A House of Dynamite: A Review - A Nuclear Dud

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

My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. An instantaneously forgettable cinematic exercise that is so lifeless and inert as to be frustrating.

A House of Dynamite, directed by Academy-Award winner Kathryn Bigelow, examines the reaction from the U.S. government and military to the launch of a nuclear missile aimed at the United States.

The film, which is streaming on Netflix, features a cast that includes Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson, Tracy Letts, Jared Harris and Anthony Ramos among many others.

There have been many notable films made throughout the years about the dire threat and fear of nuclear annihilation, Fail Safe and Dr. Strangelove immediately come to mind. Rest assured A House of Dynamite is not even remotely in the same class as either of those two classics.

In fact, A House of Dynamite is such a tepid, thin gruel, it barely even feels like a movie, never mind a good one. It looks, sounds and feels like a post-9/11, self-serious ABC Wednesday night drama series or something as equally superficial and vapid.

The movie is structured in three acts that are less acts as they are episodes…thus making the entire enterprise seem like one big “very special episode” of 24, Designated Survivor and The West Wing combined.

Unfortunately, it is also shot like a tv show, with very flat visuals, orthodox and rudimentary framing and camera work, obvious sets and forced melo-drama.  

The opening act of the movie holds a modicum of promise as it follows the people working the Situation Room at the White House when the alert comes that a missile launch has occurred. It isn’t great by any means, but compared to what comes in acts two and three, act one seems downright riveting.

In acts two and three, despite the countdown clock to the missile hitting the U.S., the film becomes remarkably inert dramatically. Act two and three are so poorly written, poorly directed and poorly acted that it is embarrassing to behold.

The film thinks it has something profound to say but its politics are as trite and vacuous as its drama. The whole venture is so devoid of gravitas it ultimately feels like a blackhole of self-seriousness that eliminates all responses to it except for derisive laughter – the most notable example of this is the film’s ignominious ending (which I won’t spoil).

Speaking of derisive laughter, there are a bevy of really bad performances in this movie, and some of them come from very good actors, which is baffling.

For example, Idris Elba is a terrific actor, but he is so afwul as the president in this movie it is jarring, and painful, to watch. He is so disconnected from the role, and to be fair it is horribly written, but he is also devoid of any charisma – which is shocking.

Jared Harris is another actor I really like but he is extraordinarily bad as the Secretary of Defense. Harris, like Elba, is British, and like Elba his American accent is sort of all over the place and entirely distracting. It also doesn’t help that his character is egregiously written as well.

Thankfully Anthony Ramos, of Hamilton fame, is American…but unfortunately, he is also an absolutely atrocious actor. I am sorry to say but it isn’t just Ramos’ work on A House of Dynamite…it is every film he does. Guy is a terrible actor. Please Hollywood…please just make Anthony Ramos go away.

To be fair to the cast, who are all not great in the movie (with the exception of the ultra-luminous Rebecca Ferguson who has one moment in the movie that is the only moment that feels real), the script is utterly appalling….and the direction is amateurish as well.

Which brings us to Kathryn Bigelow.

Bigelow is absolutely adored by some in the movie industry. I am not one of those people. I don’t have any inherent dislike of Bigelow’s work, in fact I have admired some of it, but I also have no time for false filmmaking idols.

Bigelow has made some popular movies, like Point Break, that I find to be forgettable popcorn nonsense. She has also made some serious pieces of cinema…like The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty. You can quibble with the politics of Zero Dark Thirty, but there is no quibbling over the quality of the deft and skillful filmmaking on display. The same is true, at least regarding the filmmaking, of Bigelow’s Academy Award winning film The Hurt Locker.

But unfortunately, those films were the undeniable apex of Bigelow’s career. Her follow up to Zero Dark Thirty, and her film previous to A House of Dynamite, was 2017’s Detroit…which was an absolute shitshow of a movie. It is one of the very worst films of this century…and maybe the last one too.

A funny anecdote, but after writing a much-deserved scathing review of Detroit, I had a dear friend cut me out of her life entirely in a rage. This was the height of the first Trump hysteria (God helps us that I had to say “first”) and the #MeToo and #OscarsSoWhite nonsense that gripped Hollywood (and much of the country) at the time. My former friend was suffering with Stage Four of Trump/MeToo/OscarsSoWhite/BlackLivesMatter hysteria – and I was immune to it. Due to her ailment, she apparently got so furiously enraged that I had the temerity to not adore Detroit – a movie about a racist police incident from the 60’s, that she could no longer bear to know me or read anything I wrote because apparently, I was a racist or sexist…or both…or something like that. At the time I thought that was bizarre to the point of being literally insane…in hindsight I still think I am 100% accurate in my diagnosis.

To be clear, not wanting to be my friend is not insane, actually it’s a very rational notion and a sign of good taste, but what is insane (and also a sign of the very worst of taste) is not thinking that the movie Detroit is nothing but an odious pile of elephant excrement. (I wholly encourage you to read my review of Detroit)

Regardless…or as some like to say…”irregardless”…Detroit was a mess of a movie, and while A House of Dynamite isn’t quite as insufferable as that, it is still close enough to be quite an uncinematic embarrassment.

The bottom line is that A House of Dynamite yearns to be a taut thriller chock full of profundities about the dangerous nature of our world and the current moment – a truly noble cause, but it is so dreadfully written, poorly constructed and amateurishly executed that it is rendered a dramatically impotent and cinematically flaccid affair.

The truth is that the vitally important topics addressed in the film deserved considerably better…and so do audiences. Unfortunately, audiences would’ve been better served, and definitely more entertained, if A House of Dynamite was titled A House of Dyn-O-Mite! and was a gritty drama about the golden years of JJ Walker from Good Times (only old people will get this joke).

Jokes aside, A House of Dynamite is streaming on Netflix, but it is so instantaneously forgettable that you shouldn’t waste even a single second of your time watching it.

©2025

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

Lady Bird: A Review

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

My Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT IN THEATRE - SEE IT ON NETFLIX OR CABLE

Lady Bird, written and directed by Greta Gerwig, is the story of Christine "Lady Bird" McPherson, a high school senior living in Sacramento, who struggles through a tumultuous relationship with her mother. Saoirse Ronan stars as "Lady Bird" and Laurie Metcalf plays her mother Marion. 

Lady Bird is a film of many contradictions. The film seems like it wants to be a quirky, independent, art house movie but in execution it ends up being a rather conventional, paint by numbers, pixie-dream girl coming of age story. 

Another contradiction is that the film boasts a truly superb performance from its luminous lead actress Saoirse Ronan, but because of a tepid script and weak direction, the movie never lives up to the great work Ronan does in it.

Lady Bird is actress Greta Gerwig's first feature film as a writer/director and her filmmaking inexperience definitely shows in her attempt to make a sort of backhanded homage to her hometown and her mother. The film suffers from a lack of cinematic and dramatic focus and very poor pacing, which made what should have been a very agreeable hour and a half running time seem considerably longer and much less agreeable. 

The movie is also riddled with too many cheap, easy and predictable laughs, so much so that at times it felt more like a network sitcom and less like a character study driven feature film. 

The heart and soul of Lady Bird is Saoirse Ronan, whose acting is flawless as she is totally absorbed into her role. Ronan perfectly embodies the frustration, isolation, and desperation of being a free spirit trapped in a city, Sacramento, and a family, that are suffocating her. Ronan effortlessly dances from one of her character's multiple incarnations to the next and never stops being completely comfortable with her adolescent discomfort. 

Saoirse Ronan is simply one of the best actresses working in film right now. While Lady Bird is not a great film, Ronan's performance in it certainly is, and it is a testament to her talent and skill that she is able to elevate her performance above such middling material and reach such transcendent acting heights. 

As for the rest of the cast, overall I actually found them lacking. Laurie Metcalf has a meaty role as Lady Bird's abrasive mother but I felt she just missed the mark because her performance lacked enough nuance for my liking. I think the major issue with Metcalf's performance was that her role was not very well written and left her in a bit of a box in terms of her acting choices. 

The other supporting actors are a mixed bag. Tracy Letts gives a solid performance as Lady Bird's down on his luck father. Letts brings a genuine humanity to all of his work and it played well in contrast to Lady Bird's chaotic teenage fervor. 

On the down side, Lucas Hedges gives a pretty stale and wooden performance as Lady Bird's boyfriend. Hedges, who was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar last year for his work in Manchester by the Sea, never fully commits to his role in Lady Bird and is overmatched and left in the dust by Ronan's searing performance.

To the film's credit, Lady Bird does a good job of revealing the often overlooked difficulty of middle class poverty on America. It also shows teenagers as being much less depraved and much more complicated, at least in Lady Bird's case, in regards to sex and sexuality, which was refreshing and heartening to see. 

I found Lady Bird to be a rather paper thin character study that gets bogged down by forced quirkiness and derivative and trite humor. With Lady Bird, director Greta Gerwig tried to make a somewhat edgy art house type of movie but instead ended up with a rather predictable and amateur piece of work that is only elevated beyond its banality by the sublime talents of its leading lady, Saoirse Ronan. While Lady Bird is an ultimately unsatisfying cinematic endeavor, Ms. Ronan's masterful work is worth seeing.

In the final analysis, my review of this film is just like the film itself, a glaring and seemingly irreconcilable contradiction. On one hand there is my admiration for Saoirse Ronan's acting work as Lady Bird and on the other is my rather sharp criticism for Ms. Gerwig's writing and directing of the film. In order to resolve this contradiction I will compromise and split the difference by telling you to skip Lady Bird in the theatre because it isn't worth the money or the hassle, but watch it when you can on Netflix or cable, because Saoirse Ronan's performance is something you should see.

©2017