6th Annual Mickey™® Awards: 2019 Edition

Estimated Reading Time: The Mickey™® Awards are much more prestigious than the Oscars, and unlike our lesser crosstown rival, we here at The Mickeys™® do not limit acceptance speech times. There will be no classless playing off by the orchestra here…mostly because we don’t have an orchestra. Regardless… expect this awards show article to last, at a minimum, approximately 5 hours and 48 minutes.

The ultimate awards show is upon us…are you ready? The Mickeys™® are far superior to every other award imaginable…be it the Oscar, the Emmy, the Tony, the Grammy, the Pulitzer or even the Nobel. The Mickey™® is the mountaintop of not just artistic but human achievement, which is why they always take place AFTER the Oscars!

This year has been a fantastic one for cinema with a multitude of outstanding films eligible for a Mickey™® award. Actors, actresses, writers, cinematographers and directors are all sweating and squirming right now in anticipation of the Mickey™® nominations and winners. Remember, even a coveted Mickey™® nomination is a career and life changing event.

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

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

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

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

Ladies and gentlemen…welcome to the fifth annual Mickey™® Awards!!!

Best Cinematography

Joker - Lawrence Sher : Sher was a relative unknown, at least to me, prior to Joker. His work on the film is truly remarkable as he composes really exquisite classical shots and juxtaposes them against fluid shots that in a thrilling dance with lead actor Joaquin Phoenix.

Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood - Robert Richardson : Richardson is one of my all-time favorite cinematographers. His work with Oliver Stone in the late 80’s and early 90’s was revolutionary (JFK for instance). He has proven himself to be a very flexible and adaptable talent and his work in this film is sublime. The last shot of the film, where Leo Dicaprio’s Rick Dalton walks up Sharon Tate’s driveway, is a glorious piece of cinematic myth making.

1917 - Roger Deakins : Deakins is Deakins. The guy is a master, as evidenced by his previous Mickey award for Sicario (2015) and he brings all his formidable talent and skill to bear on the “one-shot” structure of 1917. For all the gimmickry of the one-shot approach, what impressed me so much about Deakins work here is how he was able to continually frame such gorgeous shots while constantly on the move.

Ad Astra - Hoyte Van Hoytema : Hoytema is another of my favorite cinematographers working today. He is already a Mickey Award winner (Dunkirk 2017) and his work on Ad Astra is magnificent. He paints the film with a bleak palette and vivid contrast that accentuates the narrative and is gorgeous to look at.

The Irishman - Rodgrio Prieto : Prieto’s work on The Irishman is superb as he perfectly paints the film with a rather lush and nostalgic sense that contrasts well with his camera movement and framing.

Parasite - Hong Kong-pyo : Hong is someone I am not familiar with…but his work on Parasite is so precise it is a joy to behold. Hong’s greatest strength is in his camera placement, as he uses it as a a way to draw the audience into the narrative while also keeping them at a cool emotional distance.

And The Mickey goes to…Lawrence Sher - Joker : Sher pulls off the big upset going against heavyweights like Deakins, Richardson and Hoytema. Joker is beautifully and artfully photographed and Sher’s work was a major factor in the films artistic success.

Best Adapted Screenplay

The Irishman - Steven Zaillian’s ability to contain and focus the sprawling story of Frank Sheeran while keeping things tight and dramatic, is impressive.

Joker - Todd Phillips was able to imbue comic book intellectual property with profoundly insightful political and social commentary. Wow.

The Two Popes - Anthony McCarten created multi-dimensional characters where others would have made card board cutouts. Too bad his director undermined his fantastic writing.

Transit - Christian Petzold adapted a book about the holocaust and made it about modern times. It is chillingly effective in subtly showing the similarities of the rise of fascism then and now.

And The Mickey goes to…Todd Phillips - Joker : Todd Phillips must have sold his soul to the devil because nothing in his prior career would give any indication he was capable of such intelligence and artistry. Now he has a Mickey™®! The world is a wonderful place.

Best Original Screenplay

Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood - Tarantino is an even better writer than he is a director…which is a staggering thought to contemplate considering his directing greatness. OUATIH is a crackling script that holds on tight…but not too tight that it loses its humanity. Extraordinarily well done.

Parasite - Bong Joon-ho’s script is a whirling and twirling piece of magnificence. As original and well-crafted a screenplay as you’ll find.

Ad Astra - James Grey’s script is the most psychologically mature and resonant of the entire year. It is an utter field day for anyone with any background in Jungian psychology.

A Hidden Life - Terrence Malick brings the spiritual struggles of a anti-Nazi crusader down to earth in the most glorious and profound way.

Ford v Ferrari - James Mangold gives us a rip-roaring script that covers a lot of ground but never loses its way.

And The Mickey goes to…Quentin Tarantino - Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood : Tarantino’s ability to write characters, dialogue and story is unparalleled in modern cinema. Guy is amazing…now he has a Mickey™® to prove it!

Best Supporting Actress

 Margaret Qualley - Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood: Qualley, a Breakout Performance Mickey™® Award winner (2017), makes good on her promise and delivers a deliriously intoxicating turn as one of Manson’s seductive minions.

Margot Robbie - Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood : Robbie doesn’t say much as Sharon Tate…because she doesn’t have to. An effervescent and luminous performance that highlights her supreme craft and skill and proves she is way, way more than just a very pretty face.

Park So-dam - Parasite : Park is super sexy cool as the sister who poses as an art teacher. She imbues her character with a certain sense of almost spiritual fatigue cloaked in a devilish charm that is beguiling to witness.

Lee Sun-kyun - Parasite : As the mother of the rich family, Lee is wonderfully funny as her desperation to be worthy and perfect keeps wrapping her tight and unwrapping her too quickly.

Zhao Shuhzhen - The Farewell : Zhao’s turn as an ailing grandmother is delightful for its humor, humanity and power. Zhao’s Nai Nai is no wilting flower, she is both tough and tender…and reminded me so much of my late wee Scottish grandmother I was thoroughly enchanted.

The Mickey goes to…Margot Robbie - Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood. The usual suspects complained this film was misogynistic because Robbie’s Tate had a paucity of dialogue, but it’s a testament to her talent and skill that she was able to convey an affecting story with more than just words.

Best Supporting Actor

Brad Pitt - Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood. In an industry with a paucity of genuine stars, Pitt gives the movie star performance for the ages…where women want to be with him and men want to be him.

 Joe Pesci - The Irishman : Pesci is usually plays combustible characters, but his Russ Buffalino is an imposing figure of self-containment. Maybe the very best and most subtle work of his career.

Al Pacino - The Irishman : Pacino brings Jimmy Hoffa to life with a vibrancy and dynamism only he could muster. A truly masterful performance.

Jonathan Majors - The Last Black Man in San Francisco : A finely crafted and glorious performance that is filled with a deep humanity and vivacity.

Sam Rockwell - Jojo Rabbit : Rockwell is an absolute joy to behold as he subtly but magnificently devours scenery as a down on his luck Nazi.

Song Kang-ho - Parasite : Song is the epicenter of Parasite as a man without answers trying to figure out the questions. He is blessed with a face that tells a story all its own.

The Mickey goes to…Al Pacino - The Irishman. Pacino has become a sort of parody of himself in his later years, but his portrayal of Jimmy Hoffa was a perfect manifestation of self-defeating tenacity and combustibility that is one of the highlights of his superb career.

Breakout Performance of the Year - Julia Butters : Butters is mesmerizing as the whip smart child actor who works with Rick Dalton as he hangs on to his career by his finger nails. Butters is just a kid but has the presence and magnetism of someone twenty years older. I hope child stardom does not weigh heavy upon her…because down the road she has the opportunity to be very special.

Best Foreign Film

Transit - This is a close-up view of what fascism feels like…and it does not feel good.

A Hidden Life - A profound examination of the spiritual battle a man must wage to save his soul in Nazi Germany.

Parasite - A masterful contemplation of class and family dynamics set in Korea.

Rojo - A terrific under the radar movie that shows the corrosive effects of our old friend fascism as it descends upon 1970’s Argentina.

Shadow - A terrific Chinese Wuxia film with spectacular fights and inventive visuals.

And The Mickey goes to…Parasite - Exquisitely directed with an amazing cast. One of the very best films, foreign or domestic, of the year.

Best Actress

What a dismal year for female performances. I literally cannot think of any actresses worthy of even nominations never mind wins. After a very testy emergency meeting of the Mickey™ council, a compromise was reached.

The Mickey goes to…Florence Pugh - Midsommar. Pugh, a Breakout Performance Mickey Award winner (2017), is on her way to becoming a movie star and her two Mickeys will no doubt only accelerate her ascent.

Best Actor

Robert DeNiro - The Irishman : DeNiro does the very best work of the latter part of his career as Frank Sheeran, the cog in the wheel of the mafia and union who sells his soul to survive.

Franz Rogowski - Transit: Rogowski is just a phenomenal actor and his intricate work in Transit is transcendent for its humanity and honesty.

Robert Pattinson - High Life : Who knew Pattinson could actually act? In High Life he does surprisingly complex and detailed work as a man condemned to be lost in space.

Leonardo DiCaprio - Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood : DiCaprio has been among the biggest movie stars for decades now…but his performance as Rick Dalton is the very best of his remarkable career.

Joaquin Phoenix - Joker : As precise, dynamic and committed a performance as we’ve seen in years. Phoenix is the best actor of his (and maybe every other) generation and he proves it with Joker.

Brad Pitt - Ad Astra : :Pitt proves himself to be more than a pretty face with a powerfully subtle, skilled and nuanced performance as a man in search of his father. This is easily the very best acting Brad Pitt has ever done.

The Mickey goes to…Joaquin Phoenix. Phoenix’s work in The Master (2013) was a gargantuan evolutionary leap for the craft of acting, and his performance in Joker is a powerful continuation of that evolution.

Best Ensemble

Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood - DiCaprio, Pitt, Margot Robbie, Pacino, Bruce Dern…an absolutely loaded cast that all give top notch performances.

Parasite - This cast overcomes the language barrier and does exquisite work in bringing Bong’s twisted vision to life.

The Irishman - DeNiro, Pacino and Pesci do some very heavy lifting and elevate Scorsese’ late era masterpiece.

And The Mickey goes to…Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood - The very best of Pitt, Robbie and Leo is the very best of the Mickeys™®!

Best Director

Quentin Tarantino - Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood : Tarantino truly is one of the great directors of his time, and OUATIH is his very best film . Not a flaw to be found.

Martin Scorsese - The Irishman : Scorsese brilliantly turned this late era gem into a referendum on his entire stellar career and imbued the movie with an existential power than would have been missing in any other auteur’s hands.

Todd Phillips - Joker : Who knew that Todd Phillips, the guy who made The Hangover movies…was capable of such exquisite direction as Joker. This movie is so well conceived and executed it is astonishing.

Bong Joon-ho - Parasite : As detailed, specific and skilled a piece of direction as you’ll find.

James Grey - Ad Astra : Grey finally puts all the pieces together and makes the great movie he’s been striving for for years.

Terrence Malick - A Hidden Life : Malick is a master…and A Hidden Life is a monument to his talent, skill and spiritual inquisitiveness and intellect.

And the Mickey goes to…Bong Joon-ho - Parasite : All of the nominees did extraordinary work but Bong’s direction of Parasite was extraordinary. Parasite is an intoxicatingly detailed, precise and specific master class in the art and craft of film directing.

Actor/Actress of the Year - Brad Pitt : Pitt flexed his movie star muscles in Once Upon a Time and also proved himself to be a formidable thespian in Ad Astra. That sort of high level versatility earns him the Mickey™®. Now maybe women will find him attractive.

Best Comedy of the Year - Jojo Rabbit : Taika Waititi hysterically dons Hitler garb and brings an ecstatic Mel Brooks-ian humor with him to great affect. The film isn’t great...but the comedy parts of it certainly are.

Best Blockbuster of the Year - Joker . Avengers: Endgame was the obvious favorite in this category…and it is a fitting end to this phase of the MCU, but it got out beat by the scrappy lunatic from Gotham. Joker cost $60 million to make and grossed over a billion dollars, and actually made more profit than Endgame and is the most successful R-rated movie of all-time. That is a blockbuster by any standard. The fact that it was a real movie hidden within the cloak of a comic book story, makes it the most unlikely, but most delicious blockbuster in recent memory.

Best Picture

10. Transit - This is such a finely crafted and effective film. I can’t recommend it enough to people who think in the abstract about fascism. The suffocating sense of impending doom is palpable…and unnerving.

9. High Life This ingenious movie can be at times frustratingly French (even though it is in English), but I found it mythologically resonant and dramatically impactful.

8. The Last Black Man in San Francisco A fantastically interesting and entertaining film that tackles a serious subject but never panders or takes the easy road.

7. Ford v Ferrari Good old fashioned Hollywood movie making at its very finest. A captivating tale of men trying to accomplish something great…and overcoming the corporate overlords who kill everything worthwhile.

6. A Hidden Life Malick puts us into the shoes of a man who must choose between Hitler and God…and must face the consequences of his choice. A deliberate, contemplative and deeply moving film that should be required watching for any and all Catholics.

5. Ad Astra This movie is devastatingly profound and it is among the most insightful movies made in recent years about the psyche of men and the meaning of masculinity. It also boasts a great Brad Pitt performance.

4. The Irishman – Martin Scorsese turned the story of a mafia hitman’s regrets into a surprisingly poignant and existentially insightful referendum on his own spectacular career. Seeing Scorsese being Scorsese and meditating on what it means to be Scorsese…is glorious to behold.

3. Parasite – A startlingly original film and one of the most entertaining and interesting dramatic investigations of class struggle and social structure to come along in ages. A brave and unflinching movie that never pulls a punch.

2. Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood – A fork in the eye of woke Hollywood, this film is the very best of Tarantino’s career as it is chock full of outstanding performances and crackling dialogue.

1. Joker - The best picture of the year….and also…

The Most Important Film of the Year - Joker

The fact that Todd Phillips, the guy whose previous claim to fame was making The Hangover movies, made the dramatically electrifying Joker is one of the great miracles of modern cinema.

Joker is a deeply profound and insightful film that eloquently and artistically expresses the palpable sense of despair and rage that permeates the consciousness and animates the intentions of the dispossessed in society. Disguising this sentiment within the cloak of comic book intellectual property was a stroke of genius.

The elites loathed Joker because it didn’t tell them what they wanted to hear, but rather had the temerity to speak the ugly, unvarnished and unnerving truth.

For its efforts Joker made over a billion dollars…and now it earns the equivalent of that in prestige with the coveted Mickey™ Award for Best Picture.

Thus concludes The Mickey™® Awards…SEE YOU AT THE AFTER PARTY!

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

La Resistance est Mort! The Cesars, L'affaire Polanski and the #MeToo Virus

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 37 seconds

Cesar Awards, the French equivalent of the Oscars, has promised to make sweeping changes to increase gender parity and “diversity”, after a #MeToo outcry sparked by 12 nominations for Roman Polanski’s newest film.

Anger over Polanski’s abundant accolades for An Officer and a Spy motivated producer Alain Terzian to spear head the protest, which includes 400 notable French film figures, including stars Omar Sy, Lea Seydoux and directors Jacques Audiard and Michael Hazanavicius.

Polanski, an Academy award winner for The Pianist (2002) and one of the great filmmakers of his time, has long been a controversial figure. In 1977 he pled guilty to “unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor” and served 47 days in jail. Due to an erratic judge, he then fled America for France in order to avoid the possibility of more prison and has never returned.

In recent years a handful of other women have come forward with rape and sexual assault accusations against Polanski from the same general time period as the California crime.

The spark of this current French #MeToo conflagration began in November when, just as An Officer and a Spy – a film about the falsely persecuted Jewish-French officer Alfred Dreyfuss, which many said obliquely referenced the director’s own public reputation battle, was about to premiere. Actress Valentine Monnier made headlines by accusing Polanski of beating and raping her in Switzerland in 1975 when she was 18. In response, women’s groups quickly staged protests at the movie’s premiere, forcing Polanski to surreptitiously exit through a side door.

November also saw bombshell accusations from acclaimed actress Adele Haenel who claimed director Christophe Ruggia sexually harassed her starting in 2002 when she was just 12, which furthered the #MeToo fervor.

France, with its very distinctive and liberated attitudes towards sex, has been left reeling and questioning its own identity in the wake of these #MeToo Cesar Award protests.

Prior to this, the French long held out on importing the more hysteria driven aspects of #MeToo. For example, in January of 2018, at the height of the #MeToo mania in America, esteemed actress Catherine Deneuve and 99 other prominent French women signed a public letter denouncing #MeToo as being “puritanical” and born of a feminism that “beyond denouncing the abuse of power takes on a hatred of men and sexuality”.

The latest revelations about Roman Polanski and the fury over his Cesar nominations appear to be the final straw though that has broken the back of la resistance de #MeToo and its distinctly American neo-feminist beliefs.

It is easy to understand the outrage over Polanski, an admitted statutory rapist, being celebrated by the Cesar Awards. But the problem is that what the protestors are really interested in has little to do with Polanski’s repulsive depravity.

The Cesar protestors’ main demands are based on identity politics, as they are not targeting him specifically, but want more diversity and gender parity, no doubt regardless of ability, among the Cesar Academy.

This once again proves that #MeToo outrage is a quick gateway drug to the more toxic narcotic of woke totalitarianism.

Polanski may be both a repugnant sexual predator deserving of prison and a cinematic genius deserving of awards, but contrary to the protestors’ position, the Cesar Academy’s job is not to judge Roman Polanski’s guilt or innocence but rather the quality of his film.

In the case of An Officer and a Spy, it did its job well as even anti-Polanski critics have found the movie to be very good.

One film critic claimed they were “surprisingly taken by it” and another declared it a “technical master work” and “one couldn’t wish for a more painstakingly researched or beautifully rendered account” and another still that “the longer you look at it, the more impressive it grows.” One anti-Polanski critic even admitted, “I was wary of seeing An Officer and a Spy. Then I did. And it is excellent.”

I would tell you my opinion of the film and whether it was worthy of acclaim…but I haven’t been able to see it since it never got distribution, even on streaming sights, in the U.S. or U.K. The movie is essentially banned here as distributors don’t want to face the fury of the #MeToo mob. And therein lies the problem, and the future, for French cinema.

With l’affaire Polanski, France has let the tyrannical and insatiable wolf of wokeness into the chicken coop, and it won’t just eat the bad roosters, it will devour anything it can get its jaws on.

America’s recent history with #MeToo shows that neo-feminists and woke authoritarians despise the quaint notions of individual rights and freedom of expression. They feel accusations are convictions, political correctness trumps quality and that art and artists must conform to their dogma or be canceled.

Just as happened in the U.S., Polanski’s films may soon be banished down the memory hole in France and “diversity”, “inclusion” and “gender parity” will become cudgels used to beat the institutions like the Cesar Awards into submission and force them to disregard quality in favor of political correctness.

Sadly, it seems the contagion of America’s pernicious cultural colonialism continues to spread with the #MeToo virus now jumping the Atlantic.

La Republique du cinema francais held out as long as it could…Madame Deneuve, aidez-nous, s’il vous plait!

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

'Birds of Prey' Hates Men, but Wants Their Money - No Wonder It's Bombing at the Box Office

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 28 seconds

The new film Birds of Prey is populated by despicable men, and feminist women who want to be just like them. The outcome: Financial losses and moral bankruptcy.

Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) opened on Friday and stars two-time Academy Award nominated actress Margot Robbie reprising her role as DC Comics super villain Harley Quinn.

The film is marketed as a girl power manifesto that re-imagines Harley Quinn without the condescending sexism feminists felt was so prominent in Suicide Squad (2016), the last movie that featured Margot Robbie as Harley.

Suicide Squad was a horrifically shitty movie, and was regarded as a box office underperformer with a notoriously troubled production history, but it still made $750 million in total.

Early numbers suggest that despite oddly positive reviews from woke pandering mainstream critics, Birds of Prey will struggle to do half that number in its theatrical run. With a reported production budget of between $80 and $100 million, and additional marketing costs, Birds of Prey looks primed to lose money for the suits at Warner Brothers.

How did things go so wrong?

Birds of Prey banished the problematic “male gaze” of Suicide Squad that allegedly dehumanized Harley by making her purely an object of desire, by employing an all female creative team that included producer Margot Robbie, writer Christina Hodson and director Cathy Yan. The production goes so far in exorcising men as to even have a soundtrack with all-female artists on it.

The problem though is Birds of Prey tries to thread the needle and make a chaotically cool combination of Deadpool meets Wonder Woman, only it doesn’t have the first clue about the sardonically masculine humor of Deadpool and the appealing feminine power of Wonder Woman, or masculinity and femininity in general.

The film’s sexual politics are aggressive to say the least. In our current cultural moment, toxic masculinity and masculinity have become synonymous, so it is no surprise that Birds of Prey goes to great lengths to denigrate and disparage all its male characters and yet also to venerate all its female ones.

Every man in the movie, with the lone exception being a character (played by the criminally underused actor Eddie Alfano) with fifteen seconds of screen time and no dialogue, is either entitled, conniving, maniacally violent, a rapist or all of the above.

In contrast every female character wears the noble crown of resilient victimhood after having suffered at the cruel hands of men.

The portrayal of men as misogynist beasts is pretty heavy handed, as at one point Harley and female friends are surrounded and the sadistic Roman Sionis (Ewen McGregor) yells to his army of all-male thugs, “Men of Gotham, go get those bitches!”

What’s so bizarre about the supposed girl power message of the movie is that while it relentlessly tells us that men are despicable creatures, all of the female characters are lionized for trying to behave like men. Like the recent batch of feminist movies such as Charlie’s Angels (2019) and Terminator: Dark Fate, Birds of Prey believes that feminism means women should act like men.

Even more baffling is the cinematic schizophrenia of Birds of Prey, as it obviously loathes men yet is so desperate for their attention it serves up a steady supply of hyper-violence. As Harley Quinn says, “nothing gets a guy’s attention like violence…blow something up, shoot someone.”

Totally coincidentally, The New York Times published an op-ed by an actress, Brit Marling, titled “I Don’t Want to be the Strong Female Lead” on the day Birds of Prey premiered.

In the piece Marling describes strong female leads as, “She’s an assassin, a spy, a soldier, a superhero, a C.E.O. She can make a wound compress out of a maxi pad while on the lam. She’s got MacGyver’s resourcefulness but looks better in a tank top.”

In some ways this applies to Birds of Prey, since the women in it are smarter, tougher and stronger than the men, except they have been stripped of their sex appeal in a convoluted attempt to be pro-feminist.

For instance, Harley Quinn wore short shorts and alluring outfits in Suicide Squad, but in the female empowering Birds of Prey she dresses in baggy, Bermuda length shorts and a pink sports bra. It’s as if Harley went full Lady MacBeth and cried “unsex me here” and the filmmakers dutifully complied to stick it to the patriarchy.

Contrast this with the Super Bowl halftime show where Jennifer Lopez and Shakira were declared fiercely feminist when they wore skimpy outfits and literally danced like strippers.

How can female filmmakers like Cathy Yan properly tell an empowering feminist story if feminists haven’t even figured out what feminism is just yet?

This confusion manifests when Birds of Prey defines women solely in opposition to men, but then has them emulate masculinity as a show of their feminine strength.

Brit Marling wasn’t commenting on the troubling Manichean anti-male sexual politics of Birds of Prey, but she could have been, when she eloquently wrote, “I don’t believe the feminine is sublime and the masculine is horrifying. I believe both are valuable, essential, powerful. But we have maligned one, venerated the other, and fallen into exaggerated performances of both that cause harm to all. How do we restore balance?”

That is a good question, but Birds of Prey is oblivious to balance…and quality for that matter. It’s a hot mess of a movie that features derivative, repetitive and dull action sequences, and that tries to be funny, but isn’t…hell…there is a hyena in the movie and even he wasn’t laughing. Watching this thing felt like wading through an Olympic-sized swimming pool of radioactive girl power vomit.

If equality is women making misandrist, hyper-violent, incoherently vapid and dreadful movies…then Birds of Prey is a smashing success for feminism. It is also an abysmal failure for cinema…and probably humanity. It deserves to fail.

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

Do You Believe in Miracles? Parasites Shocking and Glorious Upset Win at the Oscars

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 37 seconds

The 92nd Oscars were a chaotic and turbulent train wreck, until Parasite shocked the world and won Best Picture.

In 1980 the overwhelming underdog U.S. Men’s Olympic Hockey beat the juggernaut Soviet Union 4-3 in the semifinal game of the Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York. As a result of this improbable win, dubbed the Miracle on Ice, the rag tag U.S. team went on to win the gold medal.

When the final seconds of the Miracle on Ice ticked down the play-by-play announcer Al Michaels gave his now iconic call of “Do you believe in miracles?”

It is a shame Al Michaels wasn’t doing the play-by-play for the Oscars last night…as the heavy favorite and presumed winner, 1917, went down hard in defeat to the Korean film Parasite, not only in the Best Picture race but also in Best Director. Parasite became the first foreign language film to ever win Best Picture. Do you believe in miracles?

The irony of Parasite’s completely unpredictable victory is that the Oscar show itself, was a predictably scattershot mess.

The show dragged on for three hours and thirty-one interminable minutes.  Renee Zellweger’s Best Actress acceptance speech alone took up three hours and twenty minutes. Do you believe in miracles? It would be a miracle if Renee wasn’t still talking over at the Dolby theatre right now, rambling on as she named all the people that are heroes in the world…one by one.

The show opened with a very disjointed musical number by singer and actress Janelle Monae who was pretending to be Mr. Rodgers. Monae had a mild wardrobe malfunction where her blouse was accidentally unbuttoned in front of her breasts and she couldn’t get her coat off and Mr. Rodger’s sweater on. Welcome to the Oscars everybody!

After that the evening was chock full of the same stereotypical politically correct posing and pandering we’ve come to expect from Hollywood on its big night…all of which was greeted with unabashed adoration by the audience in the echo chamber that is the Dolby theatre.

A plethora of stars and award winners, including Best Supporting Actor winner Brad Pitt, trotted out a variety of political and social complaints that were all too familiar. Among the buzzwords that made appearances were ”representation”, “inclusion” and “diversity”.

Another one of the night’s big topics was women’s issues.

There were proclamations from stars Brie Larson, Gal Gadot and Sigourney Weaver that all women are superheroes, and that it is tiresome and maybe misogynistic for women to have to keep answering the question of “what is it like to be a woman in Hollywood?”

I wonder, would Larson, Gadot and Weaver also complain if no one asked them what it was like to be a woman in Hollywood? Do you believe in miracles? Well, it would be a miracle if the answer is anything other than yes.

As the evening wore on the show became more and more unintelligible. Eminem performed a song to pay homage to how songs are used in movies sometimes. Greta Thurnberg showed up in a film clip. Some guy I have never heard of who was dressed like a waiter at a moderately priced suburban restaurant did a rap that summarized the night. A group of foreign women sang some terrible song from Frozen 2 with Idina Menzel for some inexplicable reason.  It would be a miracle if any of these things made any sense.

As the night wore on and on and on…things became more and more unhinged. A highlight was Joaquin Phoenix’s entirely expected win for Best Actor, and his acceptance speech was…well…something else.

Phoenix is a weird dude, and his speech fantastically on brand. That is not to say that he didn’t make some valid and profound points.

For instance, Phoenix was the only speaker of the entire evening who had the courage to not tell the Dolby audience what it wanted to hear. In fact, Joaquin took the audience to task and talked about cancel culture and how destructive it is. Between referencing artificially inseminating a cow and stealing its calf and milk, he also said that he and the other people in that room had a tendency to think of themselves as the center of the universe. What?! Do you believe in miracles, indeed!

Then, after having won earlier for Best Original Screenplay, Bong Joon-ho won for Best Director and Al Michaels was in my head whispering about believing in miracles.

The Oscars rarely get anything right but Bong winning Best Director is a shockingly fantastic turn of events as Parasite is impeccably directed and most worthy.

And then Best Picture was up and I was ready to throw my shoe at the television when the middle-brow 1917 won, but then Parasite was announced and I was yelling like Al Michaels in my living room “Do you believe in miracles!”

And then during Parasite’s producer’s acceptance speech the Dolby Theatre house lights went down and in response the audience chanted for them to be turned back on…and they were! And I believed even more in miracles.

And then Jane Fonda did one pump fake, then another and then another…and then the greatest miracle of all occurred and she finally and officially ended the 92nd Oscars. And then I really believed in miracles!

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

92nd Academy Awards: The 2020 Oscars Prediction Post

THIS IS NOT A BETTING GUIDE. THE OSCARS ARE SACRED AND ANYONE WHO DARES GAMBLE ON THEM IS GOING TO STRAIGHT TO HELL!

The Oscars are once again upon us.

Man’s distant descendants crawled out of the primordial ooze millions of years ago and began the arduous journey to the apex of their evolution…which is Oscar night.

The Oscars are like a Presidential election, Royal coronation, Papal conclave and public execution all at once. It is majestic, glorious, somber and gratuitously gruesome…and that’s why we love it more than life itself.

This has been a particularly good year for cinema, which translates into it being a frustratingly bad year at the Oscars, as the Academy will no doubt over look greatness in favor of blandness.

So sit back, buckle up and let’s take a deep dive into my 2020 Oscar predictions!

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Kathy Bates - Richard Jewell : My patience with Clint Eastwood movies has worn perilously thin…so I have not seen Richard Jewell. Kathy Bates is terrific actress though so I assume she’s good in it.

Laura Dern - Marriage Story : The praise Dern is getting for this performance is baffling. Not only is she not great in this movie, she is actively bad. This performance feels so contrived and mannered to me.

Scarlett Johansson - Jojo Rabbit : I really like ScarJo as an actress but I have to say that I found her grating in this role. It is not all her fault as the writing is paper thin but boy oh boy did this performance not work for me.

Florence Pugh - Little Women : I have not seen Little Women…I know, I know…I am a terrible human being. That said, Florence Pugh is undeniably one of the best young actresses working in cinema.

Margot Robbie - Bombshell : I have a screener of Bombshell but just have never found the time to watch it. Margot Robbie is an actress I usually admire a great deal so I have little doubt she does solid work here.

WHO SHOULD WIN - None of the Above. This is an abysmal year for female performances. The one I thought should win…Margot Robbie in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood…wasn’t nominated.

WHO WILL WIN - Laura Dern. This is set in stone. Dern is well-liked and respected in Hollywood and this is one of those “it’s her turn” awards.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Tom Hanks - A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood : I haven’t seen this movie…and have no interest in seeing this movie. But here is a hot take for you…and I’ve been saying this for a long time. Tom Hanks is not that great of an actor. Yes…I agree…I am a horrible human being.

Anthony Hopkins - The Two Popes : Hopkins is fantastic in this movie as he gives Pope Benedict a humanity that has never been evident in real life.

Al Pacino - The Irishman : Pacino has ocassionally spiraled into self-parody in his later years, but his turn as Jimmy Hoffa is fantastic. He brings a palpable sense of self-destructive tenacity to a role that would have been farce in any other hands.

Joe Pesci - The Irishman : Pesci’s self-contained yet vibrant work as mobster Russell Buffalino is among the very best of his stellar career.

Brad Pitt - Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood : Pitt goes full on movie star while, ironically, playing second fiddle to a fading movie star. I have yet to meet a women who hasn’t swooned when Pitt goes shirtless on the roof to fix an antenna. This is as charismatic and magnetic as Pitt has ever been…and that’s saying something.

WHO SHOULD WIN - Pacino and Pesci technically do the best work in this category. While they have very different parts, they both do supremely subtle and complex work. That said, Pitt also is spectacular in his less complicated but very dynamic role. It would be fine if any of the three won.

WHO WILL WIN - Brad Pitt. Pitt is a lock to win this thing as he turned in a glorious movie star performance and has kept it up with his speeches in at other awards shows. Pitt is well liked and has worked hard to be respected out here in Hollywood…his victory will be roundly cheered, including in my home.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Knives Out - Rian Johnson : This movie and this script are utter horseshit. Awful.

Marriage Story - Noah Baumbach : A narcissistic and vapid script.

1917 - Sam Mendes : This script could have been written on the back of a napkin…and probably was.

Once Upon a Time In Hollywood - Quentin Tarantino : Tarantino is a great director…he is an even better writer. A crisp and crackling script that is astonishing for its brilliance.

Parasite - Bong Joon-ho : An absolutely fantastic script filled with genuine human characters, profound political and social insights and a plethora of entertaining twists and turns.

WHO SHOULD WIN - Quentin Tarantino…with Bing Joon-ho a distant second

WHO WILL WIN - This is a very tough category as Mendes may win this as part of the 1917 Oscar tsunami…but I am actually going to go upset with Quentin Tarantino.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

The Irishman - Steve Zaillian : Yes the movie is long…but Zaillian’s script is pretty tight considering the vast swath of history it covers.

Jojo Rabbit - Taika Waititi : I thought the script was a weak point in this uneven film.

Joker - Todd Phillips : A masterful script that turns comic book intellectual property into dizzying social commentary.

Little Women - Greta Gerwig : I haven’t seen the film or read the book…yes…I agree…I must be a misogynist.

The Two Popes - Anthony McCarten : this is a very well crafted script (that was scuttled by very poor direction) that was able to create context and complex characters all at the same time…not a common feat.

WHO SHOULD WIN - Zaillian or Phillips. Both scripts are truly inspired pieces of work.

WHO WILL WIN - This is another tough one. In some ways I think Gerwig has the edge as the Academy wants to reward women…but I also think that a lot of Academy members think the Little Women script is not very good. Jojo Rabbit isn’t very good either…but I may be in the minority in that belief. Coin flip…my pick is…Greta Gerwig.

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

The Irishman - Rodrigo Prieto : A beautifully and subtly photographed movie.

Joker - Lawrence Sher : Sher’s work is the most profound of the bunch as he came from nowhere to produce one of the most visually intriguing movies of the year.

The Lighthouse - Jarin Blaschke : Nice black and white and some inventive use of aspect ratio…but he stands no chance.

1917 - Roger Deakins : The master. One of the greatest of all-time…and 1917 is a major flex.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood - Robert Richardson ; Richardson is one of my favorite cinematographers of all time. His work here is absolutely stellar.

WHO SHOULD WIN - Deakins is a god and his victory is well earned but I actually think Lawrence Sher also deserves to win here.

WHO WILL WIN - Deakins by a mile. 1917 is really his movie and it is going to clean up at the Oscars this year. Nice to see Deakins get his second award after being left at the altar so many times.

BEST FOREIGN FILM

Corpus Christi - Poland : I haven’t seen it…and yes…I am sure that makes me a Pole-phobe.

Honeyland - North Macedonia : I haven’t seen it…and yes…I loathe North Macedonia…I’m a South Macedonia fan…GO SOUTHIE!!

Les Miserables - France : Not a great movie and certainly not worthy of an Oscar nomination.

Pain and Glory - Spain : Almodovar is a terrific filmmaker, and I enjoyed this movie on a certain level as it was his most quiet and reflective work I can remember.

Parasite - South Korea : A stunningly great piece of film making.

WHO SHOULD WIN - Parasite.

WHO WILL WIN - Parasite.

BEST DIRECTOR

Martin Scorsese - The Irishman : Scorsese is Scorsese…little else need be said, but I’ll say something anyway. This movie, bad old man face altering aside, is a fantastic piece of work.

Todd Phillips - Joker : Phillips made the The hangover movies…what the hell is he doing at the Oscars. Well…he belongs after making one of the very best and most insightful films of the year.

Sam Mendes - 1917 : Mendes is about to win his second Best Director Oscar and he has no business even having one, nevermind being in the rarified air of two.

Quentin Tarantino - Once Upon a Time in Hollywood : This film may very well be Tarantino’s best…and his direction on it is superb.

Bong Joon-ho - Parasite : Technically as well directed a movie as I have seen in years. Magnificent.

WHO SHOULD WIN - Tarantino is due…and deserving but will get passed over again. Phillips and Bong Joon-ho are also more than deserving but will be left in the dust.

WHO WILL WIN - Mendes. Sam Mendes is literally the only director in this group who SHOULDN’T win the award…which means he is going home with another Oscar. Awful.

BEST ACTRESS

Cynthia Erivo - Harriet : Haven’t seen the movie…you know what that means…

Scarlett Johansson - Marriage Story : ScarJo is actively awful in this dreadful movie.

Saoirse Ronan - Little Women : Haven’t seen it, but i think Ronan is a phenomenal actress.

Charlize Theron - Bombshell : Haven’t seen it but I hear Theron is good.

Renee Zellweger - Judy : I, along with every other human being on the planet, have not seen this movie…i wonder…does that make me a homophobe?

WHO SHOULD WIN - Shrug…no idea.

WHO WILL WIN - Zellweger. For some reason this has been a lock from day one. If there is an upset I think it is ScarJo winning for Marriage Story…but I don’t think that will happen.

BEST ACTOR

Antonio Banderas - Pain and Glory : Banderas does the best work of his not so great career in this film.

Leonardo DiCaprio - Once Upon a Time in Hollywood : Leo has had one hell of a career and he isn’t even 50 yet…and his work as Rick Dalton is the very best acting in a leading role he has ever done. Truly fantastic.

Adam Driver - Marriage Story : The mystery continues. I don’t get it. I don’t get it here or anywhere else. I just don’t get it. How is this dopey mother fucker a thing? How?

Joaquin Phoenix - Joker : Transcedant performance from the greatest actor of his generation.

Jonathan Pryce - The Two Popes : Pryce is a pro and he brings all of his skills and craft to bear in an impressive piece of work.

WHO SHOULD WIN - Phoenix (but Leo is astounding). He should have won for The Master…but now he gets his due.

WHO WILL WIN - Phoenix. Discussion over.

BEST PICTURE

Ford v Ferrari - I really enjoyed this film and am glad it was nominated. In some other years it could have been a real contender.

The Irishman - This is a late period Scorsese masterpiece and a sterling piece of work.

Jojo Rabbit - At times brilliantly funny in a Mel Brooks-ian type of way, but not an Oscar worthy film at all.

Joker - A staggering piece of work that is remarkably profound and terrifyingly insightful.

Little Women - There are women and they are little. Why hasn’t anyone made this movie before?

Marriage Story - An over-rated, bad stage play of a movie. This thing is just God-awful.

1917 - This is juicy Oscar bait for the older Anglophile Academy members who adore these sort of morally simple war movies.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood - Tremendous, stupendous and glorious. A masterwork from a master writer/director. Everything a movie should be.

Parasite - Sublime direction and a sterling cast combined with a terrific script make for an electrifying cinematic experience.

WHO SHOULD WIN - Joker/Once Upon a Time - Both films are masterpieces in their own right and both deserve recognition for their artistry.

WHO WILL WIN - 1917. 1917 is going to dominate this year’s Oscars. That is depressing news but it is true. It is depressing because there are so many films much more worthy of attention and adoration that 1917. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Joker, Parasite and The Irishman would all be worthy champions but they won’t get the chance.

If there is an big upset in this category it will either come from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood or Parasite. I tend to think Once Upon a Time has a better chance than Parasite to sneak in for the win…but what the hell do i know?

THE BEST OF THE REST

My best guesses…

Visual Effects - Lion King - If 1917 wins this then it is going to win big all night.

Makeup and Hairstyling - Bombshell

Animated Short - Hair Love

Live Action Short - Brotherhood

Documentary Short - Learning to Skateboard

Sound Mixing - 1917 : If this doesn’t win than maybe the night won’t be as predictable as I worry it will be. Ford v Ferrari could pull the upset. If Once Upon a Time wins…LOOK OUT! That could mean a big night for Tarantino!

Sound Editing - 1917 : Same exact scenario as above in sound mixing.

Costume Design - Once Upon a Time

Production Design - Once Upon a Time : If 1917 wins here then it will clean up across the awards.

Film Editing : Ford v Ferarri : If Parasite wins here it could portend a big night for the foreign film…and maybe a Best Director or Best Screenplay or even a Best Picture victory.

Original Score : Joker - If 1917 wins here, a distinct possibility, it may be a long night.

Original Song : Rocketman - The Academy likes stars and Elton John is a star.

Documentary Feature - American Factory : It is possible that Sama or Honeyland sneak in for the win, but I think the fact that Obama produced American Factory will put it over the top. The Academy likes stars after all.

Animated Feature - Toy Story 4 - An outside chance that Klaus wins but i think familiarity pushes Toy Story to victory.

POTENTIAL NARRATIVES

1. 1917 dominates - This is the most likely scenario as it seems to be the default pick for Academy members in most categories. Could win in screenplay and editing and is the odds on favorite to win in director and picture and definitely will win in cinematography. If it wins in the sound and design categories than the blowout is on.

2. Once Upon a Time upset - it is unlikely but the film could go on a run and win screenplay, director and picture while winning a bunch of under the line awards too. Look to the sound awards as a bellwether…if it wins there than it has a shot to upset the 1917 apple cart in the big time awards like director and picture.

3. Parasite upset - It is within the realm of possibility that Parasite wins screenplay and sneaks in to win either director or picture. Long shot but possible. keep an eye on the editing award…if it wins there than it has a legit shot to upset in major categories…if it doesn’t win in editing…game over.

4. Joker shocks the world! - Highly unlikely but remotely possible that Joker goes on a miraculous run and ends up with a bevy of awards including picture and/or director. Again…the longest of long shots. if it wins in costume, makeup and editing…then hold tight because we are in for a wondrously bumpy Oscar night.

5. Splits - The most likely shockers would be a split ticket with 1917 winning picture and Tarantino or Bong winning director. It is possible for a reverse of that with Parasite or Once Upon a Time winning picture and Mendes winning director…but that is less likely than the reverse.

©2020

You're Welcome World! Academy Awards Courageously Save Earth From Global Warming

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 31 seconds

Hollywood has been averting doomsday scenarios in movies for decades - but now the Oscars are serious about it, brandishing a ‘sustainable’ plant-based menu for the cream of the virtue-signaling celebrity crowd.

Hollywood has an extended and rich history of depicting mankind in peril from various existential threats.

If you recall, it was Hollywood that showed us the nefarious nature of robots, like HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey, Skynet and their T-1000 killer robot minions (that speak with a strange Austrian accent for no apparent reason) in the Terminator franchise, and the dead-eyed evil of Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network.

Hollywood also raised the red flag concerning the threat from other worlds. Alien, Signs, War of the Worlds and Independence Day are among the many films that show what will happen when E.T. phones home and his dastardly reinforcements arrive to even the score.

Hollywood’s most accurate depiction of humanity’s inevitable destruction was shown to us in the various Planet of the Apes films. Watch the news long enough and you will surely stumble across some supposedly heart-warming story of an ape learning sign language….but don’t be fooled, that Helen Keller wannabe mini-Kong is a stepping-stone to mankind’s slavery under brutal ape overlords. I guarantee you that if enough of these monkey bastards learn to sign we will all end up wearing leashes and loin cloths and yelling at some descendant of Harambe to “take your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!”

Which brings us to global warming…oops…I mean climate change, that scary storytelling device Hollywood adores. Movies like The Day After Tomorrow, Geostorm and Al Gore’s Oscar winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth have told the all too frighteningly real story of the climate crisis and how it will impact mankind.

Hollywood has taught us that climate change will inescapably lead to a post-apocalyptic, Mad Max type of world where we must wage endless resource wars that include some pretty spectacular car chase battles with Mel Gibson or Tom Hardy, in order to survive.

Thankfully though, the Academy Awards, showcase of Hollywood’s best and brightest, has solved the climate crisis and eradicated it forever as a threat to humanity.

What is the Academy Award’s plan to stop the climate crisis? Well the noble geniuses at the Oscars have declared that instead of serving meat-based foods at their annual luncheon for nominees and in the theatre lobby on the night of the awards, they will instead serve only plant-based foods!!

Take that climate change! Go straight to hell global warming!! Way to kick ass Oscar and you are very welcome Mother Earth!

To be fair, the Oscars weren’t the first to come up with this ingenious plan, as it is the same plan the Golden Globes put into effect at their most recent awards show in early in January. After seeing the tremendous impact the Golden Globes magical vegetarian menu had on the earth over the last month, it is nice to see the Oscars deciding to double down on the effort.

The impact of the vegan Oscar menu is impossible to over estimate. It seems extremely likely to me that by serving Tinseltown’s elite vegetables instead of chicken, not only will the Academy Awards halt global warming but also bring about world peace and maybe even end the scourge of physical ugliness so prevalent in non-famous regular people.

Just imagine how much better earth and all of its inhabitants will feel when self-satisfied movie stars fly to Los Angeles from across the globe in their private jets and then cruise in their first world limousines past the hordes of homeless that literally litter every nook and cranny of third world La La Land, and then go to an Oscars ceremony with its plant based menu which these stars won’t eat anyway because they’re fasting so they look thin for photographs in their glamorous outfits. A complex problem like climate change doesn’t stand a chance in the face of that kind of total sacrifice and complete commitment.

I personally think serving a mostly vegan menu at an awards show is so much better for the environment than say, living a simple and sustainable life, or refusing to do any business with carbon based energy companies, or better yet, divesting from one of the worst degraders of the environment, The Pentagon, and deciding to stop being the propaganda wing for American Empire.

How about this Hollywood… instead of self-congratulatory awards nonsense why don’t the Academy Awards have a full and healthy menu, but as an alternative to serving it to narcissistic actors who won’t eat it because they don’t want to look bloated in photos, take it into the streets of Los Angeles where 60,000 poor, tired and ill homeless people struggle to find access to clean water, food and sanitation as they scratch out an existence in tent cities beneath nearly every underpass and in every open space in the city. Maybe then the Oscar’s plant-based menu would make an actual difference in the real world instead of just in the delusional minds of self-centered eco-poseurs.

I’m just kidding…let them eat cake!! Just as long as it is an environmentally sustainable and 100% vegan cake!

Speaking of the Academy Awards, “and the Oscar for Best Faux Eco-Friendly Virtue Signaling goes to…”

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota Podcast: Episode 5 - Parasite

In the new episode of Looking California and Feeling Minnesota, Barry and I have a spoiler free discussion about Academy Award Best Picture nominee Parasite and dive headfirst into crazy our new segment titled Studio Boss!

Please check us out on iTunes and be sure to leave a comment or review.

LOOKING CALIFORNIA AND FEELING MINNESOTA

Thank you for listening and please spread the word.

©2020

It's a Miracle...Hollywood Finds Religion!

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 38 seconds

Hollywood is Allowing Catholics Who Are Not Corrupt or Pedophiles to Appear on Screen Again

Hollywood is currently making some surprisingly good Catholic entertainment with a refreshingly traditionalist bent.

As a practicing Catholic and a devout cinephile, I am constantly frustrated that Hollywood rarely gets religion right. Films and tv shows that touch upon Catholic and religious themes are often reduced to being either saccharine adoration in the hands of believing “conservatives” or vacuous vilification in the hands of agnostic “liberals”.

Considering there are 1.2 billion Roman Catholics in the world, and 84% of all people believe in one religion or another, it would seem a wise choice for Hollywood to explore Catholic and religious themed stories with much more regularity, artistic integrity and sincerity.

Hollywood and the Catholic Church need not be adversaries, as they have a lot more in common than one might think. For instance, they both have gobs of money and their hierarchies are littered with perverts and pedophiles. I’M KIDDING! As I said, I’m a practicing Catholic…and as my Catholic gallows humor shows…I definitely need more practice because I’m not very good at it.

Truth be told, now is actually a great time to be a Catholic cinephile because that den of iniquity, Hollywood, has recently shaken off its allergy to organized religion and turned its storytelling eye toward Catholicism with a striking spiritual seriousness and cinematic verve.

Tinsel Town’s recent mini-Catholic renaissance began in late November when it dipped its toe into the holy water font with the Netflix film The Two Popes. The movie, which features two compelling performances from Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce as Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis respectively, is visually uneven but surprisingly philosophically vibrant.

This was followed in short order by Terrence Malick’s artistically gorgeous and profound film, A Hidden Life, which hit art house theatres in late December and told the story of Franz Jagerstatter, a Catholic Austrian farmer turned saint for his conscientious objection to Hitler and the Nazi war machine.

Then in January, HBO premiered The New Pope, which is a continuation of the network’s highly stylized 2016 drama The Young Pope, a fictional account of Vatican intrigue starring Jude Law as an enigmatic Pontiff. The Young Pope and its new iteration The New Pope, are cinematically lush and quite theologically robust shows.

Considering that Hollywood is so reflexively liberal, especially in cultural matters, what makes these three projects so striking, beyond their simply being about religion, is that they shine an unabashedly positive light on traditional Catholic ideology.

For instance, I’m not conservative but even I was reticent to watch The Young Pope when it first aired in 2016 because I assumed it was going to be an intellectually lazy and predictably liberal spin on church matters. Much to my cinephile delight the show has consistently defied expectations, with Jude Law’s character Pope Pius XIII being a brazen crusader for old world traditionalism as an antidote to the menace of new world moral relativity and meaninglessness.

The Young Pope is certainly not reverential toward the Church, and this along with the show’s narrative audacity and occasional racy nature is maybe why some conservative Catholics find it blasphemous. But conservatives who dislike The Young Pope/The New Pope are missing the forest for the trees, as the show is a mature meditation on faith and is extremely respectful to Catholic teachings and belief in God.

The truth is that if conservative Catholics were cinematically literate and culturally sophisticated enough they would understand that The Young Pope/The New Pope is a beacon for potential religious traditionalists converts lost in the storm of pop cultural vacuity and idolatry.

The same is true of The Two Popes, which treats Catholicism, its adherents and God with the utmost seriousness. The debates in the film between Pope Benedict and Pope Francis perfectly encapsulate the present Catholic conundrum and the film goes to great lengths to respectfully highlight both men’s arguments as well as their personal failings.

 A Hidden Life furthers the traditional Catholic cause by showing the faith in action. Protagonist Franz Jagerstatter is the living embodiment of the commitment to Catholic faith and while his story certainly isn’t a happy one, for serious Catholics, it is ultimately a spiritually joyous one.

The entertainment industry acknowledging and exploring Catholicism is remarkable, bordering on the miraculous, as religion is usually either ignored, ridiculed or vilified in Hollywood productions.

This is why I find The Two Popes, A Hidden Life and The Young Pope/The New Pope to be such a breath of fresh air. Religion, particularly Catholicism with its hierarchical structure and global nature, is a veritable gold mine of dramatic potential, and it does my Catholic cinephile heart good to see it being so exquisitely utilized in artistically and spiritually satisfying ways.

Art and cinema are about asking difficult questions and potentially opening hearts and changing minds, and it seems we are currently in a cultural moment where the madness of the world has become so disorienting that even Hollywood is considering the unthinkable, that traditional religion might be of value in trying to make sense of it all.

I am sure, soon enough, Hollywood will revert back to its relentlessly diabolical ways and this glorious mini-Catholic artistic renaissance will be but a faded, distant memory…but for now…I am going to enjoy it in all its glory while it lasts.

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

Hollywood's Arrogant and Ignorant Pandering to Chinese Audiences

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 42 seconds

Hollywood shamelessly panders to China to make money, but they are absolutely terrible at it.

Hollywood thinks that by telling Chinese stories they will woo the Chinese market they so crave…they couldn’t be more wrong, as the failure of The Farewell amply illustrates.

This past weekend The Farewell, a critically adored American film which tells the story of a Chinese-American woman who returns to China to visit her dying grandmother, opened in China.

Due to The Farewell being written and directed by a Chinese American woman, Lulu Wang, and starring Chinese-American, Golden Globe winning actress, Awkwafina, as well as the film’s dialogue being mostly spoken in Mandarin, Hollywood’s expectations were that the movie would be well received in China.

Those expectations proved to be very misguided. The Farewell has been largely ignored by Chinese audiences as evidenced by its embarrassingly dismal take at the Chinese box office of just $580,000.

The Farewell’s failure is reminiscent of the poor showing in China by another Asian themed Hollywood movie, Crazy Rich Asians, which was a break out smash hit in America in 2018, bringing in $174 million at the U.S. box office. American audiences cheered Crazy Rich Asians largely due to its Asian cast, which was deemed a great success for representation and diversity for Hollywood. In contrast, China, which has plenty of its own movies with all-Asian casts, had no such love for the film as proven by its tepid box office receipts.

Crossing the cultural divide and tapping into the Chinese market has long been the Holy Grail of Hollywood, as every studio executive in town is constantly trying to crack the Chinese code in order to fill their coffers. Of course, studio executives are not exactly the sharpest knives in the drawer, so the only plan they’ve been able to come up with thus far is to pander. Not surprisingly, Hollywood’s ham-handed attempts to cater to Chinese audiences have consistently backfired.

Disney thought Asian representation would attract Chinese audiences when they cast Asian-American actress Kelly Marie Tran in a major role in the most recent Star Wars trilogy. The problem was that Ms. Tran (who is of Vietnamese descent) did not conform to classical Chinese standards of beauty and thus Chinese audiences never warmed to her.

Chinese audiences have voiced similar complaints regarding Akwafina, with some Chinese people on social media going so far as to call her “very ugly”, which may be one of the reasons why The Farewell is doing so poorly. And this is before we get to her Mandarin, which was widely considered laughable for a first-generation immigrant, even one who left China early, according to the plot (the actress herself did not speak Chinese fluently before the film).

Another example of this cultural divide is Simu Liu, a Canadian-Chinese actor who was recently cast in the lead of the upcoming Marvel movie Shang-chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Liu is considered handsome by Western standards but some Chinese people say he is “not handsome by Chinese standards”, which means Shang-chi might face an uphill battle at the Chinese box office when it comes out. 

Hollywood has had some success in China, for instance, of the top 15 highest grossing films in Chinese box office history, four are Hollywood productions. They are Avengers: Endgame, The Fate of the Furious, Furious 7 and Avengers: Infinity War. It seems Hollywood has not learned the lesson of their Chinese successes though because unlike Crazy Rich Asians, The Farewell and even to a certain extent the poorly received latest Star Wars trilogy, the Hollywood films that have found success in China are gigantic franchises telling American stories filled to the brim with spectacle and movie stars…and none of those stars are Chinese.

In 2020 Disney is once again making a major attempt to court the Chinese market by releasing Mulan, a live action adaptation of the 1998 animated film of the same name. While Mulan is based on the Chinese folk story “The Ballad of Mulan” and will boast a very attractive cast of Asian actors, including star Liu Yifei, that is no guarantee of box office success. The 1998 animated Mulan financially flopped in China and one wonders if the live action version is just another culturally tone deaf attempt by Hollywood to try to tell and sell a Chinese story back to the Chinese.

Hollywood’s misguided belief that Chinese audiences want to see Hollywood make Chinese themed-movies with Chinese stars seems to be staggeringly obtuse. China has a thriving film industry all its own and Chinese audiences don’t clamor to see Chinese stories told from Hollywood’s perspective (even if they’re made by Chinese-American artists) anymore than Americans yearn to see American stories told by foreign artists. The bottom line is this…Chinese audiences want to see American movies from America, not Chinese movies from America.

At its best the art form of cinema is a universal language that speaks eloquently across cultural boundaries. For example, American audiences this year have embraced the South Korean film Parasite. Parasite didn’t try to tell an American story with American actors in an attempt to cash in with U.S. audiences, instead it tells a dramatically and artistically profound Korean story about family and class that connects to people of all cultures. Hollywood would be wise to emulate that approach when trying to woo Chinese audiences.

And if it does want to make what it thinks are “Asian” stories, it should be culturally humble enough to know that it’s making them primarily for the art house cinemas in Brooklyn, rather than the multiplexes in Beijing.

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

Golden Globe-Winning 'Feminist' Fleabag is Adored by Woke Critics - Does That Mean It's Actually Terrible?

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 27 seconds

We’ve become wary of watching something just because it’s been hyped by critics with an agenda. But does that mean we are missing out on great shows? I tried to watch Fleabag without all the baggage…

Sunday night at the Golden Globes, Fleabag, the British comedy about a serially self-destructive and sexually voracious woman, which is created by, written and starring Phoebe Waller Bridge, was a big winner as it snagged trophies for Comedy Series and Actress in a Comedy.

Fleabag’s Golden Globe success comes on the heels of its domination at the Emmys this past September, where it won awards for Best Comedy, Lead Actress, Writing and Directing.

Fleabag started as a one-woman stage show back in 2013, and after being adapted for tv and premiering on Amazon’s streaming service in 2016, it has over two seasons gradually built an audience through positive word of mouth and critical acclaim.

Fleabag had successfully eluded my attention up until 2019 when its second, and allegedly final, season arrived with much fanfare. I found myself immediately resistant to watching the show as I was very dubious of the relentless critical praise for it.

My reticence regarding Fleabag was fueled by the assumption that critics loved it not because it was good but simply because it was created by a woman. In other words, I assumed the critical adoration was because it was a “feminist” show that checked all the right cultural and political boxes.

My skepticism regarding critical opinion has been hard earned, as it seems all criticism of entertainment nowadays is rife with political agendas that far outweigh quality in a critic’s professional criteria.

A prime example of this biased critical approach is the 2017 film Lady Bird. Lady Bird, which was directed by Greta Gerwig, was met with unabashed critical swooning upon its release. Amidst all of this vocfierous praise I was excited to go see Lady Bird…and then I saw it. To call Lady Bird a raging mediocrity would be an insult to raging mediocrities.

It was readily apparent to me that Lady Bird, which boasts a 99% critical score on Rotten Tomatoes, was being graded on a woke political curve simply because it had a female writer/director at the helm. By pointing this fact out I became the turd in the punchbowl at Greta Gerwig’s coronation as the new Queen of Cinema and was quickly labeled a misogynist for my treason and cast out of the Kingdom of Right Thinking People.

Contrary to woke opinion, I didn’t find Lady Bird to be overrated due to misogyny but rather because I am a devout cinephile whose assessment of a film is based first and foremost on its quality, not its diversity and inclusion. By that measurement, I found Lady Bird to be amateurish and trite, more akin to a collection of bad Saturday Night Live skits than to a serious piece of cinema.

Transparent, the 2014 Amazon comedy/drama about a father who becomes a trans-woman, is another example of critical judgment skewed for symbolic political purposes. The show, which was created by Jill Soloway and starred Jeffrey Tambor as Mort - who becomes Maura, won eight Emmys over its four seasons. Critics gushed over Transparent, as it received critical scores on Rotten Tomatoes of 98, 98 and 100 over its first three seasons.

I watched the show because I had heard that Tambor, an actor I deeply respect, did amazing work in it…and he did…but the show itself was so God-awful it made my stomach hurt. I have never seen a collection of more repulsive characters and vapid caricatures on one show in my entire life. My loathing of Transparent was met with predictable accusations of transphobia, which is ironic since the characters I found so repellent weren’t the trans-gendered ones, but the cis-gendered ones.

The critics who love Lady Bird, Transparent and even Black Panther, which is a painfully middling and unimpressive Marvel movie, do so because those movies represent a sort of utopian dream of diversity and inclusion, not because they are creative and artistic masterpieces. Having the “correct” politics now trumps great artistic achievement in the eyes of critics, which is why I am so suspicious of their opinion.

Which brings me back to Fleabag. By the time I had become aware of Fleabag I was already thoroughly jaded by my experience of Lady Bird, Transparent and Black Panther among others. Unfortunately, in response to critics pushing their political bias I had reflexively formed my own bias against the shows they endorsed. I realized that assuming Fleabag was just another vacuous “girl power” show solely based on critic’s love for it was just as vapid an approach to criticism as the woke critics I abhor. So I took the plunge and watched Fleabag.

Contrary to my contrarian instincts, Fleabag is absolutely, insanely and infectiously fantastic. The show is not some recipient of a woke-inspired critical leg up, but rather is an off beat, gutter dwelling, low-brow, sort of masterpiece of the half hour comedy genre.

The writing is gloriously crisp and comedically precise while the cast, most notably Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Olivia Colman, Bill Patterson and Andrew Scott, are spectacular.

Fleabag is a feminist show, but not in the sense of how that term is misused in our popular culture at the moment. Fleabag does not embrace victimhood or blame men, instead the lead character, brilliantly played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, is a fully formed, multi-dimensional person who has agency in her life and is solely responsible for the hysterical mess she’s made of it.

If, like me, you have a plethora of pop culture scar tissue and stayed far away from Fleabag out of fear that it is just another piece of politically correct garbage, I promise you that it isn’t. The show may not be for everybody, it is pretty raunchy for instance, but it is as good a comedy as you will find anywhere on television and is deserving of its praise and worthy of your attention.

 A version fo this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

Ford v Ferrari: A Review

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

My Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. A conventional but very enjoyable and entertaining movie that will rev up your engine and get your heart racing.

Ford v Ferrari, written by Jez and John-Henry Butterworth and directed by James Mangold, is the story of American car designer Carroll Shelby and British race car driver Ken Miles as, amidst corporate intrigue, they try to build a car to compete at the 24 Hours of Le Mans against the juggernaut Ferrari racing team. The film stars Matt Damon as Shelby and Christian Bale as Miles, with supporting turns from Jon Bernthal, Tracy Letts, Caitriona Balfe and Josh Lucas.

Ford v Ferrari is an old-fashioned, meat and potatoes movie that twenty years ago would have been a prime prestige picture and sure fire Oscar contender. Nowadays, with our diversity obsessed woke culture, a movie like Ford v Ferrari, which is about white men accomplishing great things, is generally anathema. The film’s conventional narrative foundation and its traditional movie making approach don’t make for a particularly original cinematic experience, but it does make for an exceedingly entertaining one.

Ford v Ferrari is crowd-pleasing, and at times exhilarating, even within the confines of its familiar structure and simple cinematic aesthetic. The driving sequences are not exactly ground-breaking cinematography, as they are little more than a high-end car commercial, but coupled with stellar sound editing and design, film editing and a quality soundtrack, they become highly effective, if not down right heart pounding.

The cast also elevate the material, as both Matt Damon and Christian Bale give quality star performances.

Matt Damon is one of the very best movie star actors working in Hollywood right now. Damon is not Joaquin Phoenix, but he has enough acting chops and artistic integrity that he isn’t Matthew McConaughey or Ben Affleck either. Damon is consistently watchable and is able to carry a film with a subtlety and skill that few movie stars possess, and that skill is front and center in Ford v Ferrari. Carroll Shelby is a Texan, and at first blush that identity sits uncomfortably on Damon, but within moments he envelops the character and, like all good movie stars, turns Shelby into an extension of Matt Damon.

Christian Bale is maybe the least movie star movie star we’ve ever seen, as he seems to vanish into characters without a trace. In Ford v Ferrari, Bale gives a piss and vinegar performance full of humor and humanity that elevate the proceedings considerably.

Tracy Letts, Jon Bernthal, Caitronia Balfe and Josh Lucas all have small supporting roles, and none of them stand out as being note worthy or, to their credit, awful. The supporting roles are not especially full figured and fleshed out, but the cast make the most of what they’re given.

Ford v Ferrari’s director, James Mangold, is a film maker who has had one of the more baffling careers. Mangold started his career with a film I adored, Heavy, and seemed to be poised to be the next big thing in cinema. He followed up Heavy with Copland, which was a Sylvester Stallone reclamation project filled with acting heavy hitters like Robert DeNiro and Harvey Keitel. Ultimately Copland was an ambitious failure, but a failure nonetheless. After Copland, Mangold strung together a collection of unremarkable mainstream movies, such as Girl, Interrupted, Kate and Leopold, Walk the Line, Knight and Day and Wolverine. Mangold’s only noteworthy film of his entire career was his most recent, 2017’s Logan, which was a very dark take on the Wolverine character from X-Men.

Mangold’s biggest problem as a director is that he has no distinct cinematic style in general, and no visual aesthetic in particular. Even Logan, a film I loved, suffered from a rather flat and mundane look, which was a shame. The same middlebrow visual style is on display in Ford v Ferrari. That is not to say that the film looks bad, it doesn’t, as it is professionally and proficiently photographed, it is to say that the film does not look mind blowingly spectacular, which it could have. While the movie and its cinematographer Phedon Papamichael produce some very nice shots, overall it lacks a visual flair that other directors with more pronounced styles would have brought to it. For instance, it would have been interesting to see David Fincher’s or Christopher Nolan’s Ford v Ferrari. That said, Ford v Ferrari is still Mangold’s best film, even visually, and the movie’s outstanding pacing and dramatic momentum are his doing and he deserves all the credit.

The politics of Ford v Ferrari are sort of intriguing, as at one point it seemed to be just a shameless homage to corporate capitalism and the corruption inherent in it. But upon reflection, the film’s subversive spirit is more apparent, as the film actually has a populist, anti-corporate and nationalist heart beating beneath its undeniably mainstream facade.

It is due to the film’s white male centered narrative and its veneer of capitalistic flag waving, that I think the film will be either over-looked or outright snubbed come Oscar season. The film does not wear its populism, nationalism and anti-corporatism on its sleeve, which will no doubt make that message more palatable for those averse to it, but it also leaves it open to misinterpretation, and in our current culture of outrage, I suspect the movie will garner much outrage if it does make an Oscar push. Much like last year’s Neil Armstrong bio-pic First Man by director Damien Chazelle that was overlooked by the Academy Awards, Ford v Ferrari is telling a story of white male achievement that woke Hollywood is not interested in seeing or rewarding right now. The Ford v Ferrari’’s financial success, and it does appear to be on its way to a robust box office haul, is just more evidence of the gigantic split in perception and beliefs between Hollywood/the media and regular people/inhabitants of flyover country.

Ford v Ferrari is the kind of movie Hollywood used to make on a regular basis but rarely does at all anymore. The paucity of these sort of “grown-up” dramas is maybe why Ford v Ferrari is such a delicious cinematic indulgence. I am not much of a “car guy”, but I found Ford v Ferrari to be such an intoxicating movie that I left the theatre desperate to roll up my sleeves and get under the hood of a used muscle car. The film is definitely not perfect, and has some structural and dramatic missteps, but overall I found it to be a very enjoyable cinematic experience well worth your time and effort to see in the theatre, especially for the enhanced sound. This is the type of movie that regular people (non-cinephiles), will absolutely love, and rightfully so. So grab your keys, starts your engines, race through traffic and make a pit stop at your local cineplex to see Ford v Ferrari…it won’t be a life changing experience, but it will a very satisfying one.

©2019

Woke Hollywood Gets Burned By Charlie's Angels Box Office Bomb

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 28 seconds

WOKE HOLLYWOOD GETS BURNED BY CHARLIE’S ANGELS BOX OFFICE BOMB

The new Charlie’s Angels movie is more proof that woke feminist films are box office poison.

Charlie’s Angels, a reboot of the old 70’s tv show and the early 2000’s movies that stars Kristen Stewart, of Twilight fame, along with relative unknowns Naomi Scott and Ella Balinski, hit theaters last weekend with blockbuster ambitions and a defiant “girl power” message. Not surprisingly, the film opened with a resounding thud and fell decidedly flat as evidenced by its paltry $8.6 million box office.

Elizabeth Banks, who wrote and directed the movie, unabashedly declared it to be a feminist enterprise filled with “sneaky feminist ideas”. 

Banks says of Charlie’s Angels,

“One of the statements this movie makes is that you should probably believe women.”

The films star, Kristen Stewart, said of the movie, “It’s kind of like a ‘woke’ version.”

Charlie’s Angels’ failure is just the most recent evidence that woke feminist films are box office poison. The film’s financial floundering comes on the heels of the cataclysmic, franchise-destroying performance of another big budget piece of pro-feminist propaganda, Terminator: Dark Fate, which sank at the box office like an Austrian-accented cybernetic android into a vat of molten steel. Hasta la vista, woke baby.

There have been a plethora of like-minded girl power movies released in 2019 that have produced similarly dismal results at the box office.

One issue with many of these ill-fated woke films is that, like previous feminist flops Ghostbusters(2016) and Ocean’s 8, they are little more than remakes of male movies with females swapped in. These derivative films are the product of a craven corporatism entirely devoid of any originality or creative thought.

For example, the social justice geniuses in Hollywood decided this year it would be a good idea to remake two movies that no one wanted remade, Mel Gibson’s What Women Want (2000) and Steve Martin and Michael Caine’s Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1998), except this time with female leads. To the shock of no one with half a brain in their head, What Men Want with Taraji P. Henson, and The Hustle, with Rebel Wilson And Ann Hathaway, resoundingly flopped.

This year’s Book Smart, directed by Olivia Wilde, was little more than a rehash of the 2007 Jonah Hill and Micheal Cera smash-hit Superbad. Replacing Hill and Cera with two teenage girls as the protagonists in the formulaic film did not inspire audiences, as indicated by the film’s anemic domestic box office of $22 million.

Original movies with feminist themes fared no better than their re-engineered woke cinematic sisters. Late Night, a feminist comedy/drama starring Emma Thompson and Mindy Kaling, made a paltry $15 million domestically, while the painfully politically correct Charlize Theron vehicle, Long Shot, raked in a flaccid $30 million.

As evidenced by these failures, audiences of both sexes are obviously turned off by Hollywood’s ham-handed attempts at woke preaching and social justice pandering. The movie-going public is keenly aware that these woke films are not about entertainment or even artistic expressions, but rather virtue signaling and posing within the Hollywood bubble.

The female stars involved in these failing feminist projects, in front of and behind the camera, have a built in delusional defense though that immunizes them from their cinematic failures…they can always blame misogyny!

The woke in Hollywood are forever on the search for a scapegoat to relieve them of accountability, as it is never their fault that their movies fail. In the case of these female-led movies, the women involved never have to own their failures because they reflexively point their fingers in horror at the angry, knuckle-dragging men, who out of misogynist spite don’t shell out beaucoup bucks to go see their abysmally awful girl power movies.

Elizabeth Banks got an early start in the men-blaming game even before Charlie’s Angels came out when she told Australia’s Herald Sun,

“Look, people have to buy tickets to this movie, too. This movie has to make money. If this movie doesn’t make money it reinforces a stereotype in Hollywood that men don’t go see women do action movies.”

Of course, men will go see women in action movies, Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel being two prime examples of highly successful female action movies, but fear not, Elizabeth Banks dropped some feminist knowledge to counter that uncomfortable fact when she said,  

“They (men) will go and see a comic book movie with Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel because that’s a male genre.”

So even when men go see a female led action film, they are only doing so because it is a “male genre”, got that?  What a convenient way to avoid responsibility…with Elizabeth Banks it is heads, she wins, and tails, men lose.

Banks preemptively blaming men for not being interested in seeing Charlie’s Angels is also odd because she has also openly stated that “women…are the audience for this film” and that she wanted to “make something that felt important to women and especially young girls”. And yet it isn’t just men staying away from Charlie’s Angels in droves, but everybody…including women!

What the feminists in woke Hollywood need to understand is that men and women will go see quality female-led movies, but they need to be good movies first and feminist movies a very distant second.

The problem with Charlie’s Angels, and the rest of these feminist films, is that their woke politics is their only priority, and entertainment value and artistic merit are at best just an after thought, if a thought at all.

My hope is that Hollywood will learn from the critical and financial failure of Charlie’s Angels and the rest of 2019’s feminist flops and in the future will refrain from making vacuous and vapid woke films and instead focus more on quality and originality and less on political correctness and pandering. Considering the continuous cavalcade of Hollywood’s atrociously dreadful girl power movies this year, I am not optimistic.

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2019

The Irishman: A Review

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

My Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT.

The Irishman, written by Steve Zaillian (based on the book I Heard You Paint Houses by Charles Brandt) and directed by Martin Scorsese, is the alleged true story of Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran, a truck driver out of Philadelphia who becomes a trusted member of the Italian mafia. The film stars Robert DeNiro as Sheeran, with supporting turns from Al Pacino and Joe Pesci.

Martin Scorsese is one of the true masters of American cinema, and so when he releases a new film cinephiles take notice. Scorsese’s newest project, The Irishman, is a Netflix film, which means it will have a very limited release in theatres in November before it settles in for the long haul on the streaming service at the end of the month.

Being the obnoxious purist that I am, I wanted to catch The Irishman in theatres so I decided to see the first show at 10:45 on Tuesday morning. I assumed the theatre would be just how I like it…sparsely populated. I mean who, besides a loser like me, goes to a movie on a Tuesday morning? Well…apparently there are a lot of losers in Los Angeles. I was stunned to see that my screening of The Irishman was jam-packed and nearly sold out, with only the first two rows of the theatre with empty seats. The film is supposedly only playing in two theatres here in Los Angeles, and luckily for me one of the two is my regular hang out. My screening was bursting with an interesting cross-section of people, from hipsters to the elderly to elderly hipsters.

What surprised me the most about such a large crowd was that the film runs three hours and thirty minutes, which makes it a prime candidate to watch in the comfort of your home where you can hit the pause button to take bathroom breaks and not miss any of the action. Such is the draw of Scorsese that audiences would put their bladders to the test and shell out money to see a film they could essentially see for free with unlimited bathroom breaks just a few weeks from now.

The Irishman is not so much a genre defining film as it is a genre closing film. Like Clint Eastwood’s eloquent tombstone on the grave of the western, Unforgiven, Scorsese gives us the mob movie that makes mob movies dramatically obsolete with The Irishman. Both Unforgiven and The Irishman burst the archetype and myth that animate them and replace it with the awkward, unwieldy and soul-crushing reality of the consequences of that myth.

Unlike its energetic and exuberant predecessor Goodfellas,The Irishman is a melancholy meditation, a profound existential prayer whispered into the abyss. Scorsese’s makeshift mob trilogy, which began with Goodfellas and continued with Casino, finds its weighty final chapter with the contemplative epic The Irishman, and reveals an introspective auteur coming to grips with mortality. The Irishman is a film obsessed with mortality, as death looms over every scene like an ominous storm cloud containing the relentlessly inevitable deluge of both physical and spiritual destruction and disintegration.

In Goodfellas and Casino, Scorsese sees the mob world as morally corrupt, but does so through a nostalgic lens…these guys may be bad but they are “good guys”, good-fellas. In The Irishman, as physical action turns to spiritual consequences, nostalgia is replaced with a plaintive reflection, so profound as to be akin to a sacramental confession.

The performances in The Irishman magnificently give life to Scorsese’s artistic contemplation, with Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci doing some of their very best work, and easily the best work of the last three decades of their careers.

DeNiro, with the assistance of a “de-aging” special effects technology, plays Frank Sheeran from his young adulthood into old age. DeNiro has not been this engaged, this sharp or this magnetic for a quarter of a century. DeNiro and Scorsese give Frank time and space, with which he is able to be still and contemplate his choices both in the moment and in hindsight. DeNiro sublimely fills these moments with a consequential aching, and his character with an acutely unconscious wound that gives Sheeran a complexity and profundity he is unable to grasp. DeNiro is now 76 and this performance may very well be his last hurrah as an actor, and it is a fitting monument to his colossal talent and extraordinary career.

Al Pacino has a supporting role and is absolutely fantastic. Caustically funny and desperately combustible, Pacino’s character (I won’t tell you his name so as not to spoil it) is a force of nature. Pacino imbues his character with a compulsion for control and a pulsating pride that make a toxic combination and undeniably dynamic viewing.

Joe Pesci is sublimely superb as the restrained and deliberate mob boss, Russ Buffalino. Pesci made his name playing frantically unhinged characters, but in The Irishman he shows off his mastery of craft. Pesci’s Buffalino is quiet and still, and yet because he fills his stillness and silence with an undeniable intentionality, he radiates an unnerving power. Pesci rightfully won the Best Supporting Actor for his work in Goodfellas, but his performance in The Irishman, while not as showy, is even better, as it is as layered and complex a piece of acting as you’ll find.

The de-aging technology used on DeNiro, Pacino and Pesci can be a little disorienting at first, and it takes some getting used to, but after the first few minutes you never even think of it. The one thing that is sort of odd about it is that the technology only de-ages their faces and not their bodies. So when a young and fresh faced DeNiro is beating the crap out of a guy on a sidewalk, he moves like a 76 year old man…like he is underwater…which is very strange to see.

The Irishman is epic is scope and scale, and it covers some 40 or 50 years of time. As previously stated, the film has a run time of three hours and thirty minutes, and I can tell you that the film is so engrossing and captivating, that not once during that three hours and thirty minutes did I mentally or physically check out. The same was true of the other people in my screening as bathroom breaks were minimal and phone checking was non-existent…which is extremely rare nowadays.

The long running time is a good sign because it means that this is Scorsese’s film, untouched by the filthy hands of studio execs or money people. Piece of Shit Hall of Famer Harvey Weinstein once famously demanded that Scorsese cut 45 minutes off of Gangs of New York and the film was immensely harmed by those cuts. The same is true of Silence, which Paramount demanded be cut for time, and also seriously suffered because of it. When studios meddle they always and every time fuck it up, this is why Netflix matters, because unlike other studios they don’t meddle and they don’t chase the short-end money of box office bravado, they let artists be artists.

Netflix is important too because without them The Irishman never gets made. The other studios passed on the film and its hefty price tag of $160 million, and so Netflix was the studio of last resort. Scorsese would no doubt prefer to have a long theatrical run with his film, but I bet he is quite pleased he made the trade-off of reduced theatrical run in exchange for Netflix letting him make the movie he wanted to make. Just more proof that the studios and theatres are fucked…they have no vision and no balls…and they will deservedly go down in flames.

The real question regarding The Irishman is not whether you should see it, you obviously should as it is one of the very best films of the year, but where you should see it. For cinephiles, I do recommend you make the effort to see it in the theatre, as it is beautifully shot by Rodrigo Prieto, Scorsese’s cinematographer on The Wolf of Wall Street and Silence, with a subdued color palette, exquisite framing and deliriously gorgeous but subtle cameras movement. The film is also expertly edited by Thelma Schoonmakert who seamlessly keeps the film’s dramatic pacing on target while also allowing it to breathe. But for regular folks who are not as concerned about those things as I am…I think they can avoid the theatrical gauntlet and wait until The Irishman hits Netflix at the end of November and watch the movie at their leisure with the pause button at the ready when nature calls.

The Irishman is a powerful film that is the very best work of the second half of Scorsese’s career. While it is difficult to predict what the always erratic Academy Awards will do, I think it is a safe bet to say that The Irishman will at least garner a plethora of nominations. I think it will be nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor (both Pesci and Pacino), Best Cinematography (Rodrigo Prieto), and Best Editing (Thelma Schoonmaker). In my opinion the film is certainly worthy of all of those awards…but there are other worthy films this year too, so we will see.

In conclusion, I have not revealed much about The Irishman’s plot or characters because I knew little about them when I saw the film and thought that enhanced my viewing experience. I have a lot of thoughts on the movie, its politics (oh boy do I have thoughts!!), its sub-text and its symbolism, but I will hold off on sharing those thoughts for now because they are potential spoilers. Once I have seen the film again and it is running on Netflix, I’ll write more in depth about it.

The bottom line regarding The Irishman is this…it is a phenomenal film well worth the time commitment to see. If you have the time and the bladder control, see it in a theatre, if not wait until you can watch it at home come November 27. Regardless of when or where you see it, see it, and enjoy one of the greatest film makers of all time as he wrestles with his legacy and his mortality.

©2019

Jojo Rabbit: A Review

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

My Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT/SKIP IT. This film is funny at times and definitely worth seeing, but only at matinee prices, or until you can see it for free on Netflix.

JoJo Rabbit, written and directed by Taika Waititi, is based upon the Christine Leunens novel Caging Skies and tells the story of Jojo, a ten year old Hitler youth in Nazi Germany whose imaginary friend is Adolf Hitler. The film stars Roman Griffin Davis as Jojo, with supporting turns from Taika Waititi, Scarlett Johansson, Thomasin McKenzie, Sam Rockwell and Stephen Merchant.

Jojo Rabbit is an ambitious cinematic undertaking that describes itself as an “anti-hate satire”. As someone who hates the vacuous woke rhetoric of “anti-hate” and believes that hate is not only normal but a vital part of the human condition, that tag line is a turn-off. But then I discovered that the film was a dark Nazi comedy, and since I have long whined about the fact that World War II movies, be they drama or documentary, always and every time make Hitler out to be the bad guy*, the film then became more intriguing to me. After being lured in by the prospect of Nazi-induced laughs, I pulled the trigger and went to see Jojo Rabbit. Thankfully, the film lives up to its premise and remedies the past anti-Hitler cinematic injustices and gives audiences the wacky and zany Hitler we’ve always wanted. (*This is a joke!)

In all seriousness, making a Nazi comedy, especially in these hyper-sensitive, hot-take abundant times, is an act of artistic derring-do. Jojo Rabbit for the most part succeeds in pulling off this most difficult of feats. If I am judging the movie on pass/fail, it passes. That said, it is a good film, not a great one.

The credit and the blame for the film’s better than average and less than terrific outcome, is writer/director/supporting actor Taika Waititi. The first and only other time I’ve seen a Waititi film was when I watched Thor: Ragnorak while bleary-eyed on a cross country flight. I hadn’t ventured out to the theatre to see Ragnorak out of sheer Marvel fatigue, and so, due to boredom, checked it out on my flight. To say I was blown away is an understatement. I was totally mesmerized as I watched this Marvel masterpiece that was funny, smart and insightful, play out on the tiny screen mere inches from my face on the cramped plane. Waititi brings the same level of inventiveness and ingenuity to Jojo Rabbit that animatedThor: Ragnorak.

Waititi not only wrote and directed the film but co-stars as Jojo’s imaginary friend Adolf Hitler. The film is at its best when Waititi, a charismatic performer, is on-screen. Waititi’s masterful Hitler bits crackle and had the audience at my screening, myself included, laughing out loud. The problem though is that they are too few and far between. After the first fifteen minutes or so, Waititi’s Hitler vanishes from the film for long stretches, and those stretches scuttle all of the film’s giddy and insane momentum.

In my opinion I think the film should have been more of a Harvey-esque story, with Hitler being a constant companion to Jojo rather than the star of brief interludes. I think this approach would have not only made the film more consistently funny and bizarre, but also more dramatically potent and poignant. Again, I understand that the film must’ve been limited by the source material, but source material needs to be adapted to the screen, and my suggestion should have been part of that adaptation.

As for the cast, it is as wildly uneven as the film. Roman Griffin Davis is very good as the Jojo, the committed Nazi boy with the active imagination. Davis plays everything straight and it is his commitment to truth that makes his Hitler sidekick so funny.

Sam Rockwell does his usual stellar work as Captain Klenzendorf, a down on his luck German soldier. Rockwell elevates what could have been a Sgt. Schultz level caricature into a brilliantly comedic yet painfully human portrayal. Rockwell fills each moment and movement with a dynamic intentionality that is simply brilliant.

Stephen Merchant has a small role as a member of the Gestapo and he is both funny and exceedingly unnerving. Merchant’s usual banal goofiness takes on a menacing tone as he is imbued with the dark power of Nazism.

Thomasin Mckenzie is an actress I really like, her Mickey Award®© (Breakout Performance of the Year) winning work in Leave No Trace was fantastic, but here she does the best she can with a rather pedestrian role. McKenzie’s Elsa is the dramatic counter-weight to the film’s comedy, but the character is so one-dimensional as to be cliched, and thus the film never sustains the dramatic heft it desires. The narrative shift to Elsa is ill-conceived and feels like an albotross around the film’s neck.

Scarlett Johansson does not fare so well either, as she is handed a paper thin character and does little to put any meat on the bones. Johansson’s Rosie is like a #Resistance manic pixie dream girl for the World War II set. I found her performance to be grating, aggravatingly shallow and irritatingly frivolous.

Rebel Wilson has a small role as a Nazi Fraulein that goes over like a lead(Pb) zeppelin. I have often wondered aloud “what in the world is the appeal of Rebel Wilson?” I don’t get it…I don’t get it at all..NOT…AT…ALL. Wilson is not funny…not even a little bit. Her bits in Jojo Rabbit are painfully unfunny and fall thunderously flat. Rebel Wilson is one of the great mysteries of our time and I am hoping she goes away before I have to exert any mental energy trying to figure out her appeal.

The bottom line is this regarding Jojo Rabbit…it is most definitely a flawed film, but it does pull off an amazing feat by being a crowd-pleasing Nazi comedy. Waititi’s Hitler humor and Rockwell and Merchant’s Nazi comedy are uproariously satisfying. While the film can be at times cinematically uneven and dramatically trite, at other times it is tantalizingly original and combustibly hysterical.

Jojo Rabbit is the type of film, both politically simplistic and emotionally manipulative, that may catch fire and garner Oscar buzz. I do not think it is an Oscar level film, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t an enjoyable cinematic experience. I thoroughly enjoyed Jojo Rabbit despite its faults, and I think people should see it, they just shouldn’t pay $14 to see it. My recommendation is to either pay matinee prices or wait until it hits Netflix before seeing Jojo Rabbit. It isn’t a perfect film, or even a great one, but it is an interesting one, and in these artistically cowardly times, that ain’t nothing.

©2019

Joker: A Review

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

My Rating: 4.75 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE. IT. NOW.

Joker, directed by Todd Phillips and written by Phillips and Scott Silver, is the story of Arthur Fleck, a mentally-ill, down on his luck clown-for-hire and stand up comedian, who transforms into Batman’s arch-nemesis, the super-villain Joker. The film stars Joaquin Phoenix as Fleck, with supporting turns from Robert DeNiro, Frances Conroy and Zazie Beetz.

Early Thursday night I put my life in my hands and made the dangerous trek to the local art house to see Joker in 70mm. Thankfully, no angry white incels were laying in wait for me, so I lived to tell the tale of my Joker cinematic experience…here it is.

I went to Joker with very high hopes, but paradoxically, because I had such high hopes, I assumed I’d be disappointed by the film. My bottom line regarding Joker is this…it is a brilliant film of remarkable depth and insight, a gritty masterpiece that is a total game-changer for the comic book genre, and a staggering cinematic achievement for director Todd Phillips and star Joaquin Phoenix.

Joker is the cinematic bastard son of Martin Scorsese’s masterpiece of 1970’s New Hollywood, Taxi Driver. Beyond being an homage, it is more an updated bookend to that classic, engineered for the corporatized Hollywood of the 21st century.

The film’s Taxi Driver lineage is hiding in plain sight, as it has similar music, shots, camera angles and even re-purposes the famed finger gun to the head move. Joker’s Gotham, is eerily reminiscent of Taxi Driver’s New York City of the 1970’s, which Travis Bickle aptly describes as “sick and venal”. I couldn’t help but think of my Los Angeles neighborhood when seeing Joker’s dilapidated Gotham, with its garbage piled high on every sidewalk and a layer of filth covering the city. In “sick and venal” Los Angeles, we are much too evolved to have garbage piled high on our sidewalks, no, out here in La La Land, even in million dollar neighborhoods, people are disposable and so we we have them piled high on the sidewalks instead, as homelessness is epidemic. Joker’s Gotham, Bickle’s New York and my Los Angeles also share a deep coating of grime as well as a thriving rat population that is disease-ridden and increasingly bold, both in and out of public office.

Joker’s depiction of Gotham as a Bickle-esque New York is fascinating bit of sub-text, as it is a throwback to a time before Manhattan was Disney-fied and Times Square turned from degenerate porn hub to hub of capitalism porn. Joker is also a throwback to a time before cinema was corporatized/Disney-fied, a pre-Heaven’s Gate age, when filmmakers like Scorsese could flourish and make movies like Taxi Driver, unhindered by suits blind to everything but the bottom line.

Joker ‘s genius is also because it is a “real movie”, a Taxi Driver/The King of Comedy covertly wrapped in the corporate cloak of superhero intellectual property. Unlike the sterile Marvel movie behemoths, which Scorsese himself recently described as “not cinema" and which are more akin to amusement park rides than movies, Joker is, at its heart, a down and dirty 1970’s dramatic character study, for this reason alone the film is brilliantly subversive and a stake into the heart of the Disney Goliath.

It is astonishing that Todd Phillips, whose previous films are the comedies Old School and The Hangover trilogies, was able to conceive of, and execute, Joker with such artistic precision and commitment. Phillip’s success with Joker is reminiscent of Adam McKay’s astounding direction of The Big Short (2015). Previous to The Big Short, McKay had basically been Will Ferrell’s caddie, making silly movies well, but they were still silly movies. McKay’s long term film making prowess is still in question, as is Phillip’s, but that does not diminish their mastery on The Big Short and Joker.

Phillip’s direction really is fantastic, but he is also greatly benefited by having the greatest actor working in cinema as his leading man. Joaquin Phoenix’s performance as Arthur Fleck/Joker is an astonishing feat. Phoenix famously (or infamously depending on your perspective) lost a great deal of weight to play the role, and his wiry, sinewy frame at times seems like a marionette possessed by a demon outcast from American bandstand or Soul Train. Fleck/Joker’s madness is seemingly chaotic, but Phoenix gives it an internal logic and order, that makes it emotionally coherent.

Phoenix is a master at connecting to a volatile emotionality within his characters, and of giving his character’s a distinct and very specific physicality. What is often overlooked with Phoenix is his level of meticulousness and superior craftsmanship in his work. Joker is no exception as his exquisite skill is on full display right alongside his compellingly volcanic unpredictability. Phoenix’s subtle use of breath, his hands, as well as his attention and focus are miraculous.

Phoenix is a revolutionary actor. He is so good, so skilled, so talented, that he is reinventing the art form. His work as Freddie Quell in Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master (2012) was a landmark in the art form, and his performance in Joker is equally earth shattering. If he does not win an Best Actor Oscar for Joker, whoever does win the award should be ashamed of themselves for stealing the statuette from its rightful recipient.

Contrary to establishment media critical opinion, Phoenix does not make Arthur a sympathetic character, but he does make him an empathetic one, and one with which we empathize. We don’t feel sorry for Arthur, we feel kinship with him as he struggles to maintain some semblance of dignity in a society allergic to compassion.

Joker was described by its detractors as being “dangerous”, and I can attest that the film is indeed dangerous, but not for the reasons laid out by its critics. Joker is dangerous because it dares to do something that corporate controlled art has long since deemed anathema…it tells the very ugly truth.

Joker has the artistic audacity to peel back the scab of modern America and reveal the maggot infested, infected wound pulsating in agony just beneath our civilized veneer. Joker’s chaotic madness is a perfect reflection of the sickness of our time. Think Joker is too “nihilistic” or “negative”? Turn on a television, read a newspaper or take a cross-country flight, and you’ll see that the nihilism and negativity of Joker are nothing compared to the madhouse in which we currently live.

Arthur Fleck is America, as the country, populated by narcissists, neanderthals and ne’er do wells, has devolved and self-destructed, rotting from the inside out after decades of decadence, delusion and depravity. America is rapidly degrading and devolving, and that devolution is mirrored by Arthur Fleck has he transforms into Joker.

Joker is unnerving to mainstream media critics because it shines the spotlight on the disaffected and dissatisfied in America, who are legion, growing in numbers and getting angrier by the hour. As I have witnessed in my own life, the rage, resentment and violent mental instability among the populace in America is like a hurricane out in the Atlantic, gaining more power and force as every day passes, and inevitably heading right toward landfall and a collision with highly populated urban centers that will inevitably result in a conflagration of epic proportions.

Joker, the consummate trickster, is devoid of politics and ideology and exists only to feed and satiate his own voracious madness. Fleck is an empty vessel and the Joker archetype co-opts and animates him. Fleck, born again as Joker, is adopted as a symbol for the struggles of the angry and the desperate, in other words, Joker is the archetype of our times, a Trumpian figure, who unintentionally inspires others, friend and foe alike, to release their inhibitions and unleash their inner demons. Joker is dangerous because he is an avatar for the rage, resentment and desperation of millions upon millions of Americans who have been forgotten and left behind and are utterly despised by the elite. Joker is both apolitical and all political. The populist Joker is both Antifa and the Alt-Right. Joker is everything and nothing to everyone and nobody all at once. The media in the movie, and in real life, make Joker into a monster, an icon and an iconic monster for the dispossessed, elevating him in the eyes of those desperately seeking a savior.

In a perverted and brilliant way, Phillips and Phoenix make Fleck into a Jesus figure, who as he transforms into Joker, becomes an unwitting Christ/anti-Christ. The line between messiah and madman is a thin one, and depends almost entirely on projection and perspective.

Arthur Fleck, like Jesus, is literally someone who is repeatedly kicked when he is down. Like Jesus, society ignores and despises him. Like Jesus he is berated, belittled and beaten…and yet all he wants to do is make people smile. Like Jesus, Fleck’s birth story is convoluted and lacks coherence.

What makes Phoenix’s portrayal so chilling is that his Fleck earnestly desires to bring joy to the world just like Jesus…and just as Jesus is actually a good magician/miracle worker, Fleck is actually a good clown, filled with energy and purpose. But Arthur soon realizes that there are two jokes at play in the universe…the one where he is the punchline, and the one in his head, of which he is self-aware enough to realize regular people “won’t get it”. Jesus makes the same sort of discovery during his temptations, he hears a “joke” in his head too, but it is the voice of God, and he comes to realize no one else will “get it” either. Fleck and Jesus are presented the same two paths, Jesus takes the one of self-sacrifice and becomes the Christ, and Fleck takes the road of human sacrifice, and becomes The Joker/Satan.

At its core Joker is a character study, and so there is not a lot of heavy lifting among the cast besides Joaquin Phoenix. That said, Frances Conroy, Robert DeNiro and Zazie Beets all do solid work with the material they have.

The film is shot with an exquisite grittiness by Lawrence Sher. Sher pays adoring homage to Taxi Driver by using certain specific camera shots and angles throughout the film. Sher also uses shadow and light really well to convey Fleck’s/Joker’s perspective and his tenuous grasp on reality. Sher, like Phillips, does not have a resume that would make you think he was capable of doing such substantial work, but in the case of these two men past was not prologue.

Joker is one of those movies that reminds you why cinema matters, as it uses the tired and worn comic book genre to draw viewers in, and then sticks the knife of brutal cultural commentary deep into their chests.

Joker has been at the center of of a cultural storm ever since it premiered to a raucous ovation at the Venice Film Festival in September. The film won the Golden Lion (Best Picture) at Venice and was quickly catapulted into the Oscar discussion, which created a fierce backlash against the film from certain American critics and woke twitter. The common refrain from those critics who saw it at Venice, and those who hadn’t, was that the film was “dangerous” because it would incite disaffected white men to become violent. In researching an article I recently wrote about the controversy, I came across a stunning number of articles with the imploring and weak-kneed headline, “Joker is Not the Movie We Need Right Now”. Of course, the converse is true because Joker is exactly the movie we need right now.

The critical opinion of Joker, especially among the critics at influential media outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Guardian, The New Yorker and Time, is aggressively negative and dismissive, riddled with a belittling and condescending commentary. The criticisms leveled at the film from these effete establishment critics are obviously contrived, petty, personal, political and entirely predetermined. The amount of intentional obtuseness on display about Joker, its cinematic sophistication and its artistic merits, by these supposed important critics is stunning and revealing.

The critical malevolence toward Joker is undoubtedly fueled by a need to virtue signal and pander to woke culture, and is born out of personal contempt for the filmmaker (who dared defend himself against “woke culture”) and manufactured anger at the subject matter. The poor reviews of Joker by these American critics says considerably more about those critics, their dishonesty and lack of integrity, than it does about Joker. Make no mistake, Joker is a masterpiece in its own depraved way, and the critics who succumb to the myopic social pressure and cultural politics of the moment by reflexively trashing the movie as immoral and artistically and cinematically unworthy, will be judged extremely harshly by history.

In looking at the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, Joker currently has a critical score of 69 and an audience score of 91. The disconnect between critics and audience on Joker is similar to the disconnect on display regarding Dave Chappelle’s recent Netflix stand up special Sticks and Stones. Chappelle’s show was pilloried by critics who were horrified by the comedian’s “unwoke” and decidedly politically incorrect take on the world, as the critical score is currently at 35, while the audience score is a resounding 99. It would seem that in our current age, bubble-dwelling, group-thinking critics in the mainstream media, are no longer interested in artistic merit, cinematic worthiness, skill, craftsmanship or talent, but rather in personal politics, woke ideology, political correctness and conformity, and are dishonest brokers when it comes to judging art and entertainment.

Joker is a watershed for the comic book genre. In the future film historians will look back on this time and say that there comic book films pre-Joker and comic book films post-Joker. There is no going back for the genre. That does not mean that Marvel will immediately crumble and fall into the sea, but it does mean that the genie is out of the bottle, and there is no getting it back in. Jason Concepcion and Sean Fennessy at The Ringer recently pondered if Joker is to the superhero genre what The Wild Bunch was to westerns back in 1969. They are not so sure, but I certainly think is as genre redefining or killing as The Wild Bunch. The Disney/Marvel model, post-Endgame and post-Joker, will only see diminishing cultural resonance and relevance, as well as financial returns, from this point forward. The superhero genre will not disappear overnight, but it has begun its long retreat from its apex, and God only knows what will eventually replace it.

In conclusion, Joker is a mirror, and it reflects the degeneracy, depravity and sheer madness that is engulfing America. Joker is an extremely dark film, but that is because America is an extremely dark place at the moment. Joker is unquestionably one of the very best films of the year and should be, but probably won’t be, an Oscar front-runner for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Screenplay. I highly recommend you go see Joker in theatres as soon as you possibly can, as it is must-see viewing for anyone interested in cinema, art or in understanding what is rapidly coming for America.

©2019

Quentin Tarantino Films Ranked Worst to First

Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes 01 seconds

Quentin Tarantino is the most important filmmaker of his generation. That isn’t to say he is the best…just the most important. Tarantino’s distinctive aesthetic, a dialogue and violence driven stew of pop culture, spaghetti westerns, kung fu movies, film noir, pulp fiction, and satirical comedy, revolutionized movies.

Tarantino’s first film, Reservoir Dogs, hit theatres in 1992 at the height of the grunge rock revolution. Popular music was being turned upside down by the gritty, yet stylized, realism of grunge which was eviscerating the manufactured, corporate rock preening of the previous decade. Tarantino’s uber-confident brand of filmmaking was to Hollywood what Nirvana’s music was to the music industry, an artistic nuclear bomb obliterating business as usual.

Reservoir Dogs, like grunge, created a stylized, gritty realism that was fictional but seemed more true, and honest, than the fairy tale bullshit Hollywood and the music industry had been selling Generation X for the entirety of their lives.

If Reservoir Dogs was akin to Nirvana’s cult hit album Bleach, then Tarantino’s second feature, Pulp Fiction, was Nevermind. Pulp Fiction was the ultimate game changer as it was both populist entertainment, yet also an unorthodox arthouse movie, and it became an instant classic, a box office smash and a critical darling. With Pulp Fiction, Tarantino managed to resurrect not only John Travolta’s moribund career, but also give artistic credibility to Bruce Willis of all people, and catapulted both Samuel L. Jackson and Uma Thurman onto the A list.

Like Nirvana, Tarantino spawned a myriad of copycats who watered down his stylistic brand over the years that followed his breakthrough success. Like grunge, Tarantino went into a deep lull after his initial glorious burst of creativity as his follow up to Pulp Fiction, 1997’s Jackie Brown, fizzled both critically and commercially.

A new wave of independent minded auteurs hit the theatres in the mid to late 90’s, directors like Paul Thomas Anderson and Wes Anderson, and they were quickly putting Tarantino in the critical rear view mirror as the millennium closed. It would be six long years after Jackie Brown before another Tarantino film would hit the theatres, and during this time it certainly had felt like the Tarantino moment had passed.

During post-production there was a steady stream of bad press leaking out about Kill Bill, Tarantino’s Kung Fu movie. When word came out that Tarantino was going to split the film into two features to be released in back to back years (2003-2004), I thought that was a very, very bad sign. If the rumors were to be believed it seemed as though Tarantino’s ego was quickly becoming inversely proportionate to his directing ability. Then Kill Bill Vol. 1 came out…and not only was Tarantino not becoming irrelevant and obsolete…he was proving himself as the master of edgy populist arthouse American cinema. Kill Bill solidified his status of king of cool cinema who ruled over Hollywood, indie-land and the arthouse.

Kill Bill Vol. 1 & 2 saved Tarantino and Tarantino-ism, which long outlived its musical counterpart, grunge. For the next 15 years Tarantino has churned out big movies…they weren’t always great…but they were always cinematic events. No one makes movies like Quentin Tarantino, and as the years have passed people have even stopped making the type of movies Tarantino can make…big populist Hollywood movies that aren’t part of a franchise or comic book universe.

Tarantino’s career has not only survived but thrived despite his multitude of naysayers, and nowadays the naysayers include the cultural revolutionaries and revisionist historians of the woke brigade. If you read or listen to pc establishment film critics nowadays you hear them describe Tarantino the man, and his films, as “problematic”. He is accused of all sorts of things…like using too much violence and racially charged language in his films…and of filling his films with violence against women and “sex”. Even though I disagree with these criticisms, I will admit that some of these charges, such as the violence and racial language, can at least be made in good faith, but claims of violence against women and too much sex are absolutely absurd and reveal either a staggering ignorance of Tarantino’s work or a dubious and dishonest assessment of his intentions.

The point of all this is to say that, like him or not, Tarantino has cemented his place in our popular culture and in the history of cinema. To ignore this fact would be to ignore reality. With this in mind, and since Tarantino’s new film Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood, opens this weekend, I thought it would be wise to try and put together my rankings of Tarantino films.

Ranking Tarantino films is no easy task as my list is almost always in a state of flux. My top four Tarantino films are always the same, but their order can flip by the second. So this list is just capturing my thinking…and feeling…at this very moment. With that in mind…sit back…be like Fonzie and stay motherfuckin cool…and enjoy the list.

8. DEATH PROOF (2007) - Death Proof is a 2007 “exploitation horror film” starring Kurt Russell that pays homage to 1970’s slasher and muscle car movies. Death Proof is undeniable proof that paying homage to a shitty genre will result in a shitty movie. I have seen this exactly once and have zero interest in seeing it ever again. Death Proof is a bad idea made manifest which not surprisingly is a badly made, bad movie. Death Proof is what happens when you become a super successful director and no one has the balls to tell you no.

7. JACKIE BROWN (1997) - Something funny has happened in recent years where aging hipster douchebags (there is an important distinction to be made at this point…while I am aging, am a hipster, and am widely regarded as a douchebag, I am most definitely not the specific breed of monster known as an “aging hipster douchebag”) have decided that Jackie Brown, Tarantino’s homage to blaxploitation movies, is a great movie. In fact, some have gone so far as to claim that Jackie Brown is Tarantino’s greatest film. Let me be as clear as I can about this…Jackie Brown is an actively awful movie. The script is dreadful, the directing abysmal, the pacing lethargic and the acting comatose.

Jackie Brown was a Tarantino flex where he thought he could pull his Lazarus routine on some more actors just like he did with Travolta on Pulp Fiction. But this was where Tarantino’s ego got kicked in the nuts by cold hard reality. There is a reason Pam Grier and Robert Forster were, at the height of their careers, D-level movie actors…it is because they are not good actors. Building a film around such minimal talents ended with…not surprisingly…a really shitty and entirely forgettable movie. This movie was so highly anticipated and so fucking terrible it almost ended Tarantino’s career.

And if you are an aging, hipster douchebag who thinks this is Tarantino’s greatest film, I’m going to Tony Rocky Horror you’re ass and throw you out a four story window and then I’m gonna get medieval on your ass. Got it?

6. THE HATEFUL EIGHT (2015) - The Hateful Eight is a pseudo-western thriller that attempts to make grand statements on race in America all while trying to suss out a second rate Agatha Christie type of whodunnit. There are some good things in The Hateful Eight…like Robert Richardson’s stellar cinematography, particularly his glorious opening sequence. But overall…this is a terribly flawed film that suffocates under the weight of its unwieldy and impotent script.

Tarantino succumbs to his lesser instincts and ego in The Hateful Eight when he fatally undermines the archetypal, mythic and narrative structure of the film by making his “hero”, played by Sam Jackson, a male rapist. The film lacks cohesion and tension and devolves into a rather vacuous bloodbath that bores more than it repulses or titillates.

This film is a frustrating cinematic venture, sort of like being marched at gunpoint naked through a blizzard.

5. INGLORIOUS BASTERDS (2009) - This is where things start to get interesting on the list as Inglorious Basterds is at once a brilliant and yet also a troublesome film. This movie boasts the single greatest scene of any of Tarantino’s films and among the greatest in film history…the opening sequence where SS Officer Hans Landa question a French farmer, Monsieur LaPadite, in his farmhouse. The film also boasts the masterfully tense and taut “basement bar” scene which is a thing of cinematic beauty. In contrast it also has some awful scenes, like the Mike Myers scene and the climactic orgy of ridiculous Hitler slaughtering violence in the movie theatre.

On the bright side the movie boasts tremendous performances from Christoph Waltz (as the aforementioned Landa), Michael Fassbender and Brad Pitt but on the dark side it is saddled with the single worst performance ever in a Tarantino film…the utterly abysmal Eli Roth as The Bear Jew is excruciatingly awful and set the art and craft of acting back centuries.

The thing I disliked the most about Inglorious Basterds though was that it came out during a time when the torture of “enemy combatants” in the war on terror was being debated and it very surreptitiously acted as a piece of vociferous pro-torture propaganda. Anyone who couldn’t see the Manichean philosophical underpinnings of beating captured German soldiers to death with a baseball bat being equivalent to torturing Muslims in Guantanamo Bay or Bagram or Abu Ghraib is being willfully obtuse. And it should be noted here that the German soldiers in the Wermacht getting their skulls bashed in and being scalped by "The Basterds’ were not Nazis party members. Some may see this as a distinction without a difference, and Wermacht complicity and guilt is a contentious historical debate, but considering the context of the torture discussion when the film was released, I find this distinction of note.

Another thing that bothered me about the film was that it was, at its core, nothing but a Jewish revenge fantasy. of course, there is nothing wrong with a Jewish revenge fantasy, in particular a Jewish revenge fantasy against Hitler, who certainly deserves whatever horrors we can imagine for him, but what felt uncomfortable to me was that in Tarantino’s case his revenge fantasy felt manipulative and pandering. Context is important here, as Tarantino is not Jewish, but even though you are not allowed to say it, the majority of Academy members and studio heads are and it felt like Tarantino was trying to make a movie to shamelessly pander to them in order to win an elusive Best Picture and/or best Director Oscar.

Bottomline is this…as great as Inglorious Basterds can be, its failures make it an uneven cinematic experience. Of all my conflicting feelings over this movie, the most overwhelming one is my impulse to bash Eli Roth’s head in with a baseball bat after taunting him with a dreadful Boston accent.

4. DJANGO UNCHAINED (2012) - Some would argue that Django is, like Inglorious Basterds, just a revenge fantasy, except this time for African Americans against slavery. I think this point is terribly off the mark. Yes, there is a certain level of revenge fueling Django Unchained, but the archetype driving the film is not revenge but love, as Django Unchained is a mythic love story. Django is not fighting for any grandiose principles or objectives like freeing the slaves or to punish slave owners, he is just trying to get back to his wife and save her. In contrast, Inglorious Basterds is NOTHING BUT a revenge fantasy where love is nowhere to be found.

Django Unchained is, like the other films in the top four, a masterpiece in its own right. This movie is a thrilling and exhilarating ride that only suffers from one minor (although it felt major at the time) lull, and that is when Tarantino himself is on-screen as an Australian slave trader. As great a movie as this is, and it is great, Tarantino’s sloppy and narcissistic cameo nearly scuttles the entire enterprise.

That said, the film highlights exquisite and sterling performances from Jamie Foxx (easily the best work of his career), Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kerry Washington and Samuel L. Jackson. The film was pilloried for its use of violence and exploiting slavery for entertainment, but these criticism hold no water. The violence in the film is cartoonish…except when it involves slaves…then it is handled with brutal realism and gravity. Tarantino’s dance between the polar opposites of his entertaining, over-the-top violence and acknowledgement of the horrors of slavery is actually very well-done and shows a deft directing touch.

if you ask me on another day I may say that Django Unchained is Tarantino’s best film…but today I put it at #4. Even though I have it at #4, make no mistake, it is a first ballot hall of fame movie.

3. RESERVOIR DOGS (1992) - There are times where I have Reservoir Dogs as the top film in this list…and even more times when I have it ranked ahead of Pulp Fiction….but today isn’t one of those days. Like Django Unchained, Reservoir Dogs is a first ballot hall of famer.

This movie hit theatres like a hand grenade and launched Tarantino as a serious auteur. This staggeringly confident film is like a neo-noir stage play set in this well-defined but not overly explained universe where thugs, hitmen, cons and shady people all live and work. This world is not real but is so thoroughly put together it feels hyper-real.

The low budget for the film adds to its mystique and highlights Tarantino’s real talent as a writer and director. The rawness of the movie is part of its great appeal.

Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Steve Buscemi and Michael Madsen all give stellar performances and Tarantino’s script is explosively good. His use of music, camera movement, pop culture dialogue and violence make for a combustible and compelling feature film debut for Tarantino.

A truly great movie and an instant classic that launched Tarantino’s journey to the top of Hollywood’s Mount Olympus.

2. PULP FICTION (1994) - Pulp Fiction garnered Tarantino a Best Original Screenplay Oscar, and rightfully so. This script crackles with life and is a master class in world and character building. The terrific script is elevated even more by sublime performances from Uma Thurman, Samuel L. Jackson, Harvery Keitel, John Travolta, Christopher Walken and even that dullard Bruce Willis.

Tarantino’s ability to mess with narrative structure, to masterfully use music and pop culture as reference points and his exquisite ability to place multi-dimensional characters into a palpably real but entirely manufactured world, is what makes Pulp Fiction the iconic film that it is.

Pulp Fiction reinvented the Hollywood film, and for good or for ill, forever changed the movie industry. It is the type of film that if you stumble across it on cable, you will sit and watch it from any point in the story through to the end.

1. KILL BILL VOL. 1 & 2 (2003-2004) - I realize I am in the minority on this but I think Kill Bill Vol. 1 & 2 combined is the greatest Tarantino film….it is certainly my favorite.

Some have accused these films of exploiting and encouraging violence against women, this strikes me as a short cut to thinking. Uma Thurman is the lead in the movie, she is an action hero, she is beaten, shot, stabbed, you name it. Just because violence happens to a women doesn’t make it misogynist…and in this case the exact opposite is true. The weak kneed, mealy mouthed woke clowns who claim this film is misogynist should ask themselves…are the Lethal Weapon movies anti-male because Mel Gibson gets the crap kicked out him in every movie? No, of course not. Tarantino empowers his female lead, an astounding Uma Thurman as The Bride/Black Mamba, to be an action hero not despite of her gender…but because of it…and that is not misogyny.

Like Django, Kill Bill is on its surface a revenge story but in its soul is a love story. The love is that of a mother for her daughter. Thurman’s Black Mamba character is unconsciously tracking down her daughter while consciously slaying all who are impediments to her maternal bond.

The brilliance of Kill Bill is in the world and character building. Tarantino’s kung fu world is populated by ninja and samurai assassins with distinct and specific histories and motivations. A rich, textured, vivid and vibrant creation that is Tarantino at his very best.

In conclusion, while there are some misfires, like Death Proof , Jackie Brown and The Hateful Eight, Tarantino has over the span of his career been a must-see filmmaker who has heightened the craft of moviemaking while celebrating the art of cinema.

The bottom line in regards to Tarantino’s best movies is this…you simply can’t go wrong with Kill Bill, Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs and Django Unchained in any order, as they are among the very best films of the last thirty years and are monuments to Tarantino’s unique vision and singular genius.

The question now becomes…where does Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood rank in Tarantino’s canon? My verdict will be in shortly, but in the mean time why not go re-watch Django unchained, Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill or even Inglorious Basterds, as a primer before you see Tarantino’s newest offering. It will get you into the Tarantino spirit and you will not be disappointed.

©2019

Movie Subscription Services and Box Office Booms and Busts

Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes 02 seconds

There has been a lot of consternation out here in La La Land about the state of the movie industry in 2019. I thought I would take this opportunity to address the situation in an attempt to either allay concerns or ring the alarm bell.

The biggest reason that the money-hungry corporate overlords of Hollywood are so concerned is that the box office is down 10% from last year. There have been a lot of think pieces that speculate as to why the industry is supposedly in a gully. The most common refrain in these articles from the entertainment media is that the box office dip is due to plague of low quality, unoriginal movies and “franchise fatigue”.

These theories, on their surface, appear to be somewhat accurate, as the vast majority of movies are pretty awful and you seemingly can’t walk ten feet in Hollywood without tripping over yet another franchise film or reboot. While those two things are true, they don’t necessarily explain why the box office is down 10% this year in particular as last year Hollywood churned out a plethora of terrible movies and a cornucopia of franchise films.

Last year and this year at the movie theatre are strikingly similar in a myriad of ways…2018 had some massive blockbusters in Black Panther and Avengers: Infinity War, while 2019 boasts box office smashes Captain Marvel and Avengers: Endgame. In addition, 2018 had an animated hit with Incredibles 2 and 2019 has Toy Story 4, 2018 had big box office results from secondary superhero movies, like Aquaman and Deadpool 2, while 2019 has Shazam and the soon to be released Spider Man: Far From Home. Even the sort of middle brow dramas are similar, with both years showcasing bio-pics of 1970’s rock icons, Queen in Bohemian Rhapsody (2018) and Elton John in Rocketman (2019), as are the horror/thriller films, where 2018 had A Quiet Place and 2019 has Us.

The sad reality is that, just from a quality perspective, movies from last year are just as bad as last year. The year before last, 2017, had a cavalcade of great movies, like Dunkirk, Phantom Thread and even quality big budget films like War for the Planet of the Apes. But last year and this year have both been pretty terrible for cinema. The lack of quality is certainly a big reason why the movie industry is in a creative “gully” so to speak, but it doesn’t explain why there is such a precipitous drop off in box office from last year to this.

“Franchise fatigue” is certainly something that exists…hell, I suffer from it…but that doesn’t mean it adequately explains the drop off in box office. If you look at the box office numbers, it would seem to indicate that the opposite is true. Both Captain Marvel and Avengers: Endgame did record breaking business this year and they are franchise films…and Black Panther and Infinity War did great last year as well. In my opinion there are most definitely storm clouds on the horizon for Marvel/Disney, but it ain’t raining yet and the sun shone upon Mickey Mouse and his Marvel compatriots brightly the last two years.

So if the studio executives and the entertainment media are wrong with their theories about the box office decline in 2019…then what is really going on with the movie industry and why? The problem with these Hollywood elites is that they don’t spend time on the ground in the battle for box office dollars. As someone who spends his time either on the ground or under it, I have some insights as to what is causing the trouble with 2019’s box office deflation.

To start, I contend that while the box office is down this year, it is a result of a few factors, one of the most glaring is that the box office from last year was artificially inflated, thus skewing the intensity of this year’s decline. Yes, there is a decline this year compared to last, but last year was not as financially robust as it appeared to be, in fact it was a bit of a bubble.

I also contend that there is a direct correlation between last year’s box office spike and this year’s box office deflation and the rise (2018) and fall (2019) of movie subscription services like MoviePass and Sinemia. In January of 2018 there were approximately 3 million subscribers to either MoviePass, Sinemia or both. Those subscription services charged a flat fee to customers, in MoviePass’s case $9.99 for unlimited films a month, and in Sinemia’s case $14.99 for 3 films a month, and then would pay full price to theaters/studios when their customers bought tickets. The business model was obviously flawed, but the psychology of it is similar to a gym membership, as these companies were hoping people would sign up but not actually use the service. That approach failed as both services went under in various forms this year because they went deeply into debt paying the movie studios full price for the tickets their members bought.

I had both a MoviePass and Sinemia membership in 2018 and used them constantly. For me, paying $25 total per month for both services meant that if I went to just two films a month I was actually saving money, as tickets in Los Angeles can run as high $16 per movie. Considering I suffer from a medical condition called Cousin Michael-itis where I have abnormally short arms and extraordinarily deep pockets, it should be no surprise that I took advantage of these services.

In 2018 I averaged between four and five movies a month, which was a significant spike in my movie going from the previous year when I had no subscription service memberships. Through these subscription services the price of a movie ticket for me essentially dropped to around $5 per film, which made going to the movies a much more palatable option.

For me, MoviePass and Sinemia allowed me to go see movies I would never have gone to see if I had to pay full price. For example, one of my favorite films from last year was A Quiet Place, which is a horror/thriller movie, a genre I usually entirely ignore. I took a chance on A Quiet Place because I wasn’t paying $16 to see it…so why not? I ended up loving the movie and saw it TWICE using MoviePass and Sinemia, and I got other people to go see it too through passionate word of mouth and my glowing review. Hereditary was another horror film I would normally never see but took a chance on in 2018 because of MoviePass.

It wasn’t just horror movies either, by my count there are in total 26 movies in 2018, from big budget blockbusters to indy art house films, that I went to see in theatres which I never would have seen if it weren’t for MoviePass and Sinemia. Movies such as American Animals, Jurassic World, Ready Player One, Red Sparrow, First Reformed, Hearts Beat Loud, Leave No Trace, Mission Impossible, Eighth Grade, The Wife, We the Animals, A Star is Born and on and on and on.

Now if all 3 million of these movie service’s former subscribers were like me then that means that 2018’s box office was inflated by at least 3 million full priced tickets sold on 25 films over the course of the year. (Considering the plethora of movies made last year and the subscription service's main customers being similar to me, big movie fans, it seems plausible that those extra tickets purchased could be spread over a large swath of different types of movies.) With the elimination of those extra 3 million tickets paid for by the subscription services, that would mean about a $1.125 billion difference in domestic box office gross from 2018 to 2019, and that doesn’t include peripheral gains from word of mouth marketing by subscription members (nor does it include the concessions bought by these customers at the theater which greatly enhanced theater owner profits).

The domestic box office from last year was $11.6 billion and is projected to drop 10% this year. 10% of 11.6 billion is….1.16 billion. If MoviePass and Sinemia subscribers used the service like I did in 2018, seeing an additional 25 movies that they otherwise would not have seen, that would account for an additional $1.125 billion in gross at the box office (3 million extra tickets bought for 25 films at $15 per ticket). Granted, this theory is based upon my anecdotal use of subscription services and projecting that use onto other members, but since MoviePass and Sinemia have not released the data on their users usage rates, all I can do is speculate. That said, my thesis does seem to line up pretty well with the known box office data.

The elimination of these subscription services and the billion dollars they injected into the movie industry which resulted in them basically subsidizing movie studios, seems to me to be an obvious reason for the drop in box office, yet the studios and the entertainment press, like Variety and The Hollywood Reporter (or the New York Times for that matter), never mention it as a factor, nevermind the main factor...why is that? The reason for Hollywood’s and the media’s ignorance on this issue is that while both studio executives and entertainment media consume a great deal of movies, hence their explanation being “franchise fatigue or low quality…they don’t have to pay to consume them, so ticket prices are overlooked.

Studio execs and entertainment media either get screeners (free dvd’s from studios) or they go to free screenings. Paying to see a movie is something they rarely if ever do, and considering how much money they make, they do not ever have to consider the cost of tickets into the equation of whether they’ll see a film. If, God forbid, these people ever had to pay for a movie ticket, the difference between $5 and $15 is negligible to them in the big picture, whereas for me, and most “regular” working people, that $10 is a big deal, especially over the course of a month/year if you see multiple films. The Hollywood and media elite are immune to issues like ticket prices, but here on the ground in the battle for customers, it is a major issue. This is why studios and entertainment media are totally ignorant to the impact of MoviePass and SInemia crumbling…they suffer from what I call “Cinema Privilege”. I define Cinema Privilege as being immune to cost when it comes to consuming movies.

When I had MoviePass and Sinemia I had Cinema Privilege too…but now that I don’t have them and I have to pay full price to see a movie it greatly alters my viewing habits and the frequency of my trips to the theatre. I do not make studio executive or even Hollywood Reporter money, I run my own business and margins are thin so I do not have the cash to spend to pay full price to roll the dice on a movie that may or may not be any good (especially if odds are it isn’t very good). I think I am not alone…and thus the current cratering of box office income, and conversely, the inflating of box office last year when there were 3 million extra consumers with Cinema Privilege.

There are three movies that are often brought up when referring to the box office drought of 2019 and they are Long Shot starring Charlize Theron and Seth Rogan, Late Night starring Mindy Kaling and Emma Thompson and Booksmart, a coming of age story directed by actress Olivia Wilde. These films are held up as examples of film’s that dramatically under-performed at the box office regardless of their glowing reviews. I have not seen any of these movies as they don’t greatly interest me, but I guarantee you that I would have seen them all if I had MoviePass and Sinemia. My interest in these films is best described as mild, which is not powerful enough to get me to pay $16 to see them, but it is strong enough to get me to pay $4 or $5 to see them.

There are other reasons for the overall decline in movie going, which include but are not limited to, a dramatic diminishing of the theatre-going experience due to the epidemic of narcissism and rudeness in our culture (in 2019 alone I have had to ask people to put away their cell phones during movies four times…they have all complied…but I shouldn’t have to ask them!), as well as the increase of the home viewing experience through studios like Netflix and Amazon as well as the improvement of tv technology. But both of these reasons are more compelling in explaining the bigger picture trend of movie theatre going decline rather than just the box office drop from last year to this.

In conclusion, I think that the collapse of movie subscription services is the main reason why the box office is down 10% in 2019. I also believe that this story is under-reported because the Hollywood studios and the entertainment media are so detached from “regular” people’s movie going experience and how the exorbitant price of tickets is turning away business. If Hollywood doesn’t wake up, this disconnect between Tinseltown and their regular customers is going to lead to a very nasty reckoning that will leave the movie industry a shadow of its former self, sort of like what happened to the music industry. Hollywood is going to learn that sooner or later, when you take your customers for granted, the bill always comes due…and MoviePass and Sinemia are no longer around to subsidize their shitty product.

©2019

Man of Steel: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Monotonous

Superman is a great American myth and archetype.  It is ripe for a quality re-telling of the story, just as Christopher Nolan re-told the Batman myth with his iconic Dark Knight films.  I was hoping Man of Steel, directed by Zack Snyder and written by David Goyer, was going to be to Superman as Dark Knight was to Batman.  Alas, 'twas not to be. 

Let me say, the collection of actors in this film is a pretty impressive list. Russell Crowe, Amy Adams, Kevin Costner, Michael Shannon, Diane Lane and Laurence Fishburne have 11 acting Oscar nominations between them.  The failure of the film is not the fault of these actors.

Henry Cavill plays Superman and is perfectly cast.  He is impossibly handsome and is as ripped as you'd expect a Superman to be.  I first saw Cavill on the Showtime TV show The Tudors.  He is a fine actor with a subtle charm and dynamic presence, so I hope he doesn't get tainted by the stink of Man of Steel.  He has the makings of a movie star, but this is a bad film to kick off his climb to the top.  Henry Cavill is not the problem with Man of Steel.

As for the film itself, I won't go into the painful details, so no need for a spoiler alert, the only spoiler alert would be that the film is a steaming pile of excrement atop a flaming pile of even more excrement.  The main quality of the film is that it is relentlessly LOUD, for no other reason that I can gather except to make sure you don't fall asleep from it's suffocating monotony.  The story is at best incoherent and at its worst schizophrenic.

My best guess as to why the film is so awful, is that the director Zack Snyder wanted to make one film, the studio wanted to make another film and the producer wanted to make a yet another film.  I can only hope that none of them wanted to make THIS film.

In conclusion, this film is a wasted opportunity.  A great collection of acting talent along with an iconic character and storyline were not enough to make Man of Steel even remotely entertaining or interesting.  Superman Returns was an even more horrible Superman film from 2006, followed seven years later by the atrocious Man of Steel, so if history is any guide we won't have to wait very long for another horrendous Superman film.

The bottom line is that Man of Steel is more like Man of Steal…Audiences Money.

If you at the studios have any interest in making another Superman film, I ask that you please contact me.  I have a lot of ideas which may or may not be any good, but lucky for me lack of good ideas has never stopped you from making a Superman film before.  You have my number and my rates are reasonable....for now. 

©2013