- Benjamin Purcell Morris
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Follow me on Twitter: Michael McCaffrey @MPMActingCo
On this apocalyptically combustible episode, Barry and I go nuclear in our discussion of Christopher Nolan's new movie Oppenheimer. Topics discussed include a heated debate over the movie, musings on Nolan's career and a ranking of his filmography from top to bottom.
Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 105 - Oppenheimer
Thanks for listening!
©2023
****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!!THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****
My Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
My Recommendation: SEE IT. The rarest of the rare in our current culture, an exquisitely crafted movie made for grown-ups. A masterful work that deserves to be seen on the big screen.
Oppenheimer, the new film written and directed by Christopher Nolan which recounts the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the man who first made the atomic bomb, is a stunning accomplishment for a variety of reasons.
The first of which is that it is made with a level of technical and cinematic proficiency rarely seen in our current age of mundane, mind-numbing, moviemaking sub-mediocrity.
Secondly, Oppenheimer is remarkable because it’s a mature movie made for adults that features zero fights and car chases that has generated a tremendous amount of interest, and if reports are to be believed, box office.
My screening here in flyover country (I’m currently living on a farm in an undisclosed part of Middle America) at noon on a Saturday was packed with a striking cross section of regular folks, the overwhelming majority of which I can confidently assume do not consider themselves cinephiles or even count themselves among regular movie goers.
As I watched the three-hour film that consists almost entirely of dramatic scenes of people talking unfold before me, I couldn’t help but wonder if these ‘regular’ people around me liked this film as much as I did.
Oppenheimer tells the sprawling story of its protagonist’s struggle with the moral and ethical burdens of his world-altering calling, but compresses it into an intimate drama that, much like how Oppenheimer builds the first atomic bomb, explodes inward first, which then triggers the greater outward conflagration.
Watching Oppenheimer, one cannot help but marvel at a filmmaker bristling with confidence and competence, the former of which is all too common (and unearned) and the latter of which all too rare nowadays. This is an ambitious movie to the point of being audacious, and I cannot think of another living filmmaker who has the unique artistic style and populist storytelling skillset of Christopher Nolan who could even approach pulling it off.
To be clear, I am not some Nolan fanboy. I respect him greatly but have had some mixed feelings about his previous work. For instance, I thought both The Dark Knight and Dunkirk were masterpieces (I think Dunkirk is his greatest film and one of the very best films of the 21st Century), but I thought Interstellar and Tenet were garbage. On the whole I find him to be a sort of new generation Spielberg without the shmaltz and obsession with children. He is the rare auteur nowadays who makes big budget – big box office, popular movies.
Nolan empties his bag of moviemaking tricks on this one as he uses time jumps, different film stocks and aspect ratios, and wonderfully deft editing to create a mainstream movie that often feels like an impressionistic fever dream.
The key to the success of this massive undertaking is Cillian Murphy who plays Oppenheimer – the American Prometheus who gives the ultimate fire to humanity. Like Dr. Frankenstein, he meddles with powers beyond his moral comprehension that ultimately hunt and haunt him for the rest of his life. If Murphy fails even a little bit in the role this movie crumbles under the weight of its own ambition, but he never stumbles, not even a little.
Murphy is able to convey the vivid, rich inner life of his character with a single, hollow-eyed close-up, and Nolan takes full advantage of his talents. Over the course of the film Murphy’s Oppenheimer goes from being a ravenously ambitious student to a callously arrogant expert to a hollowed-out martyr desperate to be punished for his egregious moral sins and all of it feels grounded and genuine and gloriously compelling.
Another very effective performance comes from Robert Downey Jr. as Lewis Strauss, an administrative admirer of Oppenheimer and bureaucratic bully. It was an absolute joy to see Downey back to serious acting after his long and fruitful run as Iron Man. Downey has not lost his chops as his Strauss is a cauldron of conflicting and conniving energy that is captivating to watch.
The other stand out performance comes from Gary Oldman, who has just one scene, but he is phenomenal in it. It’s a testament to Oldman’s prodigious talent that he can be so thoroughly unforgettable in a mere matter of moments in a movie.
The rest of the cast, for the most part, acquit themselves well enough. Matt Damon as a demanding American General Leslie Groves, is fine, as are the cavalcade of actors like Casey Affleck, Kenneth Branagh, Rami Malek and Josh Hartnett who pepper the cast.
Florence Pugh and Emily Blunt are the two main actresses and they do the best they can with roles that feel underwritten and a bit uneven. Pugh is always terrific and brings her dark magnificent energy to bear here. Blunt at first feels out of sorts in her role as Oppenheimer’s wife, but she finds her stride in the last third of the film and nails one critical scene when it matters most.
The only performances I thought were notably underwhelming were Benny Safdie as Edward Teller and Rami Malek as David Hill. Both seem out of place and rather awkward in their roles.
On the bright side, it seems definite that Cillian Murphy will be nominated for Best Actor and will probably be the odds-on favorite to win. Downey Jr. will also likely be nominated for Best Supporting Actor.
The film is beautifully photographed by cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, who himself could be staring at a second Oscar nomination (his first was for Nolan’s 2017 film Dunkirk). Hoytema’s framing, close-ups in particular, are exquisite, as is his use of color and contrast.
The soundtrack by Ludwig Goransson is also very effective and well-done. It skillfully but subtly enhances the drama of the film without over-imposing itself and feeling manipulative.
As good as the cinematography and music were, the editing by Jennifer Lame really stands out. The film jumps back and forth in time and yet never loses coherence thanks to Lame’s deft and skillful work.
It is always difficult to discern any sort of political or cultural meaning from Nolan’s films, but they seem much more apparent than usual in Oppenheimer, at least to me. Of course, one must be self-aware enough to know that they may be projecting their own ideological perspective onto a film rather than discovering the director’s intent.
For example, after Nolan’s superhero masterpiece The Dark Knight came out in 2008 there was lots of talk among members of the George W. Bush torture and death-cult that the film was about Bush as Batman being scapegoated for what he has to do to defeat the Joker/Bin Laden, the ultimate terrorist agent of chaos. I never found that argument compelling and always thought it had more to do with the guilty conscience and vacuous ideology of its adherents rather than with Nolan’s intended sub-text.
The same may be true of my reading on Oppenheimer, which seems to me to be a movie that speaks to much of our current era’s issues. For instance, Oppenheimer is persecuted for speaking out against establishment orthodoxy and for holding views deemed to be dangerous. That seems to be very relevant to our current times where wrong-think is a cultural crime as has been well documented here and elsewhere.
Oppenheimer is also a stark reminder of the destructive power and nature of human beings, and how serious that subject is but how we often take it much too lightly.
For example, we have both liberals and conservatives in this country hell bent on escalating the proxy war in Ukraine up to and including to the point of direct conflict with Russia, a nuclear armed state, in order to desperately cling to our self-delusional empire. Oppenheimer eventually came to understand the power he unleashed by building an atomic bomb, but somehow our modern culture has forgotten the earth destroying ability it possesses and feels so comfortable toying with.
And finally, one can’t help but think of Artificial Intelligence while watching Oppenheimer. AI is a great achievement for scientists but like the team at Los Alamos that unleashed the destructive power of the gods onto humans, the unintended and long-term consequences of AI seem to be a moral and ethical minefield for which its creators never seriously prepared or even remotely considered. The impending, and most likely inevitable, dire consequences of artificial intelligence feel all the more chilling when considered in the context of the moral dilemma and outcome of Oppenheimer.
Whether the film is actually about those things or I am just projecting my own fears and ideologies on to it, is ultimately irrelevant, as the film stands on its cinematic artistry alone regardless of its deeper or wider meaning.
The thing that stood out to me the most regarding Oppenheimer was just the fact that it exists and that regular people are interested in seeing it.
For decades the art of cinema has been in steep decline and in recent years the business of movies has followed suit. For the entirety of this century Hollywood has been training audiences to watch nothing but dumbed down bullshit and to instinctively yearn for mindless entertainment. Oppenheimer is counter to that. To be clear, this film isn’t highbrow or arthouse, but it is definitely elevated, adult, populist moviemaking, storytelling and entertainment.
I doubt this will turn the tide of franchise excrement coming from Hollywood, but it is a sliver of hope. In the sea of shit that has been movies over the last four years, original, mature stories from auteurs have been few and far between and even the ones that did come out were among the lesser of the director’s filmography. But with Oppenheimer we have Christopher Nolan, one of the more successful directors in recent Hollywood history, putting out an original, adult-targeted film, and one of his very best films, when all hope seemed lost in the industry for this sort of thing.
Audiences are desperately hungry for quality films that are made for grown-ups…and with Oppenheimer Christopher Nolan has delivered. I, for one, am grateful.
Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo
©2023
On this episode Barry and I go on an archeological dig to try and discover why Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny was such a flop...and we find a treasure trove of answers. Topics discussed include Phoebe Waller-Bridge and the fool's gold of Fleabag, the cornucopia of abysmal supporting performances in this disappointing movie, and the storytelling power of science vs religion.
Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 103 - Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
Thanks for listening!
©2023
****THIS REVIEW IS MOSTLY SPOILER FREE BUT DOES CONTAIN A CLEARLY MARKED SECTION WITH SPOILERS!!****
My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
Popcorn Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
My Recommendation: SKIP IT. A mess of a movie that is a major letdown. If you really want to see it wait a few months until it’s streaming on Max.
In the weeks and months leading up to the release of the DC film The Flash there was a relentless stream of industry people vociferously declaring it to be a superhero movie masterpiece.
James Gunn, filmmaker and new co-CEO of DC Films, said prior to release that The Flash was “one of the best superhero movies (he’s) ever seen.”
Warner Brothers CEO David Zaslav said that The Flash was flat out “the greatest superhero movie” ever.
It wasn’t just Warner Brother lackeys either, as none other than the Lord and Saviour of Scientology and Hollywood, Tom Cruise, allegedly called the film’s director Andy Muschietti after an early screening and raved about how much he loved it.
Even horror writer Stephen King got in on the action declaring of The Flash on Twitter, “This one is special. It’s heartfelt, funny, and eye-popping. I loved it.”
I went to see The Flash on its opening Friday and I can report that James Gunn, David Zaslav, Tom Cruise and Stephen King are all either shameless liars or mental defectives with severe cinematic taste dysmorphia.
The reality is that The Flash is, much to my deep, deep chagrin, at its very best, a sub-mediocrity, and at its worst, terrible.
Let me start off by saying that I really like the Flash as a comic-book character, and I think he’s very deserving of a major motion picture. Let me also say that I actually liked Ezra Miller in the supporting role of Flash in the previous Snyder-verse films…and on top of that I actually liked the Snyder-verse films (the director’s cuts anyway) considerably more than most…and on top of that in general I lean much more toward DC than I do Marvel.
That is a long-winded way of saying that I was predisposed to liking The Flash. And then I saw The Flash.
The movie is just a mess. Superhero fatigue is a real thing, and the abysmal failure of The Flash, both creatively and at the box office, is proof that the genre is running on fumes at the moment.
A big part of the problem with The Flash is that the story is convoluted and incoherent. There’s lots of talk about multiverses and time travel and such but the very core of the story, the murder of Barry Allen/The Flash’s mom, is a muddled and jumbled event that carries no weight because it makes zero sense.
Another major issue is that the CGI is egregiously abominable. The opening to the film features an action sequence where Flash has to save a bunch of babies falling from a collapsing building. The scene is reminiscent of the horrors of 9/11 but this time with babies in peril, which why I raised an eyebrow when Flash checks his watch during the action and it reads “9:10”. How odd.
The CGI in this sequence and throughout the film is just atrocious to the point of being ridiculous. Director Andy Muschietti has stated that the poor CGI was intentional as it gives the viewers the perspective of Flash…ummm…yeah, ok…and I intentionally failed trigonometry in high school so I could share the perspective of stupid people. Come on, that Muschietti claim is utter horseshit. The CGI is cheap and laughably bad and no manufactured, half-assed hindsight story is going to change that. The awful CGI matters because it undercuts the entirety of the cinematic enterprise from the get go.
On top of all that, Ezra Miller, who as I stated I liked in a comedic supporting role as Flash in the earlier Snyder-verse films, is simply not able to carry a feature film. Miller is a distinct type of actor, and he becomes more and more grating the more time you spend with him on-screen. That is only heightened in The Flash when you spend a great deal of time with him AND there are two of him…which is as annoying as it sounds.
To be clear, I actually don’t care about Ezra Miller’s much publicized legal issues – which have kept him from doing any publicity for the film, nor do I care about HIS preferred pronouns. I just find it mildly amusing and somewhat ironic that Ezra Miller is obviously batshit crazy and now stars in a movie featuring a bevy of Batmen.
What made The Flash so frustrating was that it so easily could have and should have been not only so much better, but actually great. And the path to greatness, or at least making it better, is painfully obvious to anyone with half a brain in their head.
WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD. SKIP AHEAD IF YOU WANT TO AVOID SPOILERS!!!
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Much Like Spider-Man: No Way Home, which featured three Spider-men and a cavalcade of villains from previous film versions of Spider-Man, The Flash could’ve exploited the deep reservoir of DC films and tv shows to deliver fan service, laughs and drama. Instead, the film badly stumbles in its attempt to be clever and pay tribute to the superhero projects that preceded it.
The marketing of The Flash made it clear that both Ben Affleck and Michael Keaton would be playing Batman in the film. Keaton’s return was, much to my chagrin since I like movies to keep their secrets, much hyped and given away in the trailers.
The prospect of two Batmen is pretty intriguing, but The Flash does nothing with it. It also does nothing with the cavalcade of other DC superheroes it very briefly visually references….like Christopher Reeves’ Superman, Helen Slater’s Supergirl, George Reeve’s Superman and Adam West’s Batman.
That The Flash is unable to adequately exploit DC’s back catalogue effectively for drama or comedy is cinematic malpractice criminal scale.
What the film should have done is Forest Gump (yes, I’m using Forest Gump as a verb!) the Flash’s red ass into quick scenes from the actual George Reeves Superman and Adam West Batman tv shows and get a laugh when Flash realizes he’s in the wrong universe.
Do the same and put Flash into Christopher Reeves’ Superman films (maybe even in a scene with Richard Pryor!). The same is true for the Nicholas Cage Superman movie that never got made – yes, Cage’s Superman is briefly seen in The Flash, but it could have been used in a more substantial way. Hell, why not use all the Supermen…like Henry Cavill, Brandon Routh (from Superman Returns), Tom Welling (from Smallville) and Dean Cain (from Lois and Clark) even if briefly and even if only for comic effect?
Same with Batman…why not exploit all the weird villains from earlier films, like DeVito’s Penguin, Pfeiffer’s Catwoman, Schwarzenegger’s Mr. Freeze and Jim Carrey’s Riddler? Maybe even get a cheer by putting Flash in the Val Kilmer Batman universe. You could even steal from Top Gun: Maverick and have an emotional scene with a sick Val Kilmer as an aged and beaten Batman on his deathbed meeting Flash yet unable to speak to him.
And you could also do a brief crossover with the Flash tv show on the CW and have Miller’s Flash bump into CW Flash’s Grant Gustin in some weird speed force intersection. I’ve never seen the CW show but why not use and exploit all the IP in your power? Fans love that stuff and it would give this project a sense of scope and scale, and God knows Warner Brothers loves nothing more than self-congratulatory commercials for itself (see the LeBron James Space Jam movie…actually don’t, it’s awful).
As for the two Batmen most prominently featured in the movie, Michael Keaton and Ben Affleck, instead of having two Ezra Miller Barry Allen/Flash characters meet up, have Affleck and Keaton’s Batman characters jump into the other’s universe and meet up. It would be much more entertaining and much more dramatically and comedically satisfying to have Affleck and Keaton squaring off saying “I’m Batman” at each other and recounting how their parents died for the millionth time than to have Ezra Miller bantering back and forth with Ezra Miller for two hours.
Hell, imagine a fight between Affleck’s Batman and Keaton’s Batman, and then later they come together to fight against Zod or whomever. People would love that and come out to the theatre to see it.
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END OF SPOILERS END OF SPOILERS END OF SPOILERS
See, the possibilities for plumbing the depths of the DC catalogue for comedy and drama are endless, and yet what The Flash comes up with is the least creative, least interesting, least intriguing of all the possibilities.
The bottom line is that The Flash is the most disappointing movie in recent memory because it really should have and could have been at the very least entertaining…and maybe even great. But it’s neither of those things. What it is, ultimately, is a rather cheap, completely empty exercise in squeezing the very last vestiges of life from the superhero genre.
Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo
©2023
****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****
My Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Popcorn Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
My Recommendation: SEE IT. As visually stunning and original a film as you’ll see, but it is burdened by poor sound quality and some storytelling mis-steps. Not as good as the original but overall worth seeing.
The new film web-slinging atop the box office is Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, the highly-anticipated sequel to the 2018 Best Animated Film Academy Award-winner Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. The movie picks up where the original left off telling the story of neophyte Spider-Man Miles Morales as he navigates the pitfalls of life as an adolescent superhero.
The first film, Into the Spider-Verse, which I rewatched prior to venturing out to the theatre to see Across the Spider-Verse, was as entertaining as it gets in both animation and the superhero genre. It was cool, touching and funny. In other words, the sequel Across the Spider-Verse is burdened with very big shoes to fill and, unfortunately, it isn’t quite up to that Herculean task.
Let’s start with the good news.
First off, the animation on Across the Spider-Verse is simply spectacular. The filmmakers create an aesthetically glorious work of art by seamlessly blending together a wide variety of distinct animation styles to create a moving visual masterpiece that pays tribute to the great comic book artists that built Spider-Man throughout the years.
In particular, Spider-Punk, a black brit punk rocking Spider-Man deftly voiced by Daniel Kaluuya, is a standout. The character is designed like a modern art collage and its contrast to the other Spider-People makes for transcendent visuals.
Then there’s the throwbacks to a bevy of old comic book Spider-Men, some shots of live-action movie Spider-Men and even a Lego world Spider-Man. Even the more standard Spider-People, like Miguel O’Hara/Spider-Man 2099 (voiced by Oscar Isaac), look totally badass. All-in-all the film with its vibrant color scheme and distinct style, looks unique, original and absolutely gorgeous.
In terms of the plot, I have to say it’s a bit of a mixed bag for a variety of reasons. All Spider-Man stories, and Across the Spider-Verse is no exception, thrive when grappling with not only adolescent angst but existential profundity. In this film we see both Miles Morales and Gwen Stacey struggle with both things and those are the more resonant storylines.
But the increased focus on Gwen Stacey/Spider-Woman (voiced by the wondrous Hailee Steinfeld) felt too long, ineffective and ultimately distracting because viewers have never been given a fully-fleshed out origin story with Gwen with which to build rapport with the character, which would’ve made her storyline more compelling.
The film also expands into a vast multiverse plot which gets into a wide array of topics including a clever foray into the importance of canon, and all of that is a nice bit of self-reverential fan service from the filmmakers, but it also gets a bit convoluted and burdensome.
That said, I felt the brief foray into the world of Pavitr Prabhakar/Spider-Man India was really well-done (and looked great) but was much too short-lived.
Now for the bad news.
The sound mixing on Across the Spider-Verse is absolutely atrocious. Just utterly abysmal. The dialogue of characters is much too low in the mix and the pounding music much too high, particularly in the opening sequence. A great deal of dialogue gets lost in this muddied mess of a mix and it is irritating, aggravating and frustrating.
At first, I thought the sound problems were a result of my sub-par theatre and their lackluster audio equipment but no, the poor sound mixing on Across the Spider-Verse is a real and much complained about thing, so much so that Sony is sending out new versions of the film with improved sound quality. Too little too late as far as I’m concerned. I mean, how in the hell does a studio put out a major motion picture with such third-rate sound, especially one that is animated and built entirely in a computer? It would be one thing to have sound issues if you’re recording natural sound out in the world but these movie makers haven’t seen sun light in like five years so that’s not the case here. Simply unacceptable and totally inexcusable.
Another issue with the film is that, at two hours and twenty-minutes, it’s definitely at least forty minutes too long. Unlike the original, the story here feels decidedly bloated.
Making matters worse is that the film ends unexpectedly with a sort of cliffhanger that isn’t a cliffhanger but more like a poorly timed and entirely unearned abrupt ending that feels very money-grabby. The ending is so abrupt it’s jarring as the dramatic and emotional beats are left mid-arc and feel unfulfilled and unsatisfied. Having to tune in to a third Spider-Verse movie five years from now in order to fulfill the emotional and narrative beats left dangling at the end of this movie does not quench viewer’s dramatic thirst.
One more problem is that the villain, the Spot – a D-list Marvel bad guy, is not the least bit interesting or captivating. Also, due to the structure of the plot, the Spot isn’t really the main villain he’s just a very thin sideshow. I won’t get into it too much in order to avoid spoilers but will only say the lack of a substantial villain and more clearly defined and understandable narrative obstacles for Miles to overcome drains some of the power and drama from the film.
Overall, it felt like screenwriters Phil Lord and Christopher Miller - who also wrote Into the Spider-Verse, and co-directors Joaquim Dos Santos and Kemp Powers (new to the Spider-verse), stumbled in trying to expand the Miles Morales story that was so eloquently told in the first film.
To be clear, Across the Spider-Verse isn’t a bad film, it’s entertaining and enjoyable and features spectacular animation. But it’s nowhere near as good as the original film as it’s marred by some major audio issues (which allegedly are being remedied) as well as storytelling missteps and bloat that reduce its quality and effectiveness.
Across the Spider-Verse could have and should have been great, as it features the most visually stunning and mind-blowing animation you’ll ever come across, but unfortunately it never quite lives up to its predecessor or its unquestionable visual brilliance.
Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo
©2023
On the conclusion of our 100th episode celebration, Barry and I finish up our streaming service film/tv recommendations. Topics discussed include the wonders of the Criterion Channel, the god-awful shit that is Peacock, and how HBO Max was better before it became Max. Oh...and a flock of geese gets slaughtered on air for no apparent reason.
Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 100 Part Two
Thanks for listening!
©2023
On this very special episode, Barry and I host a massive party at LCFM headquarters to celebrate our 100th episode. In part one of this historic podcasting event, we not only name drop our bevy of celebrity friends, but also give our selections for good movies and shows to watch currently available on each streaming service. Stay tuned for part two of this blockbuster celebratory event in the coming days.
Thanks for listening!
©2023
****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!****
My Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
My Recommendation: SEE IT. A rare treat of a well-made movie for grown-ups. Not life changing but undeniably entertaining.
Air, the new movie about Nike’s push to sign Michael Jordan to an endorsement deal in 1984, is, to quote Kris Kristofferson, “partly truth, partly fiction, a walking contradiction”.
The film, which is directed by Ben Affleck and stars Affleck as well as his old buddy Matt Damon, is the rarest of rare things in our current culture in that it’s a movie featuring movie stars, made for grown-ups in which everyone involved is exceedingly competent at what they do.
Ben Affleck’s direction, the cast’s performances, first-time screenwriter Alex Convery’s script and Robert Richardson’s cinematography are all, at a bare minimum, competent and often much more than that. For this reason alone, the film is undeniably entertaining.
It’s a testament to Damon and Affleck’s star power, and the professionalism and skill of everyone involved, that even though viewers know how the story ends, Air is still a compelling and captivating story that at times is remarkably exhilarating and even moving.
Matt Damon is terrific as Sonny Vaccaro, the guy leading the charge to get Michael Jordan to sign up with the then basement-dwelling, third ranked basketball sneaker company, Nike.
Damon has always been a top-notch movie star actor, and he brings all his skill to the fore as the lovable loser Vaccaro. Damon is a pleasant and oddly charming screen presence who effortlessly carries this story from start to finish.
Viola Davis, who plays Michael Jordan’s mom Deloris, is outstanding in her supporting role. With minimal screen time Davis imbues Deloris with a silent authority that dominates the drama. Every time she is on-screen, she is subtly the center of the universe. It would be difficult to imagine a scenario where Davis doesn’t get nominated for an Oscar for this performance.
Ben Affleck is very good too as Phil Knight, the very strange founder of Nike. Affleck is fantastic at being unintentionally funny and if Phil Knight is anything it is unintentionally funny.
Affleck’s direction is solid as well. His decision to not make Michael Jordan a major character in the film, and to not show Jordan’s face, were pretty brilliant as the movie could have easily spun out of control and turned into a rather cheap, made-for-tv type of project with a Jordan imitator joining the festivities.
All that said, there are some things about Air that leave a decidedly bad taste in my mouth.
The first of which is that this movie is undeniably a piece of corporate propaganda and hagiography. This isn’t just a film about American capitalism and corporatocracy, it is a celebration of American capitalism and corporatocracy.
The movie bends the truth to some extraordinary degrees in order to pretend it isn’t celebrating the rather deplorable parts of American capitalism and corporatism symbolized by Nike, and to act like it’s actually a tale about the working man fighting against corporate power.
Jordan is made out to be a pioneer who broke the mold regarding shoe contracts by demanding profit sharing and his mother Deloris makes the case that “young black boys will pay a lot for this sneaker and that money should go to my son!” She also says that workers like Vaccaro, and black athletes endorsing sneakers, are exploited by companies like Nike, and Converse and Adidas and they deserve more of the profits.
This is all well and good and is a nice bit of drama for the film, but the fact that Nike pays slave wages to third world workers in order to make their sneakers goes unsaid and unacknowledged. Also unsaid and unacknowledged is the fact that Nike sell their status symbol shoes at exorbitant prices that are so high that in the 80’s and 90’s they often caused crime and violence by young black men against other young black men in order to get them.
In addition, it is also a bit unnerving that Sonny Vaccaro, who is widely considered by many in the know to be one of the sleaziest people from the amateur basketball scene back in the 70’s and 80’s, is made out to be the good-hearted, kind, lovable hero of the movie.
Vaccaro was a shark who was deeply involved in all sorts of shady shit back in the day, and to see him in the film and in the film’s prologue, portrayed as the champion of the good, the noble and the right is a bit much.
There’s an interesting monologue in the film about the Bruce Springsteen song “Born in the USA”, which was enormously popular in 1984. The song, which was co-opted by Reagan as a flag-waving theme song, is actually a lament about the brutal decline of America, but because its morose lyrics are accompanied by the energized music of an uber-patriotic anthem, the song’s meaning gets lost and its artistic power usurped.
It could be that Affleck uses the “Born in the USA” monologue to let astute viewers know that he is trying to hide his critique of the insidious nature of American capitalism and corporatocracy in plain sight in this hagiography. I’d like to think so…but Air feels too weak in its criticisms and too vociferous in its praise of Nike (and all that it represents) to pass that test, and thus feels like just the anthem part of “Born in the USA” without the existential lament at its core.
The reality is that Air is really a movie about marketing that is itself a piece of marketing. The film, with its fantastic soundtrack of 80’s music, looks and feels like a two-hour commercial for Nike. In this way it is almost an extension of The Last Dance, the ten-hour Michael Jordan docu-series that was so gloriously received by everyone but me back in 2020. That docu-series was shameless legend cultivation and brand buttressing of Michael Jordan and was produced by…you guessed it…Michael Jordan. But our culture is so enamored and addicted to narcissistic self-promotion and propaganda, that no one cared they were being fed a piece of self-serving bullshit.
Speaking of shameless marketing and self-promotion, it is strange that Damon and Affleck are out pounding the pavement selling this movie and pretending this is their first reunion film since their smash hit Good Will Hunting back in 1997, for which they won a Best Original Screenplay Oscar.
Damon and Affleck’s last actual on-screen and writing credit reunion was Ridley Scott’s underrated 2021 film The Last Duel. The Last Duel was overlooked by audiences and snickered at by critics, but I thought it was very good, so to see Damon and Affleck pretend like it doesn’t exist is somewhat bizarre…but makes sense in terms of marketing as the Damon-Affleck reunion card is being played again. As they say, everything old is new again…apparently even on-screen reunions that already happened two-years ago.
Also a bit odd is the fact that this movie is the first from Damon and Affleck’s production company Artists Equity, which is all about paying workers above and below the line fairly and with equity in the film.
That the narrative of Air somewhat reflects the business model of Artists Equity is clever, as is Affleck talking up how he looked out for first time screenwriter Convery and promised him he’d get full credit despite some rewrites.
But that “looking out for the working man” narrative feels like window dressing when the movie it is placed in is an embarrassing ass-kissing of sweatshop masters Nike made by the deplorable demons at Amazon. I mean…yikes…you’d be hard pressed to find two companies as destructive to working people and our culture as Nike and Amazon. This insidious approach is somewhat reminiscent of the Best Picture winner Nomadland, which told a tale of the working poor on the fringes of society yet disgustingly managed to portray Amazon - which is well-known for its abuse of workers and labor practices, as a friend to the working man and wonderful worker’s paradise.
And yet, despite the rather repulsive pro-corporation politics and economics on display in the movie, Air is an irresistibly entertaining and unrelentingly enjoyable movie, which is a testament to Affleck and Damon’s talent and star power.
In conclusion, Air is in rarified air in that it’s a movie for grown-ups that features movie stars confidently filling up the big screen. I highly recommend it and can guarantee that while it won’t change your life, it will definitely leave you satisfied.
Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo
©2023
On this episode, Barry and I don our women warrior garb and do battle over The Woman King, the sword and sandal action movie starring Viola Davis now streaming on Netflix. Topics discussed include the blueprint of successful female-led action movies, the burden and benefits of claiming to be "based on a true story", and the curse of over-hyping sub-mediocrity.
Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 97 - The Woman King
Thanks for listening!
©2023
****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****
My Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
My Recommendation: SEE IT. A fantastic, original and scathing takedown of modern society.
Triangle of Sadness, written and directed by Ruben Ostlund, is one of the best films of last year and one of the more misunderstood films in recent history.
The movie, which is a black comedy/social satire, was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay at the Academy Awards, but was tepidly received by critics and audiences alike as evidenced by its 71% critical score and 68% audience score at Rotten Tomatoes.
The film premiered in the U.S. in October and generated almost no buzz. In my circles in Hollywood, I heard no one talk about it at all, be it positively or negatively. It seemed the movie, which is in the English language but is produced by a cavalcade of foreign production companies from England, France, Germany, Sweden and Denmark among many others, would just come and go and be forgotten.
But then the film was nominated for a bunch of Oscars, which is why I figured I should watch it in order to be up to date prior to the Academy Awards. Thankfully the film is now streaming on Hulu which makes it more accessible.
I watched the film knowing nothing about it prior and came away from my screening believing it to be unquestionably one of the very best of the year, and certainly the most original.
The film is broken into three parts. The first is titled “Carl and Yaya” and it introduces us to models/social media influencers Carl and Yaya, two beautiful people navigating the business of marketing their bodies as well as their intimate relationship.
This opening section is absolutely mesmerizing and could be a stand-alone movie all its own. Carl, played by Harris Dickinson, and Yaya, played by Charlbi Dean, are so compelling and captivating that you are instantaneously drawn into their very topical, painfully politically correct, gender-sensitive, Gen Z drama.
Swedish writer/director Ostlund masterfully shoots this opening section with a stunning level of both subtlety and craftsmanship. There’s one shot of a conversation in a car that is as good as anything seen in a movie in years.
The second section of the film, titled “The Yacht”, chronicles Carl and Yaya and a bunch of other incredibly wealthy people as they vacation on a giant yacht. This section sets up the power dynamics between the unconscionably rich and the working people in the service industry at their beck and call.
This part of the movie is, to put it mildly, batshit crazy, as it devolves into one of the more absurd and extreme bits of physical comedy you’ll ever witness. That said, it is also incredibly insightful in terms of presenting and then propelling the film’s philosophical narrative.
The third section, titled “The Island”, turns the film on its head (again I’m being vague to avoid spoilers) as it lays bare the insidious hunger for power that lies at the heart of humanity.
After watching the film, I did something I rarely, if ever, do…I went and read some reviews of it. The reviews, which were all mostly dismissive, all said the same thing…that the film was nothing more than a rather trite criticism of American capitalism. The fact that politically-correct, limousine liberals writing for various high falutin, establishment, corporate media entities like the New York Times and such, would disapprove of a scathing Euro takedown of American capitalism should come as no surprise. But what did surprise me was that I didn’t see the film as a trite criticism of capitalism.
Yes, the film does criticize capitalism, but it also, and with maybe even more ferocity and fervor, criticizes the criticisms of capitalism. For example, at one point in the film there is a drunken debate between a wealthy capitalist and the socialist captain of the yacht. The two of them regurgitate famous quotes at one another to make their argument because neither is able to think for themselves or have an original thought. The wealthy capitalist is a repugnant pig and former citizen of the Soviet Union, and the socialist sea captain is a lazy drunkard who literally has been unable to leave his cabin to perform his duties due to his inebriation.
That the capitalist admits he sells “shit” and the socialist sea captain makes money being too drunk to pilot a giant yacht for the rich, sums up perfectly the scathing social satire of Triangle of Sadness. That critics are so venal, vapid and vacuous that they are unable to see past the obvious façade of “anti-capitalism” in this film in order to see the much deeper and more important point of it all is both damning and alarming. Or maybe critics actually did see the film’s deeper meaning and were angry that their woke worldview was so easily and entertainingly disemboweled. Who knows?
Regardless of misguided critic’s opinions, Triangle of Sadness is one of those glorious films that rattles around your brain for days after seeing it. The compromises the characters make in order to survive and/or thrive and to above all else deceive themselves, is an extraordinary thing to watch.
Ruben Ostlund’s direction is simply stunning. The opening section features numerous scenarios that are so exquisitely conjured and executed as to be amazing. For example, the modeling audition that Carl attends is both hysterically funny and unconscionably depressing for its accuracy and incisiveness.
In the second section, Ostlund does something so subtle and so clever that I’ve been ruminating on it for weeks now. During a chaotic sequence, which I won’t reveal to avoid spoilers, Ostlund introduces, almost out of nowhere, the sound of a baby crying. This baby and its parents are not featured characters and are little more than extras in the movie at best, but the sound of the baby crying elicits in the viewer a deep psychological and emotional reaction that is totally instinctual. This crying baby amidst the comedy chaos is like a vicious kick in the gut, and it leaves you shaken even if you aren’t sure why.
The third section is the laying bare of human nature and power dynamics and an escalation of the film’s critique of capitalism and criticisms of capitalism. That stereotypes regarding gender politics and economics are eviscerated in this section only makes it all the more delicious.
The cast of Triangle of Sadness all do exemplary work. Harris Dickinson and Charlbi Dean as Carl and Yaya are utterly fantastic. Dickinson in particular is able to walk a perilous tightrope to perfection. Dean, who in the most tragic of circumstances actually died last August before the film was released, is a magnetic screen presence and an absolute natural.
Other actors, like Zlatko Buric as the wealthy businessman, and Woody Harrelson as the drunken sea captain, and Dolly De Leon as the mysterious Abigail, all do solid work in their roles.
The bottom-line regarding Triangle of Sadness is that it takes no prisoners in its attack on the political, social and economic spectrum. Whether socialist or capitalist, man or woman, liberal or conservative, you’ll find yourselves in the crosshairs of this movie, and you’ll have no viable counter-argument as the film is aggressively astute and allergic to sentimentality.
If you can “stomach” it, I highly recommend Triangle of Sadness, as it is extremely well-made and extraordinarily insightful. This is the kind of movie that cinema desperately needs right now, and it was a joy to discover it.
©2023
On this uncharacteristically joyous episode, Barry and I go on a ritzy cruise to debate one of the best movies of the year, the Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay nominated Triangle of Sadness. Topics discussed include the glory of original storytelling, the art of deft directing and the joy of well-crafted cinema.
Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 96 - Triangle of Sadness
Thanks for listening!
©2023
THE 2022 SLIP-ME-A-MICKEY™® AWARDS
The Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® awards are the final award of the interminably long awards season. The Slip-Me-A-Mickey™®, or as some lovingly call them, The Mockeys™®, are a robust tribute to the absolute worst that film and entertainment has to offer for the year.
Again, the qualifying rules are simple, I just had to have seen the film for it to be eligible. This means that at one point I had an interest in the film and put the effort in to see it, which may explain why I am so angry about it being awful. So, any vitriol I may spew during this awards presentation shouldn't be taken personally by the people mentioned, it is really anger at myself for getting duped into watching.
The prizes are also pretty simple. The winners/losers receive nothing but my temporary scorn. If you are a winner/loser don't fret, because this year’s Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® loser/winner could always be next year’s Mickey™® winner!! Remember…you are only as good as your last film!!
Now…onto the awards!
WORST FILM OF THE YEAR
Amsterdam – An astonishingly awful film that is so incoherent and incomprehensible I can only posit that the Illuminati running Hollywood (and the world) demanded it be intentionally so poorly crafted in order to scuttle any discussion of Smedley Butler and the Business Plot.
She Said – Imagine making such a shitty a movie that audiences end up rooting for a deplorable fucking pig like Harvey Weinstein by the end. Quite an accomplishment!
Don’t Worry Darling – No, actually DO worry, darling. This turd was an absolute shit show of epic proportions and may very well have mercifully ended Olivia Wilde’s directing career…for that we can be grateful.
My Policeman – To quote Kurt Cobain, “what else can I say, everyone is gay!”…including Harry Styles apparently. A gay plot about gayness that is totally gay, but still makes no sense, that is infused with instantly forgettable performances turned this derivative drama into Return to Blokeback Mountain.
Pinocchio – Robert Zemeckis and Tom Hanks should return their Oscars after churning out this mindless, heartless, craft-less sack of shit. Just utterly abysmal from start to finish.
The Fabelmans – An alarmingly amateurish, poorly written, directed and acted piece of vapid, narcissistic garbage that is filled to the brim with cringe. Besides that it’s just fine.
AND THE LOSER IS…AMSTERDAM! – It’s actually quite an accomplishment to make a movie this bad and to stand out from this collection of shit sandwiches.
WORST VIRTUE SIGNALING FILM OF THE YEAR
She Said – A movie that featured the stunningly brave, earth-shattering thesis that Harvey Weinstein is bad and women are good! Too bad this empty movie had nothing original or interesting to say. Total piece of junk meant to signal its virtue to the usual suspects in order to garner awards…but was so dreadfully made even its target audience stopped pretending it was good.
Women Talking – A stagey, whiney, bitchy movie about Mennonite women debating each other like they’re know-it-all know-nothings at a late-night bitch session at Wellesley College. As pretentious, pompous, poorly made and transparently virtue-signaling and awards-thirsty as any movie as we’ve seen in years.
AND THE LOSER IS…WOMEN TALKING – The most blatant bit of vacuous and vapid virtue signaling imaginable. The fact that it is a truly horrendous movie but still won an Oscar tells you all you need to know about its pure pandering business model.
WORST PERFORMANCE OF THE YEAR
Tom Hanks – Tom Hanks has won two Best Actor Oscars, yet this year with his truly abysmal work in Elvis and Pinocchio, he has proven himself to be the worst best actor of all time. Hanks’ inability to play a character, or speak with an accent, were on full display this year, as was his hackneyed, hokey, shticky acting approach, and we’re all worse off for it. Please go away forever Tom Hanks.
Harry Styles – Harry Styles was poised to have a break out year and become a big movie star…and then we saw him in My Policeman and Don’t Worry Darling and his rocket ship to superstardom exploded on the launching pad. Holy shit this kid can’t act…not even a little. As uncomfortable and unnatural a screen presence as we’ve seen since Cindy Crawford in Fair Game.
Seth Rogan – Seth Rogan is an unwiped anus. His work in The Fablemans was a healthy reminder that he is an odious screen presence. I, for one, yearn for his vanishing from the public eye and/or the planet.
AND THE LOSER IS…TOM HANKS! Hanks should be embarrassed and humiliated by his work over the last twenty years, but he’s incapable of feeling anything but smug and superior. This hack should fuck off forever.
WORST SCENE OF THE YEAR
She Said – Bar Scene – An astonishing piece of cinema that is so atrocious as to be amazing. This scene has everything! From the poor dialogue (“these are the menus”), to the egregious virtue signaling, to the one-dimensional strawman, to the heinous acting. Just an all-around miraculous piece of cinematic shit that would be laughed out of a freshman year student film festival.
MOST OVERRATED FILM OF THE YEAR
The Fabelmans – The Fabelmans isn’t just a bad movie, it’s an embarrassing movie. That it was Oscar nominated for Best Picture and Best Director, as well as Best Actress, is a testament to how corrupt Hollywood truly is. If this film were made by anyone other than Steven Spielberg, it would’ve been vociferously labeled cringey, amateurish horseshit…but since St. Steven made it we are supposed to fawn over how “personal” it is. Get the fuck outta here with this garbage. This movie is shitty to the extreme and absolutely sucks donkey balls. If you liked it you’re an incorrigible idiot and an unrepentant asshole.
SPECIAL ACHIEVEMENT IN CINEMATIC MALPRACTICE
David O. Russell – Russell has never been a good director, but for some reason he has been considered among the elite moviemakers in Hollywood for the past twenty years or so. I think with the trainwreck that is Amsterdam, Russell has convincingly disabused Hollywood of the notion that he is even remotely able to make movies. To see even the most-simple of things, like setting actor’s eye lines, be fucked up in this deplorable shitshow, was jaw-dropping to witness. Russell put all of his copious amounts of shittyness into the Amsterdam stew and a few of us poor souls had to take a stinky bite. Yikes. Hopefully this asshat never gets another shot to make a movie.
P.O.S. HALL OF FAME
Meghan and Harry – Only these two self-absorbed, narcissistic pieces of shit could make a pervy prodigious pedophile like pecker-face Prince Andrew seem like a half normal person.
These two half-wit shitbags hate publicity and the public eye so much they moved to Hollywood and got into the entertainment business. And now you can’t avoid them because they won’t shut the fuck up and stay off camera for a single, solitary moment.
Prince Harry is a sad-sack eunuch and a ball-less buffoon and Meghan is a diabolical and devious shrew who has successfully neutered her needle-dicked husband and isolated him from his in-bred family.
My wish is that the new King Charles invites these two insufferable cunts to his coronation, they show up and then right after the ceremony King Charles has them beheaded, old school style, on live television. This would please Harry and Meghan because they’d get a lot of attention and get to be victims, and it would also ensure that Charles would be the most popular King in the history of England.
P.O.S ALL-STARS
Sean Penn – I’ve always liked Sean Penn as both an actor and a guy. He and I have very similar personalities…which isn’t exactly a brag on my part.
This year Penn has brought some of his famous screen characters to life in the real world, as he’s publicly morphed into the mentally challenged young man from I Am Sam combined with the gay activist politician Harvey Milk from Milk. Penn has made this transformation in order to bang the drums of war in Ukraine as loudly as possible.
Yes, Sean Penn who was so vociferous in his righteous anti-war sentiments regarding Iraq in 2003, is now out there demanding the U.S. and the military industrial complex get further involved in the war in Ukraine, including direct combat.
What a fucking genius.
Maybe someone should remind Sean that he has a son who’s the perfect age to go fight in Ukraine…and if that country’s “freedom” is so fucking important to him maybe he and his son can gear up and move out and go kick some Russian ass halfway across the world.
If that isn’t something he’s interested in, then maybe I Am Sam should shut the fuck up and stop talking and acting like a fucking useless retard. Maybe Mayor Man Milk should stop shouting that “I’m here to recruit you…to die in the war in Ukraine for the U.S. elites who absolutely hate you and only want to use you for cannon fodder!” Penn’s I am Sam/Harvey Milk character sounds like another famous gay buffoon, George W. Bush, as he marched us into war in Iraq…and as we all remember that went spectacularly well. Mission accomplished motherfucker!
So, Sean Penn, do us all a favor and SHUT THE FUCK UP. If you want to fight, I’d be happy to meet you and your movie star biceps anywhere, anytime, and slap the stupid out of your thick fucking skull. And by the way maybe try and do another exercise bedsides curls when you’re at the gym, you might find your bulging biceps to be less than useful in combat, be it in Ukraine or in a scrap with me. You’re welcome you fucking empty-headed shit heel.
And thus ends the Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® Awards and the cinema calendar for 2022…thank God!!
Hopefully the losers this year will be the winners next year…you never know. One thing I can guarantee though is that there will be movies and performances worthy of the Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® Award next year…and I’ll be ready!!
Thanks for reading!
FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER: @MPMActingCo
©2023
THE MICKEYS – 2022
The god-awful Oscars have finally come and gone and now it’s time for the final and most prestigious awards in cinema to commence.
The Mickey™® Awards aren’t just the most prestigious award in cinema, but are undeniably the most prestigious award on the planet, easily topping those wannabe poseurs at the overrated Nobel Prize.
Unfortunately, in recent years the art of cinema has not been worthy of such an esteemed and distinguished honor. You see, since the halcyon days of 2019 when great movies like Parasite, Joker, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and The Irishman, and significant arthouse films like Ad Astra, A Hidden Life, The Last Black Man in San Francisco and High Life, as well as quality middle-brow entertainment like the finely-crafted 1917 and Ford v Ferrari, graced our big screens, we’ve been in a dramatic and dire cinema drought. Not only has greatness not come to the big screen (or small screen) in the last three years, goodness has been an absolute rarity as well.
On the bright side, it must be said that 2022 was definitely better than 2021, but that isn’t saying much as 2021 was easily the worst year for movies in my entire life. To give an indication of how bad things were in 2021, last year The Mickeys™® were almost cancelled because the nominating committee couldn’t make a list of top five films due to the fact that there weren’t five good films that came out all year.
As far as the future is concerned, one can only cling to the hope that the ever-so-slight upward trend in cinema quality from 2021 to 2022 continues and that the three years ahead of us end up being better than the three unbelievably shitty years we’ve just slogged through.
Am I optimistic? God no! But at least as I wallow in my depression I’m setting myself up for the wondrous experience of being pleasantly surprised. As my cavalcade of girlfriends can attest, I am extremely fond of saying, “the key to happiness is low expectations.”
Before we get started…a quick rundown of the rules and regulations of The Mickeys™®. The Mickeys™® are selected by me. I am judge, jury and executioner. The only films eligible are films I have actually seen, be it in the theatre, via screener, cable, streamer or VOD. I do not see every film because as we all know, the overwhelming majority of films are God-awful, and I am a working man so I must be pretty selective. So that means that just getting me to actually watch your movie is a tremendous accomplishment in and of itself…never mind being nominated or winning!
The Prizes!! The winners of The Mickey™® award will receive one acting coaching session with me FOR FREE!!! Yes…you read that right…FOR FREE!! Non-acting category winners receive a free lunch* with me at Fatburger (*lunch is considered one "sandwich" item, one order of small fries, you aren't actors so I know you can eat carbs, and one beverage….yes, your beverage can be a shake, you fat bastards). Actors who win and don't want an acting coaching session but would prefer the lunch…can still go straight to hell…but I am legally obligated to inform you that, yes, there WILL BE SUBSTITUTIONS allowed with The Mickey™® Awards prizes. If you want to go to lunch, I will gladly pay for your meal…and the sterling conversation will be entirely free of charge.
Enough with the formalities…let's start the festivities!!
Popcorn Movie of the Year
The Batman – Matt Reeves wrote and directed the most recent sojourn into the world of the Batman and his film is a unique and original venture in a genre worn thin by its relentless and ridiculous repetition.
The Northman – Robert Eggers attempt at a Norse action movie is as weird as you’d expect it to be. While uneven, the film is a gloriously ambitious and smart action film that audiences were too stupid to understand.
Prey – I assumed Prey was going to be just another empty-headed franchise movie. It wasn’t. It was an original take on the well-worn Predator movies that revitalized the franchise.
And The Mickey™® goes to…THE BATMAN
Best Cinematography
All Quiet on the Western Front – James Friend – Friend’s work on All Quiet is simply astounding as he captured the scope and scale of war while also conveying the deeply intimate impact of it. Just beautifully photographed.
The Batman – Grieg Fraser – Fraser’s work on The Batman is at times absolutely stunning. His use of light in darkness paints some of the most extraordinary visuals in any film this year.
The Banshees of Inisherin – Ben Davis – Davis makes the most of his Irish setting through the use of fundamentally sound cinematography.
Tar – Florian Hoffmeister – Hoffmeister’s framing is simply exquisite as he turns the mundane into delicious pieces of cinema.
And The Mickey™® goes to…ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT
Best Supporting Actor
Brendan Gleeson – The Banshees of Inisherin: Gleeson is one of the best actors around and he brings the full force of his skill to his role of Colm, the dissatisfied musician tired of the ordinary life. Gleeson elevates every scene he inhabits.
Barry Keoghan – The Banshees of Inisherin: Keoghan’s work as Dominic, the fragile and combustible young man trapped in his life on the small isle of Inisherin, is at times stunning. The scene where he asks a girl to be with him is one of the very best captured on film this year.
And The Mickey™® goes to…BRENDAN GLEESON
Best Supporting Actress
Kerry Condon – The Banshees of Inisherin: Condon perfectly captures the frustration and futility of life as an Irish woman surrounded by the hell that is Irish men.
And The Mickey™® goes to…KERRY CONDON
Best Screenplay
The Banshees of Inisherin – Martin McDonagh: McDonagh’s screenplay is ridiculous and absurd at times, but it never fails to perfectly capture the civil war raging in the hearts and minds of every Irishman.
Triangle of Sadness – Ruben Ostlund: On its surface, Triangle of Sadness is a rather banal and somewhat predictable criticism of American capitalism (a criticism I agree with by the way), but just beneath this surface is as smart, savvy and savage a social satire as seen on big screens in ages.
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio: Del Toro turns the well-worn story of the puppet come to life into a fascinating tale of love, loss and fascism. As relevant a story as we saw all year.
And The Mickey goes to…TRIANGLE OF SADNESS
Best Scene of the Year
The Banshees of Inisherin – When Barry Keoghan’s Dominic professes his love for Kerry Condon’s Siobhan, it is absolutely heartbreaking and gut-wrenching. Both Keoghan and Condon absolutely crush this scene.
Tar – When Cate Blanchett’s Lydia Tar tries to teach a simple-minded social justice woke warrior about the complexity of life and music in this ten-minute uncut scene, it is simply mesmerizing. The actor playing opposite Blanchett, Zethphan Smith-Gneist, is so uncomfortable (either intentionally or unintentionally) in the role as to be glorious. Just one of those unbelievably magical scenes that make cinema so wondrous.
All Quiet on the Western Front – The scene where Paul is stuck in a bomb crater with a French soldier is absolutely hellacious as it shows war as a humanity crushing machine. It is a perfect encapsulation of this film and its anti-war message.
And The Mickey goes to…TAR
Best Actress
Cate Blanchett – Tar : There is no other option in this category. Blanchett is the best actress of her generation and maybe every other generation too. Blanchett’s skill and mastery of craft are sublime, and her raw talent is undeniable. Just a master class of master classes in terms of great acting.
And The Mickey goes to…CATE BLANCHETT – TAR
Best Actor
Felix Kammerer – All Quiet on the Western Front: A deft portrayal of the horrors of war that hollows out the human soul. Kammerer never loses his edge or his innate sense of humanity in this role.
Colin Farrell – The Banshees of Inisherin: Farrell’s work as the dim-witted, sad-sack Padraic is astonishing considering he was little more than a rather dim-witted, Hollywood pretty boy not that long ago. Farrell has grown into a terrific actor of quality and worth over the last decade or so and he puts it all together in this most subtle and deft portrayal.
And The Mickey™® goes to…COLIN FARRELL – THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN
Actor/Actress of the Year
COLIN FARRELL – In 2022 Farrell not only excelled as the lead in The Banshees of Inisherin, but he was also terrific in The Batman as the Penguin, and even elevated a rather mundane Ron Howard movie with a simple yet subtle turn as one of the divers who saves kids trapped in a cave in Thirteen Lives. Farrell has come a long way, and he now has not one but two Mickey™® awards to prove his greatness.
Best Director
Ruben Ostlund – Triangle of Sadness: Ostlund the director had to somehow bring to the screen the wild, unwieldly, sprawling story written by Ostlund the screenwriter…and he does it with a panache and deft touch that is breathtaking to behold.
Martin McDonagh – The Banshees of Inisherin: McDonagh is a better writer than he is a director, but on Banshees he lets simplicity be his guide and the result is an extremely well-made movie that never gets in its own way.
Guillermo del Toro – Pinocchio: Del Toro infuses such life and energy into this old story, and does it with the most beautiful stop-motion animation imaginable, that one can only bow to his enormous talent and extraordinary artistic vision.
Edward Berger – All Quiet on the Western Front: Berger perfectly captures the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual hell that is war. An unrelenting film that is as relevant today as the stellar original was back in 1930.
And The Mickey™® goes to…Edward Berger – All Quiet on the Western Front
Best Picture
8. Barbarian – The first two acts of this film are spectacularly well-made, but the third act falters. Still, was a pleasant surprise to see such a well-crafted horror film.
7. The Menu – A crisp and entertaining bit of class warfare moviemaking that featured some solid performances. Not a perfect movie but compelling.
6. The Batman – Matt Reeves proves himself to be a solid captain for the good ship Caped Crusader. His unorthodox approach and storytelling are a bit of fresh air in the oversaturated superhero genre.
5. Tar – 2/3rd of a great movie. The final act falls short but Blanchett’s brilliance is undeniable.
4. Triangle of Sadness – So much more than it appears to be. A funny, but insightful and incisive social satire that pulls no punches towards anyone.
3. Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio – A deeply moving, mournful meditation on life and loss.
2. The Banshees of Inisherin – Fantastically acted story that speaks to our current time and to the burden of Irishness.
1. All Quiet on the Western Front – Astonishingly well-made film. It isn’t perfect, but it overcomes its shortcomings by brutally conveying the fact that war is hell and only demons want it.
Most Important Film of the Year
All Quiet on the Western Front – In case you haven’t heard, there’s a war going on In Ukraine. Most Americans have been so thoroughly propagandized and indoctrinated that they are chomping at the bit to get the U.S. even more entangled in this bloody war.
All Quiet on the Western Front is a powerful reminder that that idea is a very bad one. War is hell, and only demons want it…and the U.S. has nothing but demonic elites running the show.
Watching liberals, with whom I proudly marched against the Iraq War in 2003, now be so blinded by relentless propaganda, misinformation, disinformation…is both astonishing and infuriating.
These dupes, dopes and dumb asses have been thoroughly manipulated into a myopic, vicious anti-Russian mania that is breathtaking to behold.
The reality is that all these dipshits who proudly display the Ukrainian flag in their bios don’t have half a fucking clue when it comes to Russia, Ukraine and this awful war.
Most of these morons, and most of Americans, have absolutely no idea what started this war – the U.S. backed coup in 2014.
Americans think their Ukrainian flag waving is in support of “democracy”, but they’re ignorant to the fact that a democratically elected Ukrainian government was overthrown in the coup that the U.S. instigated and fueled in 2014. They also have no knowledge of the 46 ethnic Russians burned alive in the Odessa Union House – and no clue that the burning alive of Russians is particularly triggering since the Nazis did the same thing in occupied Soviet territories back in the day.
These same Americans are ignorant to the fact that the newly installed, U.S. backed, post-coup Ukrainian government proceeded to shell ethnic Russians in the Donbas, killing 14,000 men, women and children. They are also blissfully unaware that this U.S. backed Ukrainian government signed a peace accord, the Minsk Agreements, with Russia in 2014 and then intentionally violated these agreements breaking the peace. These same fools are also unaware that Ukraine, the alleged bastion of democracy, outlawed the Russian language, Russian language media, and opposition parties after the 2014 coup that toppled a democratically elected government.
Americans don’t know any of this, or they reflexively call it “Russian propaganda”, because they’ve been sold a narrative and are too stupid or too cowardly to push back against it.
How many lies about the war in Ukraine have these idiots swallowed whole? There’s the Ghost of Kiev bullshit, the Snake Island nonsense, the continuous claims of Russian massacres and war crimes – like Bucha – which are obvious pieces of unsubstantiated propaganda.
Then there’s the endless stories of massive Russian defeats and retreats, with hundreds of thousands of dead Russian soldiers…except the actual numbers are the exact opposite of what the U.S. media claims. The truth is that for every one Russian soldier killed there are ten Ukrainian soldiers killed.
Then there’s the breathless stories the U.S. media keeps telling Americans about Putin on death’s door, suffering from cancer or Parkinsons or both.
The U.S. media report Russian retreats as catastrophic failures and turn around and call Ukrainian retreats “strategic withdrawals”.
Then there’s the media deification of a two-bit twat like Zelensky, who is the new Fauci…in other words a con artist and bullshitter used to front a phony narrative.
The coverage of this war has been the most blatantly dishonest propaganda spewed by the American misinformation machine I’ve ever witnessed…which is quite an accomplishment.
Which brings us to All Quiet on the Western Front. This movie lays bare the atrocity that is war and how it is a money-making machine that devours any humanity within its reach. The problem now is that Americans are so stupid and so ill-informed and so indoctrinated, that they are yearning for the U.S. to get more involved…which will only lead to copious amounts of misery for everyone involved.
We never learn. We didn’t learn from Vietnam. We didn’t learn from Afghanistan. We didn’t learn from Iraq. And now we are sleepwalking into a ground war with a nuclear power over what it deems to be a pivotal piece of property directly on its border.
The same is true of China and Taiwan by the way, which is next up on our propaganda list. There are already establishment geniuses and flag-waving fools banging the drums of war against China. I mean, why start one major ground war when you can lose on two fronts while your empire crumbles?
The reality is that the U.S. is not the good guy in the world…and most certainly not in the war in Ukraine. That doesn’t mean the Russians are the good guys…or the bad guys…they are just the guys fighting for their existential survival in a vital part of their neighborhood. What this all means for Americans is that this is a very complex, very dangerous situation which we are much too obtuse and too narcissistic to ever fully comprehend.
The truth is that Russia is winning in Ukraine…and has been winning all along. The truth is also that the U.S. empire is flailing and falling, and the BRICS are ascendant and will be the counter balance in a multi-polar, post-U.S. empire world. We need to understand this thoroughly in order to navigate it and not end up living in a post-apocalyptic, Mad Max world.
I’m not optimistic. And after watching All Quiet on the Western Front and seeing the astonishing gullibility and brutal barbarity of mankind, you shouldn’t be either.
And thus ends my rant and the 2022 Mickey Awards, the most prestigious of all cinema awards shows.
Thanks for reading and we’ll see you at the after-party!!
FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER: @MPMActingCo
©2023
It’s that time of year again!! The Oscars are here and I think I speak for everyone on the planet when I say…nobody gives a fuck!
It is a testament to how far the film industry and art of cinema has fallen in recent years that I find myself neither excited nor angered over this year’s Oscar nominations. No, my overwhelming sentiment regarding movies in general and the Oscars in particular is numbing indifference. I just don’t care anymore.
You see, my cinephile spirit has simply been broken under the weight of our cultures repeated cinematic failures. I’m one of those foolish people who demands excellence from cinema and refuses to soften my standards in order to indulge a commitment to mediocrity. This has resulted in my being a rather brutal cinematic curmudgeon for the past three years, which have been the worst three years of my movie-watching lifetime.
Other critics have been all too eager to conform to the current times and adjust (lower) their standards. This is how we get fawning reviews of inconceivably atrocious shit like The Fabelmans and Top Gun: Maverick. Those movies are true embarrassments and it speaks to our decadent age – which is indicative of an empire in steep decay and decline, that they are held up as wondrous cinematic achievements.
To be clear, this past year was better than the previous year, but that’s sort of like being proud that you’re the tallest midget in the freak show.
What is so unnerving about the recent decline in cinema is that it was just four short years ago, in 2019, when cinema seemed to be in tremendous shape. That year we had a truly phenomenal film, Parasite, win Best Picture, beating out an array of interesting and well-made movies for the honor. Among them The Irishman, Joker, Ford v Ferrari, 1917 and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Any one of those film would be the run-away Best Picture winner this year.
But since the heights of 2019 we’ve been inundated with garbage. The low point being when Coda, an absolutely ridiculous, Hall Mark Channel level movie, won Best Picture last year.
The problem is not that bad movies win Oscars, that’s been going on time immemorial. No, the problem is that there’s no movies to get angry over for not having been recognized or honored. When Coda won last year, I just shrugged because I had no dog in the fight.
P.T. Anderson had a film, Licorice Pizza, competing against Coda, and he is one of my all-time favorite filmmakers so it would’ve been nice if he won but truthfully, Licorice Pizza wasn’t any good and I wasn’t going to pretend it was…so I didn’t care.
The same is true this year. There’s no movie that I think stands out that it would be a crime if it was overlooked.
Yes, I liked All Quiet on the Western Front and The Banshees of Inisherin, but I just liked them, not loved them. They are flawed but “enjoyable” movies, so I’m not going into Oscar night yearning for their recognition.
The ugly truth is that I am so indifferent to the Oscars this year, and have become so disenchanted with cinema, that I’m not even going to watch the ceremony, which will be a first for me in my adulthood. The reality is that I have much better things to do, sleep definitely among them, than watch a delusional industry give shitty movies awards for excellence.
That said, I will still fill out my Oscar picks and compete in my Oscar pool, which I have won for a record 34 years in a row. Will I continue my astonishing streak? Probably, but not because I have any clue who will win the awards but more because my competitors care even less than me so they have no clue.
Ok…so there’s my sad tale of disillusionment and disenchantment. Now let’s get on to my Oscar picks and put this terrible year in movies behind once and for all.
BEST PICTURE
Tar – A very flawed but fascinating character study that features the best scene of the year but also the worst third act.
The Fabelmans – An utter embarrassment of a movie. Is the cinematic equivalent of Spielberg soiling himself in public.
Everything Everywhere All at Once – A mildly interesting, pretty trite popcorn movie that has no business being nominated, nevermind the odds-on favorite.
All Quiet on the Western Front – A visually stirring anti-war epic when we need an anti-war epic most. Is the best made movie of the bunch.
Women Talking – This is a bad movie.
Triangle of Sadness – An ambitious and audacious social satire that is actually smarter than it appears at first glance.
Avatar the Way of Water – a big, blue billion-dollar behemoth that is almost instantly forgettable.
Top Gun Maverick – People’s love for this pile of poop astonishes me. It’s like people know it’s awful yet love it for its awfulness.
Elvis – An absurd piece of junk.
Banshees of Inisherin – A flawed but fascinating study of Irish masculinity.
This seems pretty set in stone…but I guess there’s a miniscule chance of an upset, which if it occurs would be All Quiet winning or maybe, maybe Tar.
Should Win: All Quiet on the Western Front/Banshees of Inisherin
Will Win: Everything Everywhere All At Once
BEST ACTOR
Austin Butler – Elvis – The kid is good as Elvis, really good. But it feels more like a lived-in imitation than a piece of acting.
Brendan Fraser – The Whale – The dirty little secret is that Fraser isn’t acting particularly well under that fat suit.
Colin Farrell – Banshees of Inisherin – Farrell has matured into a terrific actor and his work here is intricate and detailed.
Paul Mescal – Aftersun – I don’t get the hype over this kid.
Bill Nighy – Living – Nighy is great in general but I’ve not seen this movie.
This is one of the more up in the air awards of the night. A lot of people have Fraser winning but I just think there’s a ground swell for Austin Butler.
Should Win: Colin Farrell
Will Win: Austin Butler
BEST ACTRESS
Cate Blanchett – Tar – Blanchett is the best actress of her generation and absolutely crushes it in this movie.
Michelle Yeoh – EEAAO – She’s…fine.
Ana de Armas – Blonde – Starring in torture porn is tough work, but the reality is that Ana de Armas shouldn’t have been playing Marylin.
Andrea Riseborough – To Leslie – I like Andrea Riseborough but like the rest of the human race I’ve not seen this movie.
Michelle Williams – The Fabelmans – Williams is an at times pleasant actress but she is truly atrocious in The Fabelmans. This is bad. Really bad.
It seems the tide has turned against Blanchett and in favor of Yeoh. What can you do?
Should Win: Cate Blanchett
Will Win: Michelle Yeoh
SUPPORTING ACTOR
Brendan Gleeson – Banshees of Inisherin – Gleeson is an outstanding actor and he is terrific in this.
Barry Keoghan – Banshees – Keoghan is a little uneven in this role but he does bring it all together in the second best scene in the year in cinema.
Brian Tyree Henry – Causeway – This is a joke. This movie stunk and Henry wasn’t very good in it.
Judd Hirsch – The Fabelmans – A bloated cameo of dubious quality.
Ke Huy Quan – EEAAO – I never thought Quan could be as good as he is in this movie. A really remarkable performance.
Should Win: Gleeson, Keoghan, Quan
Will Win: Quan
SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Angela Bassett – Wakanda Forever – I don’t get it. This movie stinks and she is not good in it.
Hong Chau – The Whale – Another head-shaker…Chau was much better in The Menu than in this.
Kerry Condon – Banshees of Inisherin – A terrific and layered performance that perfectly captures the hell of Irish womanhood.
Jamie Lee Curtis – EEAAO – I actually really liked Curtis in this role.
Stephanie Hsu – EEAAO – I thought Hsu was ok.
It seemed like Angela Bassett was going to run away with it but the tide has turned in Jamie Lee’s favor.
Should Win: Kerry Condon
Will Win: Jamie Lee Curtis
ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Banshees of Insherin – Terrific screenplay.
EEAAO – The film’s underlying philosophy is trite but it’s a sprawling story that eventually works.
The Fabelmans – This is junk. A dreadful script makes a dreadful movie.
Tar – A great forst two acts are scuttled by a rushed and unearned third act.
Triangle of Sadness – This script is fantastic.
This is sort of interesting as The Fabelmans may win because the Academy wants to reward Spielberg for his truly shitty autobiography. That said, I still think that EEAAO wins.
Should Win: Banshees of Inisherin
Will Win: Everything Everywhere All At Once
ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
All Quiet on the Western Front – Not perfect but overall well executed.
Glass Onion – identical twins? Oh please. This script is dogshit.
Living – Haven’t seen it.
Top Gun Maverick – This is a joke.
Women Talking – Brutal.
The academy want to reward a woman and Sarah Polley fits the bill with her egregiously awful Woman Talking script.
Should Win: All Quiet on the Western Front
Will Win: Women Talking
BEST DIRECTOR
Martin McDonagh – Banshees of Inisherin – Nice to see McDonagh bounce back from the shit that was Three Billboards.
The Daniels – EEAAO – Not great but they somewhat pulled off an ambitious idea.
Steven Spielberg – The Fabelmans – This movie stinks so bad it shocked me that Spielberg released it.
Todd Field – Tar – Well directed but loses its grip in the third act.
Ruben Ostland – Triangle of Sadness – Shockingly well directed movie that in lesser hands would’ve been an absolute mess.
Should Win: Martin McDonagh
Will Win: The Daniels
BEST INTERNATIONAL FILM
All Quiet on the Western Front
Argentina, 1985
Close
EO
The Quiet Girl
Should Win: All Quiet on the Western Front
Will Win: All Quiet on the Western Front
BEST ANIMATED FEATURE FILM
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
Puss in Boots
The Sea Beast
Seeing Red
Should Win: Pinocchio
Will Win: Pinocchio – This is a terrific movie, one of the best of the year.
BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
All That Breathes
All the Beauty and the Bloodshed
Fire of Love
A House Made of Splinters
Navalny
Will Win: Navalny – Just feels like the academy will want to signal its virtue by thumbing their nose at the supposed Hitler du jour Vladimir Putin. How brave.
DOCUMENTARY SHORT
The Elephant Whisperers
Haulout
How Do You Measure a Year
The Martha Mitchell Effect
Stranger at the Gate
Will Win: Elephant Whisperers
LIVE ACTION SHORT
An irish Goodbye
Ivalu
Le pupille
Night Ride
The Red Suitcase
WILL WIN: Le pupille
ANIMATED SHORT
The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse
The Flying Sailor
Ice Merchants
My Year of Dicks
An Ostrich Told Me the World is Fake and I Think I Believe It
Will Win: The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse
ORIGINAL SCORE
All Quiet on the Western Front
Babylon
The Banshees of Inisherin
EEAAO
The Fabelmans
Will Win: All Quiet on the Western Front – The score of this film is crucial in setting the ominous and unsettling mood.
ORIGINAL SONG
Applause – Tell it Like a Woman
Hold My Hand - Top Gun Maverick
Lift Me Up - Wakanda Forever
Naatu Naatu - RRR
This is Life - EEAAO
Will Win: Naatu Naatu
PRODUCTION DESIGN
All Quiet on the Western Front
Avatar The Way of Water
Babylon
Elvis
The Fabelmans
Should Win: All Quiet on the Western Front
Will Win: Elvis – This is the type of movie that the Oscars reward.
BEST SOUND
All Quiet on the Western Front
Avatar the Way of Water
The Batman
Elvis
Top Gun Maverick
Will Win: Top Gun Maverick – This feels like the Academy throwing this fan favorite a bone.
CINEMATOGRAPHY
All Quiet on the Western Front
Bardo
Elvis
Empire of Light
Tar
Will Win: All Quiet on the Western Front – Easily the best cinematography of the year.
COSTUME DESIGN
Babylon
Wakanda Forever
Elvis
EEAAO
Mrs Harris Goes to Paris
Will Win: Elvis – There’s a chance that Wakanda Forever or Babylon win, but it seems like Elvis will do well in these types of categories.
MAKEUP & HAIRSTYLE
All Quiet on the Western Front
The Batman
Wakanda Forever
Elvis
The Whale
Will Win: Elvis – Wakanda Forever is a real possibility but again, Elvis is adored for stuff like this.
FILM EDITING
Banshees of Inisherin
Elvis
EEAAO
Tar
Top Gun Maverick
Will Win: EEAAO – I actually thought the editing (or lack thereof) was one of the worst parts of EEAAO, but what the hell do I know?
VISUAL EFFECTS
All Quiet on the Western Front
Avatar The Way of Water
The Batman
Wakanda Forever
Top Gun Maverick
Will Win: Avatar the Way of Water – This is a bone thrown to big Jim Cameron for his money printing machine.
And thus concludes my Oscar picks. God willing every Oscar winner gets slapped on stage this year. If that happens then I promise I’ll actually watch the show next year. A man can dream.
©2023
****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****
My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
My Recommendation: SKIP IT. Despite a cavalcade of top-notch talent working on this film the end result is little more than a muddled mess of a movie.
Empire of Light, written and directed by Academy Award winner Sam Mendes, attempts to tell the story of Hillary, a middle-aged woman struggling with mental illness who works at a seaside British cinema in 1980.
Empire of Light is the fourth, and thankfully final, film in what I call the Masturbatorial Manifesto Movie Quadrilogy of 2022. The other members of this awful foursome who made autobiographical, virtue signaling, ego/nostalgia driven films are Alejandro Inarritu with Bardo, James Gray with Armageddon Time and Steven Spielberg with The Fabelmans. All of these films are navel-gazing, self-serving stories about their directors past lives, social justice issues and the magic of cinema.
Of these four films, Empire of Light, which is currently streaming on HBO Max, is the most astounding, but not because it’s good…it certainly isn’t, in fact it’s downright dreadful. No, Empire of Light is astounding because it brought together a remarkable collection of talented individuals and all they could collectively produce was this really, really lousy movie.
For example, the film boasts not only Oscar winner Sam Mendes as writer/director, but also Oscar winning cinematographer Roger Deakins, as well as Oscar winning musicians Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, not to mention Oscar winning actors Olivia Colman and Colin Firth. This very impressive group combined to make a most unimpressive movie.
The problems with Empire of Light are numerous but the most egregious of them is the script by Mendes, which is all over the map. Mendes obviously wanted to make a movie about his real-life mother’s struggle with mental illness, which he did, but, like his predecessors Inarritu, Gray and Spielberg, he also wanted to cram in as much politically-correct social commentary as he could about a variety of topics, the most obvious of which in this case are sexism and racism.
Sexism and racism are perfectly fine and often remarkably compelling topics to feature in a film but in Empire of Light they feel artificially added-on and inorganic and this distracts from what could have been a very interesting character study with the sublime Olivia Colman at its center.
Instead, we get a scattered, paper-thin story about a mentally-ill white woman who is sexually exploited by her boss and who learns that racism exists in Margaret Thatcher’s Britain in 1980. How revelatory.
The racial angle in the film is so vapid and panders so aggressively as to be offensive. This racism narrative was so heavy-handed, so after-school special level unsophisticated, and so lacking in any nuance that it made me roll my eyes on numerous occasions to the point of near seizure.
Equally forced and lifeless is the love story between Hillary and her young black co-worker Stephen (Michael Ward). Ms. Colman is a marvelous actress and quite lovely but Michael Ward is a considerably younger and very handsome man and the pairing is never remotely believable nor well-explained. The two also lack chemistry and their relationship devoid of dynamism and this heightens the sense of their tryst being unbelievable, if not inconceivable.
Mendes, whose famous films include American Beauty, Road to Perdition and 1917, is a filmmaker I’ve never particularly enjoyed as I find him to be a middlebrow moviemaker masquerading as an arthouse auteur. Mendes comes from the theatre world and his movies often reflect that limitation as his scripts are too verbose and his stories too obvious, flat and literal.
On Empire of Light, Mendes gets lost in the throes of a victimhood narrative and social justice fantasy and ends up losing the vitality of what should be, but isn’t, the main thrust of the story, Hillary’s struggles.
Speaking of Hillary, Olivia Colman, who may be the best actress working right now, does excellent work in the role but is time and again undercut by the asinine script. Colman’s finest hour comes when Hillary loses grip on her mental health and dissolves into a raging madness that is visceral and combustible. But beyond that, Colman is too often stuck in an anemic narrative maze of Mendes’ making.
I’m a newcomer to Michael Ward, who plays Stephen, and found him to be a compelling and very pleasant screen presence, but he too is hamstrung by the clunky script and incessantly vapid cultural politics. Too often Stephen feels like little more than a black prop in a white woman’s journey to enlightenment on racial issues.
Colin Firth has a smaller role as the cinema’s manager Donald, and he does all the Colin Firth things you’d expect him to do, but he, like every other character in the film, never feels like a real person.
It must be said that the film is beautifully photographed, not surprising considering Roger Deakins is the cinematographer, but for all of Deakins’s coloring and camera wizardry, the film cannot be elevated.
As for Reznor and Ross’s soundtrack, it’s very reminiscent of their other stellar work but here it surprisingly underwhelms and feels a bit too derivative.
As a whole the film feels stridently antiseptic, allergic to drama, and relentlessly generic. For instance, the movie is set in the 1980’s and yet it never exploits that setting and fails to much look or feel like the 1980’s. It’s also set in a cinema and it fails to exploit that potentially dramatic setting as well as movies are never featured prominently or used effectively as a dramatic device. Truth be told the whole exercise is so devoid of any genuine place, people or purpose that it just feels very weird, dramatically disconnected and like a terrible waste of an opportunity.
Which brings us back again to Mendes’ script, which is also disconnected and disjointed to the point that it seems like nothing but a collection of random scenes and not a fully formed story.
The truth is that making a good movie, never mind a great one, is unconscionably difficult, and the fact that Oscar winning talents like Sam Mendes, Roger Deakins, Trent Reznor, Olivia Colman and Colin Firth all got together and made a piece of junk like Empire of Light, is proof of that. That Alejandro Inarritu, James Gray and Steven Spielberg all tried to make similar movies this past year and all fell flat on their faces too only further reinforces that fact.
Having seen all four of this year’s autobiographical ego/nostalgia movies, the most difficult thing to do is decide which one is the worst as they’re all truly terrible in their own special ways. Deciding which of these insipid movies is best is simply a physical and metaphysical impossibility.
In conclusion, Empire of Light is a messy, middling, misfire of a movie that you should skip entirely, just like Bardo, Armageddon Time and The Fabelmans.
Hopefully these navel-gazing, nostalgia-addicted auteurs have gotten their mindless Masturbatorial Manifesto Movies out of their systems so that we never have to see this type of shamelessly awful garbage again. These filmmakers are simply too good to waste their talents making such dull, derivative, sanctimonious, self-serving detritus as this.
Follow me on Twitter @MPMActingCo
©2023
On this spoiler-filled episode, Barry and I get our Irish up and declare our blood feud as we discuss Martin McDonagh's Academy Award Best Picture nominee The Banshees of Inisherin. Topics discussed include the joy of confidently made quality films, the glorious cast and the impressive recent rise of Colin Farrell, and the undeniable darkside of Irishness.
Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 94 - The Banshees of Inisherin
Thanks for listening!
©2023
****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!***
My Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars
My Recommendation: SKIP IT. A poorly written script and ham-handed direction are the lowlights in this movie more interested in promoting its agenda than cultivating its drama.
The past year, a most dismal one in terms of cinema (and most everything else), gifted us two films with the least tantalizing titles since Freddie Got Fingered and Breakin 2: Electric Boogaloo, with She Said and Women Talking.
Those titles conjure in the mind visions of nagging, navel-gazing shrews waxing rhapsodic about their sacred victimhood and pugilistically and pedantically pontificating about the inherent toxicity of masculinity. Not surprisingly, both films fervently live up to that expectation.
But that’s not all She Said and Women Talking have in common. Both were written, directed and star women. Both movies feature top-notch actresses. Both tell stories from a rigidly female perspective about abuse at the hands of men. Both movies are unabashed “agenda” films which emphasize ideology above artistry. And both films are Oscar-bait geared toward a very limited audience consisting of devout members of the #MeToo/neo-feminist cult who unquestioningly adore the film’s trite cultural/political ideology.
Unfortunately, what the two films also have in common is that regardless of their cultural/political messaging, they are truly abysmal cinematic works. To be fair, Women Talking is the better of the two movies, but that isn’t saying much as She Said is a cataclysmically awful movie.
Women Talking, which is written and directed by Sarah Polley and is based on the 2018 novel of the same name by Miriam Toews, tells the story of the women in an isolated Mennonite community secretly meeting to discuss the sexual abuse they’ve all endured over the years at the hands of the community’s men, and what to do about it.
The women believe their three options are to do nothing, stay and fight or leave the community en masse. They argue the pros and cons of each position and then vote. The vote ends up in a tie…so we are subjected to even more debate.
The film, which is nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards and is not yet available on a streaming service, stars Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jesse Buckley and Frances McDormand among many others, and each of them play characters that are supposed to embody various feminine archetypes in this struggle.
Rooney Mara’s Ona, is a wise waif, gentle and spiritual. Claire Foy’s Salome is a mama bear. Jessie Buckley’s Mariche is the battered realist fueled by frustration and ferocity. Frances McDormand’s Janz is the withered veteran too old and bitter to envision a better future.
All of these women are terrific actresses, and yet, none of them give even remotely decent performances or are in the least believable in this film due to the extremely sub-par script, the result of which is that you don’t care about any of these characters.
The dialogue is painfully contrived, and feels like it’s nothing but a collection of ‘look-at-me-acting’ audition speeches totally devoid of genuine intent or believable context.
Another issue is that these characters, all of whom are illiterate, are somehow able to talk with the philosophical fluency of second-year Women’s Studies majors at Bryn Mawr, which makes suspension of disbelief a monumental hurdle to overcome.
None of the characters are dramatically consistent either as they fluctuate between their beliefs like Kardashians shopping for shoes. There’s also no actual confrontation or conflagration during this important debate, just staged, rather showy but decidedly flaccid speeches followed by petulant walking away or a clamoring of voices silenced by one sole voice rising above the din. I guess this is supposed to show that women aren’t aggressive and therefore are superior to men, but all it really shows is that drama is dead with no genuine conflict.
It's also rather odd considering the film is about a group of women in a religious community, that the notions of God and religion are conspicuously absent most of the time and on the rare occasion they are mentioned are quickly brushed aside. The religious aspect of this debate among the women should be the most powerful and imposing element, but writer/director Sarah Polley, who is an atheist, imposes her notion of religion as entirely irrelevant onto the proceedings.
Director Polley is a critical darling for a variety of reasons, but her work on Women Talking exposes her as quite the cinematic charlatan. Critics fawned over her films Away from Her (2006)and Take This Waltz (2011) despite both films being second and third-rate, self-indulgent exercises. Polley’s documentary Stories We Tell (2012) is a much more interesting piece of work but it too is also saddled with a relentless self-indulgence that reduces its power.
The main criticism voiced by the few critics who dare speak against Women Talking is that it’s visually not vibrant. It’s true that Luc Montpellier’s cinematography uses a desaturated and very muted visual style some find ugly, but I thought it was beautiful in its own stark way. And I actually found this visual approach to be the most interesting thing about the film because it was a coherent choice to reflect the setting and sub-text of the drama.
That said, this movie pushes the boundaries of reality with a plot point that includes one of the longest “golden hours” (which means the time after the sun sets but the sky is still bright enough to shoot a movie) in living memory.
As for Polley’s script and her direction, it is egregiously theatrical in style and is so lacking in subtlety and so heavy-handed that it ultimately feels like nothing more than a cheap agenda movie that only cares about its politics and not its drama.
A major example of this is that there is a trans character inserted into the film that is completely superfluous and does nothing but distract from the drama and narrative. This character, a female to male trans person, is so traumatized by the sexual abuse she suffers that she becomes not only a man named Melvin, but mute to boot. Although that sounds like a joke, I’m not kidding. What makes it even funnier than a trans man who is mute by choice is that Melvin is only mute with adults, but speaks freely with kids…and then with adults when necessary. Look, if you’re gonna have a mute trans man in a movie, for drama’s sake you got to commit to the muteness full-time, not have them be half-mute or mute by convenience. The preceding is a sentence I never in my wildest dreams imagined I’d ever write…welcome to post-modern America.
Another example of the film’s skewed storytelling and perspective is that there is one single, solitary man in the whole movie, and his name is August and he is played by Ben Whishaw. August is such a weepy, whiny, weak-kneed eunuch as to be astounding if not embarrassing. August isn’t just anti-toxic-masculinity, he is allergic to all masculinity to the point of absurdist comedy. That August’s presence is just another piece of political theatre meant to satiate the man-hating in the audience by showing them that even anti-toxic men are repulsive, is obvious.
The irony of this man-hating is that Melvin, the trans-man, is not considered to be a “real-man” and is lumped in with the women by all the women, which no doubt will infuriate some of the more strident of the politically-correct, JK Rowling-hating, realism-averse viewers…such is the peril of incessant box-checking when making a movie.
What is so grating is that the endless, mindless, feminist pablum spewed in this movie isn’t insightful, it isn’t revelatory and it isn’t dramatically compelling. It is contrived, manufactured, phony cultural posing that might have been topical and/or interesting in 1992…maybe.
This type of sub-par, propagandistic liberal/feminist agenda movie is no different than those atrocious bullshit conservative agenda movies like the ridiculous Kirk Cameron “Jesus is Real!” pieces of garbage, or 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, or the shitty Chris Kyle hagiography American Sniper.
These are all bad movies and just because you like their politics doesn’t make them good. Of course, critics and the Academy Awards agree with the politics of Women Talking so they turn a blind eye to the poor writing, directing and acting and mute their criticism in order to signal their virtue and tribal affiliation. I am under no such obligation. I made my bones savaging shitty movies from across the political spectrum, and Women Talking is a shitty movie that thinks it’s brave and courageous for placing a well-worn flag on top of a secured hill in friendly territory in the forever culture war.
The bottom line is that Women Talking, or as I prefer to call it The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Mennonite Sisterhood or The Mennonite Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants, is a dramatically dull, dreadfully amateurish movie that feels like every suburban high school stage play defiantly put on by the school’s drama-nerd girl group. It’s the cinematic equivalent of a shallow, adolescent, emotionalist, feminist rant from a fragile fool who thinks they’re a courageous hero because they wear an “I’m with Her” oversized t-shirt with Lululemon leggings.
The truth is that Women Talking should’ve taken trans Melvin’s approach and just stopped talking because it had absolutely nothing interesting or original to say.
Follow me on Twitter @MPMActingCo
©2023
On this episode, Barry and I put on see-through nightgowns and dance poorly in the glow of a campfire and car headlights as we break down Steven Spielberg's Oscar nominated, autobiographical movie The Fabelmans. Topics discussed include the perils of autobiography, the Oscars and the abysmal year in movies, and Spielberg's shocking cinematic decline.
Looking California and Feeling Minnesota - Episode 93: The Fabelmans
Thanks for listening!
©2023
****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****
My Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars
My Recommendation: SKIP IT. A bloated and bland mess of a movie that is firmly in the bottom tier of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, the sequel to the billion-dollar blockbuster Marvel movie Black Panther (2018), premiered in theatres back on November 11th, and is now available on Disney Plus, and I just watched it and have some thoughts.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe has been in steep decline since the glory days of late last decade when Infinity War (2018) and Endgame (2019) both made over two billion dollars in back-to-back years.
Since that creative and financial high point Marvel has stumbled and bumbled by churning out a plethora of abysmal movies, like Black Widow, Eternals and Shang-Chi, that featured second and third-rate characters, all of which underperformed at the box office.
Even the most financially successful movie of this era (I’m not counting the Spider-Man movies which are Sony/Marvel movies and not Disney/Marvel movies), Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which made over $900 million at the box office, was a pretty awful affair.
In reading the tea leaves it seemed to me that the key film in judging the overall creative and financial health of the MCU going forward would be Taika Waititi’s Thor: Love and Thunder which hit theatres this past Summer. Thor: Love and Thunder was the sequel to Waititi’s glorious Thor: Ragnarok, one of the very best Marvel movies ever made. If any movie was going to stop the bleeding at Marvel it would be Love and Thunder. And then I saw Love and Thunder.
Love and Thunder did not stop the bleeding. It was just as awful as the rest of the post-Endgame Disney/Marvel movies, and it massively underperformed at the box office, bringing in just $761 million on a bloated $250 million budget. Not good.
After Love and Thunder failed, the next big Marvel bellwether, if not its backstop, was the highly anticipated Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Unfortunately for Marvel, I can report that Wakanda Forever didn’t stop the bleeding either.
Wakanda Forever, directed and co-written by the same man who made the original, Ryan Coogler, did do better than Love and Thunder, but it didn’t do much better as it made $842 million on a $250 million budget. Compared to the original Black Panther, which made $1.38 billion and garnered an Oscar nomination for Best Picture, Wakanda Forever massively under-performed financially, to the tune of nearly half a billion less than the original.
An easy explanation for that precipitous box office drop-off is that Black Panther starred Chadwick Boseman – who tragically died of cancer in 2020. The great hurdle for Wakanda Forever to overcome was the loss of Boseman who was slated to star in the film. After his death Ryan Coogler and Disney shifted gears and, instead of recasting another actor as Black Panther, came up with a story not just in Boseman’s absence but which is centered around his absence.
Chadwick Boseman certainly seemed like a very nice guy but I never found him to be very charismatic or compelling on-screen, even in the original Black Panther, my review of which I think stands up quite well five years later. While Black Panther with Boseman felt charisma-challenged to me, Wakanda Forever without Boseman is like a black hole of anti-charisma that sucks all light and life into its darkness leaving behind a dull, dismal and distinctly lifeless-void.
The convoluted plot of Wakanda Forever revolves around the death of King T’Challa (Boseman) and how it effects his sister Shuri (Letitia Wright), his mother Ramonda (Angela Bassett), and the people of Wakanda.
On top of King T’Challa’s death, Wakanda and its royal family are confronted by the superhero/supervillain Namor, a flying Aquaman type guy who is king of the Talokan people, who live deep in the sea as a result of European colonialism in Latin America. Sigh.
Through an incoherent course of events Namor looks to ally with Wakanda to create an alliance of anti-oppressors, but in turn he demands that a brilliant, young, African-American girl from Chicago who is studying at MIT, Riri Williams, be killed first because she developed a special machine, the only one of its kind, that can detect vibranium – the stuff that makes Wakanda superior and which was just discovered deep in the ocean near Talokan. Shuri and Queen Ramonda balk at Namor’s Riri killing proposal and try to protect her, which puts Wakanda at war with Talokan.
The result of all of this is foolishness is that Wakanda Forever is a bloated, bland and boring two-hours and forty minutes long. It’s action and fight sequences are uncomfortably amateurish. It’s CGI is second, if not third-rate. Its cinematography is stilted and flat. And its script and narrative are embarrassing and incorrigibly trite. Besides that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?
In keeping with the tedious and relentless Disney/Marvel agenda, race and gender swapping is rampant in Wakanda Forever. Namor in the Marvel comics is a white/Atlantean/Asian guy, but in the movie, he has been remade – or race-swapped, into an indigenous Central American god who loathes the European colonizers who killed his culture and family. Yawn.
Then there’s Riri Williams, who is basically a black girl Iron Man with her own Iron Man suit to boot. And to no one’s surprise, the new Black Panther is a black woman too, as Shuri dons the new Black Panther outfit. You go girls!!
The recent spate of Marvel films and tv shows have all centered women and women of color, and all the white male characters have been replaced with either women, minorities or women minorities…and frankly, they have all suffered for it.
Thankfully there is a white guy in Wakanda Forever, he’s the flaccid, cuckold CIA agent (Martin Freeman) who gets duped by his much smarter and more powerful ex-wife (Julia Louis-Dreyfuss). Down with the patriarchy!!
All of this agenda driven nonsense wouldn’t concern me in the least, it really wouldn’t, if the movie was at least well-made and/or mildly entertaining. It is neither. It is, at best, a middling, lower-level Marvel movie. It’s better than Eternals, but that’s not exactly a high bar.
As for the performances, they are for the most part underwhelming.
Angela Bassett has been nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for her work as grief-stricken mother Queen Ramonda. Bassett is…fine. She’s always a very compelling screen presence and I’m sure she’ll win the Oscar and I’ll be happy for her because she seems like a good person, but I’m not so sure she deserves it for this role.
Letitia Wright as Shuri on the other hand is an absolute mystery to me. I thought she was terrible in Black Panther and I find her equally terrible in this. First off, she’s playing a teenager/young woman and yet she looks like she’s in her mid-fifties. Secondly, she is so devoid of magnetism she might as well be invisible.
Dominique Thorne is another mystery. Her work as Riri Williams is so shallow and predictable as to be caricature. Her acting is of the tired style that has become so common nowadays – where preening and posing passes for artistry. Hopefully Thorne will grow out of pretending and mugging for the camera and actually start acting.
Tenoch Huerta Mejia plays Namor and is completely lifeless. For a guy fueled by revenge he’s got nothing going on behind his eyes. It would also be a good idea if you’re going to play a superhero/villain to maybe hit the gym for a bit, especially if you’re going to be shirtless for the entirety of the movie. Tough to suspend disbelief when some doughy son of a bitch is trying to pass himself off as some super strong being. Hell, if doughy dudes could be superheroes…I’d be the fucking Hulk, Wolverine and Thor combined. Meija is so doughy they would’ve been better off casting the Stay-Puff Marshmallow Man in the role of Namor, but that would never have been allowed because that fat sack of shit is too white.
On the bright side in regards to Wakanda Forever, I thought showing only Chadwick Boseman as Black Panther in the Marvel Title Sequence – which usually features all the superheroes, was a classy tribute. On the other hand, the film’s use of Boseman’s death to promote itself and generate ticket sales feels exploitative to me. I understand that it’s a tough tightrope to walk…I’m just uncomfortable with that type of thing.
Another issue that Wakanda Forever brings up for me is in regards to writer/director Ryan Coogler. It seems pretty obvious at this point that Coogler, despite his promising start with Fruitvale Station, is simply not a good filmmaker. I’ll be interested to see what he does now and if he moves away from these franchise films – something he’d be wise to do. But I wonder if the protective bubble of franchise films is protecting him and deflecting criticism of his ability. Regardless, he’s not done anything good since Fruitvale Station.
The bottom line regarding Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is that it is just another in the long line of recent Marvel movies to be utterly and entirely forgettable. There really is no need whatsoever for you waste your time and see this movie, even for “free” on Disney Plus.
At this point, after the failures of Love and Thunder and Wakanda Forever, the Marvel Cinematic Universe feels mortally wounded and I’m having a difficult time imaging a scenario where it rebounds from the dual plagues of audience Marvel fatigue and Disney/Marvel’s creative bankruptcy.
In terms of the future, Marvel seems to be going all in on the woke agenda stuff, which, love it or loathe it, has proven over and over again to be toxic to large swaths of the viewing public, most notably the most rabid and die-hard of Marvel fans.
The biggest problem though is that regardless of any political and cultural messages ingrained into Marvel movies, if the movies themselves and the characters they feature are not high quality and compelling, then they will quickly become entirely irrelevant in the blink of an eye. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is stark proof of that.
Follow me on Twitter @MPMActingCo
©2023
****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****
My Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars
My Recommendation: SKIP IT. A terrible, self-indulgent, truly awful film that features poor performances, an abysmal script, and dreadful direction.
This past year has been a boon for self-indulgent film directors and a bane for movie audiences, as auteurs have shat out a bevy of sub-par autobiographical movies about their childhoods and the magic of cinema.
First there was Alejandro G. Inarritu’s atrocious Bardo, followed quickly by James Gray’s artistically anemic Armageddon Time, and then there was Sam Mendes’ universally panned Empire of Light (which, to be fair, is less blatantly autobiographical), and finally there is Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans.
I’ve seen all of the above except for Empire of Light. What has been alarming is that each of these films I have seen has gotten progressively worse than the one I saw before it. Armageddon Time is shlocky, politically correct garbage, but Bardo is simply an astonishing cinematic atrocity. Bardo is supremely awful, but it’s at least visually and narratively ambitious if not audacious, which is in stark contrast to Spielberg’s newest flatulent film The Fabelmans.
The Fabelmans describes itself as a coming-of-age drama, co-written by Spielberg and Tony Kushner, that chronicles aspiring filmmaker Sam Fabelman (a stand in for Spielberg), a precocious young man in love with moviemaking, as he navigates his childhood and teen years growing up with a scientific father, Burt, and an artistic mother, Mitzi.
The Fabelmans is easily the worst of the Spielberg’s late-stage movies, which is quite an accomplishment considering the garbage he’s churned out over the last twenty years or so. This film is, quite frankly, so bad as to be an utter embarrassment. I watched a screener of the movie with my wife and we laughed out loud numerous times AT the movie, but never with it. The movie is such an amateurish, after-school special level production that we literally stopped it on multiple occasions and turned to each other and asked “what the fuck?”
At one point in the film, aspiring director Sam Fabelman is watching the footage of a movie he’s shot with his Boy Scout troop, and he shakes his head and mutters to himself in disappointment, “Fake. Totally fake.” Too bad Spielberg didn’t have the same discerning eye at 76 that he did when he was 14 as The Fabelmans rings so egregiously phony that I actually pondered “how could Spielberg watch this and agree to release it?”
There are so many scenes and sequences in this movie that are simply mindboggling for how appallingly awful they are. Just when you think the worst scene is behind you a new cinematic and dramatic atrocity steps in to take its place.
There’s the dinner scene which is staged and acted like the worst high school play you’ve ever had the displeasure to endure. Then there’s the masturbatorial scenes where audiences of Boy Scouts and family are overly amazed to the point of ecstasy at Sam Fabelman’s “brilliant” movies that aren’t brilliant. And then there’s the ultimate cringe worthy scene where Mitzi Fabelman does her best Corky St. Clair “Penny for your Thoughts” from Waiting for Guffman imitation as she “dances” in a see-through nightgown in front of a campfire and car headlights while on a camping trip.
Then there’s the scene where Sam edits the footage of this camping trip and discovers a family “secret”, which is shot like it’s from a bad pre-teen show on Disney Channel. Then there’s the scene where family friend Benny gives a camera to Sam as a going away present, which is staged with all the grace of monkeys having a shit fight at the zoo. Then there’s the scenes of gay, neo-Nazi, Schindler’s List wannabe, anti-Semites who bully Sam in high school which all feel like they’re from the worst episode of Happy Days you’ve ever seen. And on and on and on.
There is literally only one scene in the entire film which crackles with any life or dynamism, and that’s the last scene of the movie. This exuberant scene only goes to remind how badly mismanaged the dismal and dull preceding two-hours and thirty-minutes truly were.
Spielberg has always been addled by his addiction to a saccharine sentimentality, and The Fabelmans is no exception, except here the sentimentality is, to reference another Christopher Guest movie, turned all the way up to 11. Unfortunately, this sentimentality has blinded Spielberg to the stark lack of craftsmanship across the board in this movie.
John Williams score and Janusz Kaminski’s cinematography are banal, underwhelming and shockingly second-rate. Tony Kushner’s (and Spielberg’s) script is so inelegant and so lacking in cohesiveness and humanity, as to be cinematic malpractice.
Speaking of cinematic malpractice, there’s a scene in the film where Judd Hirsch, who compellingly plays a sort of crazy-genius grand-uncle, is spewing contrived pieces of wisdom to young Sammy Fabelman, and yet throughout the scene you can see his mic pack bulging through his wife beater t-shirt. This is a $40 million movie, not some $1,200 student film…how the hell does that level of shoddiness make it to the screen?
The performances are just as abominable as the rest of the work on the film.
Michelle Williams is an actress I like, but her Mitzi, featuring a haircut from hell, is one of the most hollow, disingenuous and grating pieces of acting I’ve witnessed in recent years. Everything is so mannered and so contrived that it feels like watching a toddler ham it up in grandma’s clothes to entertain the family after rowdy Thanksgiving dinner.
Paul Dano is an actor I greatly admire, but his performance in The Fabelmans is so vacuous and devoid of any inner life or intention as to be remarkable. Dano is dead-eyed as he mechanically utters his lines like he’s auditioning for a job at either a wax museum or a mausoleum.
And just when you thought the acting couldn’t get any worse…Seth Rogan shows up. Good lord. Seth Rogan is to acting what a dirty diaper is to ambience.
On top of all the bad acting, every character is extremely unlikable (the same is true in Armageddon Time and Bardo…why are director’s families so repulsive?). Early in the film, Mitzi, for some incoherent reason, drives the family towards a tornado and all I could do was hope that they would all be thrown miles away and end up a red stain on the dashboard. Once that didn’t happen, I was left praying for a pack of coyotes to come along and maul them all in their sleep, or a gas leak or a septic tank explosion, to take them out and put me out of my misery.
There’s also a very strange and frankly very ugly strain of anti-Christian sentiment that rears its head about two thirds of the way through the film. I’m not someone who ever cares about this sort of thing but Spielberg goes out of his way to demean and belittle a Christian character in the movie, and explicitly mock her religion. The treatment of this girl and her Christianity is nasty and mean-spirited and totally out of place with the tone of the rest of the film. It’s the equivalent of what the gay Neo-Nazi anti-Semites do to the Sam Fabelman character when they call him ‘Bagelman’ and demand he apologize for killing Christ. In other words, it isn’t clever or insightful or amusing, it’s just vicious and small-minded. That Spielberg, who is allegedly a man of faith (he’s made quite a show of his connection to Judaism over the years), would demean, disparage and denigrate the lone character of a differing faith in his film and gleefully embrace this repellent but culturally acceptable prejudice, speaks volumes about his lack of character.
The Fabelmans has been a major box office flop, as it has only made $25 million against a $40 million budget. But Spielberg didn’t make this movie to make money, he made it to win an Oscar….and he might just succeed.
It's a testament to Spielberg’s iron grip on Hollywood that this movie, this dreadful, no-good, really bad movie, is nominated for Best Picture and Best Director, as well as Best Actress (Michelle Williams) and Best Supporting Actor (Judd Hirsch).
Spielberg’s power over Hollywood and the lack of intellectual integrity among critics, also accounts for why the movie is adored by most critics (92% critical score Rotten Tomatoes). But don’t be fooled by the vacuous opinions of these sycophants and philistines.
The reality is that the once great Emperor Spielberg, who gave us cinematic marvels like Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T., Jurassic Park, Schindler’s List and Catch Me If You Can, has no clothes.
The naked truth for all to see but few will admit, is that The Fabelmans is an embarrassing and humiliating failure of a film. To claim otherwise is either dishonest, delusional, or both.
©2023
