Netflix's The Crown is a Mirror of American Politics

Estimated reading Time: 3 minutes 33 seconds

Netflix’s acclaimed drama on the British royal family is back, but it feels eerily reminiscent of the trials and tribulations of the ruling class aristocrats running and ruining America.

The Crown, Netflix’s smash hit royal drama, premiered its much anticipated fourth season last week and I dutifully binged watched the whole thing.

The high-quality historical drama, which follows the travails of Queen Elizabeth II and the rest of the royals, is exquisitely produced, for the most part gloriously acted, reliably entertaining and somewhat perversely addictive.

But maybe I am suffering from presidential election PTSD, but as I watched The Crown I couldn’t help but be triggered into thinking about the horror show that is American politics….most notably because I simply had no one for which to root.

The Crown, like American politics, is populated almost entirely with villains…wicked, corrupt, cold-hearted, duplicitous, self-serving villains.

On one side we have the royal family, which reminds me of the Democrats. The show, like the establishment media here in the U.S., works hard to humanize these entitled elitists but it is a Herculean task for me to empathize with such a bunch of spoiled, self-absorbed, raging mediocrities.

This collection of modern royals is, like the decrepit and deceitful Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, well past their sell-by date.

The Queen, similar to our soon-to-be-crowned commander-in-chief Sleepy Joe Biden, is an empty vessel completely oblivious to reality, who becomes aggressively indignant when confronted with it.

The rest of the royal clan, the abrasive Prince Philip, the boozy Princess Margaret, the bitter Princess Anne and the depraved Prince Andrew, like the greedy harlots in the halls of American power, are arrogant and entitled knobs born on third base acting like they hit a triple.

Princess Diana (masterfully played by the luminous Emma Corrin), is similar to the Democratic firebrand Alexandra Ocassio-Cortez, as she is a young, pretty, dynamic breath of fresh air injected into the stuffy and stilted establishment.

As Ocassio-Cortez is thrown into the deep end of public life she will face the same existential threat as Princess Diana before her…either bend to the establishment’s will or be broken by it. The Crown shows us that Diana was broken by it, but AOC seems to be leaning more toward bending the knee, betraying her principles and kissing the right backside.

Then there is that silver-spooned sad-sack Prince Charles, who, like woke Democrats, mopes around his completely unearned luxurious lifestyle because he can’t be with the horse-faced women he loves, Camilla Parker-Bowles, but instead has to settle for the stunningly beautiful Diana. If ever there was a man who needed a punch in the face and a swift kick in the ass, it is Prince Charles.

As the indignant and self-pitying Charles gets all fussy over his love life like a baby in a wet nappy, I couldn’t help but think of Don Corleone in The Godfather slapping his weepy nephew Johnny Fontaine and telling him to “act like a man!”, something I’ve wanted to do to the whiny Democrats for the last four years.

On the other side of the ledger, at least this season, is the Iron Lady herself, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (Gillian Anderson – who is a disappointment in the role), who ruled Britannia from 1979 to 1990. Thatcher perfectly reflects the mindless, malignant and mendacious modern-day Republicans like Mitch McConnell and Mike Pence.

Thatcher, and her American counterpart Ronald Reagan, were loathsome and diabolical creatures who used flag waving and soaring rhetoric to deceive the masses and lead a conservative revolution that brought about the destruction of the two things it claimed it wanted to conserve – the nation and the family unit.

Most of our major problems of today can be directly traced back to Thatcher and Reagan’s revolution, which unleashed a tsunami of financialization, free trade and muscular militarization that destroyed unions and devastated the working class.

It is symbolically significant that both Thatcher and Reagan later in life suffered from dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease, as their demented approach to governing was fueled by a rapacious myopia, historical illiteracy, selective memory and a relentless lack of any foresight or consideration of consequences.

Republicans (and corporate/Clinton/Obama Democrats) still suffer from Reagan’s dementia, as they are completely incapable of coming up with a bold, new idea or any idea at all. Even Trump, who won in 2016 running against the economic globalism and neo-conservative foreign policy of establishment Republicans, suffered Reagan’s dementia as he unimaginatively governed like the swamp creature he promised to abolish.

Season four of The Crown shows that the royals despised Thatcher, who they thought uncouth and beneath them, just as much as Thatcher despised the poor men that she gleefully sends to war, as well as the working class union men she economically castrates.

The same is true in American politics, as both the Democrats and Republicans claim to be for the workingman but do everything in their power to crush the working class in favor of the investor class.

Even though The Crown triggered my election PTSD, it is a high-quality show I thoroughly enjoyed watching. The thing I liked most about The Crown was that I had the power to turn it off whenever I wanted…unlike American politics, where I am entirely powerless to put an end to the never-ending nightmare.

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 23 - Richard Jewell

On today’s podcast Barry and I take a look at the 2019 Clint Eastwood film, Richard Jewell. On the episode we discuss the hopefully soon-to-be discovered, glorious genius of the film’s star Paul Walter Hauser, as well as the reliable acting brilliance of Kathy Bates and Sam Rockwell. In addition we wrestle with the often-times frustrating nature of Clint Eastwood’s directing approach and the never ending mystery of Jon Hamm.

LOOKING CALIFORNIA AND FEELING MINNESOTA: EPISODE 23 - RICHARD JEWELL

Thank you for listening!

©2020

Cursed, Netflix’s Girl Power Infused Re-Telling of King Arthur Legend, is More Proof That Wokeness Ruins Everything It Touches

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 27 seconds

The painfully p.c. Cursed is not the Holy Grail of a good King Arthur show…it is just another example of Hollywood’s infatuation with the wicked witchery of wokeness.

The legend of King Arthur is one of my favorite stories because it is one of the most psychologically and mythologically profound tales in the human canon.

Sadly, I have been consistently underwhelmed by Hollywood’s attempts to bring the story of King Arthur to the screen, but like the Knights of the Round Table searching for the Holy Grail, I remain undaunted in my quest for a quality telling of the Arthurian tale.

It is in this context that I recently binge-watched Cursed, Netflix’s attempt to make a feminist prequel to the story of King Arthur from the perspective of Nimue, the famed Lady of the Lake from the original story.

Cursed doesn’t so much deconstruct the Legend of King Arthur as defecate upon it.

All the familiar heroes are presented in Cursed…Arthur, Merlin, Lancelot, Gawain, Percival and Guinevere, but this “re-imagining” of the Arthurian story lacks all the profundity of the original myth and is little more than a delivery system to spread the gospel of girl power and the wonders of wokeness.

In keeping with woke doctrine, the men in Cursed are universally awful. For example, Arthur is a lying, treacherous thief, King Uther Pendragon is a sniveling, villainous buffoon, and Merlin is a drunken fraud suffering with a case of sorcery impotence.

In contrast, the women, like Nimue, are righteous heroes, and even the bad ones, like Lady Lunete, are the brains behind the vapid men on the throne.

Religion too is held up as a paragon of evil. The Red Paladins, who are vile Catholic crusaders that brutally hunt the magical Faeries of the forest and burn them on crosses, are akin to Arthurian era Klansman – dressed in red robes instead of white.

It’s worth noting the exception to the woke ‘all religious people are evil’ rule though, as there are two nuns in Cursed who are good…but that’s only because they’re lesbians.

In a painfully heavy-handed bit of social justice preening, some good humans, who not surprisingly are people of color, start an underground railroad in resistance to the marauding Paladin, and funnel Faeries to safety.

Another not-so-subtle declaration of wokeness is the colorblind casting, most notably in the role of Arthur. Any real-life historical King Arthur prototype would have been white, and is even portrayed as such in the Frank Miller graphic novel that Cursed is based upon, but on the tv show he is played by black actor Devon Terrell.

Colorblind casting is certainly a bold choice, and it is somewhat amusing in a woke-ish sense that Terrell plays Arthur, as his only other role of note was playing the modern-day, neo-liberal, establishment media version of King Arthur, Barrack Obama, in the movie Barry.

I assume when it comes to colorblind casting that what’s good for the goose is good for the gander though, so hopefully very soon we’ll get to see Macaulay Culkin star as Shaka Zulu.

The problem with Terrell in the role of Arthur is certainly not his skin color, it is his egregious charisma deficit. Terrell is so devoid of any magnetism the show would have been better served casting a cigar store wooden Indian as the future king.

The rest of the cast, with the notable exception of the pleasant Katherine Langford as Nimue and the always interesting Peter Mullan as Father Carden, are nearly as inept as Terrell, and they sure as hell aren’t aided by the egregiously hackneyed and exposition-laden writing.

Cursed wants to be Lord of the Rings meets Game of Thrones meets A Mid-Summer Night’s Dream, all wrapped in an Arthurian woke cloak, but looks so unconscionably cheap and is so dramatically unsophisticated it is more akin to a backyard play put on by a bunch of neighborhood kids hopped up on too much Dungeons and Dragons.

Examples of Cursed being derivative abound, such as the Sword of Power being a nearly identical storytelling device as the One Ring from Lord of the Rings, with Nimue as an exceedingly more attractive version of Frodo.

The Sparrow cult of Game of Thrones is mimicked in Cursed by the religious zealotry of the Red Paladin. As is the plethora of palace intrigue and political maneuvering, but in Cursed that ends up being incoherently baffling rather than beguiling.

In leaving no unoriginal stone unturned, Cursed even has a mysterious Assassin’s Creed looking guy running around wreaking havoc with laughably absurd dancing fight moves.

It is amazing to me that something as mythologically potent and dramatically powerful as the Legend of King Arthur can be reduced to something as inconsequential and puny as Cursed, but I guess that is the destructive wizardry of wokeness at work.

If King Arthur were alive today and watched the derivative, dull, listless and lifeless piece of woke trash that is Cursed, he would pull Excalibur out of the stone just to gouge his own eyes out.

The bottom line is this…my quest for the ever-elusive Holy Grail of a good King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table show continues, but Cursed has left me feeling my noble quest is just that…cursed.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020  

The Invisible Man: A Review

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

My Rating: 2.25 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. This movie starts off well but spins out of control and becomes ultimately a whole lot of silliness. Even if you are a big horror fan, you can wait to see it for free on a streaming service or cable.

The Invisible Man, written and directed by Leigh Whannell, is the story of Cecilia Kass, a woman in an abusive relationship whose controlling ex-boyfriend goes to remarkable scientific lengths to torment her. The film stars Elisabeth Moss as Cecilia, with supporting turns from Aldis Hodge, Storm Reid, Harriet Dyer and Michael Dorman.

The Invisible Man is H.G. Wells’ iconic story of a mad scientist who tries to play God and turns himself invisible, this film version however is set in modern times and turns the story on its head by giving the viewer not the perspective of the scientist, but that of his long suffering girlfriend trying to get away from him.

The trailer for The Invisible Man was terrific and while I am not much of a horror film aficionado, I was excited to see it. The film’s opening sequence lives up to the trailer’s promise, as it is extremely well-done and directed, and immediately captivates the audience by throwing them directly into the tension. The problem though is that the opening sequence is scuttled by its illogical conclusion, as the film quickly deviates from a real-world setting into make-believe movie-dom, thus defusing the tension and knee-capping the suspension of disbelief. Things go down hill from there.

The first half of the film is a decent thriller, and director Whannell effectively uses long, slow pan shots that hold on seeming nothingness, as well as natural sound and a paucity of music, to convey an ominous sense of tension.

In the second half of the movie though, Whannell abandons this successful restrictive directorial approach for more conventional movie making and the film and its narrative spiral out of control and stumble into a morass of melodrama.

Whannell, who also wrote the screenplay, made the fatal error of not committing entirely to his perspective choice, namely having the audience see the world through Cecilia’s eyes. By breaking perspective and periodically showing things from other viewpoints besides Cecilia’s, the connection between audience and Cecilia, and spell of the movie, are broken, and thus we are left with a rather mundane movie of little impact.

Whannell’s other error is that he expands the story beyond the bounds of its natural power. This film, about an abusive relationship, needed to stay within the intimate confines of that relationship, and eschew the wider world, which dilutes the claustrophobia and terror of the premise. Whannell’s failure to contain things neuters the drama as well as the film and its feminist message.

I genuinely like Elisabeth Moss as an actress, as she is a highly skilled and compelling screen presence, but with The Invisible Man she repeats herself and comes perilously close to caricature. Since 2017 Moss has played Offred in The Handmaid’s Tale, and won an Emmy for doing so, but her Offred and her Cecilia seem to be the exact same person.

Cecilia, like Offred, is the noble female victim who finally “stands with fist” and fights back against the deplorable patriarchy that has its hands around her neck. The seams of Moss’s work are definitely showing as she spends a lot of her time on screen in both A Handmaid’s Tale and The Invisible Man, not blinking so that her eyes well up with tears, and then blinking so that the tear gracefully falls down her cheek. She also locks her jaw and steels her eyes in an act of defiance that always feels a lot more faux than formidable.

Moss certainly has greatness within her, but I wish I could see her get lost in a performance rather than being forced to see her act.

The rest of the cast are fine, if underwhelming.

Aldis Hodge is a very likable actor and does the best he can with his under written and rather illogical character James.

Stormy Reid is another likeable screen presence but she too is handed a thin character that doesn’t amount to much.

Michael Dormand and Oliver Jackson-Cohen fall pretty flat in their roles which needed to be much sharper for the premise of the film to work.

The Invisible Man is obviously a #MeToo allegory about the patriarchy and the “gaslighting” of women, and that is actually a pretty fascinating take on the story. The feminist politics of the movie and the portrayal of an abused woman’s PTSD work very well in the first half, but they do lose steam and coherence in the second half.

Another troubling thing of note in the movie is its racial politics, which can be boiled down to this… The Invisible Man movie doesn’t hate all men…just the white ones. It is made very clear throughout that The invisible Man wants all white men to vanish. Not only is every single white man in the movie is bad, but every bad person in the film is white. Every single one. The villain, his brother and even some throw away small characters are the token evil white men.

I have no issue with the villain and his brother being white…but what I find disturbing is the film’s decision to paint all of the even mildly prominent white male characters as bad.

For instance, there is a scene where Cecilia goes for a job interview and her interviewer is a nerdy white guy. The scene and the nerdy white guy character are not very important…which is why it is so striking that the choice was made to have this nerdy white guy sexually harass Cecilia. Instead of just a throw away character with meaningless dialogue, this choice of having him be a predator sends a clear and undeniable message, that all white men are intrinsically evil. The choice to have this sexually harassing nerd be white is also no accident. He could have been any race or ethnicity…but he was specifically white.

Further proof of the film’s anti-white racial politics are seen when James, who is a black cop, sits down with a white cop to speak with Cecilia. Cecilia won’t speak freely with the white cop in the room, so James asks him to leave. You may think that this scene makes sense devoid of the cop’s race as Cecilia is friends with James and wants to confide in him…this is true…but just like the sexually harassing nerdy architect, the choice here is subtle but very deliberate. They could have had the other cop be of any race or ethnicity they wanted…he could have been black, Asian, Latino…a woman…but they didn’t, they made him white and once again reinforced the message that not all men, but just the white men, cannot be trusted.

Of course Aldis Hodge’s character, James, is black and is a really good guy…a great father and friend who is patient and kind and never even considers being inappropriate with Cecilia.

The only reason I bring this up is because it struck me as being such a blatant piece of racist misandry (with racism defined as - "prejudice, discrimination or antagonism directed against other people because they are of a different race or ethnicity” and misandry defined as “dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against men”) as to be propaganda. I would certainly mention the same thing if other races, ethnicities or genders were universally painted with such a negative brush by a film.

Regardless of this questionable ideology, I would still have been all on board with The Invisible Man if it had just been consistently good, and sadly, it isn’t.

In conclusion, The Invisible Man never lives up to the hype, to its trailer or to its source material, and thus squanders a golden cinematic opportunity. I do not recommend spending your time and money seeing this film in the theatre, but if you are interested in seeing it at all then you should check it out on Netflix, cable or a streaming service when it becomes available.

©2020

Pain and Glory: A Review

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

My Rating: 2.75 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT/SEE IT. If you adore director Pedro Almodovar’s work, then you’ll love this movie. For everyone else, wait to watch it for free on Netflix or cable.

Language: Spanish with English subtitles.

Pain and Glory, written and directed by two-time Academy Award winner Pedro Almodovar, is an autobiographical drama that tells the story of a director looking back upon his life’s journey. The film stars Antonio Banderas, who has been nominated for Best Actor at the this year’s Academy Awards, with supporting turns from Penelope Cruz, Asier Etxeandia and Leonardo Sbaraglia.

Pedro Almodovar is a master filmmaker who has made such classics as Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, All About My Mother, Talk to Her and Volver. This past September Almodovar turned 70, and much like others entering the final stretch of their existence here on earth, he is now contemplating his life and trying to make sense of the patchwork of memories that inform his identity. Pain and Glory is Almodovar’s attempt to understand himself and the long and winding journey that brought him to his current destination.

I am pretty neutral when it comes to Almodovar’s films. I respect and admire his artistry and his artistic insights, but I have never deeply connected with his subject matter or his characters. That said, I have always found Almodovar to be an interesting filmmaker almost solely because he seems to be an interesting person. Whether blatantly or covertly, Almodovar’s films feel both joyously and painfully autobiographical, and Pain and Glory is no exception.

Pain and Glory is, like many of Almodovar’s works, filled with the usual fond remembrances of a golden, sun-drenched youth, where Almodovar’s admiration of women and attraction toward men is born. In Almodovar’s cinematic adulthood, as strikingly evidenced in Pain and Glory, there is a recurring theme of a complicated, near self-pitying relationship with other men, himself and his work.

I wouldn’t say I enjoyed Pain and Glory, but it is certainly interesting, if a bit self indulgent. Almodovar’s autobiographical movie suffers because it is, like his memory, unfocused and fuzzy. This is accentuated by numerous journeys down differing narrative paths that never quite come to any logical or dramatically satisfying conclusions. Much like real life, Pain and Glory’s themes are clear and precise but its narrative structure and dramatic specificity are not, thus making it somewhat less emotionally coherent than it needed to be to be a completely successful cinematic endeavor.

Like most of Almodovar’s movies Pain and Glory is visually lush and vibrant, with a crisp cinematic style that is very appealing for its dynamic simplicity. Almodovar and his cinematographer Jose Luis Alcaine, use a striking palette and color to great affect, most notably red and white. As always, Almodovar, a Spaniard, is able to convey love, be it familial or romantic, by using the all encompassing visual warmth of the Spanish sun. Almodovar sublimely paints the objects of his affection in his memories to great affect with that appealing solar warmth.

In terms of the acting, Antonio Banderas does solid work as Salvador. Like Almodovar, Banderas is on the downside of his career and life and he brings that reality to bear on the character. Banderas wears the weathering of Salvador’s existential strain on his formerly pristine face and it gives him a gravitas he has not always possessed. It is a compelling performance and Banderas imbues Salvador with a complexity and intentionality throughout the film that is the driving force of the narrative. Where Banderas stumbles just a bit is in embodying the physical suffering that is Salvador’s constant companion. Banderas is just a little too spry and fluid to be believable as someone suffering from the multitude of ailments of which we are told Salvador suffers.

Penelope Cruz, as she often does, embodies the Anima for Almodovar. Cruz portrays Salvador’s mother, Jacinta, and gives an earthy and grounded performance. Jacinta is the Mediterranean mama incarnate, a hard-working, no nonsense family leader whose calloused yet gentle hands scratch even as they soothe.

Asier Etxeandia and Leonardo Sbaraglia have pivotal roles as Salvador’s estranged artistic and romantic partners respectively. Both do terrific work, particularly Etxendia, who never falls into stereotype when portraying both an actor and a junkie.

In conclusion, Pain and Glory is a very Almodovar film, and if you love Almodovar you will love Pain and Glory. If you are indifferent to Almodovar, I think, like me, you’ll find the film interesting but somewhat lacking as it never quite completely captivates or has the courage of its cinematic convictions or artistic ambitions. My recommendation is to skip Pain and Glory in the theatres but definitely check it out when it hits Netflix or cable in the future. It is worth seeing, just not worth paying to see.

©2020

Martin Scorsese - Top Five Films

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes 57 seconds

Despite an abysmal winter, spring and most of the summer, 2019 is actually shaping up to be a good year for cinema. The first ray of sunshine came in the form of Quentin Tarantino’s wish fulfillment ode to Los Angeles, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood. Then the cultural hurricane known as Joker came along and sent the woke brigade and the impotent cuckolds in the establishment media into a full blown panic before most ever even saw it. When the Joker finally made landfall it was an insightful and electrifying artistic nuclear explosion at the center of the comic book genre that has dominated the box office and the culture wars.

Now that Halloween has come and gone, cinematic master Martin Scorsese has a new film, The Irishman, hitting theatres, and shortly thereafter hitting Netflix, that is generating massive Oscar buzz. This will be followed by another enigmatic auteur, Terrence Malick, who has a new film, A Hidden Life, coming out this December.

With Tarantino, Joaquin Phoenix, Martin Scorsese and Terrence Malick in the mix, it is a good time time be a cinephile…and since Scorsese’s new film came out last Friday and I haven’t seen it yet, it is also a good time for me to rank his top five films.

Scorsese is the most important film maker of his generation and maybe the most important American film maker of all time. Unlike Spielberg and his popcorn movies, Scorsese hasn’t padded his wallet with his work but instead advanced the art of cinema. Nearly every single film and filmmaker of note over the last 40 years has used Scorsese’s artistic palette to paint their own works. His use of dynamic camera movement, popular music and unorthodox storytelling structures and styles have become requisite and foundational film making skills. Scorsese didn’t invent cinema, but he did invent a new style of it that did not exist prior to his rise to prominence in the 1970’s, and that is why he is the most unique of auteurs.

Scorsese’s filmography can be split in two, with 1997’s Kundun being the end of the first half of his film making career, and 1999’s Bringing Out the Dead being the beginning of the latter part of his career. The first half of his career is staggeringly impressive, as he jumped genres with ease. Films as diverse as the gritty Taxi Driver, the musical New York, New York, the controversial The Last Temptation of Christ, the remake of Cape Fear, the enigmatic sequel to The Hustler, The Color of Money, and his biography of the Dalai Lama, Kundun, showcase Scorsese’s cinematic versatility.

The second half of his career has shown Scorsese to have lost a few miles per hour off his fastball and to have been brow beaten by the studios into making more mainstream fare. 1999’s Bringing Out the Dead was awful, most notably because Scorsese fell under the then popular spell of acting charlatan Nicholas Cage. Gangs of New York had similarly bad casting decisions, such as Cameron Diaz, no doubt encouraged by meddling money people…like Harvey Weinstein, who also took a gigantic shit on Scorsese’s vision of the film by demanding he cut 45 minutes off the running time. Other notable films from this period are The Aviator, Shutter Island and Hugo, all of which are less Scorsese films than they are studio films made by Scorsese.

Scorsese’s lone Academy Award win for Best Director came during this period with the film The Departed. The Departed is an ok movie, but it definitely feels more like a knock-off of a Scorsese film than an actual Scorsese film. It also feels like it could have been directed by anybody, which is more an indictment of the movie than and endorsement of the movie making.

The first half of Scorsese’s career is highlighted by his frequent collaborations with Robert DeNiro, and the second half by his frequent collaborations with Leonardo DiCaprio. If you’re looking for any greater piece of evidence that Scorsese is no longer at his peak, look no further than that fact. DiCaprio is a fine actor, but he is no Robert DeNiro, as DeNiro in his heyday was as good an actor as we have ever seen.

That said, Scorsese has made some great films in the second half of his career…as my list will attest…and who knows, maybe The Irishman will be worthy of inclusion. I am definitely looking forward to seeing it.

Now without further delay…onto the the list of Martin Scorsese’s “five” best films!

5C - Wolf of Wall Street (2013) - Wolf of Wall Street sneaks onto the list because it is uproariously funny while also being socially and politically insightful. In the face of the grotesque corruption so evident on Wall Street and in Washington, it was nice to see Scorsese focus his talents on the decadence and depravity that are the soul of American capitalism. It also helps that this is the only time the DiCaprio collaboration works, as Leo does the best work of his career as Jordan Belfort.

5B - Casino (1995) - Casino is an often often overlooked gem in Scorsese’s filmography. The film may have suffered from “Scorsese fatigue” as it appeared to tread on the same “mob” ground his recent masterpiece Goodfellas (1991). Casino is an indulgent masterwork in its own right, as Scorsese tells the story of how the west was won, and lost, by the Italian mafia, who were replaced by the corporate mafia. The film showcases some stellar performances from DeNiro, Joe Pesci and Sharon Stone.

5A - Silence (2016) - Silence is the very best film of the second half of his career…so far. Scorsese has always carried a Catholic cross bearing a tortured Christ on it throughout most of his films, and Silence is a tantalizing glimpse at the muse that has haunted Scorsese his entire artistic life. Silence is an ambitious film, and it doesn’t quite live up to its ambitions, but it still is great. One thing that I felt hampered the film was that it also was the victim of cuts for time, which is frustrating as Silence is a rare film in that it runs 160 minutes but deserved, and needed, to run at least another 45 minutes. Secondly, Scorsese once again falls for artistic fool’s gold by casting this generations Nicholas Cage, the mystifyinly popular Adam Driver.

4. The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)- Speaking of Scorsese’s Catholicism…The Last Temptation of Christ hit theatres while I was attending Catholic high school, and you would’ve thought that Satan himself had put the movie out. Students were read a statement by the diocese imploring us not to see the movie because it was blasphemous and viewing it would guarantee a one-way trip to eternal damnation. Obviously, I responded to this warning by rushing out and seeing the film as quickly as I could…and I am glad I did (and I’m still Catholic!). The Catholic Church’s fear over this film was so absurd as to be laughable, and this is only heightened by the fact that the film is the most spiritually vibrant and resonant depiction of Christ ever captured on film.

3. The Age of Innocence (1993) - The Age of Innocence is the most un-Scorsese of Scorsese films, as it tackles romantic intrigue among the austere world of Edith Wharton’s 1870’s New York. In many ways The Age of Innocence is a massive cinematic flex by Scorsese as he shows off his directorial versatility and exquisite film making skill. While the casting of Winona Ryder and Michelle Pfeiffer were hurdles to overcome, Scorsese does so and in magnificent fashion as The Age of Innocence is an exercise in dramatic and cinematic precision.

2. The King of Comedy (1982)- The King of Comedy is a piece of cinematic gold that accurately and insightfully diagnoses America’s star-fueled, delusional culture. The film is highlighted by Robert DeNiro, who gives an unnervingly committed and forceful performance as Rupert Pupkin, the celebrity obsessed comic wannabe who tries to get his big break by any means necessary.

The King of Comedy crackles because Scorsese creates a palpable sense of claustrophobic desperation that permeates every scene in the movie. The film is genuinely funny but uncomfortably unsettling and undeniably brilliant.

1C - Raging Bull (1980) - The top three films here could be in any order as all of them are undeniable masterpieces and the height of cinematic achievement. Raging Bull, the black and white look at former Middleweight boxing champion Jake LaMotta, is a tour-de-force from not only the film’s star Robert DeNiro, who won a Best Actor Oscar, but from Martin Scorsese, who brings all of his cinematic skills to bear on the most cinematic of sports, boxing.

Scorsese uses LaMotta’s story to explore the meaning of masculinity, its incessant fragility and its inherent volatility. While Scorsese does masterful work bringing LaMotta’s battles inside the ring to exquisite life, his most brilliant film making achievement is in illuminating LaMotta’s most imposing fight, the one raging inside of himself.

1B - Taxi Driver - Taxi Driver once again shows both Scorsese and DeNiro at the very top of their game. The film perfectly captures the madness of New York City in the 1970’s, and the spiraling madness of a delusional loner who is the modern day everyman.

Scorsese’s camera rides along a taxi cab as it ventures through the gritty streets and bares witness to the sick and venal society that produces pimps, whores and politicians, and we get to know Travis Bickle, who is the rain that will wash these filthy streets clean.

A simply astonishing film in every respect. Not just one of Scorsese’s greatest films, but one of the greatest films of all-time.

1A - Goodfellas - Goodfellas is a not only a monumental cinematic achievement, it is also a fantastically entertaining and eminently rewatchable masterpiece. Over the last thirty years, whenever I have stumbled across Goodfellas playing on cable, I will always and everytime stop and watch whatever scene is on, and 9 times out of 10, will end up watching the rest of the movie.

A terrific cast that boasts superb performances from Robert DeNiro, Joe Pesci, Ray Liotta and Lorraine Bracco, turns this film about New York gangsters, into a familiar and familial tale that everyone can relate to in one way or another. The New York of Goodfellas, is the New York of my youth, and those populating that world are my Irish family…all of them. In my family there’s a Paulie, a Henry, a Jimmy and everyone knows a Tommy. These guys are my uncles and their friends and cousins, and their wives are my aunts. Watching Goodfellas is like watching a home movie for me.

The film teems with iconic scenes and sequences, from entering the Copa to the “Layla” dead bodies sequence to “hoof” to “go get your shine box” to “what do you want fucko?” to “funny how? I mean, funny like a clown? I amuse you?” I can’t get enough of Goodfellas, as I’ve probably seen the movie at least 100 times, and I’ve discovered something new every time I’ve seen it.

Scorsese has made many masterpieces, but Goodfellas is his most entertaining masterpiece, and is a testament and monument to his greatness.

More proof of Scorsese’s genius is that I had many, many films that I love sit just on the outside of my top “five”…such as Mean Streets, The Color of Money, Cape Fear and Kundun, and they stand up to most other makers very best work.

And thus concludes my Scorsese top “five”…which is really a top nine, because Scorsese, the consummate rule breaking director, deserves a list that breaks the rules. So go forth and watch as much Scorsese as you can, and let’s hope that The Irishmen lives up to the hype!

©2019

Parasite: A Review

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

My Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. A fantastically original film, gloriously directed and acted, that is both dramatically potent and politically insighftul.

Language: Korean with English subtitles

Parasite, directed and co-written by Bong Joon-Ho, is the story of the Kim family, who live at the bottom rung of Korean society and try to connive their way out of poverty. The film stars Song Kang-ho as father Ki-taek, Jang Hye-jin as mother Chung-sook, Choi Woo-shik as son Ki-woo and Park So-dam as daugher Ki-jong.

Parasite is an exquisitely crafted film that, although it is in Korean with English subtitles, speaks as eloquently and insighftully about the perils of American capitalism and the growing resentment and rage born out of astronomical wealth disparity, as any film in recent memory. In this way Parasite is reminiscent of last year’s Shoplifters and this year’s big movie Joker. All three of these movies tap into the pulsating dissatisfaction of the working poor who are being left further and further behind, and growing angrier and angrier about it, with every passing day.

Whenever certain themes recur in films that capture either the critical or commercial imagination (or both), my antenna stand on end because as my studies have shown, cinema can be prophecy, and these films are red flags as to what is percolating just beneath the surface in the collective sub-conscious. One look around America, and the world, gives credance to the theory that these films, all of which give voice to the emotional pull of populist uprisings, are trying to warn us of what lies ahead.

Parasite is a brilliant examination of the frustration and fury that accompanies being at the bottom of the social rung in a corrupt and rigged capitalist system. The only way to get ahead and get out of the prison of debt, and it is a prison, is to lie, scheme and cheat. If that means throwing other poor people under the bus, then so be it.

Director Bong Joon-ho has tapped into these ideas of class struggle before, most notably in his film Snowpiercer (which starred Chris Evans aka Captain America), which was a remarkably innovative and original film. Bong’s class consciousness in both Parasite and Snowpiercer is fueled by anger and fear… namely, fear for what will result when the anger from below is righteously unleashed upon those at the top when the house of cards crumbles. Bong, either consciously or unconsciously, understands that the current world order sits atop a super volcano that is growing more and more unstable and combustible, and his film’s reflect the emotional and political fragility of our time.

In Parasite, the poor are vermin, roaches, who are either being pissed on or drowned, as poverty is a deluge that imposes upon them indignity after indignity until it suffocates them. The poor are forced to stay in their place and warned not to “cross the line” into familiarity with the rich. The prison of poverty has walls, both real and imagined, that are impenetrable…even when you repeatedly bang your head against them…like Arthur Fleck does in Joker (wink).

The rich family in Parasite, the Parks, are the picture of decadence, detached from the ability to see the poor as even human. The Parks are repulsed by the poor, who they see as more akin to animals than people, as evidenced by their disgust at the literal smell of poverty. The Park’s revulsion at the poor does not stop them from fetishizing poverty, much like Americans fetishize Native Americans but make sure they stay on the reservation (wink)…just one more way for the rich to exploit the poor for their personal gain.

Parasite’s politics and psychology are as insightful as its drama is enrapturing. The film never shies from the difficult or the desperate, nor does it wallow in it. Instead Bong Joon-ho has made a socially relevant, dramatically explosive film that is deliriously entertaining in every single way.

Bong’s direction of Paradise is fantastic, as the film’s dramatic and physical geometry is spectacular. His use of straight lines, differing levels (symbolic of class status) and long journeys upward and downward (very similar to Joker, where Arthur Fleck makes those trudging journeys up the long flight of stairs, and the victorious dance down it) is proof of a master craftsman and artist at work.

Bong’s ability to meld together comedy, suspense, elements of thriller, as well as social commentary is extraordinary. I never knew what was coming next in Paradise and was always surprised, sometimes shocked and never disappointed.

The cast of Paradise are outstanding. Song Kang-ho in particular gives a dynamic performance that is consistently rich and layered. And both Choi Woo-shik and Park So-dam do stellar work that is both magnetic and subtle. Park in particular has a charm and presence about her that is intriguing and compelling.

Parasite is one of the very best film’s of the year and most certainly will garner an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Picture, if not a win, and may even sneak in a Best Picture nod. The film is expertly made, wonderfully acted, politically prescient and dramatically potent, for these reasons, Parasite is required viewing for cinephiles and regular folk alike. My recommendation is to go as quickly as you can to the art house and see Parasite…it is that good. And after that, head to the cineplex to see Joker…again, and then when you get home watch Shoplifters (I see it is now available on the streaming service HULU)…because they are that good too. If you want to know what is coming for America and the world, and why, go watch those three movies. But make sure you go see Parasite as quickly as you can…it is truly a fantastic film and well worth you time and money.

©2019

Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood: A Review and Commentary WITH SPOILERS!

****THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS!!! SPOILERS AHEAD!! YOU’VE BEEN WARNED!!****

My Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5

My Recommendation: SEE IT.

Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood, written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, is the fictional story of fading television star Rick Dalton and his stunt double Cliff Booth, as they navigate Hollywood during the turbulence of 1969. The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Dalton and Brad Pitt as Booth, with supporting turns from Margot Robbie, Bruce Dern, Kurt Russell and a cavalcade of other actors.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is Tarantino’s 9th feature film and like all of his other movies it is a cultural event. With two of the biggest movie stars in the world on the marquee, and one of the most recognizable directing talents in the business at the helm, this movie was bound to stir up interest. Add in the fact that it is an unabashed homage to Hollywood history that also mixes in the toxically intriguing Manson family and you have a recipe for drawing a lot of attention. While I have loved some Tarantino films and loathed some others, I recognize his genius, and part of that genius is making movies that stir controversy and attract enormous amounts of both good and bad attention.

I went to see Once Upon a Time in Hollywood on the Friday morning of its official opening. The 10 AM screening was pretty full…full enough that I had to endure not one but two elderly couples sitting on either side of me talking throughout the movie like they were sitting in their own living rooms. Even after very politely and delicately asking them to please not talk, they continued anyway. As my buddy Steamroller Johnny astutely observed, “at some point old people think the rules of the world no longer apply to them”. Despite the incessant and idiotic yammering of these old fools, the likes of which included such gems as “remember Mannix? Oh yeah…I remember Mannix!” and “Where did Leo go? Why don’t they tell us where Leo went?”, I soldiered on to the end of the movie and much to my broke lawyer’s chagrin, never once smashed anyone’s head in.

I must admit that my first impressions of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood were not overly positive. Besides the distracting moronity of the decrepit couples around me, I thought the film looked and sounded sub-par. The visuals were terribly imprecise and muddled, and the sound was atrociously bad, with Tarantino’s constant use of music suffocating the dialogue. The visual darkness and audio messiness made me feel I was watching the movie underwater. Even though I saw the movie in a high end art house theatre, I blamed the projector for the technical mess as the screening I attended used a digital projector which is how most movies are displayed nowadays. After leaving the theatre I shook my head at the sad state of film projection in America and what a crime it is to demean the art of cinema in such an egregious way.

Another first impression I had was that this movie was two hours and forty minutes long but ultimately did not do much considering it is historical fiction and could have done absolutely anything it wanted. I sort of felt like…is that all there is? Is that all you can come up with? it felt really…limited…at least in terms of the story.

Needless to say, while I didn’t hate the movie, I didn’t love it either, and felt it landed somewhere in the bottom half of the Tarantino canon, ahead of The Hateful Eight and behind Inglorious Basterds. Then, out of both frustration and curiosity, I decided to see the film again, except this time to see it in 35mm…as it was intended to be seen. 35mm screenings are pretty rare nowadays but Tarantino usually sets up special screenings where you can see his movies either in 35 or 70mm. It took some effort as I had to track down the theatres and special screening times for the 35mm print, but I did it and then went and saw it once again on Monday at noon.

Let me tell you…the difference between digital and 35mm is like night and day in every single way. In 35 the film is gorgeous to look at, the colors and contrast are distinct, and the visuals precise and specific. As much as the look of the film improved, the sound made an even more gargantuan leap. In 35mm the sound is astounding, as the music really pops and the mix is as clear as a bell…no more dialogue pulled under the tide of music.

The second viewing, much to my delight, also gave me a much clearer perception and understanding of the narrative and the sub-text. It certainly helped that I didn’t have to listen to elderly conversations about Mannix and could focus on the action on screen, but I was also aided by just being able to let the film wash over me as opposed to figure out what will happen next.

My second viewing changed my entire opinion of the film…and it quickly skyrocketed out of the bottom tier of Tarantino movies and into the upper echelon if not the Mount Rushmore of his canon.

Tarantino has always gotten great performances from his cast and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is no exception. The entire cast is stellar, with Margaret Qualley (a 2017 Breakout Performance of the Year Mickey Award Winner!), Bruce Dern, Mike Moh, Al Pacino and Julia Butters doing terrific supporting work.

As for the leads…Leonardo DiCaprio is at his very best in this movie. DiCaprio perfectly embodies the self-destructive, self-absorbed desperation that is epidemic in Tinseltown. His Rick Dalton is a star who is fading fast who represents an era and archetype that is under siege. DiCaprio’s Dalton is barely able to keep his mind and body in tact as he tries to navigate the minefield of semi-stardom in an entertainment business going through as much upheaval as the rest of the country in 1969….which is eerily similar to 2019.

DiCaprio gives Dalton a subtle but very effective stutter and stammer that reveals a mind deteriorating after years of alcohol abuse. Dalton’s stutter and stammer indicate he is no longer able to speak his mind and do it clearly. His stutter/stammer show a man second guessing himself and his entire life.

Dalton is also in a perpetual state of cough and spits up gallons of phlegm as he is metaphorically dying on the inside. Dalton smokes and drinks like a condemned man…which is what he really is. Dalton is the archetypal American Male…the Cowboy…and in 1969 that version of American Male was losing its standing and its balance, and in 2019 it is an outright villain. It isn’t until Dalton describes a novel he is reading about a cowboy who has outlived his usefulness and grows more and more useless as everyday passes, that his plight goes from being unconscious to conscious, and it devastates him.

DiCaprio has had moments of greatness in his acting career, most notably as a mentally challenged teen in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape and as a depraved slave owner in Django Unchained, but Rick Dalton is by far his most complex and frankly, greatest acting accomplishment, and he is deserving of not only a Best Actor nomination but a win.

Brad Pitt plays the stuntman Cliff Booth with all the movie star aplomb he can muster. Pitt’s work is much more straight forward than DiCaprio’s, but no less effective. Booth is an enigmatic character…at once cool but also combustible. Pitt’s charisma oozes off the screen and he and DiCaprio have an interestingly uneven chemistry that is compelling to watch. Booth seems like a combination of the cult 1970’s Native American action hero Billy Jack (one of my favorites) and Burt Reynolds character Lewis Medlock from Deliverance. He is, unlike DiCaprio’s Dalton, unambitious, but also unlike Dalton, he is the genuine article in terms of rugged, old school masculinity. Booth is no faux tough guy, he is an actual tough guy…the epitome of a real man in that he will kick the shit out of you if you deserve it, even if you’re Bruce Lee. And while Booth is a red-blooded man who is attracted to an alluring and eager teenage girl…his moral code won’t allow him to consummate such an ethically dubious act. And it is of note that the teen in question, named Pussycat, is at one point standing in front of a rainbow colored building, no doubt a strip club, named Pandora’s Box.

Margot Robbie plays Sharon Tate and there has been much made about the paucity of her dialogue. The usual suspects are crying misogyny due to her role being “less than" her male co-stars. I find this sort of thinking to be so tiresome and vapid as to be absurd. As for Robbie’s actual performance…it is utterly spectacular. Robbie’s Tate is bursting with life for every second she appears on film. Robbie has filled her Tate with such a powerful and specific intentionality she is like a supernova of magnetism.

The Tate character is the embodiment of life, potential and the archetypal feminine. Tate is bursting with life, literally and figuratively, and her effervescence cannot be contained. When she walks down the street she seems to float or bounce, the earth barely able to grasp her ebullient spirit.

Tarantino’s decision to use actual footage of Tate in the film is a masterstroke, as he successfully pays homage to her and humanizes her at the same time. Tarantino takes Tate out of the clutches of not only the Manson gang but of the culture that has turned her into nothing but a headline and symbol. Sharon Tate was a person, a real person with hopes and dreams and aspirations and the Mansonites snuffed that out…and Tarantino reminds us of the depth of that loss without ever being heavy-handed or maudlin.

The sub-text of the film is one of a battle between traditional masculinity and femininity and the assault upon them by “woke” culture. Tate and Dalton’s wife Francesca and Booth’s dog Brandy represent the traditional feminine archetype and Dalton and Booth are two halves of the traditional male archetype in the film…and the Manson family? They are representative of our new cultural wave…they are liberalism gone awry…they are “The Woke”. In a brilliant twist Tarantino makes this connection abundantly clear as he casts one of the most grating and loathed woke apostles, Lena Dunham, as one of the leaders of the Manson gang at Spahn ranch.

The gaggle of Manson women at Spahn Ranch are the neo-feminists of our age as they are little more than harpies who incessantly yap like neutered lap dogs in the presence of genuine masculinity (Booth). To quote Reservoir Dogs, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood asks modern day neo-feminists represented in the film as Manson women, “you gonna bark all day little doggie, or are you gonna bite?” Of course, these women do not bite when they first meet Booth…they sit and stay when told…and later when they do try to bite, the hounds of hell are released and these women serve as nothing but chum to the big dogs that do bite.

When the female Manson acolytes scream at Booth as he pulverizes a hippie dude at the Spahn ranch, they symbolize the nagging neo-feminists/woke brigade who say a lot but do nothing. They express their love for the weakling and cowardly Mansonite man getting the Booth treatment, but they don’t help him, they just touch their hearts empathetically and mouth their support. It is also worth noting that these woke women may softly proclaim their love for their hippy brethren, but they want to have actual sex with the real man…Cliff Booth. Ultimately when “the woke” women do trifle with Cliff Booth, he obliterates them. Booth and his faithful canine companion unleash a fury upon the woke and smash their heads into dust, no doubt because their heads are empty, as they are incapable of any thought…only regurgitation.

Speaking of dogs…maybe my favorite character in this entire film is Brandy the pit bull, who is Cliff Booth’s beloved pet. Brandy is occasionally a lap dog, but only because she wants affection, not protection. Brandy is a female…but unlike her Manson family/neo-feminist/woke counterparts, she is no bark and all bite. Brandy is the embodiment of loyalty and when unchained she opens the gates of hell upon anyone who would try to disrupt the order of her universe. Brandy may be subservient to Cliff, as he is the one who feeds her and directs her fury when necessary, but she also ferociously defends the traditional feminine in the form of Dalton’s young bride, Francesca.

At both of the screenings I attended, the audience cheered when the Mansonites get their comeuppance…and that is because it is so deliciously satisfying. In our culture The Woke are intolerant of intolerance but are totally intolerable. Tarantino is basically giving voice to people who are sick to death of the incessant woke posing in our culture by saying, “Hey assholes, you want equality…here it is…a can of dog food smashed in your fucking face”. The Woke are, in their own way, Nazis, and Tarantino treats them as such as he has Dalton torch them just like he does the Nazis in his hit World War II movie The Fourteen Fists of McCloskey, and just like Tarantino did in Inglorious Basterds.

In a piece at The Ringer about Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Alison Herman wrote “the Manson family aren’t Nazis, or slave owners, or even Bill (from Kill Bill); they were young, manipulated, drugged-out kids” and thus “…watching Rick take a flamethrower to one feels a lot less cathartic and a lot more uncomfortable”. One need look no further to find the vacuity of woke ideology than Ms. Herman’s quote. The young women and man (Tex Watson) getting their faces kicked in, bitten off and torched in the fantasy of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, in reality brutally murdered Sharon Tate as she begged for the life of the child in her belly, as well as Abigail Folger, Jay Sebring and Wojciech Frykowski with the utmost cruelty, savagery and viciousness. They are not drugged up and confused girls anymore than the SS were noble patriots fighting for the German homeland. Ms. Herman’s woke inspired, insipid thinking is prevalent throughout our culture and is a leading cause of the epidemic of mental myopia verging on retardation in our nation. It is Ms. Herman’s thinking that Tarantino smashes in the face with a can of dog food, gets devoured by a pit bull and then gets lit up by a flamethrower…and deservedly so.

Tarantino also deftly plays with audience perception in Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood. The film is obviously a fairy tale and another bit of historical fiction/wish fulfillment from Tarantino, and it plays with this fact throughout. Tarantino subtly but continuously keeps asking the audience what is real? Is it a blind man who watches tv? Is it a man who claims he’s never been to prison yet says he was on a Houston chain gang for breaking a cop’s jaw? Or is it a man who allegedly killed his lusciously-bottomed, nagging wife or is that just rumor/lie/legend too? What about Dalton, who hates hippies but looks a lot like Manson in his Lancer costume when he gives his great performance…or Booth, who is adversarial with the hippies too but partakes of an acid laced cigarette he buys from a hippie girl?

At times the movie is a daydream within a fairy tale within a nightmare….and that makes it a hypnotically compelling film. Tarantino expertly captures the dream state that is Los Angeles…and Hollywood…a dream state that is so bright during the day as to be blinding, and so dark at night as to be deadly. Hollywood during the day is, like Sharon Tate, beautiful and full of potentialities. When night descends on Los Angeles it becomes a city of menace…the city of Charles Manson, mass murderers, serial killers, street gangs, violent lawless cops…a shadow city of predators and prey.

The ending of the movie is a combination of the dream/nightmare that leads up to it. After the “real men” Booth and Dalton save the day, greatly assisted by the traditional females in the house, Brandy and Dalton’s wife Francesca, the movie shifts to what should be a happy ending, but which feels extremely unsettling.

As Dalton stands at the end of his driveway, he is greeted by Jay Sebring, who seems like a ghostly apparition at the gates of heaven, asking what happened. Sebring is reminiscent of a ghost stuck in the place of his death, in this case Cielo Drive, who is unaware of what happened to them. Sebring and Dalton are then joined by the haunting and ghostly disembodied voice of Sharon Tate over the intercom. Tate invites Dalton up to the house for a drink…and the gates slowly open for him to enter. This is Rick Dalton walking into the gates of heaven (Tarantino’s version of heaven anyway). Dalton…the symbol of the 1950’s all-American cowboy archetype…is dead and he is going to mix and mingle with Sharon Tate and Jay Sebring and the others who did not survive the cataclysm of the 60’s.

Cliff Booth is technically alive at film’s end but physically injured (in the thigh…which in biblical stories/Jungian terms is symbolic of the genitals - which leaves Booth emasculated…just like Tex Watson who gets his balls chewed off by Brandy…and the hippie dude who Booth beats at the camp…who had no balls to begin with) and mentally altered from a hippie delivered acid laced cigarette. Although he avoided the moral trap of Pussycat, he ingested the poison cigarette willfully…like Adam eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge…for this sin he is banished from Eden. After Dalton declares his true friendship with Booth, Cliff is rushed away to a hospital…but in reality he too is gone…disappeared into the L.A. night never to be seen again.

The only ones left alive at the conclusion of the film are Francesca and Brandy…but they are sleeping in the bedroom, no doubt dreaming up the scenario played out over the preceding two and a half hours of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, where real men/traditional masculinity saved the day and real women/traditional feminine got to appreciate them for it.

In conclusion, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood is a staggeringly rich, layered and thoughtful film that is entertaining both as art and as popular cinema. I highly recommend you see it and even if it takes more effort…see it in 35 mm. Tarantino is a polarizing filmmaker, and this movie will no doubt receive a great deal of enmity from politically correct critics and their woke minions in our culture. The bottom line is this, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood is a gigantic and well-deserved fuck you to The Woke, and that is what makes it so deliciously entertaining, but what makes the movie so poignant, insightful and exceedingly relevant is that it is aware that it is pure fantasy, and that in reality The Woke have won the culture war and cinema, and the rest of us, are all the worse for it.

©2019

The Last Black Man in San Francisco: A Review

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

My Rating: 4.25 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. A unique and original film that is beautifully shot, dramatically compelling and painfully insightful.

The Last Black Man in San Francisco, based on a story by Jimmie Fails and written and directed by Joe Talbot, is the story of Jimmie, a black man trying to reclaim his childhood house, a beautiful Victorian built by his grandfather in the 1940’s, that sits in an upscale San Francisco neighborhood. The film stars Jimmie Fails as Jimmie, with supporting turns from Jonathan Majors, Danny Glover and Mike Epps.

Thus far, 2019 has been a pretty dismal year in terms of American film. Of the four lonely films I have recommended so far this year, all of them are foreign. Thankfully, The Last Black Man in San Francisco is like a tall, cool glass of cinematic water in the parched desert of American movies in 2019. The film, which is based upon a story created by its lead actor Jimmie Fails (who is black) and its director Joe Talbot (who is white), pulsates with a life, artistic vibrancy and intelligence that is an utter joy to behold.

On the surface the film examines gentrification in San Francisco and the consequences of it. What I really loved about the movie though is that it does not take the easy, emotionalist route in exploring this complicated issue. Although it is often lumped in as simply a racism issue, the changing face of a neighborhood is a result of a much more nuanced set of elements. For instance my white family (and extended family) were part of the white flight from Brooklyn in the 1970’s because the neighborhood was rapidly changing from Irish, Italian and Jewish to Haitian and Jamaican. It is easy to chalk this up as simply racism, but the reality is, regardless of race or ethnicity, people like to be around people who not only look like them, but have the same culture and relatively same belief system. This is why immigration is such a huge issue, it isn’t a function of racism but rather a function of cultural comfort. The same is true here in Los Angeles where black neighborhoods get really angry when white people move in because they feel the “essence” of the neighborhood is changing. That isn’t racism…it is human nature.

To the movie’s great credit it does not take the easy road in addressing this polarizing issue, but instead embraces the complexity and subtlety of it. Besides the maze that is gentrification, the film also dances through the minefield that is toxic black masculinity, black violence, myth and identity, the cancer of capitalism, self-deception, self-delusion and most especially…the importance of Truth.

Jimmie yearns to return to the house of his childhood, which has no doubt been sanitized in his own mind. His dream of a return is fueled by his tumultuous life since leaving the house and the myth that gives meaning to the structure, namely that his grandfather built the house from the ground up in a Japanese neighborhood. Unlike the greedy white people taking over San Francisco now and pushing out minorities, Jimmie’s black grandfather didn’t steal anyone’s house, he defied racial stereotypes and oppression and created one from scratch.

Jimmie’s journey is a fascinating one, and while the actor Jimmie Fails (playing a character with the same name) is not the greatest actor in the world, he is certainly likable and does Yoeman’s work as the protagonist. Fails succeeds at being a worthy host for his two-hour narrative journey.

The performance that I did find remarkable though was that of Jonathan Majors as Montgomery Allen, Jimmie’s best friend. Majors brings such a beautiful and delicate sense of humanity to Montgomery that it is mesmerizing. Montgomery is the consummate artist as he is a writer, director, actor, sketch artist, wardrobe…you name it, and because he is an artist he is motivated by only one thing…the Truth. Majors fills Allen with an off-beat but very specific and detailed intentionality that gives him an understated but undeniable charisma and power.

Danny Glover and Mike Epps have small roles in the film but do quality work in them and bring a certain level of professionalism to the cast. In general, the other supporting actors feel a little rough around the edges, but that aesthetic works well for the movie.

Director Talbot does a tremendous job of bringing what could have been a maudlin and middling story to life with a dazzling emotional and dramatic vitality. The movie is beautifully shot as Talbot and cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra do an outstanding job framing their shots and even throw in some delicious 70’s, throw-back, long shot zooms. I loved those shots as they not only gave the film a distinct look and feel but were also imbued with a much deeper, archetypal meaning.

Talbot’s direction reminded me a little bit, just a little, of Spike Lee, in that he masterfully uses music, particularly jazz and/or classical, to build both dramatic and narrative momentum. Also like Lee, he populates his story with eccentrics who never fall into stereotype or caricature, no easy feat. Unlike Lee, and to his credit, Talbot wholeheartedly embraces a narrative complexity and subtlety that forces introspection rather than accusation, and is not afraid to tell the Truth even when the Truth hurts.

Even though the director Joe Talbot is white, the story is told exclusively from a black man’s perspective. What I found intriguing about this is that Talbot establishes this fact from the opening shot and makes clear that white people are aliens…literally…as they look like astronauts walking on a distant planet. What is so refreshing about Talbot’s approach is that he keeps white people as “alien” throughout…they are, ultimately, truly unknowable to black people. Of course the reverse is true as well, but in this movie we only see the black perspective and it was refreshing because it forced all of the issues and responsibilities back onto black characters. There are no one dimensional, white villains to blame or scapegoat (unlike, for instance, in some of Spike Lee’s films, or in last year’s If Beale Street Could Talk).

In conclusion, The Last Black Man in San Francisco is a gorgeous film that never takes any short cuts and never fails to challenge, captivate and illuminate. This is a smart, original, unique and extremely well made film that I highly recommend you take the time and effort to go see in the theatre.

©2019

Final Thoughts on the Game of Thrones Finale - Alternative Ending Included

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes 02 seconds

Game of Thrones has come and gone and after eight seasons of turmoil has exited with a whimper and not a bang. The final episode, in keeping with the final two seasons, was underwhelming at best. The narrative felt rushed and the drama forced, and so, a show that was a powder keg of possibilities ended with a fizzle.

The finale was lackluster and the last season lacking, and I think it is important to understand why that is and how it happened. The biggest issue, and this seems to be a consensus, is that the last two seasons were rushed, with the narrative being sped up and therefore the drama not earned. It is counter intuitive, but oddly enough the dramatic momentum of the show slowed precipitously when the pace of the narrative increased over the last two seasons. Without the requisite time and space to let the characters and story marinate, simmer and then stew over a warm but not hot flame, the drama was both under done and over done at the same time. This left the story tough on the outside, which made it difficult to chew on, and cold on the inside, which made it hard to swallow, and left an unpleasant taste in your mouth and a queasy feeling in your belly when it was over.

In the recipe for drama, time is a key ingredient and it seemed to be the most lacking in the last few seasons of Game of Thrones. For example, much more time was needed for Dany to be turned into as mad a Queen as she needed to be for the resolution of the story to make dramatic sense.

By increasing the pace of the drama over the last two seasons, and this half season most especially, the show lost its focus and became more about hitting plot points necessary to end it, than in having characters make believable choices in the circumstances they found themselves. When logistics of the production are the main driving point for the arc of the narrative, then the story will crumble under the weight of its dramatic falsity.

Of course, lots of people have lots of opinions about the show and its finale. People like to bitch about things…myself included. But it is important not to let the less than stellar finale and final season undermine the enormity of what the makers of Game of Thrones achieved with this show. As I have written before, we will not see anything like this again…and so while it is fun to nit pick the negatives of the final season, we must also tip our cap to those that got so many people invested in the show in the first place.

With that said…here are my thoughts on what should have happened. Of course, the question arises, who the hell am I and why should anyone give a rat’s ass what I think should have happened to end Game of Thrones? The answer to that is that I am most definitely a nobody and will remain one until the day I die…but…I do spend my time and make my living as an acting coach scouring scripts in a desperate search for drama. I read a ton of scripts and I work with lots of actors trying to dredge up the worthwhile drama in them. My alternative take on the Game of Thrones finale is an exercise based entirely on storytelling where drama takes precedence. Maybe my ending makes no sense in terms of the books (which I have not read), or the budget (which I am not paying for), or the fan base (of which I am not a member)….but it does make dramatic sense…and for me that is all that matters.

So…here it is…my broad brush ending to Game of Thrones.

ALTERNATE ENDING

Main Themes: Duty and Honor

The sacking of King’s Landing should’ve been the first big battle of the last season….with the Battle of King’s Landing and the Battle of Winterfell exchanging places in the story order. In a six episode season (which should’ve been 12 episodes) the Battle of King’s Landing should happen in episode three at the latest, two if possible, and the Battle of Winterfell against the Night King should have happened in the penultimate episode (#5). In a 12 episode final season, which i would prefer, I would have the Battle of King’s Landing at Episode 8 and the Battle of Winterfell at episode 11.

The Battle/sacking of King’s Landing would play out the same way in my version as the show’s actual version, with Dany going all Dresden/Hiroshima on the general population. My one tweak would be that Cersei and Jaime die in each others arms but by dragon fire when Dany sees them trying to escape the Red Keep. Dany and Cersei would look into each others eyes and then Jaime and Cersei would have their conversations “this is all that matters”, and then Dany would torch them. This sequence gives Dany agency in Cersei’s death and also makes Cersei’s death a punishment for all of her evil.

The burning of King’s Landing sets Dany up as a morally questionable character due to her torching of innocents. It also means that every character becomes morally compromised by the atrocity because they still need Dany on their side in the fight against the Night King. The Night King is the greatest existential threat to all of mankind, and so it means that everyone…even the mad Queen who kills innocent people, must be kept on board. Every character, from Jon to Tyrion to Arya to Sansa and on and on must bend the knee to one evil, Dany, in order to defeat another greater evil, the Night King.

The Battle of Winterfell then proceeds after the armies march north to Winterfell to meet the Army of the Dead. On this march there are lots of conversations about Dany and what are we going to do? She is mad? etc., etc.

The Battle of Winterfell is shot more clearly and with more coherence and clarity in my version. While I didn’t really dig Arya killing the Night King or the way she did it in the original…I will acquiesce and keep that sequence the same. But in my Battle of Winterfell many more characters are lost. Brienne, Tormund, Greyworm as well as the ones killed in the original all die.

After the end of the Battle of Winterfell and the Night King’s death, Dany embraces an exhausted Jon and they weep and cheer their victory together. Dany then tells Jon that since the threat of the Night King is over, “their child can be born into a world of peace.” Uh-oh…Dany is pregnant…and Jon is the father…the stakes just got even higher in Westeros.

In my alternative finale…Jon is, as always, ready to serve his queen…but Tyrion, Sansa, and Arya all implore him that something must be done about the Mad Queen who is talking and acting like a tyrant.

Jon then has a similar conversation with Dany that he had in the actual finale, and they go back and forth about what is good and right…and Dany asks Jon to join her in making this new world. Jon kills her. Dany being pregnant with Jon’s child as well as being his Queen and love…makes the stakes much higher, the gravity of his decisions much heavier and much more fraught than in the original finale. By killing Dany, Jon is actually sacrificing not just his love and self-conceived notion of his honor and belief system…but his lineage, his child, his everything that he yearned for throughout the story. Jon commits this heinous (in his eyes) act because it is the “right” thing to do for the people, the kingdom and the Starks…and these added narrative obstacles make the weight of that decision much much greater than was in the original finale.

The Lords of the Seven kingdoms then declare Jon, who is the rightful heir, to be king of Westeros. Jon declines and instead exiles himself to the North, to wander among the Wildlings far north of the wall…and to never marry or have children or take lands. His punishment is self-imposed….this gives Jon agency and makes his exile a heroic act and thus he begins his arc of redemption. Jon starts as a bastard longing for acceptance and he ends as a self-imposed exile…forgoing all he yearns for in order to do the right thing.

The council, after much debate and hemming and hawing, all, out of various Machiavellian maneuvers…choose Gendry Baratheon to be king. Gendry is chosen by some because they think he is an peasant who can be easily manipulated to thwart Stark power. But those anti-Stark machination are upended when Arya Stark, who has discovered she is pregnant with Gendry’s baby and thus cannot explore what lies in the West, accepts Gendry’s proposal. Arya thus becomes the Queen of Westeros, and due to Gendry’s rather uneducated background, Arya is now the real ruler of the Seven Kingdoms and eventual mother to a King as well.

Arya marrying Gendry and becoming Queen of Westeros fulfills her character’s arc too as she has thrown off the childish urges for adventure and revenge and instead grows up to accept “DUTY” above all else. Just as her mother and father before her sacrificed for her, Arya now sacrifices her dream of personal freedom for her child and for her family and kingdom. Arya starts as a tomboy repulsed by the trappings of power…and ends as a Queen, ruling over the Seven Kingdoms.

Sansa, assuming she is backed by her sister, then declares that the North will not kneel…and must be independent. Other kingdoms tart contemplating the same thing. Gendry and Arya, with an assist from Bran, decide that in order to quell the “independence” talk, Sansa must consummate her marriage to Tyrion and bear an heir if the North is to be granted autonomy. Both Sansa and Tyrion are horrified and vehemently against the idea.

This is the highest of drama considering Sansa’s history and also considering that it is her sister and brother who are asking this of her. After much hemming and hawing…Sansa does what both Jon and Arya do…she chooses duty…and she accepts her fate and the conditions under which she will become Queen of the North. Sansa chooses to put duty to her people and family above all else and agrees to the pairing. (A shot, through a doorway - like the iconic ending of Godfather I with Michael in a room and Kay watching through a door- of Sansa standing in a bedroom alone. Tyrion enters, they exchange a glance, he kisses her hand, then Sansa walks over and slowly closes the door on the camera, implying they are about to have sex, would be terrific.)

In order to soften the blow upon Sansa…Tyrion is named the Hand and will live in Kings Landing after Sansa is impregnated, leaving Sansa to rule the North on her own. Arya tells Tyrion that she will watch him with a keen eye and have his head if he so much as thinks of betraying her or Gendry. Tyrion looks over and sees Bran, who nods. Tyrion understands that Bran knows everything and that he must be unquestionably loyal to Arya and Gendry.

Bran is now the Three Eyed Raven…and serves as a sort Grand Maester who is part historian, part prophet, part wizard. Bran works closely with Samwell and they become the keepers of history and knowledge. Bran also searches far and wide with his powers to find Drogon and maybe even bring him under the Stark wing with his warging powers.

The show could end with the same Stark montage as the original finale…except this time with Arya sitting on her throne next to Gendry…ruling the kingdom through her husband, with Sansa sitting alone on her throne in Winterfell with her hand on her belly contemplating her soon to be born child, and with Jon riding alone in the cold and snow of the North, feeling the bitter wind of his exile.

So…that is what I think should’ve happened. If the show had gone one more full season they may have been able to pull it off…but alas…we will never know. I guess I better get started writing my fantasy novel masterpiece because that is the only way these ideas will see the light. And thus concludes my speculative Game of Thrones pseudo-fan fiction!

©2019