Weapons: A Review - Big Creepiness in Small-Town America

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

My Rating: 3.25 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT.  A solid piece of elevated horror moviemaking that is worth watching when it hits streaming.

Weapons, written and directed by Zach Cregger, is a horror movie that tells the mysterious story of seventeen children in a small town who one night all run out of their homes into the darkness never to be seen again.  

Zach Cregger’s first feature film, Barbarian (2022), was two-thirds of a great horror movie that lost its way a bit in its final act. Despite its flawed final act, Barbarian showed Cregger to be a serious talent as it was a taut, smart, well-shot, well-acted and until its final act, very effective piece of horror filmmaking.

Weapons once again reveals Cregger to be a filmmaker to watch despite being somewhat similar to Barbarian in that as good as it is it still has some flaws that keep it from being great.

Weapons, like Barbarian with its commentary on Reagan and the destruction of the American working class, has some insightful social commentary artfully ingrained into its narrative core – the most obvious of which is the predation of children.

In an age where the Epstein files are forgotten before they’re ever released, and sex trafficking and exploitation of children runs rampant, a movie which opens by telling us it is a true story that powerful people have covered up, where seventeen kids disappear without a trace…is making a point for those with eyes to see and ears to hear.

Weapons is, in many ways but not all, Pizzagate, The Franklin Affair, Johnny Gosch, the Epstein story, and all the rest of the horrific child exploitation stories in recent times, subtly made manifest in narrative fashion…and that in and of itself makes the film unnerving – particularly if you have kids.

Cregger structures Weapons in an interesting way as the story is broken into chapters that feature the different perspectives of each main character – Justine – the kid’s teacher, Archer – parent to one of the kids, Paul – a cop in the town, James – a homeless drug addict, Marcus – the school principal, and Alex – the lone kid in the class who doesn’t disappear.

These perspectives are structurally staggered and non-linear and then intersect and converge to form the story as a whole. This approach really heightens the film and elevates what could have been rather mundane material in lesser storytelling hands.

Cregger’s greatest accomplishment with Weapons though is that he, along with cinematographer Larkin Sieple, create some very memorable and distinct visuals that stick with you.

For example, the poster for Weapons shows the silhouette of kids running in a very distinctive arms-out style, and that is used to very creepy effect in the film.

I won’t get into any of the details of the film to avoid spoilers – but I will say that there is a character in the movie that is so well-designed, well-acted, well-shot and visually unnerving that it makes you wince whenever it arrives.

There’s also a recurring motif of a certain door opening where it is so dark you strain to see what is in it, that is simple yet very effective. As is the scene where someone walks out of the door – a sequence that is chilling.

Cregger as a filmmaker is sort of a cross between Jordan Peele and Ari Aster. Cregger’s ability to create notable visuals is right up there with Peele – a noted visual stylist (although a filmmaker who struggles to tell a story), and his type of horror is reminiscent of Aster’s early work – most notably Hereditary and Midsommar.

Cregger’s skill, talent and style places him among the premiere “elevated horror” filmmakers of this era, namely Peele, Aster, and Robert Eggers.

What elevates Weapons besides Cregger’s storytelling and visual style, is a top-notch cast doing terrific work.

Julia Garner as Justine is a startlingly compelling character that is both sympathetic and abrasive. Garner, who was terribly misused in Fantastic Four earlier this summer, gives a very deft performance here.

Josh Brolin is really good as Archer, the devastated father determined to find out what happened to his son. Brolin has developed over the years to be such a reliably good actor that when he arrives on-screen you feel assured that the film is in strong acting hands.

Both Alden Ehrenreich and Benedict Wong, as Paul the cop and Marcus the principal respectively, really make the most of somewhat smaller parts that in lesser hands would have been thrown away, but in theirs are fleshed out to be really captivating pieces of work.

And finally, Cary Cristopher as the young boy Alex, is perfect as a creepy, lonely, sad and slightly scary little kid. Christopher looks like he could be the cousin to Damien from the Omen movies, and gives a really solid performance.

As much as I like Cregger, I do think Weapons has some issue that keep it from being a great film, but I will withhold the specifics of why so as not to spoil the film for those who want to see it – except to say that part of the conclusion to the mystery feels a bit unsatisfying…which is similar to how I felt about Barbarian. I’d also say that the film is better at being creepy than it is at being “horrifying”…but that is not necessarily a bad thing.

So, Weapons isn’t a great film but it is a good horror film…and in this day and age that is definitely good enough.

I think Weapons, just like Barbarian, is a perfect Halloween watch if you want to creep yourself out – particularly once it hits streaming. I also think it would make a wonderful companion piece to Ari Aster’s Hereditary.

In conclusion, writer/director Zach Cregger continues to show glimpses of brilliance in his second feature film and is quickly establishing himself as one of the premiere talents in the horror genre.

Weapons isn’t a perfect film, and it isn’t quite a great film, but it is a top-notch horror film that delivers copious amounts of creepiness, enough to have you squirming in your seat…but for less horror inclined individuals that seat can be in your home, and not necessarily in the theatre.

©2025

The Phoenician Scheme: A Review - The Exquisite, but Ultimately Antiseptic, Wes Anderson Aesthetic

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

My Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. A beautifully crafted but ultimately empty cinematic venture.

The Phoenician Scheme is writer/director Wes Anderson’s twelfth feature length film (thirteenth if you count his collection of Roald Dahl shorts to be one film), and it adequately captures the conundrum of his cinematic style.

Wes Anderson burst onto the scene in 1996 with Bottle Rocket, a wonderfully quirky movie that catapulted both Owen and Luke Wilson to stardom as they played goodhearted misfits in a rather rough and tumble world.

Anderson then gave us Rushmore (1998), another quirky tale about a young misfit sort-of-genius/idiot navigating an often times cruel world, which propelled Jason Schwartzman into the Hollywood discussion. Rushmore established Anderson’s narrative aesthetic which has a foundation of - children acting like adults, and adults acting like children.

Then came 2001’s The Royal Tenenbaums, arguably Anderson’s best and most successful film, which told the story of a family of…you guessed it…misfits…led by a lovable scoundrel of a father, masterfully played by Gene Hackman.

Post-Royal Tenenbaums, Anderson’s filmography has had some ups and downs.

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004) and The Darjeerling Limited (2007), both were terribly underwhelming and showed Anderson floundering to find his filmmaking footing.

The charming animated film The Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) was a fun breath of fresh air, but it was followed by Moonrise Kingdom (2012), which was so mannered as to be creepy and ultimately was of little value.

Then came The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), which, along with The Royal Tenenbaums, is my favorite Anderson film. It is stylistically as cinematically eccentric as any Anderson film but unlike the others, at its core is a darkness that is dramatically powerful. It also helps that, like The Royal Tenenbaums with Gene Hackman, The Grand Budapest Hotel has Ralph Fiennes giving a glorious performance at its center.

Unfortunately, after the epic heights of The Grand Budapest Hotel, Anderson learned the wrong lessons and instead of delving deeply into some dramatic darkness, he instead eschewed all drama in favor of a cornucopia of aggressive whimsy.

The French Dispatch (2021) and Asteroid City (2023) are perfect examples of this now cemented Anderson aesthetic. They are beautifully shot films which boast extraordinary production design, but that feature such copious amounts of twee that they end up being quite exquisite, but ultimately empty, cinematic exercises.

The same is true of the collection of Roald Dahl shorts that Anderson made for Netflix. Those films follow this same formula of cinematic saccharine, but they are much more digestible because they are short films.

In feature length, Anderson’s formula full of twee feels like a meal consisting solely of candy, entirely empty calories resulting in a dreadfully painful toothache.

The biggest issue with Anderson’s newest venture, The Phoenician Scheme (and with most everything post-The Grand Budapest Hotel), is that when Anderson uses contrived characters in real world settings – as he does in Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums, it can be very compelling and comedic, but when he uses contrived characters in cartoonish (but beautifully staged) settings, as he does in his recent era, it makes for tedious-to-the-point-of-tortuous amounts of twee.

The plot of The Phoenician Scheme revolves around Zsa Zsa Korda (Benicio del Toro) – one of Anderson’s many charming rogue male leads. Korda is…unsurprisingly…very peculiar. He is a mogul and a menace (dare I say it…Trumpian) – and the target of multiple assassination attempts which prompt him to have visions of meeting God. He’s also a father…but not a good one – think Royal Tenenbaum with more money.

The movie follows Korda as he tries, along with his longtime estranged, soon-to-be-nun, daughter Liesl (Mia Threapleton), and his assistant Bjorn (Michael Cera), to save a gigantic business deal to build a morally monstrous public works project– called The Phoenician Scheme.

The plot is really beside the point…as is the dialogue. The film is, like the rest of late-period Anderson films, a contrived exercise, like a diorama, filled to the brim with quirks and twee.

The performances are what they are. Del Toro makes for a reasonably watchable lead, and Mia Threapleton – who I did not know until this very moment is Kate Winslet’s daughter, is admittedly captivating as Liesl.

Surprisingly, Michael Cera, who you’d think would be the most Wes Anderson actor of them all, is actually a bit out of synch in the film.

The appearances of Bryan Cranston, Tom Hanks, Scarlett Johansson, Jeffrey Wright, Riz Ahmed, Benedict Cumberbatch and Rupert Friend in small roles are all pretty forgettable if not a little bit grating.

The Phoenician Scheme, which is currently streaming on Peacock, runs for an hour and forty minutes and not once during that entire run time did I give even half of a shit about any of the characters on screen or about what would happen to them or even around them.

Does The Phoenician Scheme look fantastic? Yes, it most certainly does as the cinematography (by Bruno Delbonnel) and production design are phenomenal.

Is the acting in The Phoenician Scheme good? Meh. It’s fine for what it is – a very mannered performance style that seems like it is more fun to do than to witness.

Is The Phoenician Scheme a good movie and worth watching? No, not really. It’s difficult to say that Anderson’s late period films are bad because they are so exquisitely crafted – but that craft often overwhelms the movies and renders them – if not undigestible, then at least unpalatable.

Wes Anderson is definitely an acquired taste, and though I acquired it early in his career, it seems in his recent era I have lost my taste for it as it’s all just a bit too sweet for my cinematic palate.

Anderson is undeniably a remarkable stylist, but his exquisite aesthetic has evolved to where it now overwhelms, so much so that his films are rendered emotionally antiseptic. At this point I feel absolutely nothing watching Anderson’s films…not joy, not happiness, not anger, not awe, not even interest.

So, if you want to see some stylish, silly cinematic musings then I recommend you go to Peacock and watch the beautiful but vapid The Phoenician Scheme.

If you’re looking for something more hearty…then you best go elsewhere because The Phoenician Scheme isn’t for you…just like it wasn’t for me.

©2025

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 139 - Superman

On this episode, Barry and I don our red and blue uni-tards and talk all things Superman - the big new Summer blockbuster from James Gunn. Topics discussed include the history of the Man of Steel, the multitude of problems with this new movie and the what the future looks like for DC Studios new cinematic universe. 

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 139 - Superman

Thanks for listening!!

©2025

Superman: A Review - It's a Bird! It's a Plane! It's Another Sub-Par Superman Movie!

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

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. This Superman will not save us.

Superman, written and directed by James Gunn, chronicles the travails of the iconic Man of Steel as he fights to protect humanity against Lex Luthor’s various nefarious schemes.

James Gunn made a name for himself writing and directing the popular Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy of films for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, now he is not only writing and directing a film for the DC universe…he runs the whole damn thing, having been named co-CEO of DC Studios.

Superman is the launching pad for Gunn’s new DCU, and its success is pivotal in making his new superhero cinematic universe venture work.

Having just seen Superman, color me extremely dubious as to the chances of Gunn’s DCU saving the floundering comic book movie business.

A couple of things to convey before diving into the specifics of Gunn’s Superman. First, I’ve never been a huge fan of the character Superman, as I’ve found him to be a bit bland (my favorite Superman comic is Red Son – which sort of flips the Superman archetype on its head by having him grow up in the Soviet Union instead of Kansas). I don’t dislike the character, I just don’t love him (I’m more of a Batman guy), which is why while I’ve seen all the various Superman movies, I’ve never seen a single second of any of the numerous Superman tv shows.

Secondly, I know James Gunn is a polarizing figure to many, and I get that as he can be a grating presence in the public eye, but I thought he did a terrific job with the Guardians of the Galaxy movies and injected a much-needed bit of life into the MCU when it needed it. I even somewhat appreciated his earlier DC work – his Suicide Squad film and his Peacemaker series.

Which brings us to Superman. The film hit theatres on July 11th and won its first weekend with a big box office showing of $125 million domestic. That’s a good start…but it’s not earth-shattering. The film has a reported budget of $225 million, and once you add-on the marketing budget and the theatre’s cut, then you’re looking at the movie needing to make around $650 million in order to break even. In the old days of a decade ago that would be a no-brainer…but times have changed and its now no sure thing.

A big part of why it’s no sure thing is that Superman, despite its early box office success, unfortunately, is not a good movie. In fact, it is kind of a mess.

After having seen a matinee of it with my young son yesterday I can report that the film just doesn’t work – a strong indicator of which was that my son was literally so bored he squirmed in his seat so much that in our nearly empty theatre he ended up literally watching the film upside down for periods of time. (By the way…my young son’s analysis of the movie was that Jurassic World: Rebirth is much better…although he did like the Superdog – which is a dog very reminiscent in looks and behavior to his grandmother’s dog).

The problem is that Gunn’s story is convoluted to the point of utter incoherence. In order to avoid spoilers, I won’t get into any discussion of the plot, but just know that it is over-burdened, bloated and decidedly boring.

The cast are all fine, I suppose, with lead David Corenswet making for a passable but rather charisma-free Superman.

Rachel Brosnahan plays Lois Lane and she is unquestionably a good actress but is hamstrung by both a shallow script and an abysmal and unflattering wardrobe.

Nicholas Hoult, also a terrific actor, plays Lex Luthor and his role too seems terribly underwritten and as a result his performance never gains any momentum or makes much sense.

Making sense is just not this movie’s strong suit.

There has been a bit of controversy around this movie, some are angry about Superman’s status as an “immigrant”, other’s angry that an evil country in the film may be Israel – and its victims Palestinians. I find both controversies to be mind-numbingly annoying mostly because the film is so flat that it just cannot generate any emotional (or political) charge from me at all.

Speaking of flat, a major, major, major issue with the film is its aesthetic. This movie is shot by cinematographer Henry Braham like it’s a TV show, with an over-brightness that gives it a flat visual presence. It was striking how derivative and cinematically dull this movie looked.

Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy movies weren’t exactly Citizen Kane, but they did have a certain visual flare to them that set them somewhat apart from the usual Marvel mush. Superman though fails to excite visually, and that’s a problem for a film that is meant to set the tone for an entire cinematic universe.

In addition to the visuals, the costumes are atrocious. Corenswet’s Superman garb is dreadful. It is poorly designed and is so poorly fitted it felt amateurish. And as previously stated poor Rachel Brosnahan’s wardrobe is criminally bad and exceedingly unflattering for such a beautiful woman. This movie may have the worst costume designing in recent memory

I will say one positive thing about the film…and that is that the ending of the movie – not the climax but the actual ending, was exceedingly well-done and at least for me personally (I will refrain from explaining the details of why) – very emotionally moving. But the sense I get watching the film is that the creators had the ending first and then threw a bunch of junk into a blender and churned it all up and puked it out to build a story that led up to that poignant ending.

It is inevitable that this film will be compared to previous Superman films, and that David Corenswet will be compared to previous actors who played Superman.

As I said, I’ve never been a huge Superman guy, and much to the chagrin of some people I never really thought Richard Donner’s Superman (1978), which stars Christopher Reeve, was the be all and end all of superhero movies. I’m not saying it’s bad, I’m just saying it isn’t great – although Gene Hackman is fantastic as Lex Luthor.

The direct sequels to Superman (1978) are all not very good or straight up bad.

Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns (2006), which stars Brandon Routh as Superman, is a bad movie. Poorly constructed and poorly executed. It is interesting as a historical artifact though as the film is directed by a gay sexual predator – Singer, and stars another gay sexual predator – Kevin Spacey. Yay Hollywood!! The only thing that would make this movie more sketchy is if Jeffrey Epstein financed the whole thing.

Then we get into the Snyder-verse, which opens with Man of Steel (2013), with Henry Cavill as the titular hero. I liked the Snyder-verse more than most (the director’s cuts of the films only), but never dug Man of Steel.

I think Gunn’s Superman is not in the same league as Donner’s 1978 film, and is even behind Man of Steel, but is better than Singer’s 2006 piece of crap Superman Returns.

As for the actors who played Superman…I know everybody loves Christopher Reeve – and his tragic accident and subsequent early death make him a bit of a martyr, but as blasphemous as it is to say, I never thought much of him as an actor.  He’s fine as Superman but let’s pump the brakes on the hyperbolic adoration of Reeve.

The less said about Brandon Routh the better. I feel bad for the guy. He wasn’t very good as Superman and the movie he was in was very bad. Tough to get over that sort of thing.

Henry Cavill was Superman in the Snyder-verse, and I know this may be outrageous to some, but I thought he was the best Superman we’ve ever had. Cavill was charismatic, was buff beyond belief, and brought under-appreciated acting chops to the role. I doubt it will happen but I have to say I think Cavill would make a great James Bond too.

David Corenswet’s performance as Superman is…ok. He isn’t great. He isn’t charismatic. He isn’t particularly engaging. He does seem like a nice guy…but he is hampered with an atrocious Superman costume.

In my ranking I have Corenswet ahead of the hapless Routh, but well behind Reeve in second and even farther behind Henry Cavill atop the list.

Now let’s look at the Lex Luthor rankings. We’ve got at number one – easily Gene Hackman – who chews scenery in Superman (1978) like a starving man locked in a house made of ham. Then at a very, very distant number two we’ve got a tie between Nicholas Hoult in an under-written part and Jesse Eisenberg’s miscasting in the Snyder-verse. And finally, we’ve got the dreadful Kevin Spacey in Superman Returns – yuck.

I would rank the Lois Lanes but the reality is that that character has always been very underwritten and never exceedingly well-played. I guess if forced to I would go with Margot Kidder at one, and Kate Bosworth, Amy Adams and Rachel Brosnahan all tied for second, as none have really done much with the role.

In conclusion, Superman has a big burden to carry…namely reviving the moribund superhero genre, saving Warner Brothers from its franchise foibles and lifting up the DCU to its greatest heights.

The film is far too artistically flawed and creatively vapid to awaken the echoes of DC success and MCU billion-dollar dominance past. The reality is that the superhero moment of the first two decades of this century has passed, and a sub-par Superman ain’t gonna revive it.

My recommendation is to skip this middling Superman in the theatre, and if you really want to see it check it out when it hits HBO MAX in a bunch of months…or, frankly, skip it altogether…you really won’t be missing much.

©2025

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota - Episode 137: F1

On this combustible episode, Barry and I buckle up and crash head on over the Brad Pitt racing blockbuster F1. Topics discussed include is this movie any good? As well as Brad Pitt vs Tom Cruise, and the not-so-secret formula of summer blockbusters.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 137 - F1

Thanks for listening!!

©2025

F1: A Review - Buckle Up!!

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

My Popcorn Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. A fun, mindless summer blockbuster that features some truly thrilling racing sequences.

F1, starring Brad Pitt, is a sports drama that tells the story of Sonny Hayes (Pitt), a former racing whiz kid who fell on hard times and faded into obscurity, and now in his fifties, is given a shot in the big show for one last ride.

The film, which is directed by Joseph Kosinski – whose last movie Top Gun: Maverick - was a gigantic billion-dollar blockbuster, opened in theatres last weekend to solid reviews and even better box office.

Before I share my thoughts on the film, I think it best to put them in to context. I started watching F1 the sport, about a decade ago, while taking care of my newborn son. You see, my wife and I would break down child care into six-hour shifts, with me taking the overnight hours and her taking the early morning hours.

This system worked pretty well. In the middle of the night when my son would wake up and need changing and a bottle, I would take him to our living room and get him all taken care of and then sit holding him until he fell asleep. Even after he fell asleep, I would just sit there with him in my arms and not want to move for fear of waking him up again. So, I would often sit in the dark and just be on watch for ghosts and goblins and the like.

To fill this time, I couldn’t read because I would just fall asleep…and I realized I couldn’t watch narrative tv or movies because I was too tired to really pay attention and also, I didn’t want to turn the volume on.

So, what I did was I set my cable box to record racing of any kind and then watch it in the middle of the night to help the time pass. Racing was perfect because I didn’t really have to pay attention, I didn’t need the sound on, and I didn’t really care about it one way or the other as I wasn’t a racing fan.

Then a funny thing happened…I became a racing fan. I watched NASCAR, IndyCar, F1 and even MotoGP and out of those I ended up really liking F1 and IndyCar.

For some reason I found myself particularly mesmerized by F1…there was just something about it…the type of cars or the drama or something, and I got hooked. And so, I now watch F1 regularly, and in a cool twist of fate I even watch it with my young son who is now old enough to have an interest in such things (he’s a big Max Verstappen fan).

This is a long-winded way of saying…I like F1 the sport.

Which brings us to F1 the movie.

F1 is, pardon the pun, very, very formulaic, but it employs a tried-and-true sports movie formula of old guy gets one last shot, and it works.

The movie opens with an exhilarating racing sequence that is accompanied by Led Zeppelin’s song “Whole Lotta Love”. This opening (and that song with its driving guitar riff and bombastic drums) is so vibrant and engaging that it grabs you by the throat and never lets you go.

F1 is certainly a flawed film, for example it is so implausible as to be utterly preposterous, and it is chock full of paper-thin characters and a cornucopia of exposition. But despite its faults, and thanks to its racing scenes, which are consistently viscerally invigorating, gloriously shot and filled with distinct drama and tension, F1 is, in many ways, a perfect, mindless, “original” summer blockbuster.

The film was made in conjunction with F1 (and Apple Films – and its budget is between $200 and $300 million) – and it shows, as it was shot on real tracks, with real racers, in front of real crowds. The movie is essentially a two-and-half hour commercial for F1, as it is a glitzy, glossy and glamorous introduction to the sport.

If you know the sport, you’ll roll your eyes at the frequent fantastical liberties taken in the film regarding racing reality, but you’ll also love the pulsating inside look at the actual racing.

If you’re a newbie, you’ll get a crash course (once again – no pun intended) into the basics of the sport and how to digest it – for example you’ll hear about soft vs medium vs hard tires, and race strategy and all the rest, given by the beautiful cast of Brad Pitt, Kerry Condon, Javier Bardem and Damson Idris.

Director Joseph Kosinski’s last film, Top Gun: Maverick, was a big budget blockbuster that “saved movie theatres” post-pandemic. I have to say that I hated that movie…and found it so cloying and imbecilic as to be insulting.

F1 is an equally big budget, sort of a more realistic Top Gun: Maverick with race cars minus the politics of empire and military industrial complex propaganda…and frankly, that worked for me.

It must also be said that F1 shows that Brad Pitt is much better at this sort of stuff than Tom Cruise. Cruise is such a self-serious blowhard that he comes across as completely cringe and grating. Pitt, on the other hand, seems to be in on the joke of it all, and while he mostly sleepwalks through this movie, he does his job of movie star with an ease and sturdy sense of self of which Tom Cruise seems to be deathly allergic.

The rest of the cast are…fine.

Javier Bardem, as team owner Ruben Cervantes, chews scenery with his usual aplomb.

Kerry Condon, as team technical director Kate McKenna, is as charming as always and does the best she can with the little she’s given.

Damson Idris, as teammate/rival Joshua Pierce, is a bit lacking in charisma and charm but I guess he does his best to pass as a self-absorbed F1 driver (they are all notoriously narcissistic).

The storytelling in F1 is not exactly its strongpoint, nor is its character development…but what does shine is its technical prowess.

The film, the racing sequences in particular, is very well shot. And the editing and sound are truly fantastic. I saw the film in a shitty cineplex which usually disappoints on all technical matters, and I was still blown away by the sound in this movie.

Be forewarned, my podcast partner, the incomparable Barry Andersson, absolutely loathed this movie with the fury of a thousand suns. And maybe that’s because he dislikes racing in general…or maybe it’s because he has terrible taste…or maybe it’s because he’s a terrible person…who knows?

So maybe those unfamiliar with F1 as a sport will dislike F1 the movie…I don’t know. I think the film is a perfect, original, non-superhero/I.P. bit of empty-headed action for the summer season that will entertain anybody with the will to be entertained.

To be clear, F1 is not a great movie in the vein of say Ford v Ferrari or something like that…but it is a fun time at the cineplex, and I think you should check out of the summer heat and go check it out.

©2025

Predator: Killer of Killers - A Review: Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda

**THIS REVIEW CONTAINS MINOR SPOILERS!! THIS IS NOT A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!!**

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. A wasted opportunity that gets bogged down in poor storytelling.

Predator: Killer of Killers, is a new animated science fiction anthology action film that is currently streaming on Hulu.

The film is the sixth film in the Predator franchise and is the second Predator film to be directed by Dan Trachtenberg, who directed Prey (2022).

I liked Prey and thought its premise of a predator taking on Native Americans in the 1700’s was a very clever one. The film wasn’t perfect, for example it had an unhealthy amount of the usual virtue signaling of woke politics that has become so commonplace nowadays. But despite that, I found it to be a compelling take on an old action franchise and I particularly liked the lead actress Amber Midthunder.

In fact, in my review of Prey I wrote that the franchise would be wise to stay on this track and move forward and set new Predator movies in other interesting times and places, like “Shogun era Japan…”, and lo and behold that’s exactly what they did…sort of.

Predator: Killer of Killers is an anthology of four different stories, the first set in Viking times (Scandinavia 841), the second in Shogun era Japan (1609), the third during World War II (1942), and the fourth on the Predator planet itself.

Unfortunately, still prevalent in these stories are the tiresome woke politics of our own annoying times…sigh. For example, the first section is about a female Viking warrior princess who kicks everybody’s ass…because of course it is…and the second section is about Japanese men – as it should be, and the third about a Latino man…because apparently leading white men are now entirely anathema in the Predator cinematic universe, even when they’d make the most sense…like in the Viking story.

I know this is animated science fiction and all, but it still beggar’s belief that creatives don’t understand how when you subvert reality to such an extent that a woman is the greatest Viking warrior around, it makes suspending disbelief that much harder and the story that much less interesting.

This Viking warrior princess should have been a man as both history and myth would tell us, for the arc of her story is, frankly, a masculine hero’s journey, and when a feminine agent takes the masculine hero’s journey it deprives the myth of its archetypal and sub-conscious power.

This first story does feature some cool animation and action sequences, but it could have, and should have, been so much better because it is a really cool idea. One can only imagine the predator taking on beserkers in a gory battle sequence…but alas t’wasn’t meant to be.

The second story is set in Shogun-era Japan and features two Samurai warriors with a long-held grudge against each other.

This segment is the best in the film as it is really cool and looks fantastic. It is by far the most compelling and profound story in the bunch as well, and its action sequences are the most vibrant.

The third section, which follows a young Latino man who yearns to be a pilot and then ends up being one in World War II, is not good at all. In fact, it is incredibly asinine and inane.

For the life of me I cannot understand why they chose this time and place, and this protagonist, as all of it feels terribly trite and not the least bit captivating.

The introduction of “modern” WWII technology into these stories just accentuates the technological advancement of the predators all the more, and makes the storyline moot, as the whole idea behind the Predator story is that man must return to his most basic, primal nature to take on the predator and OUTSMART HIM – think of Arnold Schwarzenegger mortally wounding the predator in the original film with a trap using a sharpened log and its heavy counterweight.

There are also some of the dumbest and least believable action sequences imaginable in this WWII section – which is saying a lot since it is an animated action movie after all.

The final section, which brings together the three protagonists from the other sections, is a total mess and patently absurd to the point of being ridiculous.

What really struck me watching this movie is that in the first Predator film, it seemed impossible that Arnold would actually kill this thing as it was such an elite predator. But in this anthology, all of the predators seem really bad at being…well… predators….like they don’t have minor league predator abilities…they have little league predator abilities.

Another frustrating thing about this movie is that it felt like the franchise wasted these story ideas on these short sections rather than making them better and expanding them into feature length tales.

For example, imagine a predator film (even animated) set in a Kurosawa or Shogun tv series type-of setting. That would be amazing and it would give proper respect to the culture being portrayed and give audiences a chance to connect with characters…which doesn’t happen in the short stories told here.

And just imagine how kick-ass a real Viking predator movie (again even animated) would be where the predator takes on a bunch of Berserkers and Viking warriors ravaging some village somewhere….that would be awesome.

I also think it would be great for predator to take on Spartans at the height of their military power, or Genghis Khan, or Attila the Hun, or Vlad the Impaler, or Crusaders in the Holy Land.

And if we’re gonna do a World War II story, flip the script and set it in Nazi Germany and have predator go apeshit on some Nazis, or have him destroy Japanese soldiers during the Rape of Nanking…in essence making Predator the good guy because he’s slaughtering the “bad guys”.

The possibilities are endless, but the hope that the people running the Predator franchise, people like director Dan Trachtenberg, will get it right, is slim to none at this point. It seems the only thing Trachtenberg really cares about is expressing his dislike of white men and virtue signaling his ‘perfect’ politics.

Ultimately, Predator: Killer of Killers felt like a wasted opportunity, which makes it a very frustrating viewing experience. If you’re a die-hard Predator franchise fan than I’m sure you’ll check it out and overlook its notable flaws.

But if you’re a normal person just looking to be entertained for 90 minutes, then Predator: Killer of Killers just isn’t the thing for you as it fails to entertain and fails to live up to its promising premise.

©2025

Alto Knights: A Review - Monstrous Mess of a Mob Movie

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

My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. Whoo-boy…this is a massive mess of a movie.

Alto Knights, which stars Robert DeNiro in dual roles as mobsters Vito Genovese and Frank Costello, chronicles the troubled relationship between those two gangster big wigs.

The film, which boasts a bevy of big-name talent besides DeNiro – including Oscar-winning director Barry Levinson and Oscar-nominated writer Nicholas Pileggi (Goodfellas), hit theatres on March 21st and bombed at the box office (it made $9 million on a $50 million budget). It is now available to stream on MAX, where I just watched it.

Alto Knights is an extraordinary piece of cinema if only becomes it is so incoherent and dramatically impotent.

The film, written by acclaimed scribe Nicholas Pileggi, feels less like a narrative arc than a collection of mismatched scenes pasted together like a kindergartener’s art class collage.

The film meanders from nothing to nothing with no dramatic stakes until it reaches a non-crescendo with a flaccid non-ending that is so odd and dull it felt like everyone just stopped showing up to work on the film one day and they decided to call it quits and let the editors try and figure out how to make it a full story.

To give some context, the final sequence/shot of this film is so bad and so poorly done it is actually shocking. Although I guess since it involves nothing more than an old man wandering around aimlessly it is fitting for this disastrous movie. (Not to mention that the sequence is cut to too quickly and cut away from even more quickly…so bizarre!!)

The film is meant to dramatize the often-tumultuous relationship between the fiery Vito Genovese and the calm Frank Costello, two major players in the mafia in the 1950’s and 60’s. The selling point of the film is that DeNiro plays both characters...much like Michael B Jordan plays the twins in Sinners. This construct actually works because DeNiro does very solid work as both Genovese and Costello, and unlike Jordan, gives both characters distinct traits and personalities and you never mix them up.

That DeNiro would do solid work is somewhat surprising considering his obvious struggles to give a shit in the latter part of his career, but that his performance would be absolutely wasted in this steaming garbage pile is a tragedy.

One can only assume that the responsibility for this mess lays squarely on the shoulders of once-esteemed director Barry Levinson. Levinson, who won the Best Director Oscar for Rain Man, was at one time one of the heavyweight auteurs in American cinema…but that time has long since passed.

A brief glance at Levinson’s filmography reveals a stunning-amount of terrific films at the start…films like Diner (1982), The Natural (1984) - my favorite baseball movie of all-time, Tin Men (1987), Good Morning Vietnam (1987) and his Oscar winner Rain Man (1988).

Then in 1991 Levinson made Bugsy starring Warren Beatty and Annette Benning. Bugsy was nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards, but people with eyes to see (people like me) could see something had shifted. Bugsy is a bad movie – and similar to Alto Knights, it is dramatically incoherent and feels frantically stitched together by underpaid and under-appreciated editors desperate to find some coherence in a sea of nonsense.

After Bugsy, Levinson’s filmography takes a disastrous turn from relevancy into the dark void of the instantly forgettable. Toys, Jimmy Hollywood, Disclosure and Sleepers are all surprisingly second-and-third-rate films.

In 1997 Levinson has a bit of a comeback with Wag the Dog, a clever and decent enough film but one that isn’t nearly as good as it was claimed to be.

After Wag the Dog the wheels really come off the Levinson wagon and he makes a string of some ten entirely worthless movies over a nearly twenty-year span that thrust into the deepest depths of irrelevancy.

And now, at the age of 83, he once again has a big budget and movie star and he’s reaching for the brass ring one more time and he falls flat on his face.

It would seem highly unlikely that Levinson, at his age and with this level of failure artistically and financially on Alto Knights, would be allowed back into the arena and given money to make a movie again. In a sense that is sad…he seems like a nice guy and he did make some quality movies early in his career…but this is life…if you make shit for long enough, people will realize you can now only make shit…for proof of this theory look no further than Alto Knights.

As for Alto Knights, what is so frustrating about the film is that it could have, maybe even should have, been a really good movie. There is a terrific story at its core about Genovese and Costello, and DeNiro really does do quality work in the film, but it is all scuttled by some really poor storytelling and structure.

It also doesn’t help when disastrous casting decisions are made where Debra Messing is given a major role. Messing is so bad in this movie it actually made me uncomfortable and I felt bad for her. The same is true for Cosmo Jarvis, who comically contorts himself to such extremes in order to look like Vincente Gigante I worried he might give himself a stroke.

Ultimately, the problem with Alto Knights is that it is so poorly structured that it neuters itself dramatically by failing to have a climax or a clear and definitive ending. It just walks off into the sunset whistling to itself like a dementia-addled, elderly gangster in his pajamas being led off to a state-run nursing home with bars on the windows.

I suppose Alto Nights greatest accomplishment is having an awful lot of big-name talent attached to it, yet still managing to be nothing but awful.

 ©2025

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 136 - Sinners

On this episode, Barry and I head down to the Delta and sing the blues over Ryan Coogler's blockbuster vampire movie, Sinners, starring Michael B. Jordan. Questions addressed include is Ryan Coogler good? Is Michael B. Jordan good? Is Sinners good? Stay tuned at the end for a rundown of the Summer blockbuster season and predictions regarding Fantastic Four and Superman. 

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 136 - Sinners

Thanks for listening!!

©2025

Sinners: A Review - Don't Believe the Hype

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

My Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. An over-hyped horror movie that under-delivers on every count.

Sinners, written and directed by Ryan Coogler, is a period horror film that chronicles Black twin entrepreneurs, Smoke and Stack, who open a juke joint in the Mississippi Delta in 1932 and contend with racism and vampires…and not necessarily in that order.

Sinners hit theatres on April 18th and was a run-away smash hit. The film was a box office blockbuster, making $350 million on a $90 million budget, was a critical darling, and generated a ton of positive buzz...some of which included Oscar talk.

I missed Sinners in the theatre, but as a fan of vampire movies, Blues music, actresses Hailee Steinfeld, Wunmi Mosaku and actor Delroy Lindo – all of whom have supporting roles in the movie, when the film hit Video on Demand this week, I quickly bought it (for $25 – essentially the price of two theatre tickets) and was excited to watch it and see exactly what all the fuss was about.

Having watched all two-hours and fifteen minutes of Sinners, I regret to inform you dear reader that I am completely at a loss for what all the aforementioned Sinners fuss was about.

Simply said, despite how much I wanted it to be, Sinners is just not a good movie…hell…it isn’t even an entertaining one. It is poorly paced, egregiously shot, incoherently written and at least in terms of its lead Michael B. Jordan, abysmally acted.

The film opens with a long set-up that introduces us to Smoke and Stack, the twins played by Michael B. Jordan. They have returned to Mississippi from Chicago where they worked for Al Capone. They are also combat veterans from World War I.

Smoke and Stack have a pile of money and buy an old lumber mill from a Klansman and turn it into a juke joint. The film takes place on the day they open the juke joint and the whole community (Black community) comes out to party there.

The languid first hour has the distinct pacing of a prestige drama, but it lacks both the prestige and the drama. The film then transitions, slowly…very slowly…into a horror film that is as derivative and dull as imaginable, and as predictable as can be.

The unquestionable highlight of the film is a scintillating music sequence in the juke joint that masterfully connects Delta Blues with African folk music and then to contemporary Black music. It is a visually and musically compelling piece of cinema. What makes that sequence stand out all the more though is that everything surrounding it is so visually unimaginative and aesthetically anemic.

For example, cinematographer Autumn Arkapaw, makes the decision to compose all of her shots exactly the same way, with the main subject smack dab in the middle of the frame. I know this style is en vogue nowadays but that doesn’t make it look any less amateurish and reprehensible. The cinematography in this movie looks like something from a second rate tv show on the USA network.

Another piece of cinematic malpractice is the mismanaged and poorly shot crescendo to the main action battle – which is cinematically obtuse, visually incoherent and dramatically incomprehensible…and a truly absurd and aggressively pandering coda tacked on at the end that only extends this already interminably long and decidedly lifeless movie.

Sinners is not aided in the least by the poor performance from Michael B. Jordan as the two leads. Jordan does next to nothing to differentiate between the twins and does little more than pose and preen his way through the film.

Jordan, who I once thought had such great promise as an actor – most notably in Friday Night Lights and Fruitvale Station, has eschewed acting for “blacting” in his movies now. “Blacting” is a vacuous and vapid form of stereotype incarnation in the place of actual acting among Black actors – and occasionally white ones. When someone “acts”, they create a rich and complex human character, when they are “blacting” they simply do a shallow pantomime of hollow Black stereotypes. Michael B. Jordan does blacting, not acting, in Sinners…as well as in the vast majority of things he’s been in over the last few years.

Jordan’s fall from artistic grace mirrors director Ryan Coogler’s similar precipitous stumble…not surprising since they have teamed up often over the years and both had their breakout with Fruitvale Station.

Coogler garnered much acclaim for Fruitvale Station, which was a film that showed him to be a director bursting with potential. Unfortunately, he has squandered that potential with a series of sub-par franchise films (Creed and Black Panther).

Yes, I know that Black Panther (which also starred Michael B. Jordan) was a blockbuster and got nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award…but I said it at the time and will say it again now…Black Panther is a middling Marvel movie. It just isn’t good…but critics slobbered all over it because it was a “Black movie” that came out at the height of the Trump shitshow (or first incarnation of the Trump shitshow) and all the #OscarSoWhite stuff and the rest of that era’s racial “awakening”.

I wrote about the middling nature of Black Panther when it came out and have only been proven more right as every day passes. That movie too was very poorly shot…and its cinematographer was…you guessed it – Autumn Arkapaw.

Black Panther II, which came out post Trump I and pre-Trump II, was a truly atrocious Marvel movie, and it showed the ever-expanding cracks in the Coogler myth that I astutely diagnosed much earlier on.

Now with Sinners, audiences and critics have been wowed, and I am left shaking my head in dismay, if not disgust. I get people want to be excited about movies again, and want to have a communal cultural experience, but Sinners is not the answer now…just like Top Gun: Maverick wasn’t the answer a few years ago.

Lowering our standards and pretending that Sinners (or Top Gun: Maverick, or Barbie) is a great movie, or even a good one, does no one, not audiences, not critics, not Hollywood and certainly not the art of cinema, any good.

Ryan Coogler’s success, like Jordan Peele’s and Greta Gerwig’s success, is a function of cultural wishful thinking, critical and audience virtue signaling, and a steep lowering of cinematic standards across the boards.

Sinners is a film that has no business making $350 million or of being adored by critics or of garnering Oscar nominations. The film’s success, both with audiences and critics, speaks less to its quality and more to how far both American intelligence and the art of cinema has fallen.

Ultimately, Sinners is the type of movie that dumb people think is deep, and stupid people think is smart. It is an instantly forgettable and entirely frustrating cinematic endeavor and you shouldn’t waste a single second of your precious time on it.

©2025

Black Bag: A Review - Just Another Forgettable Soderbergh Film

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

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. An ultimately forgettable spy thriller that is devoid of thrills and banal to the core.

Black Bag, directed by Steven Soderbergh, is a spy thriller that follows the travails of a husband-and-wife spy team caught up in high-stakes MI6 intrigue.

The film, which stars Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett, was released in theatres on March 14th to little fanfare, and less than a month later is now available to stream on Peacock.

I remember seeing Steven Soderbergh’s directorial debut, Sex, Lies and Videotape, back in 1989 in the theatre with my girlfriend at the time. After the film we spent hours talking about it, which was a testament to what a unique, original and interesting piece of work it was. I remember thinking at the time how exciting it was that a talent like Steven Soderbergh existed and looking forward to seeing how his career played out.

Thirty-six years later I can tell you that I have never been impressed with Soderbergh’s work beyond his debut. In fact, I have found his career to be a terrible disappointment. That may come as a shock to some readers since Soderbergh has won Oscars and made big, successful movies, but to me Soderbergh has never lived up to his potential as either a filmmaker or an artist.

Sex, Lies and Videotape was a daring and insightful piece of work. It’s not the smoothest piece of filmmaking you’ll ever see, but it is a brutally honest depiction of humanity…and that is the thing that has been missing from Soderbergh’s work ever since.

Despite Soderbergh being a hero to film hipsters everywhere, his filmography mostly reads like an inventory of discount dvds you’d find if you were fishing at the bottom of the bargain bin on the way out of Walmart. Following Sex, Lies and Videotape he made Kafka, King of the Hill, The Underneath, Schizopolis, and Gray’s Anatomy…all films I’d be willing to bet readers have either never seen or if they have seen them have totally forgotten them.

Then came Soderbergh’s commercial success with Out of Sight, The Limey, Erin Brockovich, Traffic and Ocean’s Eleven (and Ocean’s Twelve and Ocean’s Thirteen). These movies were box office successes and some, like Traffic and Erin Brockovich, won Academy Awards. The most noticeable thing about this string of success from Soderbergh is that these films are all painfully vacuous – they are monuments to style over substance. Gone is the intellectual/emotional intrigue of Sex, Lies and Videotape, and in its stead is slick filmmaking, Hollywood posturing and absolutely zero gravitas.

These films are so thin and shallow that they nearly disappear upon rewatch. Traffic, which I really liked the first time I saw it, reveals itself to be a paper-thin piece of made-for-television tripe even upon re-watching it for the first time.

The Ocean’s trilogy were uber successful, and admittedly they have a certain undeniable energy and movie star momentum to them, but ultimately they are a little more than an exercise in style over substance.

Soderbergh’s films after this grouping are more artistically daring but prove the filmmaker lost his deft touch so apparent in his debut. Full Frontal, Bubble, Solaris, The Good German, The Girlfriend Experience, Che: Part One and Two and The Informant!, are, despite some interesting moments, a collection of entirely forgettable films.

2011’s Contagion, which is a compelling watch post-covid, is another of Soderbergh’s slick but empty vassals – like a high-end movie of the week. This was followed by Haywire, Magic Mike, Side Effects, and Logan Lucky…some of which were financially successful, but all of which were an insult to thinking cinephiles.

Then we get into the small production, self-shot current era of Soderbergh’s filmography….which includes Unsane, High Flying Bird, The Laundromat, Let Them Talk, No Sudden Move and Kimi. None of these films are good…and like his early era most haven’t seen these movies and those that did would barely remember a single thing from them. And yet, there are a certain class of cineastes who will vociferously praise Soderbergh up and down and say “I really liked (any movie on this list)”, which I always counter with, just because you like it doesn’t make it good or even cinematically worthwhile. These same people couldn’t tell you a single thing about the plot, story, purpose or meaning behind any of the secondary Soderbergh films they allegedly adore.

Soderbergh then returned to the Magic Mike nonsense with Magic Mike’s Last Dance, yawn, then went arthouse supernatural thriller drama with Presence, and now the spy thriller Black Bag.

If Soderbergh were a major league hitter his lifetime average would be well below the Mendoza line (.200). He doesn’t strike out a ton, but he does ground out weakly to second base an awful lot. His filmography is mostly a collection of second-rate, unremarkable, entirely forgettable movies.

The reality is that Soderbergh is a craftsman, sometimes a very good one, but he is not an auteur because he has nothing of interest or of impact to say in any of his films.

Which brings us to Black Bag. Is Black Bag a terrible movie? No. The truth is it doesn’t feel like a movie at all, it feels like an episode from some pseudo-prestige, AppleTV spy series or something that no one would watch or talk about (like almost everything on Apple TV).

The most notable thing about Black Bag is how insubstantial, inconsequential and irrelevant it is. It is a frivolous, fleeting and entirely forgettable film.

Black Bag’s story is, like much of Soderbergh’s work, convoluted to the point of being incoherent. It is also, somehow, cinematically slick but still devoid of any notable or distinct style.

The cast, which features Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett – no slouches, as the married spies, do professional yet unimpressive, dare I say, uninspired, work.

Fassbender, whom I’ve always liked as an actor, is tightly wound as George Woodhouse – a second generation master spy, but not tightly wound enough to be genuinely interesting.

Blanchett is Kathryn, George’s wife and his equal in the dark arts of spycraft, but she too gives such a restrained performance that she is never compelling, which is sort of shocking considering she is one of the great actresses of her generation.

The rest of the cast are at best uneven, with Naomie Harris doing strong work as agency psychiatrist Dr. Vaughn, and Rege-Jean Page truly abysmal as a fellow spy who may or may not be one of the good guys.

Black Bag attempts to be an Agatha Christie parlor game mixed with John Le Carre spy thriller with some marital drama thrown in for good measure, and of course it contains the usual Soderberghian tricks and reveals…but all of it falls decidedly flat.

None of the characters compel, none of the drama crackles, none of the spy game entices, and none of the thrills manifest. Black Bag is so mediocre and mundane as to be anemic and it feels like something you’d have on in the background while you do other things…which is a shocking thing to say about a movie starring such talents as Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett.

Ultimately, Black Bag is, like the overwhelming majority of Steven Soderbergh’s filmography, forgettable and not really worth watching. It is, unfortunately, a monument to the banality of Soderbergh’s work, and a reminder what a disappointment his once promising career has been.

©2025

Luca Guadagnino Streaming Double Feature: Queer and Challengers - What Else Can I Say...Everyone is Gay!

****THESE REVIEWS CONTAIN SOME SPOILERS!! THESE ARE NOT SPOILER FREE REVIEWS!!!****

 Queer: 2 out of 5 stars – SKIP IT.

Challengers: 2 out of 5 stars – SKIP IT.

Italian filmmaker Luca Guadagnino put out two films last year, Challengers and Queer, both of which garnered at least some awards buzz, but to the chagrin of some, neither got any Oscar nominations.

Having missed both in the theatre, I watched them on streamers recently and I have some thoughts.

Guadagnino came to the fore of film in America with his 2017 Oscar-nominated film Call Me by Your Name, starring Timothee Chalamet, which chronicled the gay love affair between a teenage boy and a man in his mid to late twenties.

Call Me by Your Name was showered with praise, including multiple Oscar nominations, but I found the film to be rather poorly constructed and executed, cinematically flaccid and philosophically infantile.

The thing that stood out the most to me in that movie is a monologue delivered near the end of the film by the teenage boy’s father, who reveals that he might be kinda gay and bemoaning the fact that he didn’t have a torrid gay affair as a young man. My reaction to that scene was to quote the Nirvana song “All Apologies” where Kurt Cobain sings the unforgettable lyric “what else can I say, everyone is gay”.

When I watched Challengers (now streaming on MGM+), which opened in April of 2024 and follows the ups and downs of a love triangle between a woman and two male professional tennis players over the course of a decade or so, that lyric was at the top of my notes after watching the film conclude in the absolutely gayest manner possible when both men realize in the middle of a big tennis match that they actually want each other and not the woman. What else can I say…everyone is gay, indeed.   

I avoided watching Queer, which opened in November of 2024, for quite some time because I assumed it would be the same old thing from Guadagnino. I finally watched it the other day (it is streaming on Max) and literally laughed out loud when Trent Reznor and Atticus Finch – who do the music for the film and for Challengers, opened the movie with Nirvana’s “All Apologies”, most notably the line “what else can I say, everyone is gay”. Bravo!

The reason I share this anecdote is because Luca Guadagnino, who is gay, seems completely incapable of understanding that there actually are people in the world who are not, in fact, gay.  Dare I say it…the reality is that the overwhelming majority of people in the world are not…you know…gay. According to some polls the percentage of gay and lesbian people in the world is roughly 3%, but in Luca Guadagino’s world it feels more like 103%.

In the past forty years or so homosexuality has transformed from being a much stigmatized and often criminalized trait into being a celebrated and shame-free lifestyle. It seems cinema, particularly gay cinema, is having a hard time catching up with the normalization of this once oppressed sexual orientation.

Let’s start with Queer. Queer, which is based on William Burroughs book of the same name, stars Daniel Craig as William Lee, a gay American ex-pat living in Mexico City in the 1950s who spends his time drinking, doing drugs and chasing men….definitely not in that order.

Queer could’ve, and maybe should’ve been great, or at least been celebrated by a film industry desperate to signal it’s progressive bona fides. But the film falls completely flat despite its witty Nirvana quoting opening.

Queer is such a bleak and dismal glimpse into the gay world (or A gay world) that I wouldn’t be surprised if some homophobic pastors  showed it to “confused” teens at gay Evangelical conversion camps.

All of the gay people in this film are the most repugnant and repellent human beings imaginable as they are all desperate, despairing, depressing and depraved. If they are supposed to be an accurate representation of gay men of that or any other era, then that is quite an indictment of that community. One can only assume, and hope, that the film is just focusing on one particularly grotesque group of gays that are not representative.

Daniel Craig, most famous for playing James Bond, no doubt took this role – which some might call gay-baiting, in order to get an Oscar, but his performance felt incredibly mannered to me and distractingly off the mark.

Craig, who has been the subject of quite compelling gay rumors himself, plays Lee as a sort of disgusting desperation incarnate. Lee is less gay as he is obsessive over gay sex, and he comes across like a two-bit actor playing Tennessee Williams in a community theatre production in Blaine, Missouri.

Lee isn’t the only repulsive character in the film, as Jason Schwartzman’s Joe Guidry is so revolting it sort of boggles the mind. That none of these people are even remotely interesting is secondary to how unappealing they are to spend time with.

The plot for Queer lacks any sort of emotional coherence, and devolves into a sort of dreamlike fantasia in the final third, which undercuts whatever gritty and grimy reality was established in the first two acts.

Ultimately, Queer felt like an over-indulgent exercise in gay exploitation rather than exploration, with Craig being so superficially committed to his character’s gayness it appeared like he just wanted to kiss a man in public to see if he could get away with it.

Challengers was the hipster choice for film of the year in 2024, but apparently, I am not a hipster because I found it to be so ridiculous as to be inane.

The film, which stars Zendaya, Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist, is supposed to be this sexy jaunt through the world of tennis, but it, and its two lead males, is so transparently gay from the get-go, and features such unappealing dullards as the main actors, that I found watching it to be a tedious undertaking.

Let’s start with Zendaya. I just don’t get it. I admit I have not seen all of her work, for instance I tried watching the HBO drama Euphoria and thought it was garbage so I bailed…so maybe she is great in that…who knows? But everything I have seen her in she is an awful, anemic actress. The Spider-Man movies, Dune, and now Challengers. Just consistently bad, boring, dead-eyed and lifeless.

Josh O’Connor is supposed to bring a bevy of sex appeal to his role of Patrick, a talented but down on his luck tennis player, but he strikes me as a dullard and dopey looking doofus – which is probably why he was so good as Prince Charles in The Crown.

As forgettable as O’Connor is in this film, Mike Faist, who plays Art, his tennis and love rival, is like the invisible man. Faist, who I last saw in Spielberg’s useless remake of West Side Story, is a song and dance man, good for him, but he is so devoid of charisma he might as well be a tumbleweed. Good lord.

As Challengers goes on the story becomes more and more grating, as do the performances, until it all climaxes with the single most ridiculous, and gay, climax imaginable for a tennis movie…when Patrick and Art literally fall into each other’s arms in the middle of a tennis match.

What struck me about Challengers in the context of Guadagnino’s other work, is that the director really does seem to be incapable of understanding that people could not be gay.

Guadagnino’s approach on Challengers (and the father character in Call Me by Your Name) would be like a straight director making a movie about the Gay Men’s Chorus of San Francisco but the gay men in the chorus are actually, deep down, secretly straight.

Having typed out that last paragraph I now realize that I may have just revealed a billion-dollar movie idea…so remember that this material is copyrighted!!

In all seriousness, Challengers could have been an interesting movie set in a unique world, and the same is true of Queer, but Guadagnino has such a repetitive, one-track mind, that he is incapable of bringing any nuance, subtlety, intricacy or dramatic depth to his work. And so we are left with a one-note representation of gayness as some irrepressible truth that lies deep within us all. Sigh.

The bottom line is that both Challengers and Queer could have, and should have, been good, but neither rises to even the minimal level of being interesting, never mind entertaining.

In other words, you do not have to waste your time watching Queer or Challengers because I wasted my time watching Queer and Challengers. You’re welcome.

©2025

Babygirl: A Review - Cumming and Going

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

My Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. Despite Nicole Kidman’s courageous and well-crafted performance, this movie never quite rises to the level of being captivating. Perverts of a more puritanical nature will probably want to see it for the titillation factor alone.

Babygirl, written and directed by Halina Reijn and starring Nicole Kidman, tells the story of Romy (Kidman), a highly-successful, middle-aged CEO who is deeply unsatisfied sexually in her marriage and ends up having a sadomasochistic affair with a much younger intern (Harris Dickinson) at her company.

The film was a moderate success when it hit the big screen on Christmas day of last year, and created quite a lot of buzz due to the sexual nature of its plot. I missed (or more accurately - skipped) Babygirl in theatres but it is now available to stream on Max, where I just watched it.

Let’s start with the positives, shall we. First off, Nicole Kidman gives a…dare I say it…”brave” performance as Romy, the woman who can’t orgasm with her husband and finds herself attracted to the dark call of the brooding young intern who masterfully plays power games with her.

Kidman embraces the middle-aged aspect of her character and the struggled to stave off father time, something that most actresses her age desperately engage in, but not so publicly and definitely not in their work. In this way this performance reminded me of Demi Moore’s performance in The Substance. Moore bravely bared all, and Kidman does too, and yet Kidman received no Oscar nod for her work, which upon watching Babygirl seems like a rather noticeable snub.

Kidman’s performance is fearless (even though her character is riddled with fear), and it needed to be. She unabashedly and very effectively cuts loose when needed and keeps things tightly wrapped the rest of the time.

Kidman is one of the biggest movie stars of her generation, and she’s one of the most beautiful women in Hollywood history, so seeing her be such a committed actress, and so unafraid of exposing herself and putting herself in vulnerable situations, is heartening, and speaks volumes about her artistic integrity.

Besides Kidman’s performance, there isn’t much to love about Babygirl. It bills itself as an erotic thriller, and while it definitely tries to be erotic it is curiously devoid of thrills.

In some ways the film is harkening back to the 1980’s and early 1990’s, which was the heyday of erotic thrillers. This callback is most effectively done through music, most notably with sequences featuring INXS’s “Never Tear Us Apart” and George Michael’s “Father Figure”.

But the problem is that Babygirl isn’t Fatal Attraction, Body Heat or Basic Instinct, because while those films were erotic, they are also thrillers that had crimes at the heart of them. Babygirl is not a thriller because the only thing on the line in it is a reputation and a career, not a life.

What Babygirl really Is - is an examination of sex and power, or more accurately, power and sex, from the perspective of a female in a stereotypically male position of power – CEO.

This idea is an interesting one to examine, and there are threads of thought in the film deserving of much more attention, but the film ultimately has nothing truly interesting to say as it is incapable of profundity, and often at odds with its self philosophically.

Writer/director Halina Reijn, puts together some decent sequences, again the INXS and George Michael ones stand out, but she fails to fully flesh out the purpose and meaning behind the mania at the heart of her main character.

Besides Kidman, the cast are just ok. Harris Dickinson plays Samuel the intern, and he does well enough in the role I suppose, but I must admit that as a straight man I simply don’t get his appeal at all…and maybe that’s the point.

Antonio Banderas plays Jacob, Romy’s husband, and he gives a rather odd performance that seems to be slightly out of tune with the rest of the film.

The most bizarre thing about Babygirl is the dramatic conclusion it comes to (which I won’t share in order to avoid spoilers), which essentially finds that women in power misbehaving in the same ways that men in power misbehave, is somehow empowering.

It could be that the film’s final perspective, either intentionally or unintentionally, speaks to the intellectual and moral decay in modern feminism, where girl power is the ultimate goal even when it is delusional, deceptive, demeaning and devouring.

Ultimately Babygirl is, despite Nicole Kidman’s solid performance, a rather forgettable foray into the pool of erotic cinema. As previously stated, the films of the 80’s and 90’s seemed to have a better grasp on the genre, most notably because they leaned into the thriller part of erotic thriller.

Another issue plaguing the erotic thriller genre nowadays is the aggressive pornification of our culture. Porn is now mainstream to a shocking degree, and this is no more noticeable than in the music industry. Then there’s social media and the rest where people sell their bodies…and souls…for likes and attention. It is all so depressing.

Making an erotic film in our pornified culture is like trying to mix a drink while swimming in an ocean of alcohol…in other words, it feels like a fruitless endeavor.

The bottom line is that Babygirl explores some interesting topics, but refuses to dive deep, preferring to only dip its toes into dark and erotic waters. A better, and sexier, film about sex/power and S&M, is the 2002 movie Secretary, starring Maggie Gyllenhaal and James Spader. If you want to watch a well-made and well-acted erotic movie (that is also pretty intentionally funny), then watch Secretary, and leave Babygirl chained to its bed all by itself.

©2025

KIDS KORNER! – Three Reviews in One – The Minecraft Movie, Dog Man, and Sonic 3...Plus - Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin!!

**THESE ARE SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THESE REVIEWS CONTAIN ZERO SPOILERS!!**

A Minecraft Movie: 2.5 stars – STREAM IT

Dog Man: 2 stars – SKIP IT/STREAM IT

Sonic 3: 2.75 stars – STREAM IT

As the father of a young child, I watch a good deal of movies geared toward children, and I have never written a review of these movies because kids don’t read my stunningly sophisticated screeds.

But you know who might read my film diatribes? Parents. So, I figured since we are in a pretty deep drought in terms of new quality cinema for me to write about, why not write about some of the kid’s movies I’ve seen in recent months in theatres.

Years ago, comedian Bobcat Goldthwait did a bit about the biggest change that occurs in your life after having children is that you now watch a cavalcade of inanely shitty movies and tv shows…which is a spot-on observation. It’s even worse now as there is so much content, and so much of it is dogshit, that when something is even remotely average it feels like you’re watching Citizen Kane.

That said, it is a lot of fun to watch a movie with your child and watch them watch it. Seeing your child just get lost in a story and laugh and enjoy themselves is heaven. Of course, when you’re watching the screen and not your child, it feels like hell.

That said, there is something very freeing about watching a piece of corporate IP entertainment that is so alien to you that you feel like you’re watching a foreign film from a country you didn’t know existed after having been lobotomized. It triggers a level of dissociation and detachment that feels either like a weird Buddhist accomplishment or a psychotic nervous breakdown.

For example, let’s start with the most recent movie, A Minecraft Movie, which has been an absolute blockbuster at the box office since it hit theatres on April 4th, hauling in $550 million in its first two weeks of release.

The film is based on the video game Minecraft, and is directed by Jared Hess and written by half a dozen writers I’ve never heard of. The film stars Jack Black, Jason Mamoa, Danielle Brooks and Emma Myers and features a supporting performance from Jennifer Coolidge.

I am not a gamer so I’ve never played Minecraft. We restrict our son’s video game time pretty tightly, but he does play video games and Minecraft is one of the games he plays….so I’ve heard about the game and get the basic gist of it.

A Minecraft Movie has a plot…but it makes absolutely zero sense to me. I didn’t understand it and didn’t really want to understand it. Jack Black plays a guy named Steve who is stuck in the Minecraft world, and Jason Mamoa plays Garrett, a guy who in his youth was a world champion video game player but is now a rudderless loser.

Then there’s Sebastian Hansen who plays Henry, a new kid in school in a small town, and his older sister, Natalie played by Emma Myers,who is taking care of him because their mom died.

I don’t know what else to say about the plot except the story really takes place in Minecraft world and there’s an evil pig, and skeletons and zombies and weird villagers.

The movie follows a familiar kid movie formula in that it gets a funny man to lead the festivities, in this case Jack Black, who will appeal to parents, and places them in a world that will appeal to kids.

Is A Minecraft Movie good? No, it’s not. Is it at least tolerable? Yes, it is. It has some funny moments in it. Jack Black does Jack Black things, Jason Mamoa does Jason Mamoa things, Jennifer Coolidge does Jennifer Coolidge things, and Emma Myers is cute and easy on the eyes, so…mission accomplished.

Will kids love it? Well, my kid did…as did every other kid and twenty something in the theatre when I saw it…so I guess so. It’s a perfect movie to watch with your child when it hits streaming.

The next movie is Dog Man, an animated film based on the very popular Dav Pilkey book series of the same name.

Dog Man, which is written and directed by Peter Hastings, hit theatres on January 31st, and was a moderate success at the box office, garnering $137 million on a $40 million budget.

We’ve been reading Dog Man books with my son for quite a while. He really enjoys them and I find them to be extremely clever and amusing, so when we saw they were making a Dog Man movie we were pretty psyched.

We went and saw Dog Man opening day and I have to say, it was pretty disappointing. The film tries to capture the unique energy of the books, but doesn’t quite get there, and the end result is a rather frenetic and frustrating viewing experience.

The film is not as clever as the books, or as engaging, and I have to say the film lacks the heart and soul that the books radiate. It all feels so second-rate and so flimsy that it was impossible to walk out of the theatre feeling great.

My son loved it because he loves Dog Man and he loved seeing it come to life, but the movie was much too thrown together and sloppy for me to really appreciate on any level.

If you stream it and watch it with your kids, you’ll probably end up looking at your phone three quarters of the time.

The final film is Sonic 3, which hit theatres on December 20, 2024. The film, directed by Jeff Fowler, stars Jim Carrey, Krysten Ritter, James Marsden and Ben Shwartz and is based on the video game of the same name.

I was at a great disadvantage when watching Sonic 3 because I had not seen Sonic 1 or 2…or at least I didn’t remember seeing Sonic 1 or 2. Although I do have a Sonic story to tell.

Back in the 1990’s, I worked at a Sonic competition at the Hard Rock Café in Boston. There were all these contestants playing Sonic against each other on giant screen tv’s, and the winner got some monetary prize.

All I did was stand there (I was security) and bullshit with my friends. I remember this gig because I worked it with the great Boston stage actor Doug Marsden, and he and I were busting balls and cracking jokes the entire time. The sight of Doug, who was a very intense presence (he was like the Harvey Keitel of the Boston stage), yelling passionately at the tv screens “look out for the sticky shit!!” while nerdy twenty-somethings were competing against one another, made me laugh as hard as anything in my life.

The highlight of the day came at the end when the women running the event gave me a free Sega video game console…which to a broke young dude like me was like being gifted pure gold.

Anyway…that is all I know of Sonic.

My son has seen all the Sonic movies and was psyched for the new one, so since it came out on the last day of school before Christmas break, we played hooky and went and saw the movie.

Watching Sonic was like an out of body experience for me. I was so clueless as to what was going on, and who everybody was, it disoriented me to such a great extent I felt like I was undergoing some sort of mind-altering psychiatric treatment.

I could not even begin to recount the plot of this film, or anything that happened in it. I do remember Jim Carrey was there and he was doing a lot of Jim Carrey things. In fact, Jim Carrey has duel roles in the film, neither of which I fully comprehended…but I was aware that it was Jim Carrey times two….which is an awful lot of Jim Carrey.

There were some moments that made me laugh but for the life of me I cannot remember them now. I vaguely remember Jim Carrey doing some odd dance sequence with himself.

My son loved the movie…as did the entirety of the packed theatre where I watched it. When certain reveals occurred, none of which I understood, there were twenty-somethings in my screening who went absolutely apeshit. They were losing their minds over this movie.

The audience excitement over the film made the movie-watching experience fun, as did my son’s giddy response to the movie.

It seems to me that Sonic 3, which is now streaming on Paramount+, is a movie that kids will thoroughly enjoy and parents can tolerate…which is a perfect combo.

In closing, I do have some parenting advice. As awful as some kid’s movies are…there are some quality choices in movies that you can make which will not only entertain you and your children, but also give them a decent history of cinema.

For example, my son and I love to watch Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd movies. One of my proudest moments was when my son told people his all-time favorite movie was Buster Keaton’s The General…and when he chose all on his own to be Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp character for Halloween (and he was awesome at it!!).

The Chaplin films are a goldmine because they are heartfelt and also funny. Keaton is a treasure trove because his stunt work is so exquisite as to be unbelievable. And Harold Lloyd is a hidden gem for his breathtaking stunt work.

These films are great to watch with kids because they work on multiple levels, the first being physical comedy, and kids love physical comedy. Secondly, they are sweet in nature, and third, there isn’t much dialogue, and so even if your child can’t read, you can read the dialogue to them and it becomes an interactive experience and dare it say it…teaching moment.

Anyway…here are a few classic movies to watch with your kids that will keep them thoroughly entertained.

Harold Lloyd – Safety Last!

Buster Keaton – The General, Sherlock Jr., Steamboat Bill Jr., The Navigator.

Charlie Chaplin – The Kid, Modern Times, City Lights, The Gold Rush, The Circus.

Alright, that’s all I got folks. Whether you are young or old, with children or without, I recommend all of these silent classics…and I wish you luck navigating the modern maze of children’s entertainment which is a minefield with movies like A Minecraft Movie, Dog Man and Sonic 3.

©2025

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 135 - Heretic

On this episode, Barry and Mike go door to door to spread the word about Heretic, the horror/thriller starring Hugh Grant now available on MAX. Topics discussed include the terrific cast, the fantastic first half of the film, and the trouble with finals acts.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 135 - Heretic

Thanks for listening!

©2025

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 134 - Sing Sing

On this episode, Barry and I head to maximum security to discuss the prison drama Sing Sing, starring Best Actor Oscar nominee Colman Domingo. Topics discussed include the terrific cast, the terrible marketing, and the paucity of quality films like Sing Sing. Stick around for the bonus discussion about the 'Mike-terion Collection' - the best of the movies that Barry and I have reviewed. 

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 134 - Sing Sing

Thanks for listening!!

©2025

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!!

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