Barbie: A Review - Pink Bubblegum Bullshit

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!****

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. Underwhelming and disappointing. If you’re desperate to see it I’d say save your money and wait until it hits a streaming service.

I had no intention of seeing Barbie, the new blockbuster about the iconic Mattel doll starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, because I didn’t HAVE to see Barbie. You see, when I worked as a cultural critic for RT I had to watch and write about a lot of stuff I wasn’t that interested in simply because other people were interested in it which meant that it was culturally relevant. Well, I no longer work for RT so I no longer have to do that.

So, when Barbie came along, I just thought, due to the film’s obvious cultural politics and the fact that the film’s writer/director is Greta Gerwig – someone whose work I’ve never thought much of, it wasn’t for me so I’d skip this new battle in the endless and tiresome culture war.

But then Barbie, due to its relentless and highly effective marketing campaign, became an undeniable phenomenon, hauling in over a billion dollars at the box office and igniting a fan frenzy not seen at cineplexes in years, so I thought maybe I should see it. And then my wife said she wanted to see it…and whatever Lola wants…Lola gets! My thinking was, if people are going so nuts for this film - then maybe it’s worth seeing.

I went to a 10:30 AM screening on a Tuesday morning. Barbie had been in theaters for over two weeks at this point and still my screening here in mundane Middle America was totally sold out. Barbie is, like the recent Taylor Swift tour, satiating a primal need among our collective feminine culture for a massive communal “event”. An example of this eventizing impulse was that the theater I attended, which admittedly is not particularly big, looked like a sea of Pepto Bismol as it was overwhelmingly packed with pink wearing middle aged women (including one wearing just a big pink t-shirt…which didn’t cover nearly enough of her nether regions as it should have!) as well as teenage and pre-pubescent girls donning a ton of pink…along with some rather unfortunate looking pink-clad teen boys imprisoned in the friend zone desperate to win favor with their girl crushes with whom they were attending the screening.

My hope in seeing Barbie was that it was good and that I’d like it – I wasn’t the least bit interested in hate watching it. I fully expected to dislike the de rigueur girl power politics – something which I find to be pitiful and pathetic, but I hoped to like the film despite its predictable politics…something which I often do (for example my review of Promising Young Woman) if for no other reason than my own personal politics are so unorthodox.

The opening scene was a perfect example of what I was hoping for…as the film opens with a glorious homage to Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, where Gerwig replaces Kubrick’s monkeys with little girls playing with baby dolls and the mysterious monolith is replaced with a towering Margot Robbie as Barbie. While I was off-put by the visual of little girls smashing babies (even if they are dolls) in reaction to their newfound Barbie evolution, I still nodded in approval at this brilliant bit of moviemaking and it filled me with great anticipation for what followed.

And then I watched the rest of the movie. Unfortunately, it was all downhill from there as the film meandered aimlessly through a convoluted yet corporate cookie-cutter plot, allergic to profundity or purpose, and never even remotely approaching the genius of its opening.

In totality Barbie is an underwhelming, disappointing, cheap, shoddy, shitty, bland, boring, corporate money-grab wrapped in a vacant, vapid and vacuous feminist manifesto. In other words, Barbie is a poorly made version of exactly the thing it often pretends to belittle and/or satirize.

The film begins in Barbieland, a matriarchal utopia devoid of not only male power but babies or children….even the lone pregnant Barbie is exiled to the outskirts of girl boss heaven. The bit of the film initially set in Barbieland is ever-so-slightly amusing at first and then it gets old very, very fast. There’s a dance number in this Barbieland sequence that is supposed to be fun and funny but that is so anemic and tiresome as to be astounding. The low point is when Gerwig uses a ridiculously cliched record scratch to inject reality into the phony festivities. Yawn.

The final two-thirds of the film feature Barbie venturing to the “real world” – which is nothing like the actual real world, and the “real world” venturing in to Barbieland. All of it is sloppy but the scenes in the “real world”, in particular, are a total storytelling and cinematic shit show devoid of any redeeming cinematic qualities. The Barbie in the real-world, fish-out-of-water stuff shockingly doesn’t even muster a minimal amount of comedy.

To be fair, I did laugh out loud a few times during Barbie, all thanks to the aggressively amusing Ryan Gosling who absolutely crushes it as the desperate and dim-witted Ken. Gosling is destined to be nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his unbreakable and unshakeable performance as Barbie’s platonic boy toy.

Speaking of the Oscars, it’s 100% guaranteed that there will be a Barbie-themed musical number at this year’s Oscar ceremony. You can absolutely bet your life on that. You can also count on Mattel to turn the success of the Barbie movie into a Broadway musical…which is an eerily similar concept to the hysterically funny Marvel musical featured in the Disney Plus series Hawkeye…except Mattel won’t be making the Barbie musical ironically.

Margot Robbie is ridiculously gorgeous and perfect as Barbie but there isn’t much there, there. Robbie’s physical perfection is all she needs to play this part and when she’s asked to do more than that her acting is undercut by a really abysmal script that is chock full of cringe, freshman level women’s studies diatribes that ring hollow and feel forced making Barbie feel less human than she already is.

Besides the glorious Gosling, the other supporting performances in Barbie are shockingly devoid of life.

Who knew that both Kate McKinnon and Will Ferrell could not only be so unfunny, but so bland and so forgettable? You’d be hard pressed to find two more energized comedic actors but on Barbie they seem constrained to the point of comatose.

Somewhat surprising is that for a movie full of Barbies, there’s only one attractive one in the bunch – Margot Robbie…and she is certainly very attractive despite the sneaky and obtuse internet marketing campaign prior to the film’s release arguing that she isn’t. I have no problem with a Barbie movie featuring the vast diversity of the Barbie doll collection…which means we get a black Barbie, a fat Barbie, a wheelchair Barbie, a trans-Barbie and so on…but what befuddles me is why do all these Barbies have to be so “beauty-impaired” and visually unappealing?

The rest of the supporting cast are all interchangeable, dull and completely forgettable. Issa Rae and Simu Liu are like two sides of the same charisma-deficient coin. Neither one is remotely interesting or likeable.

Michael Cera as Allan feels like he’s in an entirely different movie…maybe because the script he has to work with is so incoherent and idiotic.

America Ferrera plays Gloria, a mom and Mattel employee, and she is utterly abysmal. She does get to have the big monologue in the movie which begins with “it’s literally impossible to be a woman…” and goes downhill from there. This monologue has middle-aged women across the nation pumping their fists in the air like gold chain and muscle shirt wearing Guidos at a Rocky movie when the Italian Stallion gets off the canvas and beats the shit out of the villain du jour. But here’s the thing…I understand the perspective behind the “it’s literally impossible to be a woman” monologue, but the fact is it isn’t “literally” impossible to be a woman…billions of women do it every minute of every day. Yes, it is no doubt difficult to be a woman due to the constant contradictions one must navigate…but you know what else is equally difficult…being a man. The obstacles and difficulties one must face and overcome as a woman are no harder than the ones men must overcome, they’re just different.

Life is hard for human beings, and for modern day feminists to claim empowerment by perpetually play the victim all while demonizing men, is pretty repugnant and frankly counterproductive.

Barbie also does what our awful culture has normalized which is to conflate masculinity with toxic masculinity, a perilous proposition since it is unquestionably masculine men that carved out a safe space in a dangerous world where women are free to make insipid and insidious films about how awful men are.

My wife, a very, very independent, powerful and, dare I say it, feminist woman, turned to me after the film and the first thing she said was that she found it to be “damaging”. As the mother of a young son, she felt the film sent a negative message to girls and woman not just about the nature of men and boys but about what it means to be a girl/woman, so much so that it depressed her and made her fear for the future. And I must say, I completely concur with her astute observations.

I’ve heard it said that Barbie is Black Panther for white women, and that is very true as Black Panther was an overhyped, shitty movie too that became super successful because seeing it was an act of cultural-political virtue signaling.

Other movies have somewhat captured the cultural political zeitgeist in the same way that Barbie has but from a different angle. For example, Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper was a terrible movie but flag waving numbskulls flocked to see and support it because it reinforced their patriotic – or rather anti-liberal, bona fides. That American Sniper was a God-awful movie regardless of its politics was irrelevant as all the flag-wavers loved it even before it started – they loved it simply because it existed…just like the pink clad buffoons are enamored by Barbie regardless of how obviously bad it is.

Sound of Freedom is another movie that is a virtue signal movie currently in theatres. Sound of Freedom is about the scourge of child trafficking and has become a cause celebre for anti-libtard right wingers and as a result has done exceedingly well at the box office – raking in over a hundred million dollars. No doubt the crossover of American Sniper fans with Sound of Freedom fans is enormous. I’ve not seen Sound of Freedom…mostly because I just assume it is poorly made…but I can plainly see that it’s a virtue signal movie just like Barbie.

Another film I thought of when watching Barbie was, ironically enough, The Passion of the Christ. Mel Gibson’s 2004 film smashed box office records for an independent film and made him something like half a billion dollars since he financed it himself. Gibson wisely marketed the film directly to churches and church groups and it became a cultural signifier among Bush loving right wingers.

The marketing of The Passion of the Christ was remarkable, as, just like Barbie, everyone was talking about it even if they hadn’t seen it. Barbie’s marketing was brilliant because it removed the film’s politics from the campaign, made it seem as if it were for adults AND kids (it’s not for kids!) and it was absolutely everywhere. You couldn’t escape the Barbie marketing machine, and frankly still can’t. That the marketing campaign has succeeded in making Barbie a cultural phenomenon doesn’t diminish the fact that the movie is garbage.

Truth be told I’ve never understood the critical love for Greta Gerwig’s films. Gerwig’s 2017 film Lady Bird was so overrated as to be astonishing. Critics adored the film yet I found it to be painfully thin and embarrassingly amateurish. It seemed to me that Gerwig, much like Jordan Peele who came out with Get Out in the same year (2017), was cashing in on the angry liberal political hysteria of the post-Trump election and were being elevated due to their race and gender, not their talent. Having seen both of Gerwig’s and Peele’s films since 2017 has only reinforced my belief regarding their lack of talent and skill and the absurd critical love they’ve received.

As for Barbie, I’ve had a rather interesting perspective on the film as I’ve watched from a distance as the usual suspects on both the left and right instinctively and reflexively loved or hated the film. Having finally seen the movie I can say that people who love it, who when pressed on its numerous shortcomings all say the same thing in defense of it, namely that “it’s fun!”, are delusional dupes and dopes. On the flip side, many of the critics reflexively hating it are so stuck on its politics that they don’t even care to examine the filmmaking….which feels less delusional than just plain disingenuous.

As for me, I didn’t like Barbie for the sole reason that Barbie isn’t a good movie.  Barbie isn’t funny and it isn’t interesting. That the film pretends to be rebellious, if not revolutionary, in its messaging, but then spews out the most corporate-friendly and approved, pedantic neo-feminist pablum, wrapped in a cavalcade of visually listless, dramatically lifeless, comedically flaccid scenes, makes it feel like watching a pink-hued Human Resources film for corporate employees to learn the new Diversity, Equity and Inclusion office rules.

The bottom line is that the masses being so enamored of Barbie says considerably less about the quality of the movie than it does about the easily manipulated morons populating our world and their astonishing level of group-think and gullibility, as well as the sorry state of our society and cinema.

Unfortunately, so few people nowadays are self-aware or introspective enough to resist massive marketing campaigns like the one around Barbie, which brainwashed otherwise intelligent people into not only mindlessly devouring this odious, rancid corporate pink taco but declaring they love it. I too succumbed and took a bite of the gigantic, rancid corporate pink taco that is Barbie, but to my minimal credit I at least am not foolish enough to don an oversized pink t-shirt sans pants and shriek “yummy…how fun!”

In conclusion, it is literally impossible for me to recommend Barbie.

Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo

©2023

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 105 - Oppenheimer

On this apocalyptically combustible episode, Barry and I go nuclear in our discussion of Christopher Nolan's new movie Oppenheimer. Topics discussed include a heated debate over the movie, musings on Nolan's career and a ranking of his filmography from top to bottom. 

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 105 - Oppenheimer

Thanks for listening!

©2023

Oppenheimer: A Review - Destroyer of Worlds, Creator of Great Cinema

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!!THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. The rarest of the rare in our current culture, an exquisitely crafted movie made for grown-ups. A masterful work that deserves to be seen on the big screen.

Oppenheimer, the new film written and directed by Christopher Nolan which recounts the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the man who first made the atomic bomb, is a stunning accomplishment for a variety of reasons.

The first of which is that it is made with a level of technical and cinematic proficiency rarely seen in our current age of mundane, mind-numbing, moviemaking sub-mediocrity.

Secondly, Oppenheimer is remarkable because it’s a mature movie made for adults that features zero fights and car chases that has generated a tremendous amount of interest, and if reports are to be believed, box office.

My screening here in flyover country (I’m currently living on a farm in an undisclosed part of Middle America) at noon on a Saturday was packed with a striking cross section of regular folks, the overwhelming majority of which I can confidently assume do not consider themselves cinephiles or even count themselves among regular movie goers.

As I watched the three-hour film that consists almost entirely of dramatic scenes of people talking unfold before me, I couldn’t help but wonder if these ‘regular’ people around me liked this film as much as I did.

Oppenheimer tells the sprawling story of its protagonist’s struggle with the moral and ethical burdens of his world-altering calling, but compresses it into an intimate drama that, much like how Oppenheimer builds the first atomic bomb, explodes inward first, which then triggers the greater outward conflagration.

Watching Oppenheimer, one cannot help but marvel at a filmmaker bristling with confidence and competence, the former of which is all too common (and unearned) and the latter of which all too rare nowadays. This is an ambitious movie to the point of being audacious, and I cannot think of another living filmmaker who has the unique artistic style and populist storytelling skillset of Christopher Nolan who could even approach pulling it off.

To be clear, I am not some Nolan fanboy. I respect him greatly but have had some mixed feelings about his previous work. For instance, I thought both The Dark Knight and Dunkirk were masterpieces (I think Dunkirk is his greatest film and one of the very best films of the 21st Century), but I thought Interstellar and Tenet were garbage. On the whole I find him to be a sort of new generation Spielberg without the shmaltz and obsession with children. He is the rare auteur nowadays who makes big budget – big box office, popular movies.

Nolan empties his bag of moviemaking tricks on this one as he uses time jumps, different film stocks and aspect ratios, and wonderfully deft editing to create a mainstream movie that often feels like an impressionistic fever dream.

The key to the success of this massive undertaking is Cillian Murphy who plays Oppenheimer – the American Prometheus who gives the ultimate fire to humanity. Like Dr. Frankenstein, he meddles with powers beyond his moral comprehension that ultimately hunt and haunt him for the rest of his life. If Murphy fails even a little bit in the role this movie crumbles under the weight of its own ambition, but he never stumbles, not even a little.

Murphy is able to convey the vivid, rich inner life of his character with a single, hollow-eyed close-up, and Nolan takes full advantage of his talents. Over the course of the film Murphy’s Oppenheimer goes from being a ravenously ambitious student to a callously arrogant expert to a hollowed-out martyr desperate to be punished for his egregious moral sins and all of it feels grounded and genuine and gloriously compelling.

Another very effective performance comes from Robert Downey Jr. as Lewis Strauss, an administrative admirer of Oppenheimer and bureaucratic bully. It was an absolute joy to see Downey back to serious acting after his long and fruitful run as Iron Man. Downey has not lost his chops as his Strauss is a cauldron of conflicting and conniving energy that is captivating to watch.

The other stand out performance comes from Gary Oldman, who has just one scene, but he is phenomenal in it. It’s a testament to Oldman’s prodigious talent that he can be so thoroughly unforgettable in a mere matter of moments in a movie.

The rest of the cast, for the most part, acquit themselves well enough. Matt Damon as a demanding American General Leslie Groves, is fine, as are the cavalcade of actors like Casey Affleck, Kenneth Branagh, Rami Malek and Josh Hartnett who pepper the cast.

Florence Pugh and Emily Blunt are the two main actresses and they do the best they can with roles that feel underwritten and a bit uneven. Pugh is always terrific and brings her dark magnificent energy to bear here. Blunt at first feels out of sorts in her role as Oppenheimer’s wife, but she finds her stride in the last third of the film and nails one critical scene when it matters most.

The only performances I thought were notably underwhelming were Benny Safdie as Edward Teller and Rami Malek as David Hill. Both seem out of place and rather awkward in their roles.

On the bright side, it seems definite that Cillian Murphy will be nominated for Best Actor and will probably be the odds-on favorite to win. Downey Jr. will also likely be nominated for Best Supporting Actor.

The film is beautifully photographed by cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, who himself could be staring at a second Oscar nomination (his first was for Nolan’s 2017 film Dunkirk). Hoytema’s framing, close-ups in particular, are exquisite, as is his use of color and contrast.

The soundtrack by Ludwig Goransson is also very effective and well-done. It skillfully but subtly enhances the drama of the film without over-imposing itself and feeling manipulative.

As good as the cinematography and music were, the editing by Jennifer Lame really stands out. The film jumps back and forth in time and yet never loses coherence thanks to Lame’s deft and skillful work.

It is always difficult to discern any sort of political or cultural meaning from Nolan’s films, but they seem much more apparent than usual in Oppenheimer, at least to me. Of course, one must be self-aware enough to know that they may be projecting their own ideological perspective onto a film rather than discovering the director’s intent.

For example, after Nolan’s superhero masterpiece The Dark Knight came out in 2008 there was lots of talk among members of the George W. Bush torture and death-cult that the film was about Bush as Batman being scapegoated for what he has to do to defeat the Joker/Bin Laden, the ultimate terrorist agent of chaos. I never found that argument compelling and always thought it had more to do with the guilty conscience and vacuous ideology of its adherents rather than with Nolan’s intended sub-text.

The same may be true of my reading on Oppenheimer, which seems to me to be a movie that speaks to much of our current era’s issues. For instance, Oppenheimer is persecuted for speaking out against establishment orthodoxy and for holding views deemed to be dangerous. That seems to be very relevant to our current times where wrong-think is a cultural crime as has been well documented here and elsewhere.

Oppenheimer is also a stark reminder of the destructive power and nature of human beings, and how serious that subject is but how we often take it much too lightly.

For example, we have both liberals and conservatives in this country hell bent on escalating the proxy war in Ukraine up to and including to the point of direct conflict with Russia, a nuclear armed state, in order to desperately cling to our self-delusional empire. Oppenheimer eventually came to understand the power he unleashed by building an atomic bomb, but somehow our modern culture has forgotten the earth destroying ability it possesses and feels so comfortable toying with.

And finally, one can’t help but think of Artificial Intelligence while watching Oppenheimer. AI is a great achievement for scientists but like the team at Los Alamos that unleashed the destructive power of the gods onto humans, the unintended and long-term consequences of AI seem to be a moral and ethical minefield for which its creators never seriously prepared or even remotely considered. The impending, and most likely inevitable, dire consequences of artificial intelligence feel all the more chilling when considered in the context of the moral dilemma and outcome of Oppenheimer.

Whether the film is actually about those things or I am just projecting my own fears and ideologies on to it, is ultimately irrelevant, as the film stands on its cinematic artistry alone regardless of its deeper or wider meaning.

The thing that stood out to me the most regarding Oppenheimer was just the fact that it exists and that regular people are interested in seeing it.

For decades the art of cinema has been in steep decline and in recent years the business of movies has followed suit. For the entirety of this century Hollywood has been training audiences to watch nothing but dumbed down bullshit and to instinctively yearn for mindless entertainment. Oppenheimer is counter to that. To be clear, this film isn’t highbrow or arthouse, but it is definitely elevated, adult, populist moviemaking, storytelling and entertainment.

I doubt this will turn the tide of franchise excrement coming from Hollywood, but it is a sliver of hope. In the sea of shit that has been movies over the last four years, original, mature stories from auteurs have been few and far between and even the ones that did come out were among the lesser of the director’s filmography. But with Oppenheimer we have Christopher Nolan, one of the more successful directors in recent Hollywood history, putting out an original, adult-targeted film, and one of his very best films, when all hope seemed lost in the industry for this sort of thing.

Audiences are desperately hungry for quality films that are made for grown-ups…and with Oppenheimer Christopher Nolan has delivered. I, for one, am grateful.

 Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo

©2023

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 103 - Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

On this episode Barry and I go on an archeological dig to try and discover why Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny was such a flop...and we find a treasure trove of answers. Topics discussed include Phoebe Waller-Bridge and the fool's gold of Fleabag, the cornucopia of abysmal supporting performances in this disappointing movie, and the storytelling power of science vs religion.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 103 - Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

Thanks for listening!

©2023

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny: A Review - Dial D for Dull

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

Popcorn Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. If you’re desperate to be an Indiana Jones completist, wait until this underwhelming movie hits Disney + to watch it.

The Indiana Jones franchise gloriously burst onto the scene with 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark, a deliriously entertaining throwback to early Hollywood action-adventure serial cliffhangers that was perfectly directed by Steven Spielberg and created/produced by George Lucas, which became a massive blockbuster and captured the culture’s imagination.

Raiders made Harrison Ford, who was already an enormous star for his turn as the charming rogue Han Solo in the Star Wars movies, a megastar for his portrayal of the swashbuckling, Nazi-punching archeologist Indiana Jones.

Now, forty years and four films later, Harrison Ford is back once again in the iconic title role in the new film Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, which is the fifth, and maybe, probably, hopefully, the last film in the franchise.

The Dial of Destiny is the first Indiana Jones film to not be directed by Steven Spielberg. This time James Mangold (Ford v Ferrari, Logan) is at the helm and joining Ford in the cast are Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Antonio Banderas, Boyd Holbrook, Mads Mikkelsen and Toby Jones.

The film tells the story of the incomparable Indiana Jones as he struggles to make his way in the modern world of 1969 as a retiring professor of archeology. His retirement plans get scattered to the wind when his goddaughter Helena shows up talking about an ancient relic called the dial of destiny…and so the adventure begins.

The Indiana Jones film series has, with one notable exception, been a case of diminishing returns as the franchise went along. Raiders was impeccable entertainment, but its sequel, 1984’s The Temple of Doom, was a major drop off from its predecessor. Thankfully 1989’s The Last Crusade, which featured a supporting turn by Sean Connery, got things back on track as it was nearly an equal to Raiders. Then fans had to wait 19 years for the next Indiana Jones movie, and that was 2008’s The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull…it was not worth the wait.

I had never seen Kingdom of the Crystal Skull but to prepare for Dial of Destiny I watched it and came away thinking that while the first act was fine, the second act was pretty bad and the third act was unconscionably awful.

As bad as The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was, and it really was bad as it was riddled with the most basic filmmaking and storytelling errors, believe it or not, it is still better than The Dial of Destiny.

I saw The Dial of Destiny a day ago and I cannot, for the life of me, remember a single frame from the film. While my cognitive decline may be partially responsible for that lack of recall, it isn’t totally to blame as the movie itself shoulders the majority of it.

The biggest problem with The Dial of Destiny, and it is riddled with a cavalcade of problems, is that it’s shockingly, unforgivably dull. The dial of dullness was turned up to 11 on this movie.

Why Ford, who is now 80 years-old, would dust off Indy’s signature fedora and bullwhip for this insipid script and lackluster movie, is beyond me. It’s not like he needs the money.

Indiana Jones has always had a partner in these movies, be it romantic or familial. In Raiders there was Karen Allen’s spectacular spitfire Marion. In Temple of Doom it was the awful Kate Capshaw as singer/actress Willie. In Last Crusade, of course, it was Sean Connery as Indy’s dad Henry. In Kingdom of the Crystal Skull it was Shia LeBeouf as Indy’s son, Mutt. And now in Dial of Destiny it is Phoebe Waller-Bridge as Helena Shaw, Indy’s Goddaughter.

As terrible as Kate Capshaw and Shia LeBeouf are in their Indy supporting roles, Waller-Bridge is, astonishingly, even worse.

Waller-Bridge is best known for her award-winning performance in the tv series Fleabag, which she also wrote. I absolutely loved Fleabag and Waller-Bridge in it. I thought she was utterly phenomenal as the self-destructive, self-sabotaging lead in the series.

But in Dial of Destiny, Waller-Bridge, who has not done much if any acting work since Fleabag, is exposed for simply not being ready for prime time. Her quirkiness was extremely appealing on the small screen in Fleabag, but on the big screen she is revealed as being a charisma-free, small, rather poor actress.

Waller-Bridge is remarkably wooden, if not leaden, in the film. As a comedic presence she is underwhelming, annoying and decidedly unfunny. As a physical actress she is uncomfortable, ungainly, ungraceful and unathletic, four things that individually are difficult to deal with in an action movie, but in unison are impossible to overcome.

Casting Waller-Bridge, who is, frankly, physically unattractive, and who runs like a baby giraffe with rickets and a club foot, as a co-lead in an action-adventure film next to a crumbling 80-year-old man, is so egregious as to be criminal.

At least with 80-year-old Harrison Ford they de-age him for the first part of the film so we don’t have to watch his decrepit body creak and ache for the full, and excruciatingly long, two hours and thirty-four-minute run time. Unfortunately for Waller-Bridge, and us, no technology exists that can alter her awkward, grating presence and unappealing appearance in this movie.

As for Ford, the truth is he has never been a particularly good actor. He’s certainly a very charming screen presence, but he’s always been pretty limited in what he’s able to do acting-wise. If you watch him in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull he’s actually egregiously bad, but in Dial of Destiny he has some brief moments.

For example, when Indy dutifully recites some exposition about why Mutt (his son from Kingdom of the Crystal Skull) isn’t in this movie, it is actually quite moving…and is the most emotionally packed sequence in any Indiana Jones film and maybe in Ford’s career.

Unfortunately, that is the only moment in the entire film that has any life to it. The rest of it is generic action after generic action all riddled with derivative dialogue around a pointless plot.

Speaking of generic, the bad guys in this movie, Nazi scientist Jurgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen) and Klaber (Boyd Holbrooke), are such cardboard cutouts I’m surprised they didn’t blow away in the wind. I like both Mikkelsen and Holbrooke but these bad guys have no depth or direction to them. Klaber in particular is totally incomprehensible and incoherent.

Another absurd character is Mason, a black, female CIA agent, poorly played by Shaunette Renee Wilson. Mason is a sassy CIA agent with a heart of gold and a strong moral compass. How realistic. That Wilson is unable to bring any life or depth to the character only adds to that undeniable sinking feeling whenever she’s on-screen.

In a recent article Wilson described how she got her character’s dramatic exit from the story changed because she thought it had offensive language in it and was unduly harsh. The ending that ultimately ended up on-screen is so banal as to be ridiculous so…congrats to Ms. Wilson?

It is also amusing that Ms. Wilson was offended by some language spoken to her character in her original final scene, which no doubt was racially tinged considering the scenes are set in 1969 and her opponent is the Nazi henchmen Klaber, but she felt completely comfortable using the term “cracker” on-screen. Apparently, what is good for the goose is most definitely not also good for the gander.

That James Mangold agreed to Ms. Wilson’s changing of the script speaks to not only his spineless and sackless nature but also his complete lack of understanding about drama. Kluber would’ve been a more compelling, interesting and comprehensible character if we could’ve seen his visceral hatred of Mason in the actual movie. But it was “offensive” so we have to deter to a no-name, third rate actress’s feelings instead. Good grief.

Speaking of Mangold, who I thought did fantastic work on both Logan and Ford v Ferrari, he brings nothing to the table on Dial of Destiny. The film isn’t even a cheap knock-off of Spielberg, which Spielberg himself already did on Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, it’s just an overly long exercise in bad decisions.

For example, why does Mangold shoot an underwater scene which is impossible to see and dramatically nonsensical? Why does he shoot so much at night, which results in bland visuals with no sharp contrast? These decisions, along with the decision to cast Waller-Bridge and Shaunette Renee Wilson, are inexplicable, and they are an albatross around the movie’s neck. And don’t even get me started on the character Teddy (Ethann Isidore), who is like Short Round (from Temple of Doom) but worse, believe it or not. Yikes.

Another enormous problem with Dial of Destiny is that its story undermines what made both Raiders and Last Crusade so archetypally compelling, namely, it eschews the magic and mysticism of religion in favor of “science”.

The plot of Dial of Destiny revolves around the Antikythera, a time travel device built by Greek mathematician Archimedes. There is nothing mystical about this device, it is supposed to be based on actual science.

Indiana Jones is himself a scientist, which is why his grappling with the magical religious powers of the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail, in Raiders and Last Crusade respectively, is so captivating and compelling.

When Indy is faced with dubious science, as in Crystal Skull and Dial of Destiny, it works at cross-purposes with the character’s archetype and mythology. In other words, it disengages the audience on an unconscious level, thus neutering the story and its dramatic power.

The Lance of Longinus or Holy Lance, which was used to pierce Christ’s side at the crucifixion, is a relic that is momentarily presented on-screen in the movie but then narratively disposed of in favor of Archimedes’ dial of destiny.

It seems to me that the Holy Lance was a better option to use as a narrative device in this film. It could have been presented as a way for the aging Indy to find both redemption and forgiveness for whatever sins he may be burdened with…like the ones regarding his son and ex-wife. And it could also have been a weapon of great power used by the usual suspects, the Nazis, to take over the world.

But instead, we get the rather flaccid dial of destiny, which Indy doesn’t even use to reverse the errors he’s made in his personal life, but only a really lame final act involving Archimedes himself that feels like a bad attraction at a second-rate amusement park. Sigh.

If I had the dial of destiny in my possession I would travel back in time and erase all of the Indiana Jones movies except for Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade. I would also make sure the diabolical producer from Lucasfilm, Kathleen Kennedy, was never born, thus saving both the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises from her malignantly evil grasp. I have no doubt that I would be received as a great hero to all people with good taste.

Oh, to dream.

Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo

©2023

Succession (HBO): Final Season Review - All's Well That Ends Well...Enough

****THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS SOME SEASON 4 SPOILERS!!! THIS IS NOT A SPOILER FREE ARTICLE!!****

Season 4 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Overall Series Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: WATCH IT. Great acting and great writing make for some great TV.

Succession is dead. Long live Succession.

The HBO prestige drama about the dysfunctional Roy family and its mega-media empire had its season four and series finale last night.

For its four seasons Succession has been a glorious dramatic feast served in an era where both film and television have consistently fed us mostly middling, mind-numbing, middlebrow mush.

Watching patriarch Logan (Brian Cox) and his ne’er-do-well offspring Kendall, Shiv and Roman run roughshod over America and its culture was insidiously entertaining but also bone chilling because of its unnerving similarity to the real-world.

The Roys are part Murdoch (Fox), part Redstone (Viacom/CBS/Paramount), part Cox (Cox Communications) and part Roberts (Comcast), and like them all, entirely awful.

Despite being a toxic brew of capitalism porn and media mogul soap opera, Succession never failed to be a joy to behold and the reason for that is two-fold.

First, the acting was superb across the board. Secondly, the dialogue brought to life by these actors was razor sharp and never failed to be anything but modern-day Shakespeare.

That all said, season four was the weakest of the Succession seasons. It wasn’t terrible at all, in fact, it featured the greatest episode not only of the series (episode 3) but of any series in recent memory. But it felt like season four was less dramatically and narratively crisp as the seasons that preceded it.

Part of the issue with season four was that it didn’t earn much of the drama it tried to use. For example, the political election storyline felt trite and shallow because the stakes of the election were not sufficiently developed, and then when they were upon us felt artificially heightened…much like our own real elections.

The same was true for the climax of the finale. Without giving too much away, there is a confrontation between the siblings at a crucial moment that rang surprisingly hollow and underwhelming because it just seemed forced and manufactured, which is not something that happened throughout the run of the series.

This crucial confrontation needed more lead time in order to be more developed and more believable. Unfortunately, the lack of believability around this confrontation undercut the dramatic momentum of the episode, season and series.

Season four was also hamstrung by killing off its most compelling character, Logan, early in the season. Logan was the center of the Succession universe and while it was amusing watching the Roy children try and fill the gaping void left in his absence, it was never quite as profound as when Logan was sitting atop the throne.

Speaking of King Lear…oops…I mean Logan, Brian Cox was absolutely phenomenal in this series. Cox’s Shakespearean speechifying was as good as it gets and has ever gotten in television. Cox’s Logan was a combustible and curmudgeonly king and we should all bow down to his combativeness.

Kieran Culkin as Roman Roy was also spectacular. Watching Roman go full Fredo…and you never go full Fredo, in the final season was extraordinary. Culkin’s ability to bring Roman’s self-loathing and searing, rapier wit to life with such skill and verve was among the show’s highlights.

Sarah Snook’s oh so human, desperate and transparently wounded Shiv was a consistent pleasure to watch as she was Lady MacBeth, Goneril and Gertrude (Hamlet’s mother) all rolled in to one.

Jeremy Strong was outstanding as Kendall, the broken boy who would be king but can’t get out of his own way. Strong’s unrelenting commitment to the vacuous and vacant Kendall was impressive.

In season four, Alexander Skarsgard was exquisite as Swedish tech guru Lukas Mattson. Skarsgard was so great in season four as the GoJo CEO he basically took over the show with his quirky, nerd guy darkness.

But of all the great actors on Succession, nobody tops Matthew Macfadyen who played Shiv’s pain sponge, sycophant husband Tom Wambsgans. Tom reeked of shameless ambition and sweaty desperation but never succumbed to self-pity, only to self-interest.

Tom’s whipping boy, cousin Greg, played by Nicholas Braun, yearned to be part of the amoral and incompetent Roy sibling “quad” and would do anything to make it happen or to make anything happen for himself. Braun was outstanding as he stole scenes and episodes with his priceless line readings and his character’s insecure maneuvering and backdoor bravado.

I suppose the reason why, despite its faults and despite having watched the finale on the new, annoyingly glitchy, streaming service Max (fuck you, Max!), I liked Succession so much was that it accurately spoke to our current time and current predicament.  

Watching a Shakespearean-esque dramatization of the ruling elite and ownership class of America, filled with an endless supply of second and third-rate fucktard, mid-wit nepo-babies devoid of balls but ravenous for power, who surround themselves with sycophantic psychopaths whose only ambition is to hold onto their own tiny, Mordor adjacent fiefdoms, was as entertaining as it was unnerving because this is exactly how empires, like America, fail and fall.

For instance, anyone who is even remotely aware can see that America’s ruling class are a decidedly spent force. For God’s sake we are on our way to having another election between fourth-rate, incompetent shitstains Joe Biden and Donald Trump. In a country of over 350 million people, it is impossible that we must choose between a compulsively lying, narcissistic, dementia-addled, pedophile politician and a bloated, incoherent, shameless, compulsively lying, nepo-brat, failure.

Of course, the truth is we only have a choice between these two asshats because we don’t actually have any choice…only the illusion of choice. Succession makes it clear that the decision between who rules and who is ruled is not a decision at all…it’s simply theatre, meant to entertain and distract while the Logan Roys and Lukas Mattsons – the ruling elites of the world, sit on high and pull all the strings.

It was great fun while it lasted, but Succession, like America’s global empire and the dollar’s dominance, is over…and frankly…it needed to be over. Succession needed to end because it ran out of runway for its drama and the American empire needed to end because it, like all empires before it, has grown much too decadent and depraved whilst wearing the crown to survive.

America will no doubt deeply miss its empirical power when it’s gone because if Succession has taught us anything it’s that while being in power is a cold, barren, miserable, sterile, lonely, painful existence, life without power is much, much worse.

 Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo

©2023

Adventures in Idiocy - Thoughts on Dylan Mulvaney, Max and Monty Python

PUTRID PANTHER PISS

Yet another front in the never-ending culture war was opened in early April of this year when Bud Light decided to hire “transgender influencer” Dylan Mulvaney to be a “spokesperson” for their shitty beer brand.

To celebrate Mulvaney’s year anniversary of his “days of girlhood” Tik Tok series – which documented the travails of his first year of “girlhood” - which miraculously included the pain of menstrual cramps (or in this case minstrel cramps) despite his not having a uterus, Bud Light put his ridiculous face on beer cans.

The reaction from Bud Light drinkers to having trans Tinkerbell Dylan Mulvaney thrust upon them was entirely predictable to everyone with half a brain in their head, which obviously excludes the decision makers at Bud Light.

The people who drink Bud Light, or used to drink Bud Light, are mostly men, mostly working class and all have bad taste. Like most men, they have no interest in Dylan Mulvaney, trans issues, or the culture war. They just want to be left alone to drink beer, hang out with buddies and watch sports while they wait to for their life to come to an end.

Bud Light used to be the beer they’d consider drinking – I don’t drink but only God knows why anyone would drink that putrid panther piss…but to each his own, but now Bud Light is definitely off the table. The reason for this is simple…men love to bust each other’s balls…and now any guy drinking Bud Light gives his buddies endless ammunition to bust his balls into oblivion.

A guy brings Bud Light to a party or orders one at the bar and he will be serenaded with a cavalcade of humorously vicious insults questioning his sexuality, his gender and the state of his genitals. You may think that is cruel or barbaric or transphobic, but no one gives a flying fuck because it is, above all else, undeniably true.

The sales for Bud Light since Mulvaney became their spokesperson prove that the brand is now toxic among its core customers. For nearly two months since this all began Bud Light sales have plummeted in comparison to last year’s weekly sales averages…consistently down between 25% and 30% a week.

And this drop in sales is not going to just disappear because the stink left on the Bud Light brand from Mulvaney’s odious presence is going to last for a long time. Once a brand becomes a punchline it is nearly impossible to reverse.

What is baffling to me is how could the suits at Bud Light be so ignorant of their target audience and so blind to cultural reality? To say this is corporate malfeasance is a massive understatement.

As for Dylan Mulvaney, he is an adult and should do as he pleases with his own body…his transgenderism is his business (literally and figuratively), I just wish he wouldn’t be so craven as exploit himself or allow himself to be exploited by corporate entities…but unfortunately it seems the mentally ill Mulvaney is more interested in attention than anything else.

Mulvaney was what we call a theatre muffin (musical theatre actor) prior to becoming an “influencer”. Disingenuous, narcissistic, hyper-performative, annoyingly flamboyant gay men like Dylan Mulvaney are a dime a dozen in the theatre world. So Mulvaney seems to have decided to distinguish himself from the glamour boy hoi polloi by dressing up like a woman and saying he was trans. How clever.

His plan has worked remarkably well, as he’s made tons of money, gotten famous and even went to the Oval Office to talk to President Biden about Women’s issues…yes…you read that right….a man went to the White House as an expert on Women’s issues. Ultimately, Mulvaney strikes me as a rather repugnant culture war creature who during his shameless drive for fame has done more to denigrate women in the past year than most any other public figure.

One can only hope that Bud Light, Dylan Mulvaney and the shitheads at Anheuser-Busch all disappear and right quick because the world desperately needs none of them.

As for Bud Light, it has successfully destroyed decades of branding and is now radioactive amongst its core customers. Congratulations…there is no coming back from that.

MAX

Speaking of corporate marketing malfeasance, the geniuses over at the corporate behemoth Warner Bros. Discovery unveiled their new streaming service this week and it stands as a monument to their moronity.

Warner Bros. Discovery owns the streaming services HBO Max and Discovery +. HBO Max is of course known for its prestige TV shows, like The Sopranos, The Wire, Game of Thrones and Succession, and for its deep library of films, which include the Harry Potter, DC Comics I.P. as well as Turner Movie Classics and a bevy of other great films.

Discovery + is known for its reality TV empire which includes all the shows from Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, TLC, HGTV, Food Network, Travel, Investigation Discovery and CNN.

The suits at Warner Bros. Discovery, led by their brainless and toothless shark of a CEO, David Zaslav, decided to combine these two streaming services into one giant streaming service.

When naming the new streaming service, they decided to forego the well-established, prestige brand of HBO which has been arduously built over the lasty forty years. And they also decided to ignore the less prestigious but still very recognizable brand of Discovery.

Instead Zaslov and co. decided to name their big new streaming service…MAX.

The first thing that comes to mind with the name MAX is the low rent cable channel Cinemax, which is derogatorily called Skinemax because of its penchant for showing soft core porn in the wee hours of the night.

The second thing that comes to mind is MAXipad…or maybe MAXimum-security prison…or maybe for those old to remember, MAX Headroom.

HBO has become such a strong brand associated with prestige over the last 40 years that even when its shows aren’t that great, they are treated with great respect by the culture. For example, 2021’s Mare of Easttown starring Kate Winslet was shit, but the media and audiences treated it like some great work of art simply because it was on HBO.

And that’s the thing…HBO signaled prestige to both viewers AND talent…which is why great actors, writers and directors would be willing to make the jump to TV only if it was HBO.

Now with MAX…not so prestigious. Now if you’re a movie star you think twice before doing a series there because it’ll be lumped in with 90 Day Fiance and Dr. Pimple Popper.

That Warner Bros. Discovery could fuck up the naming of their gigantic streaming service this badly should be shocking…but it isn’t. Zaslav and his predecessors have been able to fuck up lots of things – like their DC films, over the years.

It should also come as no surprise that Warner Bros Discovery completely fucked up the actual Max streaming site. HBO Max was the easily best streaming service site to navigate and it wasn’t even close. It had easy to access hubs to all of the valuable sections of their library like Turner Classics, DC and Studio Ghibli which made navigation a breeze. The new Max site has idiotically eliminated that glorious convenience and replaced it with a haphazard, shit-thrown-against-the-wall incoherence that is frustrating, irritating and aggravating.

The Max site is a jumbled, muddled mess. It doesn’t even have a hub solely dedicated to the Discovery material which means, much like every other useless streaming service site, browsing is fruitless and you can’t really find anything unless you specifically type it into the search bar. Moronic. I hate it so much and I hate that the ease and perfection of HBO Max is gone.

The bottom-line is don’t be surprised if Warner Bros Discovery renames MAX (and hopefully does a full reboot and rebuild) in the next 3 years…and don’t be surprised if incompetent jackass Zaslav is out of a job…and don’t’ be surprised if the company sells off major portions of its entertainment business either.

THE LIFE OF BRIAN…AND LORETTA

And finally…three years ago this July I wrote a verbosely titled article “The Monty Python Classic 'The Life of Brian' Relentlessly Mocked Christianity Forty Years Ago, Comedy Needs to Do the Same Thing to the Church of Wokeness Today” in which I celebrated the film The Life of Brian for having transformed from being banned for blasphemy upon its release to being rated as acceptable for kids today.

I also praised the film for having masterfully mocking the old religion, Christianity, and for having the foresight to eviscerate the new religion, transgenderism, too, forty years ahead of time.

The mocking of the new woke religion occurs in a scene set in the coliseum of Jerusalem where the People’s Front of Judea meet to discuss their goals. One of the members, Stan – played by Eric Idle, declares he wants to be a woman and that it is his right as a man to have people call him Loretta.

Here is the scene which is absolutely, astonishingly brilliant from start to finish.

When Stan keeps interjecting feminine pronouns into the proposed language…he is asked by Francis why he keeps bringing up women?

Stan -  “I want to be one….I want to be a woman….from now on I want you all to call me Loretta…It’s my right as a man.”

Judith – “Why would you want to be Loretta, Stan?

Stan – “I want to have babies…It’s every man’s right to have babies if he wants.”

Reg - “You can’t have babies!”

Stan - “Don’t oppress me!”

Reg - “I’m not oppressing you Stan, you haven’t got a womb! Where’s the fetus gonna gestate? You gonna keep it in a box?”

After some hemming and hawing, Francis chimes in with a solution.

Francis (to Stan) - “We shall fight our oppressors for your right to have a baby, brother…ooops…sister, sorry.”

Reg - “What’s the point of fighting for his right to have babies if he can’t have babies?”

Francis – “It’s symbolic of our struggle against oppression!”

Reg – “It’s symbolic of his struggle against reality.”

I wrote of the film and this scene that,

“The Office, Community, 30 Rock, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Scrubs and Fawlty Towers, among others, have all had episodes scrubbed from streaming services for their past politically incorrect sins. Let us pray to our Lord and Savior Brian and his Sacred Shoe and Holy Gourd, that Monty Python’s glorious canon is not next on the cancel culture crucifixion list.”

Well…just today I saw that John Cleese, one of the founding members of Monty Python, is staging a theatrical production of The Life of Brian, and he is being forced to cut the “Loretta” scene from the show.

Cleese said of the Loretta scene being cut,

“So here you have something there's never been a complaint about in 40 years, that I've heard of, and now all of a sudden we can't do it because it'll offend people. What is one supposed to make of that? But I think there were a lot of things that were actually, in some strange way, predictive of what was actually going to happen later."

Yes, Cleese and co. predicted the absurdity of transgenderism forty years before it became a state religion, and I predicted the knives of the Cancel Culture Centurions and Tiny Twitter Torquemadas coming out for the The Life of Brian three years before it happened. Prophets both of us.

As the good book says (Mark 6:4), “no prophet is without honor except in his native place, among his own kindred, relatives and in his own house.”

And that is why my prescient Monty Python article, and most everything else I’ve written, could only be widely published at a Russian media outlet RT.com, and not here in the U.S. of A. where the Truth is anathema and people only want to read things that comfort, rather than confront, their vapid, vacuous and vacant belief systems built on disinformation, misinformation, propaganda and emotionalism. It's also why my wife left me, my dog bit me and my family disowned me.

As for Bud Light, MAX and Monty Python, these stories of misjudgments and massive failures are all just symptoms of a depraved decadence brought about by the broader disease of an empire in rapid decline.

Think this is bad? Trust me…things are going to get much, much worse…just watch and see.

Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo

©2023

Champions: A Review & Impassioned Commentary

IF YOU LIKE DIATRIBES ABOUT THE DEHUMANIZATION OF THE INTELLECTUALLY DISABLED, BLACK LIVES MATTER, POLICE BRUTALITY AND ABORTION IN REVIEWS OF MINDLESS FILM COMEDIES…THEN THIS ARTICLE IS DEFINITELY FOR YOU!

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. A mind-numbingly pedestrian affair that is devoid of genuine laughs and feels uncomfortably exploitative.

Champions, starring Woody Harrelson, is a sports comedy that tells the story of a disgraced minor league basketball coach who does his court ordered community service as the coach of a team of intellectually disabled basketball players.

The film, directed by Bobby Farrelly of the famed Farrelly brothers (There’s Something About Mary, Dumb and Dumber, Kingpin) in his first solo outing, hit theatres mid-March and is now available on the Peacock streaming service.

Champions, which is a remake of the 2018 Spanish film of the same name, is a bit of a befuddling movie. It is ostensibly meant to be a redemption story for Harrelson’s character, coach Marcus Marokovich, but he never actually redeems himself because he never reveals himself to be so much of a deplorable as to need redeeming.

Sure, Marokovich initially embarrasses himself during a minor league basketball game and it becomes a humiliating moment heightened in our endlessly nasty media culture, but he never seems like a bad guy, just like a guy having a bad day. So Marokovich doesn’t have far to travel on his journey to redemption and thus the story doesn’t go anywhere or mean very much.

To be fair, there is a sort of love story mixed into the mess involving the always charming Kaitlin Olsen as Alex, a sister of one of the intellectually disabled basketball players on Marokovich’s team, but that is more a redemption story for Alex, not for Marokovich.

Part of the problem from the get-go is that Woody Harrelson is simply a very nice guy and has nice guy energy on-screen for the full two-hours. I also assume that this is why Harrelson, due to his niceness, didn’t bring more abrasive energy to his character’s initial interaction with the intellectually disabled basketball players. Yes, there’s a brief moment prior to meeting them where he almost uses the “R-word” (retard) but even then he catches himself because Marokovich/Harrelson is a nice, sensitive person. That’s a great way to be in life but not so great when trying to generate a worthwhile character arc, drama or even laughs.

Speaking of which, the intellectually disabled players in the movie are notably played by actors with intellectual disabilities. My feelings on this are decidedly mixed.

First off, it’s great that intellectually disabled actors are getting work, as I assume that isn’t the easiest thing to do due to the nature of typecasting. Secondly, these actors all do their job well without exception, most notably Kevin Iannucci as Johnny, Joshua Felder as Darius, and Madison Tevlin as Cosentino.

That said, regardless of whatever good intentions may have been present, there is a part of me that feels this movie is exploiting these intellectually disabled actors. My reason for feeling this way is that none of the characters they portray are anything but props, used to generate some cheap laughs or even cheaper sentimentality. The audience is never expected to relate to the intellectually disabled characters, only in how the “normal” characters navigate those who are intellectually disabled.

For example, we never spend a single second alone with any of the intellectually disabled characters. We never get a glimpse of their inner lives, their hopes, their dreams or their fears and they are only identifiable by their unique disabilities and how they “hilariously” manifest.

The intellectually disabled players are all broad stereotypes. There’s the one guy who talks endlessly about all the sex he has…which is supposed to be funny because he’s intellectually disabled. Then there’s the bossy diva girl who is bossy and a diva and it’s supposed to be funny because she’s intellectually disabled. Then there’s the guy who only shoots with his back to the basket which is supposed to be funny because he’s intellectually disabled…and on and on and on.

The Farrelly’s have done this type of thing with intellectually disabled people throughout their filmmaking careers, and to be clear I have no doubt that it is at least in part motivated by good intentions, but that doesn‘t mean that it can’t be uncomfortably exploitative.

The reason it all feels so exploitative is because we are solely meant to either pity these characters or laugh at them. They aren’t real people because they aren’t designed to be real people, they’re only designed to be pets to their intellectually-abled creators.

There’s also an incredibly uncomfortable shadow looming over this self-congratulatory exercise regarding the intellectually disabled that becomes painfully obvious if you look for it. Namely that the denizens of Hollywood who would cheer this movie’s diversity and inclusion also overwhelmingly believe that its cast not only could have, but should have, been aborted prior to birth.

This is not to argue in favor or against abortion, just to point out that 67% of pregnancies diagnosed with Down’s Syndrome are aborted. In Europe the number is even higher at 90%. Abortion as a treatment for Down’s Syndrome pregnancies is so rampant that the medical establishment doesn’t just expect it, they almost demand it.

The argument for why Down’s Syndrome babies should be aborted is made painfully clear whenever debated, namely that it is an alleged act of mercy to eliminate a Down’s Syndrome pregnancy because life with Down’s Syndrome is so difficult. It is no doubt true that life with Down’s Syndrome is more difficult, for not only the sufferer but for those that care for them, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a worthwhile life filled with meaning and purpose for all involved.

That Champions fails to see the intellectually disabled as anything other than props or pets to “normal” people fuels the notion that the lives of the intellectually disabled are somehow beneath us and not worthy of serious consideration.

In 2013, I wrote an article about Ethan Saylor, a young man with Down’s Syndrome who was killed by Maryland police in January of 2013. Ethan’s crime was that, being a big fan of the police and military, he went to see the movie Zero Dark Thirty. He liked the movie so much he didn’t want to leave the theatre when it ended and didn’t understand he needed to buy another ticket for a second screening. The police were called and they tackled him to the ground and kneeled on his back and neck until he died.

Ethan Saylor’s killers were never charged with any crime. They were never paraded across the front pages of America’s newspapers or television screens and chastised for their depraved inhumanity. Instead, they simply went on living their lives, just like the rest of the country, as if Ethan Saylor had never existed.

When George Floyd was murdered in 2020 by Minnesota police in much the same way Ethan Saylor was murdered by Maryland police in 2013, amidst all the ensuing media coverage of the “mostly-peaceful” riots and protests, I kept hearing the refrain that “all lives can’t matter until black lives matter!”

I believe that all lives can’t matter until black lives matter, and I also believe that black lives can’t matter until Ethan Saylor’s life matters and until all intellectually disabled people’s lives matter in utero and out. The fact that the media, your government and, frankly, most of you – who either have a blue lives matter or black lives matter signs in your window, have never said a word of protest, or given a single flying fuck about Ethan Saylor and people like him, says everything about this country and the demonic depravity at the absolute heart of it.

Ethan Saylor’s life mattered. Intellectually disabled people’s lives matter…BEFORE and after their birth. Until we as a nation and a culture come to not only understand but embrace this unnecessarily radical notion, we will fail to be anything more than a demented, decadent, depraved and diabolical Fourth Reich.

As for Champions, despite the misguided good intentions of everyone involved, deep in its DNA it retains an insidious superiority complex regarding intellectually disabled people. That this pity-inducing superiority complex is so ingrained in our country and culture means that most people won’t even notice it. What they will notice though is that this instantly forgettable movie, regardless of its notions about the intellectually disabled, isn’t funny, interesting or remotely entertaining.

Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo

 ©2023

The Mandalorian - Season Three Review: This is NOT the Way

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!****

My Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. A major disappointing season from this once terrific series.

Season one (2019) and two (2020) of The Mandalorian were as good as it gets in terms of Star Wars storytelling. So much so that a dear friend of mine, the biggest Star Wars fan I know, once waxed poetically to me about how the series’ creator Jon Favreau was the savior of the Star Wars franchise.

Whether you believe that about Favreau or not, the truth is that The Mandalorian undoubtedly set the bar very high for the bevy of Star Wars series that came in its wake. Unfortunately, the majority of them have failed to live up to the standard.

For example, the alarmingly awful The Book of Boba Fett and Obi Wan Kenobi fell shamefully short of The Mandalorian’s high standards. Things were so bleak at Mickey Mouse’s money-making machine after the back-to-back egregious embarrassments of Boba Fett and Obi Wan, Disney’s Star Wars television ventures seemed on the precipice of annihilation like Alderaan on the wrong end of a Death Star blast.

Then the top-notch Andor arrived on the scene. Andor was able to equal, and in some ways exceed, season one and two of The Mandalorian’s high storytelling standards and Disney once again felt like the had righted the good ship Star Wars.

But now the roller coaster continues with season three of The Mandalorian, whose eight episodes concluded on Wednesday, which scuttled all the creative and artistic momentum of its previous two stellar seasons and of the superb Andor.  

Unfortunately, season three of The Mandalorian feels more like an extension of the sub-par work of The Book of Boba Fett and Obi Wan Kenobi than a continuation of the excellence of seasons one and two of The Mandalorian.

Season three is an exceedingly frustrating, irritating, incoherent, dull, lore-desecrating exercise that besmirches the once mighty legacy of The Mandalorian brand, reducing it to just another Star Wars piece of junk in a galaxy quickly filling up with Star Wars junk.

The storyline of season three lacks immediacy and consistency, and instead feels like writers/producers trying to sell Star Wars toys while they kill time waiting for other series, most likely the forthcoming Ahsoka, to carry the Star Wars narrative load.

The (spoiler-free) loose premise of the season is that Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) and his de facto adopted son Grogu – aka Baby Yoda, join with Bo-Katan Kryze (Katee Sakchoff) to try and return to Mandalore.

The premise never compels, and the villain (I won’t say who it is to avoid spoilers), once revealed, feels like a creative cul-de-sac that is repetitive and redundant and redundantly repetitive.

The series featured the worst episode (episode six – which contains cameos by Lizzo and Jack Black – God help us!!) in the history of Star Wars tv which is an astonishing accomplishment considering the staggering level of incompetence of The Book of Boba Fett and Obi Wan Kenobi.

The season finale, while not a great finale, was an action-packed episode and was, to a point, entertaining, but it didn’t elevate the series or make it make sense.

As much as I enjoyed some of the action at times in the finale it was also ridiculous to the point of shameful, and it stretched Star Wars lore and the established rules of the series and the Star Wars universe beyond recognition.

For example, earlier in the season Mandalorians chasing a giant monster had to stop because their jet packs ran out of fuel after roughly a half mile. But in the finale, Mandalorians were flying thousands of miles and breaking through the atmosphere of a planet and into space with ease using their jetpacks.

Another example is that in the finale the villain/villains have great powers (I’m doing my best to avoid spoilers) and yet they end up being like every other dopey background actor stormtrooper who gets felled with ease by the good guys.

The biggest problem with season three though is that it felt like it was no longer about The Mandalorian but rather about the WOmandalorian. Female warrior queen Bo-Katan Kryze became the focus of the drama and the hero who continuously kept saving the damsel-in-distress Din Djarin from peril.

Making things worse was that Katee Sakchoff, an actress I loved on Battlestar Galactica, was dreadful as Bo-Katan. In season two Din Djarin worked with a bad-ass woman warrior Cara Dune, played by Gina Carano. Dune was really cool and Carano was great in the role, but then she said something on social media about Nazis that made the Nazis at Disney upset so they fired her. The reason I bring this up is because, and I never thought I’d say this in my entire life, but Katee Sackhoff is no Gina Carano, and The Mandalorian season three suffers under her relentlessly weak performance.

Which brings up another issue that is becoming glaring, and that is Disney’s princess problem. What I mean by that is that Disney made its bazillions by telling female-centric stories for girls about princesses. Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella and on and on. The problem is that they’ve purchased Marvel and Star Wars, two brands that tell archetypal stories about boys and men for boys and men.

Instead of embracing what made Marvel and Star Wars successful, Disney has reverted to form and gone about dismantling the male archetypes and replacing them with “princesses” - inadequate and inappropriate female characters.

So, in Marvel we get Thor replaced by Lady Thor, Black Panther replaced by Lady Black Panther, Hawkeye replaced by Lady Hawkeye, Iron Man replaced by Iron Heart aka Lady Iron Man…not to mention the cavalcade of female led-projects like Black Widow, Captain Marvel (who originally was a man in the comics) and now The Marvels. In Star Wars the most obvious example was that the center of the latest trilogy was a female, Rey, while the two previous trilogies focused on Luke and Anakin.

I understand Disney’s insipid impulse to feminize everything and even understand its insidious desire to socially engineer through its products, but what shocks me about this is Disney’s incredible misunderstanding of the basics of myth and archetype.

As Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung teach us, the woman’s hero journey (or heroine journey if you will) is very different from the male hero journey. Different narratives and archetypes are needed and necessary in order to tell the heroine’s journey, but what Disney (and most other modern storytelling) is doing is simply replacing men in the hero’s journey with women.

The reason why these stories, on the whole, fail is because they do not resonate in the collective unconscious due to their mythic and archetypal misunderstandings.

This does not mean that women can’t be leads in action stories…quite the contrary, but they must go on a heroine’s journey not a hero’s journey. Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) in Alien is a perfect example of the heroine’s journey in an action role. Ripley is at her core a feminine mother character (in the first film this – among other reasons - is why the cat is so important – as Ripley must nurture and save it), just like the mother creature she fights.

Another example is Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) from the fantastic 2015 film Sicario. Macer is an FBI agent but she must navigate the brutal world of men all the while knowing that she, as a woman, is more vulnerable than the men she is surrounded by. As much as she wants to be “one of the boys”, she never will be and that is part of her journey…coming to understand the nature of things and the perilous, nearly indecipherable world of men.

While audiences, for social or political reasons, may support these Disney designed female-led hero’s journeys, on a very deep psychological level, they are agitated by them and often repulsed by them and that’s because they are the anti-thesis of our inherent psychological and mythological conditioning.

No doubt there are some who, again for social or political reasons, want to decondition audiences from what they would describe as an archaic view of men and women, but the human psyche and collective conscious and unconscious, don’t work that way as they have been built over thousands of years and don’t bend to whatever is fashionable in the decadent society du jour.

Back in 2015 right after the female-led The Force Awakens hit theatres, I was at a dinner party with a bunch of Angelinos and the movie came up as a topic of conversation. I chimed in and said I didn’t think it was very good and a woman sitting next to me, who was there with her maybe ten-year-old daughter, leaned over and whispered into my ear, “yes, but the message it sends to girls, and to boys about girls, is really important.”

I nearly bled to death biting my tongue in an attempt to avoid a social mis-step. What I wanted to tell this woman was that the privileged life she led, the big L.A. house she lived in with the “I’m With Her” sign in front, and the security of her existence, was built by…men. Many of them ugly, brutish men, who she would despise simply because they were ugly and brutish men. These are the same men who throughout history have eliminated any and all threats to her plush, decadent, million-dollar, echo-chamber existence.

This is the type of woman, a pampered princess, who demands “equality” for women and girls, but when push comes to shove, she only wants the kind of “equality” where she is awarded unquestioned deference and privileges due to her “victim status” as a woman which elevates her above by those deplorable men who intervene to protect her from the vicious darkness of the world.

If this woman lived in Ukraine she would, as did most of the Ukrainian women, leave to go live in other parts of Europe while all the men of fighting age (and well beyond and beneath fighting age) were forced, through force or conscience, to fight, and ended up being slaughtered by the vastly superior Russian military.

This is why Sicario is so impactful, as it shows in the bleakest, bluntest terms, that play-acting as a tough chick won’t cut it in the world of men. Men inherently understand this as we’ve navigated the perils of the brutal world of men our entire lives and know what the real deal is.

Yes, women have been on the receiving end of toxic masculinity…but they’ve also benefitted from men’s sacrifice and masculinity’s ability to protect them in a dangerous world to such a degree that they now feel safe and secure enough to incessantly bitch and moan about how all masculinity is toxic.

That’s a long way of saying that when Bo-Katan saves Din Djarin for like the fifth time in season three on The Mandalorian, it made me laugh at how ridiculous and shameful it was even for a silly, sci-fi series on a corporate streaming service hellbent on promoting a social-political agenda.

It is fitting that Disney now turns its Star Wars hopes to Ahsoka, which hits Disney plus in August and tells the story of the female Jedi who was once the Padawan of Anakin Skywalker. The girl power galaxy strikes again.

As far as The Mandalorian season three goes, it was a major letdown compared to season one and two. The series lost not only its cohesiveness and its competence, but more importantly its purpose and meaning, and there’s no telling if it’ll ever get it back.

Season three of The Mandalorian was so deflating, it left me wondering not only what the future holds for Star Wars, but if it has a future at all.

The cold, hard reality is that The Mandalorian, Star Wars, Marvel, and our entire culture in general, is an utter mess, and it needs to get its balls back and quick if it wants to survive.

As the Mandalorians would say, “This is the way.”

©2023

Air: A Review - Who Knew That Shameless Corporate Ass-Kissing Could Be So Entertaining?

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!****

My Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. A rare treat of a well-made movie for grown-ups. Not life changing but undeniably entertaining.

Air, the new movie about Nike’s push to sign Michael Jordan to an endorsement deal in 1984, is, to quote Kris Kristofferson, “partly truth, partly fiction, a walking contradiction”.

The film, which is directed by Ben Affleck and stars Affleck as well as his old buddy Matt Damon, is the rarest of rare things in our current culture in that it’s a movie featuring movie stars, made for grown-ups in which everyone involved is exceedingly competent at what they do.

Ben Affleck’s direction, the cast’s performances, first-time screenwriter Alex Convery’s script and Robert Richardson’s cinematography are all, at a bare minimum, competent and often much more than that. For this reason alone, the film is undeniably entertaining.

It’s a testament to Damon and Affleck’s star power, and the professionalism and skill of everyone involved, that even though viewers know how the story ends, Air is still a compelling and captivating story that at times is remarkably exhilarating and even moving.

Matt Damon is terrific as Sonny Vaccaro, the guy leading the charge to get Michael Jordan to sign up with the then basement-dwelling, third ranked basketball sneaker company, Nike.

Damon has always been a top-notch movie star actor, and he brings all his skill to the fore as the lovable loser Vaccaro. Damon is a pleasant and oddly charming screen presence who effortlessly carries this story from start to finish.

Viola Davis, who plays Michael Jordan’s mom Deloris, is outstanding in her supporting role. With minimal screen time Davis imbues Deloris with a silent authority that dominates the drama. Every time she is on-screen, she is subtly the center of the universe. It would be difficult to imagine a scenario where Davis doesn’t get nominated for an Oscar for this performance.

Ben Affleck is very good too as Phil Knight, the very strange founder of Nike. Affleck is fantastic at being unintentionally funny and if Phil Knight is anything it is unintentionally funny.

Affleck’s direction is solid as well. His decision to not make Michael Jordan a major character in the film, and to not show Jordan’s face, were pretty brilliant as the movie could have easily spun out of control and turned into a rather cheap, made-for-tv type of project with a Jordan imitator joining the festivities.

All that said, there are some things about Air that leave a decidedly bad taste in my mouth.

The first of which is that this movie is undeniably a piece of corporate propaganda and hagiography. This isn’t just a film about American capitalism and corporatocracy, it is a celebration of American capitalism and corporatocracy.

The movie bends the truth to some extraordinary degrees in order to pretend it isn’t celebrating the rather deplorable parts of American capitalism and corporatism symbolized by Nike, and to act like it’s actually a tale about the working man fighting against corporate power.

Jordan is made out to be a pioneer who broke the mold regarding shoe contracts by demanding profit sharing and his mother Deloris makes the case that “young black boys will pay a lot for this sneaker and that money should go to my son!” She also says that workers like Vaccaro, and black athletes endorsing sneakers, are exploited by companies like Nike, and Converse and Adidas and they deserve more of the profits.

This is all well and good and is a nice bit of drama for the film, but the fact that Nike pays slave wages to third world workers in order to make their sneakers goes unsaid and unacknowledged. Also unsaid and unacknowledged is the fact that Nike sell their status symbol shoes at exorbitant prices that are so high that in the 80’s and 90’s they often caused crime and violence by young black men against other young black men in order to get them.

In addition, it is also a bit unnerving that Sonny Vaccaro, who is widely considered by many in the know to be one of the sleaziest people from the amateur basketball scene back in the 70’s and 80’s, is made out to be the good-hearted, kind, lovable hero of the movie.

Vaccaro was a shark who was deeply involved in all sorts of shady shit back in the day, and to see him in the film and in the film’s prologue, portrayed as the champion of the good, the noble and the right is a bit much.

There’s an interesting monologue in the film about the Bruce Springsteen song “Born in the USA”, which was enormously popular in 1984. The song, which was co-opted by Reagan as a flag-waving theme song, is actually a lament about the brutal decline of America, but because its morose lyrics are accompanied by the energized music of an uber-patriotic anthem, the song’s meaning gets lost and its artistic power usurped.

It could be that Affleck uses the “Born in the USA” monologue to let astute viewers know that he is trying to hide his critique of the insidious nature of American capitalism and corporatocracy in plain sight in this hagiography. I’d like to think so…but Air feels too weak in its criticisms and too vociferous in its praise of Nike (and all that it represents) to pass that test, and thus feels like just the anthem part of “Born in the USA” without the existential lament at its core.  

The reality is that Air is really a movie about marketing that is itself a piece of marketing. The film, with its fantastic soundtrack of 80’s music, looks and feels like a two-hour commercial for Nike. In this way it is almost an extension of The Last Dance, the ten-hour Michael Jordan docu-series that was so gloriously received by everyone but me back in 2020. That docu-series was shameless legend cultivation and brand buttressing of Michael Jordan and was produced by…you guessed it…Michael Jordan. But our culture is so enamored and addicted to narcissistic self-promotion and propaganda, that no one cared they were being fed a piece of self-serving bullshit.

Speaking of shameless marketing and self-promotion, it is strange that Damon and Affleck are out pounding the pavement selling this movie and pretending this is their first reunion film since their smash hit Good Will Hunting back in 1997, for which they won a Best Original Screenplay Oscar.

Damon and Affleck’s last actual on-screen and writing credit reunion was Ridley Scott’s underrated 2021 film The Last Duel. The Last Duel was overlooked by audiences and snickered at by critics, but I thought it was very good, so to see Damon and Affleck pretend like it doesn’t exist is somewhat bizarre…but makes sense in terms of marketing as the Damon-Affleck reunion card is being played again. As they say, everything old is new again…apparently even on-screen reunions that already happened two-years ago.  

Also a bit odd is the fact that this movie is the first from Damon and Affleck’s production company Artists Equity, which is all about paying workers above and below the line fairly and with equity in the film.

That the narrative of Air somewhat reflects the business model of Artists Equity is clever, as is Affleck talking up how he looked out for first time screenwriter Convery and promised him he’d get full credit despite some rewrites.

But that “looking out for the working man” narrative feels like window dressing when the movie it is placed in is an embarrassing ass-kissing of sweatshop masters Nike made by the deplorable demons at Amazon. I mean…yikes…you’d be hard pressed to find two companies as destructive to working people and our culture as Nike and Amazon. This insidious approach is somewhat reminiscent of the Best Picture winner Nomadland, which told a tale of the working poor on the fringes of society yet disgustingly managed to portray Amazon - which is well-known for its abuse of workers and labor practices, as a friend to the working man and wonderful worker’s paradise.

And yet, despite the rather repulsive pro-corporation politics and economics on display in the movie, Air is an irresistibly entertaining and unrelentingly enjoyable movie, which is a testament to Affleck and Damon’s talent and star power.

In conclusion, Air is in rarified air in that it’s a movie for grown-ups that features movie stars confidently filling up the big screen. I highly recommend it and can guarantee that while it won’t change your life, it will definitely leave you satisfied.

 Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo

©2023

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 97 - The Woman King

On this episode, Barry and I don our women warrior garb and do battle over The Woman King, the sword and sandal action movie starring Viola Davis now streaming on Netflix. Topics discussed include the blueprint of successful female-led action movies, the burden and benefits of claiming to be "based on a true story", and the curse of over-hyping sub-mediocrity. 

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 97 - The Woman King

Thanks for listening!

©2023

TV Round Up - Thoughts on Succession, The Mandalorian, White Lotus, JK Rowling and more!

I was going through my notes and thought I’d share some thoughts on various tv shows that have come and gone that I failed to properly review. If you are looking for something to watch maybe these mini-reviews will be useful.

I also had some not-so-brief thoughts on some current shows…The Mandalorian and Succession, as well as some observations regarding JK Rowling and a potential HBO Max Harry Potter series. Enjoy!!

White Lotus –

HBO Max

Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Recommendation: SKIP IT. Over-rated garbage.

Season Two of White Lotus was all the rage this past fall. It became that show that critics and fans fawn over and that generates all sorts of cultural buzz. I watched season two when it originally aired but didn’t write a review of it for a variety of reasons…one of which is that I greatly disliked it and the thought of writing about it depressed me.

The first season of White Lotus – set in Hawaii, grew on me as it went along but the second season got worse as it went along. I watched season two – set in Sicily, beginning to end in hopes of it improving…but it never did and ended up being nothing but a grating chore.

The things that irritated about this show are too numerous to list in full but here’s a select few of them.  

Jennifer Coolidge, aka Stifler’s mom, seems like a nice person and I suppose it is all well and good that she’s having a career renaissance, but her clueless Tanya character which returns for season two is no longer quirky and amusing but aggressively annoying. Coolidge’s act, which may not be much of an act, wears incredibly thin the more time you spend with her. We all would’ve been better off if she was left behind in Hawaii.

Also annoying is that apparently every hotel manager in the entire world is gay…and in the case of Valentina in Sicily, gay and incredibly boring.

The elaborate plot of season two is so beyond ridiculous as to be absurd. None of the characters are relatable or even remotely likable. I spent the entire series loathing everyone and praying for everyone, especially Audrey Plaza’s Harper, Haley Lu Richardson’s Portia, Michael Imperioli’s Dominic (Imperioli is exposed as an awful actor in this show to a shocking degree) and Adam DiMarco’s repulsive Albie, to all die heinous deaths.

On the bright side…Meghann Fahy delivers the best moment of the entire series in her scene on the beach with her husband’s supposed best friend. Fahy was the lone bright spot in this massively over-hyped and over-rated show.

I’ll never understand why this show became a thing.

Slow Horses –

Apple TV+

Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Recommendation: SKIP IT. Series has some charm but never figures out what it wants to be.

Season one of Slow Horses wasn’t much to write home about…Gary Oldman’s hysterical flatulence aside. It was too slow and too fast all at the same time.

Season two starts off with more promise than season one, but it ends up being just as underwhelming.

The show should be a rather small-scale story of bureaucratic intrigue, but it constantly goes for these over-expansive, James Bond-ian scale storylines that just seem rushed, cheap and totally unbelievable.

Oldman is, as usual, great, and the rest of the cast give solid performances, but the writing never lives up to their stellar work.

This is just one of those shows that just can’t figure out what it wants and needs to be…and thus ends up being nothing.

Black Bird –

Apple TV+

Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

Recommendation: SKIP IT. A mess of a mini-series. Incredibly poorly written. Paul Walter Hauser is great as the bad guy and deserved better.

This mini-series, developed by Dennis Lehane based on an alleged true story, is so amateurish as to be astonishing. The writing and casting of this series is so bad it made my stomach hurt.  

Taran Egerton plays a bad guy who agrees to go into prison to get a serial killer to confess. There’s not a single moment where Egerton is believable. Not one.

Sepidah Moafi plays an FBI agent and she is so miscast, and so terrible in the role, I’m surprised my tv didn’t spontaneously explode while watching it.

My old friend Greg Kinnear, one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet, is saddled with an abysmal role as a small-town cop that is never fleshed out or given any logical narrative.

The best thing about the show is Paul Walter Hauser, who is truly great as the twisted serial killer. Hauser is unquestionably one of the very best actors working on the planet right now. I hope he is given opportunities in much better projects going forward.

Bottom line is that this script is atrocious and this show is beyond ridiculous, as it’s a pyramid of inanities upon inanities.

The Mandalorian –

Disney Plus

No rating yet

Thoughts on the first 5…no wait…6 episodes of the 8-episode third season.

Season one and two of The Mandalorian grew on me as they went along and as the series became the flagship of Disney +. But season three has been a very, very bumpy ride over the first five episodes of the eight-episode season.

The drop off from season two to season three has been considerable. Mando now seems to have gone from searching to wandering…and that has sucked much of the drama out of the show. The season three story feels very scattered and unfocused and the execution of that story feels alarmingly cheap and decidedly second-rate. The writing is, unfortunately, just egregiously bad.

Maybe the series can get its mojo back in the three final episodes of this season…but that seems highly unlikely…and The Mandalorian mojo may very well be lost forever.

****Ok…so I wrote the previous paragraphs BEFORE I watched episode six of The Mandalorian. And now I’ve watched episode 6 and…holy fuck…things have changed…and not for the better.

Season 3 episode 6 of The Mandalorian is arguably the very worst Star Wars related event to have occurred in the history of the franchise…which is saying quite a bit. This is the Jar Jar Binks of episodes. This episode is so bad it makes the absolute shit shows that were Obi Wan Kenobi and The Book of Boba Fett seem like passable Star Wars entertainment.

Episode 3 is the most amateurish and cheap piece of garbage imaginable. The script, written by Jon Favreau, is abysmal and embarrassing. The directing, by famed actress Bryce Dallas Howard, is shameful and humiliating. The ignominious cameos in the episode by the rotund non-actress Lizzo, Jack Black and a decrepit Christopher Lloyd, are undeniably mortifying and resolutely cringe.

You’d be hard pressed to find anything anywhere as awful as the diarrhea of cutesy-ness that was Baby Yoda doing a front flip to be by Lizzo’s side…or watching him use the force to help her cheat and win at some stupid space game. Watching Lizzo knight Baby Yoda may have been the lowest point in American pop culture history.

Equally idiotic and incoherent was the story about Christopher Lloyd’s character who is maybe a bad guy or maybe a good guy. The conclusion of that narrative is so trite and throwaway as to be absurd. It’s like a kid playing with Star Wars figurines got called to dinner so they just gave their play session a generic ending and walked away.

The Mandalorian is apparently not about Din Djarin (Mando) and Grogu (Baby Yoda) anymore and instead has turned its flaccid dramatic focus to Bo-Katan Kryze, played by a gaunt and ghastly Katee Sackhoff. Sackhoff, who once upon a time was so good in Battlestar Galactica, is a dullard on The Mandalorian, and the nonsensical narrative turn of her not wearing her Mandalorian helmet has only made things worse as we are forced to see her lifeless eyes.

The bottom line is that Episode 6 was so bad it wasn’t a jumping of the shark, it was a Kessel Run over a trillion space sharks. This show is done. It simply cannot recover from such an egregious episode.

It’s a shame…at one point it seemed like The Mandalorian was going to save Star Wars. Now it seems that The Mandalorian is the final nail in its coffin.

Succession –

HBO Max

No rating yet

Thoughts on the first 2 episodes of the 10-episode fourth and final season

The final season of Succession is here and as enjoyable as it is to marinate in this capitalism porn, the truth is that the producers were very wise to make this the last season. The show, which is two episodes into its ten-episode finale, is well shot, well written and well-acted, but season four does feel like the series narratively repeating itself.

As glorious as it is to watch a dramatization of the palace intrigue amongst the villainous Murdoch/Redstone/Cox clans who run America’s media empires, the show thus far in season four seems to be rehashing the same battles from previous seasons just with characters taking on different roles in the melo-drama.

That said, watching Succession is a pure joy because the writing is so crisp and the performances so committed that it feels like a modern-day version of Shakespeare.  

Brian Cox, Kieran Culkin, Matthew MacFayden, Allen Ruck, Sarah Snook, Jeremy Strong and Nicholas Braun are fantastic as the Roy extended family, and the supporting actors are equally outstanding.

As sad as it will be to see Succession go, season four is showing signs that the story has run its course, so best to enjoy it while it’s here and be glad it’s not going to sully its reputation by dragging on uselessly for another three seasons.

FUTURE HARRY POTTER SERIES

HBO MAX

So, I saw in the news that HBO is maybe going to make a tv series remake of the Harry Potter books, with each of the seven original books getting its own season.

I don’t really care one way or the other about the Harry Potter franchise, be it the books, movies or anything else. But what struck me as I read the stories about this potential series is something that has struck for many years but which I never took the time to write about (that I remember)….namely that every article about the potential new series mentioned that “transphobic” creator JK Rowling would be involved in the show.

What bothers me about this is that JK Rowling being “transphobic” is an opinion, not a fact, and yet it showed up in every news article I read about this series…and in every article I’ve read about JK Rowling in recent years.

Coincidentally, I was helping my young son with his school work the other day and one of the assignments was to place a series of statements into one of two categories, ”fact” or “opinion”.

The statements were things like “there are 8 planets”, which would be considered a fact, and “apples are better than oranges”, which is an opinion. My son being the precocious lad that he is even pushed back against the 8 planets thing saying “that’s only if you don’t count dwarf planets”. Which is true…but in the spirit of the assignment we labelled it a fact since it said “there are 8 planets” not “there are ONLY 8 planets”.

The most intriguing statement in the assignment was “you shouldn’t eat too much candy”. My son’s instinct was to say it was a fact, because it is true that you shouldn’t eat too much candy. But…as we kicked the idea around, we got very philosophical…pondering how much is “too much” and who is the one to decide what is “too much”? “Too much” for me might be “not enough” for you.

We even got Clintonian as we parsed what is “candy”? We can all agree a chocolate bar is candy…but is a caramel apple candy? Are chocolate covered almonds candy? Is bubblegum candy?

The conclusion we came to was that “you shouldn’t eat too much candy” was not a fact but rather an opinion because it lacked specificity and detail and relied upon the subjective and not the objective.

Which brings us to JK Rowling’s alleged transphobia. What bothers me about these articles stating as fact that JK Rowling is transphobic is that opinions greatly differ in regards to Ms. Rowling’s transphobe status.

A journalist writing about Rowling may believe she is transphobic, but that doesn’t make it a fact. There are many people, myself included, who don’t think Rowling is transphobic at all. And just because trans activists label Rowling a transphobe doesn’t make her one.

Any journalist worth a damn should write of Rowling that “some claim she is transphobic” or “trans activists claim Rowling is transphobic” or that “Rowling has made statements some deem transphobic”. This really isn’t that hard.

Hell, when I was working for RT I wrote the term “dementia-addled” while joking about Joe Biden in an opinion piece and the editors very quickly informed me that I wasn’t a doctor and hadn’t examined Biden so I couldn’t diagnose him as having dementia. It was a valid point, so I took the phrase out of the piece despite my believing Joe Biden has dementia and, worst of all, that removing that statement ruined a good joke.

Anyway…I don’t care about the Harry Potter tv series, but I do care that our culture has completely gone off the rails and that journalists at the most prestigious of media outlets lack the critical thinking skills and basic journalistic integrity of a 7-year-old. I have no doubt that the Ivy League educated know-it-all, know-nothings at The New York Times, LA Times, Washington Post and Boston Globe would not hesitate for a moment to declare that “you shouldn’t eat too much candy” is a fact because “the science is settled”. Sigh.

It should also be obvious that the news media plays the same word games with other topics as well…and treats opinions as fact on a daily basis turning journalism into nothing more than insidious, subtle and not-so-subtle activism which only misinforms its audience and diminishes journalism’s credibility.

Alright, thus concludes both my rant about shitty journalism and JK Rowling as well as my not-so-brief TV Round Up.

 FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER: @MPMActingCo

©2023

The Woman King: A Review - Amateurish Action Junk for Women

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. Mindless, middlebrow movie devoid of meaningful drama, decent action or historical accuracy.

Sometimes a movie comes along and critics and audiences fawn all over it and then I watch it and wonder what the hell is wrong with these people?

The Woman King, an action movie about the Agojie, a real-life group of female soldiers in 1820’s Dahomey, Africa, is one of those movies.

The film, which stars Viola Davis and is directed Gina Prince-Blythewood, premiered back in September and it was greeted with an impressive 94% critical score and 99% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. It is now streaming on Netflix and I finally watched it and am utterly baffled by the love it’s received.

The Woman King got some more attention when the Oscar nominations came out because the usual suspects were bitching and moaning that the movie’s star, Viola Davis, was “snubbed”, and that the film’s director Gina Prince-Blythewood was too, both on account of their being black, and in Prince-Blythewood’s case also because she’s a female director. Sigh.

The arguments for The Woman King’s star and director being snubbed by the Oscars are so ridiculous as to be absurd.

For example, many pundits claimed the movie was awards-worthy because it was a “blockbuster” and that should have elevated its Oscar profile. Let’s be as clear as we can about this, The Woman King was not a “blockbuster” by any stretch of the imagination. The film made $94 million on a $50 million budget…which in the Hollywood accounting world means it probably didn’t even break even once you factor in marketing costs.

And let’s be even more real about The Woman King…it isn’t even remotely a good movie. It’s a painfully ordinary, rather silly sword and sandals, middlebrow movie that is burdened with a laughable script, piss poor direction and even worse fight choreography.

This movie is a painfully pedestrian action film, but simply because it’s about, stars and is directed by black women, it has magically been elevated into the “prestige” category. For example, one critic actually admitted in his positive review, “Every single beat of the plot is creaky and familiar, and if it had been a story about white people, it would have been a snore.” Yikes.

Gina Prince-Blythewood, whose last film was the clown show The Old Guard, simply is not a good director. On The Woman King her visuals are relentlessly flat and stale, and the performances from her cast obscenely forced and phony.

The film is really just an action movie so its action sequences should be its calling card, but just like with The Old Guard, the action sequences here are haphazard. Every battle is muddled and murky, poorly shot, poorly choreographed and poorly edited. The amateurish action cheese on-screen in this film makes a home video of a sandbox slap fight between toddlers look like Saving Private Ryan.

It also doesn’t help that these female super soldiers that can allegedly kick everybody’s ass look as weak as a geriatric sewing circle. If good old boy Buford Pusser from Walking Tall (the 1970’s original not the newer one starring The Rock) squared off all by himself against these crazy broads he’d beat them silly with his baseball bat in five minutes flat.

Viola Davis is supposed to be the baddest of badasses as Agojie General Nanisca but she looks like what she is…a nice, middle-aged lady with no muscle tone and probably some bone density loss.

Thuso Mbedu plays new girl Nawi who joins the Agojie, and she is a profoundly shoddy actress and an even worse action hero, as she looks like she’s allergic to exercise and has the upper body strength and muscle tone of a quadriplegic on a hunger strike.

Supporting actress Lashana Lynch plays warrior Izogie and looks like Don Cheadle in drag…which in this context could be construed as a compliment.

None of the acting in this movie rings anything but hollow. There’s lots of posing and preening and pretending on screen, but not any real acting. It’s like watching a girl’s junior high school drama club play act at being macho men.

The only performance that had any life to it was a rather hysterical portrayal of Dahomey King Ghezo by John Boyega. Boyega is so free and funny as the King he steals the whole damn movie.

The reason that other critics won’t tell you these hard truths about The Woman King is the same reason the movie was made in the first place…namely that it’s a black girl power story which makes it a glorious triumph among the weak-kneed woke buffoons in the establishment critical class regardless of its merit…or lack thereof. In other words, it’s a wonderful vehicle for critics to use to signal their virtue.

What makes the movie’s modern-day racial and political posturing so amusing is that The Woman King violently contorts and distorts actual history to such a degree its astonishing the movie didn’t collapse in on itself from its own gargantuan hypocrisy.

The film portrays the Agojie as female super soldiers, vastly superior to any men in combat and morally superior to them in the rest of life by being virulently and violently opposed to slavery. The reality is something very, very, very different. You see, in real life the Agojie and the Dahomey were unrepentant, shameless slave traders. Their economy depended on them kidnapping and capturing other Africans and selling them to Europeans and Americans who would then bring them to the new world.

As uncomfortable as this is to acknowledge, the truth is that black Africans were always vital partners to Europeans and Americans in the slave trade. In fact, it could be argued that without tribes like the Dahomey, which sold Africans to white slave traders, the infamous and calamitous slave trade to America would have been so difficult to make profitable as to be rendered essentially defunct.

Of course, that history is inconvenient to the modern Manichean victimhood narrative around slavery where white men are bad and black people saintly. It should be noted that actress Lupita Nyong’o, a native daughter of Kenya, nobly turned down a role in this film due to the “complicated” history regarding the Dahomey and slavery. Wise woman.

In this context, one can’t help but ponder…would there be more or less generational shame around slavery for black Americans if the actual truth about African complicity in the heinous crime of trans-Atlantic slavery were brought to the fore?

At least in that scenario blacks are not just hapless victims without agency who are too weak or disorganized or technologically inferior to overcome white devils and the monumental machinery of slavery. No, in this historically accurate scenario Africans are crucial cogs in the machinery of slavery itself and therefore are no longer stripped of agency but saddled with some, but obviously not anywhere close to all, responsibility. Would that be a better scenario to cleanse the perceived shame of their ancestors having been enslaved from African-American’s collective consciousness? Maybe, maybe not. My argument would be that the truth about slavery and African’s complicated complicity in it would be a better narrative to embrace in order to heal that grievous wound for the sole reason that it is the truth…and as we know the truth shall set you free.

To be clear, it doesn’t much matter what I think, but to be fair as an Irishman and a Catholic I know a wee bit about generational shame and the cultural and collective insecurities that fester over historical crimes. Take that for what it’s worth.

As if the slave history stuff in The Woman King weren’t enough, the notion of the Agojie as super soldiers is equally, if not more, ridiculous. Not surprisingly, in 1892 when, in one of the few times these female super soldiers fought an actual army, the French slaughtered them in an afternoon using only bayonets, killing 417 Agojie while only losing 6 of their own.  

The question then becomes, with the ugly history of Dahomey slave trading and Agojie military incompetence, why not just make up a fictional story about an imaginary tribe in Africa with great female warriors? I suppose that’s already been done with Marvel’s Black Panther movies…but The Woman King wants to be a real inspiration to black women and delusional feminist fools everywhere, so they manufactured a false story and just labelled it history in order to give it weight, meaning and purpose and garner prestige.

What is most egregious about this approach though is that the movie goes out of its way to whitewash the historical crimes of the Dahomey and place them instead in the hands of reliable movie villains…white men. In the film, Viola Davis’ Nanisca even says, “the white man has brought immorality here!” Ummm…if history is any guide the Dahomey seemed quite advanced when it came to immorality well before the white man ever showed up.

Of course, changing history to make a better story is not exactly breaking new ground in Hollywood, so the crimes of The Woman King in that regard can be shrugged off in the name of empty-headed entertainment…but what can’t be so easily forgiven is the numerous crimes against artistry and drama that the film commits.

The bottom line is that The Woman King is an instantaneously forgettable film that is deserving of neither critical acclaim nor award recognition. That gullible audiences are so dopey as to enjoy this third-rate, cheesy girl power garbage only speaks to the calamitous lowering of taste and standards across the entirety of our culture. I do admit that I wish the Agojie were real though, just so they could mount an offensive and wipe out the philistines who enjoy this sort of mindless junk.

 Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCO

©2023

The Last of Us: TV Review - Zombie Video Game as Prestige TV Zombie

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. An uneven show that feels like prestige tv fool’s gold.

HBO’s latest prestige tv series, The Last of Us, is a strange one.

The series, which premiered in mid-January and recently ended its first season, follows the trials and tribulations of Joel (Pedro Pascal) and his teenage ward Ellie (Bella Ramsey) as they navigate the perils of a post-apocalyptic, fascist America under siege by fungus-fueled zombies. Considering that description it should come as no surprise that the series is based on a 2013 video game of the same-name.

It seems a bit of an odd choice to make a prestige tv series based on a video game, but thanks to the hard work of HBOs savvy marketing department, the show was well-received by critics and generated a modicum of cultural chatter, no small feat in our scattered entertainment era.

Full disclosure, I’ve never played the video game The Last of Us and in fact had never even heard of it until the tv show came along. This lack of knowledge left me unencumbered by the source material and able to judge the series solely on its value as a tv show not as an extension of the video game.

My thoughts on the series are that…it is…despite some great moments, overall sort of underwhelming. The show is very uneven, as it’s at-times extremely compelling, but also often dull and aggravating. It’s also one of those rather annoyingly trite shows that poses as elevated but is really rather philosophically vacuous and politically vapid.

The first season runs nine episodes and the first episode is easily the best of the bunch. The drama of a civilization instantly crumbling due to a quickly expanding pandemic – a fungus spreading across the globe which turns its victims into zombie extensions of itself, is fantastic and eerily reminiscent of the real-world’s recent tumult. The flashbacks in episode two of how the pandemic started are equally captivating and may have been my favorite part of the series.

Another solid sequence is in episode four and five when Joel and Ellie meet up with a pair of brothers in Kansas City. The four of them must avoid not just zombies but blood thirsty locals. The conclusion of this particular adventure is phenomenal.

The problem though is that the show often feels like…well…a video game. The set ups for most of the adventures feel painfully contrived and uncomfortably like a sequence from a rather simple video game.

The series also has trouble with pacing and with generating and keeping dramatic momentum. For every episode like one, two, four and five where you’re fully invested, the show also has episodes, like three and seven where everything slows down to a crawl and we get stuck in the muck and mire of inconsequential characters and their flaccid non-drama.

It really is purely coincidental that the focus of the drama in episodes three and seven revolves around characters being gay. Even if these characters were as straight as arrows their stories simply wouldn’t be that interesting. Although it must be said that HBO injecting a heavy dose of cultural politics into a story that doesn’t need it is not the least bit surprising in our current hyper-political age. In addition, considering the paucity of people we get to know and spend time with in the series, that close to half of them are gay is sort of hysterical in an absurd way. To quote Kurt Cobain, “what else can I say, everyone is gay!”

The later episodes encapsulate the overall issues with the show as they seem both dramatically lethargic and narratively unfocused. In these last few episodes, a survivalist, charismatic Christian cult comes to the fore and considering the other cultural politics of the show it will not surprise you to learn that they are the most-evil people imaginable.

Despite the first season being much too slow at times, it also somehow manages to feel uncomfortably rushed at its conclusion. It also doesn’t help that the series and its violence become less based in reality in terms of its action as the season progresses, culminating in a rather bizarre 1980s action-movie climax.

The acting in The Last of Us is like the rest of the show, not particularly great. I genuinely like Pedro Pascal and find him to be a pleasing screen presence, and he does solid work as the tortured tough guy Joel, but he’s never really asked to do too much heavy lifting.

Bella Ramsey as Ellie is like nails on a chalkboard. Ramsey is a very unappealing screen presence and she feels completely phony as the struggling teen. Ramsey’s cadence and speech are so odd as to be grating and her entire performance rings very hollow to me.

Melanie Lynskey, an actress I very much like, is terribly miscast in a supporting role as a revolutionary leader fueled by bloodlust and revenge. Unfortunately, Lynskey is so unbelievable in the role as to be ridiculous and it scuttles what is one of the more intriguing storylines.

As for the special effects, the zombies do look pretty cool, and the actors portraying them do a terrific job of being creepy as hell.

On the whole though watching the first season of The Last of Us, despite its occasional high points, felt like a bit of a chore. Maybe I would feel differently if I was familiar with the video-game. Who knows?

In terms of just being a tv series, The Last of Us seems like one of those prestige shows that, like HBO’s Westworld, run out of creativity, lose the plot, lose their audience, and then are quickly tossed down the cultural memory hole never to be thought of again.

Considering The Last of Us seems to have already lost its creative steam (around episode six), I’d guess season two will see a precipitous decline in both audience engagement and critical adoration. It seems to me this prestige drama is a mindless zombie ultimately not long for this world.

 Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo

©2023

Mel Brooks' History of the World Part II: A Review - Oh, How the Mighty Have Fallen...and Can't Get Up

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. If you prefer you’re comedy to be funny, then this isn’t the series for you.

Let me start by saying that I love Mel Brooks. He was, for good or for ill, a major influence on the development of my sense of humor growing up.

His movies Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein (which is one of my all-time favorite movies) and History of the World Part I, were on heavy rotation during my formative years and the world has been paying the price for it ever since.

Truth be told though that as much as I love the 96-year-old Mel Brooks, he also has the unique distinction of being the only director in cinema history to have me walk out of one of his films because it sucked so bad. Back in 1993 I got free tickets to a screening of Robin Hood: Men in Tights, and after 45 gruelingly unfunny minutes I made the painful decision to get up and walk out…something I’ve never done before or since.

Which brings us to Mel Brooks’ newest creation, The History of the World Part II, which is a mini-series currently streaming on Hulu.

The most unfortunate thing about Mel Brooks’ History of the World Part II is that I couldn’t walk out of it because then I’d be left standing outside my house in the rain like some shmuck.

History of the World Part I was iconic and hysterical. History of the World Part II is its antithesis, as there’s nothing insightful, original or amusing about it. This series is so actively anti-comedy and anti-funny that I consider it to be the Adolf Hitler of comedy series since it commits a hellacious holocaust against humor.  

It should come as no surprise this series is so bad since it stars the congenitally, malignantly unfunny Wanda Sykes, who I think of as the herpes of comedy – always unwanted yet mystifyingly recurring.

The other star of the series is the turd with feet known as Nick Kroll. If Wanda Sykes is the herpes of comedy, Nick Kroll is AIDS. Kroll is not only egregiously not funny, he is aggressively anti-funny. Kroll is a black hole of comedy who sucks all humor and all possibility of humor out of every scene he inhabits. Kroll is so unfunny he seems to have been given anti-comedy enemas for years at a time to remove any semblance of funny from his system. Kroll is so allergic to being funny he should be sealed in an oil drum at the bottom of the ocean with his eyes, ears and mouth taped shut for his and our safety.

Kroll plays a cavalcade of grating characters, like Shmuck Mudman, Judas, Galileo and Henry Kissinger. Sykes’ characters include Harriet Tubman and, in the unquestionably least funny recurring part of the entire series, Shirley Chisholm.

The third “star” listed on the series is Ike Barenholtz. Ike, who plays Ulysses S. Grant and Alexander Graham Bell, is a thousand times funnier than Sykes and Kroll combined and yet he wouldn’t know funny if it gang raped him in a prison shower. A comedy truism to always remember is that if the funniest person in your comedy series is Ike Barenholtz, you’ve got some major fucking problems.

History of the World Part II, which runs for 8 interminable, thirty-minute episodes, covers such topics as the Civil War, Jesus and his Apostles, The Russian Revolution, Shirley Chisholm, Kublai Khan, Typhoid Mary and Stalin among many others.

Literally the only time I laughed during the entire excruciating four hours of this series was when, in a scene set in 1865, Abraham Lincoln, played by Timothy Simons, kept complaining about being tall and how he bumps his head all the time. Lincoln then exits a room and painfully bumps his head on the door frame. After gathering himself he declares “well, that’s definitely the worst thing that’ll happen to my head this year!” That’s funny. The rest of the show is not.

What stood out like a sore thumb in this series is that Mel Brooks, the guy who wrote “Springtime for Hitler”, has been completely neutered. Throughout the series Brooks genuflects to wokeness at every turn. The most obvious of which is a series of flaccid jokes directed at whites by Sykes as her Tubman and Chisholm characters. Yawn.

That Brooks has been reduced to conforming to the vapid, politically correct guidelines du jour is one of the more disheartening developments in recent years. You would think that a genius like Brooks, who usually finds the heights of comedy by pushing back against such ridiculous constraints, would be even less inclined to conform to them now that he’s 96, but apparently not.

Brooks, who is now almost the same age as his 2,000-Year-Old Man character, is a living piece of 20th Century comedy history. His career, which spans writing with a hall-of-fame collection of comedians for Sid Caesar’s The Show of Shows to the heights of Hollywood filmdom and Broadway dominance, is a testament to his prodigious talent.

Unfortunately, Brooks long ago lost his comedy fastball, and it would be best for his glorious legacy if History of the World Part II is memory-holed and quickly forgotten.

If you want to enjoy Mel Brooks, go watch Young Frankenstein again, or Blazing Saddles or History of the World Part I. Whatever you do don’t be a putz and a shmuck and watch the absolute worst double feature in Mel Brooks’ cinema history, History of the World Part II and Robin Hood: Men in Tights.  

 Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo

©2023

Triangle of Sadness: A Review - Savage and Insightful Social Satire

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. A fantastic, original and scathing takedown of modern society.

Triangle of Sadness, written and directed by Ruben Ostlund, is one of the best films of last year and one of the more misunderstood films in recent history.

The movie, which is a black comedy/social satire, was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay at the Academy Awards, but was tepidly received by critics and audiences alike as evidenced by its 71% critical score and 68% audience score at Rotten Tomatoes.

The film premiered in the U.S. in October and generated almost no buzz. In my circles in Hollywood, I heard no one talk about it at all, be it positively or negatively. It seemed the movie, which is in the English language but is produced by a cavalcade of foreign production companies from England, France, Germany, Sweden and Denmark among many others, would just come and go and be forgotten.

But then the film was nominated for a bunch of Oscars, which is why I figured I should watch it in order to be up to date prior to the Academy Awards. Thankfully the film is now streaming on Hulu which makes it more accessible.

I watched the film knowing nothing about it prior and came away from my screening believing it to be unquestionably one of the very best of the year, and certainly the most original.

The film is broken into three parts. The first is titled “Carl and Yaya” and it introduces us to models/social media influencers Carl and Yaya, two beautiful people navigating the business of marketing their bodies as well as their intimate relationship.

This opening section is absolutely mesmerizing and could be a stand-alone movie all its own. Carl, played by Harris Dickinson, and Yaya, played by Charlbi Dean, are so compelling and captivating that you are instantaneously drawn into their very topical, painfully politically correct, gender-sensitive, Gen Z drama.

Swedish writer/director Ostlund masterfully shoots this opening section with a stunning level of both subtlety and craftsmanship. There’s one shot of a conversation in a car that is as good as anything seen in a movie in years.

The second section of the film, titled “The Yacht”, chronicles Carl and Yaya and a bunch of other incredibly wealthy people as they vacation on a giant yacht. This section sets up the power dynamics between the unconscionably rich and the working people in the service industry at their beck and call.

This part of the movie is, to put it mildly, batshit crazy, as it devolves into one of the more absurd and extreme bits of physical comedy you’ll ever witness. That said, it is also incredibly insightful in terms of presenting and then propelling the film’s philosophical narrative.

The third section, titled “The Island”, turns the film on its head (again I’m being vague to avoid spoilers) as it lays bare the insidious hunger for power that lies at the heart of humanity.

After watching the film, I did something I rarely, if ever, do…I went and read some reviews of it. The reviews, which were all mostly dismissive, all said the same thing…that the film was nothing more than a rather trite criticism of American capitalism. The fact that politically-correct, limousine liberals writing for various high falutin, establishment, corporate media entities like the New York Times and such, would disapprove of a scathing Euro takedown of American capitalism should come as no surprise. But what did surprise me was that I didn’t see the film as a trite criticism of capitalism.

Yes, the film does criticize capitalism, but it also, and with maybe even more ferocity and fervor, criticizes the criticisms of capitalism. For example, at one point in the film there is a drunken debate between a wealthy capitalist and the socialist captain of the yacht. The two of them regurgitate famous quotes at one another to make their argument because neither is able to think for themselves or have an original thought. The wealthy capitalist is a repugnant pig and former citizen of the Soviet Union, and the socialist sea captain is a lazy drunkard who literally has been unable to leave his cabin to perform his duties due to his inebriation.

That the capitalist admits he sells “shit” and the socialist sea captain makes money being too drunk to pilot a giant yacht for the rich, sums up perfectly the scathing social satire of Triangle of Sadness. That critics are so venal, vapid and vacuous that they are unable to see past the obvious façade of “anti-capitalism” in this film in order to see the much deeper and more important point of it all is both damning and alarming. Or maybe critics actually did see the film’s deeper meaning and were angry that their woke worldview was so easily and entertainingly disemboweled. Who knows?

Regardless of misguided critic’s opinions, Triangle of Sadness is one of those glorious films that rattles around your brain for days after seeing it. The compromises the characters make in order to survive and/or thrive and to above all else deceive themselves, is an extraordinary thing to watch.

Ruben Ostlund’s direction is simply stunning. The opening section features numerous scenarios that are so exquisitely conjured and executed as to be amazing. For example, the modeling audition that Carl attends is both hysterically funny and unconscionably depressing for its accuracy and incisiveness.

In the second section, Ostlund does something so subtle and so clever that I’ve been ruminating on it for weeks now. During a chaotic sequence, which I won’t reveal to avoid spoilers, Ostlund introduces, almost out of nowhere, the sound of a baby crying. This baby and its parents are not featured characters and are little more than extras in the movie at best, but the sound of the baby crying elicits in the viewer a deep psychological and emotional reaction that is totally instinctual. This crying baby amidst the comedy chaos is like a vicious kick in the gut, and it leaves you shaken even if you aren’t sure why.

The third section is the laying bare of human nature and power dynamics and an escalation of the film’s critique of capitalism and criticisms of capitalism. That stereotypes regarding gender politics and economics are eviscerated in this section only makes it all the more delicious.

The cast of Triangle of Sadness all do exemplary work. Harris Dickinson and Charlbi Dean as Carl and Yaya are utterly fantastic. Dickinson in particular is able to walk a perilous tightrope to perfection. Dean, who in the most tragic of circumstances actually died last August before the film was released, is a magnetic screen presence and an absolute natural.

Other actors, like Zlatko Buric as the wealthy businessman, and Woody Harrelson as the drunken sea captain, and Dolly De Leon as the mysterious Abigail, all do solid work in their roles.

The bottom-line regarding Triangle of Sadness is that it takes no prisoners in its attack on the political, social and economic spectrum. Whether socialist or capitalist, man or woman, liberal or conservative, you’ll find yourselves in the crosshairs of this movie, and you’ll have no viable counter-argument as the film is aggressively astute and allergic to sentimentality.

If you can “stomach” it, I highly recommend Triangle of Sadness, as it is extremely well-made and extraordinarily insightful. This is the kind of movie that cinema desperately needs right now, and it was a joy to discover it.

©2023

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 95 - Oscar Wrap Up and Wakanda Forever

On this episode, Barry and I do a quick recap of the Oscars and then catch a flight to Wakanda to discuss all things Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Topics discussed include the sorry state of movie stardom, the sorry state of cinema and the even sorrier state of Marvel.

Looking California and Felling Minnesota: Episode 95 - Oscar Wrap Up and Wakanda Forever

Thanks for listening!

©2023

9th Annual Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® Awards: 2022 Edition

THE 2022 SLIP-ME-A-MICKEY™® AWARDS

The Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® awards are the final award of the interminably long awards season. The Slip-Me-A-Mickey™®, or as some lovingly call them, The Mockeys™®, are a robust tribute to the absolute worst that film and entertainment has to offer for the year.

Again, the qualifying rules are simple, I just had to have seen the film for it to be eligible. This means that at one point I had an interest in the film and put the effort in to see it, which may explain why I am so angry about it being awful. So, any vitriol I may spew during this awards presentation shouldn't be taken personally by the people mentioned, it is really anger at myself for getting duped into watching.

The prizes are also pretty simple. The winners/losers receive nothing but my temporary scorn. If you are a winner/loser don't fret, because this year’s Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® loser/winner could always be next year’s Mickey™® winner!! Remember…you are only as good as your last film!!

Now…onto the awards!

WORST FILM OF THE YEAR

Amsterdam – An astonishingly awful film that is so incoherent and incomprehensible I can only posit that the Illuminati running Hollywood (and the world) demanded it be intentionally so poorly crafted in order to scuttle any discussion of Smedley Butler and the Business Plot.

She Said – Imagine making such a shitty a movie that audiences end up rooting for a deplorable fucking pig like Harvey Weinstein by the end. Quite an accomplishment!

Don’t Worry Darling – No, actually DO worry, darling. This turd was an absolute shit show of epic proportions and may very well have mercifully ended Olivia Wilde’s directing career…for that we can be grateful.

My Policeman – To quote Kurt Cobain, “what else can I say, everyone is gay!”…including Harry Styles apparently. A gay plot about gayness that is totally gay, but still makes no sense, that is infused with instantly forgettable performances turned this derivative drama into Return to Blokeback Mountain.

Pinocchio – Robert Zemeckis and Tom Hanks should return their Oscars after churning out this mindless, heartless, craft-less sack of shit. Just utterly abysmal from start to finish.

The Fabelmans – An alarmingly amateurish, poorly written, directed and acted piece of vapid, narcissistic garbage that is filled to the brim with cringe. Besides that it’s just fine.

AND THE LOSER IS…AMSTERDAM! – It’s actually quite an accomplishment to make a movie this bad and to stand out from this collection of shit sandwiches.

WORST VIRTUE SIGNALING FILM OF THE YEAR

She Said – A movie that featured the stunningly brave, earth-shattering thesis that Harvey Weinstein is bad and women are good! Too bad this empty movie had nothing original or interesting to say. Total piece of junk meant to signal its virtue to the usual suspects in order to garner awards…but was so dreadfully made even its target audience stopped pretending it was good.  

Women Talking – A stagey, whiney, bitchy movie about Mennonite women debating each other like they’re know-it-all know-nothings at a late-night bitch session at Wellesley College. As pretentious, pompous, poorly made and transparently virtue-signaling and awards-thirsty as any movie as we’ve seen in years.

AND THE LOSER IS…WOMEN TALKING – The most blatant bit of vacuous and vapid virtue signaling imaginable. The fact that it is a truly horrendous movie but still won an Oscar tells you all you need to know about its pure pandering business model.

WORST PERFORMANCE OF THE YEAR

Tom Hanks – Tom Hanks has won two Best Actor Oscars, yet this year with his truly abysmal work in Elvis and Pinocchio, he has proven himself to be the worst best actor of all time. Hanks’ inability to play a character, or speak with an accent, were on full display this year, as was his hackneyed, hokey, shticky acting approach, and we’re all worse off for it. Please go away forever Tom Hanks.

Harry Styles – Harry Styles was poised to have a break out year and become a big movie star…and then we saw him in My Policeman and Don’t Worry Darling and his rocket ship to superstardom exploded on the launching pad. Holy shit this kid can’t act…not even a little. As uncomfortable and unnatural a screen presence as we’ve seen since Cindy Crawford in Fair Game.

Seth Rogan – Seth Rogan is an unwiped anus. His work in The Fablemans was a healthy reminder that he is an odious screen presence. I, for one, yearn for his vanishing from the public eye and/or the planet.

AND THE LOSER IS…TOM HANKS! Hanks should be embarrassed and humiliated by his work over the last twenty years, but he’s incapable of feeling anything but smug and superior. This hack should fuck off forever.

WORST SCENE OF THE YEAR

She Said – Bar Scene – An astonishing piece of cinema that is so atrocious as to be amazing. This scene has everything! From the poor dialogue (“these are the menus”), to the egregious virtue signaling, to the one-dimensional strawman, to the heinous acting. Just an all-around miraculous piece of cinematic shit that would be laughed out of a freshman year student film festival.

MOST OVERRATED FILM OF THE YEAR

The Fabelmans – The Fabelmans isn’t just a bad movie, it’s an embarrassing movie. That it was Oscar nominated for Best Picture and Best Director, as well as Best Actress, is a testament to how corrupt Hollywood truly is. If this film were made by anyone other than Steven Spielberg, it would’ve been vociferously labeled cringey, amateurish horseshit…but since St. Steven made it we are supposed to fawn over how “personal” it is. Get the fuck outta here with this garbage. This movie is shitty to the extreme and absolutely sucks donkey balls. If you liked it you’re an incorrigible idiot and an unrepentant asshole.

SPECIAL ACHIEVEMENT IN CINEMATIC MALPRACTICE

David O. Russell – Russell has never been a good director, but for some reason he has been considered among the elite moviemakers in Hollywood for the past twenty years or so. I think with the trainwreck that is Amsterdam, Russell has convincingly disabused Hollywood of the notion that he is even remotely able to make movies. To see even the most-simple of things, like setting actor’s eye lines, be fucked up in this deplorable shitshow, was jaw-dropping to witness. Russell put all of his copious amounts of shittyness into the Amsterdam stew and a few of us poor souls had to take a stinky bite. Yikes. Hopefully this asshat never gets another shot to make a movie.

P.O.S. HALL OF FAME

Meghan and Harry – Only these two self-absorbed, narcissistic pieces of shit could make a pervy prodigious pedophile like pecker-face Prince Andrew seem like a half normal person.

These two half-wit shitbags hate publicity and the public eye so much they moved to Hollywood and got into the entertainment business. And now you can’t avoid them because they won’t shut the fuck up and stay off camera for a single, solitary moment.

Prince Harry is a sad-sack eunuch and a ball-less buffoon and Meghan is a diabolical and devious shrew who has successfully neutered her needle-dicked husband and isolated him from his in-bred family.

My wish is that the new King Charles invites these two insufferable cunts to his coronation, they show up and then right after the ceremony King Charles has them beheaded, old school style, on live television. This would please Harry and Meghan because they’d get a lot of attention and get to be victims, and it would also ensure that Charles would be the most popular King in the history of England.

P.O.S ALL-STARS

Sean Penn – I’ve always liked Sean Penn as both an actor and a guy. He and I have very similar personalities…which isn’t exactly a brag on my part.

This year Penn has brought some of his famous screen characters to life in the real world, as he’s publicly morphed into the mentally challenged young man from I Am Sam combined with the gay activist politician Harvey Milk from Milk. Penn has made this transformation in order to bang the drums of war in Ukraine as loudly as possible.

Yes, Sean Penn who was so vociferous in his righteous anti-war sentiments regarding Iraq in 2003, is now out there demanding the U.S. and the military industrial complex get further involved in the war in Ukraine, including direct combat.

What a fucking genius.

Maybe someone should remind Sean that he has a son who’s the perfect age to go fight in Ukraine…and if that country’s “freedom” is so fucking important to him maybe he and his son can gear up and move out and go kick some Russian ass halfway across the world.

If that isn’t something he’s interested in, then maybe I Am Sam should shut the fuck up and stop talking and acting like a fucking useless retard. Maybe Mayor Man Milk should stop shouting that “I’m here to recruit you…to die in the war in Ukraine for the U.S. elites who absolutely hate you and only want to use you for cannon fodder!” Penn’s I am Sam/Harvey Milk character sounds like another famous gay buffoon, George W. Bush, as he marched us into war in Iraq…and as we all remember that went spectacularly well. Mission accomplished motherfucker!

So, Sean Penn, do us all a favor and SHUT THE FUCK UP. If you want to fight, I’d be happy to meet you and your movie star biceps anywhere, anytime, and slap the stupid out of your thick fucking skull. And by the way maybe try and do another exercise bedsides curls when you’re at the gym, you might find your bulging biceps to be less than useful in combat, be it in Ukraine or in a scrap with me. You’re welcome you fucking empty-headed shit heel.

And thus ends the Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® Awards and the cinema calendar for 2022…thank God!!

Hopefully the losers this year will be the winners next year…you never know. One thing I can guarantee though is that there will be movies and performances worthy of the Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® Award next year…and I’ll be ready!!

Thanks for reading!

 FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER: @MPMActingCo

©2023

The 9th Annual Mickey™® Awards: 2022 Edition

THE MICKEYS – 2022

The god-awful Oscars have finally come and gone and now it’s time for the final and most prestigious awards in cinema to commence.

The Mickey™® Awards aren’t just the most prestigious award in cinema, but are undeniably the most prestigious award on the planet, easily topping those wannabe poseurs at the overrated Nobel Prize.

Unfortunately, in recent years the art of cinema has not been worthy of such an esteemed and distinguished honor. You see, since the halcyon days of 2019 when great movies like Parasite, Joker, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and The Irishman, and significant arthouse films like Ad Astra, A Hidden Life, The Last Black Man in San Francisco and High Life, as well as quality middle-brow entertainment like the finely-crafted 1917 and Ford v Ferrari, graced our big screens, we’ve been in a dramatic and dire cinema drought. Not only has greatness not come to the big screen (or small screen) in the last three years, goodness has been an absolute rarity as well.

On the bright side, it must be said that 2022 was definitely better than 2021, but that isn’t saying much as 2021 was easily the worst year for movies in my entire life. To give an indication of how bad things were in 2021, last year The Mickeys™® were almost cancelled because the nominating committee couldn’t make a list of top five films due to the fact that there weren’t five good films that came out all year.

As far as the future is concerned, one can only cling to the hope that the ever-so-slight upward trend in cinema quality from 2021 to 2022 continues and that the three years ahead of us end up being better than the three unbelievably shitty years we’ve just slogged through.

Am I optimistic? God no! But at least as I wallow in my depression I’m setting myself up for the wondrous experience of being pleasantly surprised. As my cavalcade of girlfriends can attest, I am extremely fond of saying, “the key to happiness is low expectations.”

Before we get started…a quick rundown of the rules and regulations of The Mickeys™®. The Mickeys™® are selected by me. I am judge, jury and executioner. The only films eligible are films I have actually seen, be it in the theatre, via screener, cable, streamer or VOD. I do not see every film because as we all know, the overwhelming majority of films are God-awful, and I am a working man so I must be pretty selective. So that means that just getting me to actually watch your movie is a tremendous accomplishment in and of itself…never mind being nominated or winning!

The Prizes!! The winners of The Mickey™® award will receive one acting coaching session with me FOR FREE!!! Yes…you read that right…FOR FREE!! Non-acting category winners receive a free lunch* with me at Fatburger (*lunch is considered one "sandwich" item, one order of small fries, you aren't actors so I know you can eat carbs, and one beverage….yes, your beverage can be a shake, you fat bastards). Actors who win and don't want an acting coaching session but would prefer the lunch…can still go straight to hell…but I am legally obligated to inform you that, yes, there WILL BE SUBSTITUTIONS allowed with The Mickey™® Awards prizes. If you want to go to lunch, I will gladly pay for your meal…and the sterling conversation will be entirely free of charge.

Enough with the formalities…let's start the festivities!!

Popcorn Movie of the Year

The Batman – Matt Reeves wrote and directed the most recent sojourn into the world of the Batman and his film is a unique and original venture in a genre worn thin by its relentless and ridiculous repetition.

The Northman – Robert Eggers attempt at a Norse action movie is as weird as you’d expect it to be. While uneven, the film is a gloriously ambitious and smart action film that audiences were too stupid to understand.

Prey – I assumed Prey was going to be just another empty-headed franchise movie. It wasn’t. It was an original take on the well-worn Predator movies that revitalized the franchise.

And The Mickey™® goes to…THE BATMAN

Best Cinematography

All Quiet on the Western Front – James Friend – Friend’s work on All Quiet is simply astounding as he captured the scope and scale of war while also conveying the deeply intimate impact of it. Just beautifully photographed.

The Batman – Grieg Fraser – Fraser’s work on The Batman is at times absolutely stunning. His use of light in darkness paints some of the most extraordinary visuals in any film this year.

The Banshees of Inisherin – Ben Davis – Davis makes the most of his Irish setting through the use of fundamentally sound cinematography.

Tar – Florian Hoffmeister – Hoffmeister’s framing is simply exquisite as he turns the mundane into delicious pieces of cinema.

And The Mickey™® goes to…ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT

Best Supporting Actor

Brendan Gleeson – The Banshees of Inisherin: Gleeson is one of the best actors around and he brings the full force of his skill to his role of Colm, the dissatisfied musician tired of the ordinary life. Gleeson elevates every scene he inhabits.

Barry Keoghan – The Banshees of Inisherin: Keoghan’s work as Dominic, the fragile and combustible young man trapped in his life on the small isle of Inisherin, is at times stunning. The scene where he asks a girl to be with him is one of the very best captured on film this year.

And The Mickey™® goes to…BRENDAN GLEESON

Best Supporting Actress

Kerry Condon – The Banshees of Inisherin: Condon perfectly captures the frustration and futility of life as an Irish woman surrounded by the hell that is Irish men.

And The Mickey™® goes to…KERRY CONDON

Best Screenplay

The Banshees of Inisherin – Martin McDonagh: McDonagh’s screenplay is ridiculous and absurd at times, but it never fails to perfectly capture the civil war raging in the hearts and minds of every Irishman.

Triangle of Sadness – Ruben Ostlund: On its surface, Triangle of Sadness is a rather banal and somewhat predictable criticism of American capitalism (a criticism I agree with by the way), but just beneath this surface is as smart, savvy and savage a social satire as seen on big screens in ages.

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio: Del Toro turns the well-worn story of the puppet come to life into a fascinating tale of love, loss and fascism. As relevant a story as we saw all year.

And The Mickey goes to…TRIANGLE OF SADNESS

Best Scene of the Year

The Banshees of Inisherin – When Barry Keoghan’s Dominic professes his love for Kerry Condon’s Siobhan, it is absolutely heartbreaking and gut-wrenching. Both Keoghan and Condon absolutely crush this scene.

Tar – When Cate Blanchett’s Lydia Tar tries to teach a simple-minded social justice woke warrior about the complexity of life and music in this ten-minute uncut scene, it is simply mesmerizing. The actor playing opposite Blanchett, Zethphan Smith-Gneist, is so uncomfortable (either intentionally or unintentionally) in the role as to be glorious. Just one of those unbelievably magical scenes that make cinema so wondrous.

All Quiet on the Western Front – The scene where Paul is stuck in a bomb crater with a French soldier is absolutely hellacious as it shows war as a humanity crushing machine. It is a perfect encapsulation of this film and its anti-war message.

And The Mickey goes to…TAR

Best Actress

Cate Blanchett – Tar : There is no other option in this category. Blanchett is the best actress of her generation and maybe every other generation too. Blanchett’s skill and mastery of craft are sublime, and her raw talent is undeniable. Just a master class of master classes in terms of great acting.

And The Mickey goes to…CATE BLANCHETT – TAR

Best Actor

Felix Kammerer – All Quiet on the Western Front: A deft portrayal of the horrors of war that hollows out the human soul. Kammerer never loses his edge or his innate sense of humanity in this role.

Colin Farrell – The Banshees of Inisherin: Farrell’s work as the dim-witted, sad-sack Padraic is astonishing considering he was little more than a rather dim-witted, Hollywood pretty boy not that long ago. Farrell has grown into a terrific actor of quality and worth over the last decade or so and he puts it all together in this most subtle and deft portrayal.

And The Mickey™® goes to…COLIN FARRELL – THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN

Actor/Actress of the Year

COLIN FARRELL – In 2022 Farrell not only excelled as the lead in The Banshees of Inisherin, but he was also terrific in The Batman as the Penguin, and even elevated a rather mundane Ron Howard movie with a simple yet subtle turn as one of the divers who saves kids trapped in a cave in Thirteen Lives. Farrell has come a long way, and he now has not one but two Mickey™® awards to prove his greatness.

Best Director

Ruben Ostlund – Triangle of Sadness: Ostlund the director had to somehow bring to the screen the wild, unwieldly, sprawling story written by Ostlund the screenwriter…and he does it with a panache and deft touch that is breathtaking to behold.

Martin McDonagh – The Banshees of Inisherin: McDonagh is a better writer than he is a director, but on Banshees he lets simplicity be his guide and the result is an extremely well-made movie that never gets in its own way.

Guillermo del Toro – Pinocchio: Del Toro infuses such life and energy into this old story, and does it with the most beautiful stop-motion animation imaginable, that one can only bow to his enormous talent and extraordinary artistic vision.

Edward Berger – All Quiet on the Western Front: Berger perfectly captures the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual hell that is war. An unrelenting film that is as relevant today as the stellar original was back in 1930.

And The Mickey™® goes to…Edward Berger – All Quiet on the Western Front

Best Picture

8. Barbarian – The first two acts of this film are spectacularly well-made, but the third act falters. Still, was a pleasant surprise to see such a well-crafted horror film.

7. The Menu – A crisp and entertaining bit of class warfare moviemaking that featured some solid performances. Not a perfect movie but compelling.

6. The Batman – Matt Reeves proves himself to be a solid captain for the good ship Caped Crusader. His unorthodox approach and storytelling are a bit of fresh air in the oversaturated superhero genre.

5. Tar – 2/3rd of a great movie. The final act falls short but Blanchett’s brilliance is undeniable.

4. Triangle of Sadness – So much more than it appears to be. A funny, but insightful and incisive social satire that pulls no punches towards anyone.

3. Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio – A deeply moving, mournful meditation on life and loss.

2. The Banshees of Inisherin – Fantastically acted story that speaks to our current time and to the burden of Irishness.

1. All Quiet on the Western Front – Astonishingly well-made film. It isn’t perfect, but it overcomes its shortcomings by brutally conveying the fact that war is hell and only demons want it.

Most Important Film of the Year

All Quiet on the Western Front – In case you haven’t heard, there’s a war going on In Ukraine. Most Americans have been so thoroughly propagandized and indoctrinated that they are chomping at the bit to get the U.S. even more entangled in this bloody war.

All Quiet on the Western Front is a powerful reminder that that idea is a very bad one. War is hell, and only demons want it…and the U.S. has nothing but demonic elites running the show.

Watching liberals, with whom I proudly marched against the Iraq War in 2003, now be so blinded by relentless propaganda, misinformation, disinformation…is both astonishing and infuriating.

These dupes, dopes and dumb asses have been thoroughly manipulated into a myopic, vicious anti-Russian mania that is breathtaking to behold.

The reality is that all these dipshits who proudly display the Ukrainian flag in their bios don’t have half a fucking clue when it comes to Russia, Ukraine and this awful war.

Most of these morons, and most of Americans, have absolutely no idea what started this war – the U.S. backed coup in 2014.

Americans think their Ukrainian flag waving is in support of “democracy”, but they’re ignorant to the fact that a democratically elected Ukrainian government was overthrown in the coup that the U.S. instigated and fueled in 2014. They also have no knowledge of the 46 ethnic Russians burned alive in the Odessa Union House – and no clue that the burning alive of Russians is particularly triggering since the Nazis did the same thing in occupied Soviet territories back in the day.

These same Americans are ignorant to the fact that the newly installed, U.S. backed, post-coup Ukrainian government proceeded to shell ethnic Russians in the Donbas, killing 14,000 men, women and children. They are also blissfully unaware that this U.S. backed Ukrainian government signed a peace accord, the Minsk Agreements, with Russia in 2014 and then intentionally violated these agreements breaking the peace. These same fools are also unaware that Ukraine, the alleged bastion of democracy, outlawed the Russian language, Russian language media, and opposition parties after the 2014 coup that toppled a democratically elected government.

Americans don’t know any of this, or they reflexively call it “Russian propaganda”, because they’ve been sold a narrative and are too stupid or too cowardly to push back against it.

How many lies about the war in Ukraine have these idiots swallowed whole? There’s the Ghost of Kiev bullshit, the Snake Island nonsense, the continuous claims of Russian massacres and war crimes – like Bucha – which are obvious pieces of unsubstantiated propaganda.

Then there’s the endless stories of massive Russian defeats and retreats, with hundreds of thousands of dead Russian soldiers…except the actual numbers are the exact opposite of what the U.S. media claims. The truth is that for every one Russian soldier killed there are ten Ukrainian soldiers killed.

Then there’s the breathless stories the U.S. media keeps telling Americans about Putin on death’s door, suffering from cancer or Parkinsons or both.

The U.S. media report Russian retreats as catastrophic failures and turn around and call Ukrainian retreats “strategic withdrawals”.

Then there’s the media deification of a two-bit twat like Zelensky, who is the new Fauci…in other words a con artist and bullshitter used to front a phony narrative.

The coverage of this war has been the most blatantly dishonest propaganda spewed by the American misinformation machine I’ve ever witnessed…which is quite an accomplishment.

Which brings us to All Quiet on the Western Front. This movie lays bare the atrocity that is war and how it is a money-making machine that devours any humanity within its reach. The problem now is that Americans are so stupid and so ill-informed and so indoctrinated, that they are yearning for the U.S. to get more involved…which will only lead to copious amounts of misery for everyone involved.

We never learn. We didn’t learn from Vietnam. We didn’t learn from Afghanistan. We didn’t learn from Iraq. And now we are sleepwalking into a ground war with a nuclear power over what it deems to be a pivotal piece of property directly on its border.

The same is true of China and Taiwan by the way, which is next up on our propaganda list. There are already establishment geniuses and flag-waving fools banging the drums of war against China. I mean, why start one major ground war when you can lose on two fronts while your empire crumbles?

The reality is that the U.S. is not the good guy in the world…and most certainly not in the war in Ukraine. That doesn’t mean the Russians are the good guys…or the bad guys…they are just the guys fighting for their existential survival in a vital part of their neighborhood. What this all means for Americans is that this is a very complex, very dangerous situation which we are much too obtuse and too narcissistic to ever fully comprehend.

The truth is that Russia is winning in Ukraine…and has been winning all along. The truth is also that the U.S. empire is flailing and falling, and the BRICS are ascendant and will be the counter balance in a multi-polar, post-U.S. empire world. We need to understand this thoroughly in order to navigate it and not end up living in a post-apocalyptic, Mad Max world.

I’m not optimistic. And after watching All Quiet on the Western Front and seeing the astonishing gullibility and brutal barbarity of mankind, you shouldn’t be either.

And thus ends my rant and the 2022 Mickey Awards, the most prestigious of all cinema awards shows.

Thanks for reading and we’ll see you at the after-party!!

FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER: @MPMActingCo

©2023

Chris Rock: Selective Outrage - Comedy Review: Alas, Poor Yorick

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. Find the part where Rock mocks Will Smith online and just watch that…the rest of it is pretty weak.

It was just about one year ago that Will Smith slapped Chris Rock on-stage at the Oscars after Rock made a rather tepid, timid and terrible joke about Smith’s wife Jada looking like G.I. Jane.

Since that time Smith, who won a Best Actor Oscar just moments after the “Slap Seen Round the World”, has been busy issuing contrived, P.R. produced, half-assed public apologies, getting banned from the Oscars for ten years, and having an Apple TV movie about slavery come and go with no one giving a shit about it…good for him.

Rock on the other hand, has mostly kept silent and bided his time waiting for the perfect moment to metaphorically strike back at Smith. Rock’s new Netflix special, Selective Outrage, which aired live on the streaming service on Saturday, is unquestionably his counterpunch. Unfortunately, it falls decidedly flat.

To put my review of Selective Outrage into context, understand that I am 100% Team Rock.

I loathe the talentless, phony, dreadful actor and embarrassment of a “rapper”, that is King Cuck Will Smith, as well as his grating, useless fame-whore of a wife and their two relentlessly deplorable, silver-spoon kids. I have long believed that the world would be a better place if the four of these shitbags were loaded onto a rocket filled with raw sewage and launched headlong straight into the sun.

Chris Rock on the other hand is a comedian I have long admired. Rock’s brutal honesty, insightfulness and fearlessness have been his signature comedic style. To be clear though, Rock isn’t just some sharp-elbowed edge-lord, he’s also a pretty exquisite and deft comedic craftsman.

There was a time when Chris Rock was the best comedian on the planet. Unfortunately, that time was more than a quarter century ago. It was 1996 when Rock’s critically-acclaimed, immensely-popular HBO comedy special Bring the Pain hit the scene and Rock captured the ‘Greatest Comedian on the Planet’ championship belt. Since that time that championship belt has passed to a few different hands, like Louis C.K. and Dave Chappelle, but it’s never gone back to Rock.

Rock’s post-Bring the Pain HBO comedy specials, Bigger and Blacker (1999), Never Scared (2004) and Kill the Messenger (2008), were all very good and sometimes great, but they weren’t nearly as great as the iconic Bring the Pain.

It took ten years after Kill the Messenger for Rock to release another comedy special, Tamborine (2018), his first for Netflix on a deal that allegedly pays him $40 million a special.

Tamborine was a major disappointment. In the ten years since his previous special, Rock had seemed to lose mojo, and with it his rhythm, his sharpness and his precision, and the result was a scattered, dull and flaccid affair.  

Which brings us to Selective Outrage.

The show runs an hour long, and like its predecessor, features a second and third-rate Rock doing a poor imitation of Chris Rock when he was great.

Rock once again seems unfocused and out of rhythm. His material is derivative and repetitive and his delivery is forced and clumsy.

Rock seems to be trying to get ‘into the zone’ by mimicking the things that he did back in the good old days when he actually was in the zone, like pacing and prowling the stage, and repeating a few words again after saying a joke. But here the prowling seems more like wandering, and the repeating seems more like a comedian trying to remember his set. Not good.

There are some sequences in Selective Outrage that are utterly incomprehensible. For example, at one point Rock rambles on about how back when his mother was growing up in racist, Jim Crow South Carolina, black kids had to go to the veterinarian to get their teeth pulled. This is a pretty striking point, but Rock garbles the delivery so much that it makes it sound like he doesn’t know that kid’s teeth fall out all by themselves.

Another mess is his rant about his oldest daughter and how Rock surreptitiously gets her kicked out of school for her own good. Rock tells us that his ex-wife and his daughter don’t know he was behind her expulsion and they’ll only hear it for the first time while watching the special. Rock seems to think this is the height of edginess…oh how the mighty have fallen.

When the material isn’t incoherent, it’s derivative. For example, at one point Rock does a bit about abortion and how pro-choice he is…but that abortion is still killing a baby. This bit was funnier when I saw Bill Burr do it, and do it considerably better, last July in his special Live at Red Rocks.

The most anticipated part of the show is the Will Smith section. Rock is obviously still very pissed about the slap, and that anger explodes when he addresses the topic in the last ten minutes or so of the special.

Rock derisively calls both Will Smith and his wife Jada “bitches” at one time or another in the bit, and even talks about Jada sucking her son’s friend’s dick. None of it is comedic gold but all of it is very, very satisfying. Put it this way, if Chris Rock did these jokes at the Oscars then I would totally understand Will Smith getting up and slapping him.

My biggest issue with the Will Smith bit was that Rock used it to end the show instead of open it. Obviously, it’s what everyone was waiting to hear and what Rock was waiting to say…why not open with it? It seemed like the audience, and Rock, were distracted all night while waiting for what they wanted.

Maybe if Rock opened with the Will Smith bit he would’ve lost the jitters and gained the confidence that he so desperately needed. By holding off until the end to get into the nitty gritty of the Will Smith stuff, Rock didn’t build anticipation, he built frustration and boredom.

At the end of his anti-Will Smith rant Rock literally drops the mic and stands defiantly at the edge of the stage as the audience applauds. What was strange about this, and frankly kind of embarrassing, is that Rock didn’t seem like some bad ass comedian who just settled a score with his superior wit, he actually looked a lot like he did on Oscar night post-slap…like an insecure little kid trying not to cry.

Ultimately, with the lights shining brightly in anticipation of his response to Will Smith, Selective Outrage could’ve reestablished Chris Rock as one of the premier comedians on the planet. Instead, Rock’s underwhelming material and unfocused delivery made it clear that he isn’t Richard Pryor or George Carlin. He isn’t Dave Chappelle or Louis C.K. Hell, he isn’t even Bill Burr. This is why, despite how fun it was to ever so briefly hear Chris Rock talk shit about Will and Jada Smith, Selective Outrage is a painful missed opportunity.

©2023