- Benjamin Purcell Morris
© all material on this website is written by Michael McCaffrey, is copyrighted, and may not be republished without consent
Follow me on Twitter: Michael McCaffrey @MPMActingCo
On this episode, Barry and I dive head first into the fountain of youth to discuss the intriguing satirical body horror movie The Substance, starring Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley. Topics discussed include the clever premise of the film and it's quality execution, third act issues, and the stellar work of Moore and Qualley.
Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 126 - The Substance
Thanks for listening!!
©2024
****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****
My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
My Recommendation: SKIP IT. This is a truly, truly awful movie in every single way. Poorly written, directed, acted and shot. It deserves zero stars but I gave it one star out of respect for Francis Ford Coppola and his stellar work in the 70s.
My favorite baseball player when I was a kid was Tom Seaver. Seaver was a pitcher for the New York Mets and for some reason, I just attached myself to his stardom when I was very young. I even had a tiny #41 Mets jersey and uniform that I wore every year for Halloween, even after it stopped fitting.
The Mets traded Tom Terrific in 1977 and I was a heartbroken and homeless baseball fan until I quickly latched onto the irascible Thurman Munson and the Yankees – which only led to its own heartbreak down the road…but that’s a story for another day.
The reason I bring up Seaver is that I always loved the guy, even after his Hall of Fame playing career came to an end. He was a phenomenal pitcher, but he was also a great guy and a class act.
So in my teens, when Seaver was forty-years-old, I made a pilgrimage to see him pitch in Fenway Park for the Chicago White Sox against the Boston Red Sox on July 30th, 1985. I assumed this would be my last chance to see him pitch live, and I was right.
Seaver was well past his prime and couldn’t throw his fastball with the savage velocity he used to, but he was still a master craftsman and could pitch his ass off. On this night he called on all his experience and mastery and pitched an absolute gem, throwing a complete game, 7-5 victory…the 299th win of his career. It was a joy to behold.
I thought of the old war horse Tom Seaver conjuring up some late career magic when I sat down to watch Megalopolis (now available to rent on VOD for $20), the new film from iconic, Academy Award winning auteur Francis Ford Coppola, who is now 85 years-old and well past his prime. But I hoped, like Seaver, Coppola would recapture some of that old magic just one more time.
Megalopolis, which is written and directed by Coppola, is a science fiction fable that chronicles the personal, political and cultural quest for power, purpose and meaning in an alternative, 21st-century, New York City named New Rome.
The film is an epic inspired by Greek and Roman classics, Roman history, and Shakespeare, and it is an outrageously ambitious and audacious cinematic venture.
I desperately wanted to like this movie, and desperately wanted it to work and I desperately wanted it to be good. Unfortunately, Megalopolis is a catastrophically, disastrously bad movie that doesn’t work in any way at all.
The film follows the story of Cesar Catalina, yes – that is his real name, a genius architect blessed with the ability to stop time. What does Mr. Catalina do with that ability? Nothing really.
Catalina is in a power struggle against Mayor Franklyn Cicero, and banking tycoon Hamilton Crassus, as well as both of their extended families.
He’s also in a tenuous and very shallow relationship with tv presenter and social climber Wow Platinum, yes – that is her real name, and also gets into a Romeo and Juliet type situation with the Mayor’s daughter, Julia.
Through all this Cesar Catalina is trying to rebuild New Rome into a utopia that will endure well beyond his and his direct descendant’s lifetimes and be a shining city on a hill through the ages.
If that plot and character description sounds like a lot, that’s because it is…and frankly, that’s not even the half of it.
The problems with Megalopolis are legion – pardon the pun. Coppola famously financed the film himself, all $130 million of it, and it’s easy to see why as no studio executive with half a brain in his head and any semblance of a survival instinct would attach themselves to this convoluted and incoherent mess of a movie.
Let’s start at the beginning. The casting for this movie is so egregiously awful that it beggars belief.
Adam Driver, or as I call him – the modern-day Elliot Gould (in case you’re wondering…that’s not a compliment), is the darling of the auteur sect at the moment, but he is unquestionably an atrocious actor and an even worse movie star, so his being cast as the lead Cesar Catalina is a major error.
Driver is an irredeemably impotent actor devoid of even a minimal amount of power, presence or gravitas, so he is incapable of carrying a gargantuan film of this magnitude.
Catalina is supposed to be this object of desire oozing with sex appeal and magnetism, but Driver is a doughy doofus and is so repellent as to be the walking embodiment of anti-sexual attraction.
Catalina is also supposed to be a genius, but Driver is a dim-witted, dead-eyed dullard who has no light in his eyes and comes across as a dumbass and dope, meathead and mope on-screen, which only makes his performance all the more infuriatingly flaccid.
In addition to the abysmal Driver, is the equally awful Shia LaBeouf, who is consistently terrible at everything he does.
LaBeouf plays Clodio, Cesar’s jealous cousin, and he does all the usual hackneyed, ham-fisted histrionics you’d expect from a minimally talented actor trying too hard to show everyone he’s acting.
The worst performance in the film, and that is saying something, comes from Nathalie Emmanuel, who plays Julia Cicero. Emmanuel is a beautiful woman but she is such a lifeless and wooden actor that you’d be better served casting a cigar store wooden Indian than her. Emmanuel’s dismal line readings are so devoid of life I felt like I was watching her narrate her own autopsy.
The rest of the cast, which include Aubrey Plaza, Laurence Fishburne, Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman, are no walk in the park either. The main problem with the acting is that the performances are all over the place tonally. It’s like watching ten different actors working in ten different films all spliced together randomly. It’s bizarre.
The blame for the epic failure of the epic Megalopolis falls squarely on Francis Ford Coppola as he’s the one who cast these incompetent snores in the first place, and then failed to direct them adequately to present a unified tone.
I also blame Coppola for the film’s uninspired and amateurish cinematography. Scenes are consistently poorly designed, blocked and framed. The visual effects, the sets and the costumes all look unconscionably cheap and tawdry. Which begs the question…where did that $130 million go?
The theatricality of the film, in its writing, staging, acting, set design and costumes, doesn’t seem avant-garde but accidental, like a way to cut corners with unfinished ideas and unpolished set ups.
The script is an unmitigated disaster, like a glimpse into the mind of a narcissistic, drunk, manic depressive mad man having a break down while strapped to a chair in front of Fox News.
There’s a plethora of inane B-story lines about a virginal pop singer named Vesta Sweetwater, and yes that’s her real name, and a dangerously malfunctioning Soviet satellite falling to earth, and a populist politician’s quest for power and on and on and none of them mean much of anything in the big picture or come to any dramatically satisfying conclusion.
The film is just Coppola saying the world is a mess and only he understands it and only he can fix it. The problem with this is that the animating philosophy of the film is so trite as to be ludicrous.
As are the film’s heavy-handed and extraordinarily vacuous politics. For example, there’s actually a sign held up at a populist rally that says “Make New Rome Great Again”. Subtle.
Francis Ford Coppola has given us some of the very greatest films ever made, The Godfather I and II, The Conversation and Apocalypse Now. But he hasn’t made a half way decent film, or been even remotely relevant as a filmmaker or artist, in over thirty years. In other words, he not only can’t throw his fastball anymore, he can barely throw a ball anymore.
It pained me to watch the mega-mess of Megalopolis because Coppola, like Scorsese and Kurosawa and Kubrick, is such a cornerstone to my love of cinema. But the cold and very hard reality is that Megalopolis is a film made by a man who shouldn’t be making films anymore.
Coppola no longer has the effortless talent, craft and skill he displayed during his heyday in the 1970’s. He is a man with lots of ideas but without the ability to convey them cinematically in a coherent and competent way. That is heart breaking for fans of cinema, like myself, and no doubt for Coppola, who still has a lot to say but is unable to adequately say it.
I wish Megalopolis was Coppola as Tom Seaver battling Red Sox batters for nine strong innings to get his 299th win. But it isn’t. It is Coppola as Seaver, a good man and once great pitcher, having to suffer the heartbreak and indignity of quitting his post-playing broadcasting job because he was suffering from dementia.
In this respect Megalopolis isn’t just a bad film, it is a gut-wrenching tragedy. Poorly considered, poorly crafted and poorly executed in every single way, it is better not that you don’t ever watch Megalopolis, but that you entirely forget it ever existed. That’s what I hope to do.
©2024
On this episode, Barry and I head to New Rome to discuss all things Megalopolis, Francis Ford Coppola's newest film. Topics discussed include egregious casting errors, abysmal acting, incoherent script and subpar craftsmanship. But besides that how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?
Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 125 - Megalopolis
Thanks for listening!
©2024
On this episode, Barry and I head out to a Lady Raven concert in Philly only to discover we've unknowingly walked into an M. Night Shyamalan Trap, starring Josh Hartnett. Topics discussed on this pod include M. Night Shyamalan's very odd career arc, and the greatness of his early work contrasted with his disappointing later period films - which most definitely includes Trap.
Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 124 - Trap
Thanks for listening!
©2024
****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****
My Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars
My Recommendation: SKIP IT. A well-crafted and well-acted film that ultimately condemns itself to hell with an inexcusable plot twist that is so inane as to be infuriating.
Conclave, directed by Edward Berger and written by Peter Straughan (adapted from Robert Harris’ book of the same name), tells the story of Cardinal Lawrence, a man struggling with his faith who must navigate palace intrigue in the Vatican as the College of Cardinals assembles to elect a new pope.
On the surface, Conclave has a lot going for it. For example, it stars a cavalcade of top-notch actors, with Ralph Fiennes as Cardinal Lawrence, Stanley Tucci as Cardinal Bellini, John Lithgow as Cardinal Tremblay and Isabella Rossellini as Sister Agnes among the cast.
In addition, it is directed by Edward Berger, whose last film, All Quiet on the Western Front (2022), was a phenomenal, Academy Award nominated piece of work, my favorite of that year because it was so beautifully shot and masterfully executed.
On a personal note, as a Catholic myself (I’m not a good one…but I definitely am one) who has visited the Vatican on numerous occasions, I find the subject matter of a conclave in the wake of a Pope’s death, and the pomp and circumstance and politicization and jockeying for positioning that takes place, to be extraordinarily compelling.
And speaking of politics, in the wake of the US presidential election, Conclave is perfectly positioned to have something interesting to say about elections and liberals versus conservatives and the power of convictions and possibilities of backlash.
This is all to say that Conclave, which was released in the U.S. on October 25th and is still in theatres, had me in the palm of its hand even before I sat down in the theatre to watch it.
And yet…it failed to capitalize on all of its advantages and, in fact, alienated me in such a profound way with an excruciatingly egregious and inane plot twist, which I found to be a mortal moviemaking sin and entirely unforgivable.
In order to avoid spoilers, I will not reveal the specifics of the plot twist but will only say that it occurs in the final ten minutes or so of the film and is so contrived, bizarre, atrocious and appalling, and is such a grievous dramatic error, and so narratively unsound, that it ruined everything good about the film that led up to it and completely scuttled the good ship Conclave.
But besides that…how was the play Mrs. Lincoln? Truthfully, it was pretty good.
The film is well shot by cinematographer Stephane Fontaine, who uses a soft light and wonderful composition to often times create scenes reminiscent of Caravaggio’s great works.
Fontaine is aided by the spectacular work of the set and costume designers who masterfully recreate the distinct look and feel of the Vatican and the Cardinals’ outfits.
In addition, the entire cast all do tremendous work.
Ralph Fiennes in particular is outstanding. His Cardinal Lawrence is the Dean of the College of Cardinals and must wrangle the Cardinals to come together to vote for a pope and make sure everything is on the up and up…and it is never quite clear who the good guys are and who the bad guys are.
Fiennes is a supremely gifted technical actor whose skill is as good as anyone working today, and he brings all of those skills to bear as Cardinal Lawrence, a man who is struggling with his faith and his self.
An Oscar nomination, and even a win, could and should be in Fiennes future for his work in Conclave.
The supporting cast are also excellent.
Stanley Tucci is as reliable an actor as there is and he brings a subtle power to portrayal of liberal Cardinal Bellini that is enjoyable to behold. Tucci expertly embodies the illiberal liberal who is enthralled by himself more than humanity.
John Lithgow’s Cardinal Tremblay is a character that in lesser hands would’ve been forgettable, but here, Lithgow never breaks and lets the audience off the hook, so even after the film has ended, you’re still wondering if he’s a mistreated martyr or an exquisite liar.
And Isabella Rossellini has a small role as Sister Agnes, but every time she is on screen she crackles with an incandescent light and life that is undeniable.
But despite all of the magnificent artistry on display in the form of the acting, cinematography and costumes and set, Conclave commits too egregious a sin to ever be forgiven.
That sin, which is not venial sin but a mortal one, is the cheap, absurd and unearned plot twist that turns a compelling Catholic mystery and thriller into a pandering and pathetic cinematic exercise that feels like it deceived and betrayed you and stole two hours of your life.
For Catholics, Conclave will hold some appeal because it is a look behind the curtain of something familiar but still mysterious, namely the inner working of the Vatican and the conclave. In this way the film is compelling for Catholics…until the plot twist…which not just many, but I would say most, Catholics will find at best annoying, and at most infuriating (I’m in the infuriating camp).
Non-Catholics will find the majority of the film impenetrable for its disorienting maze of Catholic-ness. For example, I’m not even sure I can ask my podcast partner Barry, who is not Catholic, to watch this movie because he’s not going to know, or care, about all the Vatican and Catholic stuff that made at least the premise of the film interesting to me.
Regardless of all that, the bottom line is that I simply cannot, and will not, recommend Conclave to readers because the plot twist near the end eviscerates any artistic good the film achieved which led up to it.
If you’re interested in watching a challenging yet entertaining piece of Vatican/Pope artistry, I recommend you go back and watch The Young Pope (2014) series on HBO starring Jude Law. That overlooked, off-beat, exquisitely avant-garde series is very insightful and spiritually invigorating.
And if you’re just looking for a great story of Catholicism and Catholic priests, I highly recommend you check out Xavier Beavois’ 2010 film Of Gods and Men. It is a extraordinarily moving and spiritually insightful piece of work.
Both The Young Pope and Of Gods and Men are everything Conclave should be but ultimately isn’t. Go watch them, and skip Conclave…I certainly wish I had.
©2024
Horror Movie Round-Up And Halloween Viewer’s Guide
It is Halloween week so I thought I’d put together a quick movie guide to help you set the tone for the spooky times ahead.
I love Halloween, always have, and have spent the last few weeks gearing up for the festivities by catching up on some of the horror films released this year, and the last few years, that I’ve missed.
Here are the films I watched for the first time in recent weeks (all rated on the “1 to 5 horror movie scale” not the “1 to 5 regular movie scale”).
MaXXXine (2024) - Available on Max: This is the third movie in Ti West’s trilogy – which began with X (2022), then Pearl (2022), and now MaXXine. MaXXXine is hands down the worst of the three films. X was terrific and Pearl was pretty good too, but MaXXXine is just an incoherent mess that never finds its footing or a distinct flavor. It’s a mish mash of 1980s nostalgia stuffed into a dour and dull narrative that doesn’t really know what it wants to be.
Yes, Mia Goth is an intriguing screen presence, but even she can’t overcome the flaccid and foolish script for this seriously sub-par film. Very disappointing and definitely not worth watching. 2 stars out of 5
Late Night with the Devil (2024) - Available on Hulu: An extremely clever and well-executed movie that deftly uses the medium of 1970’s late nite tv to plumb the depths of devilry and the demonic depravity of the ruling elite who sell their souls to the dark lord at Bohemian Grove.
David Dastmalchian gives a fantastic performance as a desperate late night talk show host trying to catch Carson in the ratings. A very effective and captivating film…especially if you lived through the 70s. 4 stars out of 5.
The First Omen (2024) - Available on Hulu: Speaking of the 70s!! The First Omen is a surprisingly well-made and executed prequel to the iconic 1976 film The Omen. The First Omen won’t change your life but it will keep you mildly entertained and reasonably spooked for its two-hour run time. 3 out of 5 stars.
Immaculate (2024) - Available on Hulu: This is a not great movie but serves as a decent enough vehicle for Sydney Sweeney to keep building the foundation to her movie stardom. A rather forgettable film with a tenuous premise but the luminous Sweeney, who still manages to be insanely sexy even in a nun’s habit, makes the most of it…especially in the final scene. 2.5 out of 5 stars
Doctor Sleep – Director’s Cut (2019) - Available on Amazon Prime: A shockingly well-made and completely compelling sequel to The Shining which, like Late Night with the Devil, casts a severely jaundiced eye toward the ruling elite and their demonic ways, which include feeding off of the pain and suffering of regular people, most notably children. It’s impossible to watch this movie and not think about the infamous pedophile rings involving people of power, including the Jeffrey Epstein ring, the P Diddy accusations and the horrific Franklin Affair…not to mention the wholesale sickening and senseless slaughter of children in Gaza by the Israelis.
Doctor Sleep features two great performances, the first by Ewan McGregor, who gives a subtle, layered and impressive performance as the adult Danny trying to navigate life after the horrors he endured in The Shining. The other by the absolutely luminous Rebecca Ferguson. Ferguson is so good, so charismatic, so gorgeous and so sexy in Doctor Sleep it is astonishing.
I completely skipped Doctor Sleep when it came out in 2019 because I thought “a sequel to The Shining? No thanks!”. To me The Shining is one of the greatest horror movies of all time…and to be clear Doctor Sleep is nowhere close to being an equal of The Shining in terms of the filmmaking or storytelling. But…it really is a fantastic horror movie. In some ways I’m glad I missed it in the theatre though because my first watch of it was of the three-hour Director’s Cut which is available on Amazon Prime. I highly recommend you watch the director’s cut and not the theatrical release.
Know this going in though, Doctor Sleep – The Director’s Cut, has one of the most disturbing scenes I’ve seen in a film in a long time. It deeply disturbed and unnerved me – which may say more about me and my life’s circumstances, but still…this scene was tough to watch, but necessary to see. 4.5 out of 5 stars.
Smile (2022) - Available on Hulu: Smile came out in 2022 and has a sequel out this month…but I never saw the original so I watched it last week. Smile is a decent enough piece of trauma porn horror movie making. It’s got some clever story lines and keeps you engaged through out. I thought Sosie Bacon did a solid job as the lead, and she had some very heavy lifting to do. In some ways Smile is a typical middle of the road horror movie, but to its credit, it works. 2.5 out of 5 stars.
As for the rest of a Halloween Movie Guide…
My usual go-to horror films are previously mentioned The Shining (1980), The Exorcist (1973) and Rosemary’s Baby (1968). They are, to me, the best horror films around and they never fail to scare the living shit out of me.
I also love the Universal Classic Monster movies like Frankenstein (1931), Dracula (1931), The Wolf Man (1941) and The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954). Another old movie classic is F.W. Murnau’s masterful Nosferatu (1922), which is creepy as hell and well worth watching.
Other less ancient notables would be most anything by David Cronenberg, his remake of The Fly (1986) is particularly fantastic and his films The Brood (1979), Scanners (1980), Videodrome (1983) and The Dead Zone (1983) are solid choices as well.
You also can’t go wrong John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) and The Thing (1982), which are all time horror classics that never fail to frighten no matter how many times you’ve seen them.
More current horror films that are most worthy of a watch are Robert Eggers’ extremely eerie The Witch (2015), and Ari Aster’s formidably frightening and fearsome Hereditary (2018) and Midsommar (2019).
And finally, one movie which is not technically categorized as a horror film but which is as creepy, frightening, disturbing and unnerving as any movie out there, is David Fincher’s Zodiac (2007). Zodiac is a great film that pulsates with a darkness of such depth that haunts you for days and weeks after after watching.
And thus ends the Halloween viewer’s guide!! I hope everybody has a Happy Halloween and gets a bevy of tricks AND treats!!
©2024
****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****
My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
My Recommendation: SKIP IT. Another massive misfire from M Night Shyamalan. Poorly conceived and poorly executed from start to finish.
Trap, written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan, is a psychological thriller starring Josh Hartnett which premiered in theatres back in August. It just became available on the streaming service Max and I got a chance to watch it.
I had coincidentally watched two M. Night Shyamalan movies, The Sixth Sense and Signs, last week, unaware that Trap was being released on Max this past Friday, so when I stumbled across it I was surprised, and in the context of having watched some of Shyamalan’s stellar early films, excited to see Trap.
It is easy to forget what a big deal Shyamalan was at the turn of the century. The Sixth Sense was a smash hit and garnered a bevy of Academy Award nominations and both Unbreakable and Signs were huge hits as well.
Shyamalan’s run of The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable and Signs, is as good a three-movie run for a director as you could ever hope for. All three were original, superbly crafted, gloriously entertaining, top-notch films.
Shyamalan was portrayed back then as the second coming of Hitchcock and he fully embraced the label – most notably by putting himself in all of his movies. In interviews, Shyamalan even about how he doesn’t shoot “coverage” of his scenes because he knows what he wants and isn’t afraid to have nothing to fall back on…which is a level of cinematic arrogance and hubris that was stunning to behold at the time.
As is almost always the case with that level of hubris, Shyamalan’s inflated ego led him to a catastrophic fall from grace. His precipitous creative collapse was interesting because it happened incrementally at first, but then all at once.
Here’s how it played out. 2004’s The Village was much hyped, and did well enough at the box office, but fan’s irritation at Shyamalan’s increasing reliance on “plot twist reveals” became much more pronounced.
This was followed by 2006’s Lady in the Water, which was a decidedly murky misfire that further alienated his audience, and did very little at the box office. After the mess that was Lady in the Water, Shyamalan needed to prove himself as a big-time director and box office behemoth.
The film he made next was 2008’s The Happening starring Mark Wahlberg. The Happening was an absolutely abysmal, excruciatingly awful piece of excrement. Yes, it made some money at the box office, but in its wake the bloom was officially off the rose of Shyamalan the prodigy filmmaker in the eyes of fans and critics alike.
And things went downhill from there as every movie Shyamalan made after that got progressively worse. The Last Airbender? After Earth? Yikes.
It’s hard to imagine a more precipitous fall from cinematic grace or steeper drop in quality of work as Shyamalan has endured. Yes, he had a bit of a comeback in 2016 with Split and in 2019 with Glass, but he has never recaptured the magic of those early movies and after having sat through his newest one, Trap, I can confidently say he never will.
Trap tells the story of Cooper Abbott, a regular guy/dad in Philadelphia, who takes his teenage daughter to a concert to see her favorite artist, Lady Raven.
Like all Shyamalan movies there is a twist…(I will refrain from revealing the twist even though the marketing of the movie explicitly reveals it), but the twist here is given away much too soon and much too easily.
Shyamalan doesn’t draw his viewers in and then turn things on their head, he just rather lazily goes through the motions of revealing this twist without much build up (which maybe explains the poor marketing decision to not maintain the illusion).
After the reveal is made, the movie, which hadn’t built up much dramatic momentum to begin with, feels like a barely inflated balloon being stepped on…it never floats, it never pops, it just squishes from side to side.
As the film goes on it becomes more and more inane until the final half hour of the movie, which is so absurd as to be idiotic. The final act is so bad and so poorly executed it boggles the mind and grates the soul.
The film seems intent on being as vacuous as possible and dedicated to not standing firmly on any dramatic ground whatsoever. There were lots of possibilities on how to resolve this unfailingly incoherent mess of a movie, but Shyamalan, in his now usual custom, paints by numbers and does nothing interesting or unique…or even slightly entertaining.
Josh Hartnett is a decent enough, B or C level movie actor/star, for example he was quite good in Oppenheimer last year, and he could’ve been decent here, but Shyamalan never gives him the chance to cook and to delve into his character with any verve. Ultimately, Hartnett’s portrayal comes across as quite amateurish and vapid.
In true Shyamalan form he casts himself in a small role, and is dreadful…but even worse is he casts his daughter Saleka in the role of Lady Raven. Apparently Saleka is a singer in real life, but her anemic musical performances in Trap are not the showcase her famous father was probably hoping for. In fact, Saleka is so dull and lifeless it feels like her father cast her so that she could play act at being a famous singer because in real life that shit is definitely not gonna happen.
In the final third of the film Saleka is tasked with a lot of heavy lifting in terms of acting, holding audience attention and driving the story. Unfortunately, she is so charisma and talent deficient she isn’t anywhere remotely close to being able to pull it off.
Hayley Mills appears in the film in the role of an FBI profiler, and she is uncomfortably out of place to an alarming degree. Every time Mills appears on-screen it feels like she is a homeless person who has wandered onto set and is looking for the bus station.
As for the filmmaking, Shyamalan tries some stuff in Trap, but none of it works. For example, he uses takes where the actors speak directly into the camera, a technique used by Jonathon Demme in Silence of the Lambs to great success. Here though it just seems trite and a bit ridiculous given the context of the story surrounding it.
The reality is that Shyamalan has gone from being a moviemaker that matters to being one that just churns out odious garbage in order to make some money. Trap is a perfect example, as it is a thoughtless and fruitless film made with a minimum amount of care…something that would have been unimaginable from Shyamalan a quarter century ago.
Even if you are a huge Shyamalan fan, I’d find it hard to imagine you’d love Trap. It is a small and inconsequential piece of nothing cinema, and I recommend you avoid it because it’s so poorly made that watching it will make you angry – or at the very least, should make you angry.
©2024
****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****
My Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
My Recommendation: SEE IT. But be forewarned, this is an aggressively arthouse movie that will be very unappealing to those seeking comic book entertainment.
Joker: Folie a Deux is director Todd Philips’ sequel to his controversial, billion-dollar blockbuster Joker (2019), and features Joaquin Phoenix reprising his iconic, Oscar-winning role as Arthur Fleck aka Joker, but this time he’s joined by Lady Gaga as his love interest Harley Quinn.
Joker was, and still is, an extraordinarily polarizing film. Back in the hyper-politicized year of 2019, Joker was instantly reviled by weak-kneed critics who labeled Phoenix’s Fleck/Joker as the “patron saint of incels”, and the film vile and potentially violence inducing because it captured the anger and resentment boiling just under the surface of America.
Despite the cavalcade of establishment media fear and loathing of Joker, the film still managed to make gobs of money and garner eleven Academy Award nominations and two wins (Best Actor and Best Original Score).
Unfortunately, no one need fear Joker: Folie a Deux becoming a blockbuster or hording trophies at the Academy Awards. Joker: Folie a Deux is going to be a certified box office bomb and is despised by critics and fans alike.
I try to quarantine myself from reviews and criticisms of a film before seeing it, but with Joker Folie a Deux it was impossible to avoid the overwhelming hate the film was receiving. Some of the most animated vitriol toward the film was coming from people who, like me, loved the original movie.
So when I strolled into an empty Sunday afternoon screening of Joker: Folie a Deux, I was mentally sharpening my knives in order to be able to properly and precisely eviscerate the shitshow I was about to watch.
But then I watched it…and maybe it was because I went in with such low expectations, but not only did I like Joker: Folie a Deux, I thought it was, in a way, much like the first film, bleak but utterly and absolutely brilliant.
The film opens with a Looney Tunes style cartoon which features Arthur Fleck and his literal and figurative shadow, Joker. This opening gives the perfect psychological backdrop for Fleck/Joker and buttresses my Jungian shadow thesis regarding Joker where Arthur Fleck is a Christ-figure and Joker is the anti-Christ/Satan figure.
The film then goes to live action and the story begins where Joker left off, with the now famous Arthur Fleck sitting in Arkham Asylum awaiting his trial for murder.
Over time the film descends into the madness of Arthur Fleck…and uses the genre of a jukebox musical as a manifestation of that madness. So as reality and fantasy blend together in Arthur’s mind, he and his friend Lee Quinzel – aka Harley Quinn, played by Lady Gaga, sing a bevy of American Standards…it’s sort of like a grotesque fever dream/nightmare version of La La Land.
But make absolutely no mistake, Joker: Folie a Deux is not, and is not meant to be, “entertaining”, not in the traditional sense, but it is most certainly enlightening and insightful, something which is exceedingly rare in cinema nowadays, most especially in Hollywood films in general, and franchise movies in particular.
Joker: Folie a Deux is a work of art, which is a jarring and frustrating thing for viewers to experience when they head into the cinema expecting a franchise film piece of pop entertainment. This subverting of expectation, signified in the film with the recurring theme of “That’s Entertainment!”, is no doubt responsible for the film’s very poor reception among audiences and critics that have been conditioned by Marvel’s mindless money-making machine movies over the last 16 years…and to a lesser extent DC’s too, to expect a certain kind of pre-teen drivel as comic book cinema.
Joker: Folie a Deux is not that, instead it is a relentlessly bleak and brutal film. It is grungy, gruesome and glorious. It may make you angry, it may make you anxious, it may make you bored. But whatever your reaction to it is, that says infinitely more about you than about it, because this movie is a mirror held up to our insane, inane, indecent cancer of a culture and the vicious and vacuous world we all inhabit. Your reaction to Joker: Folkie a Deux, is your reaction to the madness of our broken and fallen world.
It seems obvious to me that Joker: Folie a Deux is director Todd Phillips’ giant middle-finger to the people who hated the first movie…and to those that loved it too. I never would’ve guessed that Todd Phillips of all people – the guy who made the Hangover trilogy, would be the auteur with balls the size of Hindenbergs who morphs into his main character, lights the match and watches the whole shithouse go up in flames. But here we are…and I’m glad to be here.
The animating characteristic of Joker: Folie a Deux is despair. Phillips’ Gotham is a hellscape…literally. For not only is it filled with vile, venal and loathsome creatures, but it is entirely devoid of any love. In a world devoid of love, despair rules the day because hope is replaced by delusion.
Arthur Fleck is, as a Christ figure, an open wound, a raw nerve, and it isn’t the hate of this world that affects him so greatly, but rather the complete absence of love.
Joker, on the other hand, as the devil, thrives in this hell for the exact reason that it cripples Arthur.
Many critics and hipsters hated the first Joker movie because Arthur Fleck was a white guy. This sort of shallow, identity driven thinking is all too common in our current age, and it reduces otherwise smart people into myopic fools unable to see the forest for the trees.
Arthur Fleck isn’t a symbol of white disenfrachisement…he is a symbol of the forgotten, the downtrodden, the outcast, and the loser of all colors, creeds and genders.
Arthur Fleck is the shaking, orphaned child in Gaza surviving in the rubble. He is the Palestinian prisoner gang-raped by his Israeli guards. He is the gay man thrown from a roof in Saudi Arabia. He is the teenage girl in Kabul beaten for showing her face. He is the black boy abused and neglected by an overwhelmed foster care system. He is Kelly Thomas, the mentally ill homeless man beaten to death by police in California. He is Ethan Saylor, the young man with Down’s Syndrome who died when Maryland cops kneeled on his neck in a movie theatre. Arthur Fleck is the helpless and the hopeless, the weak, the sick and the old…and critics and audiences who see him as a threat or a symbol of the oppressor simply due to the color of his skin and his gender are the ones who make this world the cruel, inhumane and uninhabitable shithole that it is.
Joker is Arthur’s shadow…he is his vengeance and justice. Joker is the Hamas member slaughtering Israeli men, women and children at a desert rave. Joker is the Israeli soldier executing Palestinian men, women and children in cold blood. Joker is the cop killing pets in front of children. Joker is the school-shooter settling scores for social slights. Joker is the mayhem, murder and madness unleashed by those who feel fueled by righteousness.
Joker is the king of this fallen world…and Arthur Fleck is its victim.
Joaquin Phoenix is once again fantastic as Arthur and the Joker. Phoenix is a fragile yet forceful screen presence. His transformations throughout Joker: Folie a Deux are subtle and simply spectacular. I doubt Phoenix will be considered for any awards since Joker: Folie a Deux is so hated, but he is more than worthy of accolades.
Lady Gaga is an actress I have never been able to tolerate. I despised the trite and treacly A Star is Born and found her distractingly bad in House of Gucci. But here in Joker: Folie a Deux I finally got to understand her appeal. There really is just something about her that is magnetic and undeniable, at least in this movie. I found her character arc to be somewhat poorly executed, but I thought her performance was quite good.
Brendan Gleeson plays a prison guard and is an ominous presence whenever he graces the screen, most particularly when he isn’t being menacing. Gleeson is, like Phoenix, one of the best actors on the planet, and he never fails to elevate any scene he inhabits.
And finally, Leigh Gill, who plays Gary Puddles, is fantastic in his lone scene. This scene, which features Puddles being questioned on the stand in court, is extraordinarily moving, and exquisitely captures the deeper meaning and purpose of the film.
Cinematographer Lawrence Sher, who was nominated for an Oscar for his work on Joker, once again does phenomenal work on Joker: Folie a Deux. Sher shoots the film with a distinct 1970’s grittiness and grime. He turns multiple musical numbers into uncomfortable flashbacks to Sonny and Cher episodes or other seventies type showcases and does so with a cinematic aplomb.
Hildur Guonadottir, who won an Oscar for her original score on Joker, is back on this film and once again sets the scene with an uncomfortably menacing and ominous score that drives the emotional narrative.
As for Todd Phillips, as I previously said, it’s astonishing the balls on this guy. He is basically saying “fuck you” to critics and fans alike. It’s tough to imagine him bouncing back and being allowed to do a worthwhile film after having a critical and commercial flop like this. That’s a shame though because he has proven his worth as an artist with Joker and Joker: Folie a Deux.
Phillips is a lot of things, some of them good and some of them bad, but one thing that he has been in recent years…is right.
It’s always struck me that no one (except me) seemed to notice that Joker accurately diagnosed the incandescent anger and fury that was boiling just beneath the surface of America back in 2019. I wrote about this profoundly disturbing anger prior to Joker, but Joker showed it to mainstream audiences, and elite coastal critics were so horrified by it that they blamed the film rather than the country and culture it revealed.
Joker was proven right though as less than nine months after its release that volcano of anger erupted in Joker-esque fashion with the murder of George Floyd and the ensuing riots and chaotic violence in the streets of American cities…just like in Joker.
The Joker was every BLM rioter, and every opportunistic looter and arsonist in America’s summer of rage in 2020…just like he was every flag-waving MAGA moron on January 7th, 2021, who stormed the Capitol looking to “Save Democracy”.
That Joker was correct has never been admitted by the coastal elites who hated the movie. That Joker: Folie a Deux is also correct in diagnosing the unremitting cruelty, malignant madness and incessant insanity of our culture and country will also go unnoticed by those who are too offended, or bored or angry or inhumane to care or notice.
Joker: Folie a Deux is not a polarizing film like Joker. The consensus is that it is awful to the point of being an abomination. But I am here to tell you that Joker: Folie a Deux is a brutal, ballsy and brilliant film. It is, like Oliver Stone’s manic and maniacal 1994 masterpiece Natural Born Killers, well ahead of the curve, and will only get its due when the history of this era is written and the ugly truth of our current time fully revealed.
If you have the fortitude for it, and the philosophical, political and psychological mind for it, and the ability to tolerate the arthouse in your comic book cinema, then Joker: Folie a Deux is not the steaming pile of shit that critics and audiences claim it to be, but rather a startling revelation. And like most revelations it is reviled in its own time because it tells the unvarnished and unabashedly ugly truth that no one wants to see or hear because it’s too painful to ever acknowledge.
©2024
****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****
My Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars
My Recommendation: SKIP IT. Nothing to see here at all.
Wolfs, starring Brad Pitt and George Clooney, is the new movie on Apple TV + that tells the tale of two New York City based lone-wolf “fixers” who are forced to work together on a complicated job.
The film, written and directed by Jon Watts – who is best known for directing the recent Spider-Man movies, describes itself as an action comedy, which is a bit of an inaccurate moniker since Wolfs is neither action-packed nor funny.
The film follows the travails of Jack (Clooney) and Nick (Pitt) as they are called to the hotel room of Margaret (Amy Ryan), who is running for District Attorney. Unfortunately for Margaret, the young man she brought back to her hotel room for a tryst has died and so she calls a secret number and a fixer is sent. Then there’s a twist and another fixer is sent and these two lone wolf fixers do not want to form a pack and work together. Comedy is supposed to ensue…but never does.
Writer/director Watts uses a lot of filmmaking techniques, like numerous quick edits on mundane events like a car backing out of a parking space, and languid camera movements, to give the impression of cinematic sophistication, but he fails at even the most rudimentary elements of storytelling.
With a convoluted story and middling direction, the movie is forced to rely upon the star power of Brad Pitt and George Clooney.
Pitt and Clooney have, to varying degrees of success, previously worked together in the Ocean’s Eleven movies, and their reunion on Wolfs is meant to cash in on their status and stardom. In other words, Wolfs is our chance to hang out with two handsome, cool, movie stars for two hours – lucky us.
Unfortunately, Wolfs features zero chemistry, zero comedy and zero coherence. It is one of those movies where as you’re watching it you feel like you’re waiting for the story to actually start and it never really does.
The plot of Wolfs has all the clarity of a drunk toddler’s storytelling while playing with action figures. The rules of the world in Wolfs are random, arbitrary, confusing and ultimately annoying. Nothing makes much sense and it seems as though none of it was really meant to.
In this way Wolfs is a perfect companion piece to the previous movie Apple Films released, The Instigators, starring Matt Damon and Casey Affleck. Both movies are so vehemently vapid, vacant and venal as to be apocalyptic. If some poor soul were to watch these bro-fueled bombs back to back they’d be tempted to light themselves on fire in order to feel something, anything at all, and to kill the malignant stupidity that was just implanted in their brains.
The final scene of Wolfs is the one that helped me to understand how Clooney and Pitt see themselves, or at least see their pairing, and it is astonishingly delusional. I won’t give anything away except to say that this scene is meant to demonstrate that Clooney and Pitt are the modern-day Paul Newman and Robert Redford.
Let me be as clear as I can about this…Clooney and Pitt are not Newman and Redford. Not even close. They never have been and they never will be.
To be fair, Pitt has matured into a much better actor than his pretty boy beginnings would’ve hinted, and he’s become a very astute and successful producer as well. His choice in projects and his taste are admirable, but let’s not kid ourselves, he’s no Robert Redford.
Clooney is, obviously, not Paul Newman, who was one of the greatest actors and movie stars in Hollywood history. Clooney is now, and frankly always has been, a bad actor, a bad movie star and a truly terrible director.
For the last twenty-five years or so Clooney has been one of those people who populate our culture who are only famous for being famous. He’s the male equivalent of Jessica Simpson, and equally as vacuous.
It has been reported that Clooney and Pitt were paid $35 million each to star in Wolfs, which if true, is pretty amusing. Apple’s desperation to be a player in the movie business has forced them to pay exorbitant prices to talent in exchange for truly abysmal movies. Considering that Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon is the best Apple movie ever made, and is one of Scorsese’s lesser films, is an indictment of Apple, the movie business and Killers of the Flower Moon.
Wolfs spent a week in theatres before hitting Apple TV+ on Friday September 28th. It will, rightfully, languish on that atrocious, backwater of a streaming service, mercifully hidden from wider audiences. Those without Apple TV+, and those unable to navigate the incomprehensible maze that is Apple TV+ to find Wolfs, are blissfully unaware of how truly lucky they are.
In conclusion, Wolfs is a poorly conceived and poorly executed movie that is so small and inconsequential as to be instantaneously forgettable. It means nothing. It has nothing. It is nothing.
©2024
****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE ARTICLE!! THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****
This year we’ve had a few notable box office bombs, the most intriguing of which are The Fall Guy and Furiosa.
Like the vast majority of people, I did not see those movies in the theatre, hence their under-performance at the box office. But now both films are available to stream and I recently checked them out to see what, if anything, I missed, and if they deserved to be ignored in the theatre.
Let’s start with The Fall Guy, which is currently available to stream on Peacock.
The Fall Guy, directed by David Leitch, was set up to be the big office blockbuster to open the summer movie season when it hit theatres on May 3rd. The film, which stars Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt, had a huge marketing push pre-release, which included a witty bit of banter at the Oscars between the two stars. The film sold itself in a plethora of television ads as an old-fashioned, 1980’s style Hollywood action movie with likeable movie stars (Gosling and Blunt).
But upon release the film fell flat as nobody came out to see it. It was number one at the box office on its opening week, but with a severely subdued haul of $35 million. Not great. It went downhill from there.
It dropped to number two in its second week of release and then fell off a cliff. It ended up making a paltry $180 million in total off of its $120 million budget. In Hollywood accounting, that means it lost a ton of money. (Hollywood accounting means you roughly double the budget to account for marketing and for the theatre’s haul – and the rest goes to the studio – so The Fall Guy is about $240 million underwater)
So why did The Fall Guy fail?
The Fall Guy does have two very charming and beautiful movie stars as its leads, Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt, who are, you guessed it, very charming and very beautiful. But on the downside, The Fall Guy is a movie no one wanted…and so no one went to see it. Myself included.
The movie is sort of attached to the rather forgettable B-tv series from the 80’s, The Fall Guy, which is second rate Lee Majors material, as Majors is remembered for the Six Million Dollar Man, not The Fall Guy. But The Fall Guy brand doesn’t have a built-in fan base as Gen Xers may remember the show from their childhood but don’t really give a shit about it because it wasn’t beloved, and younger audiences will have absolutely never heard of it.
Another major issue is that The Fall Guy is, frankly, a really bad movie. It features an abysmally incoherent and relentlessly stupid script, as well as stunts that are rather tepid and cinematically mundane.
As charming as Gosling and Blunt are…and they are incredibly charming…they’re not charming enough to tolerate the excruciatingly boring and stupid nonsense going on around them for the duration of this idiotic movie.
In some ways The Fall Guy is meant to be a love letter to stunt men, which I suppose is a nice thought. Stunt men are a different breed (and deserve an Oscar category)…but if you’ve ever met one you know that while their work is often interesting, they often are not.
On the bright side stunt men will always be happy to have you break a chair over their head, which is very cathartic. Truth is I’d rather break a real chair over my head than watch The Fall Guy again.
The Fall Guy’s failure is a stark reminder that wishful thinking from the C Suite of Hollywood studios doesn’t translate into audience interest. The Fall Guy had seemingly everything going for it except for the two things it actually needed, audience interest and good storytelling. Oops.
In conclusion, The Fall Guy most definitely deserved to fail, and it certainly did just that.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga on the other hand…
Furiosa is the fifth film in the Mad Max franchise and is a prequel to 2015’s fantastic Fury Road, which received ten Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director, and won six Oscars.
Fury Road didn’t break box office records but it did break more than even making $380 million on a $160 million budget.
In all honesty I am not a Mad Max fanatic. The first movies came out when I was a kid and I didn’t see them in the theatre. I did see them all as a teen on VHS though, and liked most of them (I wasn’t a real fan of Beyond Thunderdome), some a great deal…but it’s not a franchise with which I ever strongly identified despite my respect for it.
When Fury Road came out in 2015 after a thirty-year absence of Mad Max material, I didn’t see in the theatre but caught it on cable…and was absolutely blown away. Fury Road is an astonishing movie and is a monument to director George Miller’s brilliance.
Despite having missed the boat on Fury Road in the theatre, when Furiosa came along I, being the moron that I am, once again didn’t venture out to theatres to see it. In my defense, my time is much more limited now than it was back in 2015 (having kids will do that), so I sort of have an excuse – but not a very good one.
Unfortunately, I was not alone in not seeing Furiosa when it hit theatres on May 24th, as the movie made a measly $172 million during its run against a $168 million budget. The film performed so poorly that it seems likely that the Mad Max franchise may have breathed its last breath. Considering that the franchise’s director, George Miller, is 79, one can assume at the very least that Miller is done making Mad Max movies…which is a shame because he is extraordinarily good at it.
But now Furiosa is streaming on Max and I’ve seen it.
I can report that missing Furiosa in the theatre was a grievous mistake.
Furiosa isn’t perfect by any means. For instance, it isn’t nearly as good as Fury Road. But…it does feature some truly imaginative and original stunt sequences that are breathtakingly spectacular.
The film also features a stoic but solid performance from Anya Taylor-Joy, who lives up to the name of Furiosa with a fire in her eyes that is undeniable.
All of the magic that make George Miller such a dynamic moviemaker are evident in Furiosa, as he shoots his action sequences with a verve and aplomb that are unequalled in our CGI addicted world. (to be fair there is some CGI in Furiosa, but nothing compared to most movies).
As for why a film as good as Furiosa failed, it is difficult to say.
The marketing for Furiosa wasn’t particularly strong, I mean it didn’t move me to go see it, so that could be a reason.
I do recall the marketing being “female driven”, and some have speculated that having a female lead, Anya Taylor-Joy, could have turned off male audiences, so that could be it. People are certainly tired of culture war bullshit in their movies – myself included, and the impression could’ve been given by Furiosa’s marketing that this was a girl power movie…which is kryptonite nowadays for male audiences. But counter to that, that certainly wasn’t the case with Fury Road, which starred Charlize Theron, so it seems to be a thin argument. Although counter to that counter, Tom hardy had a starring role in Fury Road as well, so who knows.
Another reason could be that Furiosa is a prequel and people are tired of prequels and of having to “do the homework” of having to see all the other movies just to understand what is going on in the new movie. I think Marvel definitely suffers from this and maybe Mad Max does now too.
The truth is that Furiosa’s failure is both a mystery and frustrating to me. It’s a mystery because I can’t quite pinpoint what caused it, and it’s frustrating because Mad Max is a perfect action franchise for our times and would be a great franchise for Warner Brothers to mine for film and tv projects going forward. But now with Furiosa’s failure, that won’t happen.
After having seen Furiosa, and having found it to be a very well made, extremely solid piece of action entertainment and a noteworthy bit of Mad Max franchise filmmaking, I really don’t know why people didn’t go see it and why word of mouth wasn’t better and more useful.
To end this discussion, here’s my ranking of Mad Max movies.
5. Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome – Not an awful movie but easily the worst of the Mad Max movies.
4. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga – This movie is world’s better than Beyond Thunderdome, and is very close in the running with Mad Max and Road Warrior.
3. Mad Max – The original is a down and dirty and disturbing movie that is undeniable.
2. Mad Max: The Road Warrior – The franchise makes the leap into the big time with a gritty and explosive action extravaganza.
1. Mad Max: Fury Road – The best of the best. Truly extraordinary piece of action filmmaking.
And finally…my ratings for The Fall Guy and Furiosa.
THE FALL GUY
Streaming: Peacock
Rating: 1 out of 5 Stars
Recommendation: SKIP IT
FURIOSA
Streaming: Max
Rating: 3.8 out of 5 stars
Recommendation: SEE IT!!
Thus concludes today’s autopsy of a bomb…or bombs as the case may be.
©2024
****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****
My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
My Recommendation: SKIP IT/SEE IT. It’s a formulaic action-comedy…but it does boast an engaging and energized Eddie Murphy…something we haven’t seen in a really long time.
It’s hard to believe it but Beverly Hills Cop, the blockbuster action comedy that made Eddie Murphy a megastar, hit theatres forty years ago in 1984.
To put that into context, consider that forty years before Beverly Hills Cop, World War II was still going on and Bing Crosby was the biggest star in Hollywood.
It’s easy to forget now, but Eddie Murphy was, back in the 1980’s, the most massive star in the Hollywood universe – he was like Bing Crosby with ba-ba-ba-balls. He was the biggest tv star (SNL), movie star and comedian on the planet…he was so big he put out musical albums that were atrocious but they still sold well and got continuous radio play. I mean, who could forget the hit song “Boogie in your Butt”?
Murphy’s superstar status, which reached its apex in 1984 declined slowly…and then all at once. In the wake of his supreme successes with 48 Hrs. (1982), Trading Places (1983), Beverly Hills Cop (1984) and Coming to America (1988) the quality of work began to decline - despite a minor renaissance in 1992 (Boomerang, The Distinguished Gentleman).
In an effort to salvage his stardom Murphy made Beverly Hills Cop 3 in 1994 and it was brutally bad and instantly forgotten. At that point the bloom was definitely off the Murphy rose. He then sold his soul and dignity and dove into the Nutty Professor and Dr. Doolittle franchises and his cache and career went precipitously down from there.
Murphy has spent the last quarter of a century – with the exception of 2006’s Dreamgirls, churning out the laziest, most awful, money-grab garbage imaginable.
In recent years he has returned to his earlier successes in the hopes of a career resurgence or a money infusion. First there was Coming 2 America, a sequel to 1988’s brilliant Coming to America…which is arguably Murphy’s last good movie. Coming 2 America was a comedically flaccid venture devoid of Murphy’s charm and heart that so effectively fueled the original.
And now there is Beverly Hills Cop 4 which premiered on Netflix July 3, 2024. Murphy is back as Axel Foley, the wise cracking Detroit cop who is a very fast-talking fish out of water in the posh confines of Beverly Hills. Also back are Taggart and Rosewood, John Ashton and Judge Reinhold respectively, as well as Paul Reiser as Axel’s fellow Detroit cop Jeffrey and Bronson Pinchot as Serge. Joining the festivities are Beverly Hills Cop newcomers Joseph Gordon-Leavitt as a cop, Kevin Bacon as a bad guy cop and Taylour Paige as Axel’s adult daughter.
Beverly Hills Cop 1 and 2 were big hits and perfect vehicles for Murphy’s charisma and comedy. Beverly Hills Cop 3 (1994) was apocalyptically awful. Beverly Hills Cop 4 is…somewhere in between.
Is Beverly Hills Cop 4 a good movie? No. Is Beverly Hills Cop 4 a bad movie? Not really. It’s just sort of a formulaic movie (that somehow cost $150 million to make!) that plays out in front of you and then it’s over and no one will really care one way or the other.
The one notable thing about Beverly Hills Cop 4 though is that it’s the first movie in decades…maybe since Bowfinger (1999), where Eddie Murphy seems engaged and energized and not simply there for the check.
Murphy, at his height, had an undeniable charm and charisma that dominated the screen, which is why it was always so jarring to see him dead-eyed and dull sleepwalking through the second half of his career.
But in Beverly Hills Cop 4 Murphy is back being at ease and comfortable on screen. Axel Foley is sort of the Eddie Murphy of old and Murphy makes the most of it. He is funny, cool (but not too cool) and enjoyable to be around. You never feel like Eddie Murphy is phoning it in and just going through the motions…which is a refreshing change of pace.
The film follows its action-comedy roots and sticks pretty tight to the formula…a formula which it perfected back in 1984 and which others have used and abused ever since with ever more diminishing returns. To give an indication of how culturally mammoth the original Beverly Hills Cop movie was and what an extraordinary talent Murphy was, consider that Michael Bay poached the formula with his Bad Boys franchise and had to use both Will Smith AND Martin Lawrence to fill the Eddie Murphy role.
Beverly Hills Cop 4, which is the directorial debut of Mark Molloy and is written by Will Beall and Kevin Etten, is very conscious of the franchise’s past and winks along to the nostalgia. For example, in the first ten minutes of the movie it features the hit songs from the Beverly Hills Cop movies in the 80’s. It opens with Glenn Frey’s “The Heat is on”, followed by Bob Seger’s “Shakedown”, then the Pointer Sisters “Neutron Dance”, and of course the franchise’s synth-heavy anthem by Herbie Hancock. That Glenn Frey and one of the Pointer Sisters are dead, and that Bob Seger is permanently retired, only goes to emphasize how damn long ago that first film really was.
The plot of Beverly Hills Cop 4 is not really important. Just know that there’s trouble in Beverly Hills involving Axel Foley’s estranged daughter and he comes to LA from Detroit to figure everything out and make things right. Taggart (John Ashton) is now a police chief in Beverly Hills, Rosewood (Judge Reinhold) is a private detective and Serge (Bronson Pinchot) is still a weirdly gay-ish foreign man about Beverly Hills.
There’s a copious amount of plastic surgery apparent on both Reinhold and Pinchot’s distorted faces (oh Hollywood!) and none of the old cast bring the same joie de vivre as Murphy does, but what can you do?
There are some action sequences, none of which move the needle very much. And there’s some shootouts which feature villains who can’t shoot straight and good guys who can.
You won’t care about the convoluted plot or how it resolves (it resolves exactly like you think it does) or anything like that, but the only reason to tune in, then tune out and watch Beverly Hills Cop 4 is to see Eddie Murphy.
Murphy isn’t his old self in this movie…and he isn’t even a shadow of his former self in this movie…but he is a shadow of a shadow of his former self…and that’s better than anything Will Smith and Martin Lawrence or any other pretenders to the Murphy crown could ever hope to muster.
If you like Eddie Murphy, then Beverly Hills Cop 4, despite being mindless and middling movie mundanity, is worth watching to remember what was…and what might have been.
Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo
©2024
****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****
My Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars
My Recommendation: SEE IT/SKIP IT. A flawed movie that could’ve been great but ended up being just average.
The Bikeriders, starring Austin Butler, Jodie Comer and Tom Hardy, chronicles the trials and tribulations of a Chicago-area motorcycle club from its benign founding in the early 1960’s to its malignant expansion throughout the 70s.
The film, which is inspired by Danny Lyon’s photo-book of the same name and is written and directed by Jeff Nichols, opened nationwide in theatres last weekend.
The Bikeriders has a lot going for it, like an appealing aesthetic, a banger of a soundtrack and three solid, attractive actors atop the cast list. And yet, the film struggles to captivate because it is fundamentally at cross-purposes with itself.
On one hand it wants to be a gritty, Goodfellas-esque, guys being guys motorcycle movie/crime drama (in fact an early sequence in the film is an homage to Goodfellas), and then on the other hand it wants to be a rather safe, cinematically antiseptic Hollywood movie and star making vehicle.
These differing desires are never more apparent as when comparing the performance styles of the two lead actors, Austin Butler and Jodie Comer, who play Benny and Kathy, the couple at the center of the drama.
Jodie Comer is a very, very pretty woman, but she’s not nearly as pretty in The Bikeriders as the beautiful Austin Butler, whose Benny is the brooding, blue-eyed, bad boy biker with the perfectly tussled hair who is the object of everyone’s desire.
The Bikeriders is a star-maker for Butler, as his job is to show up and pose and preen his way through a role without actually doing much heavy lifting. That he can be little more than a mannequin in this movie and women will still go absolutely bananas for him and dudes will still want to be him, is a testament to his innate star potential.
In contrast, Jodie Comer plays Kathy and has been unsexed to such a staggering degree as to be astonishing considering her preternatural allure. Adding to her unsexing is the fact that she’s doing a deeply studied performance which features a spot-on, but still grating, Chicago accent, and her wardrobe seems designed to eliminate any possible feminine appeal.
In terms of acting style, Comer is doing 1970’s Meryl Streep method acting and Butler is doing an Armani photo-shoot, and the clash of styles is not only cinematically confounding but also greatly diminishes the drama.
For example, Kathy and Benny, whose attraction/relationship is the center piece of the narrative, are completely devoid of any sizzle. There is not one iota of chemistry between Butler and Comer. Adding to the frigidity is that they never kiss, not even once, in the entire film. In fact, I don’t recall seeing the two of them ever touch…and not even in a sensual or romantic way, but at all. How can you have two ridiculously gorgeous people play a couple in a movie and never once show them kiss?
Now, this wouldn’t be that big of a deal except it undermines the narrative and dramatic premise of the entire project. Benny is allegedly torn between the motorcycle club and Kathy, but he doesn’t seem all that interested in Kathy, and frankly, Kathy doesn’t seem all that interested in him, which makes the whole thing dramatically incoherent.
What Kathy and Benny need is uncontrollable, blood-pumping, frantic passion, which would give Benny a reason to keep coming back and, more importantly, Kathy a reason to do EVERY SINGLE THING SHE DOES. But it has none of that and thus the drama of the film is neutered.
To be clear, I didn’t hate The Bikeriders. In general, I dig motorcycle movies (or car movies) and the film looks good, is aesthetically pleasing and stylistically intriguing, and it has a cast of solid actors.
For instance, Tom Hardy does a good job as Johnny, the founder of the Vandals, the fictional motorcycle club at the heart of the movie. Hardy splits the difference between Comer and Butler’ acting styles by giving a half method/half Hollywood performance, and it actually works.
The collection of actors in the motorcycle club, guys like the always reliable Michael Shannon, as well as Damon Herriman, Norman Reedus and Boyd Holbrooke, all do solid supporting work and make for believable bikers.
The costumes work as well, and the cinematography by Adam Stone is pretty standard but well executed.
Ultimately, The Bikeriders is one of those movies that could have been great but which never figured out what it wanted to be and more importantly, how it wanted to be or why it wanted to be.
The film could’ve been a steamy star-vehicle with Butler and Comer being their beautiful selves and lighting up the screen with a scintillating and sexy love story.
Or it could have been a gritty crime drama, with Benny and Kathy as the Henry Hill and Karen in a Goodfellas style tale.
But instead, the film tries to be both and ends up being neither.
One can’t help but wish that director Jeff Nichols could have had a more clear, coherent and concise vision for The Bikeriders, and a more-deft artistic, dramatic and cinematic touch in order to make the most of the tantalizing story hinted at in Lyon’s compelling photo-book of the same name.
The Bikeriders could have been extraordinary, but due to a lack of narrative and dramatic clarity, it’s just ordinary. Which is disappointing, but nowadays, not all that surprising.
Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo
@2024
****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****
My Rating: 2.75 out of 5 stars
My Recommendation: SEE IT/SKIP IT. A harmless bit of entertainment that is enjoyable if you go in with low expectations.
Hit Man, starring Glen Powell and directed by Richard Linklater, is a noir rom-com loosely based on the true story of Gary Johnson, a psychology and philosophy professor who worked undercover for the New Orleans police department posing as a “hit man for hire”.
The film, written by both Linklater and Powell, follows the travails of the nerdy Gary as he finds his true self by embodying the various hit man-characters he concocts in order to dupe customers and thwart murders before they happen.
Hit Man was released on Netflix on June 7th, 2024, which is how I watched it.
I have heard Richard Linklater called the cinematic voice of Generation X, which I find to be an odd choice for a variety of reasons, the least of which is that he is just a bit too old to qualify for Generation X. As a Gen X-er myself, I have found Linklater to be, for the most part, a forgettable filmmaker. I find the vast majority of his work to be, at best…just fine. In general, I find nothing remarkable about his work at all. I don’t hate it, but I also don’t love it, and the truth is I never think about it.
The film that put Linklater (and Matthew McConaughey and Ben Affleck) on the map was Dazed and Confused (1993). I never understood the love for that movie despite having recognized my life being portrayed in it. It wasn’t a bad movie, but it also wasn’t a very good one.
I felt the same about Before Sunrise (1995), which made Ethan Hawke a movie star. Once again, I recognized myself and my generation in that movie, I just didn’t think it was particularly noteworthy or compelling cinema.
In 2014, Linklater was a favorite to win an Oscar with his coming-of-age film Boyhood, which was famously shot over a ten-year span. Critics adored the ten-year-shoot gimmick, but I found the whole enterprise to be gratingly vapid, pretentious and second-rate.
The Linklater films I have liked a lot are Waking Life (2001), an esoteric cinematic exploration of the meaning of life, and the mainstream School of Rock (2003). Waking Life was a ballsy movie to make because it was unapologetically arthouse while School of Rock was unabashedly crowd-pleasing.
Which brings us to Hit Man. Hit Man is a mainstream movie but not quite as mainstream as School of Rock…but it also has a subtle strain of the arthouse weaving through it.
The film flies as high as its star, Glen Powell, will take it…which is high but not that high. Powell, who is definitely the current “it” guy in Hollywood, and is poised to have a big Summer with his new Twister movie coming out in July, is charming and relentlessly likeable, but there is no denying that he’s a sort of a C or D level McConaughey – which isn’t exactly a compliment.
Powell’s various hit man characters are good for a few laughs in a showy “look at me” acting type of way, most notably his impression of Christian Bale from American Psycho, which is pretty great. But Powell, for as conventionally handsome as he is, is just a nice, good-looking guy…and that’s about it. He’s likeable, but he’s not very interesting. That doesn’t mean he won’t be a big movie star, it just means that he won’t be a very interesting movie star.
Powell’s co-star, Adria Arjona, who plays Gary’s love interest Madison, is certainly easy on the eyes, and she does a decent enough job in the role. But Arjona, like Powell, feels like a C or D level talent…which isn’t the worst thing in the world, but it also isn’t the best.
One can’t help but think while watching Hit Man that thirty years ago a movie like this would’ve starred George Clooney and Julia Roberts and been a massive hit…but in today’s world, it stars Glen Powell and Adria Arjona, and is streaming on Netflix and, frankly, will be forgotten almost as soon as the credits roll.
And that is the problem…Hit Man isn’t a bad movie, but it also isn’t great. It is an adequately-made, amusing-enough piece of middle-brow entertainment with some dark twists thrown in to give it some artistic credence.
The film tries to be sexy, but just isn’t steamy enough to make the grade. It tries to be funny, but never consistently hits the comedy mark. It tries to be dark and daring but doesn’t have quite cajones to be fully either.
This isn’t to say the film is bad…it really and truly isn’t. It certainly has its charms and it is entertaining enough, and to its credit it does have something to say and says it in a rather clever and covert way. It is well-constructed and professionally crafted, but ultimately this is a movie that comes and goes and that is the end of that…which is emblematic of the state of cinema and the movie business.
Unfortunately, Hit Man is, like so much of cinema today, fine but forgettable. That many critics are fawning all over it speaks less to the quality of the film than the overall diminishment in the quality of cinema (and film criticism) as a whole in recent years.
To circle back to the notion of Linklater as the cinematic voice of Generation X, I would point readers in the direction of a film that came out last year, also about a hit man, also on Netflix, titled The Killer. The Killer is darker, smarter, funnier, more masterfully made and substantially better movie than Hit Man. The Killer’s director is David Fincher, who is of the same generation as Linklater and is infinitely a better filmmaker…as are a plethora of filmmakers from a similar era, which is why Linklater being the labelled the Gen X guy is so absurd.
Regardless of Linklater’s filmmaking status, the question is…is Hit Man worth watching? My answer would be…sure…why not? It seems like a good date movie as it’s a rather harmless, safe, middle of the road movie that breezes by and never moves you one way or the other over its brisk 115-minute run time.
So, if you do watch Hit Man, my recommendation is to go in with low-expectations…you won’t be overwhelmed, but you won’t be disappointed either.
Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo
©2024
****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****
My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
My Recommendation: SKIP IT. Despite Sydney Sweeney’s breast efforts, this movie falls flat.
Anyone but You, the rom-com starring Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell, hit theatres back in December and became a bona fide box office sensation. I missed Anyone but You in theatres but it’s now on Netflix and I just watched it…and I have some thoughts.
The film, written and directed by Will Gluck, tells the story of Bea (Sweeney) and Ben (Powell), two attractive people who had a magical meet cute but then for some moronic reason now hate each other and are forced to attend a getaway wedding in Australia. In order to stave off prying parents and make ex-lovers jealous, Bea and Ben decide to pretend to be a couple at this wedding…which of course is not just a lesbian wedding but an inter-racial lesbian wedding because we live in a pandering hellscape.
The premise of the film is absurd to the point of abject stupidity, and the filmmaking on display is at best amateurish…so why did this film make $219 million at the box office. I’ll tell you why…because Sydney Sweeney is a force of nature…or more accurately stated, Sydney Sweeney’s magnificently magnetic mouth-watering melons are a force of nature and may in fact be so perfect as to be the epicenter around which the known universe rotates.
I’m kidding…sort of. Sydney Sweeney is an odd duck…she’s certainly beautiful and sexy…and her ample bosoms are the greatest thing this country has produced in the last 200 years…but she also talks like she has a hearing impairment and has the facial expressions of the new kid in the special ed class.
To her great credit though she is totally game and up for anything to try and get a laugh in this movie…most of the time she fails miserably but it is her commitment to the buffoonish bits that makes her such an appealing and compelling screen presence.
Sweeney is sort of a cross between Bridget Bardot and Jennifer Lawrence. She’s not as naturally gregarious or hot-girl-next-door-ish as Lawrence or as incandescently sexy as Bardot, but she’s got roughly 25% of each woman within her and that makes her 50% interesting.
Sweeney’s co-star, Glen Powell, is poised to be the next “it” guy and it’s easy to see why in this movie. He’s certainly handsome in a rather boring and sterile way, but like his co-star he too is down to do whatever needs be done to make a bit funny. Again, the bits rarely if ever work, but Powell’s commitment to them is very endearing.
Powell feels like a hybrid between Matthew McConaughey and Ryan Gosling. He’s sort of a safe version of the lesser parts of both men. Powell isn’t as charming and sexy as McConaughey or as funny and talented as Gosling, but he’s sort of in the same ballpark…if it’s a really, really big ballpark…like the Big House in Michigan – home to the NCAA Football National Champion University of Michigan Wolverines (Go Blue!).
Despite the charms of Sweeney and Powell, Anyone but You is, frankly, dreadful. It is painfully stupid, poorly shot, and except for Sweeney and Powell, exceedingly poorly acted. For example, GaTa, who plays the lesbian bride’s brother and Ben’s friend, may be the worst actor I’ve seen in a feature film in the last decade. This guy is so awful it felt like a mentally ill homeless man wandered on to the set and no one had the heart to ask him to leave.
But in GaTa’s defense, much better actors didn’t fare any better. For example, veteran actors Bryan Brown and Dermot Mulroney both give astonishingly poor performances that are not just awful but embarrassing. Brown and Mulroney’s performances feel like they’re from two people who’ve never seen a movie, never mind acted in one. The once promising Rachel Griffiths doesn’t fare any better.
The truth is that the only reason to watch this witless movie is to spend two hours with Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell. Whatever Sweeney’s and Powell’s faults as actors the one thing that is undeniable about them is that they are both extremely likable…and in today’s watered-down movie culture that’s more than enough to pass as a “movie star”.
Anyone can guess what the future holds for Sweeney and Powell. Sweeney, who was quite good in HBO’s Euphoria and The White Lotus, needs to navigate the perilous minefield that is being a sex symbol in our current culture, no easy task as being so sexually appealing to men can often turn the female audience against an actress. She and her team will need to figure out how to make men want her and women relate to her – something Anyone but You successfully accomplishes. One hopes that she can find her way and build a career filled with much better films and interesting roles…she certainly has shown flashes of the talent and skill required to become an actress of impact.
Glen Powell seems to have a much lower ceiling than Sydney Sweeney, but a much higher floor only because he is not the type of actor men will dislike since he isn’t one of those grating Hollywood pansy-ass pretty boys. Powell’s greatest strength is that he seems to be a good dude…and while he is good looking, he isn’t too good-looking…hence the high floor/low ceiling.
As for Anyone but You and whether you should watch it…well…I can’t imagine telling anyone that they need to see this movie. It is instantly forgettable and aggressively idiotic. It’s the type of movie you watch on a plane when there’s nothing else available, or when you’re on the couch recovering from surgery and can’t quite reach the remote without bursting your sutures.
The bottom line is that Anyone but You is a bad movie, but years from now we might look back on it as the big box office breakout for the biggest, breastiest movie star of all time, Sydney Sweeney, and say “thanks for the mammaries”…I certainly hope so.
Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo
©2024
****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****
My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
My Recommendation: SKIP IT. An insidiously venal piece of rom-com slop.
The Idea of You, the new Amazon movie starring Anne Hathaway and Nicholas Galitzine, is one of those insipid romantic comedies that is neither romantic nor comedic.
The film, written by Jennifer Westfeldt and Michael Showalter and directed by Showalter, tells the tale of Solene Marchand (Hathaway), a 40-year-old divorcee and single mother who owns an art gallery in Los Angeles.
Through happenstance Solene takes her teen daughter and her friends to Coachella for a music festival and there she meets and begins a love affair with Hayes, the lead singer of a popular boy band, who happens to be sixteen years her junior.
The story of The Idea of You, which apparently is based upon a book of the same name that no self-respecting human being should have ever read, is one of those divorced wine-mom wet dreams where middle-aged women can imagine themselves being so uber-desirable and hyper-successful and amazing that some high value, wealthy, famous and handsome young stud falls head over heels for them.
For an outsider like me, who is neither divorced nor a wine mom desperate for glory days gone by, this story and the character of Solene seem both fantastical and frankly pathetic. No doubt I would be run out of the mid-day chardonnay ladies book club for voicing such a misogynistic and hateful opinion.
The problems with The Idea of You go well beyond the ridiculous premise. The film bills itself as a romantic comedy yet there isn’t a single thing in it that is even remotely funny or even approaching funny.
The romance side of it is pretty lacking as well, as Hathaway and Galitzine have all the sexual chemistry of week-old dog turd roasting in the hot sun.
That Anne Hathaway is once again playing a sort of ugly duckling transformed into a princess (sexy or otherwise) is, to borrow from her favorite acting tick, eye-rolling. Yes, she has succeeded in this type of role in the past in films like The Devil Wears Prada and those Princess Diary movies, but the bloom is off the rose and it falls entirely flat in The Idea of You.
Ms. Hathaway is certainly a beautiful woman, and to pretend like she’s not or that she’s some frumpy old hag, is absurd to the point of being annoying. Even more absurd is the fact that her daughter in the film, Izzy (Ella Rubin), looks like she is Solene’s slightly younger sister.
In fact, the age difference stuff is the most-inane part of this entirely inane movie. Solene is forty but looks thirty-three, and Hayes is twenty-four and looks thirty-two, and Izzy is seventeen and looks twenty-eight. Everyone seems to be in the same suffocating age bracket and none of it makes any sense whatsoever.
Another extremely annoying part of the movie is that viewers must suffer through musical performances by Hayes and his insufferably awful boy band. Galitzine is apparently a singer in real life, so I assume he’s doing the actual singing in the movie, and I suppose it’s fine, it’s just that the songs are so god-awful atrocious as to be criminal. And that we must sit through entire renditions of these terrible songs that seem interminable throughout the film, feels like a crime against humanity.
In addition, Galitzine’s Hayes and his boy band bros are supposed to be the biggest boy band around but they are so relentlessly amateurish and such raging mediocrities, and their performances so stilted and underwhelming that it all seems even more ridiculous than the asinine premise of the movie.
The Idea of You also violates one of the rules that rarely if ever fails me, namely that if a character must run the gauntlet of a gaggle of rabid journalists/paparazzi at any time in a movie…then that movie sucks. I cannot recall a time when this rule was violated and the film was good and The Idea of You is perfect evidence of the rule’s validity.
Now, to be clear, I am not exactly the target audience for this film. But it is streaming on Amazon and that behemoth has put its considerable corporate heft behind the movie and promoting it, so it caught my eye and I gave it a watch…so you don’t have to.
What is so striking to me about The Idea of You is that this movie, its aesthetics, its tone, its story, the performances and everything about it except its star, is a Hallmark level piece of work. If this were starring Lacey Chabert and running on Lifetime, no one, myself most of all, would even know it exists or ever watch it. But because it stars Anne Hathaway and Amazon is behind it, it is thrust into the cultural spotlight and is taken seriously…or as seriously as a movie like this can be taken.
The truth is that if this movie were made fifteen years ago and starred Julia Roberts and Ryan Gosling, then it maybe, might’ve had a chance to be a big hit. But it wasn’t…and it definitely isn’t.
Anne Hathaway has her charms, but in a role like this in a film like this, they wear unconscionably thin, and Nicholas Galitzine is neither sexy enough nor interesting enough to move the needle in either direction, and so, The Idea of You ends up falling decidedly flat.
If you are looking for a mindless piece of rom-com entertainment, best avoid The Idea of You because it is either too mindless…or ironically, not mindless enough, to be of any value or worth.
The bottom line is that The Idea of You is a bad idea made into a bad movie, and rom-com lovers who seek it out will be looking for love in all the wrong places.
Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo
©2024
****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!***
My Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
My Recommendation: SEE IT/SKIP IT. This flawed film is the worst of the fantastic recent reboot franchise, but it’s decent enough for Planet of the Apes fanatics despite its very pronounced flaws.
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, the fourth film in the Planet of the Apes franchise reboot (and the ninth in the overall franchise), hit theatres this past weekend and handily won the box office by raking in $129 million.
The film, written by Josh Friedman and directed by Wes Ball, is set many generations after the events of its tremendous predecessor, War for the Planet of the Apes, which dramatized Caesar, the patriarch of the intelligent apes, delivering the first generation of said apes to the promised land.
In Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, the memory of the founding father Caesar is long forgotten by many tribes of apes living in isolated enclaves. One of these tribes is an eagle collecting group of apes, among them a young chimp named Noa (Owen Teague).
Noa accidentally stumbles upon another group of apes who not only remember the history of Caesar, but exploit it for nefarious, authoritarian means. This group, led by Proximus Caesar and his henchman gorilla Sylva, go on a rampage of conquest in order to Make Planet of the Apes Great Again….and Noa and his peaceful tribe bear the brunt of their ambition.
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes has Sasquatchian-sized shoes to fill considering the brilliance of its three predecessors Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, and War for the Planet of the Apes, and, to be frank, it never even approaches adequately filling them. To be clear, the film isn’t bad, but it also isn’t the least bit great, and it is easily the worst of the four films in the rebooted franchise.
Planet of the Apes films, even in the original franchise of the late 1960s and early 1970s, have always been great ideas with social issues embedded deep within the sci-fi splendor.
The same is true of Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, as it explores authoritarianism, exploitation, manipulation and other social issues. But just like the flawed early 1970’s sequels, Kingdom is much better as an idea than it is in execution.
The biggest issue with Kingdom is that none of its characters are even remotely compelling. The protagonist, Noa (Owen Teague), is no Caesar. He’s a rather dull and disinteresting chimp surrounded by equally dull chimps, like his friends Soona and Anaya. It also doesn’t help that it’s very difficult to tell the chimps apart as they – excuse my chimp racism – all look alike.
The uniformity of Noa’s tribe is further hampered by the flatness of each character. None stand out and none are fully fleshed out. As a result, none of their relationships are developed to the point where they’d be meaningful, never mind captivating.
The humans don’t fare any better. Nova (Freya Allen) is a mysterious human woman who isn’t that mysterious nor interesting. We never truly understand where she comes from or what motivates her. Trevathan (William H. Macy), is a human who works with apes and his story might’ve been pretty interesting but we never get to see it so we’ll never know.
Besides the lackluster characters, the film also suffers due to a lack of narrative clarity and visual crispness. Both of these shortcomings fall in the lap of director Wes Ball. Ball’s previous films include the Maze Runner trilogy, which isn’t exactly the pinnacle of cinematic experience. Watching Ball’s Planet of the Apes movie only increases Matt Reeves standing, as he directed the stellar Dawn and War films and has now graduated to the Batman franchise.
Kingdom’s plot jumps around from a coming-of-age story to a road picture to a fight-the-power narrative, but by trying to be all of these things it ends up being none of them.
Yes, Kingdom does nicely pay homage to the original 1968 film, particularly in one section with its distinct visual style and signature music, and it also gives adequate depth to the franchise’s mythology and archetypes, like having Noa (the biblical Noah – get it?) survive a flood of monkey shit both figuratively and sort of literally. But the movie never grabs you by the throat and makes you pay attention. It never makes you care much about the characters you’re supposed to care about, and never hate the characters you’re supposed to hate.
The best character in the entire film is without question Raka (Peter Macon), a monastic Orangutan who is keeping the gospel of Caesar and his sacred sayings alive, even if it is just to himself. But even Raka is not as good as say Maurice, the stunning orangutan from the previous trilogy.
That said, Raka has far too little screen time, and would be very well served with a Disney + mini-series (as would the entirety of the Orangutan class in the Planet of the Apes universe – give us a Dr. Zaius series!!), which I would voraciously watch. But instead, he’s given short shrift and the film suffers because of it.
The same is true of Proximus Caesar (Kevin Durand), the villainous chimp leader of a powerful group of apes, and his number one general Sylva (Eka Darville), a rough and tumble lowland gorilla.
The origin story of Proximus and Sylva too would make an interesting mini-series or feature film, no doubt more compelling than the rather tepid adventures of Noa, the good-hearted country ape forced to face the big, bad world. But instead Proximus and Sylva are rather thin characters despite there being a lot of meat left on those bones.
As far as the visuals of the film go, cinematographer Gyula Pados never paints with much flair, unlike his predecessors in the reboot trilogy. The film looks fine, but in comparison to the luscious visual feast of War for the Planet of the Apes for instance, Kingdom falls flat. The same is true of the action sequences, as the fight scenes, most notably the climactic battle, are dramatically underwhelming and poorly designed.
In addition, the CGI, for some reason, looks a little bit off compared to the previous films, or maybe it was just the lack of unique and compelling characters that made the visuals seem less than. For example, there is no character in this entire film that looks as good as say Koba or Maurice from the three previous films.
Another issue is the acting. Despite it being motion-capture acting, it is still acting, and the cast of the previous three films, most notably Andy Serkis as Caesar and Toby Kebbell as Koba, showed audiences the brilliance possible while acting through technology. Nothing in this film even comes close the stellar work of the cast in the previous films.
For example, Kevin Durand gives a rather trite and predictable performance as the villain Proximus. His bluster and big voice are routine for any first-time actor trying to play the heavy.
Owen Teague as Noa never lives up to the work Serkis did as Caesar, which to be fair, is an impossible task as Andy Serkis is the Marlon Brando of motion-capture acting….but still, the drop-off is notable and uncomfortable.
Now, with all of that bitching and moaning aside…I still have to admit that I liked Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes mostly because the original Planet of the Apes movies were my favorite film franchise of all-time and the reboot trilogy has only made the franchise in total even greater as they were sensational. Kingdom definitely has massive flaws – as explained above, but on the bright side, unlike Tim Burton’s shitty 2001 Apes movie, this is a real film and is passable entertainment. While not great, it is not an embarrassment to the franchise or the rich mythology of the franchise.
If, like me, you love the Planet of the Apes in general, you’ll like this movie well enough. It isn’t anywhere near as good as the previous three films, but it isn’t catastrophically bad either. But the bottom line is…Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is a professionally made movie about talking monkeys plotting against and beating the hell out of each other…what’s not to like?
That said, one can only hope that the next Planet of the Apes film is a step up from Kingdom, or at least a step in the right direction, and this extraordinarily long-running, high-quality, fascinating franchise finds better footing moving forward.
Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo
©2024
****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****
My Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars
My Popcorn Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
My Recommendation: One of the weaker MonsterVerse movies, but it still features some pretty cool monster brawls. Ultimately, a mindless monster movie that unfortunately speaks to our current moment in all the wrong ways.
Godzilla x Kong: A New Empire, directed by Adam Wingard, is the fifth film in the Legendary Pictures MonsterVerse and is a sequel to the 2021 film Godzilla vs Kong.
Godzilla x Kong is the second Godzilla movie to hit theatres in the last six months, following in the large footsteps of the Academy Award winning blockbuster Godzilla Minus One. The big difference between the two films is that Godzilla Minus One is a Japanese production and Godzilla x Kong is in every way, shape and form, an American production…up to and including having the word “Empire” in the title.
I am a huge Godzilla fan and have been since I was a kid watching the Toho films of old which featured a guy in a Godzilla suit destroying model Japanese cities. I loved those movies and am a total sucker for all things Godzilla because of it.
That said, I’ve never truly loved any American Godzilla films. Starting with Godzilla, King of the Monsters! (1956), the atrocious Americanized version of the fantastic original 1954 Japanese film Godzilla.
Then there was the 1998 film Godzilla starring Matthew Broderick, or as I call it, “Ferris Bueller Fights Godzilla”. Not a good Godzilla movie.
Then after a long dry spell came the Legendary Pictures MonsterVerse, which started in 2014 with Godzilla – a film I was lukewarm on. This was followed by Kong: Skull Island in 2017, a film I disliked. In 2019 Godzilla: King of the Monsters hit the big screens and I liked it a bit but it wasn’t great. Then in 2021 we got Godzilla vs Kong, a flawed but fun brawl. Which brings us to today and Godzilla x Kong.
In preparation for Godzilla x Kong: A New Empire I spent the last week rewatching the Legendary MonsterVerse movies….but this time I watched them with my 8-year-old son, who had never seen any Godzilla movies until Godzilla Minus One this past fall, but has grown up hearing me tell endless tales of Godzilla’s exploits.
Rewatching the MonsterVerse with my son was a great deal of fun…as is watching every movie with my son. Seeing movies through his young, unjaded, uncynical eyes, is refreshing for a bitter old cinema war horse like me. My son doesn’t roll his eyes at cliches or tired tropes, he shakes with excitement and joy and it makes me very happy. In order to maintain his cinematic purity, I never tell my son I dislike a movie…ever. I let him bask in the glow of the fun and in fact encourage it, always adding positive thoughts to our discussions post-movie.
Upon rewatching the MonsterVerse, I discovered a few things.
The first is that some of the movies were better than I remembered or at first believed. To be clear, none of the films are as good as say Godzilla Minus One, but they have their moments.
For example, I thought my son would be bored watching Godzilla (2014) because it takes a long time for Godzilla to show up and when he does you don’t see him all that clearly. But the opposite was true, my son was totally sucked into the story and thoroughly enjoyed it. As a result, I ended up liking Godzilla (2014) more as well.
My son liked Kong: Skull Island more than me, but I still thought it had some cool moments, and thought the premise was top-notch but the execution had some issues.
Upon rewatch I really liked Godzilla: King of the Monsters, as did my son. This is just an old school monster movie banger. Big monsters kicking the hell out of each other…lots of fun but never silly – which is vitally important.
Then came Godzilla vs Kong, which was, like the Toho movies of my youth, a fun and solid monster movie too. But Godzilla vs Kong also marked a major shift in the franchise. This was Adam Wingard’s directorial debut in the MonsterVerse, and he changes the tone of the franchise dramatically.
Toho’s Godzilla Minus One was so impactful because the damage Godzilla brings to the real world kills real people and those people have value and meaning to those who survive.
In the first three MonsterVerse films the monsters, be they Godzilla, Kong or any of their adversaries, were destructive and deadly, and a major dramatic throughline of those films is the trauma inflicted upon mankind by the death and destruction caused by the monsters.
For example, Godzilla (2014) opens with Juliette Binoche getting killed as a result of monster movement, which spurs the rest of the film. A major plot point in Godzilla: King of the Monsters is that a father’s young son is killed during Godzilla’s rampage in San Francisco in Godzilla. In Kong: Skull Island, Samuel L. Jackson moves heaven and earth to kill Kong because Kong killed men in his military unit.
Real people die as a result of these monsters in the first three MonsterVerse films, and those deaths resonate throughout all the living characters. That sentiment disappears once Wingard takes the helm.
That said, Wingard choreographs some pretty sweet monster brawls in Godzilla vs Kong so it’s cool, but it just doesn’t really mean much of anything.
Which brings us to Godzilla x Kong. Let me start by saying my son loved the movie….which makes sense as seeing big monsters on the big screen is pretty awesome even if the movie is not so great…and Godzilla x Kong is…well…not so great.
It seemed to me that Godzilla x Kong was a bit of a jumping of the shark for the MonsterVerse, as it featured an incoherently elaborate plot, a plethora of silliness, and a dearth of life and death consequences that reduced the proceedings to utter absurdity.
Yes, there are some cool monster fights and I enjoyed them no end, but there’s a tone of frivolity infused in the film that makes it feel tongue-in cheek and winking (literally), which I dislike.
To get into the plot is sort of a foolish endeavor, I’ll just say that Godzilla and Kong are not fighting each other at the film’s open because Godzilla lives on the surface of the earth and Kong lives in the hollow earth. But then there’s trouble in hollow earth when a super-secret extra hollow earth is discovered. The story goes from there and involves the Iwi tribe from Skull Island, a tyrannical ape-king, an ice-breathing monster and lots of strange science regarding inverted gravity.
If you’re looking for big monster fights, you’ll definitely get your fair share in this film as there’s spectacle galore, featuring some of earth’s most well-known tourist attractions being stomped by pissed off monsters.
Some of the fights are better than others, and there’s not enough Godzilla in the movie for my liking, but that said, if you’re just looking for some empty-headed monster brawls, the movie gives it to you. Unfortunately for me I like movies like Godzilla Minus One and Godzilla: King of the Monsters, which rest on the premise that these monsters are real and exist in a real world with real people. Godzilla x Kong: A New Empire is not that.
Speaking of real world and real people, it is striking to me that this movie has the term “Empire” in its title, as does the new Ghostbusters movie Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire.
As someone who notices these sorts of things, it is quite fascinating that as the American Empire erodes and crumbles in real time before our eyes, we are given signs of a “new empire” and a “frozen empire”. If I had to choose, I’d say our empire is well on its way to “freezing” and a new empire is rising to take its place – maybe/probably centered in Beijing.
There’s a recurring visual in Godzilla x Kong which shows Godzilla curling up in the Roman Colosseum, sleeping in the belly of an empire long past. Then there’s the battle between Godzilla and Kong at the pyramids, a symbol of an empire even deeper in history.
This all ties in with the lack of humanity featured in these last two Wingard directed Godzilla movies.
What is striking about this symbolism and wordplay regarding “empire” and the elimination of concerns about human life, is that a real-world drama involving empire and a disregard for humanity is playing out right before our eyes if we only had the courage to look and see it clearly.
The American Empire is directly responsible for the bloodbath in Ukraine, as it has made it very clear it is willing to fight to the last Ukrainian in its narcissistic proxy war against Russia.
The American Empire, led around by its nose by its Israeli paymasters, is also responsible for the wicked slaughter in Gaza, where more than 30,000 people, mostly women and children, have been massacred by the vile Israeli regime, armed by America.
The American Empire is losing on every front and no longer has the skill or will to win a fight for its survival. That, of course, doesn’t mean it won’t violently flail as it sinks into the graveyard of history, killing thousands, if not millions, on its way down.
The symbolism throughout Godzilla x Kong: A New Empire certainly kept me thinking, but only a certified lunatic like myself would ever notice these things. Most other people will only see the big monsters beating the hell out of each other and the poor performances of the cast, most notably Dan Stevens, giving one of the most vacuous and phony performances in recent cinematic history as Trapper, the most derivative character in recent cinematic history.
The bottom line is that if you want to watch truly mindless death and destruction nowadays you have two choices…you can either turn on the news and watch the bloody and brutal fruits of America’s demonic foreign policy in Ukraine and Gaza dance across your screen…or you can go watch Godzilla and Kong dance across the big screen at the local cineplex.
Regardless of which choice you make, the end result will be the same, and that is that America and its allies will slaughter more innocent people across the globe, and American Empire will slowly suffocate under the immense weight of its own endless moral corruption.
FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER: @MPMActingCo
©2024
****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****
My Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
My Recommendation: SEE IT/SKIP IT. If you’ve read the book, see the movie in a good theatre (emphasis on “good”). If you haven’t read the book, you should read it because it’s very good…and then watch the movie when it hits streaming.
Dune: Part Two, written and directed by Denis Villeneuve based on the classic science fiction book series by Frank Herbert, continues telling the tale of the struggle for the control of the pivotal, resource-rich planet, Arrakis, also known as Dune.
The film, which stars Timothee Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Austin Butler and Florence Pugh, among many others, is the sequel to Dune (2021), a Best Picture nominee and six-time Academy Award winner.
Last Saturday I ventured out to the cineplex to see Dune: Part Two, which no doubt will be ending its theatrical run in the coming weeks having been initially released on March 1st.
I went to the 11:50 am showing because I had a very tight window in which to see the two-hour and forty-five-minute film, and that show was the only one that worked.
I went to a Regal theatre which I’d never been to before…and my experience was…dismaying.
First off, the theatre was a confusing mess that felt like it hadn’t been cleaned or refurbished in forty years.
Secondly, the ticket printer wasn’t working so I had to wait forever to get my actual ticket.
Thirdly, when I went into the screening room, it was 11:45 am – plenty of time before the film started, but unfortunately the film didn’t start at 11:50 am. No, the commercials which were already running pre-show continued at 11:50…and kept going and going and going….until 12:10 pm…and then the film still didn’t start…but the previews did. The actual movie didn’t start until 12:20, a full half hour after the listed start time.
What are we doing people? I get maybe ten minutes of previews and commercials, but thirty minutes?
And to top it all off, Regal, like nearly every cinema in America – and certainly every cinema in fly-over country where I currently reside, has a shitty, poorly maintained digital projector that is too dark, and a screen that is too small, and theatre lights that are never dimmed enough. The end result is it feels like you’re watching a movie underwater, or worse, like watching a movie at a drive-in in broad daylight because corporate theatre companies have no interest in spending money on upgrades to their venues, most notably their god-awful projectors.
So that was the context of my Dune: Part Two movie going experience…and yet, I was still able to enjoy the film to a certain degree despite having to literally imagine in my mind what each gloriously framed shot from Denis Villeneuve and cinematographer Greig Fraser actually looked like as opposed to the muddied mess I was presented at Regal.
As for the film itself, Dune: Part Two picks up exactly where its predecessor finished, and both movies combined tell the story contained in Herbert’s first book titled Dune – which chronicles Paul Atreidis struggle to survive on Dune following an invasion and the murder of his father the king, and then his attempt to avenge his father’s death and conquer the planet. A third film, titled Dune: Messiah, is allegedly being made and is to be based on the book of the same name which is the second book in Herbert’s series.
Dune: Part Two is what I would describe as an arthouse blockbuster. Villeneuve is a highly skilled auteur, and his cinematic capabilities are on full display in this film – the same ones that garnered the first Dune film a bevy of below the line Academy Awards (Cinematography, Sound, Editing Visual Effects, Production Design), but so are his weaknesses.
For example, the fight scenes, action scenes and battle scenes are a mixed bag. Some are spectacularly well-conceived and miraculously executed, while others, particularly the climactic battle and subsequent individual fight, are underwhelming and visually muddled.
Another weakness of the film, and in my opinion its greatest, is the acting of its two leads. Timothee Chalamet is a mystery to me. I don’t think he’s a very good actor, and while he is passable as Paul “Muad’Dib” Atreides in Dune: Part Two, he still isn’t very good. Chalamet is such a wispy, flimsy, charisma-free screen presence that it seems so improbable he be a messianic leader to a warrior tribe as to be ridiculous.
An even bigger problem is Zendaya. I really have no idea how Zendaya became such a massive star, but it sure as hell wasn’t because of her acting talent. Zendaya is actively awful in the role of Chani, Paul’s love interest, to a distracting degree. All she seems able to do is give a dead-eyed pout.
Both Chalamet and Zendaya are incapable of being anything on-screen other than petulant Gen-Z poseurs, and that is a terrible burden for a film which is mostly populated by a cast of rather skilled professionals, set in an imagined science fiction future.
Speaking of disastrous casting decisions, Christopher Walken plays the Emperor Shaddam IV, and is egregiously atrocious. Walken is doing Walken things and it all feels so out of place as to be cringe-worthy.
On the bright-side, there are some very noticeable performances. Austin Butler is fantastic as the ferocious Feyd-Routha, and chews the scenery with a relentless aplomb. I couldn’t help but wonder if Butler should’ve been playing Paul instead of Chalamet, although he might be too old.
Rebecca Ferguson is as solid as they come and she certainly doesn’t disappoint as Lady Jessica, Paul’s mother and a spiritual figure to the Fremen people. Ferguson is such a striking screen presence and magnetic actress it is astonishing she doesn’t work even more than she already does.
Florence Pugh, Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem and Lea Seydoux all give solid supporting performances as well.
When I saw the first Dune film I was about sixty pages into the book Dune, so I knew enough to know what was happening, but not enough to really understand it.
Having now read the first three books of the Dune saga – which is phenomenal by the way, I have a much greater understanding of everything going on in the story, and that is both a blessing and a curse.
It’s a blessing because Villeneuve tells these stories in shorthand, and expects viewers to understand the references being made. Having read the books I know understand those references and it makes the movies much more enjoyable.
On the downside, Villeneuve does make some pretty substantial changes to the story (I won’t say what exactly to avoid spoilers), particularly in Dune: Part Two. I understand why changes like this are made in film adaptations of books, they’re not the same storytelling mediums so this is inevitable, but it is still jarring and makes the whole enterprise feel a bit watered-down. To be frank, the story in the book is much better than the story in the movie…but that is usually the case when it comes to adaptations.
Dune: Part Two has done very well at the box office thus far, generating $574 million on a $190 budget. If this were a Marvel movie it would be considered a disappointment…but it isn’t a Marvel movie…and that’s important.
Villeneuve’s Dune franchise is off to a very steady start and is successfully threading the needle between box office success and artistry. The first film won 6 notable Academy Awards, and this one will be contending for those same awards.
Marvel seems to be a dying entity and no genre/IP is thus far poised to take its place. Dune represents not so much a replacement for Marvel IP, but a replacement for the idea of movies that Marvel has propagated. Instead of making movies expecting a billion-dollar box office, maybe Dune sets the expectations that auteurs can venture into the land of IP and use their artistry and vision to create something new that is both respected as art but also as blockbuster entertainment (with the definition of blockbuster scaled back ) – hence my description of Dune: Part Two as arthouse blockbuster.
If Dune and this type of filmmaking is the future of blockbusters, then sign me up. Villeneuve is a highly-skilled moviemaker, and despite his flaws he never fails to make something visually compelling and dramatically interesting.
Dune: Part Two isn’t for everybody. In fact, I’d say, if you haven’t read the books then you’d probably struggle to understand what is happening a good portion of the time. That said, I’d highly recommend the books as they are fantastic…and then once you’ve read the first book check out Dune and Dune: Part Two.
My recommendation for cinephiles, those who have read the book and those who enjoyed the first film, is to go see Dune: Part Two in a good theatre.
Unfortunately for me, I will have to wait until Dune: Part Two becomes available on streaming where I can watch it in my home, without thirty minutes of commercials and with superior audio-visual equipment, before I can accurately judge and thoroughly comment on its true cinematic value.
Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo
©2024
On this episode, Barry and I don our stillsuits and head to Arrakis to discuss Denis Villeneuve's new film, Dune: Part Two, starring Timothee Chalamet and Zendaya. Topics discussed include the dismal state of modern cinemas, the weak acting of Li'l Timmy and Zendaya, and the future of sci-fi movies.
Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 119 - Dune: Part Two
Thanks for listening!
©2024
On this episode, Barry and I head to Victorian England to discuss Yorgos Lanthimos' crazy Frankenstein-fueled, feminist sex-romp Poor Things, starring Academy Award winning Best Actress Emma Stone. Topics discussed include the astonishing brilliance of Emma Stone, the misery of miscast Mark Ruffalo, and the originality, skill and talent of Lanthimos and cinematographer Robbie Ryan.
Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 118 - Poor Things
Thanks for listening!!
©2024
Acting Coach & Teacher Westside Los Angeles
FILM
September 5 directed by Tim Fehlbaum
Flow directed by Gints Zilbalodis
The Brutalist directed by Brady Corbet
Sing Sing directed by Greg Kwedar
Nosferatu directed by Robert Eggers
The Substance directed by Coralie Fargeat
Late Night with the Devil directed by Colin and Cameron Cairns
Joker: Folie a Deux directed by Todd Phillips
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga directed by George Miller
Dune: Part Two directed by Denis Villeneuve
TV
Beyond: UFOs and the Unknown (MGM+)
Predator: Killer of Killers
Sing Sing (pod)
Saturday Night
UFO WEEK - Battle for Disclosure
UFO WEEK - Beyond: UFOs and the Unknown
UFO WEEK - Investigation Alien
UFO WEEK - Manhattan Alien Abduction
The Rings of Power: Season Two (TV)
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
American Conspiracy: The Octopus Murders (TV)
Killers of the Flower Moon (pod)
Monarch: Legacy of Monsters (pod)
Wes Anderson Roald Dahl Short Film Collection (pod)
Wes Anderson Roald Dahl Short Film Collection
Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One (pod)
Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (pod)
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (pod)
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
The Mandalorian Season Three (TV)
TV Round Up - White Lotus/Black Bird/Slow Horses/Succession/The Mandalorian
History of the World Part II (tv)
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (pod)
The Banshees of Inisherin (pod)
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (spoilers)
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (spoiler free)
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (pod)
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio(pod)
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio
All Quiet on the Western Front (pod)
All Quiet on the Western Front (2022)
Moment of Contact - Documentary
House of the Dragon - Current Fantasy TV Champion of the World
The Greatest Beer Run Ever (pod)
The Rings of Power Season One: Final Analysis
She-Hulk: Attorney at Law Season One - Final Analysis
TV Round Up: House of the Dragon, Rings of Power, She-Hulk and Andor
Thor: Love and Thunder and the State of the MCU(pod)
Obi-Wan Kenobi(TV)(first 3 eps)(final 3 eps)
Jurassic World: Dominion(review)/(Pod)
Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
Everything Everywhere All at Once
The Lost Daughter(pod)
Pam and Tommy(TV)
Peacemaker (Ep.1-3)/Peacemaker(finale)(TV)
Nightmare Alley(pod)
Everything’s Gonna Be All White(TV)
Ozark(TV)
Finch(pod)
Hawkeye(TV)
JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass
Succession(TV)
Dopesick(TV)
Ted Lasso Season Two(TV-pod)
Convergence: Courage in a Crisis
Y: The Last Man(TV)
Harry and Meghan: Escaping the Palace(TV)
Obama: In Pursuit of a More Perfect Union(TV)
The Prince(TV)
What If?(TV)
CODA(pod)
WandaVision/Winter Soldier/Loki(TV-pod)
No Sudden Move(pod)
We the People(TV)
Bo Burnham: Inside(pod)
Tenet(pod)
Exterminate All the Brutes (TV)
Coded Bias (TV)
Coming 2 America(pod)
Ted Lasso(TV-pod)
Crack: Cocaine, Corruption and Conspiracy
Recipe for Seduction(pod)
The Queen’s Gambit(TV-pod)
The Crown(TV)
Hope Frozen: A Quest to Live Twice
Spitting Image(TV)
Cursed(TV)
Monty Python’s The Life of Brian
Lance(TV)
The Last Samurai(pod)
The Social Network(pod)
Inception(pod)
John McTiernan Films(pod)
There Will Be Blood(pod)
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy(pod)
Hell or High Water(pod)
Zodiac(pod)
Ex Machina(pod)
Contagion(pod)
Space Force(TV)
The Last Dance(TV)
Fleabag(TV)
The Amazing Jonathan Documentary
Once Upon a Time…in. Hollywood
The Last Black Man in San Francisco
Godzilla: King of the Monsters
The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
War for the Planet of the Apes
Jason Bourne, Projecting the Shadow and the Technological Hunter : A Review and Commentary
Batman v. Superman : Dawn of Justice
A Very Pleasant Awakening : Thoughts on a Galaxy Far, Far Away
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
Derek & Orange is the New Black
W.A.P.O.G. Collection: Lee Daniel's The Butler
W.A.P.O.G. Collection: August: Osage County
LIVE MUSIC REVIEWS
La La Land : An Analysis - Political Subtext
Jason Bourne, Projecting the Shadow and the Technological Hunter : A Review and Commentary
The Big Short : A Review, a Diagnosis and a Warning
Sicario: A Review and Reports From Down the Rabbit Hole of the Drug War
Citizenfour : A Review and Random Thoughts
Knight of Cups : A Review and Dispatches From the Great Malick Civil War
The Birth of a Nation : A Review and Commentary
ACTING TECHNIQUE AND THEORY
Marlon Brando, The Big Bang and the Birth of Modern Acting
Stillness: Lessons from Redford, DeNiro and Penn
Al Pacino : Top 5 performances
Requiem for a Heavyweight: James Gandolfini
On Grief and Acting: Revelations from Hamlet in the April of my Discontent
Ethan Saylor and a Lack of Empathy Part One
St. Patrick's Day : The Five Best Irish Films
AWARDS NONSENSE
1st Annual Mickey Awards (2014)
2nd Annual Mickey Awards (2015)
3rd Annual Mickey Awards (2016)
4th Annual Mickey Awards (2017)
5th Annual Mickey Awards (2018)
6th Annual Mickey Awards (2019)
7th Annual Mickey Awards (2020)
8th Annual Mickey Awards (2021)
9th Annual Mickey Awards (2022)
10th Annual Mickey Awards (2023)
11th Annual Mickey Awards (2024)
1st Slip-Me-A-Mickey Awards (2014)
2nd Slip-Me-A-Mickey Awards(2015)
3rd Slip-Me-A-Mickey Awards (2016)
4th Slip-Me-A-Mickey Awards (2017)
5th Slip-Me-A-Mickey Awards (2018)
6th Slip-Me-A-Mickey Awards (2019)
7th Slip-Me-A-Mickey Awards (2020)
8th Slip-Me-A-Mickey Awards (2021)
9th Slip-Me-A-Mickey Awards (2022)
10th Slip-Me-A-Mickey Awards (2023)
11th Annual Slip-Me-A-Mickey Awards (2024)
Must-See Documentaries
Can’t Get You Out of My Head directed by Adam Curtis
HyperNormalisation directed by Adam Curtis
Century of the Self directed by Adam Curtis
The Power of Nightmares directed by Adam Curtis
LOOKING CALIFORNIA AND FEELING MINNESOTA PODCAST
Season 1 - 2020
Ep. 2 - Marriage Story
Ep. 8 - Once Upon a Time in Hollywood*
Ep. 9 - Portrait of a Lady on Fire*
Ep. 11 - Coronavirus and Contagion
Ep. 14 - Hell or High Water*
Ep. 15 - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy*
Season 2 - 2021
Ep. 35 - Promising Young Woman
Ep. 40 - Tenet and Nolan Films
Ep. 41 - Top 5 Alien/UFO Films
Ep. 42 - No Sudden Move and Top 5 Heist Movies
Ep. 43 - WandaVision/Falcon and Winter Soldier/Loki
Ep. 44 - Bo Burnham: Inside & The State of the Comedy Union
Ep. 45 - Black Widow
Ep. 47 - Movie Streaming Recommendations
Ep. 50 - Eternals
Ep. 52 - Ghostbusters: Afterlife
Season 3 - 2022
Ep. 57 - Spider-Man: No Way Home*
Ep. 67 - Ozark Season 4 Part 2
Ep. 68 - Dr. Strange in the Mutiverse of Madness
Ep. 71 - Jurassic World: Dominion
Ep. 72 - Thor: Love and Thunder and the State of the MCU
Ep. 79 - The Greatest Beer Run Ever
Ep. 82 - All Quiet on the Western Front (2022)*
Ep. 88 Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio*
Ep. 89 - Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
Season 4 - 2023
Ep. 94 - The Banshees of Inisherin*
Ep. 95 - Oscars Wrap Up and Black Panther : Wakanda Forever
Ep. 98 - Ghosted
Ep. 99 - Air (pod)
Ep. 100 Part One - Streaming Movie Recommendations
Ep. 100 Part Two - Streaming Movie Recommendations
Ep. 101 - Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Ep. 103 - Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
Ep. 104 - Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One
Ep. 106 Ted lasso Season Three
Ep. 107 - No One Will Save You*
Ep. 108 - Wes Anderson’s Roald Dahl Short Films*
Ep. 109 - Monarch: Legacy of Monsters
Season 5 - 2024
Ep. 115 - Killers of the Flower Moon
Ep. 122 - Deadpool and Wolverine*
Season 6 - 2025
Ep. 130 - Gladiator II
DISPATCHES FROM THE SHITSHOW - 2024 ELECTION
What to Expect When You’re Expecting
Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine
The Trump Legal Charade and Other Uncomfortable Truths
Biden, Trump and the 2024 Election
Vices and a Stunning Lack of Virtues
Cheney, RFK Jr., Gambling and More
PROPAGANDA WATCH
November 2023 Propaganda Report - More 60 Minutes
Propaganda Watch: Ireland Edition
This Week in Propaganda: 60 Minutes Edition
CULTURAL CRITICISM
RIP Val Kilmer - My Best Friend
Truth, Justice and the Curious Case of Chris Kyle
Russiagate: Puzzlements and Lost Causes
The Tragedy of Charlottesville and the Age of Identity
John Oliver - Shameless Establishment Shill
Election 2016 : Random Dispatches From the Shitshow
Election 2016 Post-Mortem : Crossing the Rubicon and Chickens Coming Home to Roost
Election 2016 Aftermath : A Practical Handbook to Survive and Thrive in the Era of Trump
BLOG POSTS
2025
RIP Val Kilmer - My Best Friend
Sing Sing (pod)
Saturday Night
2024
UFO WEEK - Battle for Disclosure
UFO WEEK - Beyond: UFOs and the Unknown
UFO WEEK - Investigation Alien
UFO WEEK - Manhattan Alien Abduction
The Rings of Power: Season Two (TV)
Hollywood’s Self-Inflicted Box Office Problem
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
10th Annual Slip-Me-A-Mickey Awards
Revisiting Killers of the Flower Moon
2023
This Week in Propaganda: 60 Minutes Edition
Wes Anderson’s Roald Dahl Short Film Collection
Ahsoka (TV)
Encounters (TV) - UFO Documentary
Winning Time (TV)
Jury Duty (TV)
Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Barry (TV)
Succession (TV)
Adventures in Idiocy - Dylan Mulvaney, Max and Monty Python
The Mandalorian - Season Three (TV)
TV Round Up (White Lotus/Black Bird/Slow Horses/Succession/The Mandalorian)
The Last of Us (TV)
Mel Brooks’ History of the World Part II
9th Annual Slip-Me-A-Mickey Awards
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths
2022
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio
All Quiet on the Western Front (2022) - Review and Commentary
House of the Dragon Season One - Final Analysis
The Rings of Power Season One: Final Analysis
She-Hulk: Attorney at Law Season One - Final Analysis
The Greatest Beer Run Ever - Review and Commentary
TV Round Up: House of the Dragon, Rings of Power, She-Hulk and Andor
The Rings of Power: Amazon’s Weaponization of Tolkien and Tokens
The Last Movie Stars documentary
House of the Dragon - Episode One
She-Hulk: Attorney at Law - Episode One
Obi-Wan Kenobi: The Final Verdict
Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
Everything Everywhere All at Once
Come and See (1985) and the War in Ukraine
Everything’s Gonna Be All White
The Book of Boba Fett and the Future of Star Wars
2021
Out of the Shadows: The Man Behind the Steele Dossier
Convergence: Courage in a Crisis
The Russians are Coming…to Space!
Harry and Meghan Lifetime Movie
The Woke Wet Dream of ‘What If…?’
Numbnuts Chris Evans Goes Full Captain America
Obama: In Pursuit of a More Perfect Union
They Are Us and the Tragedy Trap
Tarantino’s Pact with the Weinstein Devil
Pentagon UFO Report Viewer’s Guide
In the Heights Box Office Bomb
Riz Ahmed and Muslim Under-Representation
Anne Boleyn and Color Conscious Casting
The Father and the MSM’s Dementia Simulation Machine
A Decaying Culture Diminishes the Value of Life
Harry, Meghan and the Royal Reality TV Show
China’s Rules for Performers are a perfect Fit for Hollywood
Keira, Knightley, Sex Scenes and the Male Gaze
Biden Inauguration Performances
Crack: Cocaine, Corruption and Conspiracy
2020
Top Ten Virtue Signalers of 2020
Midnight Sky is the End of George Clooney’s World
Chadwick Boseman and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
The Woke War on Parents and Family
Mank is a Tale of Old Hollywood - and of our Corrupted Modern Age
The Media Lie…Even About Peppa Pig
Hillbilly Elegy and the Culture War Clash
The Crown is a Mirror of American Politics
Biden Has Defeated Trump - Meet the New Boss…Same as the Old Boss
Trump’s Minority Support Sends the Woke Over the Edge
Chris Pratt in Cancel Culture Crosshairs
Disney’s New Content Warning and the Woke Slippery Slope
Jessica Chastain, The 355 and the CIA-Hollywood Alliance
Critical Race Theory in Kindergarten
UNpregnant - Review and Commentary
Cuties - Review and Commentary
Academy Awards Diversity and Inclusion Rules
Sexual taboos on tv are crumbling just as new taboos around speech are being erected
Spitting Image, BoJo’s Penis and Fear of a Black Puppet
The Crown just cast an Australian to play Princess Diana!
The Pentagon and China’s Propaganda Wars
Cursed, Netflix’s Girl Power Infused Re-Telling of the King Arthur Legend
The Woke Philistines taking Over Hollywood Hate White Men More Than They Love Cinema
A Not-So-Expert Opinion on our Future With the Coronavirus
Horny Women of the World Unite! Don’t Let Woke Puritans Cancel the Steamy Netflix Movie 365 Days!
Mr. Jones is a Timely Reminder of the Cowardice of Our Current Press
Just When You Thought Celebrities Couldn’t Get Any Worse, the ‘I Take Responsibility’ Video Comes Out
Racism is Now Gone With the Wind
Comedians Must never Apologize if Comedy is to Survive in the Age of Cancel Culture
Space Force Crashes on the Comedy Launch Pad, but Still Manages to Accomplish its Propaganda Mission
‘Hoaxed’ Exposes the Mainstream Media’s Bias…and Its Own
Mike Tyson’s Comeback is a Perfect Example of America’s Delusional Culture
Be Like Mike? Unlike Michael Jordan, The Last Dance is Anything but Great
Covid-19 is Deadly, but it Will never Kill the Relentless Stupidity of Wokeness
UFC 249 is Cancelled. Can We Now Direct Our Bloodlust at the Elites Who Deserve It?
What to Watch: TV Suggestions to Pass the Time
Coronavirus: Thoughts and Musings
Lost Opportunities and Dastardly Deeds in the Age of Coronavirus
Coronavirus Will Eventually Get Better But America Never Will
Hollywood and the Economic Time Bomb of Coronavirus
The Official Coronavirus Quarantine Viewer’s Guide
Good Riddance to Harvey Weinstein, A Repugnant Pig Who Brutalized Both Women and Cinema
Trump, Parasite and the 2020 Election
La Resistance est Mort! The Cesars, L’affaire Polanski and the #MeToo Virus
Birds of Prey Hates Men, but Wants Their Money - No Wonder It’s Bombing at the Box Office
Do You Believe in Miracles? Parasite Wins Best Picture
The Super Bowl Halftime Shitstravaganza
You’re Welcome World! Academy Awards Courageously Save Earth From Global Warming
It’s a Miracle…Hollywood Finds Religion!
Hollywood’s Arrogant and Ignorant Pandering to Chinese Audiences
Formula Still Works: Jojo Rabbit and the Holocaust
The Tedious Woke Outrage Over Oscar Nominations
1917 Dazzles the Eye but Fails to Stir the Soul
Feminist Fleabag and Woke Critics
2019
Knives Out Sharpens the Blade of Anti-White Racism
Woke Hollywood Gets Burned By Charlie’s Angels Box Office Bomb
Martin Scorsese Top Five Films
Game of Thrones Predicted the Zealotry of Extinction Rebellion Eco-Fanatics
Patron Saint of Incels? Woke Outrage Over Joker is a Bad Joke
Anecdotal Observations on Elizabeth Warren
Thoughts and Musings: Featuring Fredo, Bed Bug, Lady Kicker and More
Celebriphilia Epidemic Sweeps US: We Look Now to the Stars for Guidance
Angry Americans, Shark Attacks and Synchronicity II
Quentin Tarantino Films Ranked Worst to First
Propaganda and the Delusion of Wokeness
Women’s Soccer, pay Equality and Pandering
Movie Subscription Services and Box Office Booms and Busts
Meathead Beats the Dead Horse of Collusion
The Emotionalist Buffoonery of Charles Blow
Brief Thoughts Before the End of Game of Thrones
Undead Army of the Woke Will Make Sure Game of Thrones is the Last Show of Its Kind
Game of Thrones: The Battle of Winterfell and the Fog of War
United Sheep of America: Assange, Fascism and Liberal Hypocrisy
Russiagate: Puzzlements and Lost Causes
Jussie Smollett’s Hate Crime Hoax Exposes America’s Shocking Skepticism Shortage
Toxic Femininity: ‘Badass’ US Women Demand Right to Torture and Kill for Empire…Just Like Men
Beating the Dead Horse of Grammy Award’s Racism
2018
Bush, Bertolucci and a Requiem for Truth
2018 Mid-Terms: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly
Serena Williams and Her Basket of Deplorables
Burt Reynolds and the End of the Movie Star
The Existential Catholic Crisis
The Awful File: Oscars, Millennials, Brie Larson and More
Thar He Blows: Charles Blow Has a Question...I have an Answer
Shots Fired - James Gunn Part Two
Disturbing Dispatches From "Real America"
American Animals, Anthony Bourdain and Late Stage American Empire
Song of Experience in A Quiet Place
The Farcical Fury Over the White House Correspondence Dinner
Morgan Freeman and the #MeToo Whispers
Next Stop - Speculation Station: Syria and Scott Pruitt Edition
I Told You So: Conor Lamb Edition
A Wrinkle in Time, Film Criticism and White Liberal Paternalism
Thoughts on the Academy Awards
#MeToo: It's Not Broke, but You Can See the Cracks
Queen Oprah: Pope of the Cult of Personality
A Week of Holes: A$$holes, Sh*tholes and Rabbit Holes
Some Brief Thoughts on the Golden Globes
2017
Perversion and the Religion of Self
He Who Laughs Last - Edward S. Herman Edition
The Death of Edward S. Herman and the Death Knell for Liberalism in America
Sex Scandals and the Phases of a Panic
While We Were Sleeping...The Dogs of War Awoke
JFK and the Media: The House Always Wins
JFK and the Conspiracy Conundrum
The Media Hates Conspiracy Theories…Except When They Don't
Eternal Darkness of the Artist's Mind
Mayweather, McGregor and the Heart of Darkness
Deconstructing Criticism of Oliver Stone's "The Putin Interviews"
The Whitewashing Controversy Part Two: A Response
Caesar Americanus : Trump, Shakespeare and the American Illiterati
Greg Gianforte, Punching Nazis and the Absence of Moral Authority
JOE McCARTHY WAS RIGHT!! Shocking Revelations From a Manchurian Op-Ed Writer
Curious George and the Banana Republic
Through the Looking Glass : Truth and Lies in Week One of 2017
Theatre of the Absurd : Road to Damascus Edition
Meryl Streep, Character and Moral Authority
TWIB : This Week in Bullshit (Feb 17- 24)
President Trump : A Viewer's Guide
Raping Truth : Brando, Butter and Last Tango in Paris
#OscarsSoWhite: Don't Believe the Hype?
The Way of the Gun: Meditations on America and Guns
OP-EDS
2022
Everything’s Gonna Be All White
The Book of Boba Fett and the Future of Star Wars
2021
Out of the Shadows: The Man Behind the Steele Dossier
Convergence: Courage in a Crisis
The Russians are Coming…to Space!
Harry and Meghan - Lifetime Movie
The Woke Wet Dream of ‘What If…?’
In the Same Breath Docdumentary
Numbnuts Chris Evans Goes Full Captain America
Obama: In Pursuit of a More Perfect Union
They Are Us and the Tragedy Trap
Tarantino’s Pact with the Weinstein Devil
Pentagon UFO Report Viewer’s Guide
In the Heights Box Office Bomb
In the Heights and the Woke Albatross
Riz Ahmed and Muslim Under-Representation
Anne Boleyn and Color Conscious Casting
The Father and the MSM’s Dementia Simulation Machine
A Decaying Culture Diminishes the Culture of Life
Harry, Meghan and the Royal Reality TV Show
China’s Rules for Performers are a Perfect Fit for Hollywood
Keira Knightley, Sex Scenes and the Male Gaze
Biden Inauguration Performances
Crack: Cocaine, Corruption and Conspiracy
2020
Top Ten Virtue Signalers of 2020
Midnight Sky is the End of George Clooney’s World
Chadwick Boseman and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
The Woke War on Parents and Family
Mank is a Tale of Old Hollywood - and of our Corrupted Modern Age
The Media Lie…Even About Peppa Pig
Hillbilly Elegy and the Culture War Clash
The Crown is a Mirror of American Politics
Biden Defeats Trump - Meet the New Boss…Same as the Old Boss
Trump’s Minority Support Sends Woke Poseurs Over the Edge
What Killed Michael Brown? Review
Chris Pratt in Cancel Culture Crosshairs
Disney’s New Content Warning and the Woke Slippery Slope
Jessica Chastain, The 355 and the CIA-Hollywood Alliance
Critical Race Theory in Kindergarten
UNpregnant - Review and Commentary
Cuties - Review and Commentary
Academy Awards Diversity and Inclusion Rules
Sexual taboos on tv crumble just as taboos around speech are erected
Spitting Image, BoJo’s Penis and Fear of a Black Puppet
The Crown just cast an Australian to play Princess Diana!
The Pentagon and China’s Propaganda Wars
Cursed, Netflix’s Girl Power Infused Re-Telling of the King Arthur Legend
The Woke Philistines taking Over Hollywood Hate White Men More Than They Love Cinema
Horny Women of the World Unite! Don’t Let Woke Puritans Cancel the Steamy Netflix Movie 365 Days!
Mr. Jones is a Timely Reminder of the Cowardice of Our Current Press
Just When You Thought Celebrities Couldn’t Get Any Worse, the ‘I Take Responsibility’ Video Comes Out
Racism is Now Gone With the Wind
Comedians Must never Apologize if Comedy is to Survive in the Age of Cancel Culture
Space Force Crashes on the Comedy Launch Pad, but Still Manages to Accomplish its Propaganda Mission
‘Hoaxed’ Exposes the Mainstream Media’s Bias…and Its Own
Mike Tyson’s Comeback is a Perfect Example of America’s Delusional Culture
Be Like Mike? Unlike Michael Jordan, The Last Dance is Anything but Great
Covid-19 is Deadly, but it Will Never Kill the Relentless Stupidity of Wokeness
UFC 249 is Cancelled. Can We Now Direct Our Bloodlust at the Elites Who Deserve It?
Coronavirus Will Eventually Get Better But America Never Will
Hollywood and the Economic Time Bomb of Coronavirus
The Official Coronavirus Quarantine Viewer’s Guide
Good Riddance to Harvey Weinstein, A Repugnant Pig Who Brutalized Both Women and Cinema
Trump, Parasite and the 2020 Election
La Resistance est Mort! The Cesars, L’affaire Polanski and the #MeToo Virus
Birds of Prey Hates Men, but Wants Their Money - No Wonder It’s Bombing at the Box Office
Do You Believe in Miracles? Parasite Wins Best Picture
You’re Welcome World! Academy Awards Courageously Save Earth From Global Warming
It’s a Miracle…Hollywood Finds Religion!
Hollywood’s Arrogant and Ignorant Pandering to Chinese Audiences
Formula Still Works: Jojo Rabbit and the Holocaust
The Tedious Woke Outrage Over Oscar Nominations
1917 Dazzles the Eye but Fails to Stir the Soul
Feminist Fleabag and Woke Critics
2019
Knives Out Sharpens the Blade of Anti-White Racism
Woke Hollywood Gets Burned By Charlie’s Angels Box Office Bomb
Game of Thrones Predicted the Zealotry of Extinction Rebellion Eco-Fanatics
Patron Saint of Incels? Woke Outrage Over Joker is a Bad Joke
Celebriphilia Epidemic Sweeps US: We Look Now to the Stars for Guidance
Meathead Beats the Dead Horse of Collusion
Undead Army of the Woke Will Make Sure Game of Thrones is the Last Show of Its Kind
Jussie Smollett’s Hate Crime Hoax Exposes America’s Shocking Skepticism Shortage
Toxic Femininity: ‘Badass’ US Women Demand Right to Torture and Kill for Empire…Just Like Men
2018
A Curious Case of Mystery Attacks, Microwave Weapons and Media Manipulation
In a Fit of Anti-Trump Pique, Liberals Shamelessly Embrace 'Deep State' Criminals
Guardians of the Galaxy Defeated by the Most Fearsome Super-Villain of All...Political Correctness
Captain America v Trump in Battle of the Useful Idiots
Hollywood's Self=Serving and Misguided Immigration Protests
Trump is Deadpool and We're All Doomed
Kanye Tweets He Loves Trump, Civilization on Brink
Hollywood's Malicious Propaganda Dehumanizes All Russians
The Pentagon and Hollywood's Successful and Deadly Propaganda Alliance
Profiles in PC Courage: Brave Millennials Attack 'Friends'
Echoes of Totalitarianism in #MeToo and Russia-Gate
2017
#MeToo Wildfire Rages Out of Control
Has Fear of Putin Seized Hollywood?
Stephen Colbert Heads For Russia Looking For Laughs; He'd Find Better Material at Home
What's Eating Gilbert Grape? Trump, That's What!
Trump - Griffin Scandal Underscores American Celebrity-Obsessed Culture
Suffering Children as Propaganda and the Jimmy Kimmel Story
Colbert Attacks Trump, Was it Homophobic? Hysterical? Or Both?
Oscars and Grammy Racism : Perception or Reality?
La La Land is Hollywood's Version of "Make America great Again"
Buzz Lightyear Claims Hollywood is Nazi Germany, Captain America to the Rescue?
John Oliver - Shameless Establishment Shill
Snoop Dogg Barks Up The Wrong Tree
Express Yourself? Madonna Don't Preach!!
Goodbye Ringling Brothers, Hello Cirque du Trump and Media Clownshow
JOHN OLIVER
The John Oliver Twist 1 : Court Jester as Propaganda Tool
The John Oliver Twist 2 : The Drumpf Affair and Little Bill Maher's Power Fetish
The John Oliver Twist 3 : Waxing Brazilian and Waning Credibility
The John Oliver Twist 4 : Out Trumping Trump on the Great Wall of Trump
John Oliver Twist 5 : Things Said and Unsaid
GENERAL
Irishness, Cultural Memory and the Curse of St. Patrick's Day
BOOKS
1984 by George Orwell
Animal Farm by George Orwell
Dreamland by Sam Quinones
Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America by Beth Macy
Pain Killer: An Empire of Deceit and the Origin of America’s Opioid Epidemic by Barry Meier
American Overdose: The Opioid Tragedy in Three Acts by Chris McGreal
Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America by Chris Arnade
Hillbilly Elegy by JD Vance
Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA and the Secret History of the 60’s by Tom O’Neill
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev
Diary of a Superfluous Man by Ivan Turgenev
Laurus by Eugene Vodolazkin
The Duel by Anton Chekhov
Ward No. 6 by Anton Chekhov
The Bishop by Anton Chekhov
The Black Monk by Anton Chekhov
The Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
Projecting the Shadow : The Cyborg Hero in American Film by Janice Hocker Rushing and Thomas S. Frentz
Re-Membering Frankenstein : Healing the Monster in Every Man by G.H. Ellis
Man and His Symbols edited by C.G. Jung
Modern Man in Search of a Soul by C.G. Jung
Under Saturn's Shadow : The Wounding and Healing of Men by James Hollis
Open Veins of Latin America by Eduardo Galeano
Kill the Messenger by Nick Schou
Dark Alliance : The CIA, The Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion by Gary Webb
Whiteout : The CIA, Drugs and the Press by Alexander Cockburn & Jeffrey St. Clair
Boundaries of the Soul by June Singer
Jungian Psychology Unplugged: My Life as an Elephant by Daryl Sharp
Merton's Palace of Nowhere by James Finley
SHE: Understanding Feminine Psychology by Robert A. Johnson
HE: Understanding Masculine Psychology by Robert A. Johnson
The Problem of the Puer Aeternus by Marie-Louis Von Franz
Ego and Archetype by Edward Edinger
Scapegoat Complex: Toward a Mythology of Shadow and Guilt by Sylvia Brinton Perera
The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy
MUSIC
Centennial Collection by Robert Johnson
The Anthology, 1947-1972 by Muddy Waters
L.A. Woman by the Doors
Hendrix in the West by The Jimi Hendrix Experience
Born Under a Bad Sign by Albert King
Burglar by Freddie King
Indianola Mississippi Seeds by B.B. King
Rhythm & Blues by Buddy Guy
The Complete Recordings by Mississippi John Hurt
Trouble in Mind by Big Bill Broonzy
His Best : The Chess 50th Anniversary Collection by Howlin' Wolf
Traveler by Chris Stapleton
The Nashville Sound by Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit
A Sailor’s Guide to Earth by Sturgill Simpson
A/B by Kaleo
Blue Train by John Coltrane
Yardbird Suite: The Ultimate Charlie Parker by Charlie Parker
Body and Soul by Coleman Hawkins
Go! by Dexter Gordon
Beauty is a Rare Thing : The Complete Atlantic Recordings by Ornette Coleman
Incesticide by Nirvana
Purple by Stone Temple Pilots
Mingus Ah Um by Charlie Mingus
Rearviewmirror by Pearl Jam
Badmotorfinger by Soundgarden
Dirt by Alice in Chains
Brown and Roach by Clifford Brown and Max Roach
Moanin' by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers
Somethin' Else by Cannonball Adderley
Superfly (Deluxe Edition) by Curtis Mayfield
Astral Weeks by Van Morrison
Sea Change by Beck
Signs by Tedeschi Trucks Band
Walking the Line: The Legendary Sun Recordings by Johnny Cash
Misterioso by Thelonious Monk
Tenor Madness by Sonny Rollins
The Sky is Crying by Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble
Me and Mr. Johnson by Eric Clapton
The Story of Sonny Boy Slim by Gary Clark Jr.
Bootleg Series Vol. 8 : Tell Tale Signs by Bob Dylan
Sketches For My Sweetheart The Drunk by Jeff Buckley
Harvest by Neil Young
Email: mpmacting@yahoo.com
