Looking California and Feeling Minnesota - Episode 140: One Battle After Another

After a long hiatus, the boys are back!! On this episode, Barry and I shout "viva la revolution!" as we talk all things One Battle After Another, the new PT Anderson film starring Leonardo DiCaprio. Topics discussed include the film's many failings, politics in film, and the current state of cinema, culture and the movie industry. 

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota - Episode 140: One Battle After Another

Thanks for listening!

©2025

Eddington: A Review - The Madness of Covid...and a Lot of Other Things

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

My Rating: 4.25 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT NOW.

Eddington, written and directed by Ari Aster and starring Joaquin Phoenix, hit theatres way back in July…but I only just saw it this past weekend…and I have a lot of thoughts.

The film, which bills itself as a “neo-Western dark comedy thriller”, tells the story of the fictional town of Eddington, New Mexico and the personal and political trials and tribulations it faces during the Covid pandemic.

Ari Aster is a filmmaker of whom I think highly – so why didn’t I see Eddington until this past weekend? Well, Aster’s first two films, Hereditary (2018) and Midsommar (2019), were really top-notch elevated horror movies that I loved, but his third feature, Beau is Afraid (2023), was a film that was so affecting that I literally could not watch it all the way through. In fact, I tried multiple times to stream Beau is Afraid and each time I made it roughly 30 minutes in and bailed.

To be clear, I am not saying Beau is Afraid is a bad movie (it might be but I can’t judge after watching only 30 minutes of it - twice), what I am saying though is that it was so affecting that I had a terribly uncomfortable visceral reaction to it – the reasons for which even I am not completely clear on (paging Dr. Freud!!) – so much so that I had to stop watching. This is something that has never happened to me before (or since).

So, when Eddington came out this past Summer, I thought that seeing it in the theatre was not a priority because I might want to bail on this one too. And so…all these months later when it is now available on VOD, I rented it for $4 and watched it. And oh boy…am I ever glad I did!

Eddington is the very best film I have seen this year, and it isn’t even remotely close. It is incredibly smart, insightful, bold, brave and brilliant.

This film is once again very affecting…even uncomfortably so…but it is such a compelling and dynamic film that it is impossible to turn away from it…even when you want to.

One of the reasons you may want to turn away from Eddington, is because it so expertly recreates the Covid experience – both socially, personally and medically, in such visceral and palpable ways that watching it literally feels like having a Covid fever dream.

Ari Aster masterfully captures the disorientation of the Covid era, which felt like an assault on our senses, psyches and souls. This disorientation from Covid (both the disease and the cultural reaction to it) created rampant hysteria and mania that spread like wildfire during the insanity of the Covid era. Ultimately, that hysteria is the true pandemic that thrives to this day having lived long after the disease of Covid has faded into distant memory.

Eddington is a comedy, a thriller, a horror movie and a political satire, but above all else it is an indictment. The indictment of how foolish and gullible and easily manipulated we all are. How even now we suffer from such aggressive cognitive dissonance that the excesses of the Covid era, and the worst offenders of Covid hysteria (and the accompanying BLM mania) have never been forced to acknowledge their egregious and calamitous errors, never mind pay for them.

As time passes and we gain more distance from the lunacy and imbecility of our current age, Eddington, with its sharp and incisive criticisms, will age like the finest of wines. The film’s insights will become more profound over time for those with eyes, and the intellectual courage, to see them.  

As you may have noticed I have intentionally avoided any and all plot points for Eddington, and that is because I think it is best watched with as little information known about it as possible. That said, I will try and convey my appreciation for the film despite my strict spoiler limitations.

First of all, Joaquin Phoenix, who plays protagonist Sheriff Joe Cross, gives a stellar performance. Phoenix is brilliant, his Sheriff Joe is a stew of subdued defiance and fury mixed with smoldering self-righteousness that often curdles into hubris.

Phoenix is the great actors of our time and he creates a deliciously complex character in Sheriff Joe, that is so captivating and subtly magnetic that it is a marvel. And Phoenix’s ability to convey physical ailments is truly stunning – and I will say no more about that.

The rest of the cast, which features Pedro Pascal, Emma Stone, Deirdre O’Connell, and Austin Butler, all have smaller roles but do exceptionally noteworthy work. Pascal, in particular, is an actor who can often grate, but his unlikability is used to great effect in the film. Stone’s role is small but she is completely bought into it and does exceptional work despite minimal screen time.

Cinematographer Darius Khondji does his very best work on Eddington, using the high desert landscape and the small-town setting to great effect. He also deftly paints with a deft palette and masterfully frames his shots throughout – heightening the drama.

The real star of Eddington though is writer/director Ari Aster. It took balls the size of watermelons to make this movie and Aster has them. He has been pilloried by many critics for Eddington, but I think that has more to do with the perceived politics of Eddington rather than the filmmaking skills on display from Aster. I also think many critics are among those who so wholeheartedly embraced the Covid and BLM hysteria and are so ravaged by cognitive dissonance that they aggressively resist any notions of coming to grips with how foolish they look in hindsight.

The reality is, is that the “conspiracy theorists” were right all along…and still are…or at least they’re more right than the buffoons who think “conspiracy theorist” is a derogatory term. The most amusing thing that has happened in the last five or six years has been that tinfoil hats have been transformed from objects of ridicule into crowns of knowledge and wisdom – worn proudly.

To be fair, the “conspiracy theorists” are closer to the truth than the normies…but they still are a far way off from the truth. The conspiracy theorist’s real enlightenment comes from the fact that they understand the one undeniable fact that “normies” are loathe to admit…that the “official” story is, always and every time, a lie. And Eddington is one of those rare movies that not only acknowledges that fact…but aggressively embraces it.

The unacknowledged mantra of the dystopian digital age is – “The map is not the territory” – as our culture is so detached from the territory of reality because they have their noses buried in the map…their phones. Because of this fact we as a people are easily manipulated – emotionally, mentally, politically, and Eddington is a film that slaps us across the face in an attempt to wake us from our technologically induced stupor – and it does so with cinematic and dramatic aplomb.

You may not want to see Eddington, but trust me when I tell you…you NEED to see Eddington, you NEED to absorb Eddington, and you NEED to eventually accept what Eddington is teaching you.

Make no mistake, Eddington is thus far the very best film of the year…and is also the most important film of the year, if not the decade.

©2025

Paul Thomas Anderson Films - Ranked Worst to First

PT ANDERSON FILMS – RANKED

Paul Thomas Anderson’s newest film, One Battle After Another, hit theatres at the end of September and has garnered massive critical praise and generated a cavalcade of conversation.

I love any conversation that involves the films of Paul Thomas Anderson…so I thought I’d start another one…namely by ranking his films.

PT Anderson is my favorite current filmmaker. He is a unique cinematic genius, a brilliant writer and an extraordinary director of actors. All that said…he is for many, an acquired taste…one which I have certainly acquired. Which makes it all the more profound when I DON’T like one of his films.

Anyway…without further ado here is my list of PT Anderson films ranked worst to first. This list is…ALIVE. It can change not just everyday but sometimes every hour. For example, just in the course of writing this piece my top three films flipped back and forth at least three times.

So here is the list…let the debate begin!!

THE NOT-SO-GOOD

10. Hard Eight (1996)– Hard Eight is Anderson’s feature debut and while it is a decent film featuring a solid performance from the ever-reliable Philip Baker Hall, it is definitely as bit rough around the edges. It’s impressive for a debut but not a particularly good movie.

Available to rent or buy on Amazon Prime

9. Punch-Drunk Love (2002)– This was Anderson shifting gears into a less ambitious cinematic undertaking after the sprawling Magnolia and the decade spanning Boogie Nights. The film is devoid of ambition though as Anderson makes the calamitous decision to cast the grating Adam Sandler as his lead in this unusual and dark romantic comedy. That was a very poor decision.

Punch-Drunk Love is beautifully shot, of that there is no doubt, but the script feels cloying and trite and the lead performance from Adam Sandler is unbearably amateurish.

I know people who have Punch-Drunk Love ranked number one on their PT Anderson list…those people are idiots.

Currently streaming on the Criterion Channel

8. One Battle After Another (2025)– All the caveats apply regarding my feelings about One Battle After Another. I’ve only seen it once…and saw it on a shitty digital projector at the local cineplex – which just got new chairs but failed to get better projectors and sound systems – so now people can be comfy and cozy watching movies on their sub-par projectors!

Anyway…maybe my feelings about this movie will change after I see this movie a few more times or with a better projector…who knows? But after one less-than-cinematically-ideal viewing I was not a fan. To Anderson’s credit, it is a tremendously ambitious film, but I thought it failed by almost every metric…including the performances.

Currently in theatres

7. Licorice Pizza (2021)– This film is really gorgeous to look at but ultimately, it’s all empty calories as there is no meat on the bones of its story.

The bottom line is it’s a rather vapid “hang out” movie that ends up being rather forgettable despite some great scenes and sequences.

Currently streaming on MUBI

THE VERY, VERY GOOD

6. Inherent Vice (2014) – I, unlike many, absolutely loved this movie and found it to be a psychologically profound piece of work that felt like a fever dream.

Like One Battle After Another it is based on a Thomas Pynchon novel…unlike One Battle After Another it is exquisitely crafted and filled with rich metaphor.

It also features top-notch performances from Joaquin Phoenix and Josh Brolin…and is laugh out loud funny on occasion.

To me, the list of best PT Anderson films really starts here with Inherent Vice, an audacious arthouse gem.

Currently streaming on Amazon Prime

5. Phantom Thread (2017) – One of the more elegant, eloquent and dark relationship stories in cinema history, Phantom Thread features luminous craftsmanship – most notably its cinematography and wardrobe design.

It also features one of Daniel Day Lewis’ greatest performances as the persnickety Reynolds Woodcock. Leslie Manville and Vicky Krieps also give truly phenomenal performances in the film.

Phantom Thread is an often-overlooked Anderson film…but it shouldn’t be.

Currently streaming on Netflix

THE GREAT

4. The Master (2012) – Ok…the final four films on this list are out and out masterpieces in my mind.

The Master is a tour de force film that boasts two all-time great performances. Philip Seymour Hoffman is utterly amazing as the cult leader/con man Lancaster Dodd – it is one of Hoffman’s very best performances, which is saying quite a lot since he was one of the greatest actors of his generation.

Then there is Joaquin Phoenix as the lead Freddie Quell. Phoenix’s performance isn’t just the greatest of his career, it is the single greatest and most revolutionary piece of acting in modern cinema history. You may think that is hyperbole, but trust me, it isn’t. Phoenix re-invented the art of acting with this intricate and stunning performance.

The Master is a mesmerizing meditation on masculinity and the modern man, and it requires multiple viewings to fully flesh out its meaning…and it deserves as many re-watches and you can manage.

Currently streaming on Roku

3. There Will Be Blood (2007) – There Will be Blood is at the very top of this list on many…if not most…occasions, as it is a full-on masterpiece featuring both Daniel Day Lewis, cinematographer Robert Elswit, and in some ways PT Anderson, at their very, very best.

A dark brooding tale about capitalism, masculinity and America, There Will Be Blood is a dramatic powerhouse that devours everything in its path.

Day-Lewis brings all of his substantial power and acting prowess to bear on his role as Daniel Plainview…who, in case you didn’t know…is an oil man.

There Will be Blood is as intense, expansive, jarring and invigorating a film as you will ever see. A truly spectacular piece of cinematic art.

Available to rent or buy on Amazon Prime

2. Magnolia (1999) – Magnolia is a bit of a controversial choice at number two as it was raked over the coals by critics and many fans back in the day. But the fact of the matter is it is the very best Robert Altman film ever made…and it wasn’t even made by Altman!

Magnolia features a cavalcade of top-notch performances, great writing, and some of the best editing in recent history…not to mention Robert Elswit’s glorious cinematography.

Tom Cruise of all fucking people, gives the very best performance of his career…and it is utterly amazing as Frank T.J. Mackey. Only PT Anderson could get Tom Cruise to be that great…and he really, really is that great in Magnolia.

Philip Seymour Hoffman too gives one of his best, most subtle, and most tender performances in the film as well.

I hadn’t seen Magnolia in quite some time and re-watched it this past week and it definitely still holds the same emotional power and melancholic mastery as it did when I first saw it 26 years ago.

Currently streaming on the Criterion Channel

1. Boogie Nights (1997) – As previously stated, There Will be Blood could easily be at this top spot, but the truth is that Boogie Nights is the PT Anderson film I have watched the most (I typically watch it at least once a year if not twice) and that I enjoy the most.

Seeing Boogie Nights for the first time back in 1997 was a religious experience for me – hell I was so enraptured by the movie I even wrote a paper on its symbolism and cinematography back in film school! It is a masterfully constructed film with a complex sensibility, a funny bone and devastating dramatic punch.

Boogie Nights announced PT Anderson as THE guy to watch in moviemaking and part of the joy of watching it was experiencing the giddiness of expectation for the unknown PT Anderson films to come.

Boogie Nights itself gets the very most out of actors like Burt Reynolds (a resurrection project – Burt gives his career best performance) and Mark Wahlberg (also giving his career best performance).

Then there is the unbelievably fantastic cast – Julianne Moore, Heather Graham, John C. Reilly, Don Cheadle, Luis Guzman, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Philip Baker Hall, Melora Walters, Thomas Jane, Alfred Molina and William H. Macy – all of whom are superb and give pitch perfect performances.

A great cast, a scintillating script, Elswit’s stunning cinematography and Anderson’s audacious direction make Boogie Nights his best film (at least for today), and most watchable – and re-watchable, and my favorite, film.

Currently streaming on Paramount +

Quibble all you want…but this is the official PT Anderson film ranking list!! If it makes you angry, that’s okay…because the list has probably already changed in the fifteen minutes after I wrote it.

In looking over Anderson’s filmography the thing that stands out the most to me…besides the glorious cinematography and usually inspired writing…is that Anderson is able to get the very best out of the very best actors around. You’d think that is an easy thing to do…but it isn’t.

Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood and Phantom Thread, Joaquin Phoenix in The Master and Inherent Vice, Philip Seymour Hoffman in Boogie Nights, Magnolia and The Master, Tom Cruise in Magnolia…and on and on and on.

PT Anderson isn’t just mandatory viewing for lovers of cinema and hopeful filmmakers, he is mandatory viewing for actors of all stripes and at every stage of their career. Beginner or old pro, actors everywhere can learn boatloads just by carefully watching PT Anderson films and seeing how a master director can elicit supreme performances from the entirety of his cast.

Alright…enough of my rambling…thanks for reading and hopefully I’ll see you at a screening of One Battle After Another where I try and catch the fever for this film which has thus far avoided me.

©2025

One Battle After Another: A Review - The Art of Cinema Loses Another Battle

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

My Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT.

One Battle After Another, written and directed by acclaimed auteur Paul Thomas Anderson and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, tells the story of Bob (DiCaprio), a revolutionary fighting the fascist powers that be while trying to keep himself and his family safe.

The film, which is inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel Vineland, and stars Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro, Regina Hall, Tayana Taylor and Chase Infiniti, opened on September 26th and has been praised by critics and seen a modestly successful return at the box office – over $100 million, the biggest of Anderson’s career (with a budget of $150 million or so – also the largest of Anderson’s career, it has a long way to go to profitability).

Paul Thomas Anderson has long been the darling of film bros, and as long-time readers know I am the film bro-iest of film bros, so Anderson is my favorite filmmaker and I consider him to be the greatest filmmaker of our time. Anderson’s talent with the typewriter, the camera and particularly with actors, is undeniable. His filmography is proof of this as it includes a bevy of extraordinary masterpieces (Boogie Nights, Magnolia, There Will Be Blood, The Master) as well as a handful of exquisite and brilliant arthouse gems (Inherent Vice, Phantom Thread).

I found Anderson’s last film, Licorice Pizza, to be a disappointment. It was beautifully shot but beyond that it was a rather empty venture devoid of meaning or purpose.

So it was that I was somewhat trepidatious when going to see One Battle After Another. Despite my long-standing practice of embargoing information about films I’m interested in, news seeped through the blockade and I heard whispers about how One Battle After Another was fantastic.

In order to find out if that were the case, I went to a sparsely populated Sunday matinee at the local cineplex here in flyover country. The film was shot using VistaVision – a rarely used practice that can only truly be appreciated in like four movie theatres in America – and mine certainly wasn’t one of them. No, I watched the film like the rest of the hoi polloi – on a very shitty digital projector.

After sitting through the expansive two-hour and forty-five-minute runtime, my take away from One Battle After Another is this…it just doesn’t work. It isn’t funny, or even mildly interesting or the slightest bit profound. In fact, the only thing profound about this movie is how disappointing it is. It is such a misfire it makes the tediously middling Licorice Pizza seem like Citizen Kane.

As previously stated, I saw the movie on a digital projector, so take this with a grain of salt, but I also did not find the film technologically or cinematically impressive in the slightest.

When the film ended and I walked back out into the blinding daylight, I was stunned at what an underwhelming experience I had just endured. It was shocking to me that an enormous talent like PT Anderson could create such a lifeless movie that fails to stir even the slightest bit of a spark from such acting luminaries as Leo DiCaprio and Sean Penn.

One Battle After Another is garnering a cavalcade of critical adoration – not surprising considering two things – Anderson’s well-earned status as an elite auteur, and also the film’s political subject matter.

The film is essentially about a revolutionary group fighting a fascist government that rounds up illegal aliens – if it were a Law and Order episode they’d say it was “ripped from the headlines”. The specter – or odor, depending on your political perspective, of the Trump administration hangs over this movie like a ghost of Christmas past, present and, unfortunately, future.

No doubt critics, and most audience members, will get a thrill from the fight against fascists at the heart of the film. The problem though is that the film’s politics are both ludicrously heavy handed yet compulsively vapid, vacuous, trite and aggressively unchallenged. If you want to see a much better (and very different) film about modern-day violent revolutionaries, go watch 2022’s How to Blow Up a Pipeline – a flawed but feverishly compelling film.

Tonally One Battle After Another, labelled an action-thriller, struggles as well, as there is minimal action and even less thrills. Anderson’s other adaptation of a Pynchon novel, 2014’s Inherent Vice, was a weird and woolly conspiracy crime comedy, and I thought it was a wonderful piece of cinema and supremely psychologically profound. One Battle After Another is never as funny as Inherent Vice, and never as smart and certainly not even remotely as profound either.

I laughed exactly once watching this movie, and it was when a flustered DiCaprio tries to close a curtain and the curtain falls to the floor and he is left puzzled as to what to do next…and then apologizes. The rest of the time I was, as was the rest of the audience, as silent as the grave.

There were some amusing observations in the movie, particularly about the generational divide when it comes to revolution – the fragile Millennial/Gen Z woke keyboard warriors versus Gen-X’s hearty bomb-throwers…but that was minimal and not especially insightful.

As for the performances, much was anticipated when news came out that Leonardo DiCaprio would be teaming with PT Anderson…like a dynamic duo of generational talents.

DiCaprio gives, frankly, a rather forgettable performance as Bob, the stoner revolutionary trying to navigate life in the underground. Never once does he command attention, or feel as if he fully inhabits the character. To be fair, DiCaprio is not aided by the script, which has his flaccid character often deeply at odds with himself.

Sean Penn fares even worse. It has often been said of late that Sean Penn looks like all three of the Three Stooges combined, and that was never more-true than as his work as Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw, an obsessive and ambitious military man hot on the trail of revolutionaries.

Penn, an actor I greatly admire, gives a frivolous and forgettable performance as the fiery Lockjaw. He is all hat and no cattle. An empty vessel floating aimlessly through the doldrums of a poorly written script.

Regina Hall seems to be in a different, and much better, movie with her performance as Deandra, a revolutionary. Hall is grounded and human as Deandra, which is considerably more than anyone else in the cast can say.

Benicio del Toro does Benicio del Toro things and sort of waltzes calmly and coolly through his role as Sergio, a martial arts instructor and underground railroad engineer. Not once does he seem like anything other than a character in a movie.

Chase Infiniti is so lightweight as Willa, Bob’s daughter, she might as well have been a tumbleweed rolling silently through her scenes.

And then there is Teyana Taylor in the crucial role of Perfidia Beverly Hills – the most important revolutionary…and Bob’s wife and Willa’s mother.

Perfidia is supposed to be this dynamic, magnetic and undeniable energy who carries the revolution – and the first act of the movie, on her back with panache and flair. But Taylor is, unfortunately, a rather repulsive screen presence, which makes her being the object of attention and fetishized desire a rather ridiculous notion – so much so that it is unbelievable.

Taylor lacks the charisma and presence to pull off this vital role and the film is mortally wounded by it from the get go…and then DiCaprio and Penn stick their stakes through its heart all thanks to Anderson’s unfocused and unpolished script.

PT Anderson making two sub-par films back-to-back (Licorice Pizza and One Battle After Another) is an earth-shattering experience for me the poor little Gen X film bro. For the majority of my adult-hood he has been the guy. He has consistently been brilliant (the one notable exception is, thanks to the abysmal Adam Sandler, 2002’s Punch-Drunk Love), and to see him stumble twice in a row is jarring to say the least.

I hope I am wrong, but this feels like when in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, Muhammad Ali, the greatest of all time, lost his athleticism and his mojo. Ali shockingly lost to Leon Spinks in 1978 – but then got his belt back by beating Spinks eight months later. But even in victory Ali looked like the shadow of the great fighter and man he once was.

Two years later Ali was destroyed by Larry Holmes in one of the more brutal reality checks in boxing history. A year later he suffered an ignominious defeat at the hands of Trevor Burbick, thus ending his once glorious career.

PT Anderson’s most recent two films are not as bad as Ali’s last two fights…but they do feel the same to me. A giant of a talent losing his mojo and being humbled by Father Time is never pretty to watch.

The positive critical reaction to what I see as the failure of One Battle After Another is reminiscent of those who cheered when Ali got his title back from Spinks…thinking the great champion “still had it”. Despite the victory, he still didn’t have it. He was done. My great, great fear, is that the same is true of PT Anderson…not so much that he is done as a filmmaker, but that his best work is behind him and that it is all downhill from here. That is a terrifying notion to me as it signals that this once in my lifetime filmmaker is…just like me…coming ever closer to his end, both artistically and physically. And also…what the hell am I going to look forward to if I don’t have PT Anderson films to look forward to anymore?

Ultimately, it truly pains me to say that One Battle After Another is a rolling morass of banality and bullshit that never coalesces into a successful cinematic venture. To be blunt…it is not very good. Now, to be clear, PT Anderson’s version of not very good is considerably better than everybody else’s…but it is still not very good, and is certainly not a film I will recommend. I will watch it again though, as Anderson has earned that at a minimum with his past work, but upon first viewing, I found trying to find something good to say about One Battle After Another to be a losing battle.

©2025

R.I.P. Robert Redford: The Sundance Kid Once Saved Cinema

Robert Redford, the iconic movie star, filmmaker and Sundance Institute founder, died yesterday at the age of 89.

As gigantic a movie star as Robert Redford was…and he was a monumental movie star, particularly in the 1970’s, the most important thing about him is what he did for, or to, the film industry with his creation of the Sundance Institute and the Sundance Film Festival – which he took over in the mid 1980’s.

It is impossible to imagine the depths to which filmmaking would have fallen if Redford had not built Sundance, the place where “independent” filmmakers could develop and then show their films.

Without Sundance, the renaissance of cinema in the 1990’s, which includes the emergence of such filmmaking luminaries as Quentin Tarantino and Paul Thomas Anderson, would never have occurred.

Did Sundance quickly go from being sanctified and deified to becoming corporatized and commodified? Yes, it did. And is it now little more than a movie business version of the red-light district in Amsterdam? Yes, it is. But that doesn’t diminish its original importance or the good it did for cinema back in the early days…and it is crucial that we do not forget that when remembering Robert Redford.

As for Redford the actor, he was an impossibly handsome leading man who was gifted with a tendency toward stillness (a skill few actors possess) and the ability to share the screen with other actors with a charming effortlessness.

Redford was a good movie star, good enough that he could unflinchingly share a screen with Paul Newman, one of the biggest movie stars of all-time, for two memorable movies – Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and The Sting.

He was also a good and often underrated actor, who could comfortably share the screen with acting luminaries like Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep.

Redford, with his all-American good looks and stoic demeanor, resembled an old school movie star from the studio system but who hit his heights during the glorious age of the New American Cinema in the free-wheeling 1970s.

Redford catapulted to enormous fame in 1969 when he starred with Paul Newman in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid – what some have called the perfect movie.

Butch and Sundance – with their snarky bromance, are essentially the template for every action comedy and Marvel movie of the last 50 years. You don’t get the Lethal Weapon, Die Hard and Marvel franchises without Butch and Sundance and their witty quips to one another under fire.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid really is a remarkable movie in that it is pure movie star popcorn entertainment but its shot with a glorious aplomb by Conrad Hall – and directed with verve by George Roy Hill.

Redford and Newman’s chemistry is legendary, and while many have tried to replicate it – like George Clooney and Brad Pitt, none have succeeded. The problem with Clooney and Pitt trying to be Newman and Redford is that Pitt is not Redford - despite Hollywood’s determination to make it so, and Clooney sure as shit ain’t Newman, no matter how much Clooney tries to pretend otherwise.

Redford’s filmography is, not surprisingly considering the length of his career, a mixed bag.

His best/most popular films are most certainly Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Three Days of the Condor, All the President’s Men and The Natural.

I can say without hesitation that I unabashedly love all of those movies, and love him in all of those movies.

As previously stated, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is popcorn perfection. Three Days of the Condor is a truly spectacular film and a glorious piece of 70’s paranoid cinema that I adore. All the President’s Men is a movie with undeniable momentum to it that compulsively compels. And finally, The Natural is, in my not-so-humble opinion, the greatest baseball movie ever made and also a phenomenal American myth that Redford perfectly embodies.

As much as I love those Redford films, the Redford movies that I find most intriguing are Downhill Racer, Jeremiah Johnson and The Candidate. These three films, all from the 70’s, show Redford giving his most complex performances, and are all really fantastic films that are often-overlooked.

The final movie I’d recommend is the lone late-period Redford movie that I think works well. The film is 2013’s All Is Lost directed by J.C. Chandor, which is about a man lost at sea by himself. Redford barely speaks at all in this movie, and it was a ballsy performance for him to undertake. I loved the film but others hated it. I think it’s worth watching now as it will take on particular profundity in the wake of Redford’s death.

Another movie some have mentioned is 2018’s The Old Man & the Gun, directed by David Lowery. I thought this film was a misfire, but I could see how it could be nice to indulge in its nostalgia now that Redford has passed away.

As for Redford as a filmmaker, I never really thought very much of his directorial skills. Redford was undoubtedly interested in independence and freedom for other filmmakers but as a filmmaker himself he was extraordinarily restrictive in his artistry.

The films Redford directed, Ordinary People (for which he won a best Director Academy Award), The Milagro Beanfield War, A River Runs Through It, Quiz Show, The Horse Whisperer, The Legend of Bagger Vance, Lions for Lambs, The Conspirator, and The Company You Keep, are all suffocatingly staid and cinematically conventional.

The lone Redford directed film that I would recommend is Quiz Show, and even that is a rather middlebrow piece of mainstream cinema that never quite rises to the heights you feel like it should.

Regardless of the merits or imperfections in Robert Redford’s acting and directing career, the truth is that anyone who enjoys movies, be they cinephiles or cineplex-goers, owe a huge debt of gratitude to Robert Redford. Without Robert Redford and his Sundance Film Festival and Institute, both the movie business and the art of cinema would be in much worse shape than they are today – and it;s important to remember that the Sundance Film Festival never happens if Robert Redford doesn’t become the Sundance Kid.

So, a big tip of the cowboy hat to the Sundance Kid on a job well done and a life well lived. Thanks for saving cinema…let’s hope that one day that it can rise from the ashes and once again be worthy of all you’ve done for it.

By the way…here is a 2013 article I wrote about Redford’s acting that you might find of interest.

Stillness: Lessons from Redford, DeNiro and Penn

©2025

Friendship: A Review – Alas, Poor Yorick

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

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. A cringe comedy that never coalesces and ends up being more incoherent than funny.

Friendship, written and directed by Andrew DeYoung and starring Tim Robinson and Paul Rudd, is a black comedy about Craig (Robinson), a social oddball who desperately yearns to be best buddies with his cool male neighbor, Austin (Rudd).

Prior to Friendship hitting theatres last May, the word on the street was that this movie was going to be a big hit and would be so enormous that it would resurrect the decidedly dormant genre of film comedy. Hell, there was even talk of Oscar nominations for both Rudd and Robinson.

The insider buzz was pretty intense there for a while…but then the movie came and went with barely a whimper – making no dent in the box office and even lesser impact in the culture. I didn’t even see it in the theatre and only caught it this week now that it’s streaming on HBO Max, or MAX, or whatever the hell they are calling the HBO/Warner Brothers streaming site nowadays.

Friendship had a lot going for it prior to me seeing it. First off, I really like Paul Rudd and think he’s very good at most everything he does. Secondly, I like Tim Robinson and find him to be funny in small servings. Since Rudd and Robinson are the stars of the movie this seemed to be a good formula for me.

Then I saw Friendship…and I must report that it is a terribly frustrating viewing experience.

I must admit up front that there are few moments where I laughed out loud at the film…no small accomplishment. But overall, the movie is, from both a comedy and cinema perspective, both structurally unsound and consistently incoherent.

The film tells the story of Craig, a suburbanite middle manager at a marketing firm, who becomes socially infatuated by his neighbor Austin, who is the weatherman at the local tv station.

Austin is everything Craig wishes he were…handsome, adventurous and charismatic. At first the friendship between Craig and Austin is great…until Craig shows his true awkward colors…then things go awry and fast.

The incoherence of the film is both structural and tonal. For example, for a film like this to work, Craig must be the comedy and Austin needs to be the straight man. But here Rudd, at first, plays Austin like he is his whacky character from Anchorman. Rudd’s performance is much too broad for it to work in this specific role, and it undermines the entirety of the movie.

Robinson’s Craig is essentially saturated in flop-sweat from the jump, and he’s very good at cringe comedy, but an hour and forty minutes of cringe is tough to take even for me, someone who digs cringe comedy.

Other issues persist throughout, like not being clear about the characters. For example…is Austin married? Apparently he is, but that information is withheld for a good period of time and then thrown into the mix well beyond the character’s introduction.

The same is true for Craig’s son…a character that is poorly defined and nothing but intrusive throughout.

Some bits in the film work very well, but others make no sense or fall flat, or both. There are flashes of funny but then there are missed opportunities where a joke or gag is sitting there waiting to be grasped and is left dying on the vine.

I would say that Friendship is in some ways just an extended version of Robinson’s cringe comedy sketch show, I Think You Should Leave, but without the comedic crispness and character commitment. It is reminiscent of two other failed spurned buddy/neighbor comedies…the Jim Carrey vehicle The Cable Guy and John Belushi’s final film, Neighbors.

Ironically, considering that Friendship was in theatres at the time, I spent much of the spring re-watching a bunch of film comedies from the 2000s. I watched Wedding Crashers, 40-Year-Old Virgin, Anchorman, Superbad and Old School, all movies I saw in the theatre during their original release.

These movies are all funny but are also very flawed. Some are too-long, some are poorly pasted together and some are a bit too grating. But despite their flaws they are funny…and they all made money because of it.

Upon my re-watch of these movies, it became clear that the glory days of 2000’s film comedy dominating at the box office are NOT coming back. Part of the reason for that is that it’s just easier to wait to watch a comedy at home than go spend money to see it in the theatre. Comedy is not exactly cinematic so the need to see it on the big screen is no longer there so why not wait to watch at home?

Secondly, our culture has so neutered comedy that it essentially has lost all meaning. All of those movies are centered around the narrative of guys trying to get laid – something that is anathema in our current culture – so much so that it would be deemed predatory to attempt to do such a thing. I mean, if the suffocating limitations placed on comedy today would have been in place back in the 2000’s then we wouldn’t have gotten Wedding Crashers, 40-Year-Old Virgin, Anchorman, Superbad and Old School, because despite being rather broad comedies, their entire premises violate the strict cultural rules by which Hollywood now operates.

Friendship doesn’t violate our current cultural rules, and it also didn’t make any waves, any money, and also didn’t save the film comedy as a genre. Instead, it just highlighted the fact that the genre is dead as a doornail, and nobody is going to raise it from its eternal slumber anytime soon, if ever.

Ultimately, Friendship is a benign, at times mildly amusing, rather tepid comedy that overall is much more miss than it is hit. It’s the type of movie you watch at home without actually watching it. It is, at best, background noise.

Truth is, if you’re looking for a mild chuckle, you’d be much better served just streaming an episode or two of I Think You Need to Leave than sitting down and enduring the relentless sub-mediocrity that is Friendship for an hour and forty minutes.

©2025

Highest 2 Lowest: A Review - Lots of Lows and Too Few Highs

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

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. A misfire across the board that reveals Spike Lee as a spent creative force and Denzel Washington as firmly entrenched in the laissez-faire late stage of his career.

Highest 2 Lowest, directed by Spike Lee and starring Denzel Washington, is a remake/re-imagining of the 1963 Akira Kurosawa classic High and Low, and tells the story of David King, a music mogul facing moral, financial and familial pressures when his teenage son is kidnapped.

Highest 2 Lowest, which is produced by A24 and distributed by Apple Original Films, was briefly in theatres and is now available to stream on Apple TV +, which is where I watched it.

The film is the fifth collaboration between Lee and Washington, and the first since 2006’s Inside Man. Previous Spike Lee films with Denzel Washington include the sterling Mo’ Better Blues, the masterful Malcolm X, and He Got Game.

The Kurosawa film High and Low is nothing short of a masterpiece and features the filmmaker’s cinematic mastery as well as a powerful and deft performance by Toshiro Mifune. Spike Lee’s decision to remake, or as he claims “re-imagine” Kurosawa’s classic, is both a sign of Lee’s respect and of his hubris.

Having watched Highest 2 Lowest I can confidently declare that Spike Lee is no Akira Kurosawa and Denzel Washington is no Toshiro Mifune.

The truth is that Lee and Washington are the equivalent of hall of fame pitchers who once upon a time threw fastballs in the high 90’s, but are now reduced to grooving mid-80’s meatballs that do nothing but stir nostalgia for the good old days.

To be fair, Denzel Washington had a considerably longer peak than Spike Lee, and the argument could be made that at his best Denzel was better than Spike Lee at his best. In keeping with the baseball metaphor, Denzel at his peak was hitting 100 MPH on the radar gun, and Spike Lee at his shortened peak, was hitting 98 mph…but neither can even dream of hitting such heights now.

Highest 2 Lowest opens with a very captivating sequence which features a sunrise over New York City shot by drones with “Oh What a Beautiful Mornin’” from the musical Oklahoma playing over it. This opening is tantalizing at is shows Spike Lee at his cinematic best.

We are then introduced to Denzel’s character David King and his world, which features Ilfenish Hadera as his wife Pam, Aubrey Joseph as his son Trey, and Jeffrey Wright as his childhood friend and now driver Paul.

King is trying to navigate a big business deal in order to save his record label, and reignite his highly-acclaimed music producing career, which has been steadily slipping in recent years.

Then comes the inciting incident – Trey, King’s only child, is kidnapped at a basketball camp in the city. The way this turn of events is portrayed is so underwhelming and so dramatically impotent as to be amateurish.

Things dramatically, cinematically, artistically and creatively devolve so quickly from there that it actually shocks.

Denzel Washington is a great actor and movie star, of that there is no doubt, but he has entered the phase of his career which is reminiscent of late-stage Jack Nicholson – think of Jack in The Departed, where he does little more than show everyone how much he is “acting”.

Now, Denzel, or Jack, acting in this manner, where they show off for the sake of showing off, is fine, but it also isn’t good. The sheer charisma that Denzel and Jack possess makes their presence worthwhile, even when their acting work feels so forced and/or flimsy.

Denzel did this same thing in Gladiator II, and I found it entertaining, but here it feels like watching an acting class where the talented actor doing the scene didn’t do the prep work so now we have to watch them signal to us how much they are acting. (Anyone who has ever been in an acting class will know exactly of which I speak).

That said, Denzel Washington is definitely not the problem with Highest 2 Lowest…in fact he’s the best thing about it…and problem isn’t Jeffrey Wright wither, who is intriguing as Paul, the ex-con childhood friend who loyally serves his old pal and boss King.

One of the biggest problems with Highest 2 Lowest though is the rest of the cast, who are so atrocious as to be ridiculous.  

Ilfanish Hadera as King’s wife Pam is absolutely dreadful. It is stunning how out of her depth she is in a role that in more talented and steady hands would be pure red meat to be devoured with aplomb. Hadera is so dead-eyed and lifeless that when she’s on-screen it feels like you’re watching an autopsy.

Aubrey Joseph as King’s son Trey is another disaster, as he’s so wooden they could’ve just cast a mannequin in the role and been better served.

Another major issue is the trio of actors playing cops. John Douglas Thompson, Dean Winters, and LaChanze play the NYPD detectives assigned to solve the kidnapping and they feel like cast-offs from a Law and Order episode. It boggles the mind haw bad these three are.

Speaking of Law and Order, all of the police procedural stuff in this movie, and there’s a lot of it, feels like a third-rate Law and Order episode – which is tough because Law and Order episodes already feel third-rate to begin with…which I guess makes the cop stuff in Highest 2 Lowest sixth-rate?

The film tries to become a thriller as the kidnapping drama more deeply unfolds but it fails to muster even the most basic thrills…and it features one of the more contrived, flaccid and farcical chases in recent movie history.

On top of all that, Highest 2 Lowest also features one of the most god-awful, obtrusive and cloying scores in recent memory, thanks to Howard Drossin.

The truth is that at this point Spike Lee is an entirely spent creative force. After two decades of forgettable films, it seemed like Spike Lee might have gotten his mojo back in 2018 with BlacKkKlansman – a film for which he won a Screenplay Oscar. But instead of reinvigorating his work, Lee’s two follow-ups to BlacKkKlansman, the dismal Da 5 Bloods and Highest 2 Lowest, have been rather flimsy, instantly forgettable films.

Of course, there will be a plethora of Spike Lee sycophants who will shout from the rooftops how brilliant Highest 2 Lowest is, just like the fools who proclaimed the greatness of Da 5 Bloods, which is an amateurish mess of a movie.

But be not deceived…Highest 2 Lowest has a scant few highs and a cornucopia of lows. It is a major disappointment and an unfortunate signal that both Spike Lee and Denzel Washington may finally be done as artistic power players.

My recommendation is to skip the forgettable and foolish Highest 2 Lowest and instead go watch the tight and taut High and Low, as Kurosawa and Mifune prove they are infinitely better at telling this tale than late-stage Spike and Denzel.

©2025

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