The 12th Annual Slip-Me-A-Mickey Awards (2025)

THE 12th 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 –

Caught Stealing – I’m old enough to remember when Darren Aronofsky was the cool kid on the cinephile block…oh how the mighty have fallen. Caught Stealing is the most idiotic, moronic, and laziest film imaginable. So stupid as to be offensive. Darren Aronofsky should be banned from making any more movies after this criminally dreadful film.

Alto Knights – I’m also old enough to remember when Barry Levinson was an important filmmaker. I’m very old. Levinson’s attempt at a mob epic is a staggeringly incoherent exercise that is shocking in its ineptitude.

Jay Kelly – Director Noah Baumbach and stars George Clooney and Adam Sandler are a Murderer’s Row of putrid and pedestrian performers…and for proof of that you need look no further than the saccharine shitbag of a movie that is Jay Kelly.

After the Hunt – Luca Guadagnino is a critical darling addicted to all things queer…in After the Hunt he once again shows himself to be a philosophically trite and painfully limited filmmaker. A tremendously putrid waste of time.

Song Sung Blue – The most batshit, tone-deaf, bizarro movie experience I had in 2025. An alarmingly awful movie that features some of the cheesiest supporting turns in recent memory.

And the Slip-Me-A-Mickey award goes to…

CAUGHT STEALING: As much as all these movies suck…most of them have at least one little thing about them that is a tiny bit redeeming. For example, Alto-Knights is awful but DeNiro is ok playing dual roles (and does it considerably better than Best Actor Oscar winner Michael B. Jordan). After the Hunt is atrocious but Julia Roberts does a pretty good job in it. Song Sung Blue is so bad it is amusing. Jay Kelly is terrible but ultimately it is a harmless little George Clooney attempt (and fail) at being charming and relevant again. But Caught Stealing? Caught Stealing has absolutely nothing redeeming about it. All of it is absolutely awful…which is a great asset when it comes to this category. So..congrats Caught Stealing!!

WORST PERFORMANCE OF THE YEAR –

Michael B. Jordan – Sinners: Mr. Jordan just won a Best Actor Oscar for a performance that is so amateurish and underwhelming it would make not just Sly Stallone, but Frank Stallone, blush. Jordan plays twins but is completely incapable of differentiating between the two of them – so much so that he has to wear different color hats so that we…and he…can know which one is which. Add in Jordan’s acting style – nothing but posing and preening, and his vocal style – mush mouth akin to talking with two Snickers bars in his mouth…and you’re left with a truly terrible, two-bit performance.

Adam Sandler – Jay Kelly: Adam Sandler’s career strategy is to be awful in as many shitty movies as he can and then give the most minimal of effort in an allegedly less shitty movie and have critics slobber all over him for his dramatic abilities. Don’t be fooled. Adam Sandler sucks. He is a shitty actor….and his soft talking, “aww shucks”, acting technique in Jay Kelly is an embarrassment to anyone who has the slightest bit of knowledge about the craft of acting. Dear Adam – please go away forever. Dear Adam Sandler apologists – you will burn in hell forever.

Ayo Edebiri – After the Hunt: Ayo Edebiri is so abysmal in After the Hunt it felt like she had never acted before and was thrown before the cameras with no preparation or notice – like a Make-A-Wish kid having their dying wish to be in a movie come true. As wooden and dead-eyed a performance as you will ever see. Truly remarkable for how awful it was.

Idris Elba – A House of Dynamite: Idris Elba is great…but he was definitely not great in A House of Dynamite as the President of the U.S.A. Elba was like a fish out of water…literally. He could barely walk like a human being…and his speaking wasn’t much better either. I would be relieved if I read that Elba was strung out on heroin and LSD while he shot this movie…but unfortunately that wasn’t the case.

Anthony Ramos – A House of Dynamite: This dude starred in Hamilton on Broadway and has been so fucking terrible in every single thing he’s done since then it is actually shocking to behold. In A House of Dynamite, he puts on a masterclass in awful acting…so much so that if it were a stage play I wouldn’t throw tomatoes at him, I’d throw rocks…sharp rocks.

And the Slip-Me-A-Mickey award goes to…

AYO EDEBIRI – AFTER THE HUNT: Ms. Edebiri is a big tv star on the show The Bear…but I simply can’t bear to watch her be such a shitty actor in After the Hunt. She’s such a bad actress she should not only stay away from doing movies…she should stay away from even watching them.

Worst Scene of the Year –

JAY KELLY - A CHRISTMAS CAROL-STYLE FLASHBACKS: When the character Jay Kelly starts walking through his past and is watching his young self (played by a different actor) go through critical moments in his life, I wanted to kill myself…but not before killing Noah Baumbach who wrote this shit and George Clooney who’s terrible acting in it. An all-time embarrassing piece of cinematic detritus.

MOST OVERRATED FILM OF THE YEAR –

Sinners – Ah yes…Sinners…a second-rate vampire movie that dipshits and dopes adore but that is so amateurish it pains to even recount. This film was slathered over by every numbnuts know-nothing ignorant of cinema…it is like every online asshole’s favorite movie ever. As I so astutely observed in my review of this nothing burger – this is the type of movie that dumb people think is deep and stupid people think is smart. Critics and many “fans” loved it because they were afraid to tell the truth about its artistic mundanity out of fear of being called “racist”. Yawn.

One Battle After Another – As a “film bros” and a PT Anderson fan, it pained me to see other film bros and PTA fans get a giant boner over this middling mess of a movie. This movie was so over-hyped and underwhelming it gave me the bends. Stop with the slurping already – this ain’t no masterpiece…it is bottom-tier PTA, plain and simple. Deal with it.

Marty Supreme – I diverge from the Film Bros community when it comes to the Safdie Brothers…they love them, I can do without them. Josh Safdie wrote and directed this grating and annoying and seemingly endless film…and he did it very, very poorly. A toxic and odious odyssey of Jewish arrogance and self-loathing that goes down like a matzo ball of shit and makes you want to retch….but critics loved it! Yuck.

And the Slip-Me-A-Mickey award goes to…

SINNERS – Sinners is such a second-rate piece of moviemaking it makes my colon twinge just at the thought of rewatching it. Pedestrian and puerile through and through…it is embarrassing that this movie was both a big hit and shameful that it received more Oscar nominations than any other film in Academy Award history. It is unquestionably the most overrated film of the year.

SPECIAL ACHIEVEMENT IN CINEMATIC MALPRACTICE –

James Gunn, Spike Lee, Guillermo del Toro, Steven Soderberg: These are the Four Horsemen of the Shit-pocalypse who have taken a shit all over either their careers, their films or their audiences.

James Gunn got handed the reigns of the DC universe and promptly took a shit all over it with the truly awful Superman. The fact that we have at least a whole decade of Gunn taking shits all over the already shat upon DC universe does not fill me with any semblance of joy.

Spike Lee is such a spent creative force he did a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s masterpiece High and Low – and to show how creative Spike is he titled it Highest 2 Lowest…yawn. To top it all off Highest 2 Lowest isn’t just an embarrassment of a title, it is an embarrassment of a movie.

The great Guillermo del Toro got to make his dream film – Frankenstein…and promptly made one of his very worst movies…and absolute muddled mess. Now he will never get to make his dream project again.

And finally, Steven Soderberg had all the pieces in place to finally return to form and actually make a great and meaningful movie once again…and dropped the ball entirely. Black Bag, starring the great Cate Blanchet and Michael Fassbender, was so forgettable you forget it exists even while you’re watching it.

These four heavy hitters should be ashamed of themselves for their shoddy work on these shitty movies.

POS ALL-STARS –

BLAKE LIVELY AND JUSTIN BALDONI AND ANYONE WHO CARES OR HAS AN OPINION ABOUT BLAKE LIVELY AND JUSTIN BALDONI – I have no idea what this entire story is about, but the fact that anyone gives a shit about these two twats irritates the living shit out of me. I want Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni to be locked in a septic tank together for the rest of their lives. I want anyone who cares about the Blake Lively – Justin Baldoni story to be boiled alive in a vat of elephant excrement.

BILL MAHER – Little Bill loves to fellate all things Israel and Military/Intelligence Industrial Complex. He is such a Zio-whore and so blind to his own hypocrisy and ignorance he has devolved from being hate-watchable to simply unwatchable. On the bright side…he has never been less relevant!!

JAKE PAUL/LOGAN PAUL – I don’t give two shits about who or what these two shitsticks are. I just want them to go away. If you want to be some asshole influencer who makes a trillion dollars off of dumbass Youtube viewers…go ahead. But once you cross over into my life…and things I am interested in…like boxing…then we have a problem. I’m glad Jake Paul got his jaw broken in two places by Anthony Joshua…I only wish I was the one doing the jaw-breaking. Fingers crossed someone cracks Logan Paul’s skull open soon.

POS HALL OF FAME –

PRINCE ANDREW – Imagine being born into endless wealth and privilege and never having to work a single day in your life and instead of being grateful and living a life of charity and good will…you decide to be a sexual predator who fucks young girls simply because you can.

Prince Andrew is the worst in a family full of worsts…quite an accomplishment.

Jeffrey Epstein’s dear friend Andrew, is like the rest of his in-bred, arrogant, parasitic, useless family, a predator to the core who loves to prey upon the poor and the weak. He despises those beneath him, both literally and figuratively.

He preyed upon the girls provided by Epstein not because he couldn’t get laid in the real world, but because he wanted to force a young girl to suffer for his pleasure. He wanted her to be uncomfortable…to be subservient to him…because that is how he is wired.

Truth is his whole filthy fucking family is wired like that. These royal vermin should be stripped on their titles, their lands, their wealth and their limbs…like William Wallace…drawn and quartered in the public square. That won’t happen, of course, because the rules don’t apply to people like Prince Andrew or the rest of his cohorts in the elite Epstein Class. They get to dance between the raindrops while we drown in the deluge of their depravity and destruction.

The best-case scenario for the Epstein class regarding Prince Andrew is what happened to his friend Jeffery Epstein…happens to him too. He is “suicided” and quickly thrown in the bin of forgotten history so that his story goes away as quickly as possible.

Worst case scenario for Andrew is that they lock him in a room with me for fifteen minutes. Now that would be entertaining!

And thus ends the 12th Annual Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® Awards!!! To the winners/losers…don't take it personally…and God knows I hope I don't see you again next year!! To you dear reader…thanks for tuning in and we'll see you again next year!!

©2026

Caught Stealing: A Review – A Criminally Awful Movie

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

My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. An instantly forgettable and irritatingly moronic movie that when it isn’t being incoherent is idiotic.

Caught Stealing, directed by Darren Aronofsky and starring Austin Butler, is a “black comedy crime thriller” that follows the travails of Hank (Butler), a former baseball player turned alcoholic bartender who unwittingly gets mixed up with a bevy of New York criminal gangs. 

I vividly remember twenty-five years ago seeing director Darren Aronofsky’s film Requiem for a Dream (2000) - a gritty and cinematic examination of addiction, and immediately thinking, “this guy is gonna be something!”

A quarter of a century later I have been proven absolutely correct in my assessment, Aronofsky has become “something”, but unfortunately the “something” he has become is the feckless hack who made Caught Stealing, one of the more abysmal and idiotic films of the year.

It didn’t have to be this way. Aronofsky, a graduate of the esteemed AFI Conservatory, started out making ambitious arthouse fare like PI (1998), and then graduated to ambitious arthouse projects with some crossover mainstream appeal, such as the previously mentioned Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain (2006), The Wrestler (2008) and Black Swan (2010).

All of these movies were very good…but never quite touched upon greatness…but what they did most of all was showcase Aronofsky’s potential. They left cinephile/film bros like me with the feeling that Aronofsky was going to make the leap one day and become THE GUY.

In 2014 Aronofsky attempted to make that leap to even more mainstream success than he had with The Wrestler and Black Swan, with the big budget movie Noah (2014) starring Russell Crowe – based on the biblical tale.

Noah was a very moderate box office success (it made $359 million - essentially breaking even due to its large budget), but it was a horrendously awful film – just utter garbage from start to finish.

It was at this point that the Aronofsky film bro bubble burst like the deluge that flooded the earth in Noah.

Following Noah, Aronofsky made Mother! (2019), a very ambitious, dare I say experimental, arthouse film starring Jennifer Lawrence (at the height of her powers), and it was universally panned and flopped at the box office. The wheels seemed to be off the wagon at that point.

Aronofsky’s most recent film was The Whale (2022) a truly insipid piece of dramatic detritus that won Brendan Fraser a Best Actor Oscar (yes, that really happened despite all of us forgetting about it…or trying to forget about it).

Despite Aronofsky’s failings on Noah, Mother! and The Whale, at least he was trying…failing but trying. With Caught Stealing, it feels as if the wheels aren’t just off the Aronofsky wagon, but the wheelless wagon is overturned in a ditch and Aronofsky is next to it curled in fetal position weeping uncontrollably in a pile of horse manure.

For such a promising talent like Aronofsky to make such a dead-eyed, instantly forgettable, truly idiotic piece of trash like Caught Stealing isn’t just disappointing, it is frightening. I mean, if he could fall so low as to make this movie, how low could the rest of us fall in our own lives? Yes, I am sure Aronofsky was paid more to make this movie than I’ve ever made in my entire life…but you get my point.

Caught Stealing is lazy and stupid and useless. It is a “black comedy” that is allergic to being funny. It is a crime thriller devoid of thrills.

The script, written by Charlie Huston - based upon his book of the same name, is incoherent and moronic. There are all sorts of incomprehensible plot twists and a cornucopia of caricatures in place of characters, and none of it makes sense or even remotely captivates or compels.

The performances all feel like something out of a sixth-grade talent show.

Austin Butler is supposed to be the next big thing. I was believing the hype on young Austin, as I thought he was good in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Elvis, and Dune II. But let me tell you…after seeing Butler’s star turn in Caught Stealing I have come to realize he ain’t no burgeoning movie star. He might be a successful supporting actor type guy, but he can’t carry a movie to save his life.

Butler is brutally bad as Hank. He is obviously hampered by the trite and inane script, but Butler does himself no favors with a lifeless and mannered performance. He is so devoid of charisma and screen presence they would’ve been better served casting an inanimate carbon rod in the role instead.

Other once promising actors find themselves wallowing in the same shit script as Butler…as Regina King, Zoe Kravitz, Matt Smith, Liev Schreiber, Griffin Dune, Carol Kane and my old friend Vincent D’Onofrio all turn in gruesomely amateurish performances that sully their reputations.

Caught Stealing bombed at the box office, making $32 million on a $65 million budget, and is now streaming on Netflix, which is where I saw it. The film runs an hour and forty-seven minutes, and is right at home among the usual mindless Netflix slop. This is the type of movie you watch while scrolling on your phone or while having sex with your girlfriend on the couch after your parents go to bed early.

I wish Darren Aronofsky was good. I wanted Darren Aronofsky to be great. But Darren Aronofsky isn’t good and he isn’t great…he’s the guy who made the thoughtless, mindless, worthless Caught Stealing. How disheartening.

©2025