"Everything is as it should be."

                                                                                  - Benjamin Purcell Morris

 

 

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Follow me on Twitter: Michael McCaffrey @MPMActingCo

10th Annual Slip-Me-A-Mickey Awards™®

10th ANNUAL SLIP-ME-A-MICKEY™® AWARDS

The Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® awards are the final award of the interminably long awards season. The Slip-Me-A-Mickey™®, or as some lovingly call them, The Mockeys™®, are a robust tribute to the absolute worst that film and entertainment has to offer for the year.

Again, the qualifying rules are simple, I just had to have seen the film for it to be eligible. This means that at one point I had an interest in the film and put the effort in to see it, which may explain why I am so angry about it being awful. So, any vitriol I may spew during this awards presentation shouldn't be taken personally by the people mentioned, it is really anger at myself for getting duped into watching.

The prizes are also pretty simple. The winners/losers receive nothing but my temporary scorn. If you are a winner/loser don't fret, because this year’s Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® loser/winner could always be next year’s Mickey™® winner!! Remember…you are only as good as your last film!!

Now…onto the awards!

WORST FILM OF THE YEAR

Saltburn – This is a truly atrocious, artistically repugnant film that fails on every single level. The script is horseshit, the direction dogshit and the performances bullshit. A mountain of shit that high makes for a very odious movie.

Rebel Moon – A Zack Snyder Star Wars rip-off…what could go wrong? Well…apparently everything. One of the dullest and dumbest movies in recent cinematic history. But look on the bright side…a sequel is hitting Netflix in just a matter of months. Kill. Me. Now.

Ghosted – Chris Evans has the brains of a Tsetse fly and the charisma of a pencil eraser and Ana de Armas is a beautiful woman but very limited actress who needs to fire her agent immediately. The combination of these two morons matching dim-wits and tossing out flaccid one-liners in an action-rom-com is as lifeless and inert as a crippled eunuch’s loins.

Meg 2 – It’s tough to fuck up a giant shark movie, but the Meg 2 was able to pull it off…the key to their success? Removing the giant shark from the majority of the movie. Way to go you fucking numbnuts!

And the loser is…SALTBURN! I hated this movie. It is stupid and awful and putrid and pathetic. Anyone who liked Saltburn for any reason should be beaten to death with a sock full of month-old, frozen, elephant turds.

WORST PERFORMANCE OF THE YEAR

Adam Driver – Ferrari – Adam Driver is a favorite of many big-time filmmakers and has a cult-like following among fans. But the reality is that Adam Driver is a consistently shitty actor. This doughy, dork-faced doofus talks like Kermit and has the screen-presence of a tumbleweed wrapped a sheet of Saran-Wrap. In Ferrari Driver went full Father Guido Sarducci and managed to turn Enzo Ferrari into the Chef Boyardee of auto racing. He did the same to Maurizio Gucci in The House of Gucci a few years ago. Driver doesn’t just need to stop acting in Italian roles, he needs to stop acting.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge – Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny – Remember how charming and funny Phoebe Waller-Bridge was on Fleabag? I do…but barely. It is tough to remember after watching her suck all the life out of the most recent Indiana Jones movie. That Waller-Bridge has all the athletic grace of a baby giraffe with rickets doesn’t help her thrive in this action role.

Bradley Cooper – Maestro – Poor Bradley Cooper. Dude just wants an Oscar so he keeps making shitty movies about musical guys – first A Star is Born and now Maestro. This time in order to woo Oscar voters he wears “Jew-face” and turns the gay histrionics up to eleven. Yikes. Still doesn’t work. He so wants to be a great actor that he does nothing but ACT in these movies. He ACTS so much that he forgets to actually…you know…act. There’s not a single moment in Maestro where Bradley Cooper (or his co-star Carey Mulligan) seem like actual human beings…not good…not good at all.

And the loser is…ADAM DRIVER – FERRARI – Adam Driver is the 21st Century’s version of Elliot Gould…in case you’re wondering…that is not a compliment in any way, shape or form. On the bright side, in twenty years he can play one of the main character’s dads on a reboot of Friends.

WORST SCENE OF THE YEAR

Barry Keoghan fucking a grave – Saltburn – Yawn.

Barry Keoghan slurping jizz-soiled bath water – Saltburn – Cringe.

Barry Keoghan having oral sex with a menstruating woman – Saltburn – Eye-roll.

And the loser is…IT’S A TIE between all the try-hard, faux-edgy, god-awful scenes with Barry Keoghan doing vile shit in Saltburn. And the real loser in all of this is us – the poor bastards who watched this flaming fucking garbage pile.

MOST OVERRATED FILM OF THE YEAR

BARBIE– Barbie was a phenomenon. Barbie was a blockbuster. Barbie was a critical darling. Barbie was also a fucking atrociously awful movie. A two-hour corporate toy commercial infused with a toxic strain of toddler level feminism that left any person with half a brain in their head wanting to light themselves on fire, and any man with two-balls in their bag wanting to cleanse their palate by killing a Sabre-Toothed Tiger and then dragging some whiny plastic shrew by her hair back to his cave.

It is a testament to how mind-numbingly stupid our culture and populace has become that the insipid and insidiously imbecilic Barbie was so unabashedly celebrated and exalted as a great movie and a work of genius.

SPECIAL ACHIEVEMENT IN CINEMATIC MALPRACTICE

EMERALD FENNELL– Emerald Fennel won an Oscar for writing her first film Promising Young Woman. Upon further review that movie is garbage. Upon first view of Saltburn, it is an abysmal pile of amateur-hour excrement. Considering her track record, Fennel shouldn’t even be allowed to direct traffic, never mind a movie. She is an out and out cinematic charlatan who has only gotten a shot because of Hollywood’s post #MeToo addiction to elevating talentless female directors. She has earned this Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® award the hard way…by being devoid of any and all talent.

P.O.S. ALL-STARS

JONATHAN MAJORS– I really liked Jonathan Majors when I first saw him the in the film The Last Black Man in San Francisco. But he is the type of actor that the more you see him the more you see how hollow his work truly is. A perfect example of this is his most recent performance in the Marvel series Loki.

Majors is “acting” so much in this series it made my head hurt and my colon twinge. He is just so obviously desperate to show himself acting so that everyone can say, “wow…look at that guy’s acting!”

The result of all this is that Majors is a major disappointment as an artist.

He’s also a major disappointment as a human being as he got charged with some abusive shenanigans with a former girlfriend and then other former girlfriends came forward and said he was an aggressive asshole and on and on and on.

Then there were the tapes of him comparing himself to Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. Good lord.

The bottom line is that Jonathan Majors’ career is, at best, comatose…at worst, dead on arrival. Marvel cut him loose and an arthouse film of his which had garnered some Oscar buzz was completely shelved and if it is ever released will be done so under cover of darkness.

On top of all that Majors gave an interview on Good Morning America that was so catastrophic as to be astonishing as he came across as a completely disingenuous and delusional sack of shit.

Good riddance Jonathan Majors…you will not be missed…but congrats on being a Piece of Shit All-Star.

LIZZO – This rotund retard was the point elephant for the media’s relentless “body positivity” movement. Everywhere you turned Lizzo was there front and center playing a flute or singing and dancing, all while wearing next to nothing with her gargantuan ass hanging out.

The reason Lizzo was shoved in our faces was because our culture and civilization is actively being subverted and our intelligence being assaulted. Up is now down, left is now right, and bad is now good.

The fact that Lizzo is so gratuitously grotesque is the point of it all. The truth is, and everyone knows this, that if you saw Lizzo in your bathroom at 3 in the morning, you’d think your house was haunted. Speaking of bathrooms, Lizzo is so fat she has to shit in the bathtub.

Now, despite the relentless comedic vitriol I am currently spewing at Lizzo, the truth is she should not be shamed for being fat, but she shouldn’t be celebrated for it either. The chances she will die young of a heart attack, diabetes, or choking on a ham sandwich, are astronomical, and we should not encourage her gluttony any more than we’d encourage someone else’s alcoholism or drug addiction.

Speaking of shaming, the reason Lizzo is one of this year’s Piece of Shit All-Stars is because she is being sued by her background dancers for…wait for it…“weight shaming” them. The dancers also alleged that Lizzo harassed them sexually, religiously, and racially. She’s also accused of disability discrimination, assault, false imprisonment, and creating a hostile work environment.

Lizzo sounds like her insides are as repulsive as her outsides…which is quite an accomplishment.

The good thing about all of these charges against Lizzo is that the media is no longer shoving her fat ass in our face and we no longer have to pretend this pig is a beauty queen. A win-win scenario for everyone.

JADA SMITH – Jada is a multi-time POS All-Star and she and her family are lifetime members of the POS Hall of Fame. So why is she on the POS All-Stars again? Well…because SHE IS A GIANT PIECE OF SHIT!

After all the hoopla and horseshit around Will Smith and the Oscars slap and all of that…Jada thought this year was a good time to put out a book and overshare with America about her entire sordid and supremely narcissistic life. I mean…who gives a fuck what she or her fruitcake husband or her truly repugnant children think or feel?

This irrelevant whore was out there shouting from the rooftops about how the love of her life was Tupac, and she basically publicly cuckolded and castrated her husband, and in doing so essentially ended his career…for that at least I’m grateful.

Jada’s addiction to the spotlight, despite her complete allergy to hard work and total lack of talent or skill, is a toxic mix, and the poor public who have her obnoxious, self-righteous posturing imposed upon us by a celebrity adoring media, are the ones who truly suffer.

The reality is that Jada is an absolutely awful person in every single way. My hope is that Will Smith grows a pair of balls and goes semi-O.J. on her by drowning her in a septic tank…at least then they’d become ever-so-slightly interesting.

P.O.S. HALL OF FAME

This year’s sole inductee is the grouping of…

BIDEN, TRUMP, AMERICA’S CORRUPT POLITICAL SYSTEM and THE AMERICAN VOTERS

I am certainly not the first person to say this but WHAT THE FUCK!?!?! There are like 350 million people in the United States and the best we can do for the job of President is these two decrepit dipshits?

Joe Biden is a geriatric, dementia-addled creepy-old man and corrupt swamp creature. It is painful watching him walk on television, never mind try and talk.

This ass-hat is such a limp-dick douchebag as to be astonishing. No one, and I mean no one, with whom I’ve spoken in the last four years has anything but contempt (and occasionally pity) for this incessant failure.

Speaking of contempt, on the other side of the aisle is Trump, who is a carnival barker, rodeo clown, reality television blow-hard and corrupt charlatan.

I don’t know anyone who is excited about this election or either of these candidates. It is a testament to how far along the fall of the American Empire truly is that the populace is simply resigned to the ruling class installing either of these shitheels in the presidential chair.

It’s important to remember that no matter who “wins” the election, nothing will truly change.

Trump is running as an outsider candidate who will drain the swamp, but the last time he was president he filled his cabinet and administration with the swampiest of swamp creatures.

Biden, of course, IS the swampiest of swamp creatures. This twat has never actually held a real job in his entire life. He’s been a politician his entire adult life, and is Trump’s equal, if not superior, when it comes to corruption.  

What you’re really voting for in this election, and all elections, is who will be cast as the lead in the role of President of the United States…a long running, very unpopular reality television show.

In the 21st century we have had a narcissist, silver-spooned, nepo-baby, mental-defective war criminal as president (George W. Bush), and then people elected a smooth-talking, narcissist, CIA created dummy-corp love-child (Obama), followed by a silver-spooned, narcissistic, reality-tv star (Trump), followed by dementia-addled, geriatric, corrupt swamp creature (Biden). This is a murderer’s row of dipshittedness…all of whom ruled with neo-liberal domestic policy and neo-con foreign policy…or as I call it – the worst of both worlds.

The fact that I found it impossible to even tolerate watching any of these fucksticks on television for more than two seconds is a pretty strong indicator that my bullshit meter is finely attuned and that my taste in humanity is much too sophisticated.

Which brings me to the American voters.

Look, I get it, people are stupid or exhausted or a combination of the two. They are also relentlessly propagandized and conditioned to be allergic to critical thinking. But the fact that we are quietly compliant while these two fucktards are hoisted upon us is a scathing indictment of the state of our union and our populace.

And don’t even get me started on the imbeciles and morons who actually buy into all this shit and are fervent supporters of either candidate. If you go to a rally for either one of these fucksticks, you should be lobotomized. Hell, if you even put a Biden or Trump sign in your front lawn, you should be institutionalized.

The bottom line is that regardless of who wins this year’s election, there is one thing we can count on and it is this…all of us will lose….THAT IS GUARANTEED!

And on that happy note…thus ends the Slip-Me-A-Mickey Awards™®!! I hope everyone enjoys the after-party and that I see none of the losers who these awards next year!!

Thanks for reading and we’ll see you next time…at the Slip-Me-A-Mickeys!!

 Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo

©2024

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 98 - Ghosted

On this episode, Barry and I display zero chemistry as we go globetrotting on a spy adventure searching for answers about the new Apple TV+ movie Ghosted, starring Ana de Armas and Chris Evans. Topics discussed include really bad movies, really bad movie stars, really bad streaming services and really bad decisions by streaming services. 

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 98 - Ghosted

Thanks for listening!

©2023

Ghosted: A Review – Apple TV+ Action Rom-Com Scrapes the Bottom of the Barrel

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

My Rating: ½ out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. Don’t even contemplate watching this stupid movie.

Ghosted, which premiered on Apple TV+ this past Friday, is an action rom-com starring Marilyn Monroe and Captain America…oops…I mean Ana de Armas and Chris Evans.

I feel conflicted in labeling the film an action romantic comedy because the action is decidedly derivative and dull, the romance flaccid and the comedy non-existent, but the film identifies itself as an action rom-com so I’m respecting its pronouns, so to speak.

The film does have a plot, although I’m not going to insult your intelligence by trying too hard to recount it as it’s so idiotic as to be insulting. The basics of it are that after a meet cute that isn’t cute, world-traveling woman-of-action Sadie (Ana de Armas) and needy, home body Cole (Chris Evans) have a whirlwind 24-hour romance, which is followed by a globe-hopping, fish-out-of-water, spy/action-adventure. It’s basically a Hallmark Movie with disturbing amounts of killing and some very bad action set pieces.

The film has a run time of 116 minutes that feel like 116 hours because the writing is an abomination, the acting atrocious and the action choreography and execution ridiculous. But besides that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln…oh…it was so bad that Mr. Lincoln would’ve shot himself in the head if John Wilkes Booth didn’t do him the favor first.

A major issue with Ghosted is that the core of the film is the relationship between Ana de Armas and Chris Evans, and they have absolutely zero chemistry. Although to be fair, this script is such crap that you could’ve put Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn in this sack of shit and still would’ve stunk to high heaven.

De Armas at least has a light in her eyes and is obviously working hard to make the best of a bad situation, but Evans has such dead eyes and does such lifeless line readings the movie feels like a Weekend at Bernie’s reboot with de Armas dragging Evans’ corpse all over the world.

Evans, who made a name for himself playing Captain America in the Marvel movies, is such a buff buffoon one wonders how he got his famed physique while eating so many of his own boogers.

Hollywood has been trying forever to make Evans a movie star but the only thing that worked was the Captain America stuff because Captain America is just as bland as Evans.

Evans’s last two films are the instantaneously forgettable streaming duds Ghosted and The Gray Man, which might be the worst double-feature in the recent history of cinema. One can only hope that in short order some new meat-headed moron would take Evans’ place in Hollywood rolodex of dumb-ass hunks but you never know.

I actually felt bad for Ana de Armas watching this movie. Unlike Evans, she’s not a terrible actress…she’s not a good one either…but she deserves better than this.

It felt like the makers of this movie saw de Armas in the last James Bond movie, where she had a small but scintillating role as a sexy and silly CIA agent, and thought they’d try and replicate that energy. The problem though is that character was pretty paper thin and barely got us through ten minutes of screen time in Bond, so trying to put her on-screen for two hours in Ghosted is beyond a stretch.

Some movie stars and famous Marvel men, like Sebastian Stan and Anthony Mackie, show up in Ghosted in order to inject some life and laughs into the festivities, but not surprisingly that all falls as flat as Chris Evans’ sculpted abs.

The director of Ghosted is Dexter Fletcher, whose previous work includes the Elton John bio-pic Rocketman, which made me think that this movie should’ve starred Elton John and Debbie Harry for some random reason. At least then it would’ve been funny even if unintentionally so.

The writers of the film are Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, who wrote the Deadpool movies, and Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers, who wrote a bunch of Marvel stuff. Reese and Wernick’s distinctive style is easy to spot in the movie, but with Evans and de Armas spouting it and not Ryan Reynolds, it all feels forced and fails.

Apple TV+ is desperate to be a player in the streaming world, which is sort of amusing since it’s a gigantic tech company but still can’t even develop a barely usable streaming site. Despite some occasional hits like Ted Lasso and Severance, Apple has done little to distinguish itself in the crowded streaming world.

Apple seems to not understand that we aren’t in Old Hollywood or even Hollywood of the 1970s, as their approach seems to be to get stars and put them in shitty movies and people will tune in regardless of quality. As an aside, Netlfix has the same approach except they don’t even use movie stars, they just throw any piece of shit up on their service because they need content.

If Apple wants to become a Hollywood player, and to be honest I don’t really understand why they would want to be, they’re going to have to use their tech bazillions to bully buy somebody else…like Netflix or Disney or God help us HBO Max/Discovery. Because the truth is churning out third-rate garbage like Ghosted with second-rate stars like Ana de Armas and Chris Evans, isn’t gonna move the needle for a fourth-rate streaming site like Apple TV+.

The bottom line is that Ghosted is garbage and wholly deserves to not only be ghosted, but blocked before first contact. Do yourself a favor and don’t even give this pile of shit a single second of your attention.

 Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo

©2023

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 78 - Blonde

On this episode, Barry and I let the wind blow up our dresses as we discuss the bleak Marylin Monroe bio-pic Blonde, directed by Andrew Dominik and starring Ana de Armas. Topics discussed include the mystery of Marilyn's Cuban accent and shifting aspect ratios, Netflix's curious foray into the land of NC-17, and the incandescence of the one and only Marilyn Monroe.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 78 - Blonde

Thanks for listening!

©2022

Blonde: A Review

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

My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. An ambitious mess of an arthouse movie that misfires on all cylinders.

If you’ve always wanted to see an artistically decadent, narratively and dramatically impotent, nearly three-hour-long slog that recounts the endless abuse Marilyn Monroe endured during her tumultuous life, starring an actress with an absurdly pronounced Cuban accent playing the American icon…have I got the movie for you!

Blonde, the new NC-17 rated Netflix film based on the novel of the same name by Joyce Carol Oates, which stars Ana de Armas and is directed by Andrew Dominik, is a most puzzling movie.

The film, like the novel upon which it is based, takes dramatic license with the facts of Monroe’s tragic and turbulent life, and is a fictional biography despite chronicling some true events.

The only way I can make sense of this baffling film is to look at it not as a bio-pic, but as a horror movie with Monroe reduced to being the pretty victim trying to survive the devil stalking her. The film does nothing but portray Marilyn as she endures the continuous nightmare of her existence. There’s no reprieve for Marilyn, or the audience, as she drags the heavy cross of her exploitable beauty on the death march to the New Golgotha known as Hollywood. There’s also no growth or salvation for Marilyn…or the audience…just the repetitious banging of the drum of despair.

On this journey Marilyn is subjected to a cavalcade of either vicious, or cruel, or viciously cruel men, all of whom are icons or icon adjacent, who use and abuse her like Roman centurions at a crucifixion, the only difference being the centurions assigned to torture Jesus knew not what they did, while Marilyn’s abusers know exactly what they were doing.

My thesis that this is a horror film, which to be clear - still doesn’t make it a good film, requires the audience to understand and accept the fact that Hollywood is a death cult, fame is an evil demon, and that Monroe’s beauty and powerful sexual energy were not blessings but curses inflicted upon her.

In real life, Marilyn Monroe was captured by an energy and archetype that absolutely devoured her. Like two other of her contemporaries, Elvis and Marlon Brando, who became avatars for explosive sexual energy during the sexually repressed 1950’s, Marilyn was ultimately destroyed under the weight of her archetypal burden. Think of it as Dionysus’s revenge.

Unfortunately, director Andrew Dominik is incapable of exploring his subject matter with any such depth, and instead simply turns Blonde into abuse porn, and in so doing turns other American icons, like JFK and Joe DiMaggio, into vacuous props meant to convey the obvious point about the nefariousness of the American patriarchy.

Dominik is a visual stylist, of that there is no doubt, and I genuinely enjoyed his film The Assassination of the Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, but on Blonde, Dominik is all style and no substance.

Dominik and cinematographer Chayse Irvin use a plethora of interesting stylistic choices, like going from black and white to color and back again, and changing aspect ratios, but these choices lack coherence and dramatic intent.

As I pondered the film and Dominik’s distinct visual choices, I wondered if he was attempting to make a larger statement about the disposable nature of Monroe’s life and career, something along the lines of things being ‘pretty but meaning-less’. Or maybe Dominik was trying to make a movie about the exploitation of Marilyn Monroe by actually exploiting the image of Marilyn Monroe, and the actress playing her. Those potential intentions are astonishingly vapid, but Blonde is so bad I’m left grasping at straws to decipher it.  

Even the film’s politics are incomprehensible and at cross-purposes as the movie is both making a statement against the patriarchy but then also presenting a rabidly pro-life argument in regards to abortion. And the abortion stuff is not some throw away scene, it’s a recurring theme and one that is actually the most disturbing and most effective part of the film, but it will no doubt infuriate the movie’s feminist target audience.

Blonde has gotten quite a bit of attention because it’s the first Netflix film to be rated NC-17. I’m sure that rating will attract a few perverts hoping to see my two favorite things, nudity and gratuitous sex, but I found the NC-17 rating to be, pardon the pun, overblown. While the movie does feature a bevy of boobs, all of which belong to Ana de Armas, which are both real and spectacular, the sex is extraordinarily subdued and the nudity confined to the waist up. And while there is some adult subject matter dramatized, it’s nothing that an R rating wouldn’t comfortably cover.

Speaking of Ana de Armas, she is undoubtedly a beauty, but she is no Marilyn Monroe. De Armas is not well cast as she doesn’t particularly look like Marilyn and she most definitely doesn’t sound like her. De Armas’ Cuban accent, which manifests in the cadence of her speech and in pronunciation of certain letters and words, is egregiously incessant and a constant distraction. De Armas playing Marilyn Monroe is like having Desi Arnaz play JFK, or Matthew McConaughey play Fidel Castro.

To her credit though, de Armas does give her all in the very demanding role, but that said she is still terribly miscast.

There are really no other performances of note in the film. Bobby Cannavale plays Joe DiMaggio and Adrien Brody plays Arthur Miller and there’s not anything of interest there. Julianne Nicholson plays Marilyn’s crazy mom and she does crazy mom things.

Blonde felt to me like an arthouse bio-pic gone wrong. It’s somewhat reminiscent of Jackie(2016), which is a much better film, and Spencer(2021), which is not as bad as Blonde but still isn’t a good film (both are by director Pablo Larrain). I also thought of David Lynch’s masterpiece Mulholland Drive, which does a substantially better job at depicting the corrosive and corrupt nature of Hollywood on women and the devil’s bargain that is fame.

Ultimately, Blonde is, unlike Marilyn Monroe, entirely forgettable. If I’m being generous, I’d call it an ambitious failure of a film. If I’m being blunt, I’d call it a rancid shit sandwich. Either way, Blonde is not something you should ever trouble yourself to watch even though it’s ‘free’ on Netflix. The time spent watching this misfire of a movie could be much better spent literally doing anything else…like seeing Marilyn Monroe’s performance in a small, breakout role in The Asphalt Jungle. When you see her on-screen for the first time you instantly get why Marilyn became the most famous woman of the 20th century.

 

©2022

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 73 - The Grey Man

On this episode, Barry and I try not to put a bullet through our gray matter as we suffer through The Grey Man, the new Russo Brothers directed Netflix action movie starring Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans. Topics discussed include awful acting, awful directing, awful writing, awful establishing shots, awful action sequences, awful Chris Evans and Netflix's awful future. On the bright side, listeners will get to hear Barry's spirit break when he learns some shocking news about the Grey Man movie universe.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 73 - The Grey Man

Thanks for listening!

©2022

The Grey Man: A Review

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

My Rating: 0 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. Ho-Lee-Shit this $200 million movie is atrocious.

The Grey Man is the new action film directed by Marvel billion-dollar blockbuster makers the Russo Brothers (Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame) and produced by Netflix, which premiered on the streaming service on July 22nd.

The movie, which stars Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans and tells the story of an off-the-books CIA hitman gone rogue, is most notable because its production budget is $200 million, which makes it the most expensive Netflix movie ever made. And you thought gas was expensive?

Inflation must be very real because $200 million just doesn’t buy you what it used to. The reality is that it would have been a much better decision, and infinitely more entertaining, to just use an intern’s iPhone to record Netflix executives lighting a $200 million pile of cash on fire than to make the disaster area that is The Grey Man.

The plot of the film exists but I’m not sure I can bring myself to actually write it as it’s so derivative and inane. Just know that a sort of Bourne-type CIA assassin (Gosling) goes off the reservation and now the CIA, most notably bitchy bureaucrat Denny Carmichael, played by a truly awful Rege-Jean Page whose acting style consists of nothing but occasionally yelling, are out to get him.

The Grey Man is one of those movies that’s so bad that it’s astonishing, as it seems impossible for so many professionals to be so incompetent at their jobs all at once.

Directors Joe and Anthony Russo (Joe also co-wrote the script) are the most to blame for the shitshow that is The Grey Man. I cannot recall a film that was so poorly directed, as everything from the story to the dialogue to the visuals to the staging to the action sequences to the acting is abominable. In addition, the film is all over the map in terms of tone and feels like ten different movies, all bad, smashed together into one.

The action sequences, which no doubt account for the majority of the bloated budget, are so amateurish and poorly shot as to be criminal. One scene, which must have busted the bank, involves an inner-city European trolley chase and gun fight that looks like it was conceived and shot by a one-eyed man with cataracts who lives in a dumpster behind the School for the Artistically Impaired.

On top of that, the performances are so excruciatingly poor they would make Michael Bay blush.

Ryan Gosling is the star of the movie and plays Sierra 6, so named because “007 was taken”. How clever. Gosling is a charming actor and makes the most of the uneven snarki-ness, but he is not even remotely menacing as a bad-ass CIA assassin, and, thanks to the inadequacies of the Russo Brothers his action sequences are a blurred and obstructed mess.

The luminous Ana De Armas plays a laughably-not-believable tough-as-nails CIA agent working with Gosling’s 6 and then against 6 and then with 6 again. Her character makes no sense and her performance is as throwaway as the rest of the movie.

Chris Evans plays a mustachioed villain named Lloyd Hansen who looks like he just stumbled out of a low-end Provincetown hot spot named “Harvard Hunk Hole” on a steamy summer afternoon. Evans isn’t exactly Laurence Olivier…or Tommy Wiseau for that matter, and the most egregious thing about his performance in The Grey Man is that you can see that he actually thinks it’s amazing. It’s like the wind whistling through his empty skull is playing the Academy Award theme song in every scene and he gets hypnotized by it and actually believes it.

Watching Evans pout and sashay around the movie like a psychopathic Richard Simmons at a sold out Miami Beach Liza Minelli concert was the equivalent of watching the art and craft of acting get hit by an apocalyptic meteor….speaking of which, watching The Grey Man made me envious of the dinosaurs and their extinction.

Speaking of the apocalypse, poor Billy Bob Thornton is in the movie and plays some CIA type dude, and he gets the honor of speaking such sterling dialogue as “hey, she’s got a pacemaker, you asshole!” Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

To give you an indication of how little thought and time went into making this $200 million monstrosity, consider this, not once, not twice, but three times, the Russo Brothers use the same action movie trope involving a grenade to propel the story. As each instance of this idiocy occurred, I kept wondering if I was having a stroke and was suffering from fast-onset dementia. But trust me, despite wishing I was having a stroke so I could lose consciousness and escape The Grey Man, I wasn’t…it was all just the Russo Brothers not giving a shit or even trying when they made this anti-cinematic abomination.

The bottom line is, if someone told me that The Grey Man was actually a science experiment where a band of syphilitic monkeys were locked in a room and given a typewriter, a movie camera and an editing machine, as well as copious amounts of Jack Daniels and meth amphetamine, and then came out three weeks later with this movie in the can, I would’ve believed it but still thought they under-performed.

If you want tangible evidence of how poorly run Netflix is and why it is going into a nosedive, look no further than the atrocity that is The Grey Man.

I urge you to avoid this movie at all costs. You’ll hate yourself even if you just hate watch it…it’s that bad.

 

©2022

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 64 - Deep Water

On this episode, Barry and I don our snail costumes and slowly slither into the slime that is Deep Water, Adriane Lyne's unintentionally hysterical "erotic thriller" starring Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas, that is neither erotic nor thrilling. Topics discussed include snails, the snail room, the sexiness of snails and why the hell are there snails in this movie?

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 64 - Deep Water

Thanks for listening!

©2022

Deep Water: A Review

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

My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. An utterly incomprehensible and incoherent mess of a movie.

Filmmaker Adrian Lyne has made a name for himself by churning out a plethora of highly stylized “erotic” movies. His filmography is a who’s who of sexy cinema of the late 20th century, and includes Flashdance, 9½ Weeks, Fatal Attraction, Indecent Proposal, Lolita and Unfaithful.

Lyne, who is now 81-years-old, hasn’t made a movie in twenty years, but he’s back with a new film, Deep Water, that is currently streaming on Hulu. Not surprisingly considering Lyne’s sexy cinematic proclivities, Deep Water bills itself as an “erotic psychological thriller”.

The film has garnered some attention because it stars, Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas, in real life had a brief but very public romance while shooting the movie. For Ben and Ana’s sake I’m hoping that fling was more erotically charged and fun than the dismal Deep Water.

To be fair, Deep Water does stand out from other movies, but unfortunately that’s because it’s one of the most incomprehensible, incoherent films of recent memory.

The plot revolves around a couple, Vic (Affleck) and Melinda (de Armas), who are in a functionally dysfunctional marriage where Melinda sleeps with various impossibly handsome young men and everyone in the small town of Little Wesley, Louisiana knows it.

Vic’s bizarre cuckoldry has him both making dinner for Melinda’s lovers but also vaguely threatening them. To add to the oddities, Vic, for some completely unknown and unknowable reason, collects snails…he even has a special snail room out in the garage with special snail lighting and special snail sprinklers. The snails become a plot point later in the movie, but that plot point, not surprisingly, makes no sense whatsoever.

Early in the story, one of Melinda’s lovers has gone missing and the rumor mill of the small town has it that Vic killed him. This theory gains traction when Vic tells one of Melinda’s new lovers that he did indeed kill the old lover and might kill the new one too. For no decipherable dramatic reason, it is then revealed that some other completely random guy killed the first lover, so problem solved I guess…or is it?

To continue on describing the plot of this movie would be an asinine task as it’s simply indescribable. Just know that Melinda drinks and cheats a lot, Vic seethes a lot and there are a lot of parties where wealthy people get very drunk and swim in pools but get freaked out when it starts raining when they’re in a pool and then run to the house covering themselves because they don’t want to get wet with rain water even though they’re already wet with pool water.

Melinda’s trysts are all filled with a plethora of mild and tame erotic shots featuring soft lighting and posing seductively as if in a parody of a high-end perfume commercial. The lovely Ms. de Armas is often seen in various stages of arousal and undress…although to be fair the nudity in the film is brief and tasteful and will no doubt frustrate perverts on the prowl for soft-core thrills.

Speaking of bare skin, Ben Affleck goes shirtless in a pool scene and they only show him from behind but his back is Batman-esque with its muscular massiveness, which doesn’t really seem normal for a snail collecting nerd like Vic. Although I guess Vic sees himself as sort of the Batman of Little Wesley, so I’ll just go with it.

As incoherent as Deep Water is, and it is incredibly incoherent and may very well be the worst edited film of the 21st century, the final twenty minutes of the movie are the apex of unintentional comedy. It simply has to be seen to be believed as it had me cackling out loud on numerous occasions.

As for the performances, Affleck is on cruise control throughout, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else doing anything else than mindlessly reciting his garbage dialogue.

Ana de Armas is a luminous beauty, of that there can be no doubt, and Lyne dresses her in sexy dresses as is his signature style, but her character Melinda is so absurd as to be ridiculous. Melinda is the craziest, horniest, drunkest lunatic you’ve ever met, and yet she still manages to be as dull as a door knob.

My favorite performance though comes from Tracy Letts as Don Wilson, a local writer who is investigating Vic. Lett’s Don is such an incomplete and idiotic character, and his behavior so alien, that I couldn’t help but smile whenever he was on-screen. Don’s final scenes with Vic, which occur in the gloriously goofy final twenty minutes, are outrageously funny for all the wrong reasons.

As for Lyne, his very skillfully made past films were once thought to be edgy and sexy, but with Deep Water, he’s unfortunately lost the plot, literally and figuratively.

The bottom line is there’s absolutely no need for anyone to ever watch Deep Water as it isn’t sexy, thrilling or even interesting, it’s just a two-hour bath in a cold puddle.

 

©2022