? Why you occupy the space in the culture that you do?
I think I just don’t go away. [laughs] I’ve had critics—back in the 90s, people saying, “Why doesn’t he just stop and go away?!” I just don’t know how to do anything else with that degree of confidence. I have a cousin back home, who’s just a couple of years younger than me, and he’s retired from construction work. And he was complimenting me—he said, “Man, you just never stop, do you? You’re always doing something.” I said, “Well thank you, but the thing is, if I don’t make things, then there’s no income.” Only then did I realize I was talking to a guy with a pension. So that was really news to him, when I saw him a couple of weeks after that, he said, “That really shook me.”

Hal Hartley’s latest film, Where to Land, is in cinemas across North America throughout November.

This photo story is from the summer 2025 issue of VICE magazine, THE REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL ISSUE. Get four issues each year, sent straight to your door, by subscribing here, or pick up the summer issue as one-off purchase here.

The post You’re a Hero, Hal Hartley appeared first on VICE.

Here are the film cameras that’ve excited me the most this year.

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Pentax 17 (opens in a new window)

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the analog experience

Pentax chose to make the Pentax 17 a half-frame camera, meaning that it takes two 17mm x 24mm pictures within a single 35mm (36mm x 24mm) frame. You use normal 35mm film rolls in the Pentax, which divides each 35mm shot vertically so that you get two shots per 35mm frame.

Take the number of shots on a roll of 35mm film and double it to determine how many pictures you’ll get out of it on the Pentax 17. What’s strange unique is that they’re vertical shots. Launched mid-last year, it was the first new 35mm film camera to hit the American market in years.

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Lomography

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The Lomography Lomomatic 110 is perhaps the most charming camera I’ve laid my hands on all year. Never heard of 110 film? It was devised as a film specifically for ultra-portable cameras, and it was somewhat common back in the day for small travel cameras like the Lomomatic 110.

Nowadays, only Lomography sells it here. Made mostly of metal in the Bellagio Edition pictured above, you yank it shut for storage to cover the lens with a shutter that protects it during travel. It uses a battery for the built-in flash, but it’s oh-so satisfying to use and click those buttons.

The Fujifilm Instax Mini Evo is a unique beast. It melds the digital and analog sides of photography into something that looks like the lovechild of an old-fashioned Polaroid and a prop from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Take pictures, check them out on the screen all digital-camera-style, and then if you like it, you print it right then and there. It’s a fun camera to whip out at parties, pools, and backyard barbecues.

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Fujifilm

Instax Mini Evo (opens in a new window)

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The post 3 Fun Little Film Cameras for the Ultimate Analog Experience appeared first on VICE.

Over the years, several documentaries have been made about the wrestling legend. In 2021, A&E released the polarizing Biography: WWE Legends episode about his career that received criticism from all over the wrestling world.

Among the critics was Savage’s brother, Lanny Poffo. “I want to say that 75% of the A&E Biography episode on Randy was great,” he wrote. “20% of it was lousy, and 5% was just horrible.”

According to Deadline, the script was written and completed by Poffo before his passing in February 2023 from congestive heart failure, as well as by Eric Shapiro.

Macho Man’s Life is Fit for the Big Screen

Savage’s wrestling career was at times unconventional. While he quickly became a household name, he initially looked to start a baseball career. Although that didn’t pan out due to injuries, he turned to professional wrestling.

His father, Angelo Poffo, was a professional wrestler and promoter. Savage’s first character, which he debuted in the early 1970s, was “The Spider,” based on Marvel’s Spider-Man. His earliest feuds included Jerry “The King” Lawler and the Rock N Roll Express.

Eventually, he signed a contract with WWE (then WWF), and he won his first Intercontinental Championship with his valet, Miss Elizabeth, by his side in 1987. From there, his career skyrocketed, and despite being a heel character, the fans cheered for him. He won the WWF Championship in 1988 and continued wrestling through the ’90s and early 2000s.

His last match took place in TNA and was a multi-man tag team match. He aligned with Jeff Hardy and AJ Styles against Scott Hall, Kevin Nash, and Jeff Jarrett. In 2011, Savage’s life came to a tragic end when he suddenly passed away from a heart attack while driving with his wife.

Professional wrestling has taken center stage in the media over the last few years. It kicked off with The Iron Claw in 2023, the A24 biopic about the unforgettable Von Erich family. Then, in 2024, Queen of the Ring, which chronicled Mildred Burke’s career, was released.

There have been several attempts at a Hulk Hogan film, too, but it was ultimately scrapped. However, there are several reports of a docuseries in development in the wake of his death.

Stay tuned to VICE for updates.

The post “Macho Man” Randy Savage Biopic in Development appeared first on VICE.

For the 100-year anniversary of the Leica I 35mm camera, the German camera maker is launching the first Leica-brand 35mm film, titled Monopan 50 and made in Germany. Don’t remember the Leica I? Well, that’s probably because you’re not 100, and even if you were, why would a months-old baby be interested in photography, even during the Roaring Twenties?

Leica Monopan 50 won’t be sold widely. There are only a few places in the US to get it. Here’s where to look if you want to buy a piece of camera history.

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Leica

Monopan 50 (opens in a new window)

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an old look for new people

As Leica puts it, the low sensitivity (50 ISO) of Monopan 50 is meant to emulate the type of 35mm film common back in 1925 when the Leica I was released, and it enables “wide-aperture shooting, rendering the distinctive Leica bokeh—even in bright lighting conditions.”

Monopan 50 is a ultra-fine-grain, monochrome (black and white) film with a resolution of up to 280 line pairs per millimeter and a panchromatic sensitivity of up to 780nm.

B&H Photo Video, which has 36-shot rolls of Monopan 50 available for $10, also has sample photographs shot on the Leica film, in case you were wondering what it looks like once it’s developed. Scroll down to below the product info to see them.

There are four package designs, all beautifully retro. But no, you can’t pick out which you want when you place your order. At least if you go into a physical store, you can do so. I foresee a day when boxes of the stuff are worth a pretty penny.

You’re looking at late-21st-century thrift store fuel right here, folks.

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Leica

Monopan 50 (opens in a new window)

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The post Leica Finally Started Selling 35mm Film. Here’s Where To Find It. appeared first on VICE.

Let’s take a quick look at some of the biggest films of the last few years: the recently released Jurassic World: Rebirth (which required a plot absurd enough to justify a seventh Jurassic Park franchise film, in this case using dinosaur blood to cure heart disease); the latest Superman reboot (this one pandering to millennials and Gen Z by exploring the ‘emotional experience’ of being a superhuman alien); a second installment of the Lilo & Stitch live-action remake (which, to appropriate Jorge Luis Borges, is about as interesting as a comb to a bald man), the fifth John Wick film (this time with the entirely pointless addition of even more assassins with tragic backstories); a new onslaught of Marvel Cinematic Universe films (somehow stubbornly persisting with a new set of heroes after what we hoped would be the conclusion of this franchise with Avengers: Endgame); the sixth Final Destination film (a series which, more than any other, has survived by repeating the exact same plot each time); Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (a truly democratic film franchise, which the public once successfully bullied into redesigning Sonic’s appearance following an unloved trailer); and Moana 2 (a denigrating mockery of Polynesian culture posing as a tribute to ‘representation’).

All of these films have two things in common: their dearth of unoriginality, and their staggering box office success. Each film is either an unwanted live-action remake or the new output from a franchise that has already been flogged like a gimp on his birthday. Additionally, they all largely feature a small group of absurdly high-paid Hollywood stars, all of whom generally play the same character (or rather play themselves) in every role. According to Forbes, the five highest paid actors of 2024 earned a total of $447 million. In the U.S., the ‘Big 5’ film studios (Universal, Paramount, Warner Brothers, Walt Disney Studios, and Sony Pictures) earned a total revenue of $106.73 billion dollars (roughly equivalent to the GDP of Bulgaria in 2024). Walt Disney Studios alone earned $91.36 billion. These are staggering numbers.

“It is because of this that I propose the need for direct state regulation in the film industry.”

As many directors admit, remakes and reinstallments are driven by box-office earnings: a billion-dollar-earning film will instantaneously secure a sequel. Yet despite marinating in so much money, nothing of cinematic value seems to emerge from today’s Hollywood. There are, of course, occasionally interesting modern blockbusters. I was personally impressed by the subversive ideological premise of David Gregory’s Zombies of the Third Reich (2025), which seemed to intentionally play with the idea that, if Nazis represented the purest evil imaginable, we have to make the strange admission that Nazi zombies are somehow more digestible, more familiar to liberal democracy, than everyday human Nazism. But what is most noticeable is that any worthwhile, standout films are becoming more and more of an exception. 

To put it simply, the film market has gone seriously awry. If unchecked financial interests inevitably come to threaten the wider economy, it is not difficult to argue that the same financial interests are corrupting the film industry. Individual consumer intentions are, however, nowhere near powerful enough to counter broader financial structures. What is required is not a ‘shift in attitude,’ but rather a targeted administrative intervention. It is because of this that I propose the need for direct state regulation in the film industry.

Through the hands of the state, the hegemony of repetitive and unoriginal blockbusters could be dismantled. Marvel Studios and its persistent cinematic atrocities could be defunded. Dwayne Johnson, Ryan Reynolds, Will Smith, a host of multi-millionaire actors, and the endless production of unwanted live-action remakes would fade away with the profit motive. Direct government limitation of Hollywood budgets would dethrone the Big 5 studios, and we would no longer have to put up with x numbers of dire superhero films, endless Jurassic Park remakes mostly composed of scenes where Chris Pratt holds his hand up at a dinosaur, or cheap tangoes between Godzilla and King Kong.

The idea of centrally regulating cinematic productions is admittedly not new: Soviet control over Russian cinema—in particular under Stalinism—ensured that filmmakers were forced to adapt their artistic techniques to Party propaganda. The experimental stylizations of Eisenstein’s The Old and the New (1929), for example, were considered by the administrative nomenklatura to deviate dangerously from the rugged principles of Soviet Realism. Concerned that experimental cinema could threaten the legacy of the Bolshevik revolution, screenplays had to be submitted to the Soviet Politburo in order to ensure that neither the plot nor even the styles of mise-en-scène contradicted the Party line.

The Soviets subsumed cinema to the determining role of ideology. My suggestion, however, has little to do with a central ideological message. The interventions I propose would seek to limit Hollywood budgets and thereby influence the context in which cinema is produced. The repetitive output of contemporary cinema is a symptom of Hollywood’s unregulated profit-driven market, which fixates on the highest-paid actors and maximizing studio revenues. We got MCU film number 36 (!) not because of Marvel Studios’ passion for artistic expression, but because, like any other economic industry, profit potentials were seen. When asked about the possibility of a new Final Destination installment, director Steven Quale gave a bluntly honest answer: “We’ll see how this one performs internationally, and if it makes as much money as the fourth one, I’m sure Warner Brothers will want to make another one.” Directors no longer even bother trying to hide behind a veil of ‘artistic passion.’ Instead, they gladly proclaim their financial interests. They may be just as happy working in investment banking or tech startups.

If the problem is the enormous amount of money circulating around Hollywood, the first step in rescuing cinema would be to suck some of it out. Budgets, and subsequently actor and director earnings, would be centrally limited to a number which ensures that writing, casting, locations, production, marketing, set management, and all other expenses would proceed unhindered without going above a certain necessary amount. Manufacturing wealth would no longer be the raison d’être of cinema. The logic of this implementation is somewhat straightforward, but the history not only of film but art in general suggests that great inventions emerge when profit is reduced to secondary background noise. The exact figures of these government regulated cuts to Hollywood budgets would be a matter of a longer legislative deliberation, and don’t matter for the moment.

Unlike the Soviet method, there is no teleological reasoning to my proposed intervention: I do not recommend a specific (even ideological) form of cinema. Some may have a preference for New German Cinema, John Schlesinger, or Nicholas Ray, but recreating a film period for which I am particularly nostalgic is not the intention here. The intervention would rather be preventative: the forms of cinema it would produce cannot be predicted, but a reasonable bet could be made that if the possibility of profit were removed from the equation, the days of Marvel and nth installments of pointless action franchises would quickly be behind us.

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The post It’s Time for the U.S. Government to Defund Hollywood appeared first on VICE.