The Tragedy of Macbeth: A Review

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

My Rating: 3.75 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. Denzel Washington’s ‘The Tragedy of Macbeth’ is one of the very best films of 2021, but be forewarned, it is for cinephiles and Shakespeare afficionados, others will probably find it pretentious and boring.

The Tragedy of Macbeth, which after a very limited Christmas day theatrical release, premiered on Apple TV+ on January 14, is an intriguing film for a variety of reasons.

The first of which is that it boasts a bevy of star power, including two-time Oscar winner and American acting icon Denzel Washington as Macbeth, as well as three-time Best Actress Oscar winner Frances McDormand as Lady Macbeth.

Secondly, it is the first film directed by a single Coen brother. Academy-award winners Joel and Ethan Coen are one of the most iconic directing duos in Hollywood history, but for Macbeth, Joel Coen is flying solo without Ethan, a first for the brothers.

And finally, it’s Shakespeare’s Macbeth for god’s sakes, it’s one of the greatest plays of all-time, written by the greatest playwright of all-time.

The end result of this witch’s brew of star power, directing style and Shakespeare is a film that, while flawed, may very well be the best film of 2021.

That statement obviously requires context, but the art of cinema was in such a dismal and dire state for the year of 2021, that any discussion about it, if it were done, when ‘tis done then ‘twere well, it were done quickly.

In brief, cinema in the year of 2021 has been a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets its hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

If I saw a dagger before me, I would grab it and plunge it deep into the heart of 2021 with its abundantly awful films and put them out of their misery and me out of mine.

That is to say that The Tragedy of Macbeth is both not as great as it could be but much better than most, making it akin to being the tallest dwarf in the Lilliputian land of cinema in 2021.

What I liked about The Tragedy of Macbeth was that Joel Coen made a bold stylistic choice and did not deviate from it. The film is made in the style of German Expressionism, with its black and white color scheme, sparse sets, straight lines, sharp angles and great heights.

German Expressionism came to the fore in Weimar Germany in the 1920’s, with the most famous films of this school being The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Nosferatu. As German directors came to Hollywood, their style came with them and became prominent in horror and film noir movies.

Joel Coen’s decision to use German Expressionism to tell the tale of a Scottish warrior falling victim to his own ambitions, speaks to the current, decadent state of America, where unbridled ambition isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.

Just as some interpreted the German Expressionism of the 1920’s as a manifestation of the fragile collective unconscious of Weimar Germany and the impending embrace of stark totalitarianism in the form of Nazism and the Third Reich, Coen’s use of it on Macbeth could be interpreted as a bold statement regarding America’s dire future as well as its current sickened consciousness, political polarization, violent impulses and moral degradation.

Regardless of why Coen used German Expressionism on Macbeth, the stark style and intimate staging on display suits the story and is very pleasing on the eye. It also helps that German Expressionism is, like live theatre itself, less beholden to realism, which makes the very diverse/colorblind casting where many people of color, including Denzel Washington, play the nearly colorless to the point of near translucence Scots (I know because I am one), in context, much more believable.

Also pleasing are some of the performances.

The great Denzel Washington plays Macbeth with a profound weariness that infects his every thought and movement. With Denzel’s Macbeth, heavy lies even just the thought of the crown, nevermind the actual wearing of it.

As good as Denzel is, and he is very good, veteran stage actress Kathryn Hunter, who plays the three witches, steals the show. Hunter’s acting mastery is stunning to behold and combined with Joel Coen’s creative staging of the witch’s scenes makes for truly glorious cinema.

With all that said, and as much as I liked The Tragedy of Macbeth, it isn’t flawless.

For example, Frances McDormand’s Lady Macbeth is surprisingly subdued and seemingly out of sync. As strange as it is to say about an actress with such a stellar resume, McDormand seems overwhelmed with the mantle of Lady Macbeth, and gives an uneven performance as a result.

Another issue was that the hour and forty-five-minute film felt a bit rushed and lacking in deeper emotional connections which could have flourished if given more time. Denzel’s Macbeth and McDormand’s Lady Macbeth, in particular, lack a coherent and visceral emotional connection to one another, which undermines the power of the film.

The thing that galled me most though was Coen’s staging of the great “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow” soliloquy which is among the greatest ever written.

In the film, Coen has Denzel do that powerful monologue as he aimlessly walks down a flight of stairs, which distracts and dilutes the potency of that sacred speech, rendering it, unfortunately, flaccid and forgettable.

All that said, I did greatly enjoy The Tragedy of Macbeth, as it features a powerful performance from Denzel Washington and striking style from director Joel Coen, making it one of the very best films of the year.

But be forewarned, The Tragedy of Macbeth is not popular entertainment, it is solely for cinephiles and Shakespeare afficionados, everyone else should stay well clear. If you’re not an adherent of the arthouse and a devout classical theatre fan, then you’ll probably just find the movie pretentious and frustrating. 

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2022

The Tender Bar: 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. Another in a long line of painfully pedestrian, poorly made films from director George Clooney.

It’s easy to forget now, and it feels foolish in hindsight, but there was a time, long ago, when I got excited when I saw that a movie directed by George Clooney was coming out.

Back in the early to mid-2000’s, Clooney put out two pretty intriguing movies. In 2002, Clooney’s directorial debut, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, told the fictional tale of tv game show host Chuck Barris and fantastical claims about being a CIA assassin. It was a flawed but energetic film buoyed by a strong lead performance by Sam Rockwell.

In 2005, Clooney won critical acclaim with Good Night and Good Luck, his black and white historical drama about Edward R. Murrow’s clash with anti-communist zealot Senator Joseph McCarthy. The film, which featured a strong performance by David Strathairn, was nominated for six Academy Awards, but won none.

At this point Clooney’s directorial career was bursting with promise and he seemed to be following in his fellow Hollywood lothario Warren Beatty’s formidable footsteps in being a movie star who also directed well-respected, serious films.

But then, slowly but surely, things started to go downhill and Clooney was eventually exposed as a cinematic fraud.

First there was 2008’s Leatherheads, an empty-headed comedy, which garnered a 52% critical score and a dismal 38% audience score at the review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes.

Clooney rebounded a bit in 2011 with The Ides of March, a political thriller starring Clooney and Ryan Gosling that other critics liked considerably more than I did.

But then the wheels really started coming off the wagon and fast.

In 2014 Clooney churned out the World War II drama, The Monuments Men, which went over like a lead balloon with a 30% critical score and 44% audience score at Rotten Tomatoes.

This was followed by the utterly abysmal, Matt Damon starring catastrophe Suburbicon, which cratered with a 28% critical and 25% audience score.

Then last Christmas Clooney gave us the cinematic equivalent of coal in our stockings with the limp, apocalyptic sci-fi of The Midnight Sky. And while critics gave it a 50% score at Rotten Tomatoes, audiences felt the same way about it that I did, loathing it to the tune of 26%.

Which brings us to Clooney’s latest directorial offering, The Tender Bar, which premiered on Amazon on December 7.

The Tender Bar is a coming-of-age story based on the popular memoir of J.R. Moehringer, a writer and journalist who was raised by a single mother on Long Island.

I’ve not read Moehringer’s memoir but I have to say, if his life is as dull, and insipid as Clooney’s film, then I genuinely feel sorry for the guy.

The Tender Bar feels like a two-hour episode of the late 80’s sitcom The Wonder Years minus the charm.  

Like The Wonder Years, The Tender Bar tells the story of a kid growing up on Long Island, features popular music of the day, and guides viewers with an all-knowing, voice-over narration. It’s also relentlessly sentimental and little more than a nostalgia delivery system.

Clooney still has sway among fellow actors in Hollywood so the cast of The Tender Bar includes notables like Lily Rabe playing J.R.’s mother, and Ben Affleck playing his cool Uncle Charlie.

While Affleck brings his movie star, cool guy A-game, the talented and terrific Rabe is under-utilized and left with next to nothing to do.

Tye Sheridan plays J.R. as a teen and young man, and despite his best efforts, he simply lacks the charisma and magnetism to carry a film like this.

Sheridan, like the rest of the cast, also mangles his Long Island accent. As someone with a plethora of family on Long Island, I couldn’t help but notice when many of the cast slipped into Boston accents instead of Long Island ones, which may have been a function of the film shooting in the Boston area.

The screenplay for The Tender Bar is written by Oscar-winner William Monahan, and is a disjointed and derivative piece of work that jumps from one dramatically incoherent and unsatisfying sequence to the next.

For instance, there’s a love story thrown into the film about halfway in that is so absurd as to be ridiculous, but it ends up, out of nowhere, being the major motivational force driving the feckless protagonist on his tedious journey.

But the majority of blame for The Tender Bar falls on the salt and pepper head of George Clooney.

Clooney as director, once again, brings nothing interesting or imaginative to the festivities, and he fails at even the most rudimentary of filmmaking tasks. For instance, his film skips or stumbles over the most easily attainable dramatic beats, and never gathers any storytelling momentum, or clearly sets out and accomplishes any narrative or character arcs.

The end result is a movie that is a staggeringly pedestrian, dramatically inert, cinematic venture.

Considering Clooney’s previously documented precipitous decline as a director, and The Tender Bar’s current tepid 52% critical score, I think it’s time for Clooney to hang up his director’s hat and go sit in his mansion made of gold and count his billions of dollars.

The entirely forgettable, sub-mediocrity of a movie that is The Tender Bar, isn’t a spectacular failure or the Hollywood equivalent of the Hindenburg. No, The Tender Bar is just one more monument to Clooney’s directorial malfeasance and a case of his filmmaking career going out with a whimper instead of a bang. Let’s all raise a glass and toast to Clooney’s latest dismal directorial effort being his last.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2022

The 355: A Review

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

My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. A dreadfully-made, abysmal girl power action movie misfire that wastes its all-star cast on a forgettable, formulaic, neo-feminist fantasy.

The 355, which premiered in theatres on January 7th, is another one of those pieces of girl power propaganda that is more interested in activism than entertainment.

The idea behind the movie was born when the film’s star, Jessica Chastain, spoke with writer/director Simon Kinberg about making a female led James Bond/Mission Impossible type of spy/action movie.

Kinberg then wrote an egregiously unimaginative script that featured a derivative plot and trite dialogue, and slapped female leads onto it as a twist. The end result is the almost instantaneously forgettable The 355.

The 355, the title of which is derived from Agent 355 – the codename for a female spy for America during the Revolutionary War, tells the story of a diverse group of female super spies from across the globe who come together to stop a deadly computer weapon which can infiltrate any system and crash everything from planes to stock markets, from falling into the wrong hands.

Of course, in order to check all the right boxes in this feminist fantasy and woke wet dream, the lady super spies must all be of different skin colors and ethnicities.

Jessica Chastain is the white CIA agent, Lupita Nyong’o the black MI6 agent, Diane Kruger the hard-edged German BND agent, Penelope Cruz the fish out of water Columbian DNI psychologist, and Fan Bingbing the mysterious Chinese MSS agent. It’s like the united colors of Benetton ads except with bad-ass lady super spies.

Not surprisingly, all of the heroes in the film are women, and all of the men are villains. These brave women fight to save the world from not only the murderous mansplaining misogyny of turncoats and terrorist but also from the structural sexism of the all-powerful patriarchy in the form of the web of corrupt global intelligence agencies.

What’s so disheartening about The 355 is that the film’s leading ladies are incredibly talented dramatic actresses, with six Oscar nominations among them (and two wins), but they are woefully ill-suited for an action movie.

Producer and star Chastain has made a great deal about how in order to keep costs for the film down she did many of her own stunts. Unfortunately, it shows. Chastain is among the best dramatic actresses in the business, but she, and her co-stars, are embarrassingly unathletic, and their fight and action scenes are uncomfortably awkward.

This is not to say that women can’t be action heroes, they can, Angelina Jolie and Charlize Theron are very good at that sort of thing for instance. It is to say that being an action hero requires an athleticism and physical presence that none of the women in The 355 even remotely possess.

Just like I wouldn’t want to see Jason Statham do Shakespeare, I don’t need to see gifted thespians Jessica Chastain, Penelope Cruz and Lupita Nyong’o attempting to do mindless action sequences.

Another issue with the film is that director Simon Kinberg, who has been a successful screenwriter for a long time in Hollywood – scripting Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Sherlock Holmes and X-Men: Days of Future Past among others, is simply not a proficient filmmaker.

Kinberg’s directorial shortcomings are on full display on The 355, as the poorly shot film is saddled with amateurish fight choreography and egregious editing errors.

Kinberg’s script is also painfully pedestrian, as he repeatedly uses tired tropes like ‘accidentally spilling drinks on a bad guy as a way to distract them and pick their pocket’ in order to keep the plot moving. His dialogue too is clunky and cliched, featuring such eye-rolling gems as ‘Because we’re spies, asshole!”, and “James Bond never had to deal with real life!”, which was followed up by the lament “James Bond always ends up alone.”

The 355, which was supposed to be released last January but was delayed due to Covid, has a production budget of $40 million, but despite being so economical (by Hollywood’s bloated standards), it faces an uphill battle to break even at the box office.

Spider-Man: No Way Home is simply an unstoppable juggernaut right now and the second rate The 355 is going to be lost deep in its box office shadow.

The film will also suffer because it’s just another in a long line of recent girl power propaganda movies that were obviously more focused on getting their neo-feminist “women should behave like men” message out rather than making a quality film.

Ghostbusters (2016), Ocean’s 8, Charlie’s Angels (2019), Terminator: Dark Fate, Birds of Prey and Black Widow, all put their neo-feminist message first and entertaining their audience second, and they either bombed or underperformed at the box office, struggling to break even.

The only reason many of the above-mentioned movies, as well as The 355, were made, was because they appeased the pussy hat wearing brigade by featuring women as action heroes.

The problem though is that The 355, and many of its predecessors, are just dreadful movies, and fairly or not, their failure is seen by many to be a referendum on not only the future of female led-films, but also on the insipid cultural politics these films espouse.

A wise man, and it was most assuredly a man, as pop culture tells me my gender compulsively mansplains things, once said, “get woke go broke”. In regards to The 355, that statement definitely holds true, as this shoddy, vacuously neo-feminist movie has earned the right to be entirely ignored.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Licorice Pizza: A Review

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

My Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT/SEE IT: A rather disappointing work from the usually brilliant PT Anderson that you can skip at the theatre and check out when it comes to a streaming service.

If Paul Thomas Anderson isn’t the greatest filmmaker working today, he is certainly in the discussion. From his earliest masterpiece Boogie Nights to his most recent, Phantom Thread, as well as with There Will Be Blood, The Master and Magnolia in between, Anderson has shown himself to be a true auteur and master craftsman.

After having suffered through this apocalyptically awful year of cinema, my hope was that PT Anderson would ride in and save the day with his newest film Licorice Pizza, which opened in L.A. and NY on November 26th and went nationwide on Christmas Day.

Unfortunately, Licorice Pizza cannot redeem 2021, as it is not a great film. Yes, it’s well shot and occasionally amusing, but also often meandering and repetitive. Ultimately, it’s little more than an endearing and pleasant but mostly forgettable movie. That said, cinema this year is the land of the lollipop kids and Licorice Pizza may very well be the tallest midget.

When glancing at PT Anderson’s filmography, it’s a staggering collection of brilliant works, and Licorice Pizza wouldn’t even come close to cracking his top 6, despite arguably being one of the best film’s of 2021, which is more an indictment of the cinema of 2021 than it is an endorsement of Licorice Pizza.

The film is a coming of age story that revolves around Gary, a 15 year old child actor, and Alana, a 25 (or so) year old ne’er do well, as they navigate their tumultuous friendship/relationship. Making their feature film debuts, Cooper Hoffman (Philip Seymour Hoffman’s son) plays Gary and Alana Haim (member of the pop-rock sister band Haim) plays Alana.

Cooper Hoffman and Alana Haim are fine in the film, a bit one-note, but fine. They aren’t particularly charismatic or compelling, but they aren’t repulsive either. They don’t seem overwhelmed on-screen, but they also don’t quite have the tools to do the work necessary to make the rather thin story work.

Less a coherent narrative than a series of loosely related vignettes, the film deftly transports the viewer back in time to Los Angeles in the 1970’s. The 70’s were a great time for music and a lack of bras, both of which are duly highlighted in Licorice Pizza.

This loose cinematic structure results in an often meandering movie that lacks heft, both dramatically and psychologically, and creates an absence of character evolution and dramatic arc.

The film’s decided lack of character arc, development and depth, and its superior sense of setting, transform the film into a “hang out” movie, one of my least favorite genre of film (other famous hang out movies are American Graffiti, Dazed and Confused and Frances Ha). Gone is a driving narrative and in its place the audience just gets to hang out and experience rather than being taken for a ride.

The one thing I found somewhat intriguing about Licorice Pizza was that it often seemed like a savvy but subtle meditation on American capitalism, as the movie’s de facto lead character, Gary, is incessantly entrepreneurial. Also feeding that notion are the featured gas shortages of that era - and their accompanying rage, as well as upper class tyrants like Jon Peters (a savage Bradley Cooper) and “Jack” Holden (Sean Penn) preying upon those beneath them.

The film is, not surprisingly, beautifully shot, with PT Anderson and Michael Bauman sharing Director of Photography credit, and boasts a terrific and well utilized soundtrack that features The Doors, Paul McCartney and Wings, David Bowie, Gordon Lightfoot and Blood, Sweat and Tears.

But while the beautiful visuals and luscious soundtrack elevate the movie, they also highlight its lack of substance and dramatic vigor. Licorice Pizza isn’t a case of the emperor having no clothes, it’s more a case of a beautiful wardrobe having no emperor.

There just isn’t enough meat on these bones to satisfy the most basic hunger for drama and character, and thus Licorice Pizza ultimately feels fanciful but also fleeting and forgettable.

The bottom line is that Licorice Pizza is a disappointment, a beautiful disappointment, but a disappointment none the less. If you’re a fan of PT Anderson, lower your expectations and try to find a 35 mm screening, and then it might be worth it. For everyone else, just wait for it to come out on a streaming service and check it out then…when you can “hang out” with it in the comfort of your own home.

©2021

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 55 - West Side Story

On this episode, Barry and I don our dance belts, flash our jazz hands and dance/fight over Steven Spielberg's remake of West Side Story. Topics discussed include pondering why on earth Spielberg would make this movie, Barry's resistance to Janusz Kaminski's cinematography and my brush with greatness starring Rita Moreno.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 55 - West Side Story

Thanks for listening!

©2021

Being the Ricardos: 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. This is a sub-mediocre, made-for-tv type of movie that is at times, insufferable.

Being the Ricardos, the Aaron Sorkin written and directed bio-pic that attempts to tell the tale of a very tumultuous week in the life of iconic comedienne Lucille Ball and her husband Desi Arnaz Jr., has been making headlines for all the wrong reasons.

The film itself, which made its streaming premiere on Amazon on Tuesday December 21st, is a rather pedestrian affair that suffers from an unsound narrative structure, tonal inconsistencies and a painfully poor script.

Sorkin’s writing style, which can best be describes as ‘walking, talking and exposition’, is an acquired taste, one which I have yet to acquire. I find his dialogue to be insufferable and his storytelling ability flaccid.

Making matters worse is that Sorkin’s quirky writing desperately needs a master craftsman director to make it work, like David Fincher on The Social Network, but Sorkin is a hack behind the camera and thus Being the Ricardos falls flat on its phony face.

The movie feels like a very special episode of a bad sitcom about a good sitcom. Adding to the lack of genuine drama is the fact that every sentient being with half a brain in their heads with a minimal relationship to the history of television knows exactly how the story ends. All of the drama is therefore devoid of any power.

But the reason Being the Ricardos is making headlines is not because it’s a mindless and middling affair. No, the film is getting attention because it’s mired in the most manufactured of controversies.  

Apparently the film committed the most unforgivable of sins by casting Oscar winning actor Javier Bardem as Arnaz opposite Oscar winning actress Nicole Kidman as Lucy. Why is Bardem playing Desi Arnaz a problem? Well, Bardem is a Spaniard and Arnaz a Cuban, which somehow violates some sacred woke law of diversity, inclusion and representation. To quote Colonel Kurtz from Apocalypse Now, “The Horror. The Horror.”

One know-nothing guardian of the grievance culture complained that Bardem was, like his Spanish ancestors, being a “colonizer” by playing the Cuban Arnaz.

“They (the Spanish) came in and erased who we (Latinos) were, and I can’t help but feel the same way when Bardem gets roles meant to share the Latinx experience.”

That bit of hysterical hyperbole overlooks the fact that many Hispanic and Latino families proudly identify not just with their national origins but with their distant Spanish roots out of class-consciousness, and that Desi’s wealthy, upper-class Cuban family most likely did too.

Director Sorkin tried to defend his casting of Bardem, saying, “it’s heartbreaking and a little chilling to see members of the artistic community resegregating ourselves.”

Considering Sorkin’s long-time, mealy-mouthed complicity with Hollywood’s diversity-obsessed woke warriors more interested in ‘representation’ than in artistry or quality, that statement is the equivalent of someone who made it rain outside complaining about the weather.

Another amusing thing about this contrived controversy is that no one is making a stink about Nicole Kidman, an Aussie non-comedienne, playing the most iconic American comedienne of all time, Lucille Ball. OK, Kidman may have technically been born in Hawaii, but to Australian parents only there on student visas. I’ve heard her ‘g’day mate’ accent and I bet she likes cricket, wombats, and ‘Men at Work’ too. She’s not a real American.

No one ever cares when British or Australian actors play Americans, and do so with their tone deaf, nasally attempts at an American accent. For instance, why isn’t there an uproar over Brit Tom Holland playing all-American hero Spider-Man, whose friendly neighborhood is Queens, New York? Are there no actors from Queens available?

These woke fools bitching about Bardem’s Spanish ancestry also rarely care when British actors of color, like Daniel Kaluuya, play African-Americans, like he did in Get Out and Judas and the Black Messiah.

The truth is, American actors of all colors and ethnicities miss out when British, Irish, Canadian and Australian actors play American roles. This injustice must be stopped!

Obviously, I’m joking. When casting, focusing on the specificity of an actor’s national background rather than their talent and skill is irrational and imbecilic and runs completely counter to the art and craft of acting.

As the ever-eloquent Bardem astutely pointed out in a Hollywood Reporter article,

“I’m an actor, and that’s what I do for a living: try to be people that I’m not. What do we do with Marlon Brando playing Vito Corleone? What do we do with Margaret Thatcher played by Meryl Streep? Daniel Day-Lewis playing Lincoln?...if we want to open that can of worms, let’s open it for everyone…we should all start not allowing anybody to play Hamlet unless they were born in Denmark.”

Bardem is a great actor, as evidenced by his Best Actor Oscar nominated performance as, ironically enough, gay Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas in the Julian Schnabel’s As Night Falls (2000).

His being attacked for his improper ethnic or national background is, unfortunately, something that is becoming common place in Hollywood when it comes to casting Latino roles.

For example, In the Heights shamelessly marketed itself as a celebration of diversity as its Asian director (John Chu), Latino writer (Lin Manuel-Miranda) and mostly Latino cast told the story of a Latino neighborhood in New York City. But the movie came under fire from the woke brigade for its lack of “Afro-Latinx” representation.

Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story was sold as the righting of a historical wrong as, unlike the 1961 original movie, it cast only Latinos in Latino roles. Some still complained though that the lead role, Maria, was played by a woman of Columbian descent instead of a Puerto Rican.

The funny thing about this Being the Ricardos casting controversy is that Javier Bardem and Nicole Kidman, despite not being Cuban or American respectively, and despite the vacuous script and dreadful direction guiding them, are the two best things in this awful movie.

Thankfully, neither actor tries to do an impersonation of their famous character. Instead they attempt to create actual human beings and not caricatures. Unfortunately, Sorkin’s script does not support them in this endeavor, but Kidman and Bardem should at least be recognized for their honest attempt, no matter how far they fall short.

The lessons that needs to be learned from Being the Ricardos and the surrounding casting contrvoersy are that, one - Aaron Sorkin is a truly terrible director. And two, within reason, we just need to let actors actually, you know, act…and we should leave the social justice preening for the college campus and the New York Times. Hollywood, its movies, its audiences, and the art of acting, would be much better served if we did.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 54 - Dopesick

On this combustible episode, Barry and I talk about the Barry Levinson produced Hulu mini-series Dopesick, which examines the opioid epidemic sparked by Purdue Pharma's alleged wonder drug Oxycontin. Topics discussed include Michael Keaton's brilliance, Purdue Pharma's villainy, the scourge of government and corporate corruption and the hell that is addiction. Love me or loathe me, if you’ve ever wanted the briefest of glimpses into the heart of darkness beating within me...listen to this episode, particularly the last ten minutes.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 54 - Dopesick

Thanks for listening!

©2021

West Side Story: A Review

****THIS FILM CONTAINS MILD SPOILERS!! THIS IS TECHNICALLY NOT A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! YOU’VE BEEN WARNED!! ****

My Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

 My Recommendation: SEE IT/SKIP IT. The music is great (it’s West Side Story for goodness sakes!). The movie is not. If you’re a musical theatre nerd, then see it in the theatre. But if you’re ambivalent on musicals or are just a straight-up cinephile, you can skip it and wait to see it on streaming when it comes available.

 When I heard that Steven Spielberg was remaking the 1961 classic film musical West Side Story, I wondered why the most powerful director on earth would do such a trite thing.

Spielberg can make any movie he wants, so why, when no one was clamoring for a re-make, would he re-make a movie classic that is not in need of a re-make?

Having seen the movie, I still have no answer to that question, except maybe that Spielberg was looking for a film where he could most clearly signal his virtue in the hopes of getting an Oscar.

In 1961, West Side Story, directed by Robert Wise and famed choreographer Jerome Robbins, featuring music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Steven Sondheim, and starring the luminous Natalie Wood and the glorious Rita Moreno, captured America’s imagination as well as an astounding ten Academy Awards.

West Side Story, of course, tells the Romeo and Juliet tale of star-crossed lovers, Tony and Maria, who are caught between rival gangs of working class whites, the Jets, and Puerto Rican immigrants, the Sharks.

The 1961 film is great for its time, but it’s been labelled “problematic” by the modern politburo of political correctness due to its alleged stereotypical presentation of Puerto Ricans, including using make-up to darken the skin of actors, as well as committing the mortal sin of casting non-Latina Natalie Wood in the lead role of Maria, a Puerto Rican girl.

Spielberg’s remake keeps the story and setting the same, but in order to get maximum virtue signaling value he imposes a sort of meta update by projecting the woke politics of our current age onto the production as a way to ‘right the wrongs of cinema history’ or something.

For example, Spielberg boldly declared “the first thing I said was every single Shark, boy and girl, needs to come from the Latinx communities. And without fail.”  How courageous…and to use the term “Latinx”…bravo!

To prove his progressive bona fides, Spielberg also has numerous critical scenes in the film where only Spanish is spoken, but refuses to ever use subtitles in order to “not give English the power”. Again…these aren’t just throwaway scenes, they’re critical and if you don’t speak Spanish you have no clue what’s happening. This tactic dramatically undermines the film and ends up leaving Spanish-only speaking viewers confused half the time and English-only speaking viewers confused the other half.

Another piece of pathetic pandering is that Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner have turned the character Anybodys, which in the original was a tomboy on the fringe of the story, into a more featured character that is transgender. They even added scenes to beef up the trans aspects of Anybodys, including one where they/them beats up not only a group of Jets but also cops. Apparently in Spielberg’s 1950’s New York, trans people have super powers. And without giving anything away, I have to say, the final line of dialogue spoken to Anybodys in the movie is the absolute cringiest thing you’ll ever see….just atrociously awful in the most Spielbergian way.

The marketing campaign for West Side Story is astounding as everyday there’s a cavalcade of articles promoting how politically correct the production was, and how important and noble its representation, diversity and inclusion.

I saw a similar level of hype and woke self-congratulations earlier this year with the movie In the Heights, the musical film based on the Tony award musical by establishment darling Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator and star of middlebrow juggernaut Hamilton.

In the Heights had a massive advertising blitz touting the movie’s diversity and ethnic storyline, and critics gushed over how important it was for diversity in film.

But then the narrative quickly turned as some wokesters complained that the cast of In the Heights didn’t have enough dark-skinned Latinos. So, the film that was supposed to be super woke ended up being derailed by wokeness. How poetic.

As a result of the controversy (and also because, despite critics adoration, it wasn’t any good), In the Heights bombed at the box office and faded into obscurity.

Spielberg’s pre-release pre-emptive defense will probably work, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some cracks already showing.

For instance, I saw an article titled, “Why can’t West Side Story just cast a Puerto Rican Maria?” in the Daily Beast. The writer is furious that Rachel Zegler, Maria in Spielberg’s film, is of Columbian and Polish descent and not from Puerto Rico.  

If you are a disciple of the religion of woke addicted to identity politics, then that argument holds a great deal of sway. Of course, it is egregiously restrictive artistically, but if those are the new rules of the game, then those are the new rules of the game.

The reality is that, in terms of actual identity, the Latino community is not a monolith, it’s a very diverse collection of very specific group identities (and of course within those group identities are very diverse people). Just like the Irish, English, Welsh and Scottish are very different and distinct people who don’t take kindly to being lumped together, the same is true for Puerto Ricans, who are not Columbians, who aren’t Mexicans, who aren’t Hondurans, who aren’t Panamanians, who aren’t Cubans, who aren’t Dominicans, who aren’t Puerto Ricans and on and on.

I tend to doubt this identity-based line of attack against West Side Story will gain much steam because Spielberg has the media so deep in his pocket. But with that said, there are other areas where the film could run afoul of the woke gatekeepers of the culture, most notably the fact that this story about minorities is being told by “straight white men” and that Ansel Elgort has been accused of sexual assault.

It will be fascinating to see if any of those “issues” derail the West Side Story train, and even if they don’t it will still be interesting to see how the film performs at the box office, as this year has been very cruel to movie musicals, as audiences have stayed away in droves. But this year’s movie musical failures, In the Heights, Dear Evan Hansen and Tick, Tick…Boom are different from West Side Story in one very important way…Steven Spielberg didn’t direct them.

As for the merits of Spielberg’s West Side Story, it’s obvious he’s desperate for Oscar recognition, hence the virtue signaling, and that may work despite the fact that his movie is, at best, relentlessly mediocre. Something else in his favor is that this year has been an utter catastrophe for the art of cinema, so his competition is extraordinarily slim.

On the bright side, West Side Story is shot well by acclaimed cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, and has some interesting visual flair to it, but it isn’t all that different cinematically from the original.

Another thing going for it is…well…it’s West Side Story. The music is terrific, although many of the performances of those great songs leave a lot to be desired.

Also noteworthy is actress Ariana DeBose, who plays Anita. DuBose is a vibrant and dynamic screen presence. In every scene in which she appears, she is the radiant sun and everyone else orbits around her and is blinded by her luminosity.

DuBose’s rendition of “America” and Spielberg’s direction of that sequence, is easily the best thing in the movie. That musical number crackles with a visceral vibrancy that is undeniable and is a joy to behold, most especially because DuBose is like a supernova on-screen during the performance.

As for the rest of the cast, particularly leads Rachel Zegler as Maria and Ansel Elgort as Tony, they are unimpressive. Ziegler and Elgort specifically are anemic performers, like two black holes of anti-charisma.

Elgort’s Tony is supposed to have just gotten out of prison after nearly killing a kid in a rumble (a change by Kushner from the original story), but Elgort doesn’t look like a tough guy, in fact, he looks like someone whose dance card would’ve been pretty full in the prison showers.

That’s always been a big issue with West Side Story, either today or back in 1961, and that is that the actors playing the Jets and the Sharks gang members are about as menacing as a modern jazz dance troupe…because that’s what they are.

Speaking of which, the distinctive Jerome Robbins choreography, which borders on the hysterical in the original when the gangs dance/fight, has been altered or replaced in the new movie, but Robbins’ dance DNA is still present and, as great as it is – and it is great, it still made me chuckle at times.

In keeping with this painfully awful year in movies, West Side Story is a consistently unremarkable piece of cinema, but as an example of shameless self-promotion, virtue signaling and woke pandering, it’s the bees knees.

The bottom line is that the last time Spielberg made a move with a shark in it, it turned out a hell of a lot better than this one.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 53 - King Richard

On this episode, Barry and I volley back and forth over the new Will Smith movie King Richard, which tells the story of Richard Williams, the father of tennis prodigies Venus and Serena Williams. Topics discussed include the sorry state of cinema in the age of mediocrity, the perils of the biopic and the problem of Will Smith. Included is a brief bonus chat about the upcoming Spielberg movie West Side Story.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 53 - King Richard

Thanks for listening!

©2021

The Power of the Dog: A Review

****THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS!! THIS IS NOT A SPOILER FREE REVIEW - YOU’VE BEEN WARNED!!****

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. A self-indulgent, dramatically inert and suffocatingly dull piece of empty Oscar-bait and arthouse fool’s gold that is as vapid as it is predictable and trite.

There has been a considerable amount of Oscar buzz and critical acclaim swirling around the new Netflix film The Power of the Dog, and understandably so, as it stars one-time Oscar nominee Benedict Cumberbatch and is written and directed by Jane Campion, who won a Best Original Screenplay Academy Award back in 1993 for The Piano.

The movie, based on Thomas Savage’s 1967 novel of the same name, tells the tale of the Burbank brothers, Phil (Cumberbatch) and George (Jesse Plemons), two cattle ranchers in Montana in 1925. The brothers are very different people, with Phil the grizzled, hard-edged cowboy and George the more reserved, rotund and less respected suit-wearer.

When George marries a local widow, Rose (Kirsten Dunst), and becomes step-father to her very “special” son Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee), the story takes a turn.

As a devotee of the arthouse, The Power of the Dog, which on its surface appears to be an intricate, gritty, western drama in the vein of Paul Thomas Anderson’s brilliant There Will Be Blood, would seem to be right up my alley.

After having watched the film all I can really say is looks can be deceiving.

Critics are fawning all over the self-indulgent, dramatically inert and suffocatingly dull The Power of the Dog, giving it a 95% rating at Rotten Tomatoes, but I think the only reason for that is because the film is allegedly a mediation on “toxic masculinity” and it’s directed by a woman.  

For instance, Brian Truitt of USA Today gushed over the movie declaring it “a picturesque, enthralling exploration of male ego and toxic masculinity, crafted by an extremely talented woman…”

Peter Travers of ABC ejaculated, “Can Jane Campion’s western about toxic masculinity and repressed sexuality win Netflix its first best Picture Oscar? Let’s just say that no list of the year’s best movies will be complete without this cinematic powder keg.”

The problem with these critics, and with director Jane Campion, is that apparently, they not only have no idea what great cinema is anymore, but they also have absolutely no idea what genuine masculinity is either, nevermind its toxic variety.

The biggest example of that is the praise Benedict Cumberbatch is receiving for his portrayal of Phil, the supposedly toxically masculine cowboy who bullies and berates those around him with abandon.

I like Benedict Cumberbatch as an actor, but let’s be honest, he isn’t exactly the picture of robust masculinity. In fact, he is so miscast as Phil that watching him strut and prance around in his cowboy regalia and put on a faux tough guy pose, takes on a most comical of airs. The main reason for that is Cumberbatch’s inherent delicateness and utter lack of manliness.

Phil needs to be a menacing, ominous physical presence, but Cumberbatch is a dainty posh Englishman and with his mannered American accent he comes across, as they say in Texas, as ‘all hat and no cattle’.

Phil is supposed to be an emasculating bully – so much so that, just like Jane Campion slaughters subtlety, he actually castrates young bulls by hand. But Phil comes across less like a bully and more like a High School mean girl brat who isn’t going to beat anyone up but sure as hell will say something catty and hurtful.

One of the main targets of Phil’s “toxic masculinity” is Rose’s teenage son Peter. Peter is a painfully thin, very effeminate young man who dresses like a dandy and likes to make flowers out of paper. Just so audiences are made completely aware of how effeminate the character is, and also so that nuance can be completely dispatched and unintentional comedy heightened to the maximum, when Peter is demeaned by Phil and a bunch of ranch hands at a dinner, he responds by going out behind the house and frantically blowing off steam by using a hula hoop. No, I’m not making that up.

The film’s insight regarding masculinity and its toxicity is as deep as a pool of cow’s piss on a flat rock. For example, not to ruin the surprise for you, but… in a plot twist you could see coming from miles away like a steam train crossing the plains on a cloudless morning…the reason Phil is a mean-spirited son of a bitch is because he’s a closet case homosexual.

Let’s be clear, you don’t exactly need the most advanced form of gaydar to see Phil’s hidden, super-secret sexual yearnings. Phil’s sexual proclivities are pretty obvious when he’s waxing nostalgic about his dead friend Bronco Henry as he delicately strokes Henry’s old saddle.

One of the few things I did like about The Power of the Dog was its score by Radiohead guitarist Johnny Greenwood. But even that has its downside, as Greenwood’s score for The Power of the Dog is very reminiscent of his score for There Will Be Blood…and conjuring that masterpiece does no favors to this flaccid film.  

Come to think of it, I suppose The Power of the Dog is sort of like a cross between There Will Be Blood and Brokeback Mountain, but just without the powerful performances, insightful scripts or deft direction.

Ultimately, The Power of the Dog is not man’s best friend because it’s a movie about masculinity made by people who know nothing about the subject. It’s empty Oscar-bait and arthouse fool’s gold that is nothing more than a symptom of the plague of mediocrity that is currently ravaging the art of cinema.

So don’t waste your time on The Power of the Dog as this mangy old mutt needs to be taken out behind the barn and put out of its misery.  

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

House of Gucci: 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. This star-studded, dramatically incoherent, big-budget soap opera isn’t so bad it’s good, it’s just really bad.

It is somewhat ironic that this Thanksgiving iconic director Ridley Scott has bestowed upon audiences an absolute turkey of a movie filled with an inexcusable and excessive amount of ham.

The turkey of a movie of which I speak is the remarkably ridiculous House of Gucci, and the ham is supplied by the cavalcade of over-acting movie stars among its cast, including Lady Gaga, Adam Driver, Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons, Jared Leto, and Salma Hayek.

House of Gucci, which is currently only available in theatres, attempts to tell the based-on-a-true-story of the Gucci family fashion empire in the 1980’s into the 1990’s, particularly the courtship, then tumultuous marriage, between the heir to the Gucci throne, Maurizio Gucci (Adam Driver), and Patrizia Reggiani (Lady Gaga), a sexy and sassy daughter of a blue-collar trucking business impresario.

Maurizio’s family has mixed reactions to his marriage with the ever-ambitious and insistent Patrizia. Maurizio’s father, Rodolfo (Jeremy Irons), sees her as a social climber to be shunned. Rodolfo’s brother and business partner Aldo, sees Patrizia as a potential opportunity to gain more control over the family business by pulling Maurizio away from his father and over to him.  

House of Gucci starts off as somewhat of a misplaced love story, but then devolves into a sprawling and scattershot piece of corporate palace intrigue and capitalism porn.

The characters wear highly fashionable, gorgeous clothes, drive ludicrously fantastic cars and live in astonishingly lavish homes and high-rise apartments.

But all of this ostentatious display of wealth and beauty doesn’t give the characters any depth or dimension, nor does it conjure any genuine drama or aid in making the story coherent.

All it really does is make House of Gucci a very well-budgeted, high-end, melodramatic soap-opera.

I suppose the argument could be made that the vapid, vacuous and venal characters in the movie are meant to represent the fact that the decade featured in the film, the 1980’s, was the height of vapidity, vacuousness and venality, but I think that gives the film too much credit.

The movie doesn’t feel in on the joke of its empty campiness because it too frequently vacillates in tone from feverish fun to strenuous seriousness.

The most asinine irritating thing about the movie though is the obscene and absurd amount of over-acting in which the cast indulges.

Al Pacino and Jared Leto, the Ali and Frazier of over-acting, pull absolutely no punches in House of Gucci. These two bulls in the acting China shop chew more scenery than the pampered Gucci cows in bucolic Italian towns who provide the leather for over-priced handbags.

Leto, who is unrecognizable as the dim-witted Paolo Gucci – son of Aldo and cousin to Maurizio, is particularly awful, as his over-bearing Italian caricature makes Don Novello’s comic SNL character Father Guido Sarducci look like Marcello Mastroianni in La Dolce Vita.

Not to be outdone, Jeremy Irons brings his ham-fisted ‘A-game’ to keep up with his inane co-stars in this unbridled ham-fest. Irons is so completely committed to caricature his eyes look like Gucci sunglasses even on the rare occasions he isn’t wearing them.

But the queen of over-acting in House of Gucci is unquestionably Lady Gaga, who brings enough ham to the festivities to feed the world for the foreseeable future. Watching the thirsty Gaga, sporting a bizarre Transylvanian accent for some reason, pout and preen through a multitude of hair and costume changes like a cheap tart at a red-light street, but never once resemble an actual human being, is astonishing to behold.

Adam Driver avoids the over-acting bug, but he is terribly miscast in the film all the same, just like he was miscast in Scott’s The Last Duel. Driver, who looks like one of Dr. Frankenstein’s early discarded attempts, seems perpetually miscast to me, but maybe he isn’t miscast, maybe he’s just a bad actor.

Director Ridley Scott is one of the great filmmakers of his generation whose body of work includes such phenomenal films as Alien, Blade Runner, Thelma and Louise, Gladiator, Blackhawk Down and Matchstick Men.

In comparison, House of Gucci feels like a very cheap Ridley Scott knock-off you could get from a street corner vendor for next to nothing.

Scott is now 83 years-old and the fact that House of Gucci is the second film he’s released this year along with The Last Duel, is utterly astonishing. It’s also unfortunate. Hopefully he’s able to make a few more quality films, like the flawed The Last Duel, in his golden years in order to get the rancid taste of House of Gucci out of movie-goers mouths.

I know you’re supposed to leave them laughing, but in the case of House of Gucci – which is sure to be a massive flop at the box office, it would feel like audiences are laughing at Ridley Scott and not with him as he nears the exit of his career, and that would be a tragedy for such a brilliant artist.

About an hour and a half into the two hour and thirty-seven-minute House of Gucci, in one of those rare moments where a film unintentionally tells the truth about itself, Adam Driver’s Maurizio sternly says to Lady Gaga’s Patrizia, “You’re humiliating yourself!”

My reaction to that dialogue was to nod and say aloud to myself in the very empty theatre where I saw the film, “I concur”. Everyone involved with this movie is humiliating themselves, myself included for having seen it.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

King Richard: A Review

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!!!! THIS REVIEW IS SPOILER FREE!!!****

My Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT/SKIP IT. This is a predictable yet pleasant enough bio-pic that isn’t great but is a benign, family friendly, moderately entertaining movie that should have enough broad-based appeal for people of different stripes to watch together over the holidays.

As neither a fan of the Williams sisters nor of Will Smith, I expected to dislike King Richard, the new bio-pic starring Smith as Richard Williams, the father of tennis prodigies Venus and Serena Williams, who aided his daughters as they navigated the violence of gang-infested Compton, California and the entitlement of the lily-white tennis world.

I assumed King Richard, executive produced by the Williams sisters, would sing the same tune that Venus and Serena and their fans often croon, namely crying racism over the most banal of critiques and shamelessly playing the victim card whenever possible.

But then I watched the movie and was pleasantly surprised by the appeal of its broad-based message and how moderately enjoyable I found it to be.

To be clear, King Richard, currently in theatres and streaming on HBO Max, is not a great movie or artistic achievement. It’s a formulaic, relentlessly middlebrow, crowd-pleasing sports movie/bio-pic that is devoid of any true suspense or tension as we all know how the story turns out, with Richard crowned the king of the sports dads as Venus and Serena win 30 Grand Slam singles titles between them.

The sports movie/bio-pic genre almost always demands that the rough edges of its characters be smoothed away in order to make the simplistic story go down smoother with audiences, and King Richard is no exception.

In real life Richard Williams is a much more complicated man than the hagiography of King Richard would ever explore. For instance, Richard has always been a force of nature when it comes to protecting his daughters and advancing their careers, but he’s also a philanderer who has fathered children with other women and is prone to levels of self-aggrandizement and egotism that would make Barnum and Bailey blush.

But with all that said, the most compelling thing about King Richard is that it’s an all-American story about a dedicated working-class guy, Richard Williams, who dreamed up his daughter’s tennis dominance even before they were born, wrote it out in a 78-page manifesto, and then went out and moved heaven and earth to make it happen.

Richard was driven, maniacal and controlling when it came to his daughters, and pushed them extremely hard, and despite, or maybe even because of, their race they became ridiculously successful and wealthy, and unlike say Tiger Woods, they did so without becoming self-destructive.

That’s an incredible story, Shakespearean in its family dynamics and emotional power, and while King Richard is a better story than it is a movie, that story is powerful enough to make the movie worth watching.

As it is in nearly everything these days, the specter of racism is certainly present in King Richard, but considering the hyper-sensitive, victimhood celebrating, grievance culture in which we live, it is never egregiously heavy-handed.

In fact, one of the more fascinating revelations in the film is that the Williams family had as many obstacles to overcome in their black community of Compton in the form of violence, jealousy and negativity, as they did in the parochial, white dominated infrastructure of the tennis world.  

When the notion of racism does bubble to the surface, it does so in ways that aren’t so black and white. For example, there’s a scene smack dab in the middle of the movie where Richard becomes incensed when a white agent who is trying to sign Venus Williams says that what Richard has accomplished with his daughters is “incredible”.

An offended Richard cuts through the niceties of this business meeting and rants at the agent that the only reason he used the word “incredible” is because of Richard’s race. When the agent protests this charge, Richard defiantly farts and indignantly walks away.

What is so striking about this scene is that literally the only reason there’s a movie about Richard Williams’ “incredible” accomplishment is because he and his daughters are black. This is why we aren’t watching a bio-pic about Martina Navratilova’s father, or Chris Evert’s father, or Roger Federer’s father. Richard Williams has built an entire brand and persona around he and his daughters overcoming the supposed limitations imposed on them because of their race, and King Richard is proof of that.

This scene feels insightful, even if unintentionally so, as it perfectly sums up the current minefield of racial dialogue, where no matter what a white person says, it’s twisted into being perceived as racist.

As for Will Smith, I’ve always found him to be one of the more grating entities in entertainment. His acting, just like his insipidly embarrassing music, is always manipulative and manufactured, as is his persona.

Thankfully, in King Richard, Will Smith doesn’t so much make his cheesiness disappear as he does mute it. His performance isn’t transcendent or even all that good, but thankfully it isn’t distracting. For his middling efforts I’m sure he’ll be rewarded with an Academy Award come Oscar time.

Smith is working over time for an Oscar this time around. To coincide with the release of this Oscar-bait movie, he has released his autobiography so that he can be out working the Oscar circuit under teh guise of pushing his book.

The contents of the book, from what I can gather from news reports, is part of his Oscar push as well.

Apparently in the book, Smith talks about how he was such a committed Method actor early in his career that it messed with his marriage. Smith claims that he never broke character even off-set while working on his 1993 film Six Degrees of Separation, so much so that he fell in love with Stockard Channing, his co-star who is 24 years his senior.

To be clear, Smith doesn’t say he had an affair with Channing, only that he fell in love with her because he was so committed to his craft. Channing has basically responded by saying “that’s nice”.

What makes this story so ridiculous and incredulous, and so predictably manufactured and contrived, is that Will Smith was such a committed Method Actor while filming Six Degrees of Separation, that he quite famously refused to kiss a man on screen despite his character being gay. This was well reported at the time but Smith is pretending like it didn’t happen. It did, and part of why it did is that Denzel Washington was the one who advised Smith not to kiss a man on-screen.

I’m sorry, but if you’re a committed “Method Actor” (the actual definition of which has been so distorted and contorted by public mis-perception as to be useless, particularly from a acting teacher point of view) and yet you won’t do something on-screen because it will damage “your brand”, then you aren’t an actor, your a celebrity. Will Smith is now, and always has been, a celebrity, not an actor or artist.

Obviously, anyone who has ever seen Will Smith act knows he isn’t committed to his craft or art or anything of the sort, but only to his ego, his image and his career. Further proof of this is his “music” career, where he churned some of the most fucking horrendous and embarrassingly awful music in the history of rap with the cornball cheesiness that was “Parents Just Don’t Understand”.

The goal for Will Smith as a rapper and as an actor is to be famous, not to be an artist. Unfortunately, he’ll probably win an Oscar this year for simply not being as awful as he usually is…what can you do?

As for King Richard, while isn’t a great film, it is an inspiring one. Hopefully audiences learn the proper lesson of the value of hard work, self-discipline and familial love from the movie, as opposed to it inspiring a cavalcade of parent/coaches to try and turn their poor kids into lottery tickets through sports.

Ultimately, the best thing about King Richard is that it’s a benign, mildly entertaining, family friendly movie that people of varying philosophical dispositions and artistic tastes gathering together for the holidays can watch without having it spark arguments. That’s no small feat and something for which to be thankful in these polarizing times.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 51 - Finch

On this episode of everybody's favorite cinema podcast, Barry and I head to the post-apocalyptic world of Finch, the new Apple TV + movie starring Tom Hanks. Topics discussed include a Tom Hanks holiday, a list of his best movies, yearning for a Mel Gibson cameo, and lessons learned taking care of sick dogs.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 51 - Finch

Thanks for listening!

©2021

The Cinephile with Michael McCaffrey: Eternals

On this episode of The Cinephile with Michael McCaffrey I review the newest Marvel monstrosity Eternals.

Thanks for watching!

©2021

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 49 - Dune

On this episode, Barry and I head to Arrakis to ponder Denis Villaneuve's sprawling space epic Dune. Topics touched upon include Villaneuve's appealing style but curious lack of brand, Jason Mamoa as a force of nature, and Barry's highly erotic and inappropriate man-crush on Timothee Chalamet.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 49 - Dune

Thanks for listening!

©2021

Succession is Glorious Fun, but the Oligarchical Media Empire it Dramatizes is a Harsh Reality

HBO’s ‘Succession’ is a glorious guilty pleasure but the oligarchical family run media empire it dramatizes is actually a horrifying and harsh reality.

Four families control the majority of American media, and the Roy family of ‘Succession’ is an entertaining and clever amalgam of the dysfunction of them all.

Succession, HBO’s deliriously addictive and seductive soap opera that follows the travails of the Roy family dynasty and their media and business empire, is back in full swing for its highly anticipated third season.

The show is obviously a work of fiction, but the blueprint of the story is frighteningly familiar to anyone paying attention to our ever-consolidating media landscape lorded over by an oligarchy of just four families.

If you’ve not seen it, Succession is a sort of Shakespearean stew of palace intrigue set in the uber-wealthy and powerful world of monopolized media’s master class. It’s kind of what you’d get if you tossed King Lear, Richard III, Macbeth and Hamlet into a witch’s brew with the Murdoch, Redstone, Cox and Roberts families that control most of America’s media market.

The Roy family of Succession, with patriarch Logan and sons Kendall, Roman and Connor and daughter Siobhan, is most often likened to the media mogul Murdoch family.

The 80-year-old Logan, played with scowling ferocity by the inimitable Bryan Cox, is reminiscent of Rupert Murdoch’s combative and domineering leadership of NewsCorp. Logan’s sprawling media conglomerate Waystar RoyCo and its conservative cable news channels certainly bear a resemblance to the star-spangled simp-fest of Fox News.

Logan’s dueling sons Kendall, exquisitely portrayed by Jeremy Strong, and Roman, a fantastic Kieran Culkin, also bear some similarities to Murdoch’s sons, James and Lachlan, as does their internecine warfare to find favor with, or advantage over, their powerful father.

The scandal that befalls Waystar RoyCo, with accusations of sexual misconduct and the like, is also eerily familiar to the tawdry accusations that knee-capped Fox News and its leader Roger Ailes and star Bill O’Reilly.

But the Murdochs aren’t the only family dynasty running a media empire for Succession to emulate. Another is the Redstone family, long led by Sumner Redstone, who died in 2020.

Sumner’s media empire of Viacom/CBS/Paramount certainly resembled Waystar, and his personal life is akin to Logan Roy’s too, as it’s littered with adultery, charges of cruelty and failed relationships with women.

The most striking resemblance though between Logan Roy and Sumner Redstone is that they both have/had ambitious daughters. Logan’s daughter, Siobhan, gloriously portrayed by the beguiling Sarah Snook, is making a calculated bid for the family throne, similar to Sumner’s daughter Shari, who battled with her father over control of the family business and ultimately took over his vast empire after his death.

Sumner’s son, Brent, who in Roy-esque fashion sued his father and sister Shari, and was eventually bought out after he was removed from the board of Viacom’s parent company National Amusements.

Besides the Murdochs and the Redstones, the Cox and Roberts families are also Succession-like dynasties whose family business is media empire.

Cox Enterprises, with its major subsidiaries Cox Communications and Cox Media Group, is run by James Cox Kennedy, grandson of the company’s founder, James M. Cox, a two-time Governor of Ohio.

Kennedy’s earthy mother, Barbara Cox Anthony, and his cosmopolitan aunt, Anna Cox Chambers, long had controlling intertest of the family empire in spite of their love/hate, very distant relationship, which seems eerily similar to Logan Roy’s relationship with his estranged brother Ewan Roy.

Kennedy eventually took over the massive company from his aunt at the age of 41, and while the aristocratic Cox family isn’t as prone to paparazzi or media prying as the Redstones and Murdochs, they’re just as powerful.

The same is true of the Roberts family, which founded and runs mammoth telecommunications conglomerate Comcast. Billionaire Brian L. Roberts took over Comcast at the tender young age of 31 from his father Ralph and now runs the media monster that includes NBC/Universal.

Brian’s ascent to corporate power was swift, but despite siblings having no interest in the family business, he still solidified his powerful position as CEO and Chairman by pulling up the drawbridge and literally having his leadership written into Comcast’s articles of incorporation. There will be no sibling coup d’etat at Comcast.

The same is certainly not true on Succession which is why it’s such a fun show to watch. But despite being an eminently compelling and entertaining piece of capitalism porn, the reality it dramatizes is both horrifying and dispiriting.

Having just four families be the movers, shakers and opinion makers controlling so much of America’s media, controlling discourse, manufacturing consent and silencing dissent, is detrimental to democracy if not terminal to the republic.

These aristocrats and oligarchs, despite their pretentious and vacuous displays of philanthropy, are populated by spoiled and sadistic monsters who only care about preserving the status quo in order to secure and ensure their egregious wealth and power.

These monopolist corporate tyrants use their wealth and propaganda power to influence politicians tasked with regulating them to get further expansion of their family businesses, so that they can then use their expanded wealth and propaganda power to further pressure politicians to allow further expansion of their wealth and propaganda power. This endless cycle of corruption is corroding the core foundations of American democracy as it allows these family run media misinformation manufacturers to keep the public perpetually disinformed and deceived.

Ultimately, we can turn off Succession and walk away from its spectacle of egregious privilege and dramatic display of family intrigue, but unfortunately reality is just a less entertaining but more depressing version of the same insidious disease.

I love Succession, I just wish it was total fantasy and not a terrifyingly real glimpse of the four oligarchical families manipulating our minds through their mendacious media machines.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Colin in Black and White: Miniseries Review and Commentary

Colin Kaepernick’s new Netflix autobiography ‘Colin in Black and White’ is the Super Bowl of self-pitying narcissism that reveals hims to be an entitled, self-absorbed jerk.  

Colin in Black and White is the new mini-series on Netflix that dramatizes Colin Kaepernick’s teenage years where he struggles against racism and to be taken seriously as a quarterback.

Kaepernick, if you’ll remember, once led the San Francisco 49ers to the Super Bowl and made a name for himself by kneeling during the national anthem at NFL games to protest against racial injustice, police brutality and systematic oppression.

I utterly loathe flag fetishism as a mindless display of vacuousness, so I never had a problem with Kaepernick’s protests. I disagree with him on some of the specifics of his stance, but I always respected his kneeling. The way I see it, if the NFL wants to turn their games into de facto celebrations of militarism, then players kneeling shouldn’t be beyond the pale.

I also think it’s obvious that Kaepernick was unjustly black-balled by the league for his protests. While I admit that Kaepernick is a very specific and unique QB talent and that his skill set isn’t a fit on every team, it’s ludicrous to think he couldn’t at least have been a back-up somewhere. Of course, that brings up the question of whether he would accept that secondary role and at a price below what he thinks he deserves.

The reason I mention my moderate stance on the controversial Kaepernick is because I want to make it clear I went into watching Colin in Black and White without an axe to grind against the man, quite the opposite actually.

Having said that, let me tell you that Colin in Black and White isn’t just an amateurish tv show so awful it would be laughable as an after school special, it also exposes Kaepernick as being quite a despicable and deplorable human being.

This show is like the Super Bowl of self-pitying narcissism and Kaepernick is Bart Starr, Joe Montana and Tom Brady wrapped into one.

The series opens by literally transforming the NFL combine into a slave auction. Besides the fact that the NFL combine is something so elitist most football players of any race can only ever dream about attending, and that players at the combine have worked their whole lives to get there and are competing to become draft picks and multi-millionaires with generational wealth who’ll be worshiped like gods in our culture…yeah…the combine is EXACTLY like a slave auction.

Colin Kaepernick’s ignorance about the horrors of actual slavery is to be expected though since his social justice warrior pose and victimhood addiction apparently makes him blind, deaf and dumb regarding Nike, the company he has a big endorsement deal with that uses slave labor to make its profits. Of course, Nike is immune from Kaepernick’s social justice posing because they give him a fair share of their blood money.

It’s equally absurd witnessing real-life Colin watch and comment as his teenage screen version pouts and preens like a cheap tart at a red-light street over his anger and disappointment that the best colleges in the country want to give him a baseball scholarship, and Major League Baseball wants to draft him and give him a million-dollar signing bonus, and the prettiest white girls in school throw themselves at him, while all little Colin wants is to get a scholarship to play QB and have a black girlfriend. Boo fucking hoo.

What really turned my stomach though about Colin in Black and White is that Kaepernick’s adoptive, working-class white parents, insipidly portrayed by Mary Louise Parker and Nick Offerman, are depicted as vapid racist caricatures.

The fact that Kaepernick, who co-created this series with Ava Duvernay, would belittle, demean and slander the couple (who are still alive) that raised, loved and nurtured him from infancy, and shelled out big bucks by paying for travel baseball and high-end specialized QB coaches to help him achieve his dream, is repugnant and repulsive.

In one episode where Kaepernick’s adoption is briefly explored, the show frames his soon-to-be parents as deciding to adopt Colin only after another adoption falls through. Kaepernick then chimes in with his woe-is-me wail that “since the day I was born, I’ve never been anyone’s first choice.”

Again, boo fucking hoo Kaepernick, you sad sack clown. Your parents actually chose you. They got up in the middle of the night to feed you and change you, they held you and loved you, they gave everything to you and they moved heaven and earth to make your dreams come true, and because they’re a different skin color than you, you reward them, not with gratitude, or respect, or love, but with a tv show that bends over backwards to publicly ridicule them. That says more about you, Kaepernick, than it does about your parents.

Of course, Kaepernick turns everything into racism because he’s a nitwit incapable of understanding anything else. So, when he and his parents disagree over the usual things teenagers and parents disagree over…hair styles, facial hair, wardrobe, choice in girlfriends, Colin sees this as proof of the racist conspiracy against him.

Due to Kaepernick’s desperate need for victimhood, everyone is racist in his eyes…coaches, referees, umpires, opposing fans, opponents, hotel employees, his parents. The fact that schools weren’t tripping over Kaepernick too is because of racism.

The word that kept popping into my head as I watched this self-pitying shitshow was pathetic.  There is absolutely nothing quite as egregiously pathetic as a grown man wallowing in long past perceived slights from adolescence. Nothing.

Adding to the idiocy is that Kaepernick, dressed all in black with a massive afro, looking like Morpheus from The Matrix wearing a wig as a joke, interjects various tidbits of racial knowledge throughout the show. Kaepernick is so hysterically ridiculous in these segments he seems like a character from Dave Chappelle on The Chappelle Show or Eddie Murphy on Saturday Night Live.

On the bright-side, Jaden Michael plays teenage Kaepernick on the show, and as bad as the show is, he’s terrific. Despite not having a lick of athleticism in his body, he’s a compelling screen presence and an actor who conveys an intriguing inner life. He’s a talent to watch.

A talent not to watch is Colin Kaepernick, whose NFL career is most certainly over, and considering his dead-eyed appearance on the self-serving, self-aggrandizing, self-pitying, celebration of delusional victimhood, Colin in Black and White, which reveals his truly loathsome nature and intellectual midgetry, one can only hope he disappears from the public eye as well. The sooner the better.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Dopesick: Miniseries Review and Commentary

Hulu’s new opioid epidemic drama, Dopesick, is a must-see mini-series in the age of vaccine mandates.

The series dramatizes the mendacity and corruption of big pharma and lays bare how the powerful in business and government callously and cruelly harm regular folks for ungodly profits and unchallenged power.

Dopesick, the new dramatic mini-series about the opioid crisis on Hulu, is a flawed show, but despite its shortcomings, it’s most definitely must-see television.

The eight-episode series is compulsory viewing because in this age of vaccine mandates, where anything short of unabashed adoration of big pharma and government health agencies, as well as compulsive compliance to their edicts, leaves you ostracized from society, it lays bare the corrosive corruption of capitalism on “science” and exposes egregious government complicity with a pharmaceutical company that directly led to the holocaust of the opioid epidemic.

Dopesick is based upon Beth Macy’s non-fiction book of the same name and that, as well as ‘Pain Killer: An Empire of Deceit and the Origin of America’s Opioid Epidemic’ by Barry Meier, ‘American Overdose: The Opioid Tragedy in Three Acts’ by Chris McGreal, and ‘Dreamland’ by Sam Quinones, should be mandatory reading for everyone in order to understand the scope and scale of the opioid epidemic as well as the sinister machinations that launched it.

The Hulu mini-series tells the story of the hell unleashed when OxyContin hit the market. Unfortunately, the performances can sometimes be a bit uneven, and the show also does falter when it unnecessarily gets distracted with woke pandering on feminist and LGBT issues, but thankfully that irritant doesn’t diminish the vital tale of big pharma mendacity and government malfeasance at the heart of the story.

Some of the interesting stories featured include Dr. Finnix (a terrific Michael Keaton), a small-town doctor who gets seduced first by the drug company and then by the drug itself, Betsy Mallum (Kaitlyn Dever), a working-class girl who became a slave to Oxy and Federal Prosecutor Rick Mountcastle (Peter Sarsgaard) and DEA agent Bridget Meyer (a dismal Rosario Dawson), both swimming against the tide as they try to hold Purdue Pharma accountable for the carnage it has unleashed.

Also dramatized are the wholly dysfunctional Sackler clan, owners of Purdue Pharma.

The Sacklers are a greedy and loathsome bunch. Arthur Sackler invented medical marketing back in the 1940’s and 50’s, and came up with Valium as “mother’s little helper”, also creating a use for the drug to treat the ever-amorphous ailment of general anxiety.

Arthur’s nephew Richard Sackler (Michael Stuhlbarg) attempted much the same with OxyContin.

In the late 1980’s, Purdue Pharma was in danger of losing its patent on MS Contin, a morphine pill for cancer patients that was the company’s main source of income, and would face a financial calamity when cheaper generic versions of the drug hit the market.

It was in this desperation that OxyContin, a longer lasting version of the opioid oxycodone, was born. The drug was introduced in 1996 and was aggressively promoted.

Purdue created dummy pain organizations and media outlets as their propaganda division to push the narrative of an “epidemic of untreated pain” ravaging America. These organizations, like the American Pain Society, lobbied the medical establishment to make pain the “fifth vital sign”, and succeeded.

Remarkably, Purdue then got the FDA, despite no studies showing this claim to be true, to allow the company to put a label on OxyContin saying that danger of addiction was extremely low. In a stunning coincidence, the FDA official who granted this extraordinary label request, Curtis Wright, months later left the FDA to take a $400,000 job at…Purdue Pharma.

Purdue then unleashed its hyper-aggressive salesforce armed with the carrot of gifts, free meals and vacations, as well as the stick of lawsuits from patients if doctors didn’t prescribe Oxy, into medical offices specifically targeted by a database that focused on painkiller prescriptions, disability claims and loose regulations.  

The salesforce was also armed with a plethora of dubious marketing materials that claimed “less than 1%” of users will become addicted to Oxy.

The sales staff referenced the Porter-Jick study as proof of the ‘less than 1%” claim, and that became the cornerstone of the “pain treatment” movement and was even taught in medical schools across the country.

The stunning revelation about the Porter-Jick study is that it isn’t a study at all. It’s just the anecdotal observations of a crank doctor complaining in a five-sentence letter to the editor in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Purdue’s strategy only became more dubious and depraved as time wore on.

Oxy was supposed to work for 12 hours a dose, but for many people the effect didn’t last nearly that long. Purdue called this issue, “breakthrough pain”, which sounds an awful lot like “breakthrough infections” in regard to Covid.

“Breakthrough pain” was treated by doubling the dose. When the 10mg fails, you go to 20mg, then to 40mg…on up to the mother of all pills the 160mg.

When addiction quickly followed, Purdue claimed that the signs and symptoms of addiction weren’t really addiction, it was an ailment called “pseudo-addiction”, and pseudo-addiction is really just untreated pain and the only remedy for it is…you guessed it…more OxyContin.

The answer to everything was more OxyContin. And of course, with more Oxy comes more addiction, more death, more suffering, more despair, and more profits.

A similar paradigm seems to be in play regarding Covid vaccines, which when they fail results in calls for boosters, which in turn leads to more profit for big pharma. Like with the financial collapse of 2007/2008, failure can be remarkably profitable for big shots.

To be clear, I’m not advocating for or against vaccines, I’m advocating for critical thinking. The gullible and the goaded are fools to take big pharma or government’s word for gospel truth, be it about Covid, WMDs, or anything else, especially when profit and power can be gained by lying. As Dopesick teaches us, the wisest approach is skepticism regarding big pharma and government’s claims and cynicism regarding their motives.

Ultimately, Dopesick is a worthy watch because it tells the ugly truth about what the powerful are willing to do to regular folks, up to and including killing them, in order to make an ungodly profit.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Dune: A Review

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

My Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT/SKIP IT. A visual marvel but ultimately a rather barren drama. Readers of the book will follow the action and bask in the film’s staggeringly sumptuous cinematography, but neophytes to the story will be left completely dumbfounded.

Dune, Frank Herbert’s classic sci-fi novel, has long been deemed “unfilmable”, and depending on your perspective regarding director Denis Villeneuve’s new ambitious big budget adaptation, that label may very well still apply.

Dune is a complex and complicated story of empires and religious mysticism set in a future that is structurally not too different from the medieval past. It’s sort of, but not exactly, a cross between Lawrence of Arabia and Star Wars…but nowhere near as good as either.

In Dune, the planet Arrakis, a barren and desolate sandscape, is a key piece on the political chessboard because it’s the only place in the universe that has “spice”, which is both a hallucinogenic drug used by the Fremen – the Bedouin’s of Arrakis, but more importantly, a vital element that makes interstellar travel possible. Dune appears to be a loose metaphor for various empires lust for oil in the Middle East over the years.

The machinations that bring the rulers of House Atreidis, Duke Leto (Oscar Isaac), Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) and their teenage son Paul (Timothee Chalamet) to Arrakis by imperial decree to replace the brutish House of Harkonnen, which has ruled the planet for generations, are never clearly spelled out in the film.

In fact, much of what happens in the film is not clearly spelled out, which is why the movie is so impenetrable for those who haven’t read the book. Fortunately for me, I’ve read enough of the book to know what was happening, but unfortunately not enough to why it’s happening.

The film is actually just “Part One” of Dune, and one can’t help but wonder if Warner Brothers is waiting to see how well the movie does at the box office before greenlighting further films.

It seems to me that the problem for Dune is that it’s much too esoteric and unexplainable to be able to generate enough of a box-office bonanza to induce funding for a second picture. This is also why the notion of Dune generating Star Wars/Marvel levels of excitement among audiences seems highly unlikely.

An issue with Dune is that, unlike the first Star Wars, it isn’t a stand-alone movie. Star Wars had a very a satisfying ending all its own – the destruction of the death star. The film’s sequels only added to that experience, they didn’t make it. With Dune, the ending of Part One is in no way satisfactory, and it’s relying on future films to elevate audience’s experiences.

In fact, Dune’s climactic scenes are so mundane and dramatically insignificant it feels like the main story hasn’t yet begun when the final credits roll.

What makes the Marvel franchise so successful is that it can be glorious for audience members who know the source material, as well as digestible and entertaining for viewers who’ve never read a comic book in their lives.

The same is not true for Dune. If you haven’t read ‘Dune’, you will, like the U.S. when it rolled into the Middle East thinking it would impose its will over cultures it didn’t know or understand, be overwhelmed by your ignorance and arrogance. The ‘Dune’ illiterate will be bogged down by their own ignorance-induced boredom, as the muck and mire of world building is a maze for which they lack a map. Forever lost amidst the dust and dizzying detritus of Dune, first-timers to the story will feel like foreigners and will quickly check out.

Director Villeneuve is known for making gorgeous looking films, the proof of which lies in the stunning cinematography of Sicario, Arrival and Blade Runner 2049, and Dune is certainly no exception.

The movie is a visual marvel, and if that’s your cup of tea then I highly recommend you see the movie in theatres as opposed to on HBO Max. It really is impressive to behold. But with that said, Villeneuve’s visual feasts are often vast and stunning, but they can also leave you hungry for drama and humanity, and Dune is a perfect example of that too.

Timothee Chalamet is the film’s lead and to be frank, he has always been a mystery to me. A pretty boy with little substance and no physical presence, he feels like a manifestation of a pre-teen girl’s platonic fantasies.

Chalamet is a whisp of an actor and is devoid of the intensity and magnetism to carry a single movie, never mind a big budget franchise.

I suppose Chalamet is just eye-candy, another weapon in Villeneuve’s prodigiously gorgeous cinematic palette. But like much of Villeneuve’s beautifying flourishes, Chalamet feels entirely empty, like a miniature statue of David, or a high-end department store mannequin.

I enjoyed Dune as a cinematic experience because it’s such a beautifully photographed film, but I also understand that my interest in cinematography is not shared among the general populace. And I readily admit that this movie may very well flop, which is disappointing because as frustrating as it is, I’d still like to see Villeneuve make one or two more Dune films as the sort of high-end alternative to other less visually ambitious franchise movies…like Star Wars and Marvel.

Ultimately, fans who loved the book should see Dune in theatres as they’ll most likely enjoy the movie as they marinate in Villeneuve’s cinematic grandeur. But if you haven’t read the book, Dune is, like Arrakis, a very forbidding and foreboding land that is best avoided.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

The Cinephile with Michael McCaffrey: The Last Duel

On this episode of The Cinephile with Michael McCaffrey, I review Matt Damon and Ben Affleck’s new movie directed by Ridley Scott, The Last Duel.

Thanks for watching!

©2021