Looking California and Feeling Minnesota - Episode 42: No Sudden Move and Top Five Heist Movies

On this episode Barry and I try to make sense of director Steven Soderbergh's latest half-hearted effort No Sudden Move, and then shift gears for a wild discussion on their top 5 heist movies of all-time. Topics discussed include Frank Oz out in the cold in Montreal, the brilliance of Michael Mann, and an open invitation to John McTiernan.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota - Episode 42: No Sudden Move and Top Five Heist Movies

Thanks for listening!

©2021

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota - Episode 40: Tenet and Nolan's Top 5 Movies

On this episode Barry and I go back in time to try and make sense of Christopher Nolan's confounding Tenet. Then in the fiery second half of the show things get combative as we each share and compare our personal lists of Nolan's top five films.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota - Episode 40: Tenet and Nolan's Top 5 Movies

Thanks for listening!

©2021

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota - Episode 39: Cruella

On this episode Barry and I get dressed up for our date with DISNEY's Cruella, starring Emma Stone. This barn burner of an episode contains discussions on topics as varied as wasting $200 million on CGI dogs, the lost opportunity of a lady Joker and the Disney classics The Great Locomotive Chase and The Mandalorian.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota - Episode 39: Cruella

Thanks for listening!

©2021

Anne Boleyn and Color-Conscious Casting

Anne Boleyn is so dull that the lead’s race is the only worth discussing…as intended

The Channel 5 mini-series has attracted a lot of attention for its unconventional casting, but it is an underwhelming piece of television.

The first episode of the highly anticipated three-part drama, Anne Boleyn, which has generated a great deal of conversation because it cast Jodie Turner Smith, a black actress, in the titular role, premiered Tuesday night on BBC Channel 5.

The casting of a black actress to play a white historical figure has garnered much attention, which seems to be the point. I certainly wouldn’t have watched Anne Boleyn if it weren’t for the casting controversy…so mission accomplished.

This color-blind (casting without considering an actor’s race) or color-conscious (intentionally casting a minority because of their identity) casting approach has been a hot topic in recent years.

“Whitewashing”, where a white actor or actress plays a role that’s a minority in the source material, such as Scarlett Johansson in Ghost in the Shell or Tilda Swinton in Doctor Strange, or where white actors/actresses play “people of color” like Emma Stone in Aloha, Angelina Jolie in A Mighty Heart or Jonathon Pryce in Miss Saigon, has been labelled culturally insensitive and all but banned.

In a case of “race-washing for me but not for thee”, during this same time-period “artists of color” playing characters that are white in the source material, even when that source material is actual history, has been met with cheers for being a sign of victory for “diversity” and “inclusion”.

A Wrinkle in Time, Hamilton and Mary, Queen of Scots(2018) are just a few of the examples of the race-washing of white characters, including white historical figures, with actors of color in recent years.

As a traditionalist who believes in respecting source material, particularly when the source is history itself, I always find it ironic that the woke are so enthralled with color-blind or color-conscious casting when it comes to white historical figures or originally white characters yet are so addicted to classifying people by their racial identity in real life.

Of course, the argument from the pro-color-blind/color-conscious side is rather disingenuous and unserious. Author Miranda Kaufman’s recent article on the subject in the Telegraph is a perfect representation of the vacuousness and vapidity of that position.

Kaufman opens her piece by declaring she is “always exasperated by the uproar when a new historical drama comes out with a cast that isn’t solely white” and then goes on to reveal her ignorance and stunningly obtuse perspective on the issue.

According to Kaufman, since there were blacks in England during the Tudor era that means it’s no big deal if a black actress plays Anne Boleyn.

There were white people in the civil rights movement, so should Joaquin Phoenix, Daniel Day Lewis and Meryl Streep play Malcolm X, MLK and Rosa Parks? There were white abolitionists so should Sean Penn and Jennifer Lawrence play Frederick Douglas and Harriet Tubman? This is obviously absurd.

Equally absurd is Kaufman’s reasoning that because there were 200 free blacks out of a total of between 2 and 4 million people living in Tudor England, then a black Anne Boleyn is perfectly reasonable even though, as Kaufman admits, “of course” Boleyn wasn’t black.

Kaufman’s article is titled, “Yes, there were black Tudors – and they lived fascinating lives”, so why not make a tv show about one of them and cast black artists in the roles instead of turning history into fantasy by casting Jodie Tuner Smith as Boleyn?

My opposition to color-blind and color-conscious casting is purely a function of wanting to see the very best film and television possible. Film and tv is all about ‘make believe’, as the actors are playing ‘make believe’ in order to make the audience believe what they are witnessing is genuine.

This is why movie and tv studios pay millions of dollars for top-notch CGI to make it look like superheroes are really flying and dragons actually exist, and why taller actors play Abe Lincoln and pretty actresses play Marylin Monroe.

By casting a black woman as Anne Boleyn, or any other white figure, the critically important suspension of disbelief needed to lose oneself in entertainment has one more obstacle to overcome in our jaded age, and the ‘make believe’ is made markedly less believable.

Which brings us to Anne Boleyn.

I wanted Anne Boleyn to be good because I want every-thing I see to be good, but unfortunately it isn’t just Anne’s head that will roll in relation to this show, but viewer’s eyes as well.

This drama is a rather flimsy and flaccid retelling of the Boleyn tale that brings nothing new to the table except for the race of its leading lady.

The show is not underwhelming because of Jodie Turner Smith, it would probably be anemic regardless of who played the titular role, but it isn’t helped by her presence either.

Smith is an undeniable beauty but she’s not particularly charismatic, and she certainly lacks the magnetism and skill to elevate this rather shallow and stilted drama.

The rest of the cast, be they white, black or other, don’t fare any better, as the production feels decidedly cheap and devoid of drama.  

Episode two and three of Anne Boleyn air over the next two nights and maybe it will find its dramatic rhythm and improve significantly, but I doubt it as the first episode was so dull it left me wanting to chop my own head off.

The bottom-line reality regarding Anne Boleyn is that the virtue signaling of color-blind or color-conscious casting may make pandering studio executives and the woke feel good, but it often doesn’t make for good art and entertainment.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Cruella: Review and Commentary

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

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. Really not much of interest in this big budget misfire.

Cruella is the perfect kid’s movie for a culture that celebrates cruelty and malignant megalomania

Disney has discarded the old princess narrative and under the guise of self-empowerment are now teaching generations of young girls to embrace self-serving toxicity.

In the new Disney movie Cruella the Rolling Stones classic Sympathy for the Devil plays over the film’s final scene, which felt a bit too on the nose for the origin story of a notorious character that will go on to attempt to skin puppies for the sake of fashion.

Cruella, of course, is Cruella de Vil, the infamous arch villain of the iconic animated film One Hundred and One Dalmatians. With this new, live-action, reimagined reboot starring Emma Stone we discover why Cruella hates dalmatians so much and how she rose to power.

What we really learn though is that the suits at Disney will go to any lengths to plumb the depths of their intellectual property vault to make money and corrode the culture.

Cruella, whose real name is Estella, is at first set in a sort of Dickensian London, where we learn of her troubled childhood. The film then magically shifts into the stylishly swinging London of the 60’s and 70’s where Estella graduates from good girl gone bad to bad girl grown up.

The soundtrack, which is easily the best part of the movie, reflects that time period as it features an abundance of classics from The Doors, Queen, Nina Simone, ELO, Tina Turner, The Clash and the aforementioned Stones.

Unfortunately, like seemingly all Disney films, Cruella is a shameless money grab in the form of a two hour and fourteen-minute advertisement for Disney’s vast catalogue of past movie hits and its newfound woke politics.

Director Craig Gillespie has experience making movies about cartoonishly villainous women, as evidenced by his terrific film I, Tonya, about disgraced figure skater Tonya Harding, but on Cruella he seems desperately out of place.

The film’s star, Emma Stone, doesn’t fare much better. Stone is a likeable screen presence, but she is all bark and no bite as Cruella, as the thread bare script makes little human sense and reduces her acting to histrionics.

The lone bright spot in the cast though is Paul Walter Hauser who is glorious as always as the bumbling buffoon Horace Badun. The rotund Hauser is quickly becoming one of the best scene stealers and actors in the business.

The film’s massive $200 million budget doesn’t translate into stunning visuals either, as the film looks just ok and lacks any remarkable cinematic moments. It’s also painfully derivative, generously borrowing from other, much better films like The Devil Wears Prada, Joker, The Thomas Crown Affair and V for Vendetta.

The biggest problem with Cruella though is that it can’t quite figure out what exactly it wants to be. It’s too dark to be for kids and too silly to be for adults. Yet despite the movie’s PG13 rating, it would appear from the movie’s rather ludicrous plot and minimal character development that the target audience is impressionable pre-teen girls, which is unfortunate since the film’s moral perspective is less than idyllic.

Even though there are shades of Cinderella in Cruella, there are certainly no princesses to be found. The old days of the Disney princess are long gone and some may say good riddance, but now the corporate behemoth Mickey Mouse built is pivoting to not just churning out generic girl power movies, but with Cruella, bad-girl girl power movies.

This is a bad girl versus bad girl movie, a battle of the bitches if you will, where Cruella (Emma Stone) faces off against her fashion designer nemesis Baroness von Hellman (Emma Thompson – doing a second-rate Meryl Streep imitation), with the most-cruel and conniving female fashionista winning the stylish bad girl championship crown with belt to match.

I’m old enough to remember when Joker came out in 2019 and hysterical establishment critics shrieked in horror, declaring it dangerous because Joker was the “patron saint of incels” who’d inspire white men to violence. Joker was rated R and obviously geared towards adults, but Cruella? It’s for 10 year-old girls is designed under the guise of self-empowerment to encourage the selfish, bitchy and viciously toxic behavior of brats of all ages.

And don’t be fooled, Disney knows exactly what it’s doing as it clearly understands full well the power of pop culture to persuade, which is why it wouldn’t allow Stone to smoke as Cruella despite that being a signature trait of the character.

God only knows what deleterious effect Cruella will have on generations of girls in a nation already filled with a plethora of narcissistic Karen De Vils.

Of course, Cruella is inoculated against that sort of moral and/or cultural criticism from mainstream critics because it has the “proper” woke perspective and a “diverse” and “inclusive” cast where most of the “heroes” are women, minorities or both.

Among these heroes are Cruella, a genius taking on the small-minded patriarchy, Anita, the black female gossip columnist defiantly helping Cruella’s cause, Artie, the gay fashionista who fights for all things fabulous, and Jasper, Cruella’s right-hand person of color.

Ultimately, there’s nothing wrong with telling a story about an anti-hero or villain. These stories can have great value in that they help a culture assimilate its shadow and ultimately find catharsis. Joker is a perfect example of this, and so could be Cruella if it were made for adults.

Cruella though is a sign of a culture intent on destroying itself as it’s a kid’s movie that teaches young girls to identify with and have sympathy for this undeniably immoral and malignant megalomaniacal she-devil, all while it celebrates cruelty.

I guess a corrosive kid’s movie like Cruella was inevitable since we live in a popular, political and social culture populated with so many cruel, immoral, malignantly megalomaniacal adults. As the saying goes “you get what you pay for”…which is why I definitely wouldn’t recommend paying for Cruella.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

The Underground Railroad: Review and Commentary

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 19 seconds

This article contains minor spoilers for the series The Underground Railroad.

The Underground Railroad takes viewers on a long and ugly journey to nowhere

The highly anticipated drama about a runaway slave devolves into a vapid exercise in torture porn.

The Underground Railroad is the new critically-acclaimed limited series from Oscar winning filmmaker Barry Jenkins (Moonlight) now streaming on Amazon Prime.

The show, based on the Pulitzer prize winning novel by Colson Whitehead, tells the story of Cora, a slave who escapes the hell of a Georgia plantation by taking a train on a literal “underground railroad”.

Having the underground railroad be an actual subterranean train system as opposed to a collection of secret routes and safe houses is the lone piece of magic in this magical realist version of the much-told story of slavery in America.

Unfortunately, The Underground Railroad attempts to be profound and poignant but ends up being a shamelessly pretentious and egregiously pornographic arthouse poseur that reinforces the suffocating stasis of stereotypes by pandering, placating and patronizing to the lowest common racial denominator.

There are no insights to be found in this series, just a tenuous narrative and cardboard cutout characters used as torture and victimhood porn delivery systems.

Thuso Mbedu plays Cora and lacks the gravitas to carry the project. Mbedu is not a compelling actress and her decision to use a close-mouthed mumble as her dialect was a poor one, as I literally had to turn on the close caption in order to understand her (and only her).

Cora escapes the stereotypical cruel, fat white overseer and her viciously sadistic slave owner in Georgia, only to find the villainy and brutality of white supremacy is omnipresent across America.

In South Carolina she finds a society welcoming of blacks, but under that veneer she discovers the pulsating hatred of white supremacy in the form of eugenics. In North Carolina, the murder of blacks is ritualized as white supremacy is codified into law and religion. In Tennessee, white supremacy and its American imperative of expansion and domination has laid waste to the state and left it a veritable wasteland. In Indiana, blacks have carved out a seeming utopia, but the menace of white supremacy lurks on the margins ready to pounce at the slightest imagined provocation.

If that sounds narratively repetitious, it’s because it is.

The problem with The Underground Railroad in terms of storytelling is that Cora’s journey is simply physical and not a character arc. She undergoes no mythological, spiritual or psychological transformation at all. All Cora undergoes is one torture after another, with the only lesson learned being that all white people, including abolitionists, are awful if not evil.

The series is difficult to watch because of the relentless brutality, all of which seem gratuitous especially since there’s no emotional connection developed with the characters. All of the victims, Cora especially, are just one-dimensional punching bag props in the ten-hour diatribe against white supremacy. Maybe the novel does the hard work of character development, because the mini-series sure as hell doesn’t.

I couldn’t help but think of the cancelled-before-it-started HBO show Confederate, while watching The Underground Railroad. Confederate, which was the brain child of Game of Thrones show-runners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, imagined an alternate history where the Confederacy survived and slavery still existed. HBO backed away from the project in 2017 after social media went nuclear over the notion of “exploiting black suffering for the purposes of art and entertainment.”

The Underground Railroad is being hailed by critics despite doing that exact same thing.

Granted, the show is beautifully shot by cinematographer James Laxton, whose camera dances through the ugliness like a feather floating on a soft breeze, but using the best china and most elaborate garnish will not elevate a painfully thin gruel into a satisfying meal.

Director Barry Jenkins has said that he made The Underground Railroad to counter Trump’s slogan of “Make America Great Again”. “I think in that world there’s this vacuum in the historical record or this failure to acknowledge those things, then slogans like this, and even worse actions…will continue to proliferate. So I think it’s important to fill in those cavities and to acknowledge the truth of what this country is.”

Does Jenkins really think Americans, even lowly MAGA adherents, want a return of slavery? Or is he simply building an absurd strawman to give his vacuous mini-series some meaning in hindsight that it lacks upon viewing?

Jenkins strikes me as being as deluded about America as those people who in a recent poll believed that police killed over 10,000 unarmed black men in 2019.

He is as detached from reality as the MAGA monsters in his head that he sets out to counter with his magical realist enterprise The Underground Railroad.

The truth is that the story of how the savagery and barbarity of slavery in America distorted and damaged every soul and psyche it touched is an extremely important one, but there is no paucity of significantly better films and tv shows that express that horror more effectively. The iconic and epic Roots, the bone crushingly brilliant Best Picture winner 12 Years a Slave and even Quentin Tarantino’s exhilarating revenge fantasy Django Unchained are better resources worthy of your time because they create catharsis through creativity by utilizing originality, insightfulness and generating profundity.

Hell, even dismal cinematic efforts like Amistad, Beloved, Free State of Jones and The Birth of a Nation(2016) are superior to the slog that is this mini-series.

Ultimately, you have no need to buy a ticket to ride on The Underground Railroad because it’s an arduous ten-hour circular journey where you learn absolutely nothing and end up in the same damned place you started.

A version of this article was originally published at RT. 

©2021

7th Annual Mickey Awards™®: 2020 Edition

Estimated Reading Time: Ever prone to narcissistic indulgence, expect this awards show article to last, at a minimum, approximately 5 hours and 48 minutes.

Is everybody in? Is everybody in? The ceremony is about to begin…

After what seems like an endless year, the pinnacle of cinematic achievement, the Mickey Awards™®, is finally upon us.

The Mickeys™® and its shadow award the Slip-Me-A-Mickey™®, are always the final awards of the awards season, but since everything was pushed back due to covid, we are in the unprecedented situation of giving out awards in May. I realize this seems odd, and while the Mickey™® committee considered giving out our awards sooner, we decided to stick to tradition so as to not make the other awards (looking at you Oscar) even more irrelevant than they already are.

To be blunt, 2020 was not an a good year for movies. While there were certainly some good movies, none of them were great. This is especially apparent when contrasted with the stellar output of movies in 2019, which featured a murderer’s row of cinematic heavyweights.

On the bright side, at least some smaller movies got the spotlight this year, I just wish those movies could have been more convincing in making a case for others to join me in the cult of the arthouse.

Regardless of all that, the God of Cinema declares we must give out Mickey™® awards. For those of you who are unfamiliar…here is 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, Netflix 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!

Winners of Mickey™® Awards receive an appropriately socially distanced meal at Fatburger and/or Shake Shack…on me! And yes, you can order a shake for your beverage! And the sterling conversation with me is included with the meal! You’re welcome.

Now that all that is out of the way…buckle up…IT’S MICKEY™® TIME!!

Best Cinematography

The nominees are…

Mank - Eric Messerschmidt : Gloriously shot film that utilized a luscious black and white and also featured a visual aesthetic that was an homage to its famous subject matter.

Nomadland - Joshua James Richards: Used gorgeous shots of vast, sparse and beautiful landscapes to set an intriguing mood and propel the story.

The Vast of Night - M.I. Litten-Menz : On a shoe string budget this movie looks like a big budget project and its intricate camera movements were astoundingly complex.

THE WINNER IS…. Mank. Messerschmidt won the Oscar with his crisp bleck and white cinematography but now he reaches the ultimate summit of cinematic excellence with his first Mickey award.

Best Adapted Screenplay

The nominees are…

Nomadland - Chloe Zhao: A solid integration of the original subject matter into a loosely coherent mood piece.

The Father - Florian Zeller: A fantastic adaptation of his own stage play that actually elevates the material instead of denigrating it, which is a rarity.

THE WINNER IS… The Father: The Father is an absolutely phenomenal script and Zeller justly deserves his first Mickey Award.

Best Original Screenplay

The nominees are…

Mank - Jack Fincher: An unruly behemoth of a story that is wrestled and transformed into a brutally insightful political statement. Astoundingly impressive piece of screenwriting.

Another Round - Thomas Vinterberg: A story about a mid-life crisis and death that focuses on life and manages to make its day drinking protagonist sympathetic and compelling.

Sound of Metal - Darius Marder: On the surface this is the most predictable and mundane of ideas…but Marder turns convention on its head and discovers profundity.

THE WINNER IS… Sound of Metal: From the mundane to the magical and the predictable to the profound, Darius Marder so fleshed out this story as to never write a cliche or false note. A well-deserved Mickey Award is his reward for excellence.

Best Supporting Actress

The nominees are…

Sierra McCormick - Vast of Night: A nobody from nowhere, McCormick absolutely crushed a role that was mind-bogglingly complicated and did it with enormous aplomb and magnetism.

Olivia Colman - The Father: The most intricate work of Colman’s career, she fills every scene and every shot with unstated meaning and anguish.

Amanda Seyfried - Mank: Who knew that Amanda Seyfried could be so good? As Hollywood starlet Marion Davies she looks amazing and matches her beauty with a nuanced and inspired performance.

Maria Bakalova - Borat: An absolutely balls to the wall performance that only she could pull off.

THE WINNER IS… Sierra McCormick: There’s an extended scene in The Vast of Night where nothing happens except McCormick talks and listens on a telephone…it is utterly mesmerizing, and is a testament to her talent, skill and craft.

Best Supporting Actor

The nominees are…

Daniel Kaluuya - Judas and the Black Messiah: Kaluuya is deliriously magnetic as Chairman Fred Hampton and completely owns the role and the film. It isn’t quite Denzel as Malcolm X, but it is still electrifying to behold.

Bo Burnham - Promising Young Woman: Burnham is fantastic in the darkly comedic/rom-com portion of this movie, and his chemistry with Mulligan is believable and charming.

Kingsley Ben-Adir - One Night in Miami: Ben-Adir masterfully avoids imitation and mimicry as he re-creates Malcolm X as less a cocksure firebrand and more an insecure outsider yearning for acceptance. A truly brilliant piece of acting.

Chadwick Boseman - Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom: Boseman has always been more movie star than great actor, but in Ma Rainey he taps into an energy and emotion that he had avoided in previous roles. This is far and away Boseman’s greatest performance.

THE WINNER IS… Daniel Kaluuya: Kaluuya is fast positioning himself as one of the best actors in the business…and his resume just got a tremendous boost with a prestigious Mickey Award.

Breakout Performance of the Year - Sierra McCormick: I had never heard of McCormick before The Vast of Night, but her unforgettable performance impressed me no end. I am willing to bet it impressed other Hollywood big wigs too…and I hope we get to see a lot more of her in movies that matter going forward.

Best Foreign Film - Another Round: Thomas Vinterberg is a great director and Another Round is a gloriously Vinterbergian film. Complex and layered yet darkly funny and philosophical, Another Round is unpredictable, satisfying and the type of movie that keeps you thinking about it and talking about for days afterward.

Best Actress

The nominees are…

Carey Mulligan - Promising Young Woman: Mulligan is one of the best actresses of her generation and she brings all her powers to bear on this absurdist and twisted dark fantasy. Impossible to imagine any other actress pulling this off.

Frances McDormand - Nomadland: McDormand gives a rare nuanced performance as Fern, the grieving wanderer searching for something out there on the fringes of society. I think McDormand is over-rated as an actress, but this is one of her very best performances.

Vanessa Kirby - Pieces of a Woman: The luminous Kirby gets down and dirty in this misfire of a movie, but her performance is powerful and poignant. I hope we see much more of this Vanessa Kirby going forward.

THE WINNER IS… Carey Mulligan: Mulligan’s versatility is extraordinary and is on full display in Promising Young Woman. In lesser hands this role is a disaster, in her skilled mitts it is artistry…and the Mickey Award is rightfully hers.

Best Actor

The nominees are…

Riz Ahmed - Sound of Metal: Ahmed is one of the best actors out there, and he brings all his talent to Sound of Metal. Ahmed has the uncanny ability to fill himself with an inner life that is vibrant and dynamic and it shows on screen. A stellar piece of acting.

Anthony Hopkins - The Father: Hopkins, ever the master of controlled fury, gives arguably his greatest performance in The Father, as he unravels the character with each passing scene.

Gary Oldman - Mank: Oldman brings a sloppy slice of life to the Hollywood legend and it makes for a combustibly cantankerous experience. Few, if any, actors would even attempt this, nevermind pull it off as well as Oldman.

Mads Mikkelson - Another Round: Mikkelson transforms throughout this film from a burdened, defeated man to a confident king, to a struggling sad sack. Mikkelson is one of the great under appreciated actors of his time, and Another Round is evidence of his brilliance.

THE WINNER IS…Anthony Hopkins: Hopkins is one of the very best actors of his generation, and his stunning work in The Father, filled with precision and specificity, has now given him the most prestigious award in cinema, The Mickey™®.

Best Ensemble - Mank - Gary Oldman is the straw that stirs Mank’s drink, but the cast is loaded with solid actors giving career best performances. Amanda Seyfried, Arliss Howard and Charles Dance in particular do stellar work that elevate the film.

Best Director

The nominees are…

David Fincher - Mank : Fincher’s fearlessness is on full display in Mank as he throws caution to the wind and makes a dizzyingly complex film that is a thumb in the eye to his corporate overlords.

Chloe Zhao - Nomadland : Zhao’s comfort with silence and space make Nomadland the film that it is, and lesser directors would have scuttled the ship.

Florian Zeller - The Father : Zeller masterfully puts his audience through the horror of dementia by relying on his exquisite script and his stellar cast. This movie was no easy task and Zeller proved himself a formidable filmmaker.

Darius Marder - Sound of Metal : Marder brought all the craft of old school movie making to Sound of Metal. A fundamentally brilliant bit of directing that drew the most out of his cast and his crew.

Thomas Vinterberg - Another Round : Vinterberg is one of the most interesting directors around, and Another Round is him at his most accessibly artistic.

Andrew Patterson - The Vast of Night: Patterson’s feature debut is stunning for its confidence and technical audacity. I truly cannot wait to see what he does next.

THE WINNER IS…Darius Marder : Marder’s artistic courage, commitment and deft directing touch brought his profoundly unique vision to life on Sound of Metal…and now he’s got a Mickey Award!

Best Documentary - Can’t Get You Out of My Head : Director Adam Curtis is the best documentarian in the business and has been for nearly two decades. His newest project is a six part series that debuted on BBC in February. Like Curtis’ other revelatory series Century of the Self, The Power of Nightmares and HyperNormalization, Can’t Get You Out of My Head is brilliant for taking a sprawling subject matter and profoundly transforming it into the psychological and personal. it is currently available on Youtube, and though it may feel impenetrable at first, I highly recommend you watch every episode.

Best Picture

9. One Night in Miami - Four excellent performances propel this stagey drama and make it a worthwhile watch.

8. Promising Young Woman - Director Emerald Fennell wraps a disturbing revenge fantasy in a bubblegum aesthetic, and though it is flawed it possesses an intriguing cinematic power.

7. Judas and the Black Messiah - An uneven but captivating film that highlights two fantastic performances from Daniel Kaluuya and LaKieth Stanfield.

6. The Vast of Night - This is a little movie with big ideas and it nearly pulls them all off. A staggering piece of technical filmmaking that boasts an intricate and detailed performance from Sierra McCormick.

5. Nomadland - An arthouse meditation on the dark side of the American dream that somehow manages to be decidedly corporate friendly. Despite its shallow philosophy, the film is well-made and well-acted and very well shot.

4. Another Round - A compelling Danish drama that is gloriously acted and exceedingly well directed. This movie not only has a sense of humor but a deep sense of the profound.

3. Mank - Mank got lost in the shuffle this year, and although it isn’t a perfect movie, it is a very good one. Filled with solid performances and Fincher’s brilliance, Mank gets better upon each re-watch.

2. The Father - I expected little from The Father, and got a whole hell of a lot. This movie is like a horror film as it traps viewers inside the experience of dementia, and it makes you pray you never suffer that fate. An exquisitely jarring cinematic experience.

1. Sound of Metal - A pretty basic movie and idea that is phenomenally well-directed and acted. A quiet movie that finds profundity in the silence.

Most Important Film of the Year: Nomadland

Nomadland is the most important film of the year…but not in a good way. What makes Nomadland so important is that is symbolizes an artistic acquiescence to corporate power and reinforces working class impotence.

As I’ve written before, it is shocking that Nomadland is a story about people who are victims of American capitalism but the movie entirely ignores that reality, and in fact bends over backwards to portray the corporate behemoths (like Amazon) that cause the suffering we see in the film, as the good guys. The film might as well have been produced by Gordon Gekko or the Koch brothers.

It isn’t an accident that Amazon were so happy to let Nomadland shoot in their workplace and create the impression that working there is a wonderful experience where they treat you well, you make new friends and you make good money. Of course, the reality is much, much different.

The thing that is so horrifying is that Hollywood, and most importantly - the artists in Hollywood, refused to speak up against Nomadland’’s deception and Amazon’s evil. The film, its director and lead actress won a bevy of awards and yet not once in their acceptance speeches did they hold Amazon to task for their poor treatment of workers or anti-union practices or even speak up about those left behind by American capitalism.

Just think, Sally Field once iconically held up a “Union” sign in Norma Rae, and now Frances McDormand shits in a bucket while swearing that anti-union Amazon is a terrific place to work. What a sign of the very bad times.

Last time McDormand won an Oscar, the brassy actress shouted and touted diversity and inclusion…but this time around she was as quiet as a church mouse in regards to Amazon and unionization and its poor treatment of working people. Funny how McDormand was so courageous when it costs her nothing but so cowardly when biting the hand that feeds would be the right thing to do. Class act that McDormand…loud when she can self-aggrandize but silent when it matters.

Nomadland and the universal and uncritical love for it, signals an end to artists pushing back against corporate hegemony, and instead genuflecting to corporate power. This new era feels Orwellian, as the only thing that matters now is identity politics. If Nomadland hadn’t been written and directed by a “woman of color”, I doubt it would’ve received so much critical love, or avoided the Amazon controversy.

And so…this is why corporate America is attached at the hip with woke politics, it is a means to a dastardly end. Corporate America can be as evil as it wants and can exploit its workers all it wants, just as long as it spouts woke platitudes about diversity and inclusion and “black lives mattering” or whatever other politically correct smokescreen it wants to use…and as Nomadland proves, this distractionary measure will work…and cinema, art and humanity will all suffer.

On that very down note….thus concludes an uninspired Mickey™® awards for an uninspired year of movies!! Congratulations to all the winners and to all of my readers for surviving this decidedly heinous year. Keep an eye out for the Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® Awards…which will be coming soon to celebrate the very worst in cinema and culture!

Here’s to a better 2021! See you next year!

©2021

The Oscar Train Wreck

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 20 seconds

My biggest question regarding last night’s egregiously bungled and boring Oscar telecast is…if an awards show collapses but no one is watching, does it make a sound?

Interest in the Oscars has been in steep decline for years now, and after suffering through the entire three hour and twenty-minute show last night I can dutifully report that the 93rd Academy Awards came in with a whimper and left with a whimper too.

The night’s climactic moment was a dud as the show ran long, as usual, and then rushed to announce Best Actor, which everyone thought would be an emotional moment as it was expected to go to the late Chadwick Boseman. The award instead went to went to Anthony Hopkins. Uh-oh.

Hopkins is most deserving of the award, but his victory will no doubt spur more cries of “racism” from the usual woke suspects. Adding to the discomfort was the fact that Hopkins wasn’t present at the show, and so the telecast ended basically with everybody standing around looking at one another like they were waiting for a train.

Speaking of which, the show was held at Los Angeles’ Union Station – which is a train station, which is apropos since the show was an absolute train-wreck.

Union Station is known as a hub for hordes of homeless in Los Angeles, and I’m sure that as much as homeless people have defecated in that public space over the years they’ve never made a stink as odious as Oscar’s producer Steven Soderbergh did last night.

Soderbergh put his stamp on the show as he shot it like a movie, with more handheld cameras than static shots, and by mixing up the order of awards. For instance, contrary to previous Oscar ceremonies Best Director came early in the proceedings and Best Picture wasn’t the last award.

Of course, the Oscars are going to be the Oscars, so the show was filled with the usual rambling speeches, self-righteous political pandering, and the airing of racial grievances, but what it didn’t have was any clips of the nominated work. Want to see the nominated cinematography, acting, costumes, hair and makeup or production designs? Not on Soderbergh’s watch!

Instead Soderbergh had presenters share inane “fun factoids” about each nominee like a kindergarten teacher handing out Valentine’s Day cards in class. This was accompanied by a roving camera desperately whirling around searching the room for these unfamous nominees like a toddler lost in a train station frantically looking for its parents.

The lowlight in the evening of lowlights was a “music game” where nominees guessed if a song played by DJ Questlove (who replaced the traditional orchestra) was an Oscar winning song. This hapless and ham-handed bit deteriorated into Glenn Close pretending she knew the song “Da Butt” and then humiliating herself by getting up and doing “Da Butt” dance. If Glenn Close ever had a relationship with dignity, it ended in a ferocious divorce last night.

The entire endless evening felt like one long extended version of Glenn Close doing “Da Butt”, and conjured all the gravitas of a junior high school drama club awards night.

The Oscars did make history though regarding diversity with “artists of color” winning two of the four acting categories and Chloe Zhao being the first woman of color ever to win Best Director and Best Picture.

So maybe #OscarsSoWhite has transformed into #OscarsSoWhat*? Unfortunately, I’m sure the Academy would prefer even the righteous anger of racial resentment to the overwhelming apathy that hangs over the festivities like a toxic cloud of poisonous gas.

Even the stars who came out to aid Soderbergh in his time of need, like Halle Berry and Harrison Ford, looked disinterested. The usually luminous Berry looked like she had slept at Union Station or was suffering a hellacious flu when she presented an award, while Ford just seemed like he was baked off his ass as he mumbled through a presentation.

Soderbergh did not limit the award winners in the length of their speeches, which led to some unnecessary verbosity, but also to some moments of profundity. Director Thomas Vinterberg’s speech after winning Best International Feature Film for Another Round, was painfully poignant as he spoke about the tragic death of his daughter Ida during filming.

In contrast, Frances McDormand’s grating short speeches managed to remind everyone she’s the most annoying person in all of Hollywood, which is an achievement even greater than her three Best Actress Oscars.

As shrill and grating as she is, McDormand’s movie Nomadland was the biggest winner of the night as it won Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actress.

The biggest losers of the night though were any poor bastards like me who stayed up to watch, and of course, the Academy Awards themselves.

If last night’s abysmal Oscar ceremony proves anything it is that the Academy Awards are on the fast track to irrelevancy, and even though the show ran late, that train left Union Station right on time.  

*Joke courtesy of Leo - Da Irish Poet!

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Epsidoe 34 - Oscars Predictions

On this episode of everybody's favorite cinema podcast, Barry and I get all dressed up and go to the Oscars. Tune in to listen to our Oscar predictions, Oscar dream scenarios and Oscar nightmares, as well as lamentations for the sorry state of the movie industry.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 34 - Oscar Predictions

Thanks for listening!

©2021

93rd Academy Awards: The 2021 Oscar Prediction Post

Estimated Reading Time: 3 hours 47 minutes 22 seconds

The Academy Awards are once again upon us and the biggest question about them is…does anyone give a rat’s ass?

As the show’s dwindling ratings prove, interest in the once mighty Oscars has been in steep decline in recent years. It would seem the perfect storm of a plethora of streaming service tv shows and reduced attention spans, as well as a paucity of genuine movie stars and a plenitude of identity politics has wounded, maybe fatally, the once iconic awards.

As a denizen of Hollywood, I’ve never experienced an awards season that has generated so little interest. It appears that even though, due to streaming services, movies are more available to more people than ever before, they seem to have never mattered less.

Part of the reason for that is that, for a vareity of reasons - not the least of which was Covid, 2020 was just a cinematically lackluster year. A handful of good movies came out this year, but no truly great ones, and certainly no films that ignited the public’s passions.

With that said, the reality is that it is my sworn and solemn obligation to share with you my Oscar picks. Please remember that these picks are NOT TO BE USED FOR GAMBLING PURPOSES!!

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Who will win: Yuh-Jung Youn (Minari) - Not a fan of this movie or this performance, but it checks a diversity box Academy members want to celebrate. I personally think Amanda Seyfried (Mank), Olivia Colman (The Father) and Maria Bakalove (Borat) are considerably more deserving. There’s an outside chance Bakalove pulls the upset…but don’t bet on it.

Who should win: Seyfried or Colman.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Who will win: Daniel Kaluuya (Judas and the Black Messiah) - This is a slam dunk, and deservedly so. While I liked Paul Raci (Sound of Metal) and LaKeith Stanfield (Judas and the Black Messiah), Kaluuya crushes his role as Fred Hampton.

Who should win: Kaluuya

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Who will win: Promising Young Woman - Emerald Fennel : This is one of the few interesting categories. I think Fennel wins because the Academy is desperate to to appease the woke wolves at its door, and Fennel is a woman so she qualifies. There’s a pretty good chance that they give the award to Aaron Sorkin for his atrocious The Trial of the Chicago 7. That movie is dreadful and the script a joke, but it taps into the whole self-righteousness of the moment. That said…I think Fennel gets the nod.

Who should win: Sound of Metal - Darius Marder

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

Who will win: Nomadland - Chloe Zhao: I think Zhao and Nomadland are the big winners come Oscar night…but if Florian Zeller wins this award (which I think he should) for his adaptation of The Father, it could be a monkey wrench into the Nomadland dominance.

Who should win: The Father - Florian Zeller

ANIMATED FEATURE

Who will win: Soul. This is a no-brainer. I liked Soul and it is certainly an antidote to our tumultuous times. Also…the Pixar machine is unstoppable.

Who should win: Soul I guess.

PRODUCTION DESIGN

Who will win: Mank - I think Mank finally gets on the board here. if it loses this category it may very well get shut out of all awards. The big competition will come from Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.

Who should won: Mank.

COSTUME DESIGN

Who will win: Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom - I think Ma Rainey and its popular costume crew win here for a variety of non-merit based reasons. If Mank wins, which it could, that is a big deal and could portend a mini-Mank run in some behind the camera categories.

Who should win: Mank.

MAKEUP AND HAIR

Who will win: Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Same as above.

Who should win: Mank.

EDITING

Who will win: Sound of Metal - There’s a chance that Trial of the Chicago 7 could win (God help us), but I think Sound of Metal pulls it off. If Nomadland win then look out, that is a sign it will win a huge amount of hardware on Oscar night.

Who should win: Sound of Metal

SOUND

Who should win: Sound of Metal - Outside chance that Mank or Soul win, but that seems very unlikely. if Mank wins it is another sign of a big night for that movie…but that seems unlikely.

Who should win: Sound of Metal

VISUAL EFFECTS

Who will win: Tenet - This seems like it’s going to happen.

Who should win: I’ll be honest…I don’t know.

SCORE

Who will win: Soul - Jon Batiste, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross: This seems like a slam dunk too. An outside chance Terence Blanchard wins for his bombastic score to the equally awful Da 5 Bloods.

Who should win: Soul.

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

Who will win: My Octopus Teacher - I’m not sure why but people love this movie and I think the votes for potential winners Collective, Crip Camp and Time get split and the octopus wins.

Who should win: No idea.

INTERNATIONAL FEATURE

Who will win: Another Round - I think this beats out Qou Vadis, Aida by a nose.

Who should win: Another Round.

CINEMATOGRAPHY

Who will win: Nomadland - This is a bellwether award…if everything goes to plan then Nomadland should win and clean up at the Oscars. If Mank wins…its gonna be an interesting night because that signals Mank has a ground swell of support and Nomadland is floundering.

Who should win: Mank. Nomadland is extremely well shot by Joshua James Richards, no doubt about it, but my tastes run slightly more towards Erik Messerschmidt and Mank.

BEST ACTOR

Who will win: Chadwick Boseman (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom) - This is set in stone. With Boseman’s tragic death and the narrative around the award, it would be an absolute shocker of the highest order if anyone else won. The only other potential winner is Anthony Hopkins for The Father…but that ain’t happening.

Who should win: Anthony Hopkins. Boseman is very good in Ma Rainey…but Hopkins is on another level in The Father.

BEST ACTRESS

Who will win: Viola Davis - Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom : This is one of the very few interesting categories. Frances McDormand is the front runner but I think that the fact that she won recently (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri) and a win here would put her in Meryl Streep territory with 3 Oscar wins, the Academy will look to feed the diversity beast by awarding Davis for her sub-par performance in that dreadful movie.

Who should win: Carey Mulligan - Promising Young Woman : I thought Mulligan was better than everybody else.

BEST DIRECTOR

Who will win: Chloe Zhao - Nomadland : This too is a slam dunk. No way Fincher or Vinterberg pull of an upset. Just impossible.

Who should win: Fincher, Vinterberg or Zhao. Three different directors making very different films all did solid work.

BEST PICTURE

Who will win: Nomadland - This is happening. There is no stopping the Nomadland juggernaut. If Mank or (GOD HELP US ALL) The Trial of the Chicago 7 win, that is a sure sign of the apocalypse.

Who should win: Mank or Sound of Metal. They won’t win but I think they should. Nomadland is a good movie, but I thought these two were a little better.

Here’s the rest of the categories of which I have no opinion just a guess…

ORIGINAL SONG- One Night in Miami

LIVE ACTION SHORT - Two Distant Strangers

DOCUMENTARY SHORT - Concerto is Conversation

©2021

The Father and the Media's Dementia Simulation Machine

The Oscar-nominated The Father is a masterful film about living with dementia…and a reminder that the mainstream media is a dementia simulation machine.

The film immerses viewers in the confusion of dementia – the same sort of bewilderment caused by US media misinformation to disorient the public and make them easier to control and manipulate. 

The Father is a terrific movie that tells the story of an aging man struggling with dementia, and it has left me rattled as it’s uncomfortably reminiscent of the delusional and disorienting nature of American life.  

The film is rightfully nominated for Best Picture at the upcoming Academy Awards as it showcases a superb performance by Anthony Hopkins who was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for his stellar work.

What makes The Father such a poignant and insightful film is that director Florian Zeller doesn’t just show the effects of dementia on the screen, he immerses the audience in the excruciating experience of dementia.

Watching the film and experiencing that disease-imposed confusion, I couldn’t help but think about how, here in the U.S. at least, it feels as if our entire culture is suffering from a collective dementia. The disorientation and detachment from reality that come with that dreaded disease are entirely commonplace in America, where we seem incapable of remembering the past, or of clearly seeing the present.

This rapacious American dementia is fueled first and foremost by the mainstream media’s manipulation and misinformation.

The establishment media have long distorted reality in order to manufacture consent around a desired narrative. This is why Americans always see themselves as the “good guys” on the world stage and not as the imperialist aggressors and colonialist exploiters that we are.

For proof just look at the flag-waving coverage surrounding the Iraq war and the WMD nonsense, or the egregious media assaults on Julian Assange and Edward Snowden compared to the genuflecting coverage of infamous bs artists like Chris Kyle, George W. Bush and Barrack Obama.

This duplicitous media approach can often be so blatant as to be ridiculously absurd, such as when CNN described the rioting, looting and arson last Summer as “mostly peaceful” protests.

The same is true regarding the current wave of anti-Asian violence. The media blame the attacks on the ever-expanding yet conveniently amorphous label of “white supremacy”, but the videos and statistics regarding these repugnant attacks against Asians show black people are the majority of perpetrators, a fact the media steadfastly fail to mention.

Another dementia-like distortion caused by the media is the perception that police are killing black people en-masse.

As a 2021 Skeptic Research Poll found, most Americans greatly over-estimate the number of unarmed black people killed by police.

When asked “How many unarmed Black men were killed by police in 2019?”, 53.3 % of those self-described as “very liberal” estimated that over 1,000 unarmed black men had been killed by police, even though the actual number is believed to be between 60 – 100.

According to the same study, 24.9% of people killed by police are black, yet those self-describing as “liberal” or “very liberal” estimated the number to be 56% and 60% respectively.

This detachment from reality is no shock as according to a Gallup poll over half the country already over-estimates the size of the black population in general, believing it to be over 30% when in reality it is roughly 14%.

The over-estimation of police killings of unarmed black men is to be expected as every killing of a black person by the police or by a white person results in massive media coverage and a declaration that the only motivation for the incident is racism. In contrast the deaths of white people at the hands of police or by black perpetrators are not considered noteworthy.

The anti-Russia hysteria is another establishment media manufactured narrative that is directly at odds with reality, but that is deeply rooted in the American psyche.

Russiagate, hacking of electrical grids, using super-secret microwave weapons to attack U.S. diplomats, and putting bounties on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, are just a few of the dominant pieces of anti-Russian disinformation devoid of fact that the media tout as gospel truth.

The immigration crisis is another bewildering story disorienting Americans. The media vehemently chanted the mantra “kids in cages” when Trump detained children at the border, but were silent when Obama did the exact same thing during his presidency. And now that Biden is doing it too, the media are back to downplaying its significance or ignoring it entirely.

And of course, the most perplexing media coverage surrounds the coronavirus. Originally the press excoriated anyone who raised the notion that the disease may have come from a lab in China, but now the truth that they aren’t sure where it initially came from is acknowledged.

The medical establishment is just as perfidious and deceitful as the media.

For example, Dr. Fauci knowingly lied early in the pandemic about the need for masks.

And last Summer a collection of medical professionals said that no large groups should gather, except for Black Lives Matter protests, making the obscene and absurd claim that the media manufactured “epidemic” of racism was just as bad as the coronavirus pandemic.  

In addition, concerns over vaccinations are broken down by race, with white concerns stigmatized and black concerns gently understood.

Just like dementia, this insidious media and medical duplicity creates stress, irritability and aggression among the populace.

In conclusion, The Father is a masterful film insightfully exploring the tragedy of dementia, and the hypocritical, pernicious, frivolous and mendacious establishment media are a relentless dementia simulation machine. The former is worth indulging, the latter is terminal and should be avoided at all costs.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT. 

©2021

Another Round: A Review

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

My Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. A fascinating film featuring a terrific performance from Mads Mikkelson.

Language: Danish with English sub-titles.

Another Round, written and directed by Thomas Vinterberg, tells the story of Martin, a teacher suffering a mid-life crisis. The film, which is nominated for Best International Feature Film at this year’s Academy Awards and is currently streaming on Hulu, stars Mads Mikkelsen as Martin, with supporting turns from Thomas Bo Larsen, Magnus Millang and Lars Ranthe.

Director Thomas Vinterberg is a fascinating filmmaker. Vinterberg was, along with Lars von Trier, one of the founders of the Dogme 95 movement from the 1990’s which featured a bare bones cinematic aesthetic that emphasized story, acting and theme over elaborate special effects and technology.

His 1998 film The Celebration, which was the talk of the arthouse at the time, was the first of the Dogme 95 films and is not just a fantastic representation of that philosophy but also just a terrific film. If you have never seen The Celebration, I highly recommend you do.

Dogme 95 no longer exists, but the spirit of it lives on in Another Round, and the film is a wondrous example of that yearning for cinematic purity in action.

Another Round is an amazing film in that it is a dark comedy but also a profound drama. This merging of humor and profundity may be the result of the tumult and tragedy which surrounded the film’s production.

The idea for the film came from a play Vinterberg was writing which was partially inspired by stories his daughter Ida told him about drinking in Danish youth culture.

Ida was set to have a supporting role as one of Martin’s daughters in the film, but tragically, four days into filming, Ida was killed in a car crash. She was 19.

In this context it is no surprise that the existentialism of Another Round hangs over the film (which is dedicated to Ida) like a heavy, dark storm cloud, and gives it the gravitas that makes it such an interesting drama. And yet, Vinterberg is still able to masterfully turn the movie into a yearning for life rather than a commentary on death.

Vinterberg’s ability, both as writer and director, to create compelling characters and dynamic drama is extraordinary, and he is assisted in this endeavor on Another Round by the magnificent Mads Mikkelsen.

Mikkelsen as Martin adds to the weight of the project, as he opens the film looking like a man carrying the heavy cross of a lifeless existence, a burden under which he is suffocating. Martin’s fear of an empty life trapped within the prison of middle-class respectability make him a tortured soul, and a compelling character.

Mikkelsen is as unique an actor as Vinterberg a director. Mikkelsen is blessed as an actor, as he is impossibly handsome, yet not a pretty boy, and his face conveys a depth and complexity that draws in viewers and tells a story all its own. Mikkelsen brings a magnetism and power to the screen and combines it with a high level of craftsmanship, which results in a truly dynamic and captivating performance as Martin.

If you’re interested (and you should be), another Vinterberg/Mikkelsen film of note is 2012’s The Hunt. The Hunt, like Another Round, is a remarkable film and it highlights what is best about both Vinterberg and Mikkelsen as artists.

Another Round is also elevated by terrific supporting work from Thomas Bo Larsen, Magnus Millang and Lars Ranthe. This trio, as well as Maria Bonnevie as Martin’s wife, bring a grounded complexity to roles that in lesser hands could have been caricature.

In case you haven’t noticed, I’m intentionally being elusive about the plot of Another Round because I think it’s definitely worth seeing and it’s best seen with as little information about the story as possible.

In conclusion, Another Round is very deserving of both the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film and of your attention. I highly recommend you see it. But be forewarned, it is an arthouse, foreign film (Denmark), so its pacing and plot may feel a little unconventional to viewers used to more mainstream fare, but also note that it isn’t so unorthodox as to be incomprehensible or off-putting. The bottom line is…if you like great cinema and great acting, you should see this movie.

©2021

The Father: A Review

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

My Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. An astounding performance from Anthony Hopkins and skilled storytelling make this movie an arthouse gem.

The Father, written and directed by Florian Zeller (based on his stage play Le Pere), tells the story of Anthony, an aging man suffering from dementia. The film stars Anthony Hopkins with supporting turns from Olivia Colman, Imogen Poots and Rufus Sewell.

Anthony Hopkins has long been one of the very best actors on the planet. Ever the consummate craftsman, Hopkins has throughout his career managed to conjure remarkable performances in roles as dramatically diverse as Hannibal Lecter, Richard Nixon, John Quincy Adams and Pope Benedict, not to mention his measured and constrained brilliance in The Remains of the Day, Howards End and Shadowlands.

Now at age 83, Hopkins surpasses all of his previous brilliance in The Father.

Hopkins is not going to win the Best Actor Oscar this year solely because the late Chadwick Boseman is such an overwhelming sentimental favorite, but that doesn’t mean Hopkins’ loss will not be a travesty.

As the dementia-addled Anthony, Hopkins brings all his astounding talents, skill and craftsmanship to bear for what might be his final piece of artistic genius. Hopkins’ performance is utterly astounding and is an exquisite masterclass in precision, detail and specificity.

Hopkins’ Anthony is a modern day King Lear filled with a ferocity and fear that gives him a sharp edge and a pulsating fragility that is never flamboyant or showy, just devastating.

Hopkins has always been a master of placing emotional circles within physical straight lines, this is how his Hannibal Lecter is so frightening and his Nixon so compelling. It is the vibrant inner life within the controlled and contained outer facade that gives Hopkins his power as an actor, and in The Father, that power goes supernova.

Aiding Hopkins is Olivia Colman who is stellar as Anthony’s daughter and caregiver Anne. Colman too gives Anne a pulsating inner wound and emotional vibrancy that makes her a complicated, compelling and captivating In some ways screen presence.

Imogen Poots and Rufus Sewell bring their considerable talents to bear on smaller roles, but elevate them and the film considerably.

In some waysThe Father feels like a horror movie because it so viscerally immerses the audience into the terror of life with dementia. The disorientation Anthony and the audience experience is unnerving and leaves you praying that this movie is the closest you will ever come to that level of dreaded disorientation.

The credit for that experience is first time feature film writer/director Florian Zeller. Zeller is a playwright of some renown and The Father is his major first step/leap into the art of filmmaking. Zeller’s wonderfully constructed script and deft direction magnificently flesh out the intricacies and insanities of Anthony’s dementia-addled mind. His storytelling is confident and seamless, and his ability to never rush, push or over-explain, turn The Father from a potential movie-of-the-week afterthought into an arthouse masterwork.

With The Father Florian Zeller is declaring himself as a filmmaker to watch going forward, while Anthony Hopkins is simply proving he is one of the greatest actors of his generation. We should appreciate him while he is still with us.

If you have ever known or cared for someone with dementia or Alzheimer’s, The Father will be a difficult but worthwhile watch, as art of this caliber can be greatly cathartic. For lovers of great acting and storytelling, The Father is definitely for you, and I highly recommend you seek it out.

The Father is currently in theatres and on VOD.

©2021

Godzilla vs Kong: Review and Commentary

****WARNING: THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Popcorn Movie Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT/SKIP IT. If you love monster movies you should like this one. If you are ambivalent about monster movies then don’t waste your time.

Godzilla vs Kong, directed by Adam Wingard, made a big splash at the box office when it premiered internationally last weekend, and has generated a lot of attention in the U.S. as it opened on Wednesday in both theatres and on HBO Max.

The film, which stars Alexander Skarsgard, Millie Bobby Brown, Rebecca Hall and Brian Tyree Henry among many others, is a sequel to both Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) and Kong: Skull Island (2017), and is the fourth film in Legendary’s Monsterverse franchise which kicked off in 2014 with Godzilla.

I’m always interested in monster movies because they feature rich myths that express deeper truths regarding their time and place and are ripe with opportunities for insightful metaphor and allegory.

For instance, beginning with the first King Kong film in 1933, the Kong story was an allegory for colonialism and slavery, as he was stolen from his tropical homeland by outsiders and brought to America in chains and exploited for profit.

Cinematically born in post-war Japan by Toho Studios in 1954, Godzilla was a metaphor for the perils of atomic weapons and American imperialism, and the embodiment of nuclear age anxiety.

As the world has changed, so has the metaphorical meaning of the monsters. Kong has grown to represent, at least in American eyes, the U.S. He is a primate, warm blooded and big hearted, who is ferociously protective of those he loves, and Americans are delusional enough to see themselves and their nation in his good qualities.

Godzilla has transformed from being a lizard-brained menace to being a hero, and even the previous Legendary films Godzilla and King of the Monsters paint the cold-blooded beast as a guardian of humanity and environmental protector.

In this context, Godzilla vs Kong strikes me as an allegory about the transition from a uni-polar world with America the lone superpower to a multi-polar one where China and the U.S. are equals, with Godzilla representing China and its bid for global dominance and Kong the U.S. fighting to maintain its alpha standing.

The cinematic evidence supporting this thesis is that American favorite Kong is the main protagonist in the story, and that the U.S. military fights on Kong’s side when the monsters battle.

In a nod to China’s status and power, Godzilla proves his alpha dominance by forcing Kong to submit and also obliterates the U.S Navy when it defends Kong.

It’s also conspicuous that the moviemakers set the climactic battle between Kong and Godzilla in Hong Kong, which is a city which can simultaneously represent different things to the film’s two largest target audiences…China and the U.S.

To Americans, the Let’s Get it on In Hong Kong battle can be interpreted as Kong (U.S.A.) fighting for democracy against the tyranny of China. In China it can be interpreted as the city merely being collateral damage in the wider battle against the imperialism of the west.

Of course, with the film ending with both Kong and Godzilla saving face and being victorious, Hollywood is simply trying to kiss two asses at once and stay in the good graces of both China and the U.S. and their massive audiences.

Another interpretation could be that the third monster in the movie, Mecha-Godzilla, is supposed to be representative of the corporate titans of the tech world that are maneuvering to rule us all, and that Kong (U.S.A.) and Godzilla (China) must work together to stop the seemingly all-powerful globalist tech behemoth. Considering that the tech industry, the U.S. and Chinese government, and Hollywood are like the evil three-headed monster Ghidorah, and work in unison to horde profits, power and spread propaganda, this interpretation isn’t as compelling.

A more likely scenario is that I’m just reading way too much into the popcorn delivery system that is a mindless monster movie.

The bottom line is that as a piece of cinematic art, Godzilla vs Kong isn’t exactly Citizen Kane, but as a monster movie it’s entertaining, especially in contrast to the three Monsterverse films leading up to it which were decidedly disappointing.

Sure, the film gets bogged down in a bevy of exposition and entirely incomprehensible plots involving conspiracy theories, hollow earth and some corporate nefariousness, but all that tomfoolery fades away once the CGI creations start stomping the earth and beating the crap out of each other.

Thankfully the movie also eschews the emotional preening so prevalent in the earlier Legendary ventures and simply lets the monsters battle it out. And the big fights are well executed, proficiently filmed and efficiently choreographed for prime viewing of the carnage, something also lacking in the muddled visuals of previous Monsterverse movies.

As for the fights, my critique is that Kong is like former Heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder in that he is much too reliant on big right hands. Kong needs to develop and then utilize a jab to keep a short-armed in-fighter like Godzilla at bay. To Kong’s credit though he is a great closer with his signature double fisted beat down move.

Godzilla is just a monster…literally. Despite short arms he has a long and powerful tail that can cause serious damage when whipped, and of course boasts some of the deadliest atomic breath around. Godzilla is sort of like George Foreman before the Rumble in the Jungle in 1974…just a horrifyingly big, strong and brutal fighter.

The Godzilla-Kong fights are what everybody is tuning in to see, and while there weren’t enough of them for my taste…the ones that did happen were pretty good so I will take what I can get.

As for whether Godzilla vs Kong is good or its deeper meaning, the film business couldn’t care less, it just cares that the movie raked in $123 million from overseas markets in its opening weekend, a Covid era record.

This seems to indicate that the Hollywood beast is awakening from its Covid slumber and is prepared once again to slouch across the globe asserting its malign influence. The U.S. and Chinese governments will be thrilled to have their reliably pliable Hollywood propaganda monster back in the game.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Sound of Metal: 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. An insightful and captivating drama that boasts a simple but layered narrative, a fantastic performance from Riz Ahmed and some exquisite filmmaking craftsmanship.

Sound of Metal, written and directed by Darius Marder, tells the story of Ruben Stone, a drummer in a heavy metal duo that loses his hearing. The film stars Riz Ahmed as Ruben, with supporting turns from Olivia Cooke and Paul Raci.

Sound of Metal was released on Amazon Prime streaming service back in November of 2020. I would see the advertisement for it whenever I went online but was always hesitant to watch it as it looked like a rather predictable movie on its surface. I finally made the plunge last week and watched…and boy am I glad that I did.

Yes, Sound of Metal is about a drummer who loses his hearing, but it is infinitely more than that.

For some viewers, the premise of the movie and the opening scenes may be a hurdle, but I wholly encourage you to stick with the movie because it is a multi-layered, dramatically precise, profound and powerful piece of cinema well worth your time.

Director Darius Marder apparently developed this story for over a decade, and successfully navigated the minefield of Hollywood to get it made the way he wanted it made…and it shows.

Marder’s confidence as a filmmaker (this is his first feature) oozes through every scene of the film. The movie never takes the easy or predictable route in storytelling, and every time I thought I knew what was coming I was wrong. Marder’s refusal to rely on conventional narrative arcs and story turns makes Sound of Metal very compelling viewing.

The technical proficiency on display in the movie is impressive, as the film’s use of sound to propel the narrative and heighten the drama is masterful. The way the movie allows the audience to experience Ruben’s hearing loss creates a visceral intimacy that is captivating, jarring and mesmerizing.

The film is nominated for six Oscars, two of which include Best Sound and Best Editing and it should win both awards. The sound design on this movie is exquisite and is a pivotal part of the storytelling. The editing is seamless as scenes are never rushed nor linger too long and the film is perfectly paced.

The cast are terrific. Riz Ahmed is just one of those guys…he is an exceptional actor who has an innate presence to him that is compelling and undeniable. Ahmed is able to draw viewers into him rather than needing to be showy to attract their attention. His work as Ruben is specific and complex, and he never falls prey to the desire to overly emote. This role in lesser hands could have been a great deal of volcanic histrionics, but with Ahmed it is an exquisite exercise in subtlety and nuance.

Ahmed is nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for his performance and while be probably won’t win, he certainly deserves to.

Paul Raci plays a counselor named Joe and is outstanding. Raci is a knock around type of actor who has been nibbling away at the periphery of the business for decades. This is the most prominent role in his career and he makes the most of the opportunity. Raci is so grounded and genuine as Joe I wasn’t sure he was a professional actor when I was watching him. I don’t say that as an insult, I say it to highlight how real he comes across and how devoid of performance his work truly is.

Olivia Cooke also acquits herself quite well as Lou, Ruben’s girlfriend and bandmate. Cooke is an intriguing screen presence and she makes the most of the small role she is given.

What makes Sound of Metal so profound is that it is extremely accurate and insightful when it comes to the issue of drug and alcohol recovery. The film expertly maneuvers through the choppy waters of recovery and never flounders.

Director Marder connects the audience to Ruben and we too fall under the spell of his unseen wound and issues. He seems fine to us because we want him to seem fine. When the reality of the situation is revealed it is a breathtaking moment and a staggeringly well executed piece of cinema.

I loved Sound of Metal because it’s a “simple” bit of filmmaking that makes use of the craft and skill of moviemakiing to create a piece of cinematic art. Obviously, just because something is simple does not make it easy. For instance, if you are an addict the simple solution to your problem is to stop using…but that ain’t easy.

The beautiful simplicity of the storytelling and filmmaking of Sound of Metal is why this movie is so impressive and this type of moviemaking so exceedingly rare.

I also loved Sound of Metal because of Riz Ahmed’s heartfelt and absurdly well-crafted performance. This is Ahmed at his very best and it is glorious to behold.

And finally, I loved Sound of Metal because it dramatically presents the important truth about the intricate process of recovery, one with which I am all too familiar and which America needs to learn in a hurry…that returning to normal isn’t the panacea the addicted mind thinks it is. Becoming sober doesn’t mean your life is perfect and you are instantly happy, it means life is still suffering but now you have to feel it because you aren’t drunk or high.

Recovery doesn’t end with sobriety, it BEGINS with sobriety. Once sober, you can start the journey of self-discovery to find the wounds that cause the pain you’ve been trying to self-medicate away. Returning to normal for the addict isn’t a return to a good place, it is a return to the place that instigated the drug and alcohol use in the first place (An example of which is establishment liberals wanting to ‘return to normal’ after the nightmare of Trump - well…the pre-Trump normal is what got us Trump!). Those in recovery must discover a new normal, one that is based on integrity and isn’t self-deceptive or self-destructive.

If you’re in recovery, Sound of Metal holds important lessons for you. If you love someone in recovery and want to understand what it is like, Sound of Metal is for you too. If you just like exceedingly well made movies, then Sound of Metal is for you too. Sound of Metal is just a terrific film and I highly recommend it.

©2021

Minari: A Review

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

My Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. An over-hyped venture that ultimately underwhelms.

Minari, written and directed by Lee Isaac Chung, tells the semi-autobiographical story of Chung’s South Korean immigrant family as it tries to achieve the American dream in 1980’s Arkansas. The film, which stars Steven Yeun, Han Ye-ri, Youn Yuh-jung and Will Patton, has received six Oscar nominations, including for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Actor (Yeun) and Best Supporting Actress (Youn).

Having survived the slog of cinema that was 2020, where even the very best films of the year like Mank, Nomadland and Judas and the Black Messiah are not great films, I held out hope for Minari to ride in on a white horse and save this year of cinema from death by a thousand mediocrities.

Unfortunately, Minari is not up to the task.

Minari is not a terrible movie, but it is not a very good one either. It suffers from many flaws, most notable being it doesn’t know what it is or what it wants to be and therefore ends up being a whole lot of nothing.

For example, in theory it has all the trappings of an arthouse movie but is so painfully conventional in execution it becomes devoid of interest and artistic credibility.

Minari is sort of like a working class Korean immigrant version of Marriage Story mixed with a culture clash/fish out of water/American Dream story, but it never successfully or even adequately tells any of those stories, preferring the approach of throwing everything into the stew yet creating no flavor.

A major flaw with the storytelling approach of Minari is that it has a generalized perspective, so there is no one particular protagonist to lead us through the story. Since Chung is writing auto-biographically, it would have been interesting to have his childhood perspective lead the way. But Chung seems incapable of the skill that would require, and therefore he halves the baby and spreads perspective around which saps the story of dramatic power.

Chung is also a rather unimaginative visual stylist, as Minari is a painfully flat film with sub-par framing and composition as well as a dull and stale color palette.

There are some interesting performances in the movie, most notably by Yeun and Will Patton of all people, but Chung’s lackluster direction is unable to contain these performances and therefore the drama dissipates even when the actors are running on all cylinders. Chung’s inability to break through the conventional leaves viewers detached and disinterested in the plight of these characters despite some skillful acting work.

Chung’s biggest failing though is as a writer, as he is incapable of trusting his audience with a pure arthouse experience and therefore sprinkles in narrative arcs and beats that are cookie-cutter conventionalities that fall dramatically flat. The contrast of this conventional story being wrapped in the deliberately paced trappings of an arthouse movie creates a frustrating movie decidedly at cross purposes with itself.

Ultimately, with the generalized perspective, the conventional narrative arcs and the tedious visual aesthetic, Minari feels like a bad tv drama more than a serious piece of cinema and Oscar contender.

As evidenced by the plethora of Oscar nominations and a stunning 98% critical score at Rotten Tomatoes, Minari is being lauded as a phenomenal film. But it seems to me that this is wishful thinking rather than accurate analysis of the film on screen.

In the wake of last year’s stirring success of Parasite, a spectacular piece of filmmaking by Korean director Bong Joon-ho, Minari has no doubt been given a boost among the critical elite in the hopes of bolstering “diversity and inclusion” and recreating Parasite’s stirring success.

In the flat earth society that is our culture, Parasite and Minari are in the same category despite having nothing in common except that they share the same language and ethnicity of director. This is absurd, but it is how our culture thinks and works, especially in the era of identity politics.

If Minari were the same story but centering around the struggles of some white family, critics would rightfully ignore it for the uninspired, middling movie that it is. The fact that mediocrities like Chung and Minari are nominated for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay speaks to how precipitous the decline in the art of cinema has become and to the hyper-delusional nature of a film business glorifying “diversity and inclusion” instead of talent, skill and craftsmanship.

In conclusion, there is absolutely nothing interesting or remarkable about Minari. It is an underwhelming and instantly forgettable film that is not deserving of any accolades or praise. If you want to see a mundane, middle-of-the-road movie, Minari is definitely for you.

©2021

The Trial of the Chicago 7: A Review

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

My Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. Yikes. What an abysmal Sorkinian shitshow.

The Trial of the Chicago 7, written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, recounts the story of the infamous prosecution of a group of famed anti-Vietnam war protestors arrested for inciting riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Among the star-studded ensemble are Sacha Baron Cohen, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Eddie Redmayne, Michael Keaton, Mark Rylance and Frank Langella.

The film, which is streaming on Netflix, has been nominated for 6 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor (Sacha Baron Cohen).

The Trial of the Chicago 7 tells an extremely important story, but unfortunately, it is an abysmally crafted, relentlessly hackneyed shitshow of a movie.

One can only speculate as to why such an aggressively trite cinematic venture has been so well received.

Maybe people say they like this movie because they think this is the type of movie they’re supposed to like. In this way The Trial of the Chicago 7 is reminiscent of Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln in that It covers a “serious” historical topic meant to convey a noble truth about a current social political issue. Lincoln was a terrible movie too, but that didn’t stop critics from fawning over it during their Obama sugar high. It was like critics endorsed the film in an attempt to avoid seeming to be against the abolition of slavery - as inane as that sounds.

The Trial of the Chicago 7 is like baby boomer porn where Sorkin and his fellow boomers can signal their historic virtue all over themselves in a frantic fit of masturbatorial self-righteousness. The film allows the auto-erotic boomer fantasy to extend to current issues and protests movements like Black Lives Matter, with climax no doubt gushing forth accompanied by an orgasmic cry of “right side of history!”

Regardless (or as Dictionary.com would now say - ‘irregardless’) of why it is being praised, it is definitely being praised. At the website Rotten Tomatoes the film currently has a 90% critical score and a 91% audience score.

It is at times like these that I feel the world has officially lost its mind. .

The Trial of the Chicago 7 is so cinematically cliched, dramatically defective and pretentiously pedantic it feels like a two hour and ten minute SNL skit.

The film boasts some of the most embarrassing acting of the year. Sacha Baron Cohen is nominated for a Best Supporting Actor for his work as 60’s icon Abbie Hoffman. Cohen looks like a dad who dressed up in in a bad hippie costume to accompany his kids to a Halloween dance. It is painfully embarrassing watching the 49 year old Cohen play acting as the 30 year-old Hoffman. Adding to the suck is the fact that Cohen absolutely tears limb from limb Hoffman’s unique New England accent, and ends up sounding like Borat, a Brooklynite, Big Daddy from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and a posh Brit all rolled into one giant acting shit sandwich.

Eddie Redmayne is just as dreadful as Tom Hayden. Redmayne is a charisma-less acting vampire that drains every scene of even the most remote bit of life. He too mauls an American accent like a newly freed Vegas tiger seeking revenge on his life-long tormentors Siegfried and Roy.

Even Mark Rylance, the great Mark Rylance, churns out a sub-par performance. Rylance plays the iconic civil rights lawyer William Kunstler, who was one of the great New York characters of all-time. Rylance’s Kunstler is so far removed from any version of reality as to be criminal. Rylance too never properly wields Kunstler’s distinctive New York dialect. But as my friend Mo Danger pointed out, to Rylance’s credit he at least seems like the only actor in the cast not in on the Sorkinian joke.

The Trial of the Chicago 7’s biggest problem though is the direction of Aaron Sorkin, who simply lacks the requisite cinematic skill to take on such sprawling and complex subject matter.

Sorkin’s ham-fisted, hit-all-the-bullet-points, broad brush, watered down approach drains the dynamic story of any dramatic power. His limp direction also leaves his actors floundering, unable to piece together performances with any dramatic coherence.

The Trial of the Chicago 7 is like a very special episode of Sorkin’s 90’s remake of Fantasy Island …The West Wing. It is so self-reverential, pandering and dramatically flaccid as to be egregiously cinematically inept.

The piece de resistance of The Trial of the Chicago 7 is that it builds to a cinematic climax where people unironically stand and clap in a courtroom. It’s like Sorkin went all meta and made a movie set in the 1960’s that had the dramatic sensibilities of a high school drama from the 1980’s.

The story of the Chicago 7 is one that needs to be told…maybe in a Netflix mini-series so as to give each character more depth and the conflagration in Chicago in 1968 more context. The Trial of the Chicago 7 fails to adequately recount the time, place, events and characters involved in one of the crazier and more dangerous times in American history, and that failure is entirely on Aaron Sorkin.

My advice is to either skip The Trial of the Chicago 7 or go all in and just hate watch the damn thing, because it is certainly a target rich environment for scorn and cathartic loathing. Either way, this movie is a blight on the cinema landscape and can’t be forgotten soon enough.

©2021

Netflix's The Dig is not a White Supremacy Rallying Cry

Estimated reading Time: 3 minutes 27 seconds

Netflix’s The Dig is a movie about a famous archeological discovery, not a pro-Brexit, white supremacist rallying cry

Only a woke academic could find hidden villainy in this perfectly benign and mildly pleasant British film. 

The Dig is a Netflix film starring Ralph Fiennes, Carey Mulligan and Lily James that dramatizes the 1939 excavation of an Anglo-Saxon burial site at Sutton Hoo that transformed our understanding of the history of early medieval England.

The film, directed by Simon Stone and written by Moira Buffini, has been nominated for five BAFTAs including for Outstanding British Film.

But not everyone is so enamored of the movie, as some see it as a pro-Brexit film espousing white supremacy.

Louise D’Arcens, a Professor of English at Macquarie University in Australia, recently attacked the film because it commits the cultural sin of  “nostalgically appealing” and “romanticizing” an “imagined continuity between Anglo-Saxons and modern British people that does not speak to the complexity of Britain today.” The horror!

D’Arcens complains the film “re-animates key tropes from the persistent British and American ideology of Anglo-Saxonism”, which she claims “was vital to underwriting white racial supremacy as a mandate for Britain’s imperial power and the expansionist concept of Manifest Destiny…”

When viewed through this distorted lens, The Dig transforms from a tame historical drama/love story into a nefarious Brexit propaganda film surreptitiously waving an ‘England for the English!’ banner.

I didn’t see any white supremacy or Brexit sub-text in The Dig, but rather an utterly banal, benign and innocuous movie examining the universality of life, death and the impermanence of things.

The Dig is one of those proficiently shot, well-acted British dramas with which we’ve become so accustomed. It isn’t great and it isn’t awful. It’s fine. It’s a middlebrow piece of entertainment geared toward Anglophiles who’ve already devoured Downton Abbey and are looking to satiate their taste for all things British.

Not surprisingly, there are numerous contradictions and illogical observations in D’Arcens’ misguided analysis.

For instance, a major narrative in the film is about class struggle. Protagonist Basil Brown (Ralph Fiennes) is a self-taught, working class excavator from Suffolk, who is hired by wealthy landowner Edith Pretty (Carey Mulligan). Their budding relationship must navigate the suffocating class structures of the time period.

The class narrative is also highlighted when Charles Phillips (Ken Stott), a pompous archeologist from the British Museum, invades Sutton Hoo, belittles Basil and ultimately takes credit for his tremendous discovery.

Yet D’Arcens interprets the Phillips-Basil clash as not being about class but rather “highlighting ongoing tensions between Britain’s rural counties and its metropolitan centre” with rural meaning pro-Brexit/bad and metropolitan anti-Brexit/good.

This assessment seems oddly regressive as it lionizes the elite (Phillips) and vilifies the working class (Basil).

D’Arcens also bemoans the film “drawing uncritically on a historical tropes of expansionism – despite the fact the violence of colonialism and occupation is well understood today.”

This is directly at odds with the disparaging appraisal of Basil as a bad guy avatar for Brexiteers. Basil is the victim of the colonialism of educated metropolitan Philips. Like countless British colonialist before him, Phillips comes to Basil’s “foreign” land of Suffolk, takes power, steals treasures and brings them back to London. Yet, incongruously in D’Arcens’ deconstruction Phillips is also a heroic symbol of anti-Brexit sophistication.

D’Arcens then writes,

“One of the great reckonings in the film comes when Basil’s wife, May, urges her disaffected husband to return to the dig. She tells him:

 ‘You’ve always said your work isn’t about the past or even the present. It’s for the future, so that the next generations can know where they came from. The line that joins them to their forebears.’

This appeal to the idea of genetic continuity is rousing and profound, but also exclusionary and insular. May assumes racial and cultural uniformity in Britain, and shared forebears for all.”

Good lord, this is in no way an appeal to “genetic continuity” or an assumption of “racial uniformity”.

A major storyline in the film is that WWII is about to begin and the survival of Britain is at stake. This isn’t about genetic continuity or racial uniformity because the ethnogenesis of Anglo-Saxons developed between migrant Germanic tribes that came to the island back in the 5th century and indigenous Britons, thus Germans conquering Britain is not a genetic or racial threat. Hell, the royal family has German bloodlines.

The existential crisis facing Britain in the film is not a racial or genetic one, it is a national one as it is their (multi-racial) nationality that will disappear if the Germans prevail, not their race or genetic line.

D’Arcens continues, “(May) speaks to the film’s 21st century viewers, many of whom would not see an unearthed Saxon as a forebear, and might rightly wonder what “future generations” the film has in mind for Britain.”

If multi-cultural 21st century Brits, regardless of their race or ethnicity, don’t acknowledge a centuries dead Saxon king as a forebear for their nation, that says more about their historical ignorance and ethnic arrogance than anything else.

D’Arcens closes by lamenting, “…as cinematic archeology (The Dig) looks far more to the past than to the future.”

Considering The Dig is a movie set in the past and tells the story of characters discovering an even older past, this is an incredibly inane climax to a wholly inadequate analysis.

In conclusion, The Dig is not a great movie, but it also isn’t a dangerous one. It’s a mildly pleasant film that will most definitely not turn you into a brutish Brexiteer or Anglo-Saxon supremacist…I promise.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

A Decaying Culture Diminishes the Value of Life

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 27 seconds

In a culture obsessed with serial killers and murder stories, it is the state-sanctioned violence we ignore that is most corrosive

The tragic death of Sarah Everard has me questioning my choices in entertainment, but it’s the brutal actions of my government over the years that have done more to create a society desensitized to the value of life.

In the wake of the grisly murder of 33 year-old Sarah Everard in London earlier this month, there has been much debate about how to make women feel safer.

For example, the rather radical idea of a 6 p.m. curfew for men has been discussed. Considering that men stuck at home will just marinate in our morally twisted media which features a plethora of programming that highlights men killing women…that might not make women feel any safer.

Having just finished watching the Yorkshire Ripper documentary on Netflix, I couldn’t help but wonder if the prevalence of such gruesome subject matter in our culture cheapens the sanctity of life and thereby inspires killers.

Our culture’s fascination with violent death can often intentionally or unintentionally transform into a celebration of people who kill. In our fame-obsessed, reality-tv world, being famous and infamous are now virtually synonymous, and it doesn’t matter how you get the spotlight, just that you do. By lavishing our attention on murdering monsters we often turn them into celebrities.

I’m not immune to the lurid appeal of a serial killer story, but it feels like a chicken and egg debate pondering if I watched the documentaries on the Night Stalker and the Yorkshire Ripper because Netflix made them or did Netflix make them because they knew I’d watch them?

The most interesting serial killer narratives are the ones that explore not so much the serial killers but our obsession with them.

For example, Zodiac is one of David Fincher’s best movies as it tells the true story of Robert Graysmith, a political cartoonist who turns into an obsessive Zodiac Killer researcher. Fincher mining our fear of becoming obsessed with the Zodiac Killer rather than our fear of the Zodiac Killer is what makes the film so captivating.

Fincher’s Netflix series Mindhunter dives even deeper into that theme as it follows two FBI agents as they interview serial killers such as Edmund Kemper, David Berkowitz and Charles Manson in order to try and understand how they think. Ultimately, the brilliance of the show is that it mirrors its audience by being obsessed with the minds of serial killers.

But does immersing oneself in the crimes and mindset of a killer do damage to our individual or collective psyche?

It is much too simplistic to argue tv shows and movies about serial killers transform men into murderers.

It’s more accurate to say that the moral guardrails of our culture, most notably religion, have so decayed and been so diminished, that there seems no counter-balance to the darker things that naturally intrigue us. In other words in our fallen world there is no flicker of illumination to give us respite from the relentless darkness.

These serial killer narratives once felt cathartic and even psychologically healthy when contained within a culture with clear moral and ethical boundaries that acknowledged the precious nature of life. Now that these moral and ethical boundaries have blurred, and the religious foundation for them has been removed or revealed to be fraudulent, these serial killer stories now feel much less cathartic and much more toxic.

The result of this is, as killer John Doe tells us in Fincher’s iconic Seven, “We see a deadly sin on every street corner, in every home, and we tolerate it. We tolerate it because it is common, trivial. We tolerate it morning, noon and night.”

This is true of our culture as news and entertainment are inundated with murder, mayhem and depravity morning, noon and night.

Whether it’s scenes of attacks on Asians, or cops brutalizing civilians, or “mostly peaceful” violent protests, or documentaries on The Night Stalker or Nazis, we are perpetually force-fed a toxic media stew leaving our bellies bloated with bile and barbarity.

It is unimaginable that the culture’s consistent mantra of “if it bleeds it leads” is healthy, as it destabilizes the weak-minded, desensitizes us to the value of life and dehumanizes all of us.

Nearly a decade before the flag-waving pornography of the Iraq War’s “shock and awe” bombing campaign, Oliver Stone’s under appreciated Natural Born Killers (1994) skillfully explored this idea of a violent culture creating murderers and a malignant media transforming them into celebrities.

It is not surprising that a culture that made media sensations of Ted Bundy, Richard Ramirez and Charles Manson, celebrated more “respectable” serial killers like George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld when they unleashed their carnage.

It seems to me that the media’s glorification of the industrial scale, state sanctioned, military industrial complex murder machine does more to damage our collective psyche and diminish our sense of the preciousness of life than stories about lone murderers.  

I’m less worried about the psychological effects of a serial killer documentary than I am about America’s ambivalence regarding their war crimes committed in Yemen.

I’m less worried about Seven inspiring a lunatic than I am about the U.S. and U.K. killing people in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran.

I’m less worried about Ted Bundy’s body count than I am about the body count of Bush, Blair, Obama, Trump and Biden.

The murder of Sarah Everard is a tragic symptom of the disease of indifference to the sanctity of life that ravages our culture. But the majority of blood on our collective hands is not just a result of watching too many serial killer movies but from turning a blind eye to the violence done in our name to innocent people across the globe.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

The Mauritanian: A Review and Commentary

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

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT/SEE IT. A great story but not so great movie. Not worth paying to see but its subject matter is crucially important and makes the film worthy of a watch when it becomes available on a streaming service for free.

The Mauritanian, directed by Kevin Macdonald, tells the true story of Mohamedou Salahi, who in the wake of 9-11 was tortured and held by the U.S. at Guantanamo Bay detention camp for 14 years without charge.

The film, which as of March 2nd is in theaters and available on Video-On-Demand, is adapted from Salahi’s memoir Guantanamo Diary, and stars Tahar Rahim, Jodie Foster, Shailene Woodly and Benedict Cumberbatch.

The Mauritanian is a great story, but unfortunately not a particularly great film. Despite some effective moments, particularly the torture sequences, and a solid performance from Tahar Rahim as Salahi, it’s a mediocrity that’s not nearly as good as I wanted it to be or that it needed to be. One can’t help but wonder what a better director could have done with such dramatically potent material.

The film suffers because it looks like a tv movie. This rather flat and dull aesthetic keeps the story dramatically constrained and so we are never drawn into it.

The performances are equally middling, with the lone exception being Rahim, who plays the riddle that is Sahir with a charm and humanity worthy of note.

Jodie Foster won a Golden Globe for her work as a defense attorney Nancy Hollander in the film but I found her performance to be rather banal. Shailene Woodley gives an equally lackluster performance as another lawyer Teri Duncan.

Benedict Cumberbatch plays Marine Corps lawyer Lt. Col. Stuart Couch, who was assigned to be the prosecutor on Sahir’s case. Cumberbatch deploys a Southern accent to his Couch (who is a real person) and it is egregiously awful. When British actors miss on American accents, particularly New York and Southern accents, it is so mannered and lifeless as to be painfully distracting, and Cumberbatch’s butchering of the dialect is gruesome to behold. As I watched Cumberbatch lose his wrestling match with the Southern drawl I couldn’t help but wonder…were there no American actors available to play this part?

That said, while the movie isn’t worth paying $20 to see On Demand, I still recommend The Mauritanian when it becomes available for free if for no other reason than it is an important story that contains some vital lessons for our current turbulent time.

As Orwell taught us, “to see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle”, and in the United States of Amnesia, our prodigiously propagandized populace is conditioned to be myopic in the moment and utterly blind to the past. This makes for a pliable citizenry that can be led around by their noses by a mainstream media designed to do just that. This is heightened by gullible Americans lacking the intellectual vim and vigor to swim against the powerful current of establishment narratives in a search for some semblance of truth.

Thankfully The Mauritanian is at least a visual aid to remind America of that which it is consistently capable, namely, brutal authoritarianism fueled by frantic emotionalism.

The film does a service by reminding viewers of a few critical things.

First that Guantanamo Bay prison is still open and people still languish there, despite Obama’s promises to close it when he became president in 2009.

Second, that al-Qeada and the U.S. were allies in the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. It doesn’t get into great detail or anything, but even that little bit of information might be shocking to those who’ve conveniently forgotten that fact (or never knew it in the first place) and other much more damning facts about America and al-Qaeda’s fruitful relationship, then and now.

And third, that war criminals like George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Barrack Obama, and their immoral minions, have never been punished for their atrocities, which is an abomination considering those that exposed their crimes, such as Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, rot in prison or are forced to live in exile.

As The Mauritanian highlights, post 9-11 America went into a full-blown hysteria. The result of this hysteria was the Patriot Act, massive surveillance, rendition, torture and the mass murder and mayhem of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

 America has only gotten more hysterical in the following two decades. In recent years we’ve had one mindless panic after another. There’s been the Russia panic, the #MeToo panic, and the racism/white supremacy panic…all of them delusions and illusions built on minimal evidence and fueled by irrationalism and self-righteous fanaticism.

These panics have been used to distort reality and manipulate people into fighting for draconian and totalitarian measures to combat them.

The most alarming hysteria is the new “domestic terrorism” panic that sprung up in the wake of the Q-Anon Capitol riot of January 6th.

In reaction to this Q-Anon clownshow the political establishment and media have gone full Spinal Tap and upped the hyperbole to 11…9-11 that is.

The delusional discourse that the Capitol riot was a 9-11 level event has led to politicians demanding a “9-11 Commission” type of investigation. I wonder if the new Q-Anon Commission, maybe headed by the new “Reality Czar”, will be as toothless as the contrived show trial that was the 9-11 Commission?

Watching The Mauritanian I couldn’t help but think that Washington and the mainstream media want to do to troublesome “conspiracy theorists”, traditionalists, Christians and Trumpists what Bush, Obama and company did to Mamadou Salahi…make them suffer and disappear. Unfortunately, many regular liberals who have either sold their souls or lost their minds, moral compass and way after years of being heavily propagandized and indoctrinated, wholeheartedly agree with this assessment.

This furor and frenzy over “domestic terrorists” and “white supremacy” is inversely proportional to the actual threat from these manufactured shadows dancing upon America’s cave wall. 

9-11 was a savage and heinous attack, but the U.S.’s over reaction to it brutalized innocent people and ended up transforming the brush fire of Islamic radicalism it was meant to extinguish into an inferno that engulfed the world and torched the Constitution. It seems very likely that a similar over-reaction to the Capitol Riot will result in the same counter conflagration on American soil, and the phantom threat of “right-wing radicals” and “white supremacists” will thus be made manifest.

In conclusion, The Mauritanian isn’t great but is worth watching because it serves a noble purpose, which is to remind Americans of their unquenchable thirst to demonize and dehumanize those they deem as terrorists. Though the targets are now different, America’s evil impulse is as powerful as ever, and so is its susceptibility to hysteria and rampant emotionalism…and that portends a terrifyingly dark future indeed.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

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