Everything Everywhere All at Once: A Review

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

My Rating: 2.75 out of 5 stars

Popcorn Rating: 3.25 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT/SEE IT. Not worth paying to see on the big screen but definitely worth checking out when it hits a streaming service.

Everything Everywhere All at Once, the new film written and directed by the “Daniels”, Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, which is currently in theatres, has gotten a bevy of buzz and is the sleeper hit of the Spring.

It’s easy to understand why as on its surface Everything Everywhere All at Once is an exceedingly ambitious movie to the point of being audacious.

For example, one way to describe the film would be to say that it’s an existential kung fu family dramedy with weaponized dildos, butt plugs and lesbians with hot dog fingers. That sounds pretty audacious to me.

But barely beneath that zany surface lies a foundational narrative that is so orthodox and generic as to be trite.

At its core the story of Everything Everywhere All at Once is a simple family drama about a Chinese immigrant woman, Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh), who is ashamed of her troubled lesbian daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu), judged harshly by her old school, patriarchal Chinese father (James Hong), and stuck in a lifeless marriage to her feckless husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan).

That baseline story acts as a launching pad for the metaphysical madness of multi-verses, and the accompanying weaponized dildos, butt plugs and lesbians with hot dog fingers, to rain down on Evelyn like a major monsoon.

You see, outside of her mundane existence running a Simi Valley laundromat in our universe, Evelyn exists in an infinite number of other universes and she discovers that she can access her more powerful self in those other universes in order to fight against an inter-dimensional villain named Jobu, who seeks to destroy everything everywhere.

If all that sounds confusing, it sort of is, but not so much so that you can’t enjoy the silly spectacle of the movie. The multi-verse jumping may not make much logical sense if you stop to think about it, but the movie keeps things moving pretty fast so you never stop to question what the hell is happening, you just enjoy the mad-capped mayhem.

On the bright side, Marvel’s recent full-fledged foray into multi-verses has definitely paved the way for audiences to accept the universe bending of Everything Everywhere All at Once, but unfortunately, Marvel mainstreaming multi-verses has also blunted this film’s narrative edginess.

Everything Everywhere All at Once is definitely fun and entertaining and maybe even at times poignant, but for a film that poses as being profoundly philosophical in nature, it is remarkable for being completely devoid of profundity, and ultimately ends up feeling like a lot of empty calories.  God knows there’s nothing wrong with empty calories, and everybody likes a treat now and then, but let’s not confuse Jujubes with Filet Mignon.

The philosophical message of the movie is the equivalent of those posters with a cute kitten hanging onto a branch with the words “Hang in There!” written underneath.

The narrative nuttiness of the movie papers over the film’s stifling conventionality. The drama of the Asian immigrant experience and the accompanying tension between generations feels so played out at this point as to be cliché, and Everything Everywhere All at Once doesn’t bring anything new to the table. And the inclusion of an LGBTQ storyline into that orthodox immigrant tale feels entirely forced and like a bit of blatant pandering.

The movie also suffers because despite a plethora of action sequences, it isn’t particularly well-shot. Visually, the movie feels very flat and rather stale, and the action sequences are energetic but not particularly original.

One of the best parts of the film though is that across the board the cast does terrific work.

Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn is captivating from start to finish, and she commands the viewer’s attention like the middle-aged movie star and great actress that she is. This movie never works without Yeoh, as her physical and emotional presence in the film elevates the material enormously.

But the greatest acting revelation in the movie is unquestionably Ke Huy Quan as Waymond, Evelyn’s husband. Quan was a child star, you may remember him as Short Round from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom back in 1984, but his career floundered as he aged and he basically dropped out of acting about 25 years ago.

In Everything Everywhere All at Once, Quan is back and he is spectacularly good. He switches between his “real world” Waymond, and the Waymond of other universes with remarkable ease and believability. In one sequence, he goes from being weak-kneed Waymond to a sort of Chow Yun-fat looking leading man, and the transition is entirely seamless and quite stunning. It’s a shame that Quan got chewed up and spit out by Hollywood, but I found it exhilarating to have him back and for him to be so outstanding.

Also quite good is Jamie Lee Curtis as Deidre, a surly IRS inspector. Curtis fully inhabits the uncomfortable skin of Deidre with aplomb and seems to thoroughly enjoy her screen time as the irritatingly enigmatic shlub.

On the whole, Everything Everywhere All at Once isn’t a great film, it’s rather a fun yet flimsy movie that entertained but didn’t enlighten. It’s popcorn entertainment masquerading as philosophical cinema and edgy art. That said, if you manage your expectations, it’s certainly worth checking out when it hits a streaming service, but not worth shelling out hard earned money to see at the theatre.

©2022

Severance (AppleTV+): TV Review

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

SEVERANCE

SEASON ONE - NINE EPISODES - APPLE TV +

My Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. A dramatic and insighftul meditation on the cult-like nature and profound evils of corporate America.

Severance, Apple TV’s sci-fi psychological thriller which just concluded its first season, is one of those TV shows that is a joy to watch despite it being such a viscerally uncomfortable viewing experience.

The series follows the trials and tribulations of Mark (Adam Scott), a rather soul-sucked, dead-eyed worker at an ominous bio-tech firm named Lumen, who undergoes a procedure called “severance”, which implants a chip in his brain in order to separate his work memories from his non-work memories.

Every morning Mark steps into the elevator at Lumen and as it descends into corporate hell, his outside life is erased. Then as the elevator doors open at his assigned floor, he awakens to a repeating, Orwellian, work-day nightmare complete with torture chamber break rooms and mazes of endless white hallways leading to nowhere.

At the end of the work day Mark enters the same elevator and the process is reversed, and he returns to his regular, rather sad life, none the wiser as to what has been afflicted upon him, and what he’s been up to all day at Lumen.

Speaking of which, the job Mark and his three co-workers actually do all day at their computers is a mystery even to them as they do it, as they’re never told what exactly it is they’re doing, but considering the brutal cruelty beneath the fake-smiling façade of management, it is most likely profoundly nefarious.

I will avoid going any further into the plot and machinations of Severance because it is best experienced, ironically enough, with a “severanced” mind that is clear from bias and distractions.

And Severance most definitely should be experienced, because it’s a brilliant mediation and examination of the cult-like nature of corporate America, and the banality of evil that is big business bureaucracy.

Severance resonates because it is deeply in tune with the insanity that is America’s mindless and soulless corporate culture as it becomes, with every passing day, ever more deeply intertwined with the modern-day religion that are the socio-political movements du jour.

Severance expertly but subtly comments on the current cancer that is American corporate culture. Lumen is a stand-in for, among other things, big tech, with its yearning for a thought-reducing social credit system and its compliance-inducing addiction to cancel culture. It’s also commenting on the cavalcade of companies forcing Human Resources-inspired indoctrination seminars disguised as “sensitivity trainings” on their workers, as well as the relentless and vacuous public moral preening and pandering of corporations which they use to distract from their pernicious behavior in private.

Lumen, the morally self-righteous, ethically-challenged company at the center of Severance, is Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Netflix, Pfizer, Walmart, Goldman Sachs or any other too big to fail behemoth that is above the law and runs our corrupt corptocracy as they exploit and brutalize their workers.

The show is so good at replicating what passes for life in the spirit-stomping, soul-crushing, mind-shrinking fluorescent hell of corporate America that it was at times physically uncomfortable to watch. Having in my younger years been a prisoner in corporate America’s suffocating gulag, Severance triggered my PTSD so severely it made my legs ache and my colon twinge.

The first season of Severance consists of nine episodes, six of which are directed by Ben Stiller. I’ve never been a fan of Stiller’s directing. His previous foray into tv was the Showtime mini-series Escape at Donnemara, which came in as a lion and went out like a lamb. That mini-series was a disappointment as it opened bursting with dramatic potential but ultimately ran out of steam mid-way through and then fell flat on its face at the finish line.

Severance is the exact opposite. The series starts slowly…so slow that I almost bailed on it. But after sticking with it through the first few episodes, I was rewarded for my patience. The series builds more and more dramatic momentum as it hurtles toward the final two episodes of the season which are gloriously nerve-wracking.

A large part of why Severance works so well is its stellar cast.

Adam Scott plays protagonist Mark with a morose aplomb. The great John Turturro is absolutely phenomenal as Irving, the straight-laced company man. Britt Lower is undeniably captivating as Helly, the enigmatic new employee. And Zach Cherry is terrific as Dylan, the master of the mysterious task the office is assigned.

Equally outstanding are Patricia Arquette, as Ms. Cobell, the steely-eyed boss, and Tramell Tillman as her ruthless henchman, Seth.

And last but not least, Christopher Walken gives a sterling performance as Bert, a worker at a different division of Lumen who befriends Irving.

The combination of a culturally relevant story, a well-crafted sci-fi script, deft direction and an impeccable cast, make Severance an alarmingly compelling series and one you should definitely check out. It starts slow, but stick with it, it’s well worth it.  

©2022

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 65 - Pig

On this episode, Barry and I dig through the dirt to discover the truffle-like gem that is Pig, starring Nicholas Cage. Topics discussed include the strange career arcs of Nic Cage and director Michael Sarnoski, Matthew McConaughey as used-care salesman, defying audience expectations, and the shameful paucity of competently made movies in our cinematically troubled times.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 65 - Pig

Thanks for listening!

©2022

The Film 'Come and See', the Russian Psyche, and the War in Ukraine

My Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT NOW. Arguably the greatest war film, and greatest anti-war film, ever made.

‘COME AND SEE’ IS VITAL TO UNDERSTANDING THE RUSSIAN PSYCHE REGARDING THE WAR IN UKRAINE

A few years ago, in order to commemorate the 75th anniversary of V.E. Day, I wrote a list of the best war films ever made that was published at RT.com, an English-language Russian news outlet. I got a lot of feedback on my list, as readers shared their favorite war films and compared them to mine. Interestingly, I was inundated with emails and comments from Russian readers who were outraged I failed to have Come and See, the 1985 Soviet war film directed by Elem Klimov, not only not on my list, but not at the top of it.

The truth was I hadn’t seen Come and See because it isn’t widely or easily available here in the U.S. The film, which for years was nearly impossible to find on any streaming service, is now available on the Criterion Channel (which is wonderful and a must have service for any cinephile). Having finally watched the movie I can now say that those Russian readers were right and I was wrong…Come and See deserves to be on the top of the list of best war films ever made. It is a terrible injustice that the film has thus far remained mostly undiscovered in the West as it is an astonishing piece of cinematic art.

I think now, as the war in Ukraine rages into its second month, it’s most imperative that Westerners watch Come and See in order to better understand historical context and how it effects the collective Russian psyche regarding perceived enemies on its western border.

The dramatically scintillating Come and See is unquestionably a cinematic masterpiece, and I don’t use that word lightly. The film chronicles the odyssey of Florian Gaishun, a young teenage boy trying to survive the Nazi occupation of the Soviet Republic of Belarus in 1943.

Florian is eager to join a rag tag group of Soviet partisans in a guerrilla war against the Nazis. But his mother, afraid to be left alone in their small village with two young twin daughters, is adamant he stays home.

But once Florian discovers a discarded but usable weapon buried in the dirt, the partisans come to his house and officially conscript him into service.

Thus begins Florian’s coming of age story, which is a trial by fire where a Focke-Wulf 189 German reconnaissance plane haunts the skies above his head like a blood-thirsty vulture and Nazi savagery dominates and decimates the fragile world around him.

Florian is thrust into most harrowing journey through the brutality of war and the darkness of the human heart, and must endure the most hellacious of circumstances and devastating of tragedies.

It’s impossible to adequately describe Florian’s gruesome crucifixion upon the cross of war, and the ungodly horrors he must suffer. The viewer must simply bear witness to them too and suffer the same visceral anguish as Florian.

The film boasts two terrific performances, one from Aleksei Kravchenko as Florian, and the other Olga Miranova as Glasha.

Kravchenko’s face over the course of the film is a roadmap of the horrors he’s experienced. His ‘thousand-yard stare’ is a monument to the soul-crushing and heartbreaking ordeal he’s undergone.

Miranova is electrifying as Glasha, a young woman Florian meets in the early days of his time with the partisan guerrillas. Miranova is like a beautiful, gaping wound walking the earth, trying to avoid catastrophe but sentenced to an endless parade of calamities.

Director Klimov pulls no punches on Come and See, as he masterfully, using a variety of clever and intriguing filmmaking techniques, such as a split diopter lens and the use of reduced sound to heighten drama, tells Florian’s tale. Klimov’s brilliant direction immerses the viewer in the hell of war, as well as expresses the collective rage against the Nazis that unleashed a wave of brutality and barbarity against the Soviets that is staggering to contemplate.

This is why it’s so imperative that Westerners watch Come and See, because it so forcefully conveys the palpable fear, anxiety and angst left on the Soviet/Russian psyche by the barbarity of the Nazi invasion forty years after it happened, as well as today.

Hitler sent his very best divisions when he invaded the Soviet Union because he understood that to win the wider war the Nazis needed to destroy the USSR and usurp its plethora of resources, most notably oil and wheat, which would then fuel and feed Hitler’s war machine.

Hitler, like Napoleon before him, found out the hard way that invading Russia is never a good idea, as the winters are brutal and the people made of extraordinarily stern and resilient stuff.

Roughly 30 million Soviets died in World War II (compared to about 418,000 Americans), but their deaths were not in vain as it was the Soviets who broke the Nazi war machine’s back and won World War II. But there isn’t a Russian family that didn’t suffer immensely during the war and for generations after, and the psychological damage from that trauma still resonates today.

In the West, when we hear talk of Russia wanting to “de-nazify” Ukraine, it sounds like a vacuous talking point. To Russians it deeply resonates though because it’s driven by a palpable existential fear – a fear perfectly captured in Come and See.

My intention here is not to try and change any minds regarding the war in Ukraine, as I’m aware enough to know that when emotions are as inflamed as they are now, and the bullshit propaganda is piling up so high you need wings to stay above it, as it is now, appealing to reason and logic is a fool’s errand.

But what I am here to do is to try and get people to watch Come and See for its cinematic mastery, and its collective cultural insights, so that they can at least understand the deeper psychological and historical context of Russia’s actions and impulses.

For instance, most people in the US don’t know this but in 2014 the US backed a coup in Ukraine that overthrew a democratically elected government. The overthrown government was more inclined to Russia’s viewpoint, and the newly-installed government was beholden to the US.

To Americans, that bit of history is largely unknown, but to Russians it’s not only well-known, but deeply troubling and anxiety-inducing.

The same is true of the fact that the newly installed Ukrainian government sat idly by as 42 pro-Russian activists were burned alive in the Trade Union House in Odessa, Ukraine post-coup in 2014, something which most Americans don’t know but that Russians know all too well (and which is remarkably reminscernt of one of the more horrifying scenes in Come and See).

Another example, which most Americans don’t know but of which Russians are keenly aware, is that this same US installed Ukrainian government then banned the Russian language and went to war with ethnic Russians in the Donbass region in Eastern Ukraine. Since that war started in 2014, nearly 14,000 people, mostly ethnic Russians, including women and children, have been killed.

Another piece of historical context largely ignored in the US is that when Russia and Ukraine signed a ceasefire/peace agreement called the Minsk Agreements (Minsk Protocol signed in 2014, and Minsk II – a ceasefire signed in 2015), it seemed peace was possible, but Ukraine and the US ignored those agreements and the slaughter of ethnic Russians continued in the Donbass.

To watch Come and See gives Americans an opportunity to see the developments in Ukraine through the eyes of Russians. To Russians, Ukraine’s Azov Battalion, which western media reported on extensively for years as a battalion of devilishly devout Nazis but which now ignores that context, is not an outlier, but the crux of the issue. As evidenced by the brutal wholesale slaughter of an entire Belorussian village in Come and See, which the film informs us was something that happened to 628 Belorussian villages at the hands of the Nazis during the war, Nazi bloodthirst isn’t a speculative talking point to Russians, it’s a historical fact and a traumatic trigger.

The way Russians see it, the US installed a Nazi friendly regime in Ukraine, and Russians remember what the Nazis did the last time they had power in the region…and it was genocidal in its scope and scale and demonic in its unabashed cruelty.

When Russians see pro-Russian activists burned alive in Odessa, and ethnic Russians massacred in the Donbass, the horrors of World War II as exquisitely captured in Come and See are conjured in all their grueling and gruesome savagery.

I understand that many Americans, fed a hearty diet of establishment media Zelensky worship as well as ludicrous propagandistic tales of the Ghost of Kiev and the Heroes of Snake Island, might watch Come and See and interpret it very differently. For instance, Americans might watch Come and See and believe Putin to be Hitler and the modern-day Russians in Ukraine the equivalent of the Nazis in Belarus in 1943.

I disagree with that assessment and find it to be historically illiterate and painfully myopic, but that said, I completely understand why, after years of relentless Russo-phobic propaganda, people would be conditioned to feel that way.

Regardless of how you interpret Come and See, I whole-heartedly encourage you to watch it. By being one of the greatest war movies of all-time, Come and See succeeds in being the greatest anti-war movie of all-time.

As for the war in Ukraine…like all wars, I hate it and vehemently oppose it. I understand why it’s happening, what triggered it, the wider forces at play in it and the stakes involved in it, but I despise war in all its brutality and callousness and inhumanity.

I know most people don’t believe in this sort of thing anymore, and frankly I don’t blame them, but I ardently and earnestly pray every day that the war in Ukraine ends and an everlasting peace is found and prospers. Ukraine is nothing but a boiling cauldron of suffering, and the last thing this world needs is more suffering, the brilliant Come and See is a testament to that fact.

©2022

8th Annual Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® Awards: 2021 Edition

Estimated Reading Time: 69 seconds

The Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® awards are a tribute to the absolute worst that film and entertainment has to offer for the year. 2021 was a particularly heinous one for cinema, so the Slip-Me-A-Mickeys flourished in a very target rich environment.

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

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

Now…onto the awards!

 Worst Film of the Year

The Tender Bar – A boring, dramatically incoherent coming of age tale that makes an episode of The Wonder Years look like Lawrence of Arabia. George Clooney may be the very worst director making big time Hollywood movies. His butchery of this film is done with a chainsaw and not scalpel.  

Being the Ricardos – This cheesy, ham-handed Hollywood humping manages to turn Lucille ball and Desi Arnaz into the two dullest people in entertainment history.

Eternals – This is the worst Marvel movie I’ve ever seen and it isn’t even close. That is quite an accomplishment in cinematic futility.

Space Jam: A New Legacy – You know what would be fun…to put a legitimately moronic meathead who can barely speak a coherent sentence, LeBron James, on-screen with a bunch of corporate intellectual property and let them play basketball. Watching LeBron’s hairline recede is more entertaining.

And the Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® goes to…

Space Jam: A New Legacy – Hey, look at that, at least LeBron won something this year.

Worst Performance of the Year

LeBron James – Space Jam: A New Legacy - LeBron is a mental and moral midget, but he’s also got the charisma of a pile of week-old dog shit…so he’s got that going for him.

Benedict Cumberbatch – The Power of the Dog – Speaking of dog shit…Benedict Cumberbatch, or as my friend Dave calls him, Bend-her-dick Cunt-her-snatch, is supposed to be a menacing old-school cowboy in this movie, but from scene one he’s sashaying around like he’s working it on RuPaul’s runway. If they’d cast the cowboy from the Village People in this role it would’ve been less obviously gay.

Adam Driver – House of Gucci – Adam Driver is a giant, walking, talking anus. When you put him in Italian clothes, with Italian glasses, and have him speak with an Italian accent, he morphs into being a giant, walking, talking anus wearing Italian clothes and glasses, that has an Italian accent.

Jared Leto – House of Gucci – Leto’s performance in this movie makes Father Guido Sarducci look like Sir Laurence Olivier. A master class in awful acting.

Lady Gaga – House of Gucci – Gaga made me gag-gag with her wandering accent and hyper-theatrical posing in this dreadful movie. It is one of the great tragedies of human kind that Gaga now takes herself seriously as an actress.

And the Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® award goes to…

Jared Leto – Leto is the Leonardo da Vinci of awful over-acting.

Most Overrated Film of the Year

CODA – CODA is a Hallmark Channel movie that somehow won the Oscar for Best Picture. It is the worst film to win Best Picture in the history of the Academy Awards. The script is awful, the direction amateurish, the acting, including Troy Kotsur, is painful to watch. It also astonishes me that critics didn’t eviscerate this film but instead praised its soft-peddled, after school special bullshit.

The Power of the Dog – Jane Campion is a shitty director and this is a shitty movie. Arthouse fool’s gold that fooled a lot of people…but not me. Trite, vacuous, vapid and venal, this movie is poorly written, poorly directed, poorly acted and just all-around poor.

West Side Story – Steven Spielberg can make any movie he wants…and he made THIS piece of shit? If I want to watch dance teams square off in embarrassing street fights, I’ll just watch the original, better version of the story. An entirely useless exercise in historical cinematic revisionism.

And the Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® goes to…

CODA – I wish I was deaf and blind so I’d never have to see or hear about this stupid movie.

Worst Big Budget/Blockbuster/Action/Comedy of the Year

Eternals - See Above.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife – A terrific movie if you want to destroy a long-loved franchise with talentless teens and a terrible script.

Matrix: Resurrection – The Matrix was great. But literally every Matrix movie since the original has gotten worse by at 75%. This abysmal piece of shit puts the franchise deep into negative territory.

And the Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® awards goes to…

Eternals – This was a tough choice as these movies are all abysmal, but sitting through the two hour and thirty-six-minute woke slog that was Eternals was utterly excruciating to the point of torture.

Worst Director

George Clooney – Ironically, Clooney is on one of the most impressive runs of futility for a director since the Joel Schumacher heyday. Just when you think he can’t do any worse, he puts out The Tender Bar, and proves you wrong.

Aaron Sorkin – Sorkin proved last year with The Trial of the Chicago 7 that he was one of the worst directors of his generation, and he keeps the streak alive with Being the Ricardos.

Chloe Zhao – Zhao won an Oscar last year for Nomadland. This year she showed off what an incredibly shitty director she is with Eternals. Good for her.

And the Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® award goes to…

All three of these bags of shit. They’re all fucking terrible.

Special Achievement in Cinematic Malpractice

George Clooney – Clooney’s ability to continue to make one movie more awful than the last is a tribute to the endless supply of suck-ups and sycophants in Hollywood and to Clooney’s delusional sense of self. The shitshow that is The Tender Bar is a testament, and should stand as a monument, to the hackery of the ultimate Hollywood asshole...George Clooney.

POS Hall of Fame –

The Smith Family

At the 2015 Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® awards, the Smith family were voted to the Piece of Shit All-Stars. This year they’ve made the big leap to become Piece of Shit Hall of Famers!

Here’s a brief glimpse of what I wrote back at the 2015 Slip-Me-A-Mickey awards regarding the Smiths.

“This year we got to hear from Jada Pinkett-Smith how her husband was snubbed by the Academy Awards because he was black. We also got to hear how Jada was boycotting the Oscars in a show of solidarity with other snubbed black actors…which was convenient since she wasn't invited (as Chris Rock hilariously pointed out). I have one simple request for the entire Smith family...Will, Jada, Jaden and Willow…please shut the fuck up and go away forever. Will Smith is an abysmal hack of an actor and a dopey embarrassment as a "rapper". Jada Pinkett-Smith is a fly on the shit that is Will Smith, she desperately needs to bottle her manufactured self-righteous anger, stop talking immediately and vanish with her equally obnoxious other half. Jaden and Willow are kids, so they have an outside chance to not be as malignantly narcissistic as their God-awful parents, but I gotta be honest… it isn't looking very good as they aren't off to the best possible start in not following in their egotistical parents footsteps.”

Well, well, well, looks like I hit the nail on the head six years ago regarding the shitbag Smith family.

The truth is Will “Limp Willie” Smith has always been one of the biggest pieces of shit in Hollywood, and now with his slap of Chris Rock at the Oscars, everyone else gets to see the reality that I’ve known for a long time.

Will has been a piece of shit from day one. He is a bad joke as a rapper and his music has been an embarrassment for all sentient beings from the get-go. His acting career has also been an embarassment from day one. Will Smith is now and always has been a shitty rapper, shitty actor and shitty person. He is, undoubtedly, an incorrigle twat.

Speaking of twats, Will’s wife, Jada, is a talentless, narcissistic whore who’s done a wonderful job of making a cuckold out of her impotent and equally talentless husband by fucking her son’s friend August Alsina. She’s also a wondrous mother who has churned out two of the most repulsive spawn in Hollywood – no small task.

Jaden Smith, Will and Jada’s son, tweeted in the aftermath of Will’s slapping Chris Rock, “that’s how we do it”. Oh, really tough guy? Well Jaden, I invite you to don one of your signature skirts, and then go out into the real world with your toothpick arms, slap somebody, and see what happens to your non-binary ass. I know you don’t know this because you’re an entitled dandy who has never been around a real man in your entire life, but the real world ain’t the Oscars or the movies, and you’re going to find that out the hard way if you ever prance out of your privileged bubble, bitch.

One can only hope that the Smiths, who as individuals and as a collective family, are the most noxious, odious and malignant narcissists in all of Hollywood, a stunning achievement, are sentenced to a life of being in each other’s presence. They deserve that torture, and we deserve that reprieve.

Congratulation Will, Jada, Jaden and Willow, you’re all well-deserving members of the Piece of Shit Hall-of-Fame! Now kindly go fuck yourselves you rancid cunts.

And thus concludes another Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® awards. If you are one of the people who “won” this year I ask you to please not to take it personally and also to try and do better next year….because remember…this years Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® award winner could be next year’s Mickey™® Award winner!!which are the final awards show on the calender.

The Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® awards are the final award show on the 2021 calender. That means that 2021, the most dreadful year in recent cinema history, is now, officially and not-so-mercifully, over. Thank the good lord….and I pray that 2022 saves us from the cinematic hell that was 2021. As always…I am not optimistic.

©2022

8th Annual Mickey™® Awards: 2021 Edition

THE MICKEY™® AWARDS

The Mickey™® Awards are undeniably the most prestigious award on the planet….and they almost didn’t happen this year. You see 2021 was the worst year for cinema in recent memory, so singling out movies to celebrate with the highest honor in the land seemed an impossible task.

For example, this past January I was invited on my friend George Galloway’s radio show The Mother of All Talk Shows, to discuss the best cinema of 2021. In preparation I tried to put together a top ten list…and could not find ten, or even five, films I thought were decent enough to label as ‘good’, never mind ‘great’. Thankfully, George and I had an interesting conversation nonetheless about the state of cinema rather than a more conventional top ten list because I couldn’t conjure one.

The bottom line regarding 2021 is that there wasn’t a single great movie that came out this year. Not one. I have to admit that I was stunned by the cavalcade of cinematic failure on display, as a year where PT Anderson, Guillermo del Toro, Ridley Scott, Steven Spielberg, Adam McKay and Denis Villeneuve put out movies, and in Ridley Scott’s case he put out two, should have some gems in it, but this year had nothing but dismal duds.

Let’s not kid ourselves, last year was no walk in the park either, but this year was even worse. But what’s more alarming to me than the deplorable state of cinema is the even more deplorable state of film criticism. It felt like this year was the year where critics just decided that slightly below mediocre was the equivalent of greatness. Never have I felt so disheartened by cinema and criticism.

To think it was just three years ago that we were blessed with a bountiful bevy of brilliance. In 2019 we had four legitimately great films, Parasite, Joker, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and The Irishman, as well as significant arthouse films like Ad Astra, Malick’s A Hidden Life, The Last Black Man in San Francisco and Claire Denis’ High Life, in addition to finely-crafted, middle-brow entertainment like 1917 and Ford v Ferrari. All of those films were significantly better than anything that came out in 2021. All of them.

But, after consulting with the suits on the Mickey™® Committee, we have come to an agreement that the Mickeys™® will take place this year but under protest. The Mickeys™® retain the right to revoke these Mickeys™® at any time in the future if we feel like it.

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

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

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

BEST ACTOR

Joaquin Phoenix – C’Mon C’Mon – C’Mon C’Mon was not a great movie. In fact, it was one of the more irritating cinematic experiences I had this year because the kid character in the movie is so annoying and his mom is one of those awful mothers who creates a monster of a child but who still thinks she’s a great mother – an uncomfortably common species in Los Angeles. All that said, Phoenix eschews his signature combustibility and gives a subtle and powerful performance as just a regular guy. A quiet, touching and skilled piece of acting.

Oscar Isaac – The Card Counter – I’m not a fan of Oscar Isaac as I’ve found much of his work to be trite and shallow over the years. Much to my surprise, in The Card Counter, Oscar Isaac creates a character that is grounded whose internal wound is palpable. It is easily the best performance of his career.

Matt Damon – The Last Duel – Damon co-wrote this screenplay and took on the most complex of all the roles. Gone are his movie stardom and good guy persona, and front and center is an insecurity and egotism that fuels his delusion and destructiveness. A really finely tuned, well-crafted performance and a great piece of mullet acting.

And the Mickey™® goes to….

Joaquin Phoenix – C’Mon C’Mon: Phoenix is the best actor on the planet and in a year when no one even noticed, he still gave the best performance.

BEST ACTRESS

Jodi Comer – The Last Duel – Comer is an oasis in the conniving and brutish world of The Last Duel. She effortlessly changes the mask she is required to wear for each re-telling of the story of the attack on her character. Comer exudes a magnetism that you can’t teach, and it is on full display in her masterful performance here.

Olivia Colman – The Lost Daughter – Colman is the best actress working right now (readers should check out her work in the intriguing HBO mini-series Landscapers). Her presence elevates any project in which she appears. In the dreadful The Lost Daughter, Colman is unlikable, unlovable and unenjoyable, but from an acting perspective, she is un-look-away-able. Colman is on a Michael Jordan in the 90’s type of run right now and we should all just sit back and enjoy her brilliance.

And the Mickey™® goes to…

Jodi Comer – The Last Duel: Comer has been overlooked by the multitude of other awards, but she wins the only one that matters.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Jonah Hill – Don’t Look Up – Jonah Hill does nothing more than be Jonah Hill in Don’t Look Up, and while it isn’t exactly the greatest performance of all time, it is undeniably amusing.

Bradley Cooper – Licorice Pizza – Cooper goes all in as hair cutting mogul, lothario and Barbra Streisand boyfriend, Jon Peters. An absolutely batshit crazy performance of an even crazier person.

And the Mickey™® goes to…

Bradley Cooper – Licorice Pizza: The most striking thing about Bradley Cooper has always been his ambition rather than his ability. But as Jon Peters he goes balls to the wall and injects much needed life into PT Anderson’s rare misfire.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Kathryn Hunter – The Tragedy of Macbeth – Hunter was so mesmerizing as the witches in Macbeth that it unnerved me. She contorted her body and voice to such elaborate degrees that she transformed into a supernatural presence that was captivating and compelling while also being chilling and repulsive. Pure brilliance.

Ariana DeBose – West Side Story – West Side Story was a useless cinematic venture, but the lone bright spot was DeBose, who brought a dynamic presence to every scene she stole.

And the Mickey™® goes to…

Kathryn Hunter – The Tragedy of Macbeth: Hunter’s incredible performance is what acting is all about, and this Mickey is well-deserved.

BEST SCREENPLAY

The Last Duel – This screenplay, despite at times being a bit heavy handed in its sexual politics, was at least interesting in how it was structured (like Rashomon). It isn’t earth-shattering, but it’s better than anything else from this dismal year.

And the Mickey™® goes to…

The Last Duel: Well, I guess Matt Damon and Ben Affleck can put another trophy on the mantelpiece, but this time it’s the greatest trophy of all time.

BEST BLOCKBUSTER

Spider-Man: No Way Home – Not a great movie, but a really fun one. It gave fans anything and everything they could ever want out of a Spider-Man movie.

And the Mickey™® goes to…

Spider-Man: No Way Home – What’s better than three Spider-Mans? One Mickey.

BEST DIRECTOR

Ridley Scott – The Last Duel – The duel that takes place at the end of The Last Duel, is the most compelling piece of filmmaking I saw this whole year. That’s not saying much…but it is saying something.

And the Mickey™® goes to…

Ridley Scott – The Last Duel: This film is not among Scott’s greatest, by any stretch, but it at least is the best one he put out this year, as House of Gucci was god-awful. Regardless, Ridley showed he might have lost his fastball, but he can still bring some heat with The Last Duel.

BEST PICTURE

5. The Tragedy of Macbeth – An ambitious but very flawed re-telling of the old tale of the Macbeth by one Coen brother. Beautifully shot in a German expressionist style, the film suffered from uneven and sub-par performances, most notably from Frances McDormand.

4. Licorice Pizza – An uneven movie that had some very bright spots but ultimately lacked narrative cohesion and clarity of purpose. Was less mesmerizing than it was meandering.

3. Nightmare Alley – Gorgeous to look at, this very bleak meditation on the heart of darkness deep inside the American psyche was flawed but still managed to cast a spell on me.   

2. The Last Duel – Let’s not kid ourselves, The Last Duel is flawed, but it was good enough to land on the list of best movies of the year. That says a lot…and not all of it good.

1.Bo Burnham: Inside – Bo Burnham: Inside isn’t a movie, it’s a comedy special on Netflix. So why is it ranked number one on my list of films for 2021. Because there were no great films in 2021. None. And the thing that I watched this year that I thought was the most insightful, most artistically relevant and frankly the very best, was Bo Burnham: Inside. It should be an indicator to readers of how dreadful this year in cinema was, and how brilliant Bo Burnham is, that I, self-declared cinephile of cinephiles, would name a Netflix comedy special as the Mickey™® Award winner for Best Picture.

But no movie made me think or feel as much as Bo Burnham: Inside. It was a subversive, stunning, singular piece of genius caught on camera. And in honor of Bo Burnham’s undefinable and distinct brilliance, I hereby do honor him with the most prestigious award in all of art and entertainment…the Mickey™® Award.

And thus concludes another Mickey™® awards. We usually have quite the after party to celebrate the winners but due to the abysmal state of cinema, the after party is cancelled. Everyone should go home and think about what they’ve done and figure out a way to do better.

God willing the art of cinema will bounce back after two tough years in a row, and next year we’ll really have something to celebrate.

Thanks for reading and we’ll see you next year!!

©2022

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 64 - Deep Water

On this episode, Barry and I don our snail costumes and slowly slither into the slime that is Deep Water, Adriane Lyne's unintentionally hysterical "erotic thriller" starring Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas, that is neither erotic nor thrilling. Topics discussed include snails, the snail room, the sexiness of snails and why the hell are there snails in this movie?

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 64 - Deep Water

Thanks for listening!

©2022

94th Academy Awards: 2022 Oscar Prediction Post

So, the Academy Awards are once again upon us and once again no one gives a rat’s ass.

With my ear to the Hollywood ground the one thing that comes across very loudly is overwhelming silence and the over-abundance of indifference. It wasn’t always like this. Just a few years ago I remember Tinsel Town and its inhabitants being abuzz with Oscar talk, but no more.

The Academy has made major changes to its membership in the last few years, dumping older, whiter, male voters, in favor of a certainly more diverse, but also considerably less accomplished group of people. The results have been mixed at best.

The ratings for the show have consistently declined, but blaming that on the new Academy members is a stretch since the ratings have been declining for a decade.

Unfortunately, the Academy, and the changes it made, are just a reflection of the overall decline of film’s relevance in our culture. The movie industry is currently neck-deep in a self-defeating transformation that rewards identity tokenism and marginalizes craft, skill and talent. The current steep decline in cinema is a direct result of the of studios being more concerned with diversity and inclusion than with quality…and that is only going to get worse going forward. The Oscars reflect the current state of the movie industry by reducing their awards to merely being some sort of victimhood/identity Olympics, and not a celebration of the greatest in cinematic artistry.

This year’s Academy Awards are a perfect example. The ten films nominated for Best Picture are, frankly, all pretty forgettable if not fucking awful. The best among them are, at best, raging mediocrities.

Speaking of raging mediocrities, the hosts for the show, the first hosts in three years, Amy Schumer, Wanda Sykes and Regina Hall, are another sign of the terrible times, as they’re a trio of half-wit has-beens and anonymous nobodies who would need to make quite a leap to hit the promised land of mediocrity.

Not a soul on the planet will tune in to specifically watch Amy Schumer, Wanda Sykes and that other lady I’ve never heard of, just like no one will tune in to see if the egregiously over-rated The Power of the Dog wins Best Picture.

No matter which film wins Best Picture, and the two favorites are The Power of the Dog and CODA, this ceremony and the ultimate winner of it will be almost instantaneously forgotten. If The Power of the Dog wins it will not be remembered kindly by history because history will, like the rest of humanity, ignore it.

If CODA wins it will easily be the worst film to ever win Best Picture, and history will mark this year as the unofficial end of the Oscars as any sort of cultural landmark. I guess that would be apropos since it would coincide with the end of the American Empire.

As for my power of prognostication regarding the Oscars, I used to be much better than I am now. For years I won every Oscar pool I entered and that was because the Academy members were so reliably predictable in their picks. Now, with the new Academy, I am less Nostradamus and more Nostradoofus.

Despite knowing some Academy members, and talking to lots of film industry people across the board and up and down the income scale, I still have no insight as to how the new Academy will vote. I know how they think, which is frightening, but am not even remotely sure how they’ll vote.

In other words, at this point I’m just guessing. But I’m confident I’ll still win my Oscar pools just because irrational confidence is a learned trait I’ve yet to discard.

With all of that said, here are my picks for the 94th Academy Awards.

Best Cinematography

•  The Power of the Dog – A female cinematographer is too much for the identity obsessed Academy to pass up, so The Power of the Dog eeks out a win over the visually impressive Dune.

Best Editing, Best Production Design, Best Sound, Best Score, Best Visual Effects

•  Dune - Wins all of these and has a big night in the technical and below-the-line categories.

Best Hair and Makeup

•  The Eyes of Tammy Faye – Again…I’m guessing but feels about right.

Best Costume

•  Cruella – There’s a chance Dune wins this one too but I think Cruella takes the prize as it is the most dramatically fashionable costuming of all the nominees.

Best Documentary Short

•  The Queen of Basketball – I only chose this because Steph Curry and Shaq are producers on the film and Hollywood loves them some NBA star power.

Best Live Action Short

• The Long Goodbye – Riz Ahmed is involved in this film and again, Hollywood likes star power.

Best Animated Short

• Robin Robin- It has famous people in it, so I figure it will win.

Best Documentary

• Summer of Soul – Seems about right.

Best Supporting Actress

This seems set in stone. Ariana DeBose is going to win and maybe rightfully so. I thought she was the lone dynamic presence is Spielberg’s moribund musical retread.

Jessie Buckley – The Lost Daughter

*Ariana DeBose – West Side Story

Judi Dench – Belfast

Kirsten Dunst – The Power of the Dog

Aunjanue Ellis – King Richard

Best Supporting Actor

Quite a mixed bag in this category, but the tea leaves say Troy Kotsur will beat out Kodi Smit-McPhee. I think CODA is garbage, and all due respect to Kotsur, I don’t think he’s very good in that bad film. But what the hell do I know?

Ciaran Hinds – Belfast

*Troy Kotsur – CODA

Jesse Plemons – The Power of the Dog

J.K. Simmons – Being the Ricardos

Kodi Smit-McPhee - The Power of the Dog

Best Original Screenplay

I think this is going to be a weird category. PT Anderson is a genius but Licorice Pizza is not even remotely his best work. The old Academy would’ve awarded Kenneth Branagh for Belfast…and I think the new Academy does the same exact thing because they don’t know who else to reward so they choose the actor Branagh. Don’t count out PT Anderson though…he’s got a legit shot. If Don’t Look Up wins, and it’s got a legit chance, then hopefully a meteor will immediately hit earth and put us all out of our misery.

*Belfast

Don’t Look Up

King Richard

Licorice Pizza

The Worst Person in the World

Best Adapted Screenplay

Tight category with potential winners being CODA, Drive My Car, The Power of the Dog and The Lost Daughter. I think The Lost Daughter wins because it’s written by Maggie Gyllenhaal and she’s very popular and has campaigned hard for it. It also doesn’t hurt that she’s a woman and the Academy is shooting for a #GirlPower Oscars this year. If this goes to either CODA or The Power of the Dog that will pretty much indicate that movie will win Best Picture too.

CODA

Drive My Car

Dune

*The Lost Daughter

The Power of the Dog

Animated Feature

I’ve not seen any of these movies and really don’t care but everyone I know who has seen any of them raves about Encanto, so I think it wins here…but Flee is intriguing because it’s nominated in three categories, and maybe it’ll sneak out a win here or in documentary.

*Encanto

Flee

Luca

The Mitchells vs the Machines

Raya and the Last Dragon

Best International Feature Film

Drive My Car is the foreign film that has generated the most buzz for the longest period of time. I think it wins as its only real competition is The Worst Person in the World, but that movie seems to have gotten slow out of the gate and might not have enough time to catch up to Drive My Car, which I pick to win.

*Drive My Car

Flee

The Hand of God

Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom

The Worst Person in the World

Best Actor

The middling Will Smith is the odds-on favorite for his middling performance in the middling King Richard. I think he wins going away, but keep an eye out for a huge upset like we had last year with Anthony Hopkins beating out presumed winner Chadwick Boseman, as the middling Benedict Cumberbatch could sneak in there and shock the world with his equally middling performance as a middling gay cowboy in the middling The Power of the Dog.

Javier Bardem – Being the Ricardos

Benedict Cumberbatch – The Power of the Dog

Andrew Garfield – Tick, Tick…Boom!

*Will Smith – King Richard

Denzel Washington – The Tragedy of MacBeth

Best Actress

Easily the toughest category of the night. I think Jessica Chastain, who has campaigned hard for the award, finally wins an Oscar. Olivia Colman has a legit chance to win, but since she already has an Oscar, I think it goes to Chastain. Outside chance that Penelope Cruz takes the prize.

*Jessica Chastain – The Eyes of Tammy Faye

Olivia Colman – The Lost Daughter

Penelope Cruz – Parallel Mothers

Nicole Kidman – Being the Ricardos

Kristen Stewart – Spencer

Best Director

This is no contest as Jane Campion is going to win due to the identity politics of it all. I think The Power of the Dog is not a good movie, but to be fair, I don’t think any of these movies are great.

Kenneth Branagh – Belfast

Ryusuke Hamaguchi – Drive My Car

Paul Thomas Anderson – Licorice Pizza

*Jane Campion – The Power of the Dog

Steven Spielberg – West Side Story

Best Picture

Speaking of movies that aren’t great…ladies and gentleman, your 2021 Best Picture nominees!

Belfast

*CODA

Don’t Look Up

Drive My Car

Dune

King Richard

Licorice Pizza

Nightmare Alley

 The Power of the Dog

West Side Story

Yikes. Of these ten films, none of them are great, not even close. A few are ok, and a bunch are just plain shitty.

Both presumed front-runners, CODA and The Power of the Dog are bad movies. CODA is a joke as it’s basically a Hallmark Channel movie and it has no place being nominated. The Power of the Dog is over-rated, arthouse fool’s gold.

Belfast is a tame bit of maudlin movie-making, Don’t Look Up is a scattered diatribe, King Richard is the epitome of middle-brow mundanity, West Side Story is needless and lifeless.

Drive My Car and Dune are well made but deeply-flawed dramas. Licorice Pizza is a light romp from a brooding genius, and Nightmare Alley is a dazzlingly dark journey no one wants to take.

If this is the best the film industry has to offer, then something is catastrophically wrong with the film industry.

Regardless of all that, it seems to me that, as insane as it sounds, CODA, the worst, most amateurishly produced Oscar nominated film in living memory, is going to beat out The Power of the Dog, and win Best Picture.

 In ten years, no one will remember CODA. In five years, no one will remember CODA. In a year, no one will remember CODA. And by Monday morning, no one will remember these Academy Awards.

 Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

©2022

Deep Water: A Review

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

My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. An utterly incomprehensible and incoherent mess of a movie.

Filmmaker Adrian Lyne has made a name for himself by churning out a plethora of highly stylized “erotic” movies. His filmography is a who’s who of sexy cinema of the late 20th century, and includes Flashdance, 9½ Weeks, Fatal Attraction, Indecent Proposal, Lolita and Unfaithful.

Lyne, who is now 81-years-old, hasn’t made a movie in twenty years, but he’s back with a new film, Deep Water, that is currently streaming on Hulu. Not surprisingly considering Lyne’s sexy cinematic proclivities, Deep Water bills itself as an “erotic psychological thriller”.

The film has garnered some attention because it stars, Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas, in real life had a brief but very public romance while shooting the movie. For Ben and Ana’s sake I’m hoping that fling was more erotically charged and fun than the dismal Deep Water.

To be fair, Deep Water does stand out from other movies, but unfortunately that’s because it’s one of the most incomprehensible, incoherent films of recent memory.

The plot revolves around a couple, Vic (Affleck) and Melinda (de Armas), who are in a functionally dysfunctional marriage where Melinda sleeps with various impossibly handsome young men and everyone in the small town of Little Wesley, Louisiana knows it.

Vic’s bizarre cuckoldry has him both making dinner for Melinda’s lovers but also vaguely threatening them. To add to the oddities, Vic, for some completely unknown and unknowable reason, collects snails…he even has a special snail room out in the garage with special snail lighting and special snail sprinklers. The snails become a plot point later in the movie, but that plot point, not surprisingly, makes no sense whatsoever.

Early in the story, one of Melinda’s lovers has gone missing and the rumor mill of the small town has it that Vic killed him. This theory gains traction when Vic tells one of Melinda’s new lovers that he did indeed kill the old lover and might kill the new one too. For no decipherable dramatic reason, it is then revealed that some other completely random guy killed the first lover, so problem solved I guess…or is it?

To continue on describing the plot of this movie would be an asinine task as it’s simply indescribable. Just know that Melinda drinks and cheats a lot, Vic seethes a lot and there are a lot of parties where wealthy people get very drunk and swim in pools but get freaked out when it starts raining when they’re in a pool and then run to the house covering themselves because they don’t want to get wet with rain water even though they’re already wet with pool water.

Melinda’s trysts are all filled with a plethora of mild and tame erotic shots featuring soft lighting and posing seductively as if in a parody of a high-end perfume commercial. The lovely Ms. de Armas is often seen in various stages of arousal and undress…although to be fair the nudity in the film is brief and tasteful and will no doubt frustrate perverts on the prowl for soft-core thrills.

Speaking of bare skin, Ben Affleck goes shirtless in a pool scene and they only show him from behind but his back is Batman-esque with its muscular massiveness, which doesn’t really seem normal for a snail collecting nerd like Vic. Although I guess Vic sees himself as sort of the Batman of Little Wesley, so I’ll just go with it.

As incoherent as Deep Water is, and it is incredibly incoherent and may very well be the worst edited film of the 21st century, the final twenty minutes of the movie are the apex of unintentional comedy. It simply has to be seen to be believed as it had me cackling out loud on numerous occasions.

As for the performances, Affleck is on cruise control throughout, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else doing anything else than mindlessly reciting his garbage dialogue.

Ana de Armas is a luminous beauty, of that there can be no doubt, and Lyne dresses her in sexy dresses as is his signature style, but her character Melinda is so absurd as to be ridiculous. Melinda is the craziest, horniest, drunkest lunatic you’ve ever met, and yet she still manages to be as dull as a door knob.

My favorite performance though comes from Tracy Letts as Don Wilson, a local writer who is investigating Vic. Lett’s Don is such an incomplete and idiotic character, and his behavior so alien, that I couldn’t help but smile whenever he was on-screen. Don’s final scenes with Vic, which occur in the gloriously goofy final twenty minutes, are outrageously funny for all the wrong reasons.

As for Lyne, his very skillfully made past films were once thought to be edgy and sexy, but with Deep Water, he’s unfortunately lost the plot, literally and figuratively.

The bottom line is there’s absolutely no need for anyone to ever watch Deep Water as it isn’t sexy, thrilling or even interesting, it’s just a two-hour bath in a cold puddle.

©2022

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota - Episode 62: The Lost Daughter

On this episode, Barry and I head to the Greek Isles to take an unsatisfying vacation with The Lost Daughter, the Netflix movie starring Olivia Colman, written and directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal. Topics discussed include bad parenting, bad people, bad movies and what the hell is Ed Harris doing here?

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota - Episode 62: The Lost Daughter

Thanks for listening!

©2022

Pam and Tommy: A TV Review

HULU’S PAM AND TOMMY STARTS STRONG BUT ENDS UP BEING A RATHER FLACCID FABLE.

Pam and Tommy, the Hulu miniseries that dramatizes the events around the creation, theft and distribution of the infamous 1990’s Pamela Anderson-Tommy Lee sex tape, could have been great.

For instance, the eight-episode series boasted remarkable performances from its two leads, Lily James and Sebastian Stan, who transformed into Baywatch babe Pamela Anderson and Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee respectively, and turned those walking cartoon characters into multi-dimensional human beings.

The series also performed the miracle of making Seth Rogan (also a producer on the series), who plays Rand Gauthier – the guy who stole the sex tape from Lee’s safe, less repulsive than usual. No small feat.

In addition, Craig Gillespie, the director of the terrific 2017 film I, Tonya, directed the first three episodes of the series, which were immensely entertaining and intriguing.

Yet, despite having all of these things going for it, Pam and Tommy in its final five episodes managed to, like a drunken Tommy Lee, stumble over its giant dick and fall flat on its face.

The series opening Gillespie directed Pam and Tommy episodes were imaginative, visually interesting, taut and well-paced. But the wheels came off the wagon after Gillespie left the directing chair and the series went from a hearty jaunt to a grueling death march.

A major issue in episodes four – eight was that the series lost its deft touch and became egregiously heavy-handed in its cultural politics. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with using cultural politics as the sub-text for a story, and Gillespie does that masterfully in the first three episodes, but the other directors, most notably Lake Bell in episodes four and seven, get bogged down in the mire of heavy-handed misogyny moaning and man-hating to the point of absurdity.

For example, in episode seven, Pamela Anderson is not only portrayed as an exploited victim of a ruthless and misogynist patriarchy, but also as some undiscovered cinematic genius for how she shot the sex tape in question. The women waxing poetic about the subtle intricacies of the sex tape want you to think Pam was Kurosawa with fake tits because she had the camera aimed at Tommy’s face as opposed to his genitals while they had sex. Maybe, just maybe, that shot wasn’t an artistic or creative choice, but was just a function of Pam being unable to think straight under orgasmic duress or her not being able to get a wide enough shot to capture the infamous anaconda in Tommy’s trousers.  

Regardless, Lake Bell’s direction in episode seven, in particular, is laughable for its ham-handedness and amateurish lack of subtlety and nuance.

What makes the final five episodes so disappointing is that the first three were so good. For example, the sequences where working class Rand has to interact with detached-from-reality-rich-guy Tommy, and the ones where the emotionally walking wounded Pam and Tommy meet and fall in love, are fantastic. And the sequences where Tommy and his personality-plus pecker have a tete-a-tete are the height of director Gillespie’s absurdist glory.

But once the players and the basics of the story are established in the first three episodes, the final five fail to close the deal as the story loses momentum and wanders aimlessly and repetitively through a melo-dramatic desert.

As disappointing as the series is overall, there is no denying the extraordinary work of Lily James and Sebastian Stan. James gives an amazing performance as she perfectly captures the persona of Pamela Anderson, and imbues it with a genuine humanity that is captivating and often quite moving.

Stan too is astonishing as the aggressively adolescent Lee. Stan gives the cartoonish drummer a vivid inner life and fills all of his endless mugging and posing with a profundity and poignance that is startling to behold.

The rest of the cast though do mostly mediocre work mostly because they’re not asked to do much more. As previously stated, Seth Rogan at first is interesting as the religiously and spiritually conflicted Rand, but then as his story becomes less compelling, so does Rogan.

Taylor Shilling, Andrew Dice Clay and Nick Offerman all have supporting roles of various sizes, but none of them do any notable work at all.

The story of the sex tape of Pam Anderson and Tommy Lee, and how it came to be and saw the light of day and spread via the internet, is a truly interesting and relevant story, as it says a great deal about the decadent and decaying state of our culture and country.

Watching Pam and Tommy, who are so desperate to be famous, become victims of the celebrity culture they cultivate and the fame to which they’re addicted, should have been insightful if not profound, but unfortunately, Pam and Tommy fails to elevate this modern-day myth and fable into anything more than a tedious tabloid tantrum.

 ©2022

'The Book of Boba Fett' and the Future of Star Wars

‘The Book of Boba Fett’ may be a warning sign of Star Wars’ creative bankruptcy.

The Disney Plus series was a miserable misfire, as it relied on nostalgia to cover up its incompetent storytelling.

‘The Book of Boba Fett’, the once highly anticipated spin-off series to the stellar Disney Plus show ‘The Mandalorian’, limped to its first season finale on January 9. To say the show went out with a whimper would be a massive understatement.

When the series premiered back in December, I wrote that the show was bursting with potential but got off to a very slow start. Unfortunately, ‘The Book of Boba Fett’ never morphed into a page turner as it got bogged down by atrocious writing, anemic acting, derivative direction, lethargic action sequences and second-rate sets, costumes and special effects.

Boba Fett has long been one of the most mysterious and beloved of Star Wars characters. Despite not appearing in the original film and only having four lines of dialogue in the entire original trilogy, Boba Fett became a fan favorite because he was such a mysterious and intriguing presence.

Boba sparked the imagination of Star Wars fans like few other characters could, but the series dedicated to telling his story has disappointed fans because their imaginations are no doubt more vibrant than the suits at Disney who saw Boba Fett as little more than a vehicle for flaccid fan service and a nostalgia delivery system.

It's an act of creative malpractice that ‘The Book of Boba Fett’ turned the bounty hunter Boba Fett from badass into boring, and considering that the character was the franchise’s most iconic and interesting untapped resource, wasting this storytelling opportunity is an egregious sin.  

The failure of ‘The Book of Boba Fett’, and make no mistake the series is an abysmal failure, could be seen as merely a bump in the road, especially considering the dramatic success of its immediate predecessor ‘The Mandalorian’. But it could also be an ominous sign for the road ahead for the Star Wars franchise as a whole.

Despite hitting some major bumps in the road, like the cringe-worthy prequels and the woke-ified and feminized sequel trilogy, Star Wars has been a consistent cash cow for the 45 years it has been in existence. But you can only hit so many bumps before the wheels fall off the wagon, and in the wake of ‘The Book of Boba Fett’ one wonders if the franchise has an especially bumpy ride ahead.

As of right now Star Wars has no movies lined up to hit the big screens until December of 2023, a full four years after ‘The Rise of Skywalker’, and even that date might be optimistic.

So, the only thing for the Star Wars faithful to watch for the next two years are a bevy of Star Wars tv series which could be awesome or they could be awful.

‘The Mandalorian’ season 3 is set to premier in the second half of 2022, and if it’s anything like the previous two seasons, it should be terrific. Although, one of the most dynamic characters from the series was Cara Dune, who was played by Gina Carano. Carano was fantastic in the role but after she was labelled a heretic by the woke inquisition, Disney kicked her to the curb, and it remains to be seen if the show can adequately replace her and keep its creative momentum.

Also expected to arrive on Disney Plus this year is ‘Andor’, a prequel to the Star Wars film ‘Rogue One’ which tells the backstory of Rebel spy Cassian Andor. The series stars Diego Luna, and the biggest question is if, like Pedro Pascal in ‘The Mandalorian’, Luna can carry a series, or if like Tamuera Morrison in ‘The Book of Boba Fett’, he lacks the required gravitas to captivate audiences for a full series.

After ‘Andor’, the series ‘Obi Wan Kenobi’ is scheduled to premiere in the latter half of 2022. The show is set ten years after ‘Revenge of the Sith’ and features Ewan McGregor reprising his role as Obi Wan from the sequel films.

With McGregor starring, ‘Obi Wan Kenobi’ has no concerns about whether its lead is compelling, but there are still some concerning red flags. For instance, the series was scheduled to shoot in July of 2020 but Disney put it on hold because the scripts were so bad. Considering the abysmal writing for ‘The Book of Boba Fett’ passed muster at Disney, one can only imagine how god-awful the ‘Obi Wan Kenobi’ scripts must have been.

And when you consider that the paper-thin story of Boba Fett could only be stretched out into seven episodes, two of which ignored the lead character, and that ‘Obi Wan Kenobi’ is set to be only six episodes, it’s easy to think that this series might be, like ‘The Book of Boba Fett’, nothing more than empty nostalgia.

Other series without set release dates which may or may not hit Disney Plus before December of 2023 are ‘The Acolyte’, ‘Ahsoka’, ‘Lando’, and ‘A Droid Story’.  

Star Wars has always attracted viewers and always made money, but with Disney exploiting the fans desire for all things Star Wars by expanding the franchise, the very real possibility of overexposure, market saturation, and creative bankruptcy, which will lead to either fan disinterest or outright rebellion, exists.

If Disney goes for quantity over quality with its Star Wars tv shows and movies, eventually the brand will lose its luster and, like an imploded death star, be left a useless, hulking shell of its former self, as well as a stark reminder of the consequences of bad decisions by leadership.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2022

Oscar Nominations

The art and business of movies is in a dreadful state and the Oscars are in precipitous decline.

Hollywood got up bright and early this morning to hear who amongst them was nominated for an Academy Award. The rest of the world slept through the festivities, just like they will on March 27th when the actual awards are handed out.

‘The Power of the Dog’ was the big winner when it comes to nominations, garnering 12 including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Supporting actor and Best Supporting Actress.

2021 has been the worst year for movies that I can remember, so the vastly overrated, middling, pretentious mess that is the arthouse poseur ‘The Power of the Dog’ being nominated for a bevy of Oscars comes as no surprise, and says a great deal about the current sorry state of not only the moviemaking business but the art of cinema. It also says a great deal more about the insipid taste of the Academy than it does about the cinematic value of the movie.

Other big winners when it comes to Oscar nominations are ‘Dune’ with ten nominations and ‘West Side Story’ and ‘Belfast’ with seven nods each.

The general public rightfully had no interest in Steven Spielberg’s virtue signaling song and dance routine so ‘West Side Story’ has been a big box office bomb. But not surprisingly, the Academy Awards slobbered all over Spielberg and his tired remake nominating it for, among other categories, Best Picture and Best Director.

‘Belfast’, the rather benign and banal arthouse fool’s gold from Kenneth Branagh, snagged seven nominations as well, including Best Director and Best Original Screenplay for Branagh himself.

Besides ‘The Power of the Dog’, ‘West Side Story’ and ‘Belfast’, the Best Picture category includes ‘King Richard’, ‘Licorice Pizza’, ‘Nightmare Alley’, ‘CODA’, ‘Don’t Look Up’, ‘Dune’ and ‘Drive My Car’.

This Best Picture lineup is, at best, a murderer’s row of mundane mediocrity, you’d be hard pressed to find even good movie among this lot, nevermind a great one.

‘King Richard’ is a mindless, middlebrow sports movie, ‘Licorice Pizza’ is a secondary effort from director P.T. Anderson, ‘Nightmare Alley’ is interesting but has been a dud at the box office and overlooked by critics, ‘CODA’ is basically a laughable amateurish Hallmark Channel movie, ‘Don’t Look Up’ is a scattered failure, ‘Dune’ is a cold but beautiful spectacle, and ‘Drive My Car’ is a Japanese film that virtually no one has seen.

As for the other categories, there will be lots of talk about who was snubbed. But the reality is that movies are so bad this year that you can’t really make a case that anyone got snubbed. For instance, Lady Gaga was awful in ‘The House of Gucci’, but that won’t stop her fans from bemoaning her lack of an acting nomination.

The other big story will be the alleged lack of diversity among the nominees. As always, there will be lots of manufactured outrage about how not enough people of color, minorities or artists from “marginalized groups” got recognized by the Academy.

For example, in the wake of the nomination being announced, the New York Times wrote an article “The Diversity of the Nominees Decreased” that lamented the omission of Jennifer Hudson and “her rousing performance as Aretha Franklin” in ‘Respect’ from the Best Actress category. That movie and Hudson’s performance in it were entirely forgettable, and of course, the Times doesn’t tell us who shouldn’t have been nominated instead of Hudson.

The NY Times does give a back handed compliment to the Academy for nominating Jane Campion and Ryusuku Hamaguchi in the Best Director category, which they say has been “historically dominated by white men”. That may be true, but also true is the fact that a in recent history a “white man” hasn’t won the award since Damien Chazelle in 2016, and only two “white men” have won the award in the last decade.

It's pretty clear that the “white men” nominated for Best Director this year, Kenneth Branagh for ‘Belfast’, P.T. Anderson for ‘Licorice Pizza’ and Steven Spielberg for ‘West Side Story’, need not show up for the awards because in the name of diversity there’s no way in hell they’re going to win.

Speaking of the slavish addiction to diversity over merit, for years now the Academy Awards have been slouching towards irrelevance, but it wasn’t until the #OscarsSoWhite protest gained traction after the Oscars committed the sin of nominating only white actors in every category in 2015 and 2016, that the Academy Awards went into hyperdrive on their march to oblivion.

The desperate need to appease the diversity gods has forced the Academy to expand its membership, both through adding more “minority” members and purging older white members. The result has been an Academy that has tarnished its brand, diminished the art of cinema, and lost its audience.

The ratings for the Oscar telecasts have been declining rapidly for years. In 2010, 41 million people watched the Oscar go to ‘The King’s Speech’. In 2021, just over 10 million people watched ‘Nomadland’ win the award.

The Oscar’s ratings for 2021 had dropped 56% from the previous year, and the ratings for this year’s ceremony will undoubtedly drop precipitously again.

The bottom line is that the Academy Awards are in a death spiral of irrelevance. Oscar’s demise is a symptom of the malignant malaise in moviemaking and the collapse of the art of cinema, and the truly atrocious line up of nominated films is undeniable proof of not only the Academy Award’s irrelevance but also the decrepit state of cinema.

 A version of this article was originally posted at RT.

©2022

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 59 - Nightmare Alley

On this episode, Barry and I talk about Guillermo del Toro's noir remake ‘Nightmare Alley’. Topics discussed include the sorry state of cinema, the public's minuscule attention span and the underwhelming appeal of Bradley Cooper.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 59 - Nightmare Alley

Thanks for listening!

©2022

Rifkin's Festival: A Review

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

My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. Woody Allen once-again regurgitates his familiar formula of giving a repulsive old man a fantastical and unbelievable romantic life in this tired retread that may be the very worst of his career.

‘Rifkin‘s Festival’, which premiered in theatres and on video on demand on January 28, is Academy Award winning writer/director Woody Allen’s 49th feature film.

The movie tells the story of Mort Rifkin (Wallace Shawn), an academic and elitist film critic who accompanies his considerably younger wife, Sue (Gina Gershon), to a film festival in the Spanish city of San Sebastian. At the festival, Sue, a press agent for Phillipe, a hot young French filmmaker, falls for her client and Mort tries to seduce an even younger local woman he meets, Dr. Joanna.

Before I continue with my critique of ‘Rifkin’s Festival’, I have a confession to make. I’ve never liked Woody Allen movies and never understood people who did.

As a devout cinephile who reeks of the arthouse, I’ve been relentlessly taught and repeatedly told that Woody Allen is a brilliant, master moviemaker.

“’Annie Hall’ is a masterpiece!”, “’Crimes and Misdemeanors’ is amazing!” “’Broadway Danny Rose’, ‘The Purple Rose of Cairo’ and ‘Zelig’ are stunning achievements!” the cultural gatekeepers all told me.

But having watched Woody’s filmography over the years, I’ve come to the conclusion that none of that is true. 

When I watch a Woody Allen movie, I realize only one thing, that Woody Allen is now, and always has been, a pedantic and pedestrian filmmaker who churns out vacuous, vapid, vain, insipidly mundane, middle-brow bullshit under the guise of being a high-brow, arthouse auteur.

In basic terms, Woody Allen is nothing but Adam Sandler for the intellectual set, and their egg heads are too far up their pretentious behinds to see that reality.

As you can imagine, my opinion of Woody’s work, which, to be clear, is not a function of hindsight but actually pre-dates his troubling personal life being made public, has long put me at odds with the overwhelming majority of my cinephile tribe, but what can you do? I just call ‘em as I see ‘em, consequences be damned.

My biggest problem with Woody Allen films is, not surprisingly, Woody Allen.

I never thought Woody was charming or amusing, in fact, I’ve always found his nebbishy neuroticism to be grating to the point of repulsive on-screen. I could never imagine any actor annoying me as much Woody Allen…and then I saw ‘Rifkin’s Festival’.

If you think Woody Allen is irritating, wait ‘til you get a load of Wallace Shawn being Woody’s de facto stand-in as the pathetic protagonist of ‘Rifkin’s Festival’. Shawn, who looks like a shell-less turtle, and whose signature lateral lisp makes you feel like you’re dodging spittle for the entire 91-minute run-time, makes the sniveling Woody Allen seem like the suave Cary Grant.

The plot of Allen’s movies are always romantically ridiculous, and in keeping with tradition, in ‘Rifkin’s Festival’ the repugnant Mort looks thirty-five years older than his wife Sue, and maybe forty-five years older than his object of desire, Dr. Jo. The only way to make these couplings seem remotely believable would be to have them take place on ‘Fantasy Island’ under the watchful eye of Mr. Roarke and Tattoo.

The fact that Woody Allen is expecting audiences to accept that a beauty like Gina Gershon’s Sue would be married to a troll like Wallace Shawn’s Mort, or that the gorgeous Elena Anaya as Dr. Jo would contemplate being with Mort, is so beyond absurd as to be utterly delusional and insane.

Woody Allen has won three Oscars for screenwriting, but that says more about the group think of the academy than it does about Woody’s writing ability. ‘Rifkin’s Festival’ features more of the same pointless plot, lazy exposition, stilted dialogue and flaccid humor as Woody’s other work, except worse.

The film also attempts to be a tribute to classic European cinema, with homages to Jean-Luc Godard’s ‘Breathless’, Francois Truffaut’s ‘Jules and Jim’, Federico Fellini’s ‘8 ½’, Ingmar Bergman’s ‘The Seventh Seal’ among others sprinkled throughout. There’s even a hackneyed nod to ‘Citizen Kane’.

But referencing genius auteurs and their works doesn’t make Woody Allen a great filmmaker, in fact, it only spotlights his creative bankruptcy and highlights his relentlessly tedious, unimaginative and uncreative writing and direction.

In recent years, most notably after the #MeToo movement came to the fore and a 2021 documentary series ‘Allen v Farrow’ aired on HBO chronicling Woody Allen’s daughter Dylan’s claims that he molested her, weak-kneed critics have soured on Woody Allen films.

For years I was always on the outside looking in when it came to Woody Allen. I was never in on the joke. But maybe I was just ahead of the curve. Woody’s movies were always awful, and the allegations of depravity in his personal life have nothing to do with it.

The truth is that ‘Rifkin’s Festival’, which is being skewered by many critics, lays bare the fact that the emperor Woody Allen has no clothes, and I would argue that he’s been stark naked all along and that his simple-minded, sycophantic worshippers among the critical community were too blind to see it.

Regardless of whether you think ‘Annie Hall’, ‘Crimes and Misdemeanors’, and ‘Broadway Danny Rose’ really are masterpieces, it is simply undeniable that ‘Rifkin’s Festival’ is a dreadful and abysmal movie. In fact, the only debatable question about the movie now is whether or not it is Woody Allen’s worst. I think it is, which is quite an achievement.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2022

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota - Episode 58: The Tender Bar

On this episode, Barry and I belly up to the bar and down a few beverages as we wax poetic about George Clooney's latest directorial effort, The Tender Bar. Topics discussed include Clooney's dismal directing filmography and his illusory popularity, as well as Ben Affleck's long and winding road back to normal.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota - Episode 58: The Tender Bar

Thanks for listening!

©2022

The Fallout: A Review

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

My Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT/SKIP IT. The flawed film wisely eschews politics for the personal as it paints an at times compelling portrait of a teen emotionally and mentally disoriented by post-traumatic stress.

The specter of school shootings has become such a pervasive fear here in America that there’s not a school I know of that doesn’t have “active shooter drills” to prepare students, some as young as preschool and kindergarten, for such a horrifying potential disaster.

‘The Fallout’, the new dramatic movie streaming on HBO Max, isn’t a guide on how to avoid or survive a school shooting, but it’s definitely a useful study on how teens deal with the after effects of such a devastating event.

The movie, written and directed by first time feature film maker Megan Park, opens with 16-year-old protagonist Vada going through the motions of the most mundane of California mornings. She brushes her teeth, takes a shower, rolls her eyes at her younger sister, stops at Starbucks with her gay friend Nick and eventually gets to class.

Then at school all hell breaks loose. Gunfire rings out in the hallway as Vada and a stranger named Mia, hide and huddle together in a bathroom stall praying they won’t be discovered by the unknown gunman.

What makes ‘The Fallout’ an intriguing film is that, unlike virtually every other movie on the topic, it steadfastly refuses to engage in any meaningful way with the contentious politics that surround school shootings.

There’s no anti-gun or pro-gun message delivered, or passionate cries for more money to treat the mentally-ill who would be deranged enough to shoot people at a school, or musings on how demented a culture must be to produce school shooters in the first place.

No, ‘The Fallout’ entirely eschews the political for the personal. The movie avoids those cliched and more conventional political narratives in favor of simply focusing on the drama of how a 16-year-old girl deals with the overwhelming trauma of surviving such a violent and heinous event.

To its credit, the film also never exploits its subject matter for titillation. For instance, the shooting is never shown and neither are the physical after effects of it. We never see kids being killed or bodies piled up. And the fictional shooter is an afterthought, as his name is only mentioned once, and his motive never addressed.

The best part of the film is Jenna Ortega (who was most recently seen in the new ‘Scream’ movie), who plays Vada and gives a vibrant and compelling performance. Ortega convincingly captures the awkward nature of a 16-year-old, as well as the disorienting effects of such a heavy, existential burden being thrust upon an innocent child.  

Vada, like many victims of trauma, feels everything and nothing all at once. This manifests at first as numbness and lethargy. For instance, when her best friend Nick becomes one of those passionate activists you see on tv after a school shooting demanding change, this alienates Vada who struggles just to watch tv, nevermind appear on it.

Vada then finds companionship with Mia, the pretty-girl, Instagram star she hid with in the bathroom during the shooting. Mia and Vada become attached at the hip as they try and navigate the tumultuous waters of their fear and emotions in an ocean of post-traumatic stress.

Not surprisingly, two 16-year-old girls left to their own devices as they try and come to grips with a tsunami of mental and emotional turmoil, make some pretty bad choices, but in context they are completely understandable and believable.

Like Ortega as Vada, Maddie Ziegler is very good as Mia, giving the rather shallow, one-dimensional character that was written, a great deal more depth on-screen.

Unfortunately, the rest of the cast are less than spectacular. In fact, some of them are distractingly bad.

For instance, Julie Bowen, of hit sitcom ‘Modern Family’ fame, is so miscast and out of step with the film that it’s painful to watch. Bowen can’t seem to shake her sitcom performance style to better fit a movie attempting to tackle a topic of such gravitas.

Another issue is writer/director Megan Park. ‘The Fallout’ is definitely a confident and solid first-time feature film, but it also highlights Park’s inexperience as a director. For example, the film at times struggles to find its tone and maintain it, often devolving into an insipid silliness, usually while Julie Bowen is on-screen.

But to Park’s credit, ‘The Fallout’ is no polemic, as she doesn’t preach and she doesn’t pander with her movie. She also does a good job of discreetly contrasting American teen internet culture’s insidious vacuousness and vapidity against the intense existential angst born by peering into the deep void of death.

In addition, Park makes a solid but subtle case that American teen internet culture, with its narcissistic nihilism, is a type of soul-sucking trauma in and of itself.

And best of all, Park finishes ‘The Fallout’ with a flourish, as the ending is both simple and profound enough to elevate the movie and diminish its myriad of minor flaws.

As a dramatic study of a teen dealing with post-traumatic stress from a school shooting, ‘The Fallout’, despite its flaws, is a compelling and at times insightful movie, and the fact that it stays away from poisonous politics only makes it all the more worth watching.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2022

HBO series The Gilded Age: A Review

The HBO series ‘The Gilded Age’ is fool’s gold for ‘Downton Abbey’ fans

The series eschews historical realism and undermines its 19th century drama by embracing 21st century wokeness.

The first episode of ‘The Gilded Age’, the long-awaited, highly anticipated new HBO series from ‘Downton Abbey’ creator Julian Fellowes, which dramatizes the ruling class clash between old money and the nouveau riche in New York in 1882, premiered on January 24.

‘The Gilded Age’ once again tries to follow Fellowes’ well-worn formula of mining the opulent lifestyles of the exorbitantly rich for some drawing room drama.

To be clear, ‘Downton Abbey’, which ran from 2010 to 2015, wasn’t some dramatic masterpiece, but it was a charmingly benign, escapist soap opera that hit at the right time with the right tone to capture the imagination of audiences.

Unfortunately, ‘The Gilded Age’ is a pale imitation of both ‘Downton Abbey’ and the literary works of Edith Wharton and Henry James, as the show lacks both Downton’s charm and Wharton and James’ dramatic specificity and dynamism, resulting in an exceedingly joyless and painfully pedestrian program.

The first episode of ‘The Gilded Age’ introduces the less-than-compelling protagonists in this New York based, 1880’s cultured clash.

From the old money van Rhijn house are high-priestess of the old guard hierarchy, matriarch Agnes (Christine Baranski), her spinster sister Ada (Cynthia Nixon), their niece Marian (Louisa Jacobson), and Agnes’ son Oscar (Blake Ritson).

Across the street, in a pretentiously large mansion, are the nouveau riche Russell’s. The patriarch, George (Morgan Specter), is an amoral railroad robber baron. His wife Bertha (Carrie Coon), is determined to climb the highly provincial and restrictive hierarchy of New York’s elite. Their adult son Larry (Harry Richardson) and teenage daughter Gladys (Taissa Farmiga), are less ambitious and more open-hearted if not naïve.

You’d think the ‘The Gilded Age’ would focus fiercely on the clash between the van Rhijn and Roberts clans and everything they represent, but you’d be wrong.

Instead, a main thrust of the show is about Marian and a young black woman, Peggy Scott (Denee Benton), who serendipitously become friends on a railroad journey to New York from Pennsylvania.

 Downton Abbey’ received criticism for not being “diverse” enough, and Fellowes obviously wanted to pay his woke tax in full on ‘The Gilded Age’, so he scuttles the realism of the show by conjuring up this dramatically self-defeating, racially harmonious storyline to appease the diversity police.

Despite the fact that all Agnes talks or cares about is appearances and what other people think, when the black Peggy Scott comes into the van Rhijn house on 61st and Fifth Avenue, she is warmly welcomed by the family with soft-smiles and a job offer and not the historically accurate, racist and classist shrieks of outrage one would expect.

In one disjointed scene, Agnes scolds Marian for what people will say after she walked alone in the streets of New York with a suitcase, but then turns and smiles broadly at Peggy asking her to live with them and be her personal secretary.

This sort of preening progressivism and historical revisionism reared its head on ‘Downton Abbey’ too. On that show, which took place between 1912 and 1926, one of the butlers is discovered to be gay, and everyone responded in the most 21st century way by embracing him with open hearts and gentle smiles.  

In contrast, on the series ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’, the terrific original British period parlor piece which ran from 1971 to 1975, a butler was discovered to be gay and after being aggressively shunned he ended up being hanged.

It should come as no surprise that there is, of course, a gay character on ‘The Gilded Age’ too, and I doubt he meets such a grisly end.

Julian Fellowes is not interested in any such uncouth ugliness, he just wants to show off his, and his character’s, woke world view as well as the lavish lifestyle of the aristocracy.

Besides the self-defeating woke nonsense, what is most striking about ‘The Gilded Age’ is the abysmal writing and acting.

Christine Baranski is a great actress, but as Agnes she is tasked with being like Maggie Smith from ‘Downton Abbey’, a matriarch who unleashes incisive, witty barbs with a knowing smirk and a gleam in her eye. But Baranski is no Maggie Smith, and her dialogue is delivered with a dead eyed dullness that is shocking to behold.

The problem with Louisa Jacobson, who happens to be Meryl Streep’s daughter, isn’t that she’s no Meryl Streep (who is?), but that she gives a thoroughly lifeless and utterly anemic performance as Marian. She is so lacking in magnetism she’s nearly translucent if not transparent.

Denee Benton as Peggy is just as listless, and when Peggy and Marian are on-screen together it feels like the universe may collapse into a black hole of anti-charisma.

Most alarming of all is Carrie Coon, an actress of great skill and talent, giving a miserable misfire of a performance as Bertha. Coon furiously flails, and ultimately falls into the abyss of nothingness that is non-specifics and bland generalities.

The entirety of the cast seems adrift in the same endless ocean of lifelessness.

Maybe the problem is that the actors all have to recite the most cliched and trite of dialogue imaginable. Fellowes’ script is so devoid of any original spark that it’s no wonder the cast seem to be sleep-walking through the festivities.

‘The Gilded Age’ runs for eight more episodes with new shows premiering every Monday to March 21. But the bottom line is, if you’re looking for another ‘Downton Abbey’ or even just a decent tv show, the cheap knock-off that is ‘The Gilded Age’ sure as hell isn’t it.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2022

Ozark: Season 4 (Part One) - A Review

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

‘Ozark’ is back in all its brooding, blood-soaked, brilliant glory.

The dark Netflix series kicks off its final season with a binge-worthy cavalcade of crime and corruption.

The first part of the fourth and final season of ‘Ozark’, the hit Netflix show about a middle-American family that launders money for a murderous drug cartel, is finally here.

‘Ozark’, much like ‘The Sopranos’ before it, has split its final season into two parts, and premiered the first 7 episodes of its final season on January 21, with the last 7 coming out later this year.

When ‘Ozark’ first appeared back in 2017, I had little faith it would be a worthwhile watch. The premise, a regular guy getting caught up in the drug trade, seemed derivative, and its star, Jason Bateman, while being a terrific comedic actor, didn’t strike me as having the chops to carry a dark drama.

After watching the first episode of season one, it quickly became apparent that I was fantastically wrong. Yes, ‘Ozark’ certainly owes a debt to ‘Breaking Bad’, as it borrows the “regular guy gets into the drug business” blueprint, but it’s no cheap ‘Breaking Bad’ knock-off. It’s an original, captivating, stylish series that boasts scintillating performances and searing social commentary.

Just to remind you, the show follows the trials and tribulations of accountant Marty Byrde (Bateman), a middle-aged, middle-American accountant who happens to be a money launderer extraordinaire.

When Marty gets in too deep with the Navarro drug cartel, he and his wife Wendy, teenage daughter Charlotte and son Jonah, leave Chicago for the backwaters of the Ozarks, where the whole family must navigate their internecine conflicts while also dealing with the perils of drug lords and law enforcement.  

The show’s cast is tremendous, but it’s Jason Bateman as Marty Byrde that is the straw that stirs the drink. Bateman’s Marty is a masterwork of skilled, subtle and intricate acting.

Marty is a problem-solver, and while it’s his original sin that sets the story in motion, he’s now blessed/cursed to be surrounded by a coterie of combustible women who seem to cause all his problems.

For example, there’s Marty’s wife, Wendy, gloriously played by Laura Linney in full Lady Macbeth mode, who is a ferociously ambitious sort who hides her ruthless nature behind her smiling mom exterior. Wendy’s reach often exceeds her grasp and leaves the whole family in danger, but it’s Marty who must be the calm and cool voice of reason that has to clean up her mess.

Then there’s spitfire Ruth Langmore, Marty’s protégé, phenomenally portrayed by two-time Emmy winner Julia Garner. Ruth is a firebrand, vicious, volcanic yet vulnerable. When Ruth’s deep-seated wound is sufficiently agitated and she unleashes her existential fury, she’s a diabolical dervish that can destroy everything and everyone in her orbit, including Ruth herself.

And then there’s the queen of the Redneck Riviera, Darlene Snell, the local drug boss and all-around low-rent lunatic. Darlene (fiercely portrayed by Lisa Emery) seems like she could be the in-bred sister of the backwater rapists in ‘Deliverance’, and her shotgun-toting, mama bear energy, is as unnerving as she is relentless.

It’s a stroke of cultural/political sub-textural genius that the women of ‘Ozark’ are, almost universally, the catalysts of the story and are also consistently irrational, incorrigible and violently narcissistic. They are equally as diabolical and depraved as any of the men, if not more so. And it always falls on Marty, flaws and all, to put the pieces back together after one of these witches casts a wayward spell.

Too often nowadays movies and tv shows want to empower women without having them grapple with the insidious shadow that comes with power. ‘Ozark’ though, empowers women, but also lets them wallow, flail and drown in the same deep, dark waters that engulf men when they venture too far from shore, and it’s utterly delicious to watch.

Another great thing about the show is that it’s persistently a brooding, blood-soaked meta-commentary on life among the ruins of an American empire in steep decline.

For example, the stench of desperation and the rot of corruption, both personal and institutional, is absolutely everywhere.

The Byrdes start out trying to do the right thing, but their moral and ethical corruption spreads like a virus, and contaminates everyone with which they come into contact, leaving a trail of broken bodies and spirits in their wake.

Also corrupt are every law enforcement agency, both local and federal, every politician, and every corporation that shows their ugly head and bare their teeth in the Byrdes direction.

Another stroke of creative genius was having the Byrdes get into the riverboat casino business, as ‘Ozark’ is a running commentary on the absurdity of our casino capitalist system, where the little people are cannon-fodder, the rigged shell game is never ending, the money is made up out of thin air, and nothing is built on solid ground.

As an artistic endeavor, ‘Ozark’ is fantastically well-crafted. Creators Bill Dubuque and Mark Williams, as well as season four directors Andrew Bernstein (one of the very best directors in television), Alik Sakharov, and Robin Wright (the famed actress), consistently set the menacing mood with ominous atmospherics using a stellar score and masterfully-executed cinematography.

Ultimately, despite some minor plot missteps I felt didn’t work, the first part of season four proves ‘Ozark’ is as good as it gets on television. It’s not for the faint of heart, but it’s remarkably compelling and thoroughly satisfying. I’ll be sad to see the series go, but I’m glad it’s here for a little while longer.

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

Munich: The Edge of War - A Review

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

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. A middle-of-the-road, paint-by-numbers thriller without the thrills.

The new Netflix film, ‘Munich: The Edge of War’, which premiered on the streaming service on January 21, is a pseudo-historical thriller that mixes fact and fiction, resulting in a middle-of-the-road movie that is fundamentally, and at times forcefully, at odds with itself.

The film, directed by Christian Schwochow, is based upon the best-selling novel ‘Munich’ by Robert Harris and tells the story of two men, a Brit, Hugh Legat (George McKay), and a German, Paul von Hartmann (Jannis Niewohner), who were once chums at Oxford but had a falling out over politics when von Hartmann embraced Hitler in the mid-1930’s.

Now, years later the two are mid-level diplomatic staff members, Legat for Britain and von Hartmann for Germany, but they end up working together to try and thwart Neville Chamberlain from signing the Munich Agreement in 1938.

You see, von Hartmann has seen the light regarding Hitler’s malevolence, and he is supporting a secret plot by some German generals to have Hitler arrested if he invades Czechoslovakia. But if Chamberlain signs the Munich Agreement, then no crime will have taken place when the German army rolls into Sudetenland as it won’t technically be an invasion, and thus the generals will waver, the plot will crumble and Hitler will be left to run amok.

In order to convince Chamberlain to leave the Munich Agreement unsigned, von Hartmann enlists Legat to show the Prime Minister a top-secret classified German document that details Hitler’s plans for the Third Reich’s aggressive expansion across Europe.

The major problem with ‘Munich: The Edge of War’ is that the film desperately wants to be a thriller but due to it being a historical drama, it is devoid of thrills.

All the trappings of a thriller are present in the movie. For instance, there are a bevy of scenes at restaurants where passionately whispered conversations between men with furrowed brows come to a screeching halt when the waiter arrives and takes his time serving drinks while all the characters give each other intense, knowing glances.

There’s also a bunch of scenes where Legat frantically runs through the streets, bumping into random people (I hope these extras got combat pay), as he rushes to deliver a message of great import to the British Parliament or to the Munich Conference.

There are also multiple scenes where von Hartmann quickly walks, eyes forward, head down, past nasty Nazis bullying unfortunates on the streets of Germany hoping to avoid danger.

And then there’s the plethora of hand-held, floating camera shots and and purposeful music used to try and build suspense.

But the reality is it’s very difficult for a film to be a thriller and to build suspense when the audience knows exactly how the story ends, and obviously, spoiler alert, we know World War II happens and millions die.

Another failing of the film is that it tries to personalize history with the fictional relationship between Legat and von Hartmann. But the film’s dual narratives, which jump between Legat and von Hartmann, never allows sufficient time for either character to be developed enough for the viewer to be fully invested in their individual journeys. When the two narratives merge, the friendship between them isn’t established enough to carry any dramatic weight.

Unfortunately, director Schwochow also does not imbue the film with any distinct style, as it is visually indistinguishable from any second rate, made-for-tv movie with its staid framing and conventional camera work.

On the bright side, the cast is, for the most part, proficient.

For example, George McKay and Jannis Niewohner give solid if unspectacular performances as Legat and von Hartmann.

Ulrich Matthes plays a credibly creepy and slightly weird Hitler.

Jeremy Irons is particularly good as an enigmatic Chamberlain, embracing nuance and avoiding caricature.

The same cannot be said for the usually stellar August Diehl, who plays Franz Sauer, von Hartmann’s former schoolmate and current bodyguard to Hitler. Diehl’s retread of a performance as the cackling, crazy-eyed Nazi is a tired and over-used caricature.

Ultimately, ‘Munich: The Edge of War’ is as painfully pedestrian and paint-by-numbers a film as you’ll find. The most striking thing about it is not how banal and boring it is, but how fundamentally self-defeating it is. It isn’t an awful film, but it also isn’t a remotely interesting one.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

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