9th Annual Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® Awards: 2022 Edition

THE 2022 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

Amsterdam – An astonishingly awful film that is so incoherent and incomprehensible I can only posit that the Illuminati running Hollywood (and the world) demanded it be intentionally so poorly crafted in order to scuttle any discussion of Smedley Butler and the Business Plot.

She Said – Imagine making such a shitty a movie that audiences end up rooting for a deplorable fucking pig like Harvey Weinstein by the end. Quite an accomplishment!

Don’t Worry Darling – No, actually DO worry, darling. This turd was an absolute shit show of epic proportions and may very well have mercifully ended Olivia Wilde’s directing career…for that we can be grateful.

My Policeman – To quote Kurt Cobain, “what else can I say, everyone is gay!”…including Harry Styles apparently. A gay plot about gayness that is totally gay, but still makes no sense, that is infused with instantly forgettable performances turned this derivative drama into Return to Blokeback Mountain.

Pinocchio – Robert Zemeckis and Tom Hanks should return their Oscars after churning out this mindless, heartless, craft-less sack of shit. Just utterly abysmal from start to finish.

The Fabelmans – An alarmingly amateurish, poorly written, directed and acted piece of vapid, narcissistic garbage that is filled to the brim with cringe. Besides that it’s just fine.

AND THE LOSER IS…AMSTERDAM! – It’s actually quite an accomplishment to make a movie this bad and to stand out from this collection of shit sandwiches.

WORST VIRTUE SIGNALING FILM OF THE YEAR

She Said – A movie that featured the stunningly brave, earth-shattering thesis that Harvey Weinstein is bad and women are good! Too bad this empty movie had nothing original or interesting to say. Total piece of junk meant to signal its virtue to the usual suspects in order to garner awards…but was so dreadfully made even its target audience stopped pretending it was good.  

Women Talking – A stagey, whiney, bitchy movie about Mennonite women debating each other like they’re know-it-all know-nothings at a late-night bitch session at Wellesley College. As pretentious, pompous, poorly made and transparently virtue-signaling and awards-thirsty as any movie as we’ve seen in years.

AND THE LOSER IS…WOMEN TALKING – The most blatant bit of vacuous and vapid virtue signaling imaginable. The fact that it is a truly horrendous movie but still won an Oscar tells you all you need to know about its pure pandering business model.

WORST PERFORMANCE OF THE YEAR

Tom Hanks – Tom Hanks has won two Best Actor Oscars, yet this year with his truly abysmal work in Elvis and Pinocchio, he has proven himself to be the worst best actor of all time. Hanks’ inability to play a character, or speak with an accent, were on full display this year, as was his hackneyed, hokey, shticky acting approach, and we’re all worse off for it. Please go away forever Tom Hanks.

Harry Styles – Harry Styles was poised to have a break out year and become a big movie star…and then we saw him in My Policeman and Don’t Worry Darling and his rocket ship to superstardom exploded on the launching pad. Holy shit this kid can’t act…not even a little. As uncomfortable and unnatural a screen presence as we’ve seen since Cindy Crawford in Fair Game.

Seth Rogan – Seth Rogan is an unwiped anus. His work in The Fablemans was a healthy reminder that he is an odious screen presence. I, for one, yearn for his vanishing from the public eye and/or the planet.

AND THE LOSER IS…TOM HANKS! Hanks should be embarrassed and humiliated by his work over the last twenty years, but he’s incapable of feeling anything but smug and superior. This hack should fuck off forever.

WORST SCENE OF THE YEAR

She Said – Bar Scene – An astonishing piece of cinema that is so atrocious as to be amazing. This scene has everything! From the poor dialogue (“these are the menus”), to the egregious virtue signaling, to the one-dimensional strawman, to the heinous acting. Just an all-around miraculous piece of cinematic shit that would be laughed out of a freshman year student film festival.

MOST OVERRATED FILM OF THE YEAR

The Fabelmans – The Fabelmans isn’t just a bad movie, it’s an embarrassing movie. That it was Oscar nominated for Best Picture and Best Director, as well as Best Actress, is a testament to how corrupt Hollywood truly is. If this film were made by anyone other than Steven Spielberg, it would’ve been vociferously labeled cringey, amateurish horseshit…but since St. Steven made it we are supposed to fawn over how “personal” it is. Get the fuck outta here with this garbage. This movie is shitty to the extreme and absolutely sucks donkey balls. If you liked it you’re an incorrigible idiot and an unrepentant asshole.

SPECIAL ACHIEVEMENT IN CINEMATIC MALPRACTICE

David O. Russell – Russell has never been a good director, but for some reason he has been considered among the elite moviemakers in Hollywood for the past twenty years or so. I think with the trainwreck that is Amsterdam, Russell has convincingly disabused Hollywood of the notion that he is even remotely able to make movies. To see even the most-simple of things, like setting actor’s eye lines, be fucked up in this deplorable shitshow, was jaw-dropping to witness. Russell put all of his copious amounts of shittyness into the Amsterdam stew and a few of us poor souls had to take a stinky bite. Yikes. Hopefully this asshat never gets another shot to make a movie.

P.O.S. HALL OF FAME

Meghan and Harry – Only these two self-absorbed, narcissistic pieces of shit could make a pervy prodigious pedophile like pecker-face Prince Andrew seem like a half normal person.

These two half-wit shitbags hate publicity and the public eye so much they moved to Hollywood and got into the entertainment business. And now you can’t avoid them because they won’t shut the fuck up and stay off camera for a single, solitary moment.

Prince Harry is a sad-sack eunuch and a ball-less buffoon and Meghan is a diabolical and devious shrew who has successfully neutered her needle-dicked husband and isolated him from his in-bred family.

My wish is that the new King Charles invites these two insufferable cunts to his coronation, they show up and then right after the ceremony King Charles has them beheaded, old school style, on live television. This would please Harry and Meghan because they’d get a lot of attention and get to be victims, and it would also ensure that Charles would be the most popular King in the history of England.

P.O.S ALL-STARS

Sean Penn – I’ve always liked Sean Penn as both an actor and a guy. He and I have very similar personalities…which isn’t exactly a brag on my part.

This year Penn has brought some of his famous screen characters to life in the real world, as he’s publicly morphed into the mentally challenged young man from I Am Sam combined with the gay activist politician Harvey Milk from Milk. Penn has made this transformation in order to bang the drums of war in Ukraine as loudly as possible.

Yes, Sean Penn who was so vociferous in his righteous anti-war sentiments regarding Iraq in 2003, is now out there demanding the U.S. and the military industrial complex get further involved in the war in Ukraine, including direct combat.

What a fucking genius.

Maybe someone should remind Sean that he has a son who’s the perfect age to go fight in Ukraine…and if that country’s “freedom” is so fucking important to him maybe he and his son can gear up and move out and go kick some Russian ass halfway across the world.

If that isn’t something he’s interested in, then maybe I Am Sam should shut the fuck up and stop talking and acting like a fucking useless retard. Maybe Mayor Man Milk should stop shouting that “I’m here to recruit you…to die in the war in Ukraine for the U.S. elites who absolutely hate you and only want to use you for cannon fodder!” Penn’s I am Sam/Harvey Milk character sounds like another famous gay buffoon, George W. Bush, as he marched us into war in Iraq…and as we all remember that went spectacularly well. Mission accomplished motherfucker!

So, Sean Penn, do us all a favor and SHUT THE FUCK UP. If you want to fight, I’d be happy to meet you and your movie star biceps anywhere, anytime, and slap the stupid out of your thick fucking skull. And by the way maybe try and do another exercise bedsides curls when you’re at the gym, you might find your bulging biceps to be less than useful in combat, be it in Ukraine or in a scrap with me. You’re welcome you fucking empty-headed shit heel.

And thus ends the Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® Awards and the cinema calendar for 2022…thank God!!

Hopefully the losers this year will be the winners next year…you never know. One thing I can guarantee though is that there will be movies and performances worthy of the Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® Award next year…and I’ll be ready!!

Thanks for reading!

 FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER: @MPMActingCo

©2023

95th Academy Awards: 2023 Oscar Predictions Post

It’s that time of year again!! The Oscars are here and I think I speak for everyone on the planet when I say…nobody gives a fuck!

It is a testament to how far the film industry and art of cinema has fallen in recent years that I find myself neither excited nor angered over this year’s Oscar nominations. No, my overwhelming sentiment regarding movies in general and the Oscars in particular is numbing indifference. I just don’t care anymore.

You see, my cinephile spirit has simply been broken under the weight of our cultures repeated cinematic failures. I’m one of those foolish people who demands excellence from cinema and refuses to soften my standards in order to indulge a commitment to mediocrity. This has resulted in my being a rather brutal cinematic curmudgeon for the past three years, which have been the worst three years of my movie-watching lifetime.  

Other critics have been all too eager to conform to the current times and adjust (lower) their standards. This is how we get fawning reviews of inconceivably atrocious shit like The Fabelmans and Top Gun: Maverick. Those movies are true embarrassments and it speaks to our decadent age – which is indicative of an empire in steep decay and decline, that they are held up as wondrous cinematic achievements.

To be clear, this past year was better than the previous year, but that’s sort of like being proud that you’re the tallest midget in the freak show.

What is so unnerving about the recent decline in cinema is that it was just four short years ago, in 2019, when cinema seemed to be in tremendous shape. That year we had a truly phenomenal film, Parasite, win Best Picture, beating out an array of interesting and well-made movies for the honor. Among them The Irishman, Joker, Ford v Ferrari, 1917 and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Any one of those film would be the run-away Best Picture winner this year.

But since the heights of 2019 we’ve been inundated with garbage. The low point being when Coda, an absolutely ridiculous, Hall Mark Channel level movie, won Best Picture last year.

The problem is not that bad movies win Oscars, that’s been going on time immemorial. No, the problem is that there’s no movies to get angry over for not having been recognized or honored. When Coda won last year, I just shrugged because I had no dog in the fight.

P.T. Anderson had a film, Licorice Pizza, competing against Coda, and he is one of my all-time favorite filmmakers so it would’ve been nice if he won but truthfully, Licorice Pizza wasn’t any good and I wasn’t going to pretend it was…so I didn’t care.

The same is true this year. There’s no movie that I think stands out that it would be a crime if it was overlooked.

Yes, I liked All Quiet on the Western Front and The Banshees of Inisherin, but I just liked them, not loved them. They are flawed but “enjoyable” movies, so I’m not going into Oscar night yearning for their recognition.

The ugly truth is that I am so indifferent to the Oscars this year, and have become so disenchanted with cinema, that I’m not even going to watch the ceremony, which will be a first for me in my adulthood. The reality is that I have much better things to do, sleep definitely among them, than watch a delusional industry give shitty movies awards for excellence.

That said, I will still fill out my Oscar picks and compete in my Oscar pool, which I have won for a record 34 years in a row. Will I continue my astonishing streak? Probably, but not because I have any clue who will win the awards but more because my competitors care even less than me so they have no clue.

Ok…so there’s my sad tale of disillusionment and disenchantment. Now let’s get on to my Oscar picks and put this terrible year in movies behind once and for all.

BEST PICTURE

Tar – A very flawed but fascinating character study that features the best scene of the year but also the worst third act.

The Fabelmans – An utter embarrassment of a movie. Is the cinematic equivalent of Spielberg soiling himself in public.

Everything Everywhere All at Once – A mildly interesting, pretty trite popcorn movie that has no business being nominated, nevermind the odds-on favorite.

All Quiet on the Western Front – A visually stirring anti-war epic when we need an anti-war epic most. Is the best made movie of the bunch.

Women Talking – This is a bad movie.

Triangle of Sadness – An ambitious and audacious social satire that is actually smarter than it appears at first glance.

Avatar the Way of Water – a big, blue billion-dollar behemoth that is almost instantly forgettable.

Top Gun Maverick – People’s love for this pile of poop astonishes me. It’s like people know it’s awful yet love it for its awfulness.

Elvis – An absurd piece of junk.

Banshees of Inisherin – A flawed but fascinating study of Irish masculinity.

This seems pretty set in stone…but I guess there’s a miniscule chance of an upset, which if it occurs would be All Quiet winning or maybe, maybe Tar.

Should Win: All Quiet on the Western Front/Banshees of Inisherin

Will Win: Everything Everywhere All At Once

BEST ACTOR

Austin Butler – Elvis – The kid is good as Elvis, really good. But it feels more like a lived-in imitation than a piece of acting.

Brendan Fraser – The Whale – The dirty little secret is that Fraser isn’t acting particularly well under that fat suit.

Colin Farrell – Banshees of Inisherin – Farrell has matured into a terrific actor and his work here is intricate and detailed.

Paul Mescal – Aftersun – I don’t get the hype over this kid.

Bill Nighy – Living – Nighy is great in general but I’ve not seen this movie.

This is one of the more up in the air awards of the night. A lot of people have Fraser winning but I just think there’s a ground swell for Austin Butler.

Should Win: Colin Farrell

Will Win: Austin Butler

BEST ACTRESS

Cate Blanchett – Tar – Blanchett is the best actress of her generation and absolutely crushes it in this movie.

Michelle Yeoh – EEAAO – She’s…fine.

Ana de Armas – Blonde – Starring in torture porn is tough work, but the reality is that Ana de Armas shouldn’t have been playing Marylin.

Andrea Riseborough – To Leslie – I like Andrea Riseborough but like the rest of the human race I’ve not seen this movie.

Michelle Williams – The Fabelmans – Williams is an at times pleasant actress but she is truly atrocious in The Fabelmans. This is bad. Really bad.

It seems the tide has turned against Blanchett and in favor of Yeoh. What can you do?

Should Win: Cate Blanchett

Will Win: Michelle Yeoh

SUPPORTING ACTOR

Brendan Gleeson – Banshees of Inisherin – Gleeson is an outstanding actor and he is terrific in this.

Barry Keoghan – Banshees – Keoghan is a little uneven in this role but he does bring it all together in the second best scene in the year in cinema.

Brian Tyree Henry – Causeway – This is a joke. This movie stunk and Henry wasn’t very good in it.

Judd Hirsch – The Fabelmans – A bloated cameo of dubious quality.

Ke Huy Quan – EEAAO – I never thought Quan could be as good as he is in this movie. A really remarkable performance.

Should Win: Gleeson, Keoghan, Quan

Will Win: Quan

SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Angela Bassett – Wakanda Forever – I don’t get it. This movie stinks and she is not good in it.

Hong Chau – The Whale – Another head-shaker…Chau was much better in The Menu than in this.

Kerry Condon – Banshees of Inisherin – A terrific and layered performance that perfectly captures the hell of Irish womanhood.

Jamie Lee Curtis – EEAAO – I actually really liked Curtis in this role.

Stephanie Hsu – EEAAO – I thought Hsu was ok.

It seemed like Angela Bassett was going to run away with it but the tide has turned in Jamie Lee’s favor.

Should Win: Kerry Condon

Will Win: Jamie Lee Curtis

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Banshees of Insherin – Terrific screenplay.

EEAAO – The film’s underlying philosophy is trite but it’s a sprawling story that eventually works.

The Fabelmans – This is junk. A dreadful script makes a dreadful movie.

Tar – A great forst two acts are scuttled by a rushed and unearned third act.

Triangle of Sadness – This script is fantastic.

This is sort of interesting as The Fabelmans may win because the Academy wants to reward Spielberg for his truly shitty autobiography. That said, I still think that EEAAO wins.

Should Win: Banshees of Inisherin

Will Win: Everything Everywhere All At Once

 ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

All Quiet on the Western Front – Not perfect but overall well executed.

Glass Onion – identical twins? Oh please. This script is dogshit.

Living – Haven’t seen it.

Top Gun Maverick – This is a joke.

Women Talking – Brutal.

The academy want to reward a woman and Sarah Polley fits the bill with her egregiously awful Woman Talking script.

Should Win: All Quiet on the Western Front

Will Win: Women Talking

BEST DIRECTOR

Martin McDonagh – Banshees of Inisherin – Nice to see McDonagh bounce back from the shit that was Three Billboards.

The Daniels – EEAAO – Not great but they somewhat pulled off an ambitious idea.

Steven Spielberg – The Fabelmans – This movie stinks so bad it shocked me that Spielberg released it.

Todd Field – Tar – Well directed but loses its grip in the third act.

Ruben Ostland – Triangle of Sadness – Shockingly well directed movie that in lesser hands would’ve been an absolute mess.

Should Win: Martin McDonagh

Will Win: The Daniels

BEST INTERNATIONAL FILM

All Quiet on the Western Front

Argentina, 1985

Close

EO

The Quiet Girl

Should Win: All Quiet on the Western Front

Will Win: All Quiet on the Western Front

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE FILM

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On

Puss in Boots

The Sea Beast

Seeing Red

Should Win: Pinocchio

Will Win: Pinocchio – This is a terrific movie, one of the best of the year.

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

All That Breathes

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed

Fire of Love

A House Made of Splinters

Navalny

Will Win: Navalny – Just feels like the academy will want to signal its virtue by thumbing their nose at the supposed Hitler du jour Vladimir Putin. How brave.

DOCUMENTARY SHORT

The Elephant Whisperers

Haulout

How Do You Measure a Year

The Martha Mitchell Effect

Stranger at the Gate

Will Win: Elephant Whisperers

LIVE ACTION SHORT

An irish Goodbye

Ivalu

Le pupille

Night Ride

The Red Suitcase

WILL WIN: Le pupille

ANIMATED SHORT

The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse

The Flying Sailor

Ice Merchants

My Year of Dicks

An Ostrich Told Me the World is Fake and I Think I Believe It

Will Win: The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse

ORIGINAL SCORE

All Quiet on the Western Front

Babylon

The Banshees of Inisherin

EEAAO

The Fabelmans

Will Win: All Quiet on the Western Front – The score of this film is crucial in setting the ominous and unsettling mood.

ORIGINAL SONG

Applause – Tell it Like a Woman

Hold My Hand - Top Gun Maverick

Lift Me Up - Wakanda Forever

Naatu Naatu - RRR

This is Life - EEAAO

Will Win: Naatu Naatu

PRODUCTION DESIGN

All Quiet on the Western Front

Avatar The Way of Water

Babylon

Elvis

The Fabelmans

Should Win: All Quiet on the Western Front

Will Win: Elvis – This is the type of movie that the Oscars reward.

BEST SOUND

All Quiet on the Western Front

Avatar the Way of Water

The Batman

Elvis

Top Gun Maverick

Will Win: Top Gun Maverick – This feels like the Academy throwing this fan favorite a bone.

 CINEMATOGRAPHY

All Quiet on the Western Front

Bardo

Elvis

Empire of Light

Tar

Will Win: All Quiet on the Western Front – Easily the best cinematography of the year.

COSTUME DESIGN

Babylon

Wakanda Forever

Elvis

EEAAO

Mrs Harris Goes to Paris

Will Win: Elvis – There’s a chance that Wakanda Forever or Babylon win, but it seems like Elvis will do well in these types of categories.

MAKEUP & HAIRSTYLE

All Quiet on the Western Front

The Batman

Wakanda Forever

Elvis

The Whale

Will Win: Elvis – Wakanda Forever is a real possibility but again, Elvis is adored for stuff like this.

FILM EDITING

Banshees of Inisherin

Elvis

EEAAO

Tar

Top Gun Maverick

Will Win: EEAAO – I actually thought the editing (or lack thereof) was one of the worst parts of EEAAO, but what the hell do I know?

VISUAL EFFECTS

All Quiet on the Western Front

Avatar The Way of Water

The Batman

Wakanda Forever

Top Gun Maverick

Will Win: Avatar the Way of Water – This is a bone thrown to big Jim Cameron for his money printing machine.

And thus concludes my Oscar picks. God willing every Oscar winner gets slapped on stage this year. If that happens then I promise I’ll actually watch the show next year. A man can dream.

©2023

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota - Episode 93: The Fabelmans

On this episode, Barry and I put on see-through nightgowns and dance poorly in the glow of a campfire and car headlights as we break down Steven Spielberg's Oscar nominated, autobiographical movie The Fabelmans. Topics discussed include the perils of autobiography, the Oscars and the abysmal year in movies, and Spielberg's shocking cinematic decline.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota - Episode 93: The Fabelmans

Thanks for listening!

©2023

The Fabelmans: A Review - The Naked Truth Is That Emperor Spielberg Has No Clothes

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

My Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. A terrible, self-indulgent, truly awful film that features poor performances, an abysmal script, and dreadful direction.

This past year has been a boon for self-indulgent film directors and a bane for movie audiences, as auteurs have shat out a bevy of sub-par autobiographical movies about their childhoods and the magic of cinema.

First there was Alejandro G. Inarritu’s atrocious Bardo, followed quickly by James Gray’s artistically anemic Armageddon Time, and then there was Sam Mendes’ universally panned Empire of Light (which, to be fair, is less blatantly autobiographical), and finally there is Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans.

I’ve seen all of the above except for Empire of Light. What has been alarming is that each of these films I have seen has gotten progressively worse than the one I saw before it. Armageddon Time is shlocky, politically correct garbage, but Bardo is simply an astonishing cinematic atrocity. Bardo is supremely awful, but it’s at least visually and narratively ambitious if not audacious, which is in stark contrast to Spielberg’s newest flatulent film The Fabelmans.

The Fabelmans describes itself as a coming-of-age drama, co-written by Spielberg and Tony Kushner, that chronicles aspiring filmmaker Sam Fabelman (a stand in for Spielberg), a precocious young man in love with moviemaking, as he navigates his childhood and teen years growing up with a scientific father, Burt, and an artistic mother, Mitzi.

The Fabelmans is easily the worst of the Spielberg’s late-stage movies, which is quite an accomplishment considering the garbage he’s churned out over the last twenty years or so. This film is, quite frankly, so bad as to be an utter embarrassment. I watched a screener of the movie with my wife and we laughed out loud numerous times AT the movie, but never with it. The movie is such an amateurish, after-school special level production that we literally stopped it on multiple occasions and turned to each other and asked “what the fuck?”

At one point in the film, aspiring director Sam Fabelman is watching the footage of a movie he’s shot with his Boy Scout troop, and he shakes his head and mutters to himself in disappointment, “Fake. Totally fake.” Too bad Spielberg didn’t have the same discerning eye at 76 that he did when he was 14 as The Fabelmans rings so egregiously phony that I actually pondered “how could Spielberg watch this and agree to release it?”

There are so many scenes and sequences in this movie that are simply mindboggling for how appallingly awful they are. Just when you think the worst scene is behind you a new cinematic and dramatic atrocity steps in to take its place.

There’s the dinner scene which is staged and acted like the worst high school play you’ve ever had the displeasure to endure. Then there’s the masturbatorial scenes where audiences of Boy Scouts and family are overly amazed to the point of ecstasy at Sam Fabelman’s “brilliant” movies that aren’t brilliant. And then there’s the ultimate cringe worthy scene where Mitzi Fabelman does her best Corky St. Clair “Penny for your Thoughts” from Waiting for Guffman imitation as she “dances” in a see-through nightgown in front of a campfire and car headlights while on a camping trip.

Then there’s the scene where Sam edits the footage of this camping trip and discovers a family “secret”, which is shot like it’s from a bad pre-teen show on Disney Channel. Then there’s the scene where family friend Benny gives a camera to Sam as a going away present, which is staged with all the grace of monkeys having a shit fight at the zoo. Then there’s the scenes of gay, neo-Nazi, Schindler’s List wannabe, anti-Semites who bully Sam in high school which all feel like they’re from the worst episode of Happy Days you’ve ever seen. And on and on and on.

There is literally only one scene in the entire film which crackles with any life or dynamism, and that’s the last scene of the movie. This exuberant scene only goes to remind how badly mismanaged the dismal and dull preceding two-hours and thirty-minutes truly were.

Spielberg has always been addled by his addiction to a saccharine sentimentality, and The Fabelmans is no exception, except here the sentimentality is, to reference another Christopher Guest movie, turned all the way up to 11. Unfortunately, this sentimentality has blinded Spielberg to the stark lack of craftsmanship across the board in this movie.

John Williams score and Janusz Kaminski’s cinematography are banal, underwhelming and shockingly second-rate. Tony Kushner’s (and Spielberg’s) script is so inelegant and so lacking in cohesiveness and humanity, as to be cinematic malpractice.

Speaking of cinematic malpractice, there’s a scene in the film where Judd Hirsch, who compellingly plays a sort of crazy-genius grand-uncle, is spewing contrived pieces of wisdom to young Sammy Fabelman, and yet throughout the scene you can see his mic pack bulging through his wife beater t-shirt. This is a $40 million movie, not some $1,200 student film…how the hell does that level of shoddiness make it to the screen?

The performances are just as abominable as the rest of the work on the film.

Michelle Williams is an actress I like, but her Mitzi, featuring a haircut from hell, is one of the most hollow, disingenuous and grating pieces of acting I’ve witnessed in recent years. Everything is so mannered and so contrived that it feels like watching a toddler ham it up in grandma’s clothes to entertain the family after rowdy Thanksgiving dinner.

Paul Dano is an actor I greatly admire, but his performance in The Fabelmans is so vacuous and devoid of any inner life or intention as to be remarkable. Dano is dead-eyed as he mechanically utters his lines like he’s auditioning for a job at either a wax museum or a mausoleum.

And just when you thought the acting couldn’t get any worse…Seth Rogan shows up. Good lord. Seth Rogan is to acting what a dirty diaper is to ambience.

On top of all the bad acting, every character is extremely unlikable (the same is true in Armageddon Time and Bardo…why are director’s families so repulsive?). Early in the film, Mitzi, for some incoherent reason, drives the family towards a tornado and all I could do was hope that they would all be thrown miles away and end up a red stain on the dashboard. Once that didn’t happen, I was left praying for a pack of coyotes to come along and maul them all in their sleep, or a gas leak or a septic tank explosion, to take them out and put me out of my misery.

There’s also a very strange and frankly very ugly strain of anti-Christian sentiment that rears its head about two thirds of the way through the film. I’m not someone who ever cares about this sort of thing but Spielberg goes out of his way to demean and belittle a Christian character in the movie, and explicitly mock her religion. The treatment of this girl and her Christianity is nasty and mean-spirited and totally out of place with the tone of the rest of the film. It’s the equivalent of what the gay Neo-Nazi anti-Semites do to the Sam Fabelman character when they call him ‘Bagelman’ and demand he apologize for killing Christ. In other words, it isn’t clever or insightful or amusing, it’s just vicious and small-minded. That Spielberg, who is allegedly a man of faith (he’s made quite a show of his connection to Judaism over the years), would demean, disparage and denigrate the lone character of a differing faith in his film and gleefully embrace this repellent but culturally acceptable prejudice, speaks volumes about his lack of character.

The Fabelmans has been a major box office flop, as it has only made $25 million against a $40 million budget. But Spielberg didn’t make this movie to make money, he made it to win an Oscar….and he might just succeed.

It's a testament to Spielberg’s iron grip on Hollywood that this movie, this dreadful, no-good, really bad movie, is nominated for Best Picture and Best Director, as well as Best Actress (Michelle Williams) and Best Supporting Actor (Judd Hirsch).

Spielberg’s power over Hollywood and the lack of intellectual integrity among critics, also accounts for why the movie is adored by most critics (92% critical score Rotten Tomatoes). But don’t be fooled by the vacuous opinions of these sycophants and philistines.

The reality is that the once great Emperor Spielberg, who gave us cinematic marvels like Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T., Jurassic Park, Schindler’s List and Catch Me If You Can, has no clothes.

The naked truth for all to see but few will admit, is that The Fabelmans is an embarrassing and humiliating failure of a film. To claim otherwise is either dishonest, delusional, or both.

©2023

Bardo, False Chroncile of a Handful of Truths: A Review - Inarritu's Head Up Inarritu's Ass

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

My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. A self-aggrandizing, self-pitying, self-righteous, and self-indulgent…not to mention pretentious, piece of crap.

In case you’d forgotten, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu has won two Best Director Academy Awards – for Birdman and The Revenant, which puts him in some very rarified air. To put into context, Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola have one Best Directing Oscar each, and Stanley Kubrick and Robert Altman have none.

I readily admit that I enjoyed Birdman (2014) and thought it was clever, and in hindsight its critique of superhero culture was spot-on and before its time, but I also thought the film badly bungled its ending.

I thought The Revenant (2015) was a flawed film but was deeper than it appeared on the surface and became much more interesting when seen through Jungian dream analysis rather than through the pop culture lens.

Except for those two films, Inarritu’s filmography is littered with some truly abysmal and pretentious pieces of work. For example, Inarritu’s 2006 shlockfest Babel may be the worst ‘taken seriously’ movie of the 21st Century…and its main competition is another Inarritu movie, 2003’s 21 Grams.

Which brings us to Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths, Inarritu’s newest cinematic venture, which is currently streaming on Netflix.

Bardo, which was a Netflix production and hit the streaming service October 27th, was written and directed by Inarritu and stars Daniel Giminez Cacho and Griselda Siciliani.

The movie, which describes itself as an epic black comedy-drama, is a fictional, pseudo-autobiographical story that chronicles Silverio Gama – a sort of stand in for Inarritu himself, as he navigates his life as a big-time journalist and documentarian who immigrated from Mexico to the U.S.

Gama wrestles with his career success, his critics, his artistry, his family, his grief, and his past, as well as the past of Mexico and his guilt over having left the country of his birth. Of course, these are all the same things with which Inarritu grapples.

Bardo, which runs two hours and forty minutes, is another in a bevy of films this year made by auteurs examining their own lives in feature films. For example, I recently reviewed Armageddon Time, James Gray’s dismal autobiographical effort, and I’ve yet to see Spielberg’s The Fabelmans or Sam Mendes’ Empire of Light.

I will say this about The Fabelmans and Empire of Light…it is absolutely impossible for them to be worse than Bardo. Bardo is bad-o. Really bad-o. Like excruciatingly bad-o. Like so bad it makes the awful Armageddon Time feel like Citizen Kane.

Bardo, which has a grueling two-hour and forty-minute run time, is somewhat remarkable as it’s simultaneously self-aggrandizing, self-pitying, self-righteous, and self-indulgent.

The problem with Bardo is not cinematic incompetence on the part of Inarritu. If Inarritu is anything it’s competent. He knows how to shoot a film and make beautiful images – and he’s aided in this effort by cinematographer Darius Khondji (who…curiously, also shot Armageddon Time – poor bastard). What Inarritu doesn’t know how to do is turn off his ego and turn down his adolescent maudlin impulses in order to tell a coherent and compelling story.

Bardo is supposed to be infused with magical realism but is devoid of magic and allergic to realism. In their stead Inarritu injects an extraordinary lack of subtlety and pronounced heavy-handedness as well as a steaming hot serving of middlebrow bourgeois bullshit philosophy.

This movie is, without exaggeration, literally a director bitching about how persecuted he is by critics, how envied he is by jealous less successful people, and imagining how devastated everyone will be when he dies. This is more akin to something a petulant teenager would dream up as they cry in their bedroom after their parents refused to buy them a sports car for their sixteenth birthday than something an adult filmmaker should put in a feature.

To give you an indication of what an absolute shitshow Bardo is, consider this…the film features a graphic scene where a baby is literally pushed back into a vagina, and another scene where Gama’s adult face is CGI’d onto a little kid as he has a discussion with his father in a sort of dream like sequence. Did I mention it was heavy-handed? Yikes!

In addition to all of that self-serving navel gazing, Inarritu also throws colonialism and anti-Mexican racism shit against the wall to see if any of it sticks…and none of it does.

Then there’s the virtuoso filmmaking stuff, like the extended, one-shot dance scene, which I was supposed to be impressed by but which I wasn’t impressed by.

What’s astonishing about Bardo is that Inarritu has made himself the hero of the story but only succeeds in exposing himself as being relentlessly unlikable. The Inarritu character Gama is one of the most punchable people to have graced the silver screen this year, and maybe this decade.

Even the film’s more interesting visual sequences, like when people start dropping dead in Mexico City, is derivative. I saw the same sequence done better in a Radiohead music video nearly thirty years ago.

Speaking of derivative, it seems to me that with Bardo Inarritu was trying to copy/emulate his fellow Mexican director Alfonso Cuaron’s film Roma (2018), and maybe even Terrence Malick’s Knight of Cups (2015). Roma is a brilliant, magical realist, autobiographical story about growing up in Mexico, and Knight of Cups is, in my opinion, a dreamlike masterpiece about navigating the hell of Hollywood and moviemaking.

The problem though is that Inarritu is no Cuaron and no Malick. He lacks their deftness, their depth and their profundity. Inarritu is an artistic poseur. A pretentious pretender who thinks cinematically pouting and preening is equivalent to being profound.

What is bothersome about Inarritu’s failure on Bardo is that we are witnessing the end of the auteur era at Netflix. The streaming giant in recent years made the decision to throw money at auteurs and let them do what they want. In the case of Cuaron, David Fincher and Martin Scorsese, that decision was cinematically fruitful as it gave us Roma, Mank and The Irishman. This year the two auteurs blessed by Netflix’s desire for prestige were Noah Baumbach and Inarritu, and they delivered the excrement filled dump-trucks that were White Noise and Bardo. It should not be a shock that Netflix announced this year that they will no longer throw money at auteurs…thanks Baumbach and Inarritu.

The bottom line is that Bardo may finally expose Inarritu for the philosophically trite filmmaking fraud that he is. His elevation to the heights of Hollywood success is more a testament to the buffoonery of the movie business than to the artistic genius of Inarritu.

Whatever one may think of Inarritu as a filmmaker, there is simply no denying that Bardo is an artistic catastrophe of epic proportions. This movie is nothing but a vacuous, vapid and vain exercise in cinematic masturbation. Avoid it at all costs.

©2023