Barry (HBO) - Season Three: A TV Review

My Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. Great acting, writing and directing make Barry one of the b est shows on TV.

I’ve been a huge fan of the black comedy series Barry ever since it premiered on HBO in March of 2018. The show, which is created by and stars Bill Hader, tells the story of Barry Berkman, a veteran of the Afghanistan war who becomes a hitman and then unsuccessfully tries to transition out of a life of violence by attempting to become an actor in Hollywood.

I loved Barry because of its gloriously dark humor, its insightful and incisive take on the inanity of acting classes and the pursuit of success in Hollywood, and its exquisite writing, directing and acting.

Season three of the series, which runs for eight episodes, finally premiered on HBO in late April and finished in mid-June, and I just completed watching it last night.

Season three gets off to a not-so-great start, in fact it was so not-so-great that I thought it had jumped the shark and lost its mojo entirely. But after a shaky first three episodes, Barry once again finds its rhythm and gets into an irresistible groove, so much so that the final three episodes are as good as it gets on television.

In order to avoid spoilers, I will only say that the mantra for season three of Barry is that ‘the bill has come due’. Barry spent the first two seasons being a reluctant but very good hitman (and very bad actor), but now the hunter has become the hunted as the families of his victims are out for revenge.

As Barry slips deeper and deeper into a tangled web of his own making, he simultaneously dives deeper and deeper into an existential ocean searching for answers, or meaning, or purpose.

Bill Hader is outstanding as he perfectly captures Barry’s increasing agitation with life in an ever-increasing pressure cooker. The fear in his eyes is palpable as he desperately tries to maintain his cool and his cover as his world crumbles around him.

Supporting characters go through their own tumultuous and tortuous journeys as well, with Barry’s girlfriend Sally (a fragile and combustible Sarah Goldberg) riding the nauseating roller coaster of the Hollywood machine for her profoundly unsatisfying 15 minutes of fame. Barry’s acting teacher, Gene Cousineau (a gloriously inimitable Henry Winkler), is stuck on the same narcissistic, self-immolating, humiliating Hollywood ride, but for the last 50 years.

Naïve dimwit Chechen gangster NoHo Hank, a truly terrific Anthony Carrigan, is navigating his own fantastically preposterous maze as well, which includes his closeted homosexuality, deadly Chechen gang politics and a love affair with Cristobal (Michael Irby), a leader in a rival Bolivian gang.

Both Carrigan and Winkler are so great in their roles that it makes me giddy. These aren’t the usual sitcom caricatures, these are well-written, multi-dimensional characters brought to life by gifted, committed actors of great skill, and the results are glorious.

The rest of the cast, from big roles to small, are top notch as well, from D’Arcy Carden as Natalie Greer, Sally’s assistant, to Elizabeth Perkins as Diane Villa the head of BanShe the network for women, to Tom Allen as Mitch the philosopher baker.  

The writing is equally as good, and in the final half of season three is just fantastic. But what is most appealing about Barry, this season in particular, is the direction. Each sequence is so well designed, both cinematically and dramatically, that it feels like a master filmmaker is behind the camera.

Bill Hader and his co-creator Alec Berg directed all the episodes in season three, and their work is jaw-droppingly impressive. From the viscerally unnerving motorcycle sequence to the podcast sound-room sequence to the FaceTime to Chechnya/police raid/Bolivian hit sequence, all of the action sequences are unique in design and execution, and it makes Barry a glory to behold. Most television directors, even the good ones, have limited visual and creative imagination, usually because their ambition is stunted by the limitations of the medium and the business of television. But Hader and Berg are not infected by any such afflictions, and their vision is so clear and their direction so crisp, that Barry feels like cinema rather than tv.

As for the comedy, season three is less aggressively funny than its predecessors, but the humor that is there works because it is so deliciously dark. For example, there’s an action sequence, the aforementioned “sound-room” scene, that is incredibly disturbing, but which made me laugh out loud at a particularly bizarre moment amongst the depravity. This is what is so great about Barry, it isn’t forcing the laughs, it just lets you marinate in the madness of its premise and then jolts you with dark absurdities that are undeniably funny even if they are barbaric, or maybe even because they are barbaric.

Due to Covid and all the rest, we had to wait three years between season two and season three of Barry. Thankfully, HBO has greenlit season four of the series, and hopefully the wait between season three and four will be considerably shorter because Barry is undeniably one of the very best things on tv, and I’d like to think we deserve good things.

©2022

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 71 - Jurassic World: Dominion

On this episode, Barry and I run for our lives from the dino-disaster that is Jurassic World: Dominion. Topics discussed include Jaws/Jurassic Park and the primordial fear of moving down the food chain, the mystery of awful writer/director Colin Trevorrow's career, and the sizzling sexual chemistry between Chris Pratt and Blue the Raptor.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 71 - Jurassic World: Dominion

Thanks for listening!

©2022

Jurassic World: Dominion - A Review

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

My Rating: 1.75 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. This dismal dino-disaster has all the charm of a rotting Brachiosaurus carcass left out in the hot Malta sun.

Ever since Steven Spielberg busted the box office with his signature Spielbergian grandiosity and grating emotional simplicity in the original Jurassic Park back in 1993, the franchise has been an exercise in diminishing returns, with each successive movie declining precipitously in terms of cinematic quality.

Jurassic World: Dominion, which opened in theatres June 10 and stars Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Sam Neil, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum, is the third movie in the Jurassic World trilogy and the sixth cinematic dino-venture, and allegedly the final installment, in the nearly thirty-year-old Jurassic Park franchise, and it feels distinctively like hitting bottom.

Beating the Jurassic Park dead dinosaur to dust has been a profitable exercise for Executive Producer Spielberg and his corporate cohorts at Universal over the years, but this most recent miserable meteor strike of a movie should only be warmly welcomed because it seems to signal a Jurassic franchise extinction-level event.

The good news is that Jurassic World: Dominion has a plot, the bad news is that the parts of it that aren’t completely incoherent are utterly absurd. The globe spanning story features, of course, dinosaurs on the loose, an evil bio-tech company with the rather on the nose name of Bio-Syn (subtle), as well as a beautiful teenage clone with a posh British accent.

The plot and its atmospherics are so ridiculous and stereotypically “Hollywood” they sound like something bandied about in a rejected Entourage script.

The same is true of the second-generation Hollywood royalty populating the cast, with Bryce Dallas Howard (Ron Howard’s daughter), Laura Dern (Bruce Dern and Diane Ladd’s daughter) and Campbell Scott (George C. Scott’s son) headlining the nepotism all-star team dreamed up in the halls of power at some nefarious Tinsel Town talent agency.

Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum, the leads from the original Jurassic Park, reprise their rather forgettable roles in Dominion and mix and mingle with the equally forgettable characters from the Jurassic World trilogy.

I suppose this call back to the original is an attempt at nostalgia, but it’s a fruitless one since no one gives a flying fuck about these drab and dismal characters. The only reason to watch a Jurassic Park movie is to see dinosaurs roam the earth and wreak havoc, not to see Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum collect a paycheck.

The same is true of Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard. Pratt is sort of a C+ level movie star and is charming enough, and Howard is an equally pleasant on-screen presence and is easy on the eyes, but let’s not kid ourselves, no one would care if they, or Neill, Dern and Goldblum were just another high-priced dino-meal at the Jurassic Park café.

In fact, if T-Rex, or one of his even larger dinosaur co-stars, were to devour one of these mindless Hollywood meat puppets, it would make the movie delightfully worthwhile. But similar to Top Gun: Maverick, another current corporate money grab, no main character is allowed to die in this movie for some apparent reason.

This rather sterile creative decision is so egregious as to be criminal. If this is indeed the last installment of the franchise, and God knows it should be, then writer/director Colin Trevorrow should’ve used that as a blessed opportunity to shamelessly milk this bloated brontosaurus for all the drama it’s worth.

Why not have Neill’s Dr. Grant nobly sacrifice himself to save his beloved Dr. Sattler (Laura Dern) and then have Sattler eventually end up with his nemesis, Goldblum’s Ian Malcolm? Or have Dr. Ian Malcolm die in a blaze of over-acting glory to save the rest of the cast? Or have Chris Pratt get killed by his best friend/part-time lover Blue the Raptor? Hell…why not have Chris Pratt, Sam Neill and Jeff Goldblum all get eaten and then Bryce Dallas Howard and Laura Dern can raise the cloned teenage girl in a sort of “my two mommies/down with the patriarchy!” type of situation?

Speaking of which, the usual cultural politics of the day are on display in Dominion, with cartoon cutout minority characters, namely, Bio-Syn communications director Ramsey Cole (an appealing Mamoudou Athie) and ex-Air Force pilot and current sassy black lesbian Kayla Watts (a luminous DeWanda Wise), being the ones who save the day and everybody else’s pasty white asses. How patronizingly progressive or progressively patronizing, whichever you prefer.

Writer/director Trevorrow, who wrote all three of the Jurassic World movies and directed two of the three, has proven himself to be the poster-child for Hollywood hackery.

His movies seem like two-hour trailers for themselves, as there’s just no “there” there. As evidenced by Jurassic World: Dominion, Trevorrow’s stories are convoluted, his dialogue utterly atrocious, and his action sequences often derivative.

Another striking thing to me is that somehow the dinosaurs from the original Jurassic Park thirty years ago, look considerably better and more realistic than the ones in Jurassic World: Dominion. That is probably a function of cost-cutting and just plain old not giving a shit, but for whatever reason it occurs, it’s entirely unforgivable.

Jurassic Park movies are meant to be entertaining, mildly elevated monster movies, with a scintilla of sub-text about philosophy and science bubbling underneath the spectacle of dino-carnage. But what has ended up happening is that the films have been marketed more and more toward younger kids and also become more and more silly while also becoming more and more violent and dark. This dichotomy has made for a strange combination as the movies now seem much too scary for kids and much too stupid for grown-ups.

The bottom line is that the tortuously dopey Jurassic World: Dominion is a typical piece of mindless Hollywood franchise filmmaking that is devoid of both quality and interest. The once ferocious T-Rex from Spielberg’s startling 1993 original has been reduced to be nothing more than a creatively comatose, cold-blooded cash cow, and is definitely not worth your valuable time or hard-earned money.

©2022

Top Gun: Maverick - A Review

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

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. Despite some compelling aerial scenes, this absurd action movie is second rate cheese and a poor imitation of the original.

This week I took the highway to the danger zone that is the number one movie on the planet, Top Gun: Maverick.

The question you need to ask yourself before deciding to see this movie is…do you feel the need? The need for cheese? If so, then Top Gun: Maverick, is the movie for you.

The iconic Tony Scott film Top Gun turned Tom Cruise into a megastar back in 1986, and the long-awaited sequel, Top Gun: Maverick hit theatres on May 27 and has dominated the box office since its arrival, resulting in the biggest opening weekend of Tom Cruise’s blockbuster career. Thus far it has hauled in nearly $400 million worldwide in its first week in theatres.

The movie isn’t just making big bucks, its winning the hearts and minds of critics and audiences alike as it has Rotten Tomatoes scores of 97 critical and 99 audience.

In preparation for seeing Top Gun: Maverick, I re-watched the original movie this week. I was never a fan of Top Gun and upon re-watching that opinion didn’t change. That said, Top Gun: Maverick makes Top Gun seem like Citizen Kane.

The one redeeming quality Top Gun had was that it perfectly captured the cultural aesthetic of its time as it was an ode to the cheesy, Manichean simplicity of Reaganism and its accompanying American obliviousness and imperialism. Cruise’s Pete “Maverick” Mitchell was basically a fly boy version of Reagan’s Wall Street avatar Gordon Gekko, as he swaggered his way to success replacing Gekko’s mantra of “greed is good” with “militarism is good”.

The scope and scale of Top Gun’s success back in 1986 cannot be overstated as it changed not only the film industry but the nature of propaganda and the military industrial complex. The movie was made in cooperation with the Pentagon, which used it as tool to recruit and indoctrinate millions of Americans into a militarist mindset.

Prior to Top Gun there were a plethora of great films, such as Apocalypse Now, Platoon and Full Metal Jacket, that questioned America’s imperialism and militarism. But with Top Gun, the Pentagon figured out how to co-opt the Hollywood machine and not only churn out their own propaganda but silence or neuter films that questioned the American military.

Nowadays you can’t even get a serious movie that questions American militarism made because the Pentagon uses its leverage over studios to eliminate that train of thought.

Want to make another Platoon or Full Metal Jacket? You can’t because not only won’t the Pentagon let you use American military equipment, they’ll make damn sure the studio that greenlights that “anti-American” project won’t get any assistance, and will face numerous obstacles, for whatever other projects they may want to make.  

Now, if a studio wants to bend the knee and make a piece of rancid propaganda like Zero Dark Thirty or Top Gun: Maverick, the Pentagon will bend over backwards to make it happen.

Of course, the biggest problem with the success of the Pentagon’s Top Gun propaganda campaign back in 1986, is that it hasn’t just grown like a cancer in Hollywood, but in the news business as well. Watch any cable news channel today and you’ll see a cavalcade of intelligence agency veterans and assets mindlessly spewing intelligence agency approved talking points. Adversarial journalism against the military or intelligence agencies is now anathema in establishment news.

The biggest story of our time that simply cannot be told to a wide audience is the capture of all mainstream media, news media most of all, by the military and intelligence industrial complex.

Which brings us to Top Gun: Maverick.

As previously stated, I was not a fan of the original Top Gun, but to its credit it did perfectly capture the cultural aesthetic of its time, and unfortunately, Top Gun: Maverick captures the aesthetic of our time too in that it is so relentlessly generic and uninspiring.

The film is, like the recent spate of shitty Star Wars projects on the big and small screen, nothing but nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake. It’s meant to transport the viewer back to a “better” time when the moral simplicity of Reaganism ruled the world and movie stars actually existed.

Tom Cruise hasn’t been a major movie star for well over a decade as he’s churned out a cornucopia of crap since his partnership with Steven Spielberg ended after War of the Worlds (2005), and even those Spielberg films weren’t great.

Cruise can’t open a movie anymore if it isn’t a sequel, so he’s been squeezing the Mission: Impossible lemon for every last bit of juice it has, and now he’s trying to do the same with Top Gun.

The Cruise conundrum is that he has made the rather odd choice of becoming less an actor and more a famous stunt man/daredevil…and of course he does his own stunts in Top Gun: Maverick. But Cruise’s death-defying stunt fueled acting can only become more difficult as he tries to one up himself with each successive film while his body deteriorates with age (he turns 60 this year). Cruise is now essentially Evel Knievel without the drunken daredevil charm.

It's somewhat ironic that Cruise never allows himself to die in his films…but he might just end up actually dying on film. I’d say he has a death-wish but that’s impossible since he thinks he’s immortal.

Of course, Cruise could just go back to actually acting, but that was never his strong suit anyway and I guess it’s to his credit that he realizes that fact.

At this point Cruise is a parody of himself, which I guess works because this movie is a parody of the original…which was itself an unintentional parody of American militarism and machismo. Cruise gives a typically empty performance in Top Gun: Maverick…but I’m sure he’d counter that by saying “but I did all the flying!”. Congratulations?

At my screening, a bizarre filmed introduction by Cruise opened the festivities. In it Cruise looked like he reeked of formaldehyde and had just been awoken from a nap at a funeral home in what felt like a Scientology advert gone terribly wrong.

When the actual movie started, Cruise looked slightly better on screen but still looked odd. His obviously surgically altered face being both bloated in places yet contorted and taut in others. Look, the guy is in insanely great shape for 60, but his steadfast refusal to even let a little grey come in at his temples, and his strange face, feels decidedly forced and delusional.

In the movie, the plot of which is so absurd as to be ridiculous, Cruise’s Maverick is once again a rule breaker who somehow fails upwards and gets assigned a special post at Top Gun to train a group of other Top Gun pilots for a special mission.

It's not a spoiler to inform you dear reader that the mission these Top Guns are training for is identical to the mission in the first Star Wars…they’re basically being sent to destroy the Death Star. It’s good to know that the Star Wars creative bankruptcy is metastasizing to other franchises.

The original Top Gun, with its homoerotic undertones, including its manly female lead named Charlie (Kelly McGillis) and a volleyball scene populated by shirtless, oiled up pretty boys, is easily the gayest movie of the last 40 years and is considerably gayer than Brokeback Mountain, a movie which featured two cowboys aggressively butt-fucking in a tent.  

The homoeroticism of the first film is not as present in this movie…but that’s because there is no eroticism present at all. Yes, there’s a sense that all the guys from Mav’s old Top Gun class are like aged queens giving knowing glances to each that silently recount their debauched exploits on Fire Island back in ’86, but the new crew of Top Gunners, a collection of paper-thin caricatures, are remarkably asexual and unsexual. It beggars-belief that none of these studly swaggering fighter pilots is attempting to bed the lone female stick jockey, who is also neutered. These hot new Top Gunners are nothing but a collection of smooth-loined Ken and Barbie doll eunuchs that have all been unsexed Lady Macbeth style.

There is a romance in the movie featuring a stunningly gorgeous Jennifer Connelly as Cruise’s love interest Penny. The couple have history but no electricity, as no matter how much the gifted Ms. Connelly bats those beautiful blue eyes of hers, she just can’t spark the slightest bit of life to appear in Mav’s decidedly dead ones.  Maybe if Connelly’s character were named Joe and had a deeper voice it would stir Mav’s long dormant dong? Watching Connolly’s Penny flirt with Cruise’s Maverick is like watching a frantic surgeon repeatedly punch a week-old corpse’s chest in the hope of starting its heart.

Another story line in Top Gun: Maverick revolves around the son of Mav’s old “partner” Goose, who in the first movie dies due to Maverick’s reckless nature, who is one of the Top Gun pilots being trained to attack the Death Star. Goose’s son, played by Miles Teller, goes by the name Rooster. That is literally the most interesting thing about him.

A sentence you never want to hear is…”Jon Hamm is in this movie”, but unfortunately it’s true regarding Top Gun: Maverick. Hamm plays a former Top Gun pilot who is now in charge of Naval Air Forces and has a bug up his ass about Maverick. Hamm brings all of the power of his anti-charisma to bear on the role.

Without giving spoilers I will simply say this about the mission in the movie, just when you think it can’t get any sillier, it jumps a metaphorical ravine filled with sharks and becomes Rambo movie level of silly. To make matters even more buffoonish, the country the Top Gunners go to war with is never identified throughout the film. Is it the Russians? The Iranians? Nobody knows…and apparently nobody wants to know. This stuff is so silly and so cheesy that it feels like camp.

On the bright side, the aerial footage, captured by multiple cameras on the inside and outside of each fighter jet, is invigorating and pulsates with an energy that the rest of the film, which is the majority of the film, painfully lacks. If only that terrific fighter jet footage could’ve been used to tell a more meaningful and more interesting story. But alas…’twas not to be.

The original Top Gun was shlocky, but at least Tony Scott was a stylist that understood the fundamentals of moviemaking and knew how to make a coherent film. Joseph Kosinski, the director of Top Gun: Maverick, is not similarly blessed.

Just comparing and contrasting the two films reveals a great deal about Tony Scott’s skill and Kosinski’s (and screenwriters Ehren Kruger, Eric Singer and Christopher McQuarrie) cinematic incompetence.  

In Top Gun, the film opens with the top pilot on Maverick’s ship struggling with freezing up due to fear. This is an internal struggle that pilots must overcome, and eventually Maverick suffers from it too and must overcome it.

In Top Gun: Maverick the only issue pilots face is the deadly possibility that they pass out from too many G forces. The difference between that and a mental performance issue is night and day. G forces aren’t personal, they’re external and natural. Fighting G forces is like punching a rain storm. Fear on the other hand is personal…and with it comes intense personal drama.

In Top Gun even the romance is more complicated, as Maverick’s love interest is “Charlie” (read into that name all you want in terms of the homoeroticism of the film), who is actually his superior at Top Gun school. Mav is breaking the rules by bedding Charlie, and Charlie is too…which creates drama. Both Mav and Charlie acknowledge the danger of their love/work relationship and how they must keep it secret.

In Top Gun: Maverick, Mav and Penny have no stakes involved in their relationship whatsoever. She’s just a girl he used to bang and that’s as complicated as it gets. This is highlighted by the cringe worthy line by Penny’s daughter to Mav when she says “don’t break her heart.” Yikes.

In Top Gun, the story and the film, regardless of how over the top it was, is based in reality. It is grounded. Meaning that people could die if something went wrong. For instance, Goose dies because Mav fucks up and lets his ego write a check his piloting skills couldn’t cash.

In Top Gun: Maverick it’s all Hollywood fantasy world, as there is no connection to a grounded reality where people can actually die because they make a bad decision. This is accentuated by the oddity of having a no name country be the target of the Top Gun attack…which is in stark contrast to the original film which features Top Gunners facing off with the dreaded menace of Russians in Migs.

The bottom line is that Top Gun: Maverick is as generic a piece of big budget, blockbuster entertainment as you’ll find. The fact that its being widely hailed by critics and adored by fans is less a sign of the film’s worth, than of our culture’s steep and rapid decline.

©2022

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 70 - Top Gun: Maverick

On this episode, Barry and I take the highway to the danger zone because we feel the need...the need for speed... as we dissect Tom Cruise’s return as Maverick in Top Gun: Maverick. Topics discussed include the mystery of Jon Hamm and the recurring theme of attacking a Death Star, the difficulty of playing volleyball covered in baby oil, and how many G forces could we handle?

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 70 - Top Gun: Maverick

©2022

We Own This City (HBO): TV Review

My Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. Great cast and an important story for our troubled times.

It has been my experience that most, but not all, law enforcement professionals fall into two basic categories…bullies and blowhards.

Bullies seek out the job in search of power to try and quell their sense of inferiority, and are the types who frantically call for back up and then ruthlessly beat on an outnumbered suspect once they have the advantage.

Blowhards sign up for the job in order to impress others and gain a sense of self, and they love to talk about their police exploits to anyone within earshot, but when push comes to shove, they turtle dick and run for cover.

A wonderful example of blowhard cops are the cowards in Uvalde, Texas who did nothing as a lunatic shot and killed 19 kids in a classroom literally feet from where these allegedly rough and tumble bad ass cops impotently crouched in a hallway.

As for bully cops, their behavior is fully on display in the HBO mini-series We Own This City, produced by David Simon, the creator of The Wire. The series, which runs six episodes, is based on the true story of the Baltimore Police Department’s (BPD) Gun Trace Task Force and its malevolent and malignant rule over the streets of Baltimore in the 21st Century.

Simon’s series The Wire, also set in the morally murky world of the crime ridden streets of Baltimore, was a masterpiece. But his series since then, including the likes of Treme, The Deuce and The Plot Against America, were, frankly, pedantic and pretentious dogshit. So, I was intrigued prior to seeing We Own This City if Simon’s return to Baltimore would rejuvenate his work…and thankfully, it has.

Make no mistake, the six-episode We Own This City is nowhere near the marvel that The Wire was over five seasons, but it is chock full of fascinating performances and the occasional larger insight that is so often lacking in this age of supposedly prestige TV.

The series follows the exploits of rah-rah, go-getter Wayne Jenkins, a Sergeant leading the charge of the BPD’s Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF) who has a twisted view of justice, very sticky fingers, and a delusional sense of self.  

The GTTF under Jenkins is essentially the most effective drug gang in the city, as it uses its legal authority to cover its ass and line its own pockets while padding its overtime.

Jon Bernthal, one of the better actors of our time, is astonishing as Jenkins. He opens the series with a mesmerizing monologue that features his mastery of the extremely difficult Baltimore accent. Bernthal never drops the accent throughout the show, just as his Jenkins never gives up the ghost of his good-guy delusion.

Bernthal’s committed, energetic and relentless performance as Jenkins is DeNiro-esque in the best sense as he is both alive in every moment on-screen yet in total control of the minute details of the character.

Jenkins’ minions in the GTTF learn to rob, cheat and steal under his totalitarian tutelage, and even when they try and move on or stay away from the depravity, the cancer of Jenkins’ still infects them.

Another terrific performance comes from Jamie Hector as Sean Suitor, a cop who left GTTF and went to homicide. Suitor’s a good cop in a bad department and watching him try to navigate his impossible situation is a viscerally unnerving experience.

The luminous Wunmi Mosaku plays Nicole Steele, an attorney from the civil rights division of the Justice Department tasked with imposing a federal consent decree on the BPD. Steele’s confidence and competence emanate from her every pour, but, in the final episode when she’s confronted by the Sysiphean nature of her job, Mosaku’s performance, and the show, take on a deep sense of profundity.

Equally profound is a monologue by Treat Williams playing Brian Grabler, a retired Baltimore cop turned Police Academy teacher. Williams is excellent in the small role and his radically enlightened speech about the drug war is as compelling as television gets.

Despite the remarkable performances, the show is not perfect. It struggles with coherency because it keeps jumping around in time, from past to present and back again. I understand that this choice was necessary to adequately recount the exploits of the GTTF, but it is at times poorly executed and leaves the viewer wondering what the hell is happening and when is it happening.

That said, We Own This City, which ended its run Monday May 30, is well worth the time to watch, especially now with the cavalcade of police misconduct cases, the rise (and fall?) of Black Lives Matter, the demands to defund the police and even the deplorable cowardice on display in Uvalde.

The reality regarding policing is that the drug war has infected government from law enforcement on the street level, all the way up to the shills and shams in Congress and the White House.

The drug war has turned cops into an occupying force and citizens into the enemy. The fact that the drugs at the center of the drug war, and the guns that often accompany them, are a main source of income for the black budgets of our intelligence agencies, reveals the drug war to be a piece of Kabuki theatre meant to do little but destabilize the working class and poor and enrich the authoritarian agencies across government (local law enforcement as well as DEA, FBI, ATF, CIA, DIA, NSA etc.).

The obvious issues with police are further complicated by the fact that violent crime, especially in black neighborhoods, is a scourge. And while authoritarianism and police brutality and misconduct needs to be addressed and eliminated, that doesn’t negate the fact that black people are being killed at an ungodly rate not by police but by other black people.

The truth is that even today’s more popular opposition to police misconduct, namely Black Lives Matter, is infuriating because it is a corrupt movement meant as a ruse to turn discussions about our totalitarian and authoritarian police state into nothing but a fruitless and emotionalist debate about a nebulous, all-encompassing “racism”, which creates needless enemies out of potential allies.

BLM not only misses the forest for the trees regarding law enforcement, it is equally blind to the plight of black people stuck in crime-ridden neighborhoods, who need protection from the rampant criminality that surrounds them. How can we take the statement “black lives matter” seriously when the people killing blacks are themselves black?

The only conclusion to draw that makes any sense is that BLM is an intentional agit prop action conjured by the ruling elite to keep us proles divided, separated and distracted from the real issue, namely how cops protect and serve the interests of the oligarchy and aristocrats, not the citizenry.

For example, race means nothing to the cops in Baltimore’s gun trace task force. If Baltimore were a city of poor, lily white people, the GTTF, which is a very diverse and inclusive bunch of bastards, would still run rampant with its thuggery.

Policing in America isn’t about black and white, it’s about us versus them. The police are the muscle for corporate interests and the elite, and they make sure to use violence to control the working man and keep us all on a tight leash.

If the school shooter in Uvalde had gone to a private school in Brentwood, California, or Arlington, Virginia, or in Manhattan, do you think cops would sit around with their thumbs up their asses while nine-year-old kids were being massacred? Of course not, because those children of the rich are whom the police are meant to protect, and their parents are whom they serve.

The bottom line is that honest, genuine discussions about policing in America need to happen and rarely do, but thankfully We Own This City isn’t just a worthy series but also a good starting point for those discussions.

©2022

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 69 - Operation Mincemeat

On this episode, Barry and I don a stiff upper lip as we try to grin and bear the new Netflix WWII movie Operation Mincemeat starring Colin Firth. Topics of discussion include the banality of evil that is sub-mediocre cinema, John Madden as great NFL coach and commentator but abysmal film director, and the missed opportunity of a Weekend at Bernies World War II movie.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 69 - Operation Mincemeat

Thanks for listening!

©2022

Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness: A Review

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

My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

Popcorn Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. A dreadfully dull stroll through the multiverse of mundanity where Marvel malaise rules the day. If you need to see it, save your money and wait until it hits Disney’s streaming service.

In the wake of having witnessed Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, the 28th, and most recent film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I sat waiting for the usual end-credits scene and had a few thoughts.

The first of which was, if you’re the type of person who unironically uses the term “y’all”, I automatically think you’re a moron. I’m not saying that I’m justified in that belief, just that’s what I believe.

Another thought I had was if you pronounce words that begin with “s”, like “street” or “strange”, by adding an “h” to them and saying “shtreet” or “shtrange”, or if you’re so verbally lazy that you skip the pronunciation of “t’s” in words like “Manhattan”, and instead say “Manha’an”, or if you replace “th” at the end of a word with an “f” and instead of saying “mouth” and “breath” you say “mouf” and “breaf”, then you should drown yourself in a bathtub because you are so fucking stupid you don’t deserve to live.

The reason I was thinking about those rather random things is because a young white woman in her early 20’s sitting near me in the theatre was sharing her opinion of Dr. Strange, or as she called it, “Dr. Shtrange”, as the credits rolled and liberally used the term “y’all” and spoke about how the film was set in “Manha’an” and that it took her “breaf” away.

Unfortunately, “Dr. Shtrange” did not take my “breaf” away, although at various times throughout the movie I was wishing that I would stop breathing and be put out of my misery.

Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness opened on May 6th and, not surprisingly, has won the box office battle its first two weeks, raking in nearly $700 million worldwide against a $200 million budget. Marvel dominates modern movie going and it feels like we all have to pay our Marvel tax a few times a year just to stay on top of the cultural comings and goings, and I am no exception.

My relationship to Marvel movies and tv shows is that I am routinely underwhelmed by them but feel it my duty to watch. This says more about me than anything else, and what it says isn’t particularly positive.

Marvel’s new post-Endgame game plan seems to be to inundate audiences with sub-mediocre movies and tv shows with ever more complicated multiversal mania that are required watching if you want to stay relevant with the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

For example, if you haven’t seen the truly dreadful Disney + Marvel wokefest of a tv show What If…? then you might be a bit lost while watching Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. The same is true of Loki and even more true of the show WandaVision, which was an ambitious and mildly entertaining series starring Elizabeth Olsen as Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch, the character she plays in Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.

But rest assured, being up to date on Marvel’s required watch list doesn’t make Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness coherent, it just makes it slightly less incoherent.

The plot of Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is so convoluted as to be absurd, just know that there isn’t a single universe in the multiverse that is even mildly interesting. This isn’t the multiverse of madness, it’s the multiverse of dullness.

Adding to the malaise in the multiverse is the fact that this film looks and feels cheap and rushed. For example, the visual effects are at times embarrassingly amateurish. Add in a scattershot script, generally poor performances and derelict direction, and you have a recipe for sub-mediocre Marvel movie mundanity.

What makes this movie so disappointing is that it’s directed by Sam Raimi, who you may recall, among other things, directed the three Tobey Maguire Spider-Man movies from the early 2000s. Those films, particularly the first two, were very good and extremely well made (the third one was a hot mess…but two out of three isn’t bad!). Raimi is a quality filmmaker and yet on Dr. Strange he seems to have succumbed to the Marvel virus and made the most sterile and anti-septic piece of incoherent corporate comic book crap imaginable.

To be fair, the first Dr. Strange (2016) film was pretty forgettable too, but this sequel somehow feels even more inconsequential, which is unfortunate.

It’s unfortunate because of a few things, the first of which is that Dr. Strange is actually quite a fascinating comic book character. After seeing the first film I had a reader send me some Dr. Strange comic book titles to read and I thought they were terrific. The character, and his world, is weird, but not weird for weirdness sake. It’s a complex character and one worthy of a decent cinematic exploration.

Another thing that irritates about these Dr. Strange movies is that the films never live up to the stand out casting of Benedict Cumberbatch as the master of the magical arts and former Sorcerer Supreme himself. Cumberbatch’s Dr. Strange is a deliriously intoxicating combination of insecure smugness and aggressive arrogance that is pretty great to behold…but the stories they put him in and the movies that surround him are needlessly vapid, vacuous and abysmal.

Speaking of abysmal, Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness boasts what may very well be the worst performance by an actress in Marvel Cinematic history, which is quite an achievement. Xochitl Gomez plays America Chavez, a young-women who possesses the ability to traverse the multiverse. The dead-eyed, charisma-free Gomez is so awful in the role that it was physically uncomfortable to witness. It was like watching a homeless person defecate under the golden arches in front of a McDonalds and then put it on a bun and serve it to an unsuspecting public.

Gomez’s character, America Chavez, of course speaks Spanish because we have to hit all the right demographic buttons, and on top of that box-checking bit of virtue signaling she also has two mommies. In a nod to Marvel’s supreme subtlety, the name of Ms. Chavez’s universe of origin where everyone is a Spanish speaking Latina lesbian is…the Utopian Parallel. I shit you not. Here’s hoping the woke brigade and their alphabet contingent at Disney can learn Spanish and move to the Utopian Parallel and churn out their shitty movies to their heart’s content and spare the rest of us in this miserable universe their insipid cultural politics.

Speaking of mommies, Elizabeth Olsen is a good actress who was absolutely phenomenal in WandaVision playing Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch, but who is remarkably dreadful playing the same character in Dr. Strange. It’s sort of bizarre, but Olsen’s angry mommy on a multi-versal rampage just feels off here. Olsen seems completely uncomfortable on-screen as Wanda/Scarlet Witch, which manifests by her continuously being completely off-breath and off-voice throughout.

The rest of the cast, including some surprise cameos from stars playing Marvel icons - all of which will go unnamed so as to avoid spoilers, are pretty awful too. One is so horrendous that it genuinely shocked me.

As for the movie’s fate, Dr. Strange is undoubtedly going to dominate the box office for weeks on end and by year’s end will be one of the top grossing films, but that says less about the quality of the film and more about the crumbling nature of the entertainment business and the rapid decline in audience expectations. Such is life in this universe of corporate controlled, crap art/entertainment.

My advice is to avoid Dr. Strange in the theatre as it is most definitely not worth your hard-earned money. But if you’re a complete-ist and you want to stay on top of all things Marvel, just wait for it to stream on Disney + and watch it there. But even then it’ll still feel like a giant waste of time.

The bottom-line regarding Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is that it made me yearn to live in a universe where Marvel movies weren’t so reliably and relentlessly sub-par.

©2022

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 67 - Ozark Season 4 Part Two

On this episode, Barry and I launder our thoughts on the final seven episodes of the Netflix drug drama Ozark. Topics discussed include the harmonious sounds of Covid coughing, the foundational failings of an unsatisfying finale and the brilliance of Jason Bateman.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 67 - Ozark Season 4 Part Two

Thanks for listening!

©2022

Moon Knight (Disney+): A TV Review

My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. A completely forgettable and unforgivable mess of a Marvel series.

Marvel has not exactly covered itself in glory in the wake of the staggering achievement that was the narrative arc which culminated with Infinity War/Endgame.

Black Widow and Shang Chi were rather generic Disney/Marvel movie ventures and Eternals was the worst film Marvel has churned out in its history.

The Spider-Man Sony/Marvel movies have fared a bit better at the box office, but even those have been pretty lackluster films, Spider-Man: No Way Home being the exception. The other Sony/Marvel movies, Venom and Morbious, have been pretty disastrous.

In this post-Endgame era, Mickey Mouse’s minions have tried to branch out from feature films to television, giving us a plethora of Disney + content that has been more miss than hit.

WandaVision and Loki were flawed but at least ambitious. Hawkeye was a more conventional work, but entertaining nonetheless. Falcon and the Winter Soldier was a middling misfire. What If…? an animated shitshow. And now there’s Moon Knight, which is easily the worst of the bunch.

Moon Knight is, like the lead character in the recent sorry Sony/Marvel movie Morbius, a bit of an obscure superhero in the Marvel canon.

Moon Knight is one of the superhero personas of Marc Spector/Steven Grant - a guy with a split personality. Spector is a rough and tumble American mercenary and Grant is an effete Brit who works at an Egyptian museum. Moon Knight is the avatar for the moon god Khonshu when Spector’s personality is in charge, and when Grant is in charge that avatar is Mr. Knight.  

If that all sounds a bit much that’s because it is, and Moon Knight doesn’t do much to quell the confusion.

Moon Knight is, like Morbius, a pretty fascinating character once you do the comic book reading necessary, but also like Morbius, the character is poorly served by the studio’s attempt to take him mainstream because the vehicle used is so atrocious.

The series Moon Knight, like the film Morbius, is an utter abomination it is so awful.

The series runs for 6 episodes, and yet it’s pacing is so bad, its storytelling so stilted, its action sequences so dull, it felt like watching a 40 hour death march.

The series takes its sweet time actually introducing Moon Knight, a fatal error as he’s the only remotely interesting thing in it. Instead, it plays coy with Steven Grant’s perspective, and actually cuts away anytime something interesting is about to happen and Moon Knight is supposed to show up.

When Moon Knight finally does arrive on screen, he is accompanied by the most egregiously choreographed, poorly shot and dismally edited action sequences you’ll ever witness.

And it isn’t just the action sequences, as everything about Moon Knight looks and feels cheap.

A huge problem with the show is that Oscar Isaac simply can’t carry a series on his own, as he lacks the requisite charisma and star power, nevermind the acting ability.

Isaac’s appeal has long eluded me. He is routinely terrible in movies (try watching him in those Star Wars pieces of shit) and yet people fawn all over him like he’s some great actor/movie star.

That said, last year I saw him in the Paul Schrader film, The Card Counter, and I thought he was fantastic. His performance was underplayed, subtle and riddled with complexity. Finally, I began to see what other’s saw in Oscar Isaac…and then… he turns around and churns out the embarrassment that is Moon Knight.

All of Isaac’s versions of Moon Knight, be it Mark Specter or Steven Grant, are dead-eyed, dreadful and dull. By the way, Isaac’s British accent as Steven Grant is Dick Van Dyke level of hackneyed.

Speaking of dreadful, Morbious was a truly dreadful movie and, ironically, the geniuses behind Morbious and Moon Knight are on the same creative page as there’s a sequence in Morbious that is copied in Moon Knight.

In the sequence, there’s a sort of horror chase through a hallway with corporate zone lighting in it where the only lights that go on are the ones immediately above the person walking. It was enormously amusing to me that Moon Knight used the same exact lighting technique in an equally flaccid horror chase scene. Apparently unoriginal minds think alike.

Another major issue with Moon Knight is that the whole Egyptian gods thing is a tough sell, as once you start getting into supernatural instead of superhero, things become even more silly than usual pretty fast. Eternals suffered from a similar failing.

And Moon Knight doesn’t seem to be connected in any way to the rest of the Marvel Universe, so the series feels even more irrelevant. For example, why when giant Egyptian gods are fighting and civilians dying, wouldn’t the Avengers get involved?

To me, the most remarkable thing about Moon Knight is how instantly forgettable it is, and how atrociously made it is.

But rest assured, despite Moon Knight being a major mess, Marvel still managed to get its weak-kneed woke agenda into the series. There’s one sequence where a little Egyptian girl says to Scarlet Scarab (a female Moon Knight-esque character - it’s a long story), “are you an Egyptian superhero?”, and she replies with pride, “Yes I am!” That sequence made me cringe so hard I nearly defecated.

But rest assured, all that virtue signaling garbage is just icing on the cake of awfulness that is Moon Knight.

The bottom line is that if Moon Knight is what the future holds for Marvel, then the future is bleak indeed.

©2022

Winning Time (HBO): A TV Review

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. A second rate recounting of a first rate story. Just more fool’s gold from Adam McKay.

The title of the Adam McKay produced HBO series that chronicles the critical 1980 NBA season for the Los Angeles Lakers, Winning Time, subtly says a great deal about why the series is ultimately a failure.

Winning Time is based on the Jeff Pearlman book Showtime, which was aptly titled since it documented the birth and growth of the Showtime Lakers, which, along with Larry Bird’s blue-collar Boston Celtics, revitalized the NBA and the game of basketball itself in the 1980’s.

“Showtime” in this context has multiple meanings in that it refers to the Lakers flashy, up-tempo offense, Magic Johnson’s jaw-dropping passing ability, million-dollar smile and superstar charisma, and the team’s new glitzy, Hollywood-friendly image.

But “Showtime” is also a cable channel and HBO’s main competitor, so they couldn’t name the series “Showtime” despite that being the perfect name. It would be like McDonalds naming their new burger the Burger King.

So, “Showtime” was jettisoned and the series became the banal and boring Winning Time, which sounds eerily similar to the 90’s Saturday morning show and Saved by the Bell wannabe, Hang Time, about a high school basketball team. Hang Time starred former NBA player Reggie Theus and gave the world Anthony Anderson, and also set the art of acting back to the Stone Age.

Winning Time is little more than a glossier, glitzier, adult-version of Hang Time. In case you were wondering…that’s not a compliment.

Winning Time attempts to do the near impossible, make a compelling drama/comedy that has a cultural/political agenda and is filled with famous real-life characters, while believably capturing the essence of professional basketball as played at the time.

Ultimately, the series clangs off the rim in its shot at greatness because it is so ham-fisted in nearly everything it tries to do.

As a basketball fan the thing that was most uncomfortable about watching Winning Time is that the basketball in it is just cringe-worthy. This is not surprising since basketball is a very difficult sport to fake – see White Men Can’t Jump for proof of that, and in high school the drama nerds were too busy starring in Brigadoon rather than on the basketball court.

In recreating the 1980 Lakers (and their opponents) you first have to find actors who are big enough to be believable, and who share a resemblance to their famous characters. Once you have that…which is no easy task, then those actors need to be able to play decent basketball, which is highly unlikely since if they could be as remotely good at basketball as the character’s they portray, they wouldn’t be two-bit actors.

Quincy Isaiah is a perfect example. Isaiah has a passing resemblance to Magic Johnson, and does an excellent job of capturing young Magic’s exuberant essence off the court. But on the court, Isaiah’s pudgy physique and his lack of basketball skill is, frankly, distracting and embarrassing.

Most of the rest of the players, be they Lakers or Larry Bird or Dr. J, suffer a similar fate, and no matter how much the director’s try and hide the awkward un-athelticism on display, you simply can’t tell this basketball story without showing basketball, and the basketball on display is an abomination.

The only real exceptions are Solomon Hughes as Kareem, and DeVaughn Nixon as Norm Nixon, and even they more look the part than actually play it.

Hughes is a 7-footer who played at Berkley and had a cup of coffee in the NBA. He perfectly captures the sullen brooding of Kareem off the court, and while his skyhook is definitely a bit wonky (which begs the question…why has no big man over the last 50 years tried to emulate the single most successful basketball shot in the history of the sport – Kareem’s skyhook?) he makes for a somewhat believable presence on the court.

As for Devaughn Nixon, he looks so much like Norm Nixon it freaked me out…but then I looked him up and he’s Norm Nixon’s son, so mystery solved.

Unfortunately, most of the non-basketball playing cast members throw up an airball as well.

For example, Jason Segel’s over-acting as assistant coach Paul Westhead is high school drama club reject level of awful. Segel’s Westhead is a feckless, Shakespearean fancy-pants with no lips and even less balls. Segel may be charming in various comedies, but he is an absolutely atrocious dramatic actor.

Adrien Brody, whose face looks like it was found in Picasso’s garbage bin, is, astonishingly, supposed to play super model-looking, Gucci mannequin and future Hall-of-Fame coach, Pat Riley. Brody is appallingly bad in the role. And watching Brody try to chew gum like Riley is one of the more alarming things I’ve ever witnessed, it’s like watching a brain-damaged camel chew on a truck tire.

Jason Clarke plays Laker icon Jerry West, aka The Logo, like he’s auditioning for a community theatre production of The Shining. West has made a stink about his portrayal in the series and is threatening legal action, and frankly, I don’t blame him. Clarke is a fine actor, but his choices as West are so absurd as to be insane.

One of the lone bright spots is John C Reilly as Dr. Jerry Buss. Reilly captures the degenerate clown show that is Jerry Buss. Buss, like many successful men of that generation, was a delusionally depraved douchebag and thought of himself as a cross between Hugh Hefner and James Bond.

Of course, Reilly’s Buss is funny because he’s so ridiculous in his tight jeans, unbuttoned shirt and with his scientifically impossible comb over, but he’s also pathetic, manipulative and disgusting, as he keeps pictures of all his sexual conquests and uses his wealth and the terminal illness of his mother to basically sexually assault a nurse.

Buss’s smoke and mirrors purchase of the Lakers, and his revitalization of the team, which ultimately led to the birth of the modern NBA, is an important story, but Adam McKay is incapable of properly telling it.

McKay uses his usual bag of tricks, like breaking the fourth wall and using different film stocks to give a visual flair to things, but this doesn’t elevate the material but rather feels like empty parlor tricks.

Winning Time, like all of McKay’s “serious” works, is loaded with the director’s personal politics, in this case there’s a plethora of pandering regarding misogyny and the patriarchy. These cultural political issues in Winning Time are a lot like McKay’s various filmmaking quirks in that they feel manufactured and used to cover up fundamental flaws in the storytelling.

McKay came to fame as Will Ferrell’s comedy caddy and then made the leap with the extraordinarily impressive The Big Short. The Big Short was a stunning achievement, one which I never would have thought a director like McKay could’ve made…but he did it.

But since The Big Short, McKay has tried to tackle equally complex material and has floundered. Vice, the story of Dick Cheney, was an ambitious failure. Don’t Look Up was a scattershot attempt to make a climate change satire, and it fell flat. As more time passes and more “serious” McKay projects see the light of day, it becomes more and more clear that The Big Short wasn’t the beginning of a great run, but rather an outlier from an ambitious but artistically very limited storyteller. Winning Time is just more proof of this thesis.

Ultimately, Winning Time is a loser because it’s a story of Shakespearean scope and scale about basketball made by someone who has neither any genuine insight into human nature nor a true understanding of the complexities of the game. As any big man worth his salt would say as he swatted a sorry shot into the third row, I say to Adam McKay and Winning Time, “get that weak shit outta here!”

©2022

The Dropout (Hulu): A TV Review

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

My Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. A middling misfire of a movie of the week posing as prestige TV.

Years ago, before streaming services and even before cable tv, there was a network television phenomenon called The Movie of the Week (MOTW). MTOW was usually a second rate, ripped from the headlines hack-fest, starring some up-and-comer or down-and-outer, that produced a compelling commercial for itself but an abysmal two-hour movie.

Hulu, Disney’s backwater repository for all of its non-Disney-fied properties, seems to want to brand itself the modern-day home for the MOTW which it has stretched out into Mini-Series of the Week.

For example, a few months ago Hulu premiered Pam and Tommy, starring Lily James and Sebastian Stan, a mini-series which tells the true story of how a celebrity sex tape of Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee came to be and changed the world for the worse.

Hulu also recently premiered another mini-series called The Girl from Plainville, starring Elle Fanning, which tells the true story about a high-profile case about a high school girl who was prosecuted for allegedly talking her boyfriend into killing himself.

Hulu’s The Dropout falls into this now familiar category, as it stars Oscar nominee Amanda Seyfried, and tells the true story of a high profile, scandalous event - Elizabeth Holmes scamming most everybody with her smoke and mirrors blood testing company Theranos.

Like the old MOTW, Hulu’s star-studded, ripped-from-the-headlines mini-series make for better commercials than they do actual series. For instance, Pam and Tommy generated a lot of light but ultimately no heat as it was an exercise is play-acting and vapid socio-political pandering.

The Dropout produces similar results but is even more vacuous and artistically banal than Pam and Tommy.

Pam and Tommy at least started off promisingly enough and then went precipitously off the rails, but The Dropout is a tortuous slog from the get-go. I almost didn’t make it through the first episode. And then was so turned off by its amateurish script, its incoherent structure and mundane production that I stayed away for weeks until I finally bit the bullet and watched the rest of the eight-episode series.

As evidenced by her work in David Fincher’s Mank, Amanda Seyfried is a fine actress, and she does her best as the peculiar Elizabeth Holmes, but Holmes is such a cartoon character that she feels impenetrable (maybe the point of why she turned herself into a cartoon character!) and Seyfried’s performance feels more like imitation than acting.

Seyfried never pierces Holmes’ armor and thus we are left with a rather shallow performance with her doing little more than mimicking Holmes’ bizarre speaking voice and not much else.

Other performances are equally underwhelming if not uncomfortably broad. William H Macy is atrocious as Richard Fuisz, a neighbor of Holmes and competitor. His prosthetics are an embarrassment to the profession.

Much like Pam and Tommy turned their story into a feminist screed about the evils of the patriarchy, The Dropout follows this familiar path. The series paints Holmes as both victimizer and, of course, since she’s a woman swimming in the shark-infested, unfathomable waters of the patriarchy, also a victim.

The show never dares confront the most obvious and most interesting truth about Holmes which is that she rose to the power solely BECAUSE SHE WAS A WOMAN.

The big wigs, and she had a plethora of big wigs, from investor Don Lucas to Rupert Murdoch to former Secretary of State George Shultz, who backed her and went to great lengths to protect her, did so because they wanted to signal their virtue and 21st century feminist bona fides. Holmes sensed their weakness and exploited her femininity to manipulate the ‘noble intentions’ of these pillars of the male power structure.

The media gets off easy too in The Dropout, as its role in her rise to power is diluted if not outright ignored. The media’s gushing, deferential coverage is what built the formidable myth of Holmes as the girl power Steve Jobs. The media wanted Holmes to be a feminist icon and did all it could to print the legend and avoid the truth.

Both the media and the powerful men she duped, were promoting the credo of the 21st century, image over merit. This credo fuels the entirety of our society, and is a reflection of a country and culture in a death spiral.

Ultimately, the problem with The Dropout, and Pam and Tommy, and Hulu’s MOTW approach, is that it too is only interested in image and not in merit, not just in their storytelling but in their hiring and production.

Yes, the stories of Elizabeth Holmes and Pam and Tommy Lee are on their surface interesting, but Hulu doesn’t bring any insight to them, just shallow recreation and exploitation. We learn nothing about Elizabeth Holmes in The Dropout, we just witness her do things we already knew she did.

The Dropout, like Pam and Tommy before it, seems to exist for no other reason than for Hulu to signal its virtue and to have viewers passively mutter, “oh yeah, I remember when that happened in real life” as they sit comatose on their couch watching famous people play-act as other famous people.

As Orwell once wrote, “to see what is in front of one’s nose is a constant struggle”, and the makers of The Dropout are disinterested in life beyond their proboscos. The story of Elizabeth Holmes is chock full of lessons and morals for our decadent and delusional age, but The Dropout is incapable of seeing what is in front of its own nose, and instead prefers to close its eyes and imagine a different, more politically Twitter friendly, less complex, more Manichean, world instead.

The bottom line is that The Dropout, like Pam and Tommy before it, is a terribly wasted opportunity. It’s nothing more than an empty-headed movie of the week posing as prestige TV, stretched out over eight grueling weeks. There is absolutely no reason why anyone, anywhere, should ever waste their time watching this middling monstrosity.

©2022

Slow Horses (Apple TV+): A TV Review

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

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. Despite a brilliant cast, this cliched spy thriller is a rushed and rather derivative piece of television.

Slow Horses, the British spy thriller which just finished its first season on Apple TV+, is an odd duck of a show.

The series, based upon the 2010 Mick Herron novel of the same name, tells the story of a group of MI5 misfits sent to a mind-numbing, soul-sucking, bureaucratic no man’s land called Slough House, where they are meant to waste away their careers on meaningless drudgery as punishment for their various failings.

The show, the first season of which runs six episodes, attempts to balance a somewhat comedic tone against the overloaded tensions of a spy story involving kidnapping, murder, double-crosses, triple-crosses, spy agency conspiracies and white supremacy.

The reason I navigated the labyrinth of Apple TV and tuned in to Slow Horses was because Gary Oldman, one of my favorite actors, was the series lead.

I was not disappointed with Oldman’s performance, though I was disappointed that his character was not as featured as I had hoped (or been led to believe). Oldman plays Jackson Lamb, an old school spy wasting away in the purgatory of Slough House for some undescribed mortal sin. Oldman’s Lamb is caustic, acerbic, odious, repulsive and gloriously funny. OIdman so embodies the disheveled anarchy that is Lamb you can almost smell his flatulent stench wafting through your living room.

Equally good is Kristen Scott Thomas as cold-blooded, clench-mouthed MI5 matriarch, Diana Taverner. Taverner is an uptight operator supreme and her visceral repulsion of Lamb tells you all you need to know about her own sense of superiority.

Jack Lowden plays River Cartwright, an up-and-coming young buck of an MI5 agent who steps in a pile of shit and finds himself in the stink that is Slough House. Cartwright is the most superficially constructed MI5 agent in the show but Lowden does a terrific job of making him compelling.

The acting across the board is excellent. The supporting cast, most notably Olivia Cooke, Dustin Demri-Burns and Rosalind Elazor as a group of Slough House agents, all do solid work.

What makes Slow Horses so odd though is that despite superb work from the cast, the show is painful to watch because the script is utterly abysmal.

I will avoid giving away any plot points or spoilers out of respect for those who may want to watch the show, but I will say that the six episodes of Slow Horses is so crammed full of spy cliché after spy cliché and absurd plot twist after absurd plot twist as to be ridiculous. None of it is remotely believable or, to be frank, very interesting. Slow Horses is so manufactured and derivative that it feels like…well…just another stupid TV show.

I kept thinking of the 2018 British drama Bodyguard as I watched Slow Horses. Bodyguard, which starred a very good Richard Madden, started off interesting but then quickly devolved into egregiously ridiculous spy shenanigans and became unbearably buffoonish. Slow Horses stumbles the same way, wasting its bevy of captivating performances with outlandish plot twists that come too fast and too often.

The six-episode arc of the first season felt abbreviated and rushed. The story may have, may being the imperative word, worked better if it were stretched over a 12-episode season, thereby spreading out the narrative and giving time for the drama, and the plot, to build and seem more believable.

The politics of Slow Horses is just as trite as the storytelling, as the show decides to use the allegedly edgy, but actually old and tired, trope of having white supremacist be the villains. I understand the urge to placate and pander to a certain segment of the audience with this sort of politically charged, and painfully politically correct, storyline, but that doesn’t diminish how vacant, vacuous and vapid it is.

And while the conspiracy angle of Slow Horses is, in theory at least, intriguing, in execution it falls decidedly flat.

At the end of season one of Slow Horses, they show clips from the upcoming season two, so the show will definitely be around for a bit longer. But if season one is any indication, despite the glories of Gary Oldman and Kristen Scott Thomas, this old spy dog just won’t hunt.

If you want to watch the show for the brilliance of Gary Oldman, I don’t blame you, just go into it with low expectations for the series and an understanding that Oldman isn’t the star, just a sterling piece is an otherwise terribly mismatched puzzle.  

©2022

The Northman: A Review

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

My Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Popcorn Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

 My Recommendation: SEE IT. This weird, arthouse action movie is flawed but also unique, interesting and gorgeously photographed, so best to see it in the theatre.

The Northman, directed and co-written by arthouse darling Robert Eggers, may be the most brazenly bizarre big budget action movie in cinema history.

The best way I can describe the film is to say that it’s like if Conan the Barbarian and Hamlet had a baby and Norse mythology was its wet nurse.

Writer/Director Eggers is one of the more intriguing talents to come along in recent years, and he made a name for himself with his distinctly stylized, visually impeccable, first two films, The Witch (2015) and The Lighthouse (2019). Those movies were arthouse ventures through and through, and while I liked The Witch much more than The Lighthouse, I respected what Eggers was up to in both films.

With The Northman, Eggers is stepping out of his comfort zone and stepping up in budget to an estimated $90 million, in an attempt to expand his audience with a more action-oriented movie. With more money comes, well, less responsibility, as Eggers lost the power of final cut of his movie, leaving him no doubt unhappy to have his film be left at the mercy of soulless suits from the studio.

The plot of The Northman is as old-school as it gets, as it’s a revenge story, one which has no doubt been told and retold since the dawn of history.

The film follows the trials and tribulations of Amleth (Alexander Skarsgard), a Viking prince who sets out on a journey to avenge the murder of his father and capture of his mother.  

Amleth’s odyssey is epic in concept but Eggers makes it feel intimate in execution, whether that is a plus or minus is entirely a matter of taste, with arthouse aficionados probably liking it and action fans being disappointed by it.  

What makes The Northman so fascinating as an action movie, and it is an action movie as there are some gorgeously shot battle sequences that are as good as it gets in the genre, is that scattered among the usual revenge story twists and turns are scenes that explore the esoteric spirituality of the Vikings. To put it mildly, these scenes are weird, and viewers who signed up to just watch the spectacle of a Viking kicking some ass will no doubt be irritated and annoyed by such artsy distractions.

I found these forays into the Norse netherworlds to be fascinating, but I am admittedly a strange person and that sort of stuff is right up my alley, so take that for what it is worth.

The biggest problem for me about The Northman was not the winding story or the esoteric detours, but rather something much more basic…namely that the film’s star, Alexander Skarsgard, isn’t up to the job.

To be clear, Skarsgard isn’t a bad actor and he doesn’t embarrass himself as Amleth, the Berserker on a mission. No, the trouble with Skarsgard is that he simply lacks that “it” factor which all movie stars need. Yes, he’s is impossibly handsome and he is in incredible shape for the role of a Viking – for example, his traps are absurd, but Skarsgard just doesn’t have the requisite supply of charisma, magnetism and blind ambition to make a compelling enough screen presence.

Skarsgard is in nearly every frame of this film and yet he never jumps off the screen. Unlike his co-star Anya Taylor Joy, who obviously loves the camera and the camera loves her back, Skarsgard often times seems to be trying to hide from the camera and by default, audiences. In contrast, Taylor Joy’s ambition oozes out of her every pore, and you see her seek out the camera at every opportunity, but Skarsgard feels like a reluctant leading man.

That said he does pull off the action scenes with aplomb, but it’s when things slow down, that Skarsgard recedes into his shell.

As for Anya Taylor Joy, who plays Olga – a Slavic Sorceress, she makes the most of her supporting role. Taylor Joy was fantastic in Eggers’ first film The Witch, and her career is in steep ascendance, and you can see why in The Northman. She steals nearly every scene in which she appears, and her magnetism and dynamism are absolutely undeniable. She is a star who is in the early stages of going supernova.

Other actors in supporting roles, like Ethan Hawke as Amleth’s father-king, and Willem Dafoe as a court jester, do solid work in smaller roles.

Nicole Kidman plays Amleth’s mother Queen Gudrun, and while I admire the attempt, she seems to be out of sync with the acting style of the rest of the film.

Unfortunately, Claes Bang, who plays Amleth’s nemesis Fjolnir, is not up to his task and makes for an underwhelming villain.

The real star of The Northman is director Robert Eggers and his cinematographer Jarin Blaschke. There are sequences in this movie, most notably the climactic battle scene and an earlier scene of a raid on a village by Vikings, that are stunning to behold. Gloriously and gorgeously photographed, The Northman is elevated from a run of the mill blood, beards and brutality Viking tale into a piece of semi-populist cinematic art.

The screening of The Northman I attended was the first screening on the Sunday of opening weekend, and it was sold out. I saw the film in a mall in a rural part of upstate New York, and the audience reactions were very muted. No doubt audience expectations of a blood and guts action movie were thwarted by Eggers’ unique arthouse style and narrative decisions.

Due to my experience of seeing the film in “rural America”, I can’t help but feel that The Northman will under-perform at the box office because it’s arthouse weirdness will alienate regular viewers and negative word of mouth will be the kiss of death.

That would be a shame, as The Northman isn’t a great movie, but it is a good and interesting one. Despite its weak leading man, The Northman is a captivating cinematic experience that is worth the effort to see in theatres…but you should hurry as I don’t think it’ll be in theatres long, and its stunning cinematography will seem less so on a smaller screen.

In conclusion, if all action movies boasted the masterful artistry and depth of understanding of The Northman, then cinema would be a much more interesting and relevant artform than it is now. We need more movies like The Northman, not less. I pray to Odin that he makes it so.

©2022

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