Heretic and Longlegs: Two Horror Reviews for the Price of One!!

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

Heretic – 2.75 out of 5 stars. SEE IT/SKIP IT.

Longlegs – 2 out of 5 stars. SKIP IT.

Heretic, written and directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, is a horror film that tells the tale of two Mormon missionaries, Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton, who attempt to convert Mr. Reed, a man who is not what he seems.

The film, which stars Hugh Grant as Mr. Reed, opened in the U.S. on November 8th 2024 and is available to stream on MAX, where it is currently the number one ranked movie.

Heretic was a success at the box office, raking in $58 million on a $10 million budget, and it garnered some positive buzz and even some awards consideration, with Grant receiving Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations.

I missed Heretic in the theatre but recently checked it out on MAX.

Heretic is one of those tantalizing movies that has a stellar premise, a wonderful set-up, terrific performances and a gripping first half, but that loses its way in its second half/final act and ultimately suffers greatly because of it. In this way Heretic reminds me Barbarian (2022), another horror film from a few years ago that was phenomenal for two acts and then stumbled badly in its final act.

The first half of Heretic really is remarkable as it deftly presents its characters and subtly creates tension. The film is at its best when it is essentially a philosophical and theological debate between the Mormon missionaries and Mr. Reed. The interplay between the three of them and Reed’s intellectual chess playing is extraordinarily compelling to watch.

Hugh Grant’s performance in the first half is outstanding as he chews the scenery and spits out dialogue with aplomb.

Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East as Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton respectively, also give top notch and very layered performances that in lesser hands would have been easily botched.

The dramatic interplay between Grant, Thatcher and East is a glorious stew for the first half of the film…but then a shift occurs (to avoid spoilers I won’t reveal it) and the script loses its way, and the film loses a great deal of its tension, and it is no longer as captivating a cat and mouse game.

Unfortunately, the film spins out of control in its final third to an alarming degree and it diminishes all that came before it. Gone is the intrigue, the tension, the intelligence, and in its place are some rather tired horror tropes – well executed but tropes nonetheless.

Again, Heretic’s fumbled final act reminded me a great deal of Barbarian because Barbarian made similar mistakes, such as expanding its story and setting unnecessarily which egregiously dissipated dramatic tension.

That said, there is no doubt that writer/directors Beck and Woods are skilled filmmakers as this movie is well-made, and are interesting thinkers…they just need to be more concise and more contained storytellers in order to make the most of their moviemaking opportunities.

Another horror film from last year that I just checked out was Longlegs, which hit theatres on July 12th, 2024 and is now available to stream on Hulu.

Longlegs was a big hit, making $126 million on a $10 million budget. It was well-marketed, and had very positive word of mouth, with many calling it the “scariest movie ever made!”

I missed Longlegs in the theatre and just watched it on Hulu and I can testify that Longlegs is most definitely NOT the scariest movie ever made. It is definitely creepy, and has some scary moments, but over-all it isn’t that scary and it also isn’t very good.

Longlegs is an exercise in creating mood, and it excels at that, but what it has in mood it lacks in story and character.

The basic premise of Longlegs is that it follows the travails of Lee Harker, and FBI agent in the 1990s assigned to the mysterious serial killer case Longlegs. Harker has the gift of clairvoyance and uses it in her FBI work, and so it seems she is a good choice to track down this killer.

As the story progresses, we learn more about Harker, and about Longlegs, and the more we learn the less it makes sense and the less we care about any of it.

The film is undoubtedly trying to pay homage to The Silence of the Lambs and create a newer more esoteric version of it, and it does a respectable job of capturing the weird and creepy essence of that film, but it lacks a coherent and compelling narrative to drive the story forward, and once again, it loses the plot in its second half.

The performances in Longlegs are all just a bit underwhelming as well. Maika Monroe does a decent enough job as Agent Harker, but shenever quite completely takes the role into her possession and instead seems just a bit too contained.

Nicholas Cage as Longlegs is certainly unnerving, but Nicholas Cage not as Longlegs is unnerving too. Cage never truly inhabits this sicko character but rather play acts at being a sicko…which has been the story of Cage’s career from the get go.

Blair Underwood and Alicia Witt have two supporting roles and neither of them feel fully fleshed out or adequately performed.

I left Longlegs with a certain sense of admiration for the film’s ambitions, and a certain level of irritation because it only succeeded in creating a marketing movement around itself rather than a great horror movie.

The reality is that Longlegs is a creepy vibes movie with some distinctly disturbing sequences that are nightmare fuel, but it is not a movie I would recommend because it never coalesces into a thoroughly successful horror venture. It ultimately falls flat in its fear-mongering because it can’t find a way to fulfill its promise and adequately finish.

Out of Heretic and Longlegs I would definitely choose Heretic even with its flaws, because it is vastly superior to Longlegs when at its best. Longlegs strikes me as the type of movie that pre-teens will absolutely freak out watching at a slumber party and keep themselves up all night trying to avoid nightmares…but unless you fit that demographic – I don’t recommend it.

If you’re a horror aficionado, then you’ll watch both of these movies…so my opinion is meaningless. But if you’re a regular person who only occasionally wanders into the horror genre, then I’d say the best option out of these two is Heretic.

©2025

September 5 and Saturday Night: Two Reviews for the Price of One!!

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

September 5: 4 out of 5 stars – SEE IT.

Saturday Night: 1.5 out of 5 stars – SKIP IT.

Last year two films came out that dealt with the behind-the-scenes drama of major events in television history, and I think it useful to review them both together…a two for one if you will.

September 5 dramatized ABC’s coverage of the kidnapping and killing of the Israeli Olympic team at the 1972 Munich Olympics, and Saturday Night chronicles the drama surrounding the premiere of Saturday Night Live in 1975.

Contrasting and comparing these films is useful because they both highlight the possibilities and the pitfalls of this very specific genre – the tv movie, or more accurately – the movie about tv.

Let’s start with September 5, which is directed by Tim Fehlbaum and written by Fehlbaum and Moritz Binder. The film was released on December 13th, 2024 and is currently streaming on Paramount+. It stars Peter Sarsgaard, as Roone Arledge – president of ABC Sports, Ben Chaplin as Marvin Bader – head of operations at ABC Sports, and John Magaro as Geoffrey Mason – head of ABC control room in Munich.

September 5 is an extraordinarily effective and affecting movie that is able to build and maintain dramatic tension, and believability, despite audiences already knowing how the story ends.

Director Fehlbaum, along with cinematographer Markus Forderer, are able to create a vivid reality in the claustrophobic confines of the ABC Sports control room in Munich as globe changing events are taking place a mere hundred yards or so from their location.

Fehlbaum never gives in to the temptation to break from the control room perspective and give a glimpse into the hostage situation or elsewhere. Everything we as viewers see is what Arledge, Bader and Magaro are seeing in the control room.

Fehlbaum also makes a very wise choice in his direction of actors, namely he keeps the performance style minimalist – there are no big dramatic speeches, no emoting, just realism of regular people doing their important jobs under extreme pressure….pros being pros. This approach makes it feel like you’re watching things actually unfold and not a movie, which heightens the drama and the emotional impact of the tragic events ABC is covering.

Another key to the film’s success is Hans Weibrich’s editing, which is subtle but tight, and keeps the film at a compelling pace and a captivating run time of 93 minutes.

September 5 is a real gem of a film – masterfully crafted and directed towards adults, the type so rarely made nowadays, and I highly recommend it…so much so that I think you should subscribe or get a free week to Paramount + just to watch it.

The drama covered in September 5 of ABC’s coverage of the massacre of the 1972 Israeli Olympic team is important because the decisions made in that control room still resonate in our culture today. For example, the decision to use the word “terrorist” to describe the Black September militant group who committed to kidnapping and killing – as opposed to say “commando” or “militant” or the just as loaded “freedom fighter”. This choice set up the paradigm under which the Middle East in general, and Israel in particular, would be covered by the media for the next fifty plus years, and continues to this day.

Which brings us to another television event that still resonates fifty years later, and that is the birth of Saturday Night Live, which is dramatized in Jason Reitman’s film Saturday Night.

Saturday Night hit theatres on September 27, 2024, and is now available to stream on Netflix. The film, which is directed and co-written by Jason Reitman, tells the tale of the wild and whacky events surrounding Saturday Night Live’s premiere on October 11, 1975.

The film follows Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) as he scrambles to put out a multitude of fires – which include out of control creative egos, corporate pressure and union resistance, not to mention the culture clash between old school television people and the young rebels Michaels has gathered for his SNL team.

There are lots of very familiar faces here…like Chevy Chase, John Belushi, Dan Akroyd, Gilda Radner, Laraine Newman, Garrett Morris, Jane Curtin, Andy Kaufman, Billy Crystal, Jim Henson, George Carlin and Billy Preston. For the most part, the actors playing these icons are, not surprisingly, less than a shadow of the stars they are portraying.

The one exception is Cory Michael Smith, who is quite good as Chevy Chase. Others, like Matt Wood as John Belushi, and Nicholas Braun as both Andy Kaufman and Jim Henson, are brutally bad.

Gabriel LaBelle, who plays Lorne Michael and who previously played Steven Spielberg in The Fabelmans – quite the power players, is much too young for his role here and lacks the charisma and charm to carry this movie for its bloated 109-minute run time.

Another problem with Saturday Night is that it tries to build tension through music and pacing, but it all falls very flat. It has no life to it, no energy, just a bunch of watered-down Aaron Sorkin-esque walk and talks that are a tsunami of sound and fury signifying nothing.

The actions of the characters in the film run counter to the drama building because none of them seem particularly frantic about going live in less than an hour. The most moronic of sequences involves Lorne Michaels leaving the studio with like ten minutes to go before airtime and walking to the skating rink at 30 Rock, where he has a talk with Gilda Radner and John Belushi. What makes this scene even dumber is that mere moments before Michaels gets there, Gilda Radner gives a melancholy speech to Belushi about how she feels like she’s in the future looking back at this momentous occasion…which of course is supposed to be moving since both Radner and Belushi died much too young…but it just feels contrived and manipulative and takes you out of the story even more than everything else.

Another gigantic issue with the film is that Reitner decides to make a pseudo-comedy about very funny people…which if you’ve ever spent even a millisecond with a comedian you’d know they are the most miserable and existentially burdened humans on the planet. Comedians are funny when they perform, and diabolically dramatic and depressed when they don’t…and Reitman never captures the suffocating gravity of that truth.

Instead, the Saturday Night just flits and flirts from one flaccid bit to another where something supposedly momentous occurs and then something else and then there’s this other thing and then the show starts and everything works out. Yawn.

I am sure it is no coincidence that this film came out the same year that SNL had its 50th anniversary, but the movie fails in every respect to make anyone care about that first show, or to elucidate why it mattered and still does today.

Saturday Night is exactly what you shouldn’t do when making a movie about the behind the scenes of a television event, and September 5 is exactly what you should when making a movie about the behind the scenes of a television event. Where September 5 is precise, meticulous, and contained, Saturday Night is vague, frivolous and dramatically scattered.

I watched the two films on back-to-back nights and it made me really appreciate the craftsmanship and artistry Tim Fehlbaum put into September 5, and the lack of detail and skill of Jason Reitman gave to Saturday Night.

The bottom line is this…September 5 is one of the best films of last year and you should definitely check it out…and Saturday Night is instantly forgettable and not worth a moment of your time.

©2025

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 133 - September 5

On this episode, Barry and I thoroughly investigate the 2024 hidden gem September 5, which dramatizes ABC's coverage of the 1972 attack on the Israeli Olympic team. Topics discussed include the restraint and focus of the film, the fantastic filmmaking and pondering how a movie this good got overlooked. We also spend some time discussing Gene Hackman and his legendary career.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 133 - September 5

Thanks for listening!

2025©

11th Annual Slip-Me-A-Mickey Awards - 2024 Edition

11th ANNUAL 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

Blitz –A truly idiotic story, poorly executed…what happened to Steve McQueen? Once upon a time he was one of my very favorite directors and now he’s embarrassing himself, and frankly…me, with this amateur hour, woke-fueled garbage. Yuck. This movie is so atrocious it actually made me root for the Nazis to win World War II. Shame on you Steve McQueen…shame on you.

Trap – M. Night Shyamalan jumped the shark about twenty years ago and now he’s just flailing around in a kiddie pool filled with his own excrement. This is another idiotic story that is egregiously executed. M. Night needs to say goodnight and go away forever.

Megalopolis – Francis Ford Coppola is one of the greatest directors in film history, and Megalopolis is one of the biggest misfires in modern cinematic history…make it make sense. This movie is painfully awful…and so often borders on unwatchable it feels like it should be classified as a snuff film.

Juror #2 – Clint Eastwood is 2,000 years old and is still churning out shoddy and shitty movies like a man half his age. I’m glad Clint is alive and still working…I just wish he’d a make an even halfway decent movie that didn’t make me laugh out loud at how bad it is.

Nightbitch – This will shock you…but this is another astonishingly idiotic movie that is so poorly executed you’d be more entertained watching your neighbor’s dog shit on your lawn than watching this piece of shit. Everything about it is so stupid it makes my colon twinge.

And the loser is…NIGHTBITCH – This movie is so grating, so stupid, so self-serving, delusional and retarded it should force-watched, Clockwork Orange style, by terrorists in CIA prison camps as a form of torture. I also believe every single person associated with this film, or who liked this film, should be imprisoned in said prison camps for life.

MOST OVERRATED FILM OF THE YEAR

Emilia Perez – Jesus Fucking Christ this movie musical with the worst music in the world is unconscionably awful and so are the people who think it’s good, or even watchable. Thirteen Oscar nomination for this turd? Good Lord.

A Complete Unknown – This movie is the poster child for mundanity and is so painfully paint by numbers it feels like it never really existed. It is like a made-up movie they talk about on “Entourage” or something. Bob Dylan seems like he’s an original and interesting guy…but somehow they made a movie about him that is allergic to being interesting and is never once original.

And the loser is…EMILIA PEREZ – At least A Complete Unknown had good music in it…unlike Emilia Perez. Emilia Perez is the most virtue signally, moronic, dramatically flaccid, cinematically inept movie and yet it got thirteen Oscar nominations, which boggles the mind. How anyone could think this movie is even passable, nevermind good, is beyond me.

WORST PERFORMANCE OF THE YEAR

Adam Driver – Megalopolis – This doughy doofus is a turd with feet who was maddeningly miscast as a genius architect/city planner in Megalopolis, which is pretty funny because to look at him you’d think he has Down’s Syndrome or is at the very least Down’s Syndrome adjacent. Can this talentless fuck stick just go away already…please?

Saleka Night – Trap – Nepo baby embarrasses self in daddy’s movie – a story as old as cinema itself. This talentless lady makes Sophia Coppola in Godfather III look like Meryl Streep. Yikes.

Scoot McNairy – Nightbitch – God this guy absolutely sucks in Nightbitch…but on the bright side he also totally sucked in A Complete Unknown…so I guess it’s official…Scoot McNairy sucks. By the way…if this guy’s name was Doug McNairy instead of Scoot…he’d never get hired. Hollywood is fucking retarded.

And the loser is…SALEKA NIGHT – Trap: Saleka Night is so awful in Trap that she manages to make nepo babies look even worse than they did before – which is quite an accomplishment. This young lady needs to go to her luxurious room in her father’s expansive mansion and think about how awful she is at acting!!

SPECIAL ACHIEVEMENT IN CINEMATIC MALPRACTICE

Marielle Heller - Nightbitch director:  Ms. Heller is such an awful hack of a director, and always has been, that she should not only not be allowed to direct movies for the rest of her life, she should also not even be allowed watch movies for the rest of her life. Anyone this bad at their job needs to be punished in the extreme. Ms. Heller’s Nightbitch is supposed to be a comedy horror movie and yet it isn’t comedic or horrifying…but it is laughably bad and horrible…which I guess is as good as Ms. Heller can do.

POS ALL STARS

JLo and Ben Affleck – Ok JLo and Ben Affleck…please just fuck right the fuck off you fucking fucks. I don’t care about your fatal attraction to one another, I don’t care about your love or marriages, and I don’t care about your now dwindling careers. I don’t care about either of you…at all. So if you want to get back to together…that’s fine…JUST DON’T MAKE A PUBLIC SPECTACLE OF YOURSELVES!!

In the most predictable turn of events since gay sexual assaulter Kevin Spacey came dancing out of the closet with jazz hands flying, after the newlyweds for the second time JLo and Ben Affleck did annoyingly narcissistic movie projects together like JLo’s vomit inducing This is Me…Now: A Love Story or her vanity documentary The Greatest Love Story Never Told, and did Ben Affleck’s unfunny and annoying Dunkin Donuts commercials featuring JLO, they woke up one day and realized they are just as awful together as they are individually, and that the other one is just as awful as they are and want to get away from them like we all want to get away from them both.

I now beg both JLo and Ben…please…stay divorced and stay away from each other. Oh…and please stop doing fucking Dunkin Donuts commercials or shitty movies with whatever unfortunate asshole is your next spouse….it won’t end well…trust me…and no one wants to see or hear about it.

Oh…and while I never want to hear about Ben Affleck’s private life that he makes oh-so-public and then complains about people focusing on his private life made public, ever again…JLo…can you please do me a gigantic favor? Can you please disappear off the face of the earth you talentless whore? You are an atrocious “singer”, an abysmal actress and an all-around waste of human flesh…SO PLEASE GO AWAY!!

And also…JLo and Ben…congrats on being Piece of Shit All-Stars!!!

POS HALL OF FAME

Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs aka Diddy – Speaking of JLo…her former “boyfriend” Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs, aka Diddy, is in deep doo doo for being a sexual predator and piece of shit during his nearly thirty-year run as a music impresario, rapper and all-around annoying public figure.

Diddy has always been a poseur who play acted at being tough…and apparently straight. He has always reeked of being on the down-low, and it was pretty obvious to anyone with eyes to see that he was, like so many in the rap game, at least a part-time flaming homosexual and pederast if not pedophile.

Diddy’s persona as a brilliant business man was always as believable as his claim to being a talented music maker…in other words – not at all.

Diddy’s music is an embarrassment, and his business acumen is, like his sexuality and his popularity, a charade. Diddy is an intelligence asset and con-man, much like Jeffrey Epstein, who was put in place by a powerful group to serve a purpose…and he did that very well.

His music (and the music of his company Bad Boy), was meant to sow discord and depravity…and with backing by media and moneyed interests, it succeeded.

But apparently Diddy has run afoul of his paymasters…and now he sists in jail waiting for a cavalcade of charges against him to be adjudicated.

My guess is that Diddy may walk scot-free because he has the goods on a lot of powerful people which will serve as a get out of jail free card…or…he might get shivved in jail and take his secrets to the grave.

The important thing is that Diddy’s guest list from his famous parties, and the videos made at those parties, will only see the light of day in order to serve as a distraction or obfuscation from the Epstein lists and videos. Those Epstein lists and videos will never, ever see the light of day…because the people who have them are the same people who put Diddy in a position of power in the music industry, and are the same nefarious elites who run our government, media, Hollywood, and Wall Street.

Diddy is little more than a distraction from Epstein, and he will serve that purpose going forward and will be discarded or deceased before he ever tells his many tales…and he has many tales to tell.

The bottom line is that Diddy and his ilk, rich and powerful people who prey upon the young and the desperate, are the biggest pieces of shit in the universe…and they all belong in hell…but for now we congratulate Sean Combs – aka Puff Daddy/Diddy to the Piece of Shit Hall of Fame…you’ve certainly earned it you fucking piece of shit!!

And thus ends the fourth annual Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® Awards!!! To the winners/losers…don't take it personally…and God knows I hope I don't see you again next year!! To you dear reader…thanks for tuning in and we'll see you again next year!!

©2025

11th Annual Mickey©®™ Awards - 2024 Edition

11th ANNUAL MICKEY©®™ AWARDS

The ultimate awards show is upon us!!!

The Mickeys©™® are superior to every other award imaginable…be it the Oscar, the Emmy, the Tony, the Grammy or even the Nobel. The Mickey©®™ is the mountaintop of not just artistic but human achievement, which is why they always take place AFTER the Oscars!

This year has been a rather sub-par one for cinema but there are still a multitude of films eligible for a Mickey©™® award.

Actors, actresses, writers, cinematographers and directors are all sweating and squirming right now in anticipation of the Mickey©™® nominations and winners. Remember, even a coveted Mickey©™® nomination is a career and life changing event. 

Before we get to what everyone is here for…a quick rundown of the rules and regulations of The Mickeys©™®…The Mickeys©™® are selected by me…I am judge, jury and executioner. The only films eligible are films I have actually seen, be it in the theatre, via screener, cable, 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!

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

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

Ladies and gentlemen…welcome to the 11th annual Mickey©™® Awards!!!

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

Jarin Blaschke – Nosferatu: Blaschke beautifully photographs this film and gives it a desaturated look with a stunning contrast between light and shadow and magnificent framing. A true cinematic master work that is glorious for cinephiles to behold.

Lol Crawley - The Brutalist: In many ways this is a minimalist piece of cinematography which does a lot with a little, and always in service to the story. From the opening tracking sequence on the boat to the insightful slow pan in the granite quarry, Crawley shows he can tell a story with visuals alone, and do it with aplomb.

And the Mickey©®™ goes to…JARIN BLASCHKE – NOSFERATU: An exquisitely shot film that goes to the top of the vampire cinematic catalogue.

BEST EDITING

Sean Baker – Anora: Sean Baker wrote, directed, produced and edited Anora and he did all of those jobs exceedingly well. The editing on this film is pretty miraculous as it keeps the proper pace and tone throughout and never fails to make every scene crackle with dramatic energy.

Hansjorg Weibrich - September 5: This movie could’ve felt dull and claustrophobic but thanks to Weibrich it is perfectly paced and wondrously put together and squeezes every ounce of drama out of its story and setting.

And the Mickey©®™ goes to…HANSJORG WEIBRICH - SEPTEMBER 5: In lesser cinematic hands, this movie is entirely forgettable but Weibrich’s edit turns this into a tight and taut dramatic thriller.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Bill Skarsgard – Nosferatu: Do what you’re good at…and Skarsgard is good at being creepy, and he turns the creep up to 11 as a horny vampire in Nosferatu. An original and truly horrifying take on the age-old vampire character.

Jesse Plemons – Kinds of Kindness/Civil War: Plemons is nominated for two performances…the first for his scene stealing work in Civil War as a “real American”, which was a stunning piece of acting, and for his performances in the anthology film Kinds of Kindness. Both films highlight Plemons’ impressive versatility and subdued volatility. Plemons is one of the best actors working today.

Yuri Barosov – Anora: From the get go Yuri Barosov jumps off the screen in Anora and commands audience attention. His performance is quiet and subtle yet shows a level of charisma that is startling. One hopes he gets a ton more work from now on.

Karren Karagulian – Anora: Karagulian is fantastic as the handler who must try and control and contain a wild Russian rich kid in Anora. Karagulian’s energy, intensity, subtlety, comedic timing and commitment are crucial to the success of Anora, and shows him to be a very skilled and talented actor.

And the Mickey©®™ goes to…KARREN KARAGULIAN – ANORA: Karagulian’s funny and ferocious performance in Anora is the hidden lynchpin to the entire movie…and now he has a Mickey©®™ for his efforts!!

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Margaret Qualley – The Substance: Qualley is an outstanding actress and she dives in headfirst into her role as the “ingenue” in The Substance. She lights up the screen with a dastardly, doe-eyed and sometimes demonic presence that is beguiling.

Monica Barbaro – A Complete Unknown: Who the hell is Monica Barbaro and where has she been hiding? Barbaro nearly steals the entire movie from under Bob Dylan’s prominent nose despite the fact that her character is criminally underwritten. A commanding and compelling performance all the way around.

Lady Gaga – Joker: Folie a Deux - I am not a fan of Lady Gaga…but I have to admit that she really is terrific in Joker: Folie a Deux, as she fits right in with the vibe of the film and gives it an allure and edge that is mesmerizing.

And the Mickey©®™ goes to…MARGARET QUALLEY – THE SUBSTANCE: Qualley brings a life and tempestuousness to The Substance that invigorates the film and elevates the material…and now she has a Mickey©®™!!

THE GENRE CATEGORIES MICKEY©®™ WINNERS ARE…

BEST HORROR FILM

Nosferatu – Everybody knows the Nosferatu/Dracula story…and yet Robert Eggers films his version so exquisitely, and his cast deliver such glorious performances, that this movie becomes an instant classic.

BEST ACTION FILM

Furiosa – The chase scenes in this movie are, not surprisingly considering George Miller is at the helm, astonishing. Visually vibrant, this movie contains some of the best and most breathtaking stunt sequences in years.

BEST COMEDY FILM

Anora – This is technically a dark dramedy but it still qualifies for me as a comedy. This movie is wickedly funny, powerfully poignant, and painfully insightful.

BEST ANIMATED FILM

Flow – The animation in Flow isn’t the best you’ll ever see but the depth and magnitude of the story are as profound as you’ll find.

BEST ACTOR

Joaquin Phoenix – Joker: Folie a Deux - Once again Phoenix disappears into Arthur Fleck and his alter ego Joker and gives a twisted and terrific performance as the most hated person and character in the world. Phoenix is still the best and boldest actor in the world.

Colman Domingo - Sing Sing: Domingo is absolutely astonishing as a dramatically driven prison inmate. This performance is both combustible and contained and is a gift to the art of acting. I had no idea Domingo could be this good…but he is…he really is.

Ralph Fiennes – Conclave: Fiennes, as always, gives a meticulous and mesmerizing performance as a Cardinal navigating Vatican intrigue. A joy to watch this master craftsman at work.

And the Mickey©®™ goes to…COLMAN DOMINGO – SING SING: Domingo’s exquisite performance in this movie is so intimate and intricate it is difficult to adequately describe. It is such a poignant, profound and powerful piece of acting work that it has elevated Colman Domingo to the absolute heights of artistic achievement with a Mickey©®™ award!!

BEST ACTRESS

Mikey Madison – Anora: Madison so thoroughly embodied a certain New York archetype that it felt like I was watching a home movie. A daring yet subtle performance that showed Madison has some serious chops when given the right material and direction.

Demi Moore – The Substance: I’ve never really thought much of Demi Moore as an actress, but in The Substance, she gives a phenomenal performance that speaks to the reality of the actress’ experience in the shithole that is Hollywood.

Emma Stone – Kinds of Kindness: Emma Stone’s overlooked performance in the arthouse anthology Kinds of Kindness is funny, intense and disturbing, and reveals an artistic depth uncommon in today’s cinema.

Lily Rose Depp - Nosferatu: Depp has been much maligned in her career, but she went balls to the wall as the love interest of a vampire in Nosferatu. Depp gives as committed and courageous a performance imaginable in a role that in lesser hands would have been ridiculous to the point of disaster.

And the Mickey©®™ goes to…LILY ROSE DEPP – NOSFERATU: Depp’s performance is such a tour de force it elicited giggles from moviegoers uncomfortable with such levels of commitment…that is an indictment of our imbecilic audiences and an endorsement of Depp’s artistic integrity and commitment. No one is laughing now that Lily Rose Depp has a Mickey©®™!!

BEST ENSEMBLE

Nosferatu: Lily Rose Depp, Nicholas Hoult, Aaron Taylor Johnson, Emma Corrin, Willemn Dafoe and of course Bill Skarsgard, give fantastic performances in this gothic drama.

Anora: Mikey Madison, M<ark Eydelshteyn, Yura Borisov and Karren Karagulian are all so good in this movie that it boggles the mind. A terrific ensemble with absolutely zero weak links.

Kinds of Kindness: Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe and Margaret Qualley crush their roles in this crazy anthology film that features acting brilliance across the board.

The Substance: Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley and Dennis Quad chew scenery and bring this movie to life with aplomb. All three give very brave and courageous performances for different reasons.

And the Mickey©®™ goes to…ANORA: Top to bottom this cast just doesn’t miss. A truly remarkable collective performance.

BEST DIRECTOR

Sean Baker – Anora: Baker brought a unique and original vibrancy, humor and drama to this twisted, modern-day screwball dramedy that made it deliriously compelling and captivating.

Robert Eggers - Nosferatu: Eggers is an exquisite filmmaker obsessed with detail, and his attention to cinematic detail is what makes Nosferatu so absorbing despite the fact that we all know the story.

Brady Corbet – The Brutalist: Corbet’s ambition and audacity are off the charts and he is reaching for the stars with The Brutalist…and he almost gets there.

Todd Phillips – Joker: Folie a Deux: I know, I know, I know, everybody hated this movie but me…but Todd Phillips gave a big budget middle finger to his critics and supporters alike with Joker 2, and he did it by making the most insane arthouse franchise film in history…and for that he gets a much-deserved Mickey©®™ nomination. Hey everybody…look at the big balls on Todd.

Tim Fehlbaum - September 5: Fehlbaum takes a story we already know in a contained setting and through sheer skill and talent fills it with exquisite drama. A truly remarkable achievement by Fehlbaum to avoid all the traps laid out before him and to make this film work as well as it did.

And the Mickey©®™ goes to…ROBERT EGGERS – NOSFERATU: Eggers is such a singular talent that he turned an age old story into a cinematically breathtaking, and darkly heartbreaking, blockbuster. Eggers is well-respected as a craftsman, and now he has the ultimate in prestige and respect in the form of The Mickey©®™ award!!

 BEST PITCURE

10. Furiosa – George Miller’s wild ride is bumpy at times but has a visual brilliance to it that can be breathtaking.

9. The Substance – This movie is as insightful about the female experience in Hollywood as any you’ll see. It loses its way in the third act but the first two acts are riveting.

8. Late Night with the Devil – This overlooked gem of a horror film is really original and very effective in conveying its creepiness and its relevant ideology.

7. The Brutalist – The Brutalist is ambitious and audacious, but unfortunately never quite lives up to its spectacular first half.

6. Kinds of Kindness – Yorgos Lanthimos is an acquired taste…and I’ve acquired it. This wild and weird anthology that always leaves you guessing is shockingly compelling from start to finish, and features some spectacular performances.

5. Sing Sing – This prison drama perfectly manages its mostly amateur cast and the underlying menace of life behind bars. A deeply moving and vibrant film that stays with you.

4. September 5 – Impeccably directed film that maximizes the drama without ever crossing over into melodrama. An undiscovered gem of a film.

3. Joker: Folie a Deux – This movie is a punchline…but the jokes is on all of us as director Todd Phillips once again is ahead of the curve in regards to the collective unconscious. Magnificent and malicious movie madness.

2. Nosferatu – A glorious exercise in cinematic mastery combined with electric performances makes Nosferatu a must watch.

And the Mickey©®™ for BEST PICTURE goes to…ANORA: Nosferatu won Best Director and Best Actress, but Anora comes from behind for the Mickey©®™ victory. Funny, insightful and frankly profound, Anora grabs you by the balls and never lets go…even after it ends. A masterful piece of moviemaking by Sean Baker and a fantastic cast, make Anora this year’s Mickey©®™ winner~!!

MOST IMPORTANT FILM OF THE YEAR

JOKER: FOLIE A DEUX and ANORA:

These two films, one much maligned (Joker) and the other much celebrated (Anora - Oscar and Mickey©®™ winner) are seemingly much too different to have anything in common.

One deals with a psychopathic comic book character singing show tunes as his demonic alter-ego, and the other with a strong-willed stripper striving for financial success.

But there is one thing that binds them both…namely that both films take place in worlds completely devoid of love.

Joker’s Gotham City and Anora’s New York are hellscapes because it is impossible for love to exist there, or for the inhabitants there to truly contemplate love and its absence. They aren’t sure what is missing but they know something huge and vital is…and its absence is destroying them….they try and fill it with money, sex, power…but nothing fills the void.

The reason these films are so important is because they reflect a growing darkness in our own world…where love in its many forms is being suffocated by a soulless culture hellbent on destroying love, beauty and truth.

It would be easy to think that love in the world of Anora is transactional…except it isn’t transactional, it is non-existent. Love is not the thing being bought and sold in Anora…power is…and dignity too. Love has nothing to do with any of it.

Joker’s Gotham is so devoid of love that it is hostile to human life like a planet with no oxygen and extreme temperatures. Arthur Fleck is so starved for love that he wastes away in this loveless landscape…but Joker…the devil…the king of hatred, cruelty and viciousness, thrives in this loveless world.

Love is not something that most people think about in regards to the big ideas of the world or geopolitics and all the rest…but a lack of love tells us a lot about what’s happening and what will happen.

For instance, the distinct absence of any love, or the ability to love, in these movies speaks to the American Empire’s devolution into capitalistic self-destruction. At this stage of the American Empire’s collapse, love is often transactional, a commodity to bought or sold in order to gain money, power or both.

In our cancerous culture, where religion is corrupt, wealth is worshipped, government self-serving, and pornography and gambling mainstream, vices have are now virtues and beauty and truth sullied and maligned. In this state of existance, the spiral downward for the American Empire isn’t just inevitable, it is accelerating at break neck speed, for with love goes humanity, decency and dignity.

Anora, like many Americans, had to detach from her moral and ethical foundation (and her humanity, decency and dignity) given to her by tradition (in her case her Russian ancestry), in order to pursue money by selling her soul and body one piece at a time…intentionally ignoring the fact that neither of these are limitless resources.

Arthur Fleck is the delicate and damaged among us…he is a fish out of water in this hateful world…the love he needs to survive isn’t kept from him because he is repulsive, he can’t get it or give it because it is non-existent in the world. He gasps and flounders about desperate for the life sustaining substance to fill his gills…but it’s not there for him…or anyone else…and its absence will undoubtedly kill him, sooner rather than later.

We are all either Anora or Arthur Fleck, and the evil ruling elite of oligarchs and aristocrats that lord over us don’t just not care about us, they actively hate us and want to exploit us and see us suffer. If you doubt this simply open eyes and look around at our country…homelessness, drug addiction, suicide, violent crime, broken homes and families, children abused, unhealthy food, malignant pharma, casino banks, justice-free justice system…and all the rest.

We will, if we haven’t already, like Anora and Arthur, be forced to degrade and demean ourselves at the altar of the ruling elites power and wealth, just to survive, or be crushed under the weight of the loveless world they force us to inhabit.

This is not a democrat or republican issue. This is not as conservative or liberal issue. This is an existential issue. And this issue isn’t just a fight for our literal survival, it is also a fight for our souls.

First, they crush your spirit, and then they suck out your soul. Arthur Fleck had his spirit crushed and then his soul taken by the darkness. Anora had her spirit crushed and sold most of her soul, but realized at the very last moment that she had one last chance at redemption and wholeness.

We are all either Arthur or Anora right now, and either the devil within us is going to take over or we’ll grasp on with all our might at the last vestiges of light in our dark world and save our souls from the malicious ghouls in charge who want to take them.

Don’t let them take them. Don’t let them win. Love one another. Use that love as a shield as you go to battle to destroy the ones who rule and despise you.

This is the only way.

On that oh-so-pleasant note…thus ends the 11th annual Mickey©®™ awards!!

Thanks for reading and all your support through the years…and stay tuned for the Slip-Me-A-Mickey©®™ awards coming soon!

©2025

Oscar's Round Up - The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

OSCARS ROUND UP

Well…that was tough.

At the 97th Academy Awards some good things happened…namely that Anora, a movie I like and respect, won a bevy of awards – most notably Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actress. And some bad things happened…like I had to sit through an abysmal Oscar telecast to see Anora win.

The Oscar telecast, as is its wont, ran an excruciating four hours and was chock full of lifeless musical numbers and impotent gags and jokes as it was hosted by feverishly flaccid unfunnyman Conan O’Brien.

The Oscars’ consistent futility through the years has earned it a well-deserved thrashing on the pop culture whipping post…and last night’s telecast was a target rich environment for those foolish enough to watch, but smart enough to discern the dearth of quality entertainment.

The Oscar telecast now only seems to exists for the sole purpose of being the target of much deserved ridicule from the viewing public. The highlight of my night watching was exchanging cutting barbs with friends over the inanity and banality of the entire enterprise.

Conan O’Brien is an acquired taste…and I can proudly declare that, just like herpes, syphilis and AIDS, I have never acquired it. Conan is, first and foremost, a writer…a bad writer but a writer nonetheless. He is not a performer. And it shows.

Conan’s go-to shtick is to be faux edgy and mix it with a narcissistic self-deprecation that reeks of arrogance. He relied heavily on that formula last night and it fell flat.

Conan’s opening gag, a play on the movie The Substance, where he crawls out of and back into Demi Moore’s body, was remarkable for how poorly constructed it was. The bit could have been funny as the premise was good, but Conan bungled it and prolonged it unnecessarily, thus defeating its purpose. As Shakespeare has taught us…”brevity is the soul of wit”, and I do declare - Conan O’Brien has no soul.

The comedy only got worse from there. The lowest point in terms of comedy was when Conan did a bit with Adam Sandler. The bit was a bad idea because it wasn’t funny, it was poorly executed and most of all…Conan and Adam Sandler are two of the most unfunny human beings to have ever been considered comedians. The two of them doing a bit together is like a black hole of humor…no laughs can escape the gargantuan sucking of it all.

Speaking of sucking…there was the Dune sandworm bit…which became a recurring bit. The less spoken about this the better.

The show also featured some of the worst musical performances in recent memory.

The show opened with Ariana Grande giving us as mediocre a rendition of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” imaginable. This was followed by Cynthia Erivo, who I have been told is the greatest singer alive, belting out a decidedly pitchy rendition of “Home” from The Wiz and “Defying Gravity” from Wicked…both were exceedingly underwhelming.

Then there was the bizarre tribute to James Bond, which for some reason featured three songs, all of them sung so poorly it felt like some community audition show on cable access.

Some person named Lisa sang “Live and Let Die”, and did so very poorly. She was followed by a stunningly awful performance by Doja Cat of “Diamonds are Forever”. The highlight of Doja Cat’s performance was that she was singing notably off-key…you go girl!! And finally, someone named Raye sang an amateur version of “Skyfall” and it felt like a bad karaoke night had broken out at the Dolby theatre.

Then of course there was a tribute to Quincy Jones where Queen Latifah, who isn’t a singer but rather a rapper – and has the weak, tepid voice to prove it, attempted to sing “Ease on Down the Road” from The Wiz. The entire tribute, from Oprah and Whoopi Goldberg’s intro to Queen Latifah’s brutal belching out of the tune, were an embarrassment to the greatness that was Quincy Jones.

As for the awards…it was Anora’s night and writer/director/editor/producer Sean Baker won four awards himself and gave pleasant and heartfelt speeches each time at the podium. Others were less dignified.

Adrien Brody won his second Best Actor Oscar and automatically became the worst actor in history to have won two Best Actor Oscars.

Brody’s speech was rambling, self-serving and overlong…sort of like his acting career. That he was being cheered on and coached by his girlfriend Georgina Chapman…who has a real-eye for talent…she used to be married to Harvey Weinstein, says a lot about Brody, Hollywood and The Brutalist, and none of it good. It was also a nice touch that he called out “anti-Semitism” at the same Oscars where the Best Documentary winner No Other Land, about Israel’s apartheid and ethnic cleansing against Palestinians, can’t get distribution in the United States…just more proof that Hollywood, of all places, is “anti-Semitic”. What a fucking doofus. Yo Adrien, can’t wait to see you being awful in a second-rate movie or tv show in the near future!!

There were also a bevy of pronouncements about “first ever” status among winners. So, the guy who won Best Costume Design was the “first Black man” to ever win the award. Yawn. No one gives a shit or should give a shit.

In the pre-show red carpet coverage Julianne Hough gave a land acknowledgement about how the Oscars were taking place on the indigenous land of various tribes. These tribes, like all native tribes, have been fucked over a billion times by the federal, state, city and local governments here in the U.S.

That said, land acknowledgements irritate the shit out of me because they are solely designed to signal virtue, which is a repulsive form of moral preening and narcissism.

The bottom line on this issue is this…if it means so much to you quit making empty gestures like land acknowledgements and just give the fucking land back to the native tribes. And shut the fuck up.

As for the fashion…once again there were some major mistakes that stars made that always baffle me.

Little Timmy Chalamet dressed in an all-yellow suit that looked like it could have been made of denim and that made him look like he was a background dancer in a Big Bird stage show or Curious George’s handler. Timmy is 29 years old…but this outfit made him look like he was 12…not a good look Timmy.

Zoe Saldana, winner of Best Supporting Actress, wore an egregiously designed dress that made her look like a cheap lamp in a thrift shop. She’s a beautiful woman but goodness gracious she looked ridiculous.

There were a bevy of “performers”…like Doja Cat, who was dressed like a cat, and Miley Cyrus, who was dressed like a Belgian hooker on Halloween, who showed off their tattoos. I have to say visible tattoos on a woman look extraordinarily trashy. It also didn’t help that Miley shaved her eyebrows for some reason…and she doesn’t have the face for no eyebrows.

The biggest news about the Oscars, and what my readers have been dying to find out…is whether I won my Oscar pool for the 30th year in a row. The answer is…yes…of course I did. But to be fair I had a very bad night, going a paltry 16-23 in my picks.

The good news though is that the film I liked the most out of the nominees, Anora, won Best Pic, Best Director, best Editing and Best Actress.

Speaking of Best Actress, the biggest surprise of the night was Anora’s Mikey Madison beating odds-on favorite Demi Moore for the gold. I was shocked when it happened and happy for Mikey Madison, but it was impossible to not feel bad for Demi Moore, who, by all accounts, is a decent human being who has really fought hard to survive in this nasty, nasty business.

Oh…and one last thing…in an attempt to end on a positive note. I thought the funniest bit of the night was Ben Stiller giving out the Production Design Oscar on a set that failed to work in lifting him from below the stage, to stage level. It was a clever bit and was impeccably executed…kudos to Ben Stiller.

Too bad Conan O’Brien wasn’t as clever or funny as that bit.

Alright ladies and gents…that’s my Oscar round up. Stay tuned to this website in the coming days as the biggest awards show of all time…The Mickeys®©™ will be announced as will the Slip-Me-A-Mickey®©™ Awards!!!

So hydrate and buckle up everybody because the party has just begun!!

©2025

97th Academy Awards: 2024 Oscar Predictions Post

2024 OSCARS PREDICTIONS

The 97th Academy Awards are upon us and anyone with half a brain in their head and any semblance of a life doesn’t even remotely give a flying fuck.

Unfortunately, I do not meet the previously stated requirements…so here we are at my Oscar predictions post.

As long-time readers know I am the proud owner of the longest Oscar predictions winning streak in history…and even more remarkably, this is not just the longest winning streak in Oscar history, but the longest winning streak of any kind in any competition….EVER!

What’s it like to be the greatest Oscar predictor of all time? Thanks for asking…the reality is that it’s a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing because being great at anything is a gift from God. It’s a curse because…well it’s the dumbest fucking thing in the world to be great at.

And truth be told…and this stays just between us…I really have no idea what I’m doing. Of course, that works to my benefit because the members of the Academy who vote on the Oscars have no idea what they’re doing either, so I guess that’s why I succeed in reading their diseased minds.

Every year the trade papers in Hollywood publish interviews with anonymous Academy members in the hopes of deciphering who will win the awards. These interviews are extraordinary because they always reveal Academy members as being the biggest dopes, dupes and dipshits on the planet.

It's nice to fantasize that Academy members are dedicated professionals who take their craft, their art, cinema and the film community seriously…and then you read these interviews and realize these people are lazy and entitled pieces of shit with the worst taste imaginable.

My favorite part is that these people get to see all the nominated movies for free…in their home…and they still don’t watch them, or they watch just fifteen minutes of them.

Then there’s the mindlessly political pricks who won’t vote for anything that doesn’t have the “correct”, and most obvious, politics. Yawn. This explains a great deal about how the Oscars work and why we get so many atrocious movies not just getting nominated, but winning big awards.

The truth is that the Oscars are nothing more than a popularity contest for the adult high school known as Hollywood. The expansion of the Academy membership in recent years in order to be more diverse and inclusive, has only heightened that sentiment.

Regardless of how ridiculous some members of the Academy are, and how diminished the Oscars have become…I still watch the movies and watch the Oscar telecast. Although if I’m being honest…there’s a very good chance that I will bail pretty early on the telecast because I’m on the East Coast and I’m an early riser. Missing the Oscars would’ve been inconceivable a few years ago…but not now. I am now indifferent to the Oscars and very protective of my precious sleep.

As for my Oscar predictions this year, I have to be honest…I have almost no idea how this year’s awards will play out. It’s been a strange year at the movies, and unfortunately not a particularly good one, so picking winners is a fool’s errand. But as you all know…I am nothing if not a fool.

So…on to my picks!!

BEST PICTURE

Anora

The Brutalist

A Complete Unknown

Conclave

Dune: Part Two

Emilia Perez

I’m Still Here

Nickel Boys

The Substance

Wicked

This is a rather underwhelming collection of films, only one of which, Anora, did I think was very good. Does that mean Anora will win? You’re guess is as good as mine. If Anora doesn’t win, then Conclave will…or at least that seems to be how the Academy is shaking out. There is a miniscule chance that A Complete Unknown sneaks in out of nowhere…but I wouldn’t bet on it. If Emilia Perez or Wicked win then we have officially entered the End Times.

WILL WIN: Anora

SHOULD WIN: Anora

 BEST DIRECTOR

Sean Baker - Anora

Brady Corbet – The Brutalist

James Mangold – A Complete Unknown

Jacques Audiard – Emilia Perez

Coralie Fargeat – The Substance

Ok…this is an interesting category. Baker won the Director’s Guild award, which should give him the leg up here…but don’t be shocked if Brady Corbet or dark horse James Mangold sneak in and steal it.

WILL WIN: Sean Baker - Anora

SHOULD WIN: Sean Baker

BEST ACTOR

Adrien Brody – The Brutalist

Timothee Chalamet – A Complete Unknown

Colman Domingo – Sing Sing

Ralph Fiennes - Conclave

Sebastian Stan – The Apprentice

Lots of hub-bub about Timothee Chalamet and his win at the SAG Awards last weekend…but Oscar voting was over so his speech and such will have no sway. This is really a two-man race between Chalamet and Brody, but if they split votes there could be a dark horse winner in Ralph Fiennes. My guess is that two-time Holocaust survivor Adrian Brody pulls it off (this is a great Nikki Glaser joke).

WILL WIN: Adrian Brody – The Brutalist

SHOULD WIN: Colman Domingo – Sing Sing

BEST ACTRESS

Cynthia Erivo – Wicked

Karla Sofia Gascon – Emilia Perez

Mikey Madison – Anora

Demi Moore – The Substance

Fernanda Torres – I’m Still Here

A three-woman race between the big favorite Demi Moore, the ingenue Mikey Madison and the international, dark horse candidate Fernanda Torres.

I think Demi Moore wins it because it’s a great “comeback” story and makes Academy members feel good about themselves for some reason. Personally, I think Moore is good in the film and gives a “brave” performance, I just think Mikey Madison’s performance is much better.

WILL WIN: Demi Moore – The Substance

SHOULD WIN: Mikey Madison - Anora

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Monica Barbaro – A Complete Unknown

Ariana Grande – Wicked

Felicity Jones – The Brutalist

Isabella Rossellini – Conclave

Zoe Saldana – Emilia Perez

Zoe Saldana is the big favorite…but if there’s an upset it will come from Isabella Rossellini…and maybe, maybe, maybe…from Monica Barbaro.

WILL WIN: Zoe Saldana

SHOULD WIN: Monica Barbaro

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

 Yura Borisov – Anora

Kieran Culkin – A Real Pain

Edward Norton – A Complete Unknown

Guy Pearce – The Brutalist

Jeremy Strong – The Apprentice

I was not a fan of A Real Pain and not a fan of Kieran Culkin’s performance, but this shit is set in stone.

WILL WIN: Kieran Culkin – A Real Pain

SHOULD WIN: Yura Borisov - Anora

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Anora – Sean Baker

The Brutalist – Brady Corbet

A Real Pain – Jesse Eisenberg

September 5 –

The Substance – Coralie Fargeat

This is a fascinating category…if Sean Baker wins this…there’s a real chance he could win four Oscars in one night (Picture, Director, Screenplay and Editing), which would be incredible…so incredible I don’t think it will happen. I think the Academy spreads the love and rewards one of their own Jesse Eisenberg with the Oscar here.

WILL WIN: Jesse Eisenberg – A Real Pain

SHOULD WIN: Sean Baker - Anora

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

A Complete Unknown

Conclave

Emilia Perez

Nickel Boys

Sing Sing

Conclave is the frontrunner and presumptive winner…but if it doesn’t win then we might be in for a wild night.

WILL WIN: Conclave

SHOULD WIN: Conclave…I guess. I liked Sing Sing a lot but the script isn’t elite.

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE

Flow

Inside Out 2

Memoir of a Snail

Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl

The Wild Robot

A fascinating category…The Wild Robot is in the lead but I actually think Flow is going to win it thanks to the international contingent in the Academy.

WILL WIN: Flow

SHOULD WIN: Flow

BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE

Emilia Perez

Flow

The Girl with the Needle

I’m Still here

The Seed of the Sacred Fig

Emilia Perez had this wrapped up a few months ago and then the Gascon scandal hit and…well…not so good for Emilia Perez after that. I now think the vociferous Brazilian contingent drags I’m Still Here over the finish line.

WILL WIN: I’m Still Here

SHOULD WIN: Flow – I just really liked that movie.

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

Black Box Diaries

No Other Land

Porcelain War

Soundtrack to a Coup

Sugarcane

This has the potential to be the funniest category of the night. The Oscars are notoriously political when it comes to documentaries, so I think the Ukrainian war documentary Porcelain War will win because the simps in the Academy fall for this type of shit. The funniest outcome would be for the Palestinian documentary No Other Land to win because the presenter for this award is Gal Gadot…actress and former member of the Israeli Defense Forces. Watching Gadot have to give this award to Palestinian activists would be hysterically delicious …but it won’t happen for the same reason No Other Land has no distribution in the U.S. – because the people who run Hollywood (and our government) are Zionists or, at a minimum, Zionist adjacent.

WILL WIN: Porcelain War

SHOULD WIN: No Other Land

BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT

A Lien

Anuja

I’m Not a Robot

The Last Ranger

The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent

I have no idea…

WILL WIN: A Lien

SHOULD WIN: No clue

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT

Death by Numbers

I am Ready, Warden

Incident

Instruments of a Beating Heart

The Only Girl in the Orchestra

I’m just picking based on the subject matter…which is exactly how the Academy members do it!

WILL WIN: I am Ready, Warden

SHOULD WIN: No idea

BEST ANIMATED SHORT FILM

Beautiful Men

In the Shadow of the Cypress

Magic Candles

Wander to Wonder

Yuck!

I’ve not seen any of these so I’m stabbing in the dark here.

WILL WIN: Magic Candles

SHOULD WIN: You’re guess is as good as mine.

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE

The Brutalist

Conclave

Emilia Perez

Wicked

The Wild Robot

Interesting category that could be a harbinger of bigger things to come for some movies. If Wicked wins, then it might have a good run in a bunch of categories. Same with The Brutalist and Conclave.

WILL WIN:  The Brutalist

SHOULD WIN:  The Brutalist

BEST ORIGINAL SONG

El Mal – Emilia Perez

The Journey – The Six Triple Eight

Like a Bird – Sing Sing

Mi Camino – Emilia Perez

Never Too late – Elton John

I think all of these songs are awful….but what do I know?

WILL WIN: El Mal – Emilia Perez

SHOULD WIN: None of them

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN

The Brutalist

Conclave

Dune: Part Two

Nosferatu

Wicked

Another interesting toss up category. I feel like Wicked could get some below the line love and these seems like a category it could win. That said, The Brutalist could start a big run here.

WILL WIN: Wicked

SHOULD WIN: Nosferatu

BEST SOUND

A Complete Unknown

Dune: Part Two

Emilia Perez

Wicked

The Wild Robot

I just want to say that I think it’s really stupid that a few years ago the Academy combined the Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing categories into one. Disrespectful and dumb.

WILL WIN: A Complete Unknown

SHOULD WIN:  A Complete Unknown

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

The Brutalist

Dune: Part Two

Emilia Perez

Maria

Nosferatu

I think Nosferatu should definitely win this award going away but unfortunately won’t. I think that The Brutalist gets the gold.

WILL WIN: The Brutalist

SHOULD WIN: Nosferatu

BEST COSTUME DESIGN

A Complete Unknown

Conclave

Gladiator II

Nosferatu

Wicked

I think Conclave and Nosferatu are head and shoulders above everything else in this category…which of course means they won’t win.

WILL WIN: Wicked

SHOULD WIN:  Nosferatu/Conclave

BEST FILM EDITING

Anora

The Brutalist

Conclave

Emilia Perez

Wicked

This category is a great indicator of how the night will go. Writer/director Sean baker also edited Anora…so if he wins then expect that film to do very well. On the other hand, there is a chance they give him an award here and then feel like that’s all he gets and spread the love elsewhere. Don’t find that non-prediction helpful? That makes two of us. Anyway…I think Anora wins but won’t be shocked if either The Brutalist or Conclave get the gold.

WILL WIN: Anora

SHOULD WIN: Anora

BEST MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING

A Different Man

Emilia Perez

Nosferatu

The Substance

Wicked

I think Wicked could win here again because the simps in the Academy like shiny, shitty things. That said, this is a category where they can reward The Substance and I think they will.

WILL WIN: The Substance

SHOULD WIN: Nosferatu

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS

Alien: Romulus

Better Man

Dune: Part Two

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

Wicked

A tough category…again this could be an indicator of a big below the line night for Wicked if it wins here. But…the craftsmen of Dune: Part Two are highly respected and they did do tremendous work. Toss up.

WILL WIN: Dune: Part Two

SHOULD WIN: Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

And thus concludes my Annual Oscar Prediction Post. There’s a very good chance that I go 10-23 this year so my recommendation is that you don’t gamble actual money based on my predictions…that would be foolish. But feel free to follow along Oscar night and see how poorly I did this year… for as the great American financier Jeffrey Epstein once taught us…all good things must come to an end…and this year might see the ignominious end to my miraculous Oscar prediction winning streak.

p.s. Don’t look for me at the after party!!

©2025

Emilia Perez: A Review - No es Bueno

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

My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. Yikes. A very bad musical.

Emilia Perez, written and directed by Frenchman Jacques Audiard, is a Spanish-language musical that chronicles a Mexican drug kingpin’s transition from a man into a woman.

The film, which is France’s official Oscar submission, stars Karla Sofia Gascon as Emilia Perez/Juan Del Monte – the drug kingpin, Zoe Saldana as Rita Castro – his/her lawyer, and Selena Gomez as Jessi – Juan’s wife.

The movie has garnered a whopping 13 Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best International Feature, Best Actress (Gascon) and Best Supporting Actress (Saldana).

The premise for Emilia Perez - where a brutal Mexican drug cartel kingpin yearns to live as his true self and therefore uses his vast wealth and power to undergo a transition and become a woman, is an undeniably intriguing one. Unfortunately, writer/director Jacques Audiard fumbles this premise so egregiously that the film is not just bad, but an absolutely lifeless and rather ridiculous bore.

One of the biggest problems with Emilia Perez is that it is a musical where the music is atrocious and the choreography pedestrian. Instead of being a conduit to heighten emotion, the music in this film acts as a barrier to emotion and genuine drama.

The film’s musical numbers all feel extraordinarily flat and lifeless, and cinematographer Paul Guilhaume’s camera does nothing to enhance  them, as he spends a lot of time with his camera swirling around with little to no motivation.

The film also lacks a visual crispness, distinctive color palette, and compelling framing, so it looks, and therefore feels, like a mediocre television show. Audiard has said he set out to make an opera, but to me he has made little more than a soap opera.

I would appreciate Emilie Perez for its audacity if it actually had any, but besides its premise, the film is as dramatically conventional and uninspired as can be. No doubt the film, and its supporters, thinks it has a lot of very interesting things to say on a lot of very important topics, but the reality is that it is unrelentingly allergic to profundity.

The performances in the film have received a lot of praise and award recognition, but I found them to be less than stellar.

Zoe Saldana has won a bevy of awards this year and is a favorite to win Best Supporting Actress at the Oscars, and while I acknowledge that she does a lot in the movie, from singing and dancing to emoting, I didn’t find any of it to be captivating.

This is not to say that she does a bad job, just that what she does in the context of the film, is more admirable in its effort than it is remarkable in its result.

Karlas Sofia Gascon, who plays both Juan and Emilia, is fine, I guess. She is nominated for Best Actress at the Oscars, and because of a scandal involving nasty tweets she once posted she has no chance to win, but I think she shouldn’t win because she gives a rather one-note, shallow performance.

I don’t think it’s entirely Gascon’s fault, but we never get to know Juan or Emilia in the course of the film, instead we get to see someone play-acting and not fully inhabiting the character.

And I will add, the notion that no one recognizes Emilia as the female version of Juan is one of the more absurd leaps that the film asks audiences to make…and that’s saying a lot considering that this is a Latin pop/rap musical.

Selena Gomez does her best as Jessi, Juan’s wife, but she, like the rest of the cast, isn’t given much to work with and doesn’t do anything of note with what she is given.

If I had stumbled across Emilia Perez on Netflix one night and watched it without all of the award’s hype and all the rest, I would simply say that it was an overly ambitious film that took a very big swing and missed badly. No harm in that…in fact, good for you for going for it. Better a big swing and miss than a tepid attempt and miss.

But for some reason, Emilia Perez has 13 Oscar nominations, the most of any film this year, and for a while there pre-Gascon scandal, it looked like it might win Best Picture. Thanks to that Gascon scandal, it looks like it will lose most of the major awards except for Saldana in Best Supporting Actress…so that’s good.

Of course, the reason why the film was so lauded by the Academy and by some notable critics, is that it preaches to the choir in regards to trans issues…so much so that the film literally canonizes Emilia in its final scene. And no…I’m not shitting you.

So, the film is set up to be a vehicle by which mindless Academy members and spineless critics can signal their virtue regarding trans and diversity issues. But then a funny thing happened on the way to Oscar gold…namely LGBTQ activists took umbrage with this specific depiction of a trans character…and Mexicans got pissed at an ill-informed Frenchman (Audiard) making a movie about the problems in Mexico. Uh-oh.

So Emilia Perez went from a liberal darling to a dastardly racist and transphobic villain almost overnight and Academy members and critics were confused because they don’t actually believe in anything…which ironically enough is also true of the film Emilia Perez.

Regardless of the controversy around the film and Gascon and all the rest, the reality is that this is not a good movie and it should never ever had gotten one single Oscar nomination, never mind 13.

The truth is that Emilia Perez says more about the people advocating for it and sucked in by its ruse than anything else…and what it says, like the movie itself, is nothing good.

My recommendation is to skip Emilia Perez entirely. It is not a good movie and its isn’t even a good-bad movie…it’s just a bad-bad movie. I watched it so you don’t have to…and trust me…you really don’t have to.

©2025

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 132 - Anora

On this episode, Barry and I head to the strip club to talk all things Anora, the Academy Award nominated dramedy from director Sean Baker starring Mikey Madison. Topics discussed include a debate over screwball comedy - and whether this movie is one, the merits of the entire cast, and specifically Best Actress nominee Mikey Madison's performance and the undeniable magnetism of Best Supporting Actor nominee Yuri Borisov. 

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 132 - Anora

Thanks for listening!

©2025

Flow: A Review - The Cat's Meow

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

My Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. A very compelling and unique animated feature that can be enjoyed by people of all ages on multiple levels.

Flow, written and directed by Gints Zilbalodis, is an arthouse, animated feature from Latvia that chronicles the journey of an unnamed dark grey cat.

The film, which is nominated for Best Animated Feature and Best International Feature Film at this year’s Academy Awards, is notable because it contains no dialogue and is completely rendered on the free and open-sourced software Blender.

When I was a kid, I had a dog…a great dog…named Scooter. He was a Gordon Setter/Bernese Mountain Dog/St. Bernard mix…an absolute behemoth and a complete and total gentle giant. The loveliest dog you ever could’ve had the pleasure to know and the best friend I’ve ever had.

I bring up Scooter because once as a little kid I decided to follow him for a day – this was back in olden times when people let their dogs - and their kids, run free and wild off of leashes. So I, by myself, followed Scooter as he made his daily rounds one afternoon. I kept a good distance from him so he didn’t know I was following him – or at least he let me think he didn’t know I was following him.

Scooter went on quite a journey that day, deep into the woods on a trek only he could understand, with little old me spying intently on him. We went into and out of the woods, across fields, over streams, through muck, mire, brush and construction sights. I don’t know how many miles we covered that day but it was a magical mystery tour for me and probably just another day at the dog office for Scooter.

Which brings me back to Flow…which essentially does the same thing I did with Scooter except with a cat and with much, much higher stakes.

Flow is a sort of wondrous movie. It is a simple film yet is filled with complexities. It is both an endearing dramatic tale of a cat and his friends and also a magical realist biblical mediation that is overflowing with profundities for those with the eyes to see them.

I watched the film with my young 9-year-old son and he posed lots of questions throughout…but was more saying these questions out loud to himself rather than expecting me to give him answers. The movie entertained him but it also really made him think. I was a very proud Papa indeed when he himself blurted out the biblical sub-text out loud to me before I ever articulated it…a sub-text to which many adults would be completely oblivious.

I bring up my son only because Flow is not the typical talking cat movie aimed at kids that you catch at the cineplex or on Disney +. In other words, Flow isn’t Garfield, but it is a film kids can still enjoy as a compelling animated movie without grasping its philosophical depths.

Adults can enjoy it too, but on a much deeper level, as the film touches upon a lot of pretty heavy philosophical ideas and leaves a good deal of room for interpretation. One of my favorite parts of the film was when it was over and me and my wife and son had a hearty discussion about it.

I’ve been intentionally vague about the plot, setting and characters in Flow because, as is my wont, I do not want to spoil the experience of watching the film for anyone who will give it a go. I knew nothing about the movie prior to watching and I think that ignorance was bliss and heightened my enjoyment.

I will note a couple things though.

First, the animation, which is done using Blender, a free and open-source software, is definitely uneven. The scenery and setting look gorgeous and are gloriously designed, but the animals are very hit or miss. Some animals look great and others look really cheap and shoddy.

Secondly, the film doesn’t entirely confine itself to the rules of the world it creates at its start – hence the magical realism aspect of the story. For example, and I won’t give specifics, the animals don’t always behave exactly as animals would behave – I’ll say no more than that. This is not a criticism per se, it is just something that knocked me off balance at first until I got on board with it.

Flow is still playing in some theatres, but it is also available on VOD, which is where I watched it. It cost something like $5.99 to rent, and we had three people watching so that’s a good deal.

The movie runs an hour and twenty-five minutes – and is captivating the entire run time…and an important note…stick around through the credits until the very end as the movie isn’t over until one small final scene plays out after the credits.

In conclusion, if you have kids, watch Flow with them. If you don’t have kids…watch Flow with another adult or by yourself. It isn’t the best film of the year, but it is the film this year that I’ve thought the most about after having watched it.

©2024

The Brutalist: A Review - American Dreams and Nightmares

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

My Rating: 3.25 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT.  A dramatically uneven, cinematically stellar, ambitious movie about ambition that is not a great film but a film that wants to be great.

The Brutalist, written and directed by Brady Corbet, stars Adrien Brody as Laszlo Toth, a talented Jewish Hungarian architect who survives the Holocaust and comes to America to start a new life.

The film, which has garnered 10 Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress, is favored to dominate this year’s Oscars.

I have many thoughts on the philosophy and ideology expressed in The Brutalist, but will save that discussion for a second, more in-depth “analysis and commentary” article I will publish at a later date. For now, I will simply review the film.

The Brutalist is a film so cinematically ambitious as to be audacious. It is a film that asks a lot of big questions, and tackles a lot of big issues, and does so all on a miniscule $9 million budget, and a monumental three-hour-and-thirty-five-minute run time.

The film is exquisitely photographed using VistaVision, and has been released in both 35 mm and 70 mm. I watched it, twice, on a SAG screener in my house and was astonished at the cinematography by Lol Crawley – who is, in my mind, the undeniable star of the film.

Crawley’s camera movement, lighting and most of all his framing, are sublime. This is a small budget, arthouse film that looks and feels expansively epic, in both scope and scale, thanks to Crawley’s work.

The film is designed to question America and the American dream, and to give voice to not just the immigrant experience but the Jewish immigrant experience in particular. It deftly uses stock footage, newsreels and radio reports to set the stage and strengthen the not-so-subtle sub-text.

Writer/director/producer Brady Corbet has also spoken about the film being a metaphor for the filmmaking experience itself…which is plain to see. Filmmakers are, at least in some cases, artists who must navigate a cold and cruel capitalist system just to be able to make their art. Filmmakers aren’t painters who can buy a canvas and some paint and go to work. No, filmmakers need money to make their movie and therefore must get into bed with those that have it (in some cases…literally).

The same is true for architects like Laszlo Toth. An architect must have a benefactor…someone who has the desire to make a great building, the means to do so, but not the artistic vision and expertise to bring it to life.

The Brutalist as metaphor for the filmmaker’s plight is certainly insightful, if not a bit self-aggrandizing, and considering the film’s politics (which will be discussed in length in my second article) egregiously hypocritical.

Regardless of that, there can be no doubt that Brady Corbet had a big idea and was able to translate it onto the big screen. Kudos to him.

Not so good for him is that the film, which boasts a first half as good as any seen this year, stumbles badly in its heavy-handed second half. The film, which again, runs for three and a half hours, actually has an intermission…and it is after the intermission when it loses its grip on its narrative and its storytelling.

The biggest problem with The Brutalist is that it tries to do so much that it ends up doing not quite enough of anything.

For example, it is an immigrant story, an American capitalism story, a Jewish story, a Holocaust story, a love story, a sex story, an artist’s story and a drug addict’s story. The drug addict angle in particular is superfluous to the point of frivolous, as is the sex story, which does nothing to enhance the narrative but only confuse it.

A major problem for the film is the character of Erzsebet Toth, Laszlo’s wife who follows him to America. Erzsebet is played by the woefully miscast Felicity Jones, an actress I usually like quite a bit. Erzsebet’s arrival on the scene signals the end of the film’s tight grip on its drama, and the beginning of a rudderless wandering into the wasteland of dramatic doldrums.

The character of Erzsebet would have been better served never being seen, but rather as a sort of dream from Lazslo’s past never to be regained.

The rest of the cast are hit and miss.

Adrien Brody, who is nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for his work as Laszlo – a fictional character by the way, is good in the film. He has a lot to do and he definitely does it. I didn’t think his performance was transcendent, but I thought he did an admirable job. Considering the last-time I saw Brody act was when I recently watched the series Peaky Blinders, where he played an Italian gangster from New York in the 1920s…and it was one of the worst, most embarrassingly awful pieces of acting I’ve ever witnessed, and now he is probably going to win his second Best Actor Oscar, speaks to how insane Hollywood can be.

Guy Pearce is very good as Harrison Van Buren, the rich American who becomes enamored with Laszlo’s talent and hires him to build his dream project. Pearce really sinks his teeth into the role and never relinquishes his steely grip, devouring every scene he inhabits.

Other performances, like that of Alessandro Nivola as Laszlo’s friend Attila, and Joe Alwyn as Harry Van Buren Jr, seem to disappear the moment they wander onto screen. They are so weightless as to be non-existent.

There’s one final performance that is worth mentioning…and that is of Raffey Cassidy as Zsofia, Laszlo’s niece. What struck me about Cassidy’s performance is that she looks remarkably like Daniel Radcliffe, the actor who plays Harry Potter. So much so that I literally was wondering if Daniel Radcliffe was playing Zsofia in drag in some sort of arthouse tomfoolery – amusingly I wrestled with this question for quite a while as I watched. What is even weirder is that Raffey Cassidy, in real life and even as Zsofia, is a truly beautiful woman…which left me very, very confused. The bottom line though is that Raffey Cassidy is NOT Daniel Radcliffe, and Daniel Radcliffe is NOT Zsofia. Mystery solved.

The Brutalist intentionally calls to mind other ambitious films that, ironically enough, are about ambition, like Godfather II and There Will Be Blood. Unfortunately, The Brutalist shrinks exponentially in comparison to such cinematic greatness as Godfather II and There Will Be Blood.

The Brutalist’s biggest flaw, besides its over-abundant narrative, is that it gets so heavy-handed with its not-so-subtle symbolism in the second half of the film that it loses a great deal of its credibility, coherence and artistic good will.

The bottom line is that I am glad The Brutalist exists, and I’m glad Brady Corbet is so ambitious as to make it, but that doesn’t mean that it’s a great film.

I do not think The Brutalist is a great film, but I do believe it wants to be great, and is a great attempt to make a great film, and that makes it much more worthwhile than 99% of the garbage made nowadays.

If The Brutalist wins Best Picture at the Oscars I won’t be dismayed, even though I don’t think it’s the Best Picture I’ve seen this year. I will celebrate its win because hopefully it will allow for other filmmakers to take equally big swings when they get their turn at bat.

Brady Corbet took a big swing with The Brutalist and he flied out to right field just short of the warning track. No shame in that. Maybe the next guy, or maybe Brady Corbet the next time he gets up, will hit it out of the park, or off the wall, or into the gap for a double. Hell, at this point in cinema history I’d take a bloop single, a walk, or a hit by pitch over the strikes out that keep piling up.

Make no mistake…The Brutalist is infinitely better, and more worthwhile than recent Best Picture winners Nomadland, Everything Everywhere All at Once, and the god-awful CODA.

As for recommending this movie…I do recommend people give it a shot and watch it with an open mind. It will be, simply said, a bridge too far for most normal people. It’s expansive run time, challenging themes and numerous dramatic narratives, will be too much for normies to digest, especially since the film is not a cinematic classic like Godfather II or There Will Be Blood.

But just because I think most people won’t love it, or even like it, doesn’t mean I think people shouldn’t give it a shot. I didn’t love the film, but I admire its ambition, and I watched it twice.

So, if you have three and a half hours and want to wallow in lukewarm arthouse waters contained in a gloriously crafted, artisan bathtub, then give The Brutalist your attention. At the very least it will trigger discussions about both its quality and its philosophy/ideology…which are decidedly meaty topics for debate…and in my eyes a movie that triggers debate is definitely a movie worth watching.

©2025

A Different Man: A Review - The Elephant Man in the Room

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

My Rating: 2.75 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. This is definitely a flawed and uneven film, but it is also a film that features a fantastic performance from Sebastian Stan, so it’s worth giving it a shot on streaming.

A Different Man, starring Sebastian Stan, chronicles the travails of Edward (Stan), a man suffering from a severe case of neurofibromatosis, which gives him a grossly disfigured face and leaves him socially isolated.

I knew nothing about A Different Man before seeing it – didn’t know the plot, the genre, the purpose or meaning behind the film…and if I’m being honest, after having watched it, I still feel like I still don’t really know all that much about it.

A Different Man is not a terrible movie, not at all, in fact it has a lot going for it, not the least of which is a superb performance from its star Sebastian Stan, but it is a frustratingly uneven film.

I won’t give much of the film away…not even a whiff of spoilers here…but the first half of A Different Man is a really cinematically invigorating experience, as it sets itself up as a very vibrant drama accentuated by Stan’s terrific acting work.

But then about midway through, the film transforms and transitions from an intriguing drama to a rather farcical comedy. The tonal shift is jarring and, in my opinion, very unsatisfying.

The second half of the film is so tonally off-kilter to the first half that it feels frivolous and superfluous, two things which the first half most definitely is not.

That is not to say that the more comedic material falls flat…it doesn’t. There are some legitimately funny scenes and sequences in the second half of the film…like a discussion about JFK and Lincoln, it just feels out of place and like it should be in a different movie.

In fact, there are a few different movies struggling to break out in A Different Man but we don’t get to glimpse enough of any of them for this movie to truly shine.

For example, as previously stated this could’ve been a really gritty and gruesome character-study drama. Or it could have been a sort of absurdist, reality-bending psycho-dramedy. Or it could have been a flat-out farcical comedy. It ended up trying to be a bit of all of them and ending up being not quite enough of any of them.

This film is writer/director Adam Schimberg’s third feature, and interestingly enough, it is his second major feature dealing with physical, specifically facial, disfigurement.

Schimberg was born with a cleft-palate and brings a unique and very interesting perspective to the navigation of disfigurement issues from both sides of the coin.

He also brings a somewhat intriguing cinematic and narrative style. One can’t help but think that Schimberg has a great movie in him that he just hasn’t quite matured as a filmmaker enough to produce. I think once he figures out what exactly he wants to say and how exactly he wants to say it, he’ll be a powerful auteur.

The very best thing about A Different Man is Sebastian Stan as Edward. Stan gives a remarkably versatile performance which features existential drama, frantic comedy and everything in between.

Stan’s Edward, particularly in the first half of the film, is so well-done, and so specific and detailed, that it is actually shocking considering he is best known for playing Bucky Barnes in the Marvel movies.

Watching Stan flex his artistic acting muscles instead of his actual muscles was a joy to behold. Even after the shift in the second half of the film, Stan stays committed and keeps on crushing this role, showing a versatility and skill level that is astonishing.

Sebastian Stan was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar this year but it wasn’t for A Different Man, but rather for his work as Donald Trump in The Apprentice. I have not seen The Apprentice so I can’t speak to his work in it, but I will say that Stan definitely deserves a nomination for his work in A Different Man.

The rest of the cast do very good work as well, most notably Renate Reinsve as Ingrid and Adam Pearson as Oswald.

Reinsve is fantastic as Edward’s subtly seductive, arthouse, manic pixie dream girl, neighbor Ingrid. She is one of those actresses who so effortlessly commands your attention. She never pushes too hard and never gets lost in the lesser parts of the script.

Pearson, who plays Oswald – Edward’s sort of alter-ego, is a magnetic screen presence who has a such a vivid and visceral energy to him that he is undeniable.

Ultimately, A Different Man could have and maybe should have, been a different movie. But the movie that it is, I suppose, good enough…or at least interesting enough, to be worth watching.

The film is currently streaming on MAX, which is where I saw it, and although I think it has some flaws and some issues, I also think it is worth giving it a watch especially if you have MAX.

A Different Man is not a great film, or a particularly profound film, or a keenly insightful film, but it is a unique enough film, and better than most of the thoughtless junk out there, to be worthy of watching.  If you go in with tempered expectations you might come out feeling a bit more positive about it than I did. And regardless of whether you connect with the film or not, you will definitely leave it feeling a great deal more respect and admiration for Sebastian Stan as an actor and artist than you did going in.  

©2025

Sing Sing: A Review - Prison and the Power of Drama

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

My Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. A simple movie, featuring a terrific performance from Colman Domingo, that is bursting with complexity and humanity.

“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.” - Albert Camus

Sing Sing, written and directed by Greg Kwedar, tells the story of the prisoners who act in the real-life Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) drama program at Sing Sing Correctional Facility.

The film stars Academy Award Best Actor nominee Colman Domingo as well as a group of men who were actually incarcerated and part of the RTA, including Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin and Sean San Jose.

Sing Sing has been in very limited release in theatres since July of 2024, but I only saw it just this past week as I got a screener for it from the Screen Actors Guild….and I’m very glad that I did.

As an acting coach and actor, Sing Sing is right in my wheelhouse. It is a simple film bursting with complexity that celebrates the healing power of both drama and the art of acting. It is also a testament to the fragility, intricacy and complications of humanity.

Regardless of who the actor is, whether it’s Tom Cruise or the third spear-carrier from the left, in almost every case they have gotten into acting in order to try and resolve some trauma. The way they try and resolve it through acting can be different for each person. For example, some people try to become famous in order to find the love they feel they never received or to gain wealth and power to protect themselves or to the feed the ego that their trauma birthed. Or some will try and garner accolades to elevate their crippled self-esteem, or try to find respect by becoming an “artist” to show their commitment and purity to a higher cause. And some might do all of the above as the uses of acting to heal trauma are as diverse and vast as trauma itself, as I can attest from having worked with so many actors and actresses over the years.

What I loved about Sing Sing is that it does an admirable job of showing how acting (or any art) can, for those with the courage to dive in, cut through the bullshit and get to the heart of the matter and the soul of the actor.

Colman Domingo, who was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar last year for Rustin and again this year for Sing Sing, is the heart and soul of this film. Domingo is utterly fantastic as John “Divine G” Whitfield, an inmate of some acclaim who has written books and plays while serving his time.

Domingo gives a subtle yet stirring performance that is filled with such complexity and humanity as to be a marvel. He is at once a saint, yet also crippled by his frailties, such as his ego and his fury at what he sees as an unjust system.

Colman Domingo probably won’t win Best Actor at the Oscars this year, but having seen all the nominated performances I can say unabashedly that he should.

Another stand out is Clarence Maclin who plays himself in the film. Maclin, a former real-life inmate and participant in the RTA, is a thug on the exterior but is a thoughtful, insightful and ambitious artist on the inside.

Maclin can mimic menace at the drop of a hat, but it is when he starts to push back against his “natural” instincts and actually becomes introspective that he comes to life and lights up the screen.

The rest of the real-life former inmates are very good in their roles because they seem like exactly what they are…real people who are kind of uncomfortable acting and being vulnerable in front of others. This discomfort, self-consciousness and amateurism is humanizing and extremely endearing…as well as very funny on a few occasions.

All of the real-life inmates give exceptional performances, but the most notable is Sean San Jose, who plays Mike Mike, a charismatic and charming inmate who is Divine G’s best friend.

Sing Sing has its flaws, and all those flaws fall on writer/director Greg Kwedar as they are structural in nature and diminish the film a bit, but it also has a dramatic vitality and tension to it that is uncommon, and that is to Kwedar’s credit.

Kwedar succinctly captures the prevailing sense of menace and peril of everyday life in prison as well as the suffocating sense of claustrophobia, and this imbues the film with a baseline of drama and a background of tension that befits a prison drama.

Kwedar also does a good job of showing just enough of the inmate’s performances without burdening the film with them. We get a taste and a taste is enough to maintain the spirit of the story without bogging it down in minutia.

It genuinely surprises me that Sing Sing is not nominated for Best Picture at this year's Oscars as it is a movie that would seem to be in the Academy’s sweet spot. But who knows what the Academy cares about anymore?

Regardless of what the Academy thinks, the truth is it is one of the very best films of the year and if you get a chance to see Sing Sing, whether in the theatre or on streaming/VOD, you really should. It isn’t the most deftly directed, or exquisitely acted film you’ll ever see, but it is a profound, efficient and extremely affecting one.

©2025

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota - Episode 131: A Real Pain

On this episode Barry and I mull over the Jesse Eisenberg directed arthouse darling A Real Pain, starring Best Supporting Actor Oscar nominee Kieran Culkin. Topics discussed include our happiness that the film exists, musings on the state of Kieran Culkin, and an examination of our mixed feelings on the film. 

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota - Episode 131: A Real Pain

Thanks for listening!

©2025

Anora: A Review - 'Pretty Woman' for our Depraved, Disturbed, Dystopian Age

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

My Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. A funny and forthcoming film about the fairy tale of the American dream that in reality is a soul-crushing nightmare.

Anora, written and directed by Sean Baker, is a dark dramedy that chronicles the whirlwind romance between a sex worker in New York and the son of a rich Russian oligarch.

The film, which stars Mikey Madison as the title character, was just nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor and Best Director, and in my opinion, very deservedly so, as it is one of the very best films of the year.

Anora is, essentially, a realistic Pretty Woman set in our dystopian times. It tells the story of Anora (Mikey Madison), a stripper and sometimes “escort” who yearns for the good life and will do most anything to get it…or at least to get some money. Then she meets Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn), the young party boy who is a Russian oligarch’s son, and the two fall headlong into an impetuous romance.  

What astonished me about Anora and the adoration it has received from the artistic community and Hollywood, was that it is subtly and surreptitiously, and maybe even unintentionally, a robust repudiation of modern feminism.

The film’s animating ideology is unquestionably a traditionalism that nowadays is considered subversive in an oddly counter culture kind of way.

Pretty Woman was the essential myth/fairy tale of the 80’s, with wealth being the symbol of happiness, wholeness and transcendence, and love being the conduit to get it. The only things that could’ve made Pretty Woman any more symbolic of the 80’s was if Julia Robert’s character falls head over heels for “greed is good” Gordon Gekko.

Anora as the myth/fairy tale of the 2020’s, is the anti-Pretty Woman, where love is non-existent and money is a toxic cancer that devours both those that have it in abundance and those so obsessed with it that they’ll sell their soul, and body, to get it.

Anora, who prefers to be called “Ani”, is the epitome of the modern woman as prostitution is empowerment. Ani controls her own body yet chooses to sell it, and more importantly her soul, for money. Sex for Ani is, always and every time, solely transactional. She may feel empowered as a modern woman, and she makes decent money selling herself, but her value and her worth diminish with every passing moment, which is why she’s so desperate to “bag a whale”…and Vanya represents her winning lottery ticket…her fairy tale come true.

I’ll refrain from going any further into the plot or twists and turns in the film so readers can enjoy it without knowing what comes next, just like I did.

I will say though that Anora is basically three films in one. The first section of it is the “modern day meet cute”…or “meet-not-so-cute” as the case may be. The second is a comedic road picture. And the third is the heart, soul and moral of the story. All three are exceedingly well-executed.

The biggest surprise for me regarding Anora was the blistering performance of Mikey Madison. Madison is not an actress I ever considered to be any good. I saw her in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood where she played one of Manson’s major minions, and thought she was actually kind of terrible. But here in Anora she is an absolute revelation.

Madison fully inhabits Anora and makes her a real, genuine human being that is so believable and so authentic I felt like I knew her from my own life…not because she’s a stripper you perverts…but because she is an archetype that so many local women in New York inhabit.  

Madison effortlessly floats in the film from the comedy to the drama and hits every note perfectly and with a gritty yet charming intensity and humanity that never wanders.

Madison is nominated for Best Actress at this year’s Academy Awards and while she probably won’t win, she definitely gives the best performance I’ve seen this year and is more than deserving of an Oscar.

The rest of the cast are fantastic as well.

Yura Borisov, who plays Igor, a Russian henchman, jumps off the screen from the get go. Borisov is nominated for Best Supporting Actor, and his soulful and still performance is stirring for any actors out there who are looking to break through in a smaller role. Borisov breaks through because he fills every moment of screen time he has with a very vivid and palpable inner life. You actually see his character thinking and gaming things out in real time, and it is compelling.

Another performance which I thought was terrific was Karren Karagulian as Toros, an Armenian handler hired by Vanya’s father to look after him. Karagulian is so good as Toros it made me giddy. He is so furious, frantic, frightened, formidable and funny that he chews through scenes like a tiger coming off a hunger strike.

Karagulian’s Toros gives a speech in a restaurant about two-thirds of the way through the film that brings the sub-text of the movie to light but it is the secondary focus of the scene and could’ve been a throwaway piece of work but Karagulian does it so well, and it feels so real and authentic that I’ve been thinking about it ever since.

Writer/director Sean Baker, is not someone that I think of, or until now, think highly of. My introduction to Baker was his 2017 film The Florida Project, which was a very ambitious and effecting arthouse movie, but one that I ultimately couldn’t get a good grip on. His follow up film, Red Rocket (2021), was very well-received by most, and while I didn’t hate it I also I didn’t love it.

Anora is Baker showing himself to be a very confident craftsman and intellectually curious artist. His filmmaking and storytelling skills on Anora are top-notch. He paces the film well and fully fleshes out every character even with a minimum of screen time. Everything is shot to feel, if not real, then at least genuine.

As previously stated, Baker using his film to challenge the current liberal orthodoxy and the corrosive spiritual nihilism of modern feminism, shows he has artistic balls the size of watermelons…but his intentional or unintentional championing of the cause of traditionalism, inflates those balls to the size of Goodyear blimps.

Anora is currently in theatres and is available to stream VOD, and I highly recommend it to both cinephiles and scions of the cineplex. It is a funny and insightful film that never pulls its punches or plays games with its audience.

A bit of a warning though, the film does have nudity and sex scenes, although nothing is particularly graphic, but it might make the more prudish a bit uncomfortable.

In conclusion, just as Pretty Woman was a soulless selling of the corporate fairy tale of the Reagan 80’s, Anora is a soulful swallowing of the reality that the fairy tale of Reaganism in the 80’s has morphed into the nightmare of Trump, and just as importantly, the liberal feminist freakout to their nightmare of Trump, in the 2020’s. It’s an important movie not just to see, but to think about and to hopefully understand.

©2025

A Real Pain: A Review - On the Same Old Road Again

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

My Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT.  A good but not great film that trods a well-worn path but features solid enough performances to be worth seeing.

A Real Pain, written and directed by Jesse Eisenberg and starring Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin, chronicles two adult cousins as they make a pilgrimage to Poland on a Holocaust tour to visit their late grandmother’s birthplace.

The film, which has a 90-minute run-time, had a limited theatrical release in November and is now available to stream on Hulu, which is where I watched it.  

A Real Pain has a lot going for it, and some things going against it.

The best thing about this movie is that it is the type of movie, a dialogue-driven ‘two-hander’ featuring two skilled actors, that doesn’t get made enough anymore but should.

A Real Pain cost $3 million to make and made $12 million at the box office, and while that won’t buy many beach houses it’s an even enough split to consider the movie well worthwhile.

In addition, the movie is adult fare, which is a rare species nowadays. It isn’t geared toward adolescents but rather toward adults, and adults who either act like adolescents or know other adults who act like adolescents.

And finally, the film features what is sure to be an Oscar nominated performance, and very likely an Oscar winning performance, from Kieran Culkin.

The film follows Eisenberg’s David and Culkin’s Benji, cousins who grew-up together but have grown apart in adulthood, as they fly from New York City to Poland and go on a Holocaust tour with a group of other Jews. There’s an older married couple, a middle-aged divorced woman, and a black African survivor of the Rwandan genocide who has converted to Judaism.

What makes the film compelling are both Culkin and Eisenberg’s performances…but what makes the film a grating experience, are the characters Culkin and Eisenberg play.

Benji is a ne’er do well narcissist and David is a neurotic nebbish, and neither of them are even remotely likable. This isn’t the fault of the actors, it’s just the reality of the characters….and I found them to be annoying as hell, which makes for a less than ideal viewing experience.

This is just me but I have never enjoyed watching Larry David or Woody Allen, and Benji and David are sort of like very, very distant cousins to Larry David and Woody Allen respectively (very, very, very distant…but relations nonetheless).

Culkin’s Benji is supposed to be charismatic in his own peculiar, truth-telling way, but I found him to be repulsive…your mileage may vary. I had no sympathy for him, or even empathy, I just wanted him to go away. David isn’t much better. He’s such a milquetoast, anxiety-ridden wet noodle that I wanted him to disappear too.

Again, and this is important to say, it’s nothing to do with the actors…both Culkin and Eisenberg deliver very solid performances. While Culkin is getting the awards mentions, Eisenberg does equally worthy, but more subtle, work.

The truth is, as good a performance as Culkin gives, there is an air of familiarity to it that feels a little shticky. Benji is, in many ways, just Culkin’s character from Succession, Roman, except Jewish and poor. Culkin’s Benji, like Roman, is quick-witted and snarky yet allegedly good-hearted and tormented. In this way, Culkin’s performance definitely feels like he’s just doing his same old shtick with minor external variances.

That said, it’s a showy, actory part, and he does it well, and I assume Culkin will win an Oscar for it…so good for him and all the more power to him.

Eisenberg has a less showy part, and as is usual with him, is much more internally focused, and he does it well. He has a monologue in a restaurant that is particularly well-done, and smart actors will use it in acting classes and auditions for the next few years.

Eisenberg also wrote and directed the film and he did well enough on both jobs. The script isn’t earth shattering but it is structured well-enough and gives some decent scenes to the actors.

The filmmaking is pretty standard as there’s nothing earth shattering visually, but the movie has a decent pace to it and feels professionally put together, so kudos to Eisenberg on his directorial debut.

Now on to a rather uncomfortable issue, and this is without question a very uncomfortable thing to feel and to discuss, and that is that A Real Pain seems like it’s yet another movie in the Holocaust Cinematic Universe.

Hollywood loves to make Holocaust movies, and that’s understandable as that vile, calamitous event is ripe with drama, but considering the times we live in, and the genocide being actively committed against Palestinians by Israeli ancestors of those who survived the Holocaust, this film’s entitled woe-is-me narrative feels painfully tone-deaf.

The tone-deafness is only accentuated by the film’s rather alarming and arrogant usurpation of the Rwandan genocide for the Jewish narrative, as if Jewishness can be the only home for suffering on such a grand scale. This is a morally insidious and ethically insipid position as it creates a self-righteousness immune from self-reflection – which is how we get an apartheid regime in Israel committing genocide, ethnic cleansing and a cavalcade of other war crimes all in the name of “Never Again” self-defense.

It would have been nice if A Real Pain had been self-aware enough to acknowledge the deeper more conflicted state of Jewishness in the world today rather retread the martyrdom narrative once again, but I suppose that is the safest and easiest path to tread, so I get it.

Despite the combustible moment in which we exist, and the film’s discomfort with this bloody moment (to be fair the film was shot before the October 7th, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel and start of the ensuing war), I thought A Real Pain was worth watching.

The film features solid performances across the board, and is geared toward adults, so that’s two wins right there.

If you have a chance check out A Real Pain on Hulu. It’s not the greatest movie you’ll ever see, and it won’t change your life, but it will hold your interest and maybe, if you get lucky, it’ll make you think just a little bit about things you don’t want to think about but should. And regardless of what conclusion you come to through this thinking, it is always good to think about things you don’t want to from time to time.

©2025

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 129 - Nightbitch

On this episode Barry and I chase our own tails trying to find something nice to say about Amy Adams' new film Nightbitch, currently streaming on Hulu. Topics discussed include the multitude of bad decisions made by the writer/director Marielle Heller, Amy Adams' career decline, and the missed opportunity of a arthouse or body horror "mother" movie. 

And finally, stay 'til the end of the pod for a tribute to the great filmmaker David Lynch.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 129 - Nightbitch

Thanks for listening!

©2025

Nightbitch: A Review - This Mangy Dog Won't Hunt

****THIS REVIEW CONTAINS PLOT POINTS AND MILD SPOILERS!! THEREFORE: THIS IS TECHNICALLY NOT A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!!****

My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. Flaccid and flavorless feminist gruel.

Nightbitch, starring Amy Adams, chronicles the weird and wild travails of a mother as she navigates raising a toddler, perimenopause and the modern world.

Nightbitch, which is written and directed by Marielle Heller and is adapted from the Rachel Yoder book of the same name, describes itself as a “black comedy horror” film. I take umbrage with that description since the movie is not funny, darkly or otherwise, nor is it horrifying….it’s just bad.

Nightbitch starts out in quite compelling fashion as Amy Adams’ character, simply named “mother”, struggles with the mind-numbing repetitiveness and inanity of raising a toddler, in this case her son, named, “baby”. Mother’s husband, who goes by the clever moniker “husband”, is away for work from Monday to Thursday so mother must do everything on her own.

A very interesting premise and a captivating first twenty minutes about the unique difficulties of raising a toddler quickly gets derailed when a tsunami of heavy-handed, insipid, intellectual and dramatic vapidity and vacuity around gender roles and modern-day feminism comes to the fore.

The movie shifts from arthouse realism into the mire of symbolism and surreality, as mother starts to show the early signs of morphing into a dog. Again, this could’ve been a nice segue into a “body-horror” type of cinematic exploration, but instead this metamorphosis ultimately is used just as “woman tapping into her primal power” symbolism, which is about as original, interesting and captivating as watching a dog take a shit on your lawn.

This movie could have, and frankly should have, been a serious and slightly comedic meditation on how devastatingly difficult it is for women to mother a toddler in the modern world. Or it could have, and should have, been a body horror film about a woman losing herself, physically, mentally, emotionally, and artistically to motherhood and menopause/middle-age. But it is neither…it is a pitiful and pedantic tantrum by a middle-aged woman angry at her intellectual and artistic impotence and her career and familial failures and needing to blame anyone but herself.

It is also so archetypally and mythologically obtuse and contrary to collective human consciousness and conditioning as to be astounding. For example, why is a woman seeking to connect with her primal power, morphing into a dog? Dogs are pack animals and are usually led by an alpha male…so even in this feminist fantasy film, the dream is of being a male instead of an empowered female. Odd.

Another issue is the tone deafness of the class politics of the film. Mother, and all the mothers in the movie by the way, live some of the most privileged lives imaginable. They are rich enough to be afforded the option of not working and staying home to raise their children. This used to be standard operating procedure here in America, but in the last fifty years it has become a sign of rare privilege and less and less likely.

Mother is completely unaware of how spoiled she is as she lives this extraordinarily privileged life and yet still manages to wallow in her narcissistic melancholy and navel-gazing ennui. She is, at a minimum, an upper-middle class woman who can afford to not have a job and stay at home and raise her one child. The child, by the way, is so well-behaved as to be absurd, and yet still she can’t handle it.

This flaccid film is so unconscionably blind to class politics because it is designed to be nothing more than a vehicle for some of the most-trite and laughably moronic modern feminist politics imaginable.

The eye-rolling level of cringe in this movie becomes nearly unavoidable as it rolls along. For example, mother is an artist…because of course she is since she’s never actually worked a day in her life…and she’s also a former Mennonite…because of course she is because she has to be connected to some weirdly archaic lifestyle and religious background. And of course her husband is one of those pussified eunuchs who lacks both balls and any semblance of muscle tone or masculinity, who serves little to no purpose in mother or baby’s life except for supplying food, clothing and shelter.

The relationship between mother and husband says a great deal about the film. When mother and husband argue it’s because he’s an idiot and thoughtless and selfish, not because she is spoiled and irrational (which she is).

Mother was an artist “in the city” but wanted to stay home with the baby and gave up her career to do so. Husband is the bread winner….as they both agreed upon prior to the baby being born. But now she regrets that decision and somehow it is all husband’s fault for not being able to both read her mind and see into the future.

Mother decides she is unhappy and it’s all husband’s fault because he gave her everything she ever wanted…but it wasn’t what she wanted. So, she says raising this child on her own is too difficult so she wants to get separated…which will really solve the issue of being overwhelmed by having to take care of a child by yourself by removing the other adult in the equation. Brilliant….or should I say “great idea stupid bitch”.

And then…for some strange reason because he’s the one who makes money and has always been the one making money and it’s his fucking house…he moves out into an apartment complex with all the other divorced/separated dads. How about this nightbitch…it’s his fucking house and you’re the one with the problem, so you get the fuck out…how does that sound you hairy fucking mongrel? But no, Mr. Limp Dick puts his tail between his legs and goes to sleep in his race car bed in his studio apartment with all the other sad sacks at the singles complex. Pathetic.

Mother then spends her time getting back in touch with her primal nature – morphing into a dog and hunting with the pack late at night. She also spends time with other moms who all agree that “women are gods” and that “women create life!” The funny thing about this sort of bumper sticker feminism is that it is so stupid it makes my teeth hurt. For example, women don’t create life…men AND women create life…women carry it in their bodies after men inseminate them. Sort of a big difference. Also…why do I have to explain 5th grade biology to this idiotic movie?

Mother, now free on the weekends because exceedingly well behaved baby is busy overwhelming incompetent husband at the single’s complex, creates a massive amount of art that celebrates the power of mothers, and she puts on a big art show and presents in the suburbs. The art mother makes is so laughably bad, pretentious, derivative and trite it makes a toddler’s play-dough snake look like Michelangelo. The banal atrocity that is mother’s art is obvious to everyone watching the movie but apparently no one involved in making the movie. But the lesson of all this nonsensical junk is that mother can only be her true goddess self without that useless husband around…and even more menacingly…without that annoying baby occupying her precious time too.

On the bright side, Nightbitch is a wonderful encapsulation of how modern feminism teaches women to be deathly allergic to responsibility and to blame others for their personal, political, artistic and financial failures.

The “patriarchy” that the nightbitches scapegoat are made up of the rough men they love to loathe, but these are the men who carved out a place for these feckless women to live their silly, mindless, meaningless lives the way they choose…and yet still, all they can do is bitch about it.

Writer/director Marielle Heller, is one of those less-than-talented people who somehow, almost magically, con people into thinking they have actual talent. Trust me, she doesn’t have an ounce of it.

Nightbitch fits right in with Heller’s flimsy filmography, which includes Can You Ever Forgive Me? and A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, because like all the other movies, it’s a mind-numbing, sub-mediocrity. It is poorly shot, poorly written, poorly executed and devoid of any real purpose or meaning except to pose as having a deep purpose or meaning.

Amy Adams is an actress I have always liked but she is on one hell of a streak of shitty movies. Her last decent movie was Arrival, and that was in 2016!

Adams dives right in to her role here as mother, and apparently gained weight for the role, which is ironic because the film is so philosophically and cinematically weightless.

She does the best she can with what she’s given but it never coalesces into a coherent or compelling performance. There is no arc, no insight, no genuine humanity or behavior. Everything feels like Amy Adams play-acting as a middle-aged feminist avatar.

Adams seems to be in a very disorienting career death spiral which started out with her aggressively attempting to finally win an Oscar after six nominations, and has morphed into her desperately flailing away in an attempt to save her moribund career.

Nightbitch was released into theatres on December 6th, which is ironic because that is one day before Pearl Harbor Day and this movie was a massive, massive bomb. The only difference between this movie and Pearl Harbor is that people paid attention to Pearl Harbor.

The film had a budget of $25 million and it made measly $170,000 at the box office. It didn’t make that its opening day, or even opening weekend, that’s how little it made in the entirety of its run. $170,000. YIKES!

A flop this bad and a box office bomb this big can be career death for a movie star and a moviemaker. Adams and Heller are on very thin ice going forward.

The film is now available to stream on Hulu…but as you may have guessed, you really don’t need to stream it. It’s stupid and even worse, it’s pointless AND gutless.

The topic of the struggle of motherhood in all its complexities is one ripe for exploration, but Nightbitch ain’t that. This movie is so toothless, so artless and so thoughtless, that it is anti-cinema made manifest. Avoid it at all costs.

©2025

A Complete Unknown: A Review - A Bob Dylan Bio-Pic Blowin' in the Wind

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

My Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT/SEE IT. A painfully formulaic music bio-pic, that features great music, but that refuses to do anything but paint-by-numbers. Skip it in the theatre and see it on streaming.

A Complete Unknown, starring Timothee Chalamet, chronicles Bob Dylan’s rise to fame from his beginnings in 1961 to his iconic performance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965.

The film, which is directed by James Mangold and co-written by Mangold and Jay Cocks, opens with Dylan moving to New York City and making a pilgrimage to see the godfather of American folk music, Woody Guthrie, as he lay in dire straits in a hospital bed.

It is at the hospital that Dylan meets both the infirm Guthrie as well as his friend, esteemed folk musician Pete Seeger, and plays a song for them both which impresses them no end. And off to the races goes Bob Dylan’s career.

On the journey of this film, we get to see Bob mix and mingle with such musical stalwarts as Joan Baez and Johnny Cash as well as Seeger and Guthrie. We also get glimpses of his personal life and his relationships with both Baez and Sylvie Russo (in real life this character is Dylan’s girlfriend Suze Rotolo), and his struggle and sometimes delight in making it big.

We also get to the standard music biopic touchstones where a guy-writing-songs is interspersed with great historical moments of the time. So, there’s memory lane type moviemaking where Dylan writes this great song and everybody knowingly looks at each other, and then the Cuban Missile Crisis happens, and he writes another great song and everybody knowingly looks at each other, and then the JFK assassination happens and Dylan writes another great song and everybody knowingly looks at each other…and on and on and on.

What we don’t see in the film is any real glimpse of Bob Dylan behind the well-defined public persona. In public life Dylan has long been a distant, aloof, morose and surly entity…and he remains one throughout the entirety of this rigidly formulaic film.

The music bio-pic is such a standard of Hollywood that it feels like self-parody at this point, and A Complete Unknown adheres to the well-worn, paint-by-numbers music biopic approach from start to finish.

Are there bright spots in the film? Sure.

First off, while I am no superfan of Bob Dylan, I do like his music a great deal and the music in this movie is well executed and presented. You can’t help but tap your feet and nod along to the renditions of Dylan’s famous and fantastic songs…of which there are a shockingly high number.

Secondly, there are a few good performances in the movie. The most notable to me is a very nuanced and subtle performance from Edward Norton as Pete Seeger.

Norton’s Seeger is a gentle soul that conceals a fiery spirit with which Seeger is exceedingly uncomfortable. Norton gives Seeger a delicate touch but there is something in his gentility that is fierce and undeniable.

Norton gets overlooked a lot, and is widely considered a pain in the ass by the powers that be in Hollywood, but make no mistake, when he is locked-in he is a terrific actor, and he is locked-in here as Seeger.

Another bright spot is that Timothee Chalamet, to his great credit, actually plays guitar and sings for his performance as Dylan. Nothing would’ve been worse than to have a fake-nose wearing Chalamet lip-sync his way through Dylan’s early catalogue. Chalamet singing and playing gives the music a rawness that adds to the authenticity of an otherwise rather inauthentic movie.

To be clear, in terms of the acting, Chalamet does a good impression of Bob Dylan, but due to the limitations of the script, the performance never moves beyond imitation. He is restricted by the script from delving too deeply into Dylan as a human being, and is forced to stick with Dylan as musical genius.

Timothee Chalamet, or as I prefer to call him – “Little Timmy”, has always been a bit of a mystery to me. Critics and industry people fawn all over him like he’s the love child of James Dean and Leonardo DiCaprio. In my less than humble opinion, he’s never been very good in anything I’ve seen him do, with the lone exception of a commercial for Apple TV (in which he is excellent).

I assume Little Timmy will win the Academy Award for Best Actor for his work as Bob Dylan. It’s one of those roles that Hollywood loves to celebrate because it pays homage to an icon, Dylan, and gives praise to a young actor they want to turn into the next big movie star.

Little Timmy has definitely positioned himself well for the moment and in his career, and is poised in Hollywood eyes for winning an Oscar, but whether he’ll actually prove himself to be a great actor, or a great movie star, over the next decades, remains to be seen. Consider me skeptical.

The rest of the cast do decent enough work in rather thankless roles.

For example, the usually stellar Elle Fanning, who was so remarkable in the tv series The Great, is under-utilized and reduced to the one-dimensional girlfriend role of Sylvie. Fanning does what she can with the very little she’s given…but boy there’s not much for her to do.

The same is true of Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez. Barbaro does do a good job singing in Baez’s beautiful style, but beyond that she is given gruel on which to feed.

Boyd Holbrook plays Johnny Cash, and he does well enough with very little. One of the funniest moments in the movie is when Holbrook’s Cash tries to move his car at the Newport Festival. If you’ll remember, director Mangold made the Johnny Cash bio-pic Walk the Line, which garnered Joaquin Phoenix a Best Actor nomination in 2005. (It would’ve been amusing to me if Mangold went full Mangold Music Bio-pic Cinematic Universe – MMBPCU - and had Phoenix play the small role of Johnny Cash in this movie.)

But even the bright spots of this film aren’t particularly bright, which is often an issue with a formulaic music bio-pic.

The bottom line regarding A Complete Unknown is that it is, as a cinematic venture, unlike Bob Dylan’s discography, pretty forgettable. But the reality is that most people will go and hear the great music and enjoy the movie for the mediocrity that it is…and there’s nothing wrong with that.

In my screening there were a bevy of people in Dylan’s age group (their 80s) who cheered rapturously when the movie ended…and who also spoke ridiculously loudly during the duration of the film. These folks don’t need the movie to be good or even interesting, they just need it to be a nostalgia delivery machine…and they got what they wanted.

Ultimately, I enjoyed listening to Bob Dylan’s music for a couple hours while a middling movie played out before me. I assume anyone who loves or even likes Bob Dylan’s music will feel the same way.

That said, the reality is that A Complete Unknown is a generic, safe and very middling affair that is buoyed by Bob Dylan’s musical brilliance. Because of that, I would say that if you want to see it, save your money and the annoyance of a theatre outing and wait until it hits a streaming service to watch it.

©2024

Nosferatu: A Review - Beautiful, Brilliant and Bloodthirsty

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

My Rating: 4.25 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. A masterfully-made arthouse horror movie that features exquisite craftsmanship.

I went to a small arthouse theater here in flyover country last night to see Robert Eggers’ new film Nosferatu, which is a remake of the 1922 F.W. Murnau silent film classic of the same name.

My theater going experience was, to say the least, not very conducive to a positive cinematic experience. First off, the theater across the hall from my screening was playing the Bob Dylan bio-pic A Complete Unknown, and so my often-silent screening of Nosferatu many times had an unintentional bass line accompanying it courtesy of Mr. Dylan.

Secondly, despite being the only people in the theater at the start of the screening, my wife and I were soon joined by a cavalcade of dimwits and dipshits in our small screening room once the film began. A couple in their mid-60’s sat in the row in front of us off to the right and decided this theater was their living room and chatted freely and loudly. Another man, by himself, sat in the row in front of us to our left and after downing a bag of popcorn and drinking a canned iced tea, proceeded to sanitize his hands and compulsively rub them together literally every ten minutes for the duration of the film. The medicated stench of the sanitizer did not add to our enjoyment of the film.

And yet…despite all of the morons and miscreants around us and the uninvited bass line, I still found myself under the spell of the arthouse horror of Nosferatu as its the mesmerizing mastery played out before me.

The original Nosferatu is a truly staggering cinematic achievement. Director Murnau is one of the most influential filmmakers of the German Expressionist era. I saw Murnau’s Nosferatu for the first time in the early 1990’s and was blown away by it. It is essential viewing for anyone interesting in making, or understanding, cinema.

Robert Eggers’ remake is not as colossal a cinematic document as Murnau’s, but it is very impressive nonetheless. What is so remarkable about this new version is that Eggers’ Nosferatu is one of the most magnificently crafted films in recent memory.

The film is bursting with a bevy of extraordinary craftsmanship, from its cinematography to its costume and set design, that is exhilarating for a cinephile. Unfortunately, for whatever reason (and there are a myriad of them), craftsmanship of this level is rarely seen in films anymore.

Jarin Blaschke’s cinematography is astonishing as the film is gorgeously photographed. His framing and composition, use of shadow and light, and deft camera movements make for a phenomenal visual feast of a film.

Robert Eggers’ and Blaschke’s clarity of vision, precision and attention to detail are extraordinary. The film is not black and white, like the original, but it is dark…but unlike so many modern movies, the darkness does not lack distinction. In other words, you can actually see despite – or in some cases – because, of the darkness.

Blaschke’s cinematography and muted color palette, combined with the locations, sets and costumes, along with Eggers’ gothic brilliance, set an unsettling mood for the movie which is more-creepy than it is scary.

If you know the original Nosferatu, or are familiar with the Bram Stoker novel Dracula, you’ll know the plot of this film, so there will be no twists or surprises, but thanks to Eggers’ mastery, you’ll still be compelled to watch.

The cast all acquit themselves well, but it is Lily Rose Depp (daughter of Johnny Depp) as Ellen, who stands above the rest with a truly superb performance. Depp is asked to do quite a bit and she is fearless in tackling all of the madness required of her. Depp is unleashed, physically, emotionally, artistically, and she devours the role with a ferocious aplomb.

Depp’s Ellen is the embodiment of repressed female sexuality in the Victorian era. The men in her life restrain her, numb her, drug her, chastise her, shame her and ignore her. But the sexual beast within her, which has called Nosferatu forth, simply cannot be denied.

Nicholas Hoult plays Thomas, Ellen’s husband, and he is fantastic as essentially the cuckold to Nosferatu. Thomas is afraid…of everything, and Hoult brings that fear to life in a captivating, and never mannered, way.

Thomas loves Ellen, of that there is no doubt, but he is rudderless when it comes to navigating the intricacies of the staid business world as well as his wife’s carnal needs.

Aaron Taylor Johnson, Emma Corrin, and Willem Dafoe all give deliciously theatrical performances as Friedrich, Anna, and Dr. von Franz respectively.

Dafoe, if you’ll recall, starred as Max Shreck in Shadow of the Vampire back in 2000 – a fictional (and clever) re-telling of the making of Murnau’s Nosferatu. Now here he is playing a German version of Von Helsing in the remake. It never fails to amuse me that Willem Dafoe has become the go to eccentric character actor of our time…it also never fails to please me.

Bill Skarsgard plays Count Orlack/Nosferatu in all his grotesqueness and is magnificently menacing. Skarsgard’s voice is unnervingly demonic and matches his ungodly and ungainly physicality.

The vampire has long been a symbol of repressed sexual energy…which is why it was such a potent myth in Victorian era. Count Orlock/Nosferatu, is not a sexy and suave lady killer like Dracula, instead he is a demon and beast…a sub-conscious symbol of repressed sexuality.

Ellen’s sexual energy is stifled at an early age under the repressive mores of her time, but it is released when she calls forth the beast Nosferatu…a shadow creature who dwells in psychological darkness where unspoken and unacknowledged desires reside.

As Thomas says to Ellen after she speaks of her calling forth the demon in her youth – “let’s never speak of it again” – which of course leaves it in the psychological shadow which will only further empower the beastly demon.

Eggers’ re-telling of the Nosferatu/Dracula/vampire story goes, unsurprisingly, deep into the lore and the core of vampire mythology. Thanks to this much of the Hollywood stuff we’ve grown accustomed to is gone. For example, there are no wooden stakes or flying bats in Nosferatu…but there are rats…lots and lots and lots of rats.

Eggers is a filmmaker who has a distinct style that some consider an acquired taste. If that is true then I have, for the most part, acquired it. I was blown away by Eggers’ moody first film, The Witch, but was disappointed by his second effort, The Lighthouse, which just wasn’t for me.

I really enjoyed his third film The Northman, but the movie flopped and I was worried what he would or could do next to keep his artistry and his career afloat. Thankfully he’s now given us Nosferatu, which while it isn’t a truly great film, it is so exceptionally made and is doing well-enough at the box office, that Eggers will continue to do his cinematic thing for the foreseeable future, which makes me happy.  

Genuine auteurs are tough to find nowadays, and auteurs with exquisite artistic sensibilities and craftsmanship are even more rare. Eggers is all of the above, and when you consider his unique cinematic style and taste in projects, he really comes to the forefront as one of our treasured filmmakers…even if he isn’t blowing up the box office or winning Academy Awards.

In conclusion, Nosferatu may not interest normal people, or it may be too dark for the cineplex crowd, but it is a masterful piece of moviemaking that should be celebrated and encouraged.

Nosferatu was the best movie I’ve seen this year because it was the best made-movie I’ve seen this year. If you like cinematic excellence, even when it comes in the form of a remake of a one-hundred-year-old silent horror classic, then this movie is for you.

And finally, while I heartily recommend David Eggers’ new arthouse horror version of Nosferatu to those with the taste for it, I also highly recommend the original 1922 Nosferatu by F.W. Murnau, but that I recommend for everyone…as it’s something everybody needs to see at least once in their life (and it is streaming on Amazon Prime!!).

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