Rifkin's Festival: A Review

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

My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2022

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

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

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

Thanks for listening!

©2022

The Fallout: A Review

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

My Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2022

Munich: The Edge of War - A Review

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

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ulrich Matthes plays a credibly creepy and slightly weird Hitler.

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

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

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

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2022

Scream (2022): A Review

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

My Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. A dull blade, short on scares, devoid of the winking wit, wisdom, vibrancy and vivacity of the original.

The original Scream, directed by horror master Wes Craven and written by Kevin Williamson, hit movie theatres in 1996 and revolutionized the form with its giddy self-awareness of its genre after a cavalcade of inane ‘Halloween’ and ‘Friday the 13th’ sequels had drained slasher movies of all signs of life.

Now, twenty-five years and three sequels later, and for the first time without the brilliance of late director Wes Craven and sans writer Kevin Williamson, Scream is back to take another stab at the box office with the new, aptly yet oddly titled movie, Scream.

You see, even though Scream is the fifth movie in the franchise and is a direct sequel to 2011’s Scream 4, it is not titled Scream 5, which to quote Spinal Tap, is a mystery “best left unsolved, really.”

The original Scream was a breath of fresh, blood-soaked air and a box office bonanza back in ’96, as it brought in $173 million on a measly $14 million budget. Not surprisingly, over time the budgets for the sequels grew and the box office haul shrunk, with the most recent film, Scream 4, bringing in $97 million on a $40 million budget.

This new Scream, which is written by James Vanderbilt and Guy Busick and directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, has a manageable budget at $24 million, and in spite of potential audience hesitancy born by the Omicron surge, it hopes to be the first blockbuster of 2022. There’s a very strong possibility it earns enough in its opening weekend to be the first film to knock the juggernaut  Spider-Man: No Way Home out of the top spot of the weekend box office for the first time in a month.

Scream defines itself, through the franchise’s formula of slasher movie self-awareness, as a “requel”. It’s not a reboot and it’s not a sequel, but instead it’s a “requel” that features fresh new characters but also connects back to the original movie in order to revitalize the franchise.

Back in supporting roles for the fifth installment of the franchise are original cast members Neve Campbell, David Arquette and Courtney Cox reprising their roles as Sidney Prescott, Dewey Riley and Gale Weathers respectively.

They join the main cast of Scream newcomers, including star Melissa Barrera as Samantha Carpenter, Jack Quaid as Samantha’s boyfriend Richie, Jenna Ortega as Samantha’s sister Tara, Mikey Madison as Amber and Dylan Minnette as Wes, among others.

The storyline for the new Scream is like all the other Scream movies. In the unfortunate town of Westboro, there’s a killer on the loose targeting a group of friends, who dons a ghost face mask and calls to torment his victims before brutally stabbing them to death.

The original Scream was vibrant, vivacious, incredibly clever and as sharp as a serial killer’s blade. But after beating, stabbing and shooting this dead horse to near dust, the franchise on its fifth outing is as dull as a baby’s plastic spoon by which they feed their audience this thin gruel of watered-down nostalgia.  

The movie tries desperately to re-ignite the fire from the original, but it just cannot, for the life of it, find a spark anywhere. The new cast are a bunch of unappealing dullards and even the return of David Arquette, Neve Campbell and Courtney Cox falls flat and feels like a sign of the franchise floundering rather than flexing.

In an attempt at being coolly self-aware, Scream admits its creative bankruptcy when it has characters discuss how “Hollywood is out of ideas”, but admitting you’re out of ideas isn’t actually an idea.  

And when the film has characters muse “how can fandom be toxic?” and declare that “this time the fans are gonna win!”, it feels pathetically patronizing because the fans aren’t winning when they shell out their hard-earned money to see this tired, unoriginal old retread.

While I found some of the more subtle, inside jokes regarding the Halloween franchise and particularly Once Upon a Time in Hollywood to be mildly amusing, the truth is they aren’t exactly insightful and they’re certainly not worth the price of admission.

Scream labels itself as a slasher-whodunnit, so I won’t give away any twists and turns, but let me assure you, after sitting through this dull and derivative, two-hour mess of a movie that in its final third descends into an orgy of utter incoherence, I’d say it’s less a slasher-whodunnit than a blood-stained-who cares?

The greatest sin of Scream is that unlike the original film, it isn’t smart, it isn’t clever, it isn’t fun, and worst of all, it isn’t scary. Scream isn’t a horror movie, it’s just a horror of a movie.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2022

The Tragedy of Macbeth: A Review

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

My Rating: 3.75 out of 5 stars

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Also pleasing are some of the performances.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2022

The Tender Bar: A Review

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

My Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. Another in a long line of painfully pedestrian, poorly made films from director George Clooney.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2022

The 355: A Review

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

My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

The Matrix: Resurrections - A Review

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

My Rating: 1.25 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. Just a dreadful, awful movie that does nothing but undermine the brilliance of the original.

At the very end of Matrix: Resurrections, the movie perfectly sums up its sole reason for existing as well as what is so dreadfully wrong with it.

Back in 1999, when The Matrix came to its conclusion after its astonishing action sequences and mind-expanding/blowing storyline, the song “Wake Up” by Rage Against the Machine blasted out of studio speakers as an aggressive rallying cry and call to arms. It was a stunning moment that perfectly captured the volcanic frustration born out of the ennui and malaise of post-cold war and pre-9/11 America.

In contrast, after two and a half hours of impotent fight sequences and flaccid philosophical musings in Matrix: Resurrections, the fourth movie in the Matrix franchise - which is now in theatres and streaming on HBO Max, the same song, “Wake Up” by Rage Against the Machine, plays once again, but this time the ferocious and rebellious growl of Rage Against the Machine is replaced, and the song is played by a flaccid cover band, Brass Against, and the singer is a woman.

To give an even deeper context to that music cue, Brass Against is a watered-down, truly shitty cover band, and they’ve only ever made the news once, for an incident where their female lead singer literally urinated on a male fan on stage during a show.

Chef’s kiss.

It would seem, with all of the ridiculous, gender-based changes made to the Matrix in Matrix: Resurrections, the girl power revolution will most definitely be televised, but it will also be an abysmal, derivative and boring fucking show that’s only redeeming value is that it is almost instantaneously forgettable.

What grates about Matrix: Resurrections, is that it apparently only exists in order to undermine the story, meaning and power of the original film. In Matrix parlance, it’s like the filmmakers want their audience to vomit up the red pill and gobble up the blue pill.

This of course would seem to be an asinine course of action for the filmmakers, who have never made anything even remotely worthwhile since The Matrix. But when seen in context, it all makes perfect sense on a meta level, as the creators of the Matrix have literally castrated themselves and now have succeeded in castrating their greatest work, The Matrix, as well.

You see, the Wachowski brothers , who wrote and directed the ground-breaking The Matrix in 1999 and both of its dismal sequels in 2003, are now in 2021, the Wachowski sisters. Lana Wachowski, who was Larry Wachowski back in the day, directed this new Matrix movie solo as her former brother and current sister Lilly (formerly Andy), wasn’t involved in the production.

Obviously, a lot can change in the Matrix over twenty years. Besides brothers becoming sisters, action sequences that were once so revolutionary back in ‘99, are now just derivative and dull and the original mind-bending Matrix story is now reduced to a masturbatorial homage driven by limp cultural politics and painfully inert and cliched narratives.

Back for Resurrections are veterans of the original trilogy, Keanu Reeves and Carrie Ann-Moss, but gone for no discernible reason are fellow trilogy vets Laurence Fishburn and Hugo Weaving. But at least Matrix: Resurrections casts heavyweight Doogie Howser…oops…I mean, Neil Patrick Harris, in a critical role. Yikes. Was Urkel/Jaleel White not available?

Keanu, always an understated actor, seems to sleep walk through the film and Moss looks oddly detached from the foolish festivities into which she wanders. I understood their weariness, as I too fought to stave off slumber.

I’d recount the specifics of the plot of Matrix: Resurrections, but its just so supercilious and self-defeating as to be inane if not insane. The brilliance of The Matrix was that it was narratively complex without being complicated. This was why it was so effortless to fall under the spell of the film and go along for the ride. Matrix: Resurrections on the other hand, is needlessly labyrinthine but also remarkably stupid. It repels audience interest by building barriers of banality cloaked in contradictions and incoherence.

I remember when I first saw The Matrix in ‘99. I was going to London the next day and took my lady and a friend to the movie after we had dinner in Manhattan. I had extremely low expectations as I considered Keanu to be a bit of a joke at the time. I left the theatre a few hours later gobsmacked. The movie blew me away. And what made it all the more fascinating was that as the days, weeks, months and even years went by I thought more and more about the movie. Quite an accomplishment for what I assumed was just an action movie.

Unfortunately, the sequels to The Matrix, Matrix: Reloaded and Matrix: Revolutions, were abysmal disappointments, with Revolutions in particular being nearly unwatchable.

Besides the original Matrix movie, the Wachowski’s filmography reveals them to be quite dreadful filmmakers. Speed Racer, Cloud Atlas and Jupiter Ascending is a murderer’s row of cinematic dogshit, and Matrix: Resurrections is an equally odious addition to that line-up.

I’ve read that Lana Wachowski wanted to use Resurrections to take back The Matrix’s “red pill” symbology that had been pirated by right-wing radicals, most notably during the Trump years. This strikes me as a sort of “cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face” type of situation.

The Matrix: Resurrections seems like an attempt to retroactively ruin a classic film, The Matrix, in order to piss off the original’s fans who found meaning within it, because the meaning they found wasn’t what the filmmakers intended.

I’ve heard this Matrix right-wing conundrum equated to when Ronald Reagan usurped Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” back in the 80’s. Springsteen wrote the song as a protest about the injustices against the working class in America. Reagan used it as a patriotic rallying cry.

The problem with “Born in the U.S.A.” is that while the lyrics astutely lament America’s treatment of the working class, the music accompanying them is written like an anthem. The music is a celebration, while the lyrics are a lamentation. (To see how the musical context changes the song, listen to Springsteen’s sterling acoustic version on the 1999 album 18 Tracks)

Music, like movies, makes people feel first, and think second. Audiences of both Born in the U.S.A. and The Matrix responded to the pride and anger respectively of those two works.

Trying to reverse the effects of that is near impossible, and no matter how much Springsteen corrects the record regarding his song, or the Wachowski’s try and go back and change the meaning of The Matrix, the cat is already out of the bag, the horse is out of the barn, and the genie is out of the bottle. Audience response is solidified and deeply held and there’s nothing that can change that.

Ultimately, Matrix: Resurrections is wrestling with a ghost, and while that may be interesting for the ghost and for the wrestler, to outside observers it just looks like an idiot having spasms during a psychosis-fueled conniption.

My advice is to skip Matrix: Resurrections. It is truly awful. Don’t see it. Don’t even acknowledge it exists. Stay stuck in the delusion that only The Matrix exists and all the other Wachowski films are just bad dreams to be brushed off and forever forgotten.

©2021

Licorice Pizza: A Review

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

My Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

©2021

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota : Episode 57 - Spider-Man: No Way Home

Barry and I show off our new technical and audio prowess in this scintillating episode that is the season three premiere of everybody's favorite cinema podcast. The film discussed on this glorious episode is blockbuster Spider-Man: No Way Home. The wide ranging discussion touches upon such diverse topics as the Sony-Disney soon to be not-so-civil war, good guy Andrew Garfield, stealing from the Dennis Hopper film Colors, and dreams of The Flash and Jack Nicholson's price to reprise the Joker.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota : Episode 57 - Spider-Man: No Way Home

Thanks for listening!

©2021

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 56 - Don't Look Up

On this episode, Barry and I brace for impact as we critique Adam McKay's polarizing, darkly comedic, climate change satire Don't Look Up starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence. Topics discussed include the trouble with satirizing the already absurd, the genius of Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove and Barry's continuing obsession with Timothee Chalamet. Make sure to stay tuned for a post-credit nude scene!

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 56 - Don't Look Up

Thanks for listening!

©2021

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

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

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

Thanks for listening!

©2021

Don't Look Up: A Review

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

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. An ultimately instantly forgettable cinematic venture that tries to satirize our already-absurd reality in vain. The allegorical climate change comedy wastes its star-studded lineup’s brilliant performance in a flaccid and unfocused attempt at comedy.

The new Netflix movie, Don’t Look Up, an apocalyptic black comedy that uses the narrative of a huge meteor heading towards earth as an allegory for climate change, seemingly has a lot going for it.

For instance, the movie, which premiered on the streaming service on December 24th, boasts an impressive cast, as Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence star with Cate Blanchett, Meryl Streep, Jonah Hill, Mark Rylance and Timothee Chalamet in supporting roles.

In addition, the movie is written and directed by Adam McKay, who has shown himself, most notably with his stellar film The Big Short, to be a clever and ambitious filmmaker.

Despite bursting at the seams with comedic potential and its bevy of formidable assets, the laughs of Don’t Look Up unfortunately never blossom, but instead die on the vine. Unfortunately, the comedy and the film just don’t work.

The film opens with Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence), a PhD candidate at Michigan State, discovering a mammoth comet as she does research at an observatory.

Her professor, Dr. Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio), does the calculations and realizes that the comet is heading toward earth and will arrive and destroy all life on the planet, in roughly six months.

From there, Dr. Mindy and Dibiasky try and warn humanity but constantly run up against the worst of mankind, from the vapid, vacuous and venal President Orlean (Meryl Streep) to the sociopathic tech guru Peter Ishwell (Mark Rylance) and everyone in between, trying to thwart them and subvert the truth.

Part of the problem with Don’t Look Up is that it intends to be an ambitious satirical social commentary about media, big tech, social media, celebrity culture and our politics, but how do you successfully satirize things that are already so absurd as to be parodies of themselves?

For example, The New York Times, which the film briefly pokes fun at, wrote an article titled “A Comedy Nails the Media Apocalypse” about Don’t Look Up and the media’s alleged inability to focus on climate change because it keeps getting distracted by superfluous side stories.

In the article, as the writer, Ben Smith, opines about two empty-headed tv hosts in the film who can’t stay on topic even when that topic is the potential end of humanity, he himself gets distracted by a superfluous side story and ends up writing an aside where he chastises director McKay for having the film’s female tv host (a Mika Brzezinski type played by Cate Blanchett) sleep with DiCaprio’s Dr. Mindy character.

Smith writes, “I did ask Mr. McKay if we could have a moratorium on fictional female journalists sleeping with their subjects, even if they’re Mr. DiCaprio in the guise of a nerdy scientist.”

Mr. Smith is oblivious to his inane ridiculousness and only succeeds in raising the question in regard to this movie and the media, namely, how can you satirize something that is so absurd and obscene as to be beyond satire?

There are some bright spots in the film. The first of which is that both Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence give solid performances. DiCaprio, who plays a somewhat Dr. Fauci-esque scientist the media and public falls madly in love with, is particularly good in moments.

Lawrence is terrific as well, as movie star charisma, as well as her dry delivery and impeccable timing, show themselves at times to great effect.

The supporting cast, most notably Mark Rylance as the creepy tech guru and Jonah Hill as the chief of staff and son to the president, give delicious performances. As do Cate Blanchett as the aforementioned horny tv host and Meryl Streep as the shameless, Trumpian president.

But despite such a bevy of top-notch performances, the comedy of Don’t Look Up just never coalesces enough to make it a compelling cinematic venture.

The main culprit in the failure of the film is writer/director McKay.

McKay is trying to make Don’t Look Up be to climate change what Stanley Kurbick’s Dr. Strangelove was to the cold war.

The problem, of course, is that for as interesting as McKay can be as a filmmaker, he is no Stanley Kubrick. Not even close.

Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove works because he never preaches or panders or allows his film to become a pure partisan political polemic. In contrast, McKay is unable to restrain his more-base impulses and simply cannot resist needlessly preaching and pandering. The result is an often-times partisan political polemic that comes across more as self-righteous, pretentious and smug than comedically insightful or enlightening. 

The ironic thing is that McKay’s film is commenting on the short-attention span and scatterbrained nature of our current culture, but it fails as a film because it is scatterbrained and lacks the unflinching focus of Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove. Ultimately, Don’t Look Up tries to say too much about too many things and ends up saying nothing of any substance about anything.

Like so many films this year, Don’t Look Up isn’t a great movie, or a funny movie or even an interesting movie, it is just a movie you sit through and when it’s over you move on and never once think about it again. Which is a shame, because it could have been, and should have been, so much better.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Being the Ricardos: A Review

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

My Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars.

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. This is a sub-mediocre, made-for-tv type of movie that is at times, insufferable.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Spider-Man: No Way Home - A Review

****THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!! THIS IS AN ENTIRELY SPOILER FREE REVIEW!!****

My Rating: 2.75 out of 5 stars

My Popcorn Rating: 4.75 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. A nearly perfect piece of pop entertainment that gives fans all they could ever want.

In preparation for seeing the highly-anticipated Spider-Man: No Way Home, which stars Tom Holland and premiered in theatres Friday December 17, I re-watched Holland’s two previous Spider-Man movies, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) and Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019).

Upon re-watching those movies, I found them to be even worse than I vaguely remembered. Far From Home in particular is just abysmal. I share that thought only to give context for my thoughts on No Way Home.

When watching a Marvel movie, one must temper their expectations. You know going in that you’re not going to see cinema on the level of Citizen Kane but rather an attempt at mainstream entertainment designed to maximize profit above all else.

The question then becomes not is Spider-Man: No Way Home a great piece of cinema, but whether it’s a good piece of popular movie making.

Having witnessed the movie the verdict is clear, Spider-Man No Way Home is not Citizen Kane, but it sure as hell is a phenomenal, nearly perfect, piece of pop entertainment.

I believe the best way to see this movie, and I definitely think you should see it, is to go into it knowing as little about it as possible, so I’ll refrain from writing about the plot or even the cast. Instead, I’ll try to describe why the movie works so well without ruining it, or even tainting it, for anyone who hasn’t seen it.  (I will write a more in-depth, spoiler-filled analysis of the movie in the near future after more people have seen it.)

Let’s start at the beginning of this current run of Marvel movies.

Since Marvel’s twenty-three movie Infinity Saga, which began with Iron Man in 2008 and concluded with Avengers: Endgame in 2019 (Marvel claims it ended with Spider-Man: Far From Home but that is nonsense), came to a close, the Marvel movie behemoth has been creatively and financially floundering.

Part of the reason for that is the post-Endgame Marvel movies have often been more interested in preaching from the woke gospel than in entertaining their audience.

For example, Black Widow was little more than a middling movie designed to be a stiletto to the groin of the patriarchy.

Eternals, which boasted both a gay and a disabled superhero, was a miserable misfire of a movie dedicated to “diversity” and “inclusion” over coherence and entertainment value.

Shang-Chi was half of a good movie, but it too was riddled with a limp girl power narrative and empty woke sloganeering.

Disney, which owns Marvel, has obviously gone all in on the woke stuff, and that is reflected in the majority of their films and tv shows.

It’s important to note that while Marvel is owned by Disney, and Spider-Man is a Marvel character, he is not entirely owned by Disney. Sony actually owns the film rights to Spider-Man.

In 2015, Sony came to an agreement with Disney that allowed Spider-Man to be a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and both studios have benefited from the arrangement. But the deal is clear, Sony finances, distributes and has final creative control on all the solo Spider-Man movies.

As explained earlier, the Sony produced Tom Holland Spider-Man movies haven’t been particularly good, but unlike the Marvel/Disney movies, they thankfully haven’t been aggressively woke either.

Which brings us to Spider-Man: No Way Home, which is entirely dedicated to fan service and obviously only cares about giving audiences what they want, as opposed to doing what Disney does which is giving audiences what Disney wants them to want.

Spider-Man: No Way Home is devoid of woke preaching or virtue signaling, and aside from a well-executed running joke that makes fun of Alex Jones and Infowars, there’s no cultural politics in the movie at all.

Instead, Sony delivers a deliriously fun movie that hits all the beats and delivers all the goods. No Way Home is so chock full of goodies for fans it’s nearly bursting at the seams and so gloriously deferential to fan’s desires one wonders how Sony or Marvel can ever follow it up.

Part of how the movie succeeds is that while being deliciously fun and funny it also takes itself and its subject matter seriously. For instance, the film is really about consequences and the permanence of consequences, so every action Peter Parker takes in the film has consequences that desperately matter.

The movie doesn’t try to have it both ways, it doesn’t short shrift its story or undercut its power by softening the edges, it commits to its reality and narrative and sticks with it through thick and thin.

The result is easily the best Spider-Man of the Tom Holland era, and also easily the best Marvel movie post-Endgame. Where it lands on the list of all-time Spider-Man movies and all-time Marvel movies will vary wildly from person to person, but I think it’s safe to say it’s at the very least in the conversation for the top spot in both categories.

No Way Home is set to make anywhere from $150 million to $240 million at the domestic box office on its opening weekend (potentially nearing $400 million worldwide). From my anecdotal observations I think the higher end of that projection is very likely. That is an astonishing amount of money for any movie to make, but when factoring in the pandemic and some people’s reluctance to go to a movie theatre, it’s all the more astounding.

As Uncle Ben once told Peter Parker, “With great power comes great responsibility.” It’s good to see Sony profiting by using its great power responsibly by giving fans what they want with the terrific Spider-Man: No Way Home. Disney/Marvel would be very wise to learn the same lesson.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

West Side Story: A Review

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

My Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 53 - King Richard

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

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 53 - King Richard

Thanks for listening!

©2021

The Power of the Dog: A Review

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

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

House of Gucci: A Review

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

My Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. This star-studded, dramatically incoherent, big-budget soap opera isn’t so bad it’s good, it’s just really bad.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021