Train Dreams: A Review - A Malickian Meditation on Man's Search for Meaning

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

My Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. A well-made and moving mediation on the search for meaning and human connection.

Train Dreams, directed by Clint Bentley and written by Bentley and Greg Kwedar, chronicles the life of Robert Grainier, a working man in the northwest of the United States in the 1900s.

The film, which has a run-time of 102 minutes and is currently streaming on Netflix, stars Joel Edgerton, Felicity Jones, Kerry Condon and William H. Macy.

I knew nothing about Train Dreams prior to watching. I had no idea who whom the writer/directors were, no idea about the plot, no clue who starred in it. I went in naked as a newborn babe…and I think that’s a good thing…and because I think it’s a good thing, I will try my best to give as little information about the film as possible to you dear reader so that you can experience the film in similar fashion.

Train Dreams, which is based on the Denis Johnson book of the same name, is made by the same creative team – Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar, that made last year’s Sing Sing…a film that was well-done and very affecting. Not surprisingly considering Bentley and Kwedar, Train Dreams is well-done and very affecting as well.

The best way to describe Train Dreams is to say that it is Malickian – in reference to filmmaker Terence Malick. Train Dreams is, like Malick’s work, more meditation and contemplation than plot driven. It also, like Malick’s movies, is painfully human and addresses deep existential topics while desperately seeking profundity.

I love Terence Malick. His film The Tree of Life (2011), which I coincidentally just re-watched last week, is not just one of my favorite films but one of the very best films ever made.

Malick’s movies are often challenging to general audiences – a topic I’ve written about at length, but his artistry and philosophy connect with me in a very personal, intimate and deeply moving way.

For instance, Malick’s films after The Tree of Life – such as Knight of Cups (2015) and Song to Song (2017), were simply too esoteric for most people, but I was blown away by them.

For good or for ill, Train Dreams is Malick for mainstreamers….let’s call it Malick-lite. The film examines many of the same subjects as a Malick movie, and it uses much of the same visual style as a Malick movie, but it is not quite as impenetrable and esoteric as a Malick movie.

Bentley and his cinematographer Adolpho Veloso, somewhat mimic Malick’s floating camera style, and make the most of the gorgeous natural light and scenery…and montage is used to great effect throughout to generate emotion…all signatures of a Malick film.

There is a voice-over used throughout the film, which is from a third person perspective. This voice-over is a bit too on the nose for me, but it is also the device that makes this movie a Malick-lite instead of a straight up Malick. Malick uses voice-over, but they are first person, and they reveal internal dialogues and not used as a way to give context to the plot. This voice-over reduces the sense of this film being a meditation and contemplation, and tries to make it more mainstream and digestible. In a sense it succeeds, but I would have preferred the film without it.

What most makes Train Dreams Malickian is that it is a film about meaning…more particularly, our search for meaning…and the void we all have within us and some of us are even brave enough to acknowledge. The film dwells in the dark, empty places we all carry, and it masterfully portrays the yearning for connection…to others, to the world, to our true self, to God.

Joel Edgerton is an actor I generally do not think much of on the rare occasion I think of him at all. But to Edgerton’s great credit, he does a wonderful job in this film of being a blank slate when playing the protagonist Robert. He doesn’t push too hard or try to give too much, he just quietly exists in the frame and lets the context and story do all the work for him.

That may sound like an easy task, but it truly isn’t, and very few actors are capable of it. For example, in Malick’s To the Wonder (2012), Ben Affleck is unable to do that exact thing and is terribly uncomfortable in front of Malick’s camera. Sean Penn, Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain were masters of it in The Tree of Life (2011), as was Christian Bale and Cate Blanchett in Knight of Cups (2015).

Joining Edgerton in giving simple yet very affecting performances in Train Dreams is Felicity Jones. Once again, Jones does little more than be alive in front of the camera - easier said than done, and she fills the screen with simplicity. It also helps that she is a comforting beauty of which the camera makes the most.

William H. Macy was at one time one of the great character actors in the movie business, but that was a long time ago. In Train Dreams he is back at his best playing an aging logger who works with Robert. Macy has minimal screen time but he makes the most of it by giving a hearty and heartfelt performance.

Terence Malick films are akin to cinematic poems, you less try and figure them out than you let them wash over you. Train Dreams is not a cinematic poem, it is a bit too straight-forward for that, but it is reminiscent of that. It is a more mainstreamed version of Malick that while still an art house film, is an art house film made for general audience consumption - hence the Netflix deal. The truth is, for me at least, Malick-lite is better than no Malick at all.

Train Dreams isn’t perfect, but it is very well-made and skillfully acted, and it is artful in its genuine yearning for humanity and profundity….and for that I am grateful.

In our age of relentless cinematic midgetry, where lesser films are heralded as masterpieces (I’m looking at you Sinners and One Battle After Another – both painfully vapid and vacuous exercises), and hyperbole rules the day, Train Dreams is most definitely good enough to qualify as one of the very best films of the year.

While I’d love to say that everyone should watch The Tree of Life with their family on Thanksgiving night, but I am smart enough to know that would be catastrophic, but I do think Train Dreams is a solid choice for mainstreamers and cinephiles alike to watch together on Thanksgiving night over pumpkin pie and hot chocolate...and doing a double feature with Sing Sing would work well too.

©2025

After the Hunt: A Review - Philosophical Phonies in a Woke Soap Opera

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

My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. An incoherent and inconsequential dramatization of the madness of #MeToo and woke campus politics.

After the Hunt, directed by Luca Guadagnino and starring Julia Roberts, is a #MeToo/campus politics drama set at the Yale University Philosophy Department.

After the Hunt, which runs two-hours and twenty-minutes, landed at theatres on October 10th of this year with a pronounced thud. The film, despite being helmed by critically adored Italian auteur Luca Guadagnino, and starring Oscar winning movie star Julia Roberts, was a box office bomb and critical failure.

I am usually not in synch with audience or even critical opinion, and so it was that I went into watching After the Hunt – which is now available to stream on Amazon Prime, curious to see what all the negative fuss was about.

I have never been a fan of Luca Guadagnino – and find his films, like Challengers and Call Me by Your Name, to be egregiously overrated, or of Julia Roberts, who in my terribly unhumble opinion is a suffocatingly limited talent.

That said, the subject matter of After the Hunt, which deals with the woke hysteria that has infected nearly every part of our culture over the last decade, is something that I think deserves true artistic examination…and I thought maybe, just maybe, Guadagnino might have stumbled on to making a decent movie about a crucial topic.

And then I watched the movie.

After the Hunt truly earned its box office and critical failing. The film, which was scripted by Nora Garrett, is atrociously written. The plotlines of the film are much like the characters, poorly thought out and insipidly vapid.

There is so much superfluous nonsense in this movie, surrounded by philosophical posing and preening, that it feels like you’ve got lost wandering around in a poorly designed liberal haunted house in the MSNBC green room. It is also inhabited by some of the most loathsome and unlikable characters in recent memory and it is relentlessly pedantic, pretentious and petty in its personal politics.

The woke topics tackled in the film are just as dull and dim-witted as the woke issues of our time, but they are so clumsily dramatized they end up feeling like something a freshman philosophy major would write if they were trying to create a daytime soap opera for an ill-conceived Ivy League television network.  

There are some plot devices in this movie that are so ham-handed it actually left me shaking my head. For example, there is a crucial plot point in the first act (I won’t give it away to avoid spoilers) that is so amateurish in design and execution it felt like something from teen dramedy on Nickelodeon or something. The same is true for the deep, dark secret Julia Roberts’ character is hiding. And don’t get me started on the epilogue of the film which is jaw-droppingly inane…Yikes!

Speaking of Julia Roberts…here is a weird thing about this movie…Julia Roberts is very good in it as Alma, a respected Philosophy professor hungry to get tenure. Now as previously stated I have never thought much of her as an actress, but considering the slop she was given to work with in this film, she does a remarkable job of putting it together.  What was particularly affecting was her physical performance and her ability to convey physical pain.

Unfortunately, the rest of the cast are nowhere near as successful as Ms. Roberts.

Andrew Garfield plays Hank, a cool dude philosophy professor who may or may not have crossed the line with one of his students. Garfield turns his performance up to eleven and turns down his believability to about a two. Garfield is so performative in the role it feels like he’s doing an SNL skit.

The same is true of Michael Stuhlbarg, who plays Frederick, Alma’s cuckolded, sad sack psychotherapist husband. Stuhlbarg’s Frederick is so incoherent and odd it feels like he is doing a Coen Brothers comedy and not a #MeToo drama. Good for him.

The worst acting in this film…and the worst acting I’ve seen in quite some time, comes from Ayo Edebiri, who plays Maggie, a lesbian philosophy student who is Alma’s protégé and the daughter of extravagantly wealthy parents.

I have never watched The Bear, so I’ve never seen Edebiri act before…but she is an absolutely abysmal actress in After the Hunt. She is so devoid of any acting skill or charisma it is actually shocking.

Guadagnino cast his art dealer David Leiber in this film to play a dean at Yale, and he is as awful as you’d expect a rank amateur to be in that performance…but here’s the thing…as terrible as he is…he is better than Ayo Edebiri.

Edebiri may be great in The Bear and is totally miscast here, I don’t know, but what I do know is that she is unbearably awful in this movie and it is truly embarrassing. She is so bad I wonder if she’ll ever work in film again.

Now, maybe Luca Guadagnino is playing 69-dimensional chess and he cast the talent deficient woman of color Edebiri, and used the shitty script from millennial white woman Nora Garrett, as some sort of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion performance art to show how insidious wokeness is in the arts. If so, good for him, then his god-awful movie is actually a worthwhile piece of meta-art.

Of course, the truth is Guadagnino didn’t do any of that with the intention of exposing DEI for the cancer that it is on the arts, instead he did it because he is infected by that same cancer.

One thing that I do think is true is that Guadagnino, who is a Generation X-er, used his film to take Gen Z and millennials to task for their absurd and ridiculous fragilities, tortured philosophies and performative politics, something that two other Generation X directors did this year as well – PT Anderson with One Battle After Another, and Ari Aster with Eddington. Both Anderson and Aster certainly took on the generation gap in much smarter and more successful ways than Guadagnino.

Ultimately, After the Hunt could have been a very interesting and even useful film. But unfortunately, Guadagnino isn’t skilled enough to overcome a truly amateurish script and so this film flounders from start to finish – devoid of drama, comedy, humanity and insight.

The topics raised in After the Hunt are definitely worthy of serious examination and dramatization, but this movie does those issues, and its audience, a disservice, as it never truly brings an adequate level of artistry to this fiery philosophical debate.

©2025

Nouvelle Vague: A Review - Non 'Mange Tes Mort', Mais Plutot 'N'importe Quoi'*

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

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. A rather fruitless endeavor devoid of insight and drama. I highly recommend you go straight to the source and watch Breathless and the rest of the French New Wave classics instead.

*Apologies to the French if I butchered their language in the headline.

Nouvelle Vague, directed by Richard Linklater, is a new Netflix film that dramatizes the making of the iconic 1960 Jean-Luc Godard film, Breathless, which was one of the first films of the French New Wave.

The Nouvelle Vague, which translated means “New Wave”, was born among a cohort of cinephiles and cinema intellectuals in the offices of the famed French film magazine Cahiers du Cinema in the 1950s – which included Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, Eric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette, Claude Chabrol as well as filmmakers Alain Resnais, Agnes Varda, Jacque Demy and Chris Marker.

Breathless, which is an existential love story/ crime drama, was a revolutionary film that signaled the emergence of the French New Wave and its unorthodox style – most notably long tracking shots, jump cuts and breaking filmmaking rules like continuity and 180-degree axis of camera movement, upon cinema.

Breathless was enormously popular and is considered by some to be one of the very best films ever made.

I do not think Breathless is one of the greatest films ever made…I don’t think it is even the best French New Wave film ever made – I’d go with Truffault’s The 400 Blows (1959) for that title…followed closely by Truffault’s Jules et Jim (1962) and Alian Resnais’ Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959), but I do think Breathless is a fantastic piece of cinema.

Whatever you may think of Godard and the French New Wave – and lots of people don’t think much of it (those people are meat-headed philistines!!), Breathless is a phenomenal film that radiates with an undeniable cinematic magnetism and momentum.

Watching the film and its’ avant-garde cinematic styling, as well as its compelling and charming performances from Jean-Paul Belmondo and the luminous Jean Seberg, is a pure joy.

Unfortunately, Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague, which is an ode to, and dramatization of, Breathless, is not much of a joy. In fact, it is quite a baffling and confounding experience that never seems to make much sense or coalesce into a coherent piece of cinema.

Linklater, who is occasionally a bit of a cinema revolutionary himself – as evidenced by his unorthodox films Waking Life and Boyhood, obviously adores the French New Wave in general and Breathless/Godard in particular. But his film about the making of Breathless is the polar opposite of Breathless itself, as it seems to serve no purpose and is devoid of the magnetism, momentum and energy that make Breathless the iconic film that it is.

Nouvelle Vague recounts the daily struggle to get Breathless made and the original, dare I say “odd”, way it was made. It highlights how Godard was a difficult artist who refused to compromise his vision, and kept most everyone in the dark about what that vision actually was.

As a cinephile and a lover of the French New Wave (and also a lover of the Italian Neo-Realists who were the precursors to the Nouvelle Vague), I understand the appeal of examining it, I just don’t think trying to re-enact the making of an iconic movie is the best way to do that.

Yes, there are some fun little moments in Nouvelle Vague, and it is momentarily enjoyable to go “oh hey!! There’s Truffaut…or Roberto Rossellini or Chabrol!!” But ultimately, Nouvelle Vague feels like an empty gesture, a recreation of a great moment in history that is stripped of all its drama, mystery and thrills….sort of like the recreation of a famous battle – it lacks drama because the bullets aren’t real…and thus the stakes are null and void. In other words, it is all play acting - making insight, not to mention genuine drama, impossible.

As dramatic as the making of Breathless was at the time, there is no drama in revisiting it as we know that ultimately the film gets made, is a masterpiece and Godard is venerated as a genius and proven right. So, when obstacles appear in Nouvelle Vague regarding the making of Breathless…they are nothing but toothless drama.

The cast of the film do decent enough jobs mimicking their famous characters. For example, Guillaume Marbeck seems exactly like what you’d think what Jean-Luc Godard was like. But the performance, as enjoyable as it was, feels a bit empty…like something you’d see at a Paris amusement park dedicated to French filmmakers.

Zoey Deutch plays Jean Seberg – who was quite a fascinating character in real-life (and who died at a very young age – and under very mysterious circumstances -  which included “meddling” from the U.S. intelligence community), is not so fascinating in Nouvelle Vague. Deutch is certainly a beauty like Seberg, but she lacks the charisma and charm of her iconic character.

The overwhelming feeling after watching Nouvelle Vague was simply – why would I watch this instead of watching Breathless itself? The answer, of course, is that you shouldn’t.

Breathless is streaming on HBO Max – or Max or whatever the hell HBO is calling their streaming service nowadays. Instead of watching Nouvelle Vague on Netflix, go watch Breathless on HBO Max, and then watch The 400 Blows, and Jules et Jim (both are also on Max), and Hiroshima, Mon Amour.

If you want to do a deep dive on the French New Wave _ which I highly recommend…The Criterion Channel streaming service (which is excellent) has a great collection (which include all three of the above films, and they also have a great collection of Italian Neo-Realist films too which I highly recommend (Bicycle Thieves, Rome: Open City and Germany: Year Zero are a great place to start).

The bottom line is that as much as Richard Linklater may genuinely love the French New Wave, Breathless and Godard, he does it no favors with his rather tepid and trite Nouvelle Vague – which is hamstrung by a paucity of interest and insight.

So, if you are interested in the slightest in the French New Wave, Breathless and/or Godard (you should be!), skip Nouvelle Vague and go to the original source…you’ll be very glad you did.

©2025

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 143 - Weapons

On this episode Barry and I chat about Zach Cregger's fantastic horror mystery movie Weapons, now streaming on HBO Max. Topics discussed include how this is one of the best films of the year, Cregger as an elevated horror master - and the tricky next step in his career, as well as Oscar hopes for Amy Madigan, and respect for Josh Brolin and Julia Garner. 

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 143 - Weapons

P. S. SEE THIS MOVIE!!

Thanks for listening!!

©2025

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 142 - Frankenstein

On this episode Barry and I search for life in Guillermo del Toro's new Netflix movie Frankenstein. Topics discussed include del Toro's unique filmography, Oscar Isaac being an awful actor, and the tonal, visual, literary and artistic mess that is this movie. 

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 142 - Frankenstein

Thanks for listening!

©2025

Mr. Scorsese: A Documentary Review - Into the Mind of a Master

MR. SCORSESE

My Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. A flawed but fascinating documentary that thrives when examining Martin Scorsese’s childhood, and stumbles when trying to navigate the personal politics of Hollywood.

Mr. Scorsese, directed by Rebecca Miller, is a five-part documentary series that examines the life and career of esteemed auteur Martin Scorsese.

The series, which debuted on October 17th, is available to stream on Apple TV+.

Martin Scorsese is, in my not so humble opinion, most definitely on the Mount Rushmore of greatest filmmakers of all-time. His career, which has spanned over half a century, is littered with such greatness it is difficult to fathom. But as Mr. Scorsese shows us, Martin Scorsese’s career, and life, has been anything but smooth sailing.

The series opens with an episode titled “A Stranger in a Strange Land”, which chronicles Scorsese’s tempestuous childhood in New York City’s Little Italy – a neighborhood which at the time was riddled with crime and violence.

The very best part of Mr. Scorsese is the first episode and all other episodes dealing with Scorsese’s childhood. The reason his childhood is so fascinating is that by examining it you can literally see where Scorsese’s filmmaking artistry was born.

A sickly child, Scorsese was confined to his apartment and had to watch the world through the panes of his window…which essentially created his worldview simulated through the box of a film screen. This detachment from the world allowed for his analytical side to connect with his artistic…thus a filmmaker was born.

In addition to being confined to his apartment, Scorsese’s severe asthma forced his father to take him to movie theatres during the hot summer days and nights – since movie theatres were the only place in the city with air conditioning which would ease his asthmatic symptoms. This gave Scorsese a great education in filmmaking and storytelling, as well as bonded cinema with his love for his father…a powerful force indeed.

On top of all that, Scorsese’s childhood was riddled with characters that would come to fill is films…gangsters, clowns, losers, thugs. Whether it be Mean Streets, Raging Bull, Goodfellas, Casino or The Irishman, Scorsese’s movies are populated with some of the very same, or at least similar, people as those that populated his childhood.

Another staple of Scorsese’s childhood which directly relates to his films is his Catholicism. Scorsese obviously has a tortured relationship with Catholicism (I can relate), but it is undoubtedly the animating force in his artistic life.

Even the darkest of Scorsese films are fueled by Catholicism, in one way or another. As are his other more straight forward films about faith…be it The Last Temptation of Christ, Kundun or Silence.

As the docu-series progresses we watch Scorsese graduate the mean streets of Little Italy and attempt to navigate the even meaner streets of Hollywood.

As compelling as Scorsese is as a person, and as astonishing as his career has been, one can’t help but feel a bit cheated watching this documentary try and tell the story of his storied filmmaking. The reason for this is that Martin Scorsese isn’t just the subject of this documentary, he is also the controlling force of it. And no matter how honest Scorsese may attempt to be, it is foolish to expect him to really hold his own feet to the fire.

Due to the constraints of Scorsese’s position – an active filmmaker and producer, we never get the down and dirty truth about his struggles with Hollywood. The only brief glimpse of the ugly world of it all is when Harvey Weinstein is held up for the briefest bit of ridicule and contempt….and even that feels soft-pedaled and exceedingly safe.

That said, it is an important exercise to go through Scorsese’s career if for no other reason than it is easy to forget how astonishing and tumultuous it has been.

The highs of Scorsese’s career…which would undoubtedly be his films Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas, and The Departed (his lone Oscar), take on more meaning when you understand the struggles he endured to even get his movies financed, never mind recognized.

It seems that no matter how great Scorsese was, and he is one of the all-time greats, Hollywood never embraced him and the money people never accepted him.

And so Scorsese was left to scratch and claw just to get movies made, and even when they were made he still had to fight to get them released in the form he wanted. A perfect example of this is one of Scorsese’s dream projects – Gangs of New York, which starred the biggest movie star of the era – Leonardo DiCaprio, and the best actor of the era – Daniel Day-Lewis, and yet Scorsese had to go to war with a grotesque pig like Harvey fucking Weinstein to keep control of the film. Ultimately Scorsese lost that battle, and the film greatly suffered because of it – and one is left to wonder how much even greater could his career could have been if it weren’t for the Weinstein types and their ilk fucking everything up.

One of the nice benefits of Mr. Scorsese is that it is chock full of people who normally would never appear in a documentary. For example, Leonardo DiCaprio is in it, Robert DeNiro is in it, as is Daniel Day- Lewis…who also happens to be married to the documentary director Rebecca Miller.

Miller brings a deft, if somewhat overly protective, touch to the documentary, no doubt herself informed by her artistically brilliant famous father – Arthur Miller, and his tumultuous life. Rebecca Miller’s instinct to protect Scorsese is probably born from her desire to protect her own father and also by the fact that Scorsese is so darn likeable and such a compelling figure.

If there is one takeaway from Mr. Scorsese besides the obvious – which is Scorsese’s singular artistic genius which was often beyond the world’s understanding, it is that Martin Scorsese seems like someone you’d love to spend as much time with as possible.

As a documentary about Martin Scorsese, Mr. Scorsese is a flawed work as it is much too deferential to be truly enlightening…but that doesn’t mean it is devoid of enlightenment. The first two episodes about his childhood in particular, are really fantastic and give as much insight into Scorsese as an artist as is possible.

If you are looking for a bareknuckle expose on the excesses of Scorsese’s life – of which there is much, this isn’t the docu-series for you…and if you’re looking for backroom Hollywood scuttlebutt…the same is true. But if you’re looking to discover what made Martin Scorsese the filmmaking genius he is…this documentary does as well as any could.

In writing this review I was tempted to put together a ranking of all of Scorsese’s films. After attempting to do so I decided against it because it is an impossible task. Scorsese is too great and too important a filmmaker to simply reduce his films to best and worst. His movies don’t work that way. I would feel the same about similar monumental talents like Akira Kurosawa or Ingmar Bergman.

Instead, I would just offer this brief viewer’s guide.

If you want to watch the seminal Scorsese works, start with Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas, and Casino. If you want to dive a bit deeper into the canon then watch The King of Comedy, The Color of Money, Cape Fear.

If you want to watch the most accessible movies in the canon (notice I said accessible and not audience friendly) then go with The Departed, The Wolf of Wall Street, Shutter Island, The Aviator and The Irishman.  

If you really want a glimpse into the mind and soul of Scorsese then watch three often overlooked films (which are among my favorites) The Last Temptation of Christ, Kundun, and Silence.

And finally, the film that is so often overlooked people tend to forget he made it but which is truly a remarkable piece of work, is The Age of Innocence. The Age of Innocence is a parlor drama that most would think is out of his wheelhouse but which reveals Scorsese to be a truly master filmmaker. Just a tremendous piece of work.

In conclusion, Mr. Scorsese is not the greatest documentary about a filmmaker you’ll ever see, but it is an enjoyable handful of hours spent with one of the greatest to ever do it, and one of the more compelling directors in cinema history…so it is worth your time.

©2025

Frankenstein: A Review - Guillermo del Toro's Lifeless Monster

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

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT/SEE IT. If you’re a monster movie maniac like me then watch it out of curiosity, but just know this disappointing movie isn’t anywhere near as good as it could, and should, have been.

Frankenstein, written and directed by acclaimed auteur Guillermo del Toro, recounts the famous Mary Shelley tale of man’s cursed attempt at playing God.

The film, which stars Oscar Isaac, Mia Goth, Christoph Waltz and Jacob Elordi, is currently streaming on Netflix and is also available in some theatres, for those inclined to see it on the big screen.

As someone who truly loves Mary Shelley’s book, slavishly adores the 1931 James Whale Frankenstein movie, and is also a great admirer of Guillermo del Toro, it is a massive understatement to say that I was greatly anticipating this version of Frankenstein.

Every year come October, I make a pilgrimage to the Universal Monster Classics and my first watch is always Frankenstein – as it is my favorite of the bunch. That moody and mesmerizing movie is considerably different from Shelley’s book, but it is one of those rare cases where both the book and movie are great despite their differences.

As for Guillermo del Toro…I really dig his work too. I was one of the few who was happy when he won Best Picture/Best Director for The Shape of Water…which I found to be a psychologically and mythologically insightful film.

Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth is an emotionally powerful, politically vibrant and cinematically imaginative masterwork. His Nightmare Alley is an underrated gem, a true nightmare of a movie.

Del Toro’s last film before Frankenstein was 2022’s Pinocchio, an animated musical. Despite being allergic to musicals and wary of some animation, I thought that was a brilliant piece of work – both poignant and profound.

And so it was that I was greatly anticipating seeing Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, the film which he has spoken about being his dream project.

The reality of my experience of the film is thus…I love del Toro. I love Frankenstein. But I did not love del Toro’s Frankenstein.

Unfortunately…and frankly quite shockingly, this version of Frankenstein simply doesn’t work no matter how much I wanted it to.

Out of respect to del Toro I will start by focusing on what I did like about the film.

I thought Jacob Elordi did a terrific job playing the monster. Elordi skillfully captures the emotional tenderness that transforms into the turmoil that fuels the monster’s entire existence. It also helps that he is very tall and looms over the rest of the cast with ease and a certain sense of menace.

It also must be said that the monster make-up effects, as well as the effects of other corpses in various stages of experimentation, are imaginative, fantastic and well-deserving of Oscar gold.

Now onto the plethora of things that don’t work.

Let’s start with the script. The plot of the film is altered from the book – which is not a big deal, but the problem is that the script feels both bloated and emotionally emaciated. The main characters have been jumbled around and left in dramatic disarray, neutering the film of much of its emotional power. The structure of the screenplay is flawed as well and the dialogue is clunky and at times painfully on the nose, and is delivered with less than spectacular skill.

Speaking of which, a major issue with the film is that Oscar Isaac plays the lead Viktor Frankenstein…and he is not a good actor…at all. Isaac is an albatross around the neck of this film, and every second he is on screen the movie suffers. Not only is Isaac a bad actor, he is absolutely devoid of any charisma…rendering him a black hole on screen that allows no light or life to enter or exit.

Guillermo del Toro has often spoken about how Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) is one of his favorite movies. It is one of mine too. It isn’t a perfect film by any means, but it is the last piece of notable work by one of the all-time greats - Coppola.

That film was greatly wounded by a dreadful supporting performance from a dead-eyed Keanu Reeves struggling with a British accent. Thankfully, Reeves isn’t the lead, and his awful work is counter-balanced by the great Gary Oldman as Dracula, who absolutely crushes the role.

Del Toro’s Frankenstein is not as fortunate as Coppola’s Dracula…as Oscar Isaac is bad in the lead role and not a supporting one…and as good as Elordi is as the monster, he ain’t no Gary Oldman.

Mia Goth, an actress I quite like, is equally bad as Lady Elizabeth, Viktor’s soon to be sister-in-law. Goth is given a tough task due to the inadequacies of the script, and she never elevates the bad material into anything watchable or resembling human.

Christoph Waltz plays Elizabeth’s rich uncle and his character makes no sense and his performance is as confused as the writing.

Another major, and quite stunning issue considering the director, is that the film is remarkably underwhelming visually. Exactly twice during the film did I sit up and think – “wow…that’s a nice shot.” That didn’t happen until the last act of the movie – inexcusable for a cinematic great like del Toro.

Longtime del Toro collaborator Dan Laustsen is the cinematographer on the film and his work is painfully flat, devoid of crispness or cinematic flair – with no color and no contrast. It is genuinely shocking how remarkably dull this movie looks.

Another major issue is the dreadful CGI deployed in the film. Thankfully there isn’t a ton of CGI, but when it appears…most notably with wild animals – like wolves, it is alarmingly bad and very distracting. How can a movie with a $120 million budget and a master director who cares at the helm end up with such low-rent CGI?

Another issue is that the film is tonally all over the map. The visuals feel like something from a kid’s movie…and yet there are flourishes of ultra-violence mixed in among the soap opera melodrama which make the whole affair quite tonally off-putting.

And finally, the sets are poorly designed and the soundtrack is cloying and intrusive. But besides that, how was the play Mrs. Frankenstein?

The cold, hard reality is that del Toro’s Pinocchio is worlds better and more profound than his Frankenstein. It is also considerably darker and scarier.

The thing that grates about this version of Frankenstein is that it cost a ton of money to make, and del Toro has as much control as any director imaginable…and yet it all still looks so goddamn cheap.

Once again, I will refer to another remake of a monster movie classic…last year’s Nosferatu directed by Robert Eggers. Egger’s film is glorious to look at – gorgeously shot and masterfully made creepy. Eggers understands the assignment…and will continue it with his next remake of a classic monster movie with Werwulf…and I will run out to see it. What bums me out is that del Toro has fumbled his Frankenstein film and thus someone like Eggers won’t get a chance to make his own version of Frankenstein. That complaint may not make sense to anyone else, but it makes perfect sense to me.

I love the Universal Classic Monster movies…and I love when masters remake them well….like with Coppola and his Dracula (two years after his Dracula, Coppola also produced a Frankenstein film which was directed by and starred Kenneth Branagh – Robert DeNiro was the monster…I wanted to love that movie too…and was devastated when it really stunk), and I desperately wanted to del Toro’s Frankenstein to be glorious.

The truth is that in our techno-dystopian age of aggressively infantile AI struggling to take its first baby steps – which will no doubt lead to it outgrowing us and ultimately destroying us…we are primed for a great Frankenstein movie. Unfortunately, Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein isn’t it.

©2025

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota - Episode 140: One Battle After Another

After a long hiatus, the boys are back!! On this episode, Barry and I shout "viva la revolution!" as we talk all things One Battle After Another, the new PT Anderson film starring Leonardo DiCaprio. Topics discussed include the film's many failings, politics in film, and the current state of cinema, culture and the movie industry. 

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota - Episode 140: One Battle After Another

Thanks for listening!

©2025

Eddington: A Review - The Madness of Covid...and a Lot of Other Things

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

My Rating: 4.25 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT NOW.

Eddington, written and directed by Ari Aster and starring Joaquin Phoenix, hit theatres way back in July…but I only just saw it this past weekend…and I have a lot of thoughts.

The film, which bills itself as a “neo-Western dark comedy thriller”, tells the story of the fictional town of Eddington, New Mexico and the personal and political trials and tribulations it faces during the Covid pandemic.

Ari Aster is a filmmaker of whom I think highly – so why didn’t I see Eddington until this past weekend? Well, Aster’s first two films, Hereditary (2018) and Midsommar (2019), were really top-notch elevated horror movies that I loved, but his third feature, Beau is Afraid (2023), was a film that was so affecting that I literally could not watch it all the way through. In fact, I tried multiple times to stream Beau is Afraid and each time I made it roughly 30 minutes in and bailed.

To be clear, I am not saying Beau is Afraid is a bad movie (it might be but I can’t judge after watching only 30 minutes of it - twice), what I am saying though is that it was so affecting that I had a terribly uncomfortable visceral reaction to it – the reasons for which even I am not completely clear on (paging Dr. Freud!!) – so much so that I had to stop watching. This is something that has never happened to me before (or since).

So, when Eddington came out this past Summer, I thought that seeing it in the theatre was not a priority because I might want to bail on this one too. And so…all these months later when it is now available on VOD, I rented it for $4 and watched it. And oh boy…am I ever glad I did!

Eddington is the very best film I have seen this year, and it isn’t even remotely close. It is incredibly smart, insightful, bold, brave and brilliant.

This film is once again very affecting…even uncomfortably so…but it is such a compelling and dynamic film that it is impossible to turn away from it…even when you want to.

One of the reasons you may want to turn away from Eddington, is because it so expertly recreates the Covid experience – both socially, personally and medically, in such visceral and palpable ways that watching it literally feels like having a Covid fever dream.

Ari Aster masterfully captures the disorientation of the Covid era, which felt like an assault on our senses, psyches and souls. This disorientation from Covid (both the disease and the cultural reaction to it) created rampant hysteria and mania that spread like wildfire during the insanity of the Covid era. Ultimately, that hysteria is the true pandemic that thrives to this day having lived long after the disease of Covid has faded into distant memory.

Eddington is a comedy, a thriller, a horror movie and a political satire, but above all else it is an indictment. The indictment of how foolish and gullible and easily manipulated we all are. How even now we suffer from such aggressive cognitive dissonance that the excesses of the Covid era, and the worst offenders of Covid hysteria (and the accompanying BLM mania) have never been forced to acknowledge their egregious and calamitous errors, never mind pay for them.

As time passes and we gain more distance from the lunacy and imbecility of our current age, Eddington, with its sharp and incisive criticisms, will age like the finest of wines. The film’s insights will become more profound over time for those with eyes, and the intellectual courage, to see them.  

As you may have noticed I have intentionally avoided any and all plot points for Eddington, and that is because I think it is best watched with as little information known about it as possible. That said, I will try and convey my appreciation for the film despite my strict spoiler limitations.

First of all, Joaquin Phoenix, who plays protagonist Sheriff Joe Cross, gives a stellar performance. Phoenix is brilliant, his Sheriff Joe is a stew of subdued defiance and fury mixed with smoldering self-righteousness that often curdles into hubris.

Phoenix is the great actors of our time and he creates a deliciously complex character in Sheriff Joe, that is so captivating and subtly magnetic that it is a marvel. And Phoenix’s ability to convey physical ailments is truly stunning – and I will say no more about that.

The rest of the cast, which features Pedro Pascal, Emma Stone, Deirdre O’Connell, and Austin Butler, all have smaller roles but do exceptionally noteworthy work. Pascal, in particular, is an actor who can often grate, but his unlikability is used to great effect in the film. Stone’s role is small but she is completely bought into it and does exceptional work despite minimal screen time.

Cinematographer Darius Khondji does his very best work on Eddington, using the high desert landscape and the small-town setting to great effect. He also deftly paints with a deft palette and masterfully frames his shots throughout – heightening the drama.

The real star of Eddington though is writer/director Ari Aster. It took balls the size of watermelons to make this movie and Aster has them. He has been pilloried by many critics for Eddington, but I think that has more to do with the perceived politics of Eddington rather than the filmmaking skills on display from Aster. I also think many critics are among those who so wholeheartedly embraced the Covid and BLM hysteria and are so ravaged by cognitive dissonance that they aggressively resist any notions of coming to grips with how foolish they look in hindsight.

The reality is, is that the “conspiracy theorists” were right all along…and still are…or at least they’re more right than the buffoons who think “conspiracy theorist” is a derogatory term. The most amusing thing that has happened in the last five or six years has been that tinfoil hats have been transformed from objects of ridicule into crowns of knowledge and wisdom – worn proudly.

To be fair, the “conspiracy theorists” are closer to the truth than the normies…but they still are a far way off from the truth. The conspiracy theorist’s real enlightenment comes from the fact that they understand the one undeniable fact that “normies” are loathe to admit…that the “official” story is, always and every time, a lie. And Eddington is one of those rare movies that not only acknowledges that fact…but aggressively embraces it.

The unacknowledged mantra of the dystopian digital age is – “The map is not the territory” – as our culture is so detached from the territory of reality because they have their noses buried in the map…their phones. Because of this fact we as a people are easily manipulated – emotionally, mentally, politically, and Eddington is a film that slaps us across the face in an attempt to wake us from our technologically induced stupor – and it does so with cinematic and dramatic aplomb.

You may not want to see Eddington, but trust me when I tell you…you NEED to see Eddington, you NEED to absorb Eddington, and you NEED to eventually accept what Eddington is teaching you.

Make no mistake, Eddington is thus far the very best film of the year…and is also the most important film of the year, if not the decade.

©2025

Paul Thomas Anderson Films - Ranked Worst to First

PT ANDERSON FILMS – RANKED

Paul Thomas Anderson’s newest film, One Battle After Another, hit theatres at the end of September and has garnered massive critical praise and generated a cavalcade of conversation.

I love any conversation that involves the films of Paul Thomas Anderson…so I thought I’d start another one…namely by ranking his films.

PT Anderson is my favorite current filmmaker. He is a unique cinematic genius, a brilliant writer and an extraordinary director of actors. All that said…he is for many, an acquired taste…one which I have certainly acquired. Which makes it all the more profound when I DON’T like one of his films.

Anyway…without further ado here is my list of PT Anderson films ranked worst to first. This list is…ALIVE. It can change not just everyday but sometimes every hour. For example, just in the course of writing this piece my top three films flipped back and forth at least three times.

So here is the list…let the debate begin!!

THE NOT-SO-GOOD

10. Hard Eight (1996)– Hard Eight is Anderson’s feature debut and while it is a decent film featuring a solid performance from the ever-reliable Philip Baker Hall, it is definitely as bit rough around the edges. It’s impressive for a debut but not a particularly good movie.

Available to rent or buy on Amazon Prime

9. Punch-Drunk Love (2002)– This was Anderson shifting gears into a less ambitious cinematic undertaking after the sprawling Magnolia and the decade spanning Boogie Nights. The film is devoid of ambition though as Anderson makes the calamitous decision to cast the grating Adam Sandler as his lead in this unusual and dark romantic comedy. That was a very poor decision.

Punch-Drunk Love is beautifully shot, of that there is no doubt, but the script feels cloying and trite and the lead performance from Adam Sandler is unbearably amateurish.

I know people who have Punch-Drunk Love ranked number one on their PT Anderson list…those people are idiots.

Currently streaming on the Criterion Channel

8. One Battle After Another (2025)– All the caveats apply regarding my feelings about One Battle After Another. I’ve only seen it once…and saw it on a shitty digital projector at the local cineplex – which just got new chairs but failed to get better projectors and sound systems – so now people can be comfy and cozy watching movies on their sub-par projectors!

Anyway…maybe my feelings about this movie will change after I see this movie a few more times or with a better projector…who knows? But after one less-than-cinematically-ideal viewing I was not a fan. To Anderson’s credit, it is a tremendously ambitious film, but I thought it failed by almost every metric…including the performances.

Currently in theatres

7. Licorice Pizza (2021)– This film is really gorgeous to look at but ultimately, it’s all empty calories as there is no meat on the bones of its story.

The bottom line is it’s a rather vapid “hang out” movie that ends up being rather forgettable despite some great scenes and sequences.

Currently streaming on MUBI

THE VERY, VERY GOOD

6. Inherent Vice (2014) – I, unlike many, absolutely loved this movie and found it to be a psychologically profound piece of work that felt like a fever dream.

Like One Battle After Another it is based on a Thomas Pynchon novel…unlike One Battle After Another it is exquisitely crafted and filled with rich metaphor.

It also features top-notch performances from Joaquin Phoenix and Josh Brolin…and is laugh out loud funny on occasion.

To me, the list of best PT Anderson films really starts here with Inherent Vice, an audacious arthouse gem.

Currently streaming on Amazon Prime

5. Phantom Thread (2017) – One of the more elegant, eloquent and dark relationship stories in cinema history, Phantom Thread features luminous craftsmanship – most notably its cinematography and wardrobe design.

It also features one of Daniel Day Lewis’ greatest performances as the persnickety Reynolds Woodcock. Leslie Manville and Vicky Krieps also give truly phenomenal performances in the film.

Phantom Thread is an often-overlooked Anderson film…but it shouldn’t be.

Currently streaming on Netflix

THE GREAT

4. The Master (2012) – Ok…the final four films on this list are out and out masterpieces in my mind.

The Master is a tour de force film that boasts two all-time great performances. Philip Seymour Hoffman is utterly amazing as the cult leader/con man Lancaster Dodd – it is one of Hoffman’s very best performances, which is saying quite a lot since he was one of the greatest actors of his generation.

Then there is Joaquin Phoenix as the lead Freddie Quell. Phoenix’s performance isn’t just the greatest of his career, it is the single greatest and most revolutionary piece of acting in modern cinema history. You may think that is hyperbole, but trust me, it isn’t. Phoenix re-invented the art of acting with this intricate and stunning performance.

The Master is a mesmerizing meditation on masculinity and the modern man, and it requires multiple viewings to fully flesh out its meaning…and it deserves as many re-watches and you can manage.

Currently streaming on Roku

3. There Will Be Blood (2007) – There Will be Blood is at the very top of this list on many…if not most…occasions, as it is a full-on masterpiece featuring both Daniel Day Lewis, cinematographer Robert Elswit, and in some ways PT Anderson, at their very, very best.

A dark brooding tale about capitalism, masculinity and America, There Will Be Blood is a dramatic powerhouse that devours everything in its path.

Day-Lewis brings all of his substantial power and acting prowess to bear on his role as Daniel Plainview…who, in case you didn’t know…is an oil man.

There Will be Blood is as intense, expansive, jarring and invigorating a film as you will ever see. A truly spectacular piece of cinematic art.

Available to rent or buy on Amazon Prime

2. Magnolia (1999) – Magnolia is a bit of a controversial choice at number two as it was raked over the coals by critics and many fans back in the day. But the fact of the matter is it is the very best Robert Altman film ever made…and it wasn’t even made by Altman!

Magnolia features a cavalcade of top-notch performances, great writing, and some of the best editing in recent history…not to mention Robert Elswit’s glorious cinematography.

Tom Cruise of all fucking people, gives the very best performance of his career…and it is utterly amazing as Frank T.J. Mackey. Only PT Anderson could get Tom Cruise to be that great…and he really, really is that great in Magnolia.

Philip Seymour Hoffman too gives one of his best, most subtle, and most tender performances in the film as well.

I hadn’t seen Magnolia in quite some time and re-watched it this past week and it definitely still holds the same emotional power and melancholic mastery as it did when I first saw it 26 years ago.

Currently streaming on the Criterion Channel

1. Boogie Nights (1997) – As previously stated, There Will be Blood could easily be at this top spot, but the truth is that Boogie Nights is the PT Anderson film I have watched the most (I typically watch it at least once a year if not twice) and that I enjoy the most.

Seeing Boogie Nights for the first time back in 1997 was a religious experience for me – hell I was so enraptured by the movie I even wrote a paper on its symbolism and cinematography back in film school! It is a masterfully constructed film with a complex sensibility, a funny bone and devastating dramatic punch.

Boogie Nights announced PT Anderson as THE guy to watch in moviemaking and part of the joy of watching it was experiencing the giddiness of expectation for the unknown PT Anderson films to come.

Boogie Nights itself gets the very most out of actors like Burt Reynolds (a resurrection project – Burt gives his career best performance) and Mark Wahlberg (also giving his career best performance).

Then there is the unbelievably fantastic cast – Julianne Moore, Heather Graham, John C. Reilly, Don Cheadle, Luis Guzman, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Philip Baker Hall, Melora Walters, Thomas Jane, Alfred Molina and William H. Macy – all of whom are superb and give pitch perfect performances.

A great cast, a scintillating script, Elswit’s stunning cinematography and Anderson’s audacious direction make Boogie Nights his best film (at least for today), and most watchable – and re-watchable, and my favorite, film.

Currently streaming on Paramount +

Quibble all you want…but this is the official PT Anderson film ranking list!! If it makes you angry, that’s okay…because the list has probably already changed in the fifteen minutes after I wrote it.

In looking over Anderson’s filmography the thing that stands out the most to me…besides the glorious cinematography and usually inspired writing…is that Anderson is able to get the very best out of the very best actors around. You’d think that is an easy thing to do…but it isn’t.

Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood and Phantom Thread, Joaquin Phoenix in The Master and Inherent Vice, Philip Seymour Hoffman in Boogie Nights, Magnolia and The Master, Tom Cruise in Magnolia…and on and on and on.

PT Anderson isn’t just mandatory viewing for lovers of cinema and hopeful filmmakers, he is mandatory viewing for actors of all stripes and at every stage of their career. Beginner or old pro, actors everywhere can learn boatloads just by carefully watching PT Anderson films and seeing how a master director can elicit supreme performances from the entirety of his cast.

Alright…enough of my rambling…thanks for reading and hopefully I’ll see you at a screening of One Battle After Another where I try and catch the fever for this film which has thus far avoided me.

©2025

One Battle After Another: A Review - The Art of Cinema Loses Another Battle

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

My Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT.

One Battle After Another, written and directed by acclaimed auteur Paul Thomas Anderson and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, tells the story of Bob (DiCaprio), a revolutionary fighting the fascist powers that be while trying to keep himself and his family safe.

The film, which is inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel Vineland, and stars Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro, Regina Hall, Tayana Taylor and Chase Infiniti, opened on September 26th and has been praised by critics and seen a modestly successful return at the box office – over $100 million, the biggest of Anderson’s career (with a budget of $150 million or so – also the largest of Anderson’s career, it has a long way to go to profitability).

Paul Thomas Anderson has long been the darling of film bros, and as long-time readers know I am the film bro-iest of film bros, so Anderson is my favorite filmmaker and I consider him to be the greatest filmmaker of our time. Anderson’s talent with the typewriter, the camera and particularly with actors, is undeniable. His filmography is proof of this as it includes a bevy of extraordinary masterpieces (Boogie Nights, Magnolia, There Will Be Blood, The Master) as well as a handful of exquisite and brilliant arthouse gems (Inherent Vice, Phantom Thread).

I found Anderson’s last film, Licorice Pizza, to be a disappointment. It was beautifully shot but beyond that it was a rather empty venture devoid of meaning or purpose.

So it was that I was somewhat trepidatious when going to see One Battle After Another. Despite my long-standing practice of embargoing information about films I’m interested in, news seeped through the blockade and I heard whispers about how One Battle After Another was fantastic.

In order to find out if that were the case, I went to a sparsely populated Sunday matinee at the local cineplex here in flyover country. The film was shot using VistaVision – a rarely used practice that can only truly be appreciated in like four movie theatres in America – and mine certainly wasn’t one of them. No, I watched the film like the rest of the hoi polloi – on a very shitty digital projector.

After sitting through the expansive two-hour and forty-five-minute runtime, my take away from One Battle After Another is this…it just doesn’t work. It isn’t funny, or even mildly interesting or the slightest bit profound. In fact, the only thing profound about this movie is how disappointing it is. It is such a misfire it makes the tediously middling Licorice Pizza seem like Citizen Kane.

As previously stated, I saw the movie on a digital projector, so take this with a grain of salt, but I also did not find the film technologically or cinematically impressive in the slightest.

When the film ended and I walked back out into the blinding daylight, I was stunned at what an underwhelming experience I had just endured. It was shocking to me that an enormous talent like PT Anderson could create such a lifeless movie that fails to stir even the slightest bit of a spark from such acting luminaries as Leo DiCaprio and Sean Penn.

One Battle After Another is garnering a cavalcade of critical adoration – not surprising considering two things – Anderson’s well-earned status as an elite auteur, and also the film’s political subject matter.

The film is essentially about a revolutionary group fighting a fascist government that rounds up illegal aliens – if it were a Law and Order episode they’d say it was “ripped from the headlines”. The specter – or odor, depending on your political perspective, of the Trump administration hangs over this movie like a ghost of Christmas past, present and, unfortunately, future.

No doubt critics, and most audience members, will get a thrill from the fight against fascists at the heart of the film. The problem though is that the film’s politics are both ludicrously heavy handed yet compulsively vapid, vacuous, trite and aggressively unchallenged. If you want to see a much better (and very different) film about modern-day violent revolutionaries, go watch 2022’s How to Blow Up a Pipeline – a flawed but feverishly compelling film.

Tonally One Battle After Another, labelled an action-thriller, struggles as well, as there is minimal action and even less thrills. Anderson’s other adaptation of a Pynchon novel, 2014’s Inherent Vice, was a weird and woolly conspiracy crime comedy, and I thought it was a wonderful piece of cinema and supremely psychologically profound. One Battle After Another is never as funny as Inherent Vice, and never as smart and certainly not even remotely as profound either.

I laughed exactly once watching this movie, and it was when a flustered DiCaprio tries to close a curtain and the curtain falls to the floor and he is left puzzled as to what to do next…and then apologizes. The rest of the time I was, as was the rest of the audience, as silent as the grave.

There were some amusing observations in the movie, particularly about the generational divide when it comes to revolution – the fragile Millennial/Gen Z woke keyboard warriors versus Gen-X’s hearty bomb-throwers…but that was minimal and not especially insightful.

As for the performances, much was anticipated when news came out that Leonardo DiCaprio would be teaming with PT Anderson…like a dynamic duo of generational talents.

DiCaprio gives, frankly, a rather forgettable performance as Bob, the stoner revolutionary trying to navigate life in the underground. Never once does he command attention, or feel as if he fully inhabits the character. To be fair, DiCaprio is not aided by the script, which has his flaccid character often deeply at odds with himself.

Sean Penn fares even worse. It has often been said of late that Sean Penn looks like all three of the Three Stooges combined, and that was never more-true than as his work as Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw, an obsessive and ambitious military man hot on the trail of revolutionaries.

Penn, an actor I greatly admire, gives a frivolous and forgettable performance as the fiery Lockjaw. He is all hat and no cattle. An empty vessel floating aimlessly through the doldrums of a poorly written script.

Regina Hall seems to be in a different, and much better, movie with her performance as Deandra, a revolutionary. Hall is grounded and human as Deandra, which is considerably more than anyone else in the cast can say.

Benicio del Toro does Benicio del Toro things and sort of waltzes calmly and coolly through his role as Sergio, a martial arts instructor and underground railroad engineer. Not once does he seem like anything other than a character in a movie.

Chase Infiniti is so lightweight as Willa, Bob’s daughter, she might as well have been a tumbleweed rolling silently through her scenes.

And then there is Teyana Taylor in the crucial role of Perfidia Beverly Hills – the most important revolutionary…and Bob’s wife and Willa’s mother.

Perfidia is supposed to be this dynamic, magnetic and undeniable energy who carries the revolution – and the first act of the movie, on her back with panache and flair. But Taylor is, unfortunately, a rather repulsive screen presence, which makes her being the object of attention and fetishized desire a rather ridiculous notion – so much so that it is unbelievable.

Taylor lacks the charisma and presence to pull off this vital role and the film is mortally wounded by it from the get go…and then DiCaprio and Penn stick their stakes through its heart all thanks to Anderson’s unfocused and unpolished script.

PT Anderson making two sub-par films back-to-back (Licorice Pizza and One Battle After Another) is an earth-shattering experience for me the poor little Gen X film bro. For the majority of my adult-hood he has been the guy. He has consistently been brilliant (the one notable exception is, thanks to the abysmal Adam Sandler, 2002’s Punch-Drunk Love), and to see him stumble twice in a row is jarring to say the least.

I hope I am wrong, but this feels like when in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, Muhammad Ali, the greatest of all time, lost his athleticism and his mojo. Ali shockingly lost to Leon Spinks in 1978 – but then got his belt back by beating Spinks eight months later. But even in victory Ali looked like the shadow of the great fighter and man he once was.

Two years later Ali was destroyed by Larry Holmes in one of the more brutal reality checks in boxing history. A year later he suffered an ignominious defeat at the hands of Trevor Burbick, thus ending his once glorious career.

PT Anderson’s most recent two films are not as bad as Ali’s last two fights…but they do feel the same to me. A giant of a talent losing his mojo and being humbled by Father Time is never pretty to watch.

The positive critical reaction to what I see as the failure of One Battle After Another is reminiscent of those who cheered when Ali got his title back from Spinks…thinking the great champion “still had it”. Despite the victory, he still didn’t have it. He was done. My great, great fear, is that the same is true of PT Anderson…not so much that he is done as a filmmaker, but that his best work is behind him and that it is all downhill from here. That is a terrifying notion to me as it signals that this once in my lifetime filmmaker is…just like me…coming ever closer to his end, both artistically and physically. And also…what the hell am I going to look forward to if I don’t have PT Anderson films to look forward to anymore?

Ultimately, it truly pains me to say that One Battle After Another is a rolling morass of banality and bullshit that never coalesces into a successful cinematic venture. To be blunt…it is not very good. Now, to be clear, PT Anderson’s version of not very good is considerably better than everybody else’s…but it is still not very good, and is certainly not a film I will recommend. I will watch it again though, as Anderson has earned that at a minimum with his past work, but upon first viewing, I found trying to find something good to say about One Battle After Another to be a losing battle.

©2025

R.I.P. Robert Redford: The Sundance Kid Once Saved Cinema

Robert Redford, the iconic movie star, filmmaker and Sundance Institute founder, died yesterday at the age of 89.

As gigantic a movie star as Robert Redford was…and he was a monumental movie star, particularly in the 1970’s, the most important thing about him is what he did for, or to, the film industry with his creation of the Sundance Institute and the Sundance Film Festival – which he took over in the mid 1980’s.

It is impossible to imagine the depths to which filmmaking would have fallen if Redford had not built Sundance, the place where “independent” filmmakers could develop and then show their films.

Without Sundance, the renaissance of cinema in the 1990’s, which includes the emergence of such filmmaking luminaries as Quentin Tarantino and Paul Thomas Anderson, would never have occurred.

Did Sundance quickly go from being sanctified and deified to becoming corporatized and commodified? Yes, it did. And is it now little more than a movie business version of the red-light district in Amsterdam? Yes, it is. But that doesn’t diminish its original importance or the good it did for cinema back in the early days…and it is crucial that we do not forget that when remembering Robert Redford.

As for Redford the actor, he was an impossibly handsome leading man who was gifted with a tendency toward stillness (a skill few actors possess) and the ability to share the screen with other actors with a charming effortlessness.

Redford was a good movie star, good enough that he could unflinchingly share a screen with Paul Newman, one of the biggest movie stars of all-time, for two memorable movies – Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and The Sting.

He was also a good and often underrated actor, who could comfortably share the screen with acting luminaries like Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep.

Redford, with his all-American good looks and stoic demeanor, resembled an old school movie star from the studio system but who hit his heights during the glorious age of the New American Cinema in the free-wheeling 1970s.

Redford catapulted to enormous fame in 1969 when he starred with Paul Newman in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid – what some have called the perfect movie.

Butch and Sundance – with their snarky bromance, are essentially the template for every action comedy and Marvel movie of the last 50 years. You don’t get the Lethal Weapon, Die Hard and Marvel franchises without Butch and Sundance and their witty quips to one another under fire.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid really is a remarkable movie in that it is pure movie star popcorn entertainment but its shot with a glorious aplomb by Conrad Hall – and directed with verve by George Roy Hill.

Redford and Newman’s chemistry is legendary, and while many have tried to replicate it – like George Clooney and Brad Pitt, none have succeeded. The problem with Clooney and Pitt trying to be Newman and Redford is that Pitt is not Redford - despite Hollywood’s determination to make it so, and Clooney sure as shit ain’t Newman, no matter how much Clooney tries to pretend otherwise.

Redford’s filmography is, not surprisingly considering the length of his career, a mixed bag.

His best/most popular films are most certainly Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Three Days of the Condor, All the President’s Men and The Natural.

I can say without hesitation that I unabashedly love all of those movies, and love him in all of those movies.

As previously stated, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is popcorn perfection. Three Days of the Condor is a truly spectacular film and a glorious piece of 70’s paranoid cinema that I adore. All the President’s Men is a movie with undeniable momentum to it that compulsively compels. And finally, The Natural is, in my not-so-humble opinion, the greatest baseball movie ever made and also a phenomenal American myth that Redford perfectly embodies.

As much as I love those Redford films, the Redford movies that I find most intriguing are Downhill Racer, Jeremiah Johnson and The Candidate. These three films, all from the 70’s, show Redford giving his most complex performances, and are all really fantastic films that are often-overlooked.

The final movie I’d recommend is the lone late-period Redford movie that I think works well. The film is 2013’s All Is Lost directed by J.C. Chandor, which is about a man lost at sea by himself. Redford barely speaks at all in this movie, and it was a ballsy performance for him to undertake. I loved the film but others hated it. I think it’s worth watching now as it will take on particular profundity in the wake of Redford’s death.

Another movie some have mentioned is 2018’s The Old Man & the Gun, directed by David Lowery. I thought this film was a misfire, but I could see how it could be nice to indulge in its nostalgia now that Redford has passed away.

As for Redford as a filmmaker, I never really thought very much of his directorial skills. Redford was undoubtedly interested in independence and freedom for other filmmakers but as a filmmaker himself he was extraordinarily restrictive in his artistry.

The films Redford directed, Ordinary People (for which he won a best Director Academy Award), The Milagro Beanfield War, A River Runs Through It, Quiz Show, The Horse Whisperer, The Legend of Bagger Vance, Lions for Lambs, The Conspirator, and The Company You Keep, are all suffocatingly staid and cinematically conventional.

The lone Redford directed film that I would recommend is Quiz Show, and even that is a rather middlebrow piece of mainstream cinema that never quite rises to the heights you feel like it should.

Regardless of the merits or imperfections in Robert Redford’s acting and directing career, the truth is that anyone who enjoys movies, be they cinephiles or cineplex-goers, owe a huge debt of gratitude to Robert Redford. Without Robert Redford and his Sundance Film Festival and Institute, both the movie business and the art of cinema would be in much worse shape than they are today – and it;s important to remember that the Sundance Film Festival never happens if Robert Redford doesn’t become the Sundance Kid.

So, a big tip of the cowboy hat to the Sundance Kid on a job well done and a life well lived. Thanks for saving cinema…let’s hope that one day that it can rise from the ashes and once again be worthy of all you’ve done for it.

By the way…here is a 2013 article I wrote about Redford’s acting that you might find of interest.

Stillness: Lessons from Redford, DeNiro and Penn

©2025

Highest 2 Lowest: A Review - Lots of Lows and Too Few Highs

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

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. A misfire across the board that reveals Spike Lee as a spent creative force and Denzel Washington as firmly entrenched in the laissez-faire late stage of his career.

Highest 2 Lowest, directed by Spike Lee and starring Denzel Washington, is a remake/re-imagining of the 1963 Akira Kurosawa classic High and Low, and tells the story of David King, a music mogul facing moral, financial and familial pressures when his teenage son is kidnapped.

Highest 2 Lowest, which is produced by A24 and distributed by Apple Original Films, was briefly in theatres and is now available to stream on Apple TV +, which is where I watched it.

The film is the fifth collaboration between Lee and Washington, and the first since 2006’s Inside Man. Previous Spike Lee films with Denzel Washington include the sterling Mo’ Better Blues, the masterful Malcolm X, and He Got Game.

The Kurosawa film High and Low is nothing short of a masterpiece and features the filmmaker’s cinematic mastery as well as a powerful and deft performance by Toshiro Mifune. Spike Lee’s decision to remake, or as he claims “re-imagine” Kurosawa’s classic, is both a sign of Lee’s respect and of his hubris.

Having watched Highest 2 Lowest I can confidently declare that Spike Lee is no Akira Kurosawa and Denzel Washington is no Toshiro Mifune.

The truth is that Lee and Washington are the equivalent of hall of fame pitchers who once upon a time threw fastballs in the high 90’s, but are now reduced to grooving mid-80’s meatballs that do nothing but stir nostalgia for the good old days.

To be fair, Denzel Washington had a considerably longer peak than Spike Lee, and the argument could be made that at his best Denzel was better than Spike Lee at his best. In keeping with the baseball metaphor, Denzel at his peak was hitting 100 MPH on the radar gun, and Spike Lee at his shortened peak, was hitting 98 mph…but neither can even dream of hitting such heights now.

Highest 2 Lowest opens with a very captivating sequence which features a sunrise over New York City shot by drones with “Oh What a Beautiful Mornin’” from the musical Oklahoma playing over it. This opening is tantalizing at is shows Spike Lee at his cinematic best.

We are then introduced to Denzel’s character David King and his world, which features Ilfenish Hadera as his wife Pam, Aubrey Joseph as his son Trey, and Jeffrey Wright as his childhood friend and now driver Paul.

King is trying to navigate a big business deal in order to save his record label, and reignite his highly-acclaimed music producing career, which has been steadily slipping in recent years.

Then comes the inciting incident – Trey, King’s only child, is kidnapped at a basketball camp in the city. The way this turn of events is portrayed is so underwhelming and so dramatically impotent as to be amateurish.

Things dramatically, cinematically, artistically and creatively devolve so quickly from there that it actually shocks.

Denzel Washington is a great actor and movie star, of that there is no doubt, but he has entered the phase of his career which is reminiscent of late-stage Jack Nicholson – think of Jack in The Departed, where he does little more than show everyone how much he is “acting”.

Now, Denzel, or Jack, acting in this manner, where they show off for the sake of showing off, is fine, but it also isn’t good. The sheer charisma that Denzel and Jack possess makes their presence worthwhile, even when their acting work feels so forced and/or flimsy.

Denzel did this same thing in Gladiator II, and I found it entertaining, but here it feels like watching an acting class where the talented actor doing the scene didn’t do the prep work so now we have to watch them signal to us how much they are acting. (Anyone who has ever been in an acting class will know exactly of which I speak).

That said, Denzel Washington is definitely not the problem with Highest 2 Lowest…in fact he’s the best thing about it…and problem isn’t Jeffrey Wright wither, who is intriguing as Paul, the ex-con childhood friend who loyally serves his old pal and boss King.

One of the biggest problems with Highest 2 Lowest though is the rest of the cast, who are so atrocious as to be ridiculous.  

Ilfanish Hadera as King’s wife Pam is absolutely dreadful. It is stunning how out of her depth she is in a role that in more talented and steady hands would be pure red meat to be devoured with aplomb. Hadera is so dead-eyed and lifeless that when she’s on-screen it feels like you’re watching an autopsy.

Aubrey Joseph as King’s son Trey is another disaster, as he’s so wooden they could’ve just cast a mannequin in the role and been better served.

Another major issue is the trio of actors playing cops. John Douglas Thompson, Dean Winters, and LaChanze play the NYPD detectives assigned to solve the kidnapping and they feel like cast-offs from a Law and Order episode. It boggles the mind haw bad these three are.

Speaking of Law and Order, all of the police procedural stuff in this movie, and there’s a lot of it, feels like a third-rate Law and Order episode – which is tough because Law and Order episodes already feel third-rate to begin with…which I guess makes the cop stuff in Highest 2 Lowest sixth-rate?

The film tries to become a thriller as the kidnapping drama more deeply unfolds but it fails to muster even the most basic thrills…and it features one of the more contrived, flaccid and farcical chases in recent movie history.

On top of all that, Highest 2 Lowest also features one of the most god-awful, obtrusive and cloying scores in recent memory, thanks to Howard Drossin.

The truth is that at this point Spike Lee is an entirely spent creative force. After two decades of forgettable films, it seemed like Spike Lee might have gotten his mojo back in 2018 with BlacKkKlansman – a film for which he won a Screenplay Oscar. But instead of reinvigorating his work, Lee’s two follow-ups to BlacKkKlansman, the dismal Da 5 Bloods and Highest 2 Lowest, have been rather flimsy, instantly forgettable films.

Of course, there will be a plethora of Spike Lee sycophants who will shout from the rooftops how brilliant Highest 2 Lowest is, just like the fools who proclaimed the greatness of Da 5 Bloods, which is an amateurish mess of a movie.

But be not deceived…Highest 2 Lowest has a scant few highs and a cornucopia of lows. It is a major disappointment and an unfortunate signal that both Spike Lee and Denzel Washington may finally be done as artistic power players.

My recommendation is to skip the forgettable and foolish Highest 2 Lowest and instead go watch the tight and taut High and Low, as Kurosawa and Mifune prove they are infinitely better at telling this tale than late-stage Spike and Denzel.

©2025

The Phoenician Scheme: A Review - The Exquisite, but Ultimately Antiseptic, Wes Anderson Aesthetic

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

My Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. A beautifully crafted but ultimately empty cinematic venture.

The Phoenician Scheme is writer/director Wes Anderson’s twelfth feature length film (thirteenth if you count his collection of Roald Dahl shorts to be one film), and it adequately captures the conundrum of his cinematic style.

Wes Anderson burst onto the scene in 1996 with Bottle Rocket, a wonderfully quirky movie that catapulted both Owen and Luke Wilson to stardom as they played goodhearted misfits in a rather rough and tumble world.

Anderson then gave us Rushmore (1998), another quirky tale about a young misfit sort-of-genius/idiot navigating an often times cruel world, which propelled Jason Schwartzman into the Hollywood discussion. Rushmore established Anderson’s narrative aesthetic which has a foundation of - children acting like adults, and adults acting like children.

Then came 2001’s The Royal Tenenbaums, arguably Anderson’s best and most successful film, which told the story of a family of…you guessed it…misfits…led by a lovable scoundrel of a father, masterfully played by Gene Hackman.

Post-Royal Tenenbaums, Anderson’s filmography has had some ups and downs.

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004) and The Darjeerling Limited (2007), both were terribly underwhelming and showed Anderson floundering to find his filmmaking footing.

The charming animated film The Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) was a fun breath of fresh air, but it was followed by Moonrise Kingdom (2012), which was so mannered as to be creepy and ultimately was of little value.

Then came The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), which, along with The Royal Tenenbaums, is my favorite Anderson film. It is stylistically as cinematically eccentric as any Anderson film but unlike the others, at its core is a darkness that is dramatically powerful. It also helps that, like The Royal Tenenbaums with Gene Hackman, The Grand Budapest Hotel has Ralph Fiennes giving a glorious performance at its center.

Unfortunately, after the epic heights of The Grand Budapest Hotel, Anderson learned the wrong lessons and instead of delving deeply into some dramatic darkness, he instead eschewed all drama in favor of a cornucopia of aggressive whimsy.

The French Dispatch (2021) and Asteroid City (2023) are perfect examples of this now cemented Anderson aesthetic. They are beautifully shot films which boast extraordinary production design, but that feature such copious amounts of twee that they end up being quite exquisite, but ultimately empty, cinematic exercises.

The same is true of the collection of Roald Dahl shorts that Anderson made for Netflix. Those films follow this same formula of cinematic saccharine, but they are much more digestible because they are short films.

In feature length, Anderson’s formula full of twee feels like a meal consisting solely of candy, entirely empty calories resulting in a dreadfully painful toothache.

The biggest issue with Anderson’s newest venture, The Phoenician Scheme (and with most everything post-The Grand Budapest Hotel), is that when Anderson uses contrived characters in real world settings – as he does in Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums, it can be very compelling and comedic, but when he uses contrived characters in cartoonish (but beautifully staged) settings, as he does in his recent era, it makes for tedious-to-the-point-of-tortuous amounts of twee.

The plot of The Phoenician Scheme revolves around Zsa Zsa Korda (Benicio del Toro) – one of Anderson’s many charming rogue male leads. Korda is…unsurprisingly…very peculiar. He is a mogul and a menace (dare I say it…Trumpian) – and the target of multiple assassination attempts which prompt him to have visions of meeting God. He’s also a father…but not a good one – think Royal Tenenbaum with more money.

The movie follows Korda as he tries, along with his longtime estranged, soon-to-be-nun, daughter Liesl (Mia Threapleton), and his assistant Bjorn (Michael Cera), to save a gigantic business deal to build a morally monstrous public works project– called The Phoenician Scheme.

The plot is really beside the point…as is the dialogue. The film is, like the rest of late-period Anderson films, a contrived exercise, like a diorama, filled to the brim with quirks and twee.

The performances are what they are. Del Toro makes for a reasonably watchable lead, and Mia Threapleton – who I did not know until this very moment is Kate Winslet’s daughter, is admittedly captivating as Liesl.

Surprisingly, Michael Cera, who you’d think would be the most Wes Anderson actor of them all, is actually a bit out of synch in the film.

The appearances of Bryan Cranston, Tom Hanks, Scarlett Johansson, Jeffrey Wright, Riz Ahmed, Benedict Cumberbatch and Rupert Friend in small roles are all pretty forgettable if not a little bit grating.

The Phoenician Scheme, which is currently streaming on Peacock, runs for an hour and forty minutes and not once during that entire run time did I give even half of a shit about any of the characters on screen or about what would happen to them or even around them.

Does The Phoenician Scheme look fantastic? Yes, it most certainly does as the cinematography (by Bruno Delbonnel) and production design are phenomenal.

Is the acting in The Phoenician Scheme good? Meh. It’s fine for what it is – a very mannered performance style that seems like it is more fun to do than to witness.

Is The Phoenician Scheme a good movie and worth watching? No, not really. It’s difficult to say that Anderson’s late period films are bad because they are so exquisitely crafted – but that craft often overwhelms the movies and renders them – if not undigestible, then at least unpalatable.

Wes Anderson is definitely an acquired taste, and though I acquired it early in his career, it seems in his recent era I have lost my taste for it as it’s all just a bit too sweet for my cinematic palate.

Anderson is undeniably a remarkable stylist, but his exquisite aesthetic has evolved to where it now overwhelms, so much so that his films are rendered emotionally antiseptic. At this point I feel absolutely nothing watching Anderson’s films…not joy, not happiness, not anger, not awe, not even interest.

So, if you want to see some stylish, silly cinematic musings then I recommend you go to Peacock and watch the beautiful but vapid The Phoenician Scheme.

If you’re looking for something more hearty…then you best go elsewhere because The Phoenician Scheme isn’t for you…just like it wasn’t for me.

©2025

Black Bag: A Review - Just Another Forgettable Soderbergh Film

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

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. An ultimately forgettable spy thriller that is devoid of thrills and banal to the core.

Black Bag, directed by Steven Soderbergh, is a spy thriller that follows the travails of a husband-and-wife spy team caught up in high-stakes MI6 intrigue.

The film, which stars Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett, was released in theatres on March 14th to little fanfare, and less than a month later is now available to stream on Peacock.

I remember seeing Steven Soderbergh’s directorial debut, Sex, Lies and Videotape, back in 1989 in the theatre with my girlfriend at the time. After the film we spent hours talking about it, which was a testament to what a unique, original and interesting piece of work it was. I remember thinking at the time how exciting it was that a talent like Steven Soderbergh existed and looking forward to seeing how his career played out.

Thirty-six years later I can tell you that I have never been impressed with Soderbergh’s work beyond his debut. In fact, I have found his career to be a terrible disappointment. That may come as a shock to some readers since Soderbergh has won Oscars and made big, successful movies, but to me Soderbergh has never lived up to his potential as either a filmmaker or an artist.

Sex, Lies and Videotape was a daring and insightful piece of work. It’s not the smoothest piece of filmmaking you’ll ever see, but it is a brutally honest depiction of humanity…and that is the thing that has been missing from Soderbergh’s work ever since.

Despite Soderbergh being a hero to film hipsters everywhere, his filmography mostly reads like an inventory of discount dvds you’d find if you were fishing at the bottom of the bargain bin on the way out of Walmart. Following Sex, Lies and Videotape he made Kafka, King of the Hill, The Underneath, Schizopolis, and Gray’s Anatomy…all films I’d be willing to bet readers have either never seen or if they have seen them have totally forgotten them.

Then came Soderbergh’s commercial success with Out of Sight, The Limey, Erin Brockovich, Traffic and Ocean’s Eleven (and Ocean’s Twelve and Ocean’s Thirteen). These movies were box office successes and some, like Traffic and Erin Brockovich, won Academy Awards. The most noticeable thing about this string of success from Soderbergh is that these films are all painfully vacuous – they are monuments to style over substance. Gone is the intellectual/emotional intrigue of Sex, Lies and Videotape, and in its stead is slick filmmaking, Hollywood posturing and absolutely zero gravitas.

These films are so thin and shallow that they nearly disappear upon rewatch. Traffic, which I really liked the first time I saw it, reveals itself to be a paper-thin piece of made-for-television tripe even upon re-watching it for the first time.

The Ocean’s trilogy were uber successful, and admittedly they have a certain undeniable energy and movie star momentum to them, but ultimately they are a little more than an exercise in style over substance.

Soderbergh’s films after this grouping are more artistically daring but prove the filmmaker lost his deft touch so apparent in his debut. Full Frontal, Bubble, Solaris, The Good German, The Girlfriend Experience, Che: Part One and Two and The Informant!, are, despite some interesting moments, a collection of entirely forgettable films.

2011’s Contagion, which is a compelling watch post-covid, is another of Soderbergh’s slick but empty vassals – like a high-end movie of the week. This was followed by Haywire, Magic Mike, Side Effects, and Logan Lucky…some of which were financially successful, but all of which were an insult to thinking cinephiles.

Then we get into the small production, self-shot current era of Soderbergh’s filmography….which includes Unsane, High Flying Bird, The Laundromat, Let Them Talk, No Sudden Move and Kimi. None of these films are good…and like his early era most haven’t seen these movies and those that did would barely remember a single thing from them. And yet, there are a certain class of cineastes who will vociferously praise Soderbergh up and down and say “I really liked (any movie on this list)”, which I always counter with, just because you like it doesn’t make it good or even cinematically worthwhile. These same people couldn’t tell you a single thing about the plot, story, purpose or meaning behind any of the secondary Soderbergh films they allegedly adore.

Soderbergh then returned to the Magic Mike nonsense with Magic Mike’s Last Dance, yawn, then went arthouse supernatural thriller drama with Presence, and now the spy thriller Black Bag.

If Soderbergh were a major league hitter his lifetime average would be well below the Mendoza line (.200). He doesn’t strike out a ton, but he does ground out weakly to second base an awful lot. His filmography is mostly a collection of second-rate, unremarkable, entirely forgettable movies.

The reality is that Soderbergh is a craftsman, sometimes a very good one, but he is not an auteur because he has nothing of interest or of impact to say in any of his films.

Which brings us to Black Bag. Is Black Bag a terrible movie? No. The truth is it doesn’t feel like a movie at all, it feels like an episode from some pseudo-prestige, AppleTV spy series or something that no one would watch or talk about (like almost everything on Apple TV).

The most notable thing about Black Bag is how insubstantial, inconsequential and irrelevant it is. It is a frivolous, fleeting and entirely forgettable film.

Black Bag’s story is, like much of Soderbergh’s work, convoluted to the point of being incoherent. It is also, somehow, cinematically slick but still devoid of any notable or distinct style.

The cast, which features Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett – no slouches, as the married spies, do professional yet unimpressive, dare I say, uninspired, work.

Fassbender, whom I’ve always liked as an actor, is tightly wound as George Woodhouse – a second generation master spy, but not tightly wound enough to be genuinely interesting.

Blanchett is Kathryn, George’s wife and his equal in the dark arts of spycraft, but she too gives such a restrained performance that she is never compelling, which is sort of shocking considering she is one of the great actresses of her generation.

The rest of the cast are at best uneven, with Naomie Harris doing strong work as agency psychiatrist Dr. Vaughn, and Rege-Jean Page truly abysmal as a fellow spy who may or may not be one of the good guys.

Black Bag attempts to be an Agatha Christie parlor game mixed with John Le Carre spy thriller with some marital drama thrown in for good measure, and of course it contains the usual Soderberghian tricks and reveals…but all of it falls decidedly flat.

None of the characters compel, none of the drama crackles, none of the spy game entices, and none of the thrills manifest. Black Bag is so mediocre and mundane as to be anemic and it feels like something you’d have on in the background while you do other things…which is a shocking thing to say about a movie starring such talents as Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett.

Ultimately, Black Bag is, like the overwhelming majority of Steven Soderbergh’s filmography, forgettable and not really worth watching. It is, unfortunately, a monument to the banality of Soderbergh’s work, and a reminder what a disappointment his once promising career has been.

©2025

Luca Guadagnino Streaming Double Feature: Queer and Challengers - What Else Can I Say...Everyone is Gay!

****THESE REVIEWS CONTAIN SOME SPOILERS!! THESE ARE NOT SPOILER FREE REVIEWS!!!****

 Queer: 2 out of 5 stars – SKIP IT.

Challengers: 2 out of 5 stars – SKIP IT.

Italian filmmaker Luca Guadagnino put out two films last year, Challengers and Queer, both of which garnered at least some awards buzz, but to the chagrin of some, neither got any Oscar nominations.

Having missed both in the theatre, I watched them on streamers recently and I have some thoughts.

Guadagnino came to the fore of film in America with his 2017 Oscar-nominated film Call Me by Your Name, starring Timothee Chalamet, which chronicled the gay love affair between a teenage boy and a man in his mid to late twenties.

Call Me by Your Name was showered with praise, including multiple Oscar nominations, but I found the film to be rather poorly constructed and executed, cinematically flaccid and philosophically infantile.

The thing that stood out the most to me in that movie is a monologue delivered near the end of the film by the teenage boy’s father, who reveals that he might be kinda gay and bemoaning the fact that he didn’t have a torrid gay affair as a young man. My reaction to that scene was to quote the Nirvana song “All Apologies” where Kurt Cobain sings the unforgettable lyric “what else can I say, everyone is gay”.

When I watched Challengers (now streaming on MGM+), which opened in April of 2024 and follows the ups and downs of a love triangle between a woman and two male professional tennis players over the course of a decade or so, that lyric was at the top of my notes after watching the film conclude in the absolutely gayest manner possible when both men realize in the middle of a big tennis match that they actually want each other and not the woman. What else can I say…everyone is gay, indeed.   

I avoided watching Queer, which opened in November of 2024, for quite some time because I assumed it would be the same old thing from Guadagnino. I finally watched it the other day (it is streaming on Max) and literally laughed out loud when Trent Reznor and Atticus Finch – who do the music for the film and for Challengers, opened the movie with Nirvana’s “All Apologies”, most notably the line “what else can I say, everyone is gay”. Bravo!

The reason I share this anecdote is because Luca Guadagnino, who is gay, seems completely incapable of understanding that there actually are people in the world who are not, in fact, gay.  Dare I say it…the reality is that the overwhelming majority of people in the world are not…you know…gay. According to some polls the percentage of gay and lesbian people in the world is roughly 3%, but in Luca Guadagino’s world it feels more like 103%.

In the past forty years or so homosexuality has transformed from being a much stigmatized and often criminalized trait into being a celebrated and shame-free lifestyle. It seems cinema, particularly gay cinema, is having a hard time catching up with the normalization of this once oppressed sexual orientation.

Let’s start with Queer. Queer, which is based on William Burroughs book of the same name, stars Daniel Craig as William Lee, a gay American ex-pat living in Mexico City in the 1950s who spends his time drinking, doing drugs and chasing men….definitely not in that order.

Queer could’ve, and maybe should’ve been great, or at least been celebrated by a film industry desperate to signal it’s progressive bona fides. But the film falls completely flat despite its witty Nirvana quoting opening.

Queer is such a bleak and dismal glimpse into the gay world (or A gay world) that I wouldn’t be surprised if some homophobic pastors  showed it to “confused” teens at gay Evangelical conversion camps.

All of the gay people in this film are the most repugnant and repellent human beings imaginable as they are all desperate, despairing, depressing and depraved. If they are supposed to be an accurate representation of gay men of that or any other era, then that is quite an indictment of that community. One can only assume, and hope, that the film is just focusing on one particularly grotesque group of gays that are not representative.

Daniel Craig, most famous for playing James Bond, no doubt took this role – which some might call gay-baiting, in order to get an Oscar, but his performance felt incredibly mannered to me and distractingly off the mark.

Craig, who has been the subject of quite compelling gay rumors himself, plays Lee as a sort of disgusting desperation incarnate. Lee is less gay as he is obsessive over gay sex, and he comes across like a two-bit actor playing Tennessee Williams in a community theatre production in Blaine, Missouri.

Lee isn’t the only repulsive character in the film, as Jason Schwartzman’s Joe Guidry is so revolting it sort of boggles the mind. That none of these people are even remotely interesting is secondary to how unappealing they are to spend time with.

The plot for Queer lacks any sort of emotional coherence, and devolves into a sort of dreamlike fantasia in the final third, which undercuts whatever gritty and grimy reality was established in the first two acts.

Ultimately, Queer felt like an over-indulgent exercise in gay exploitation rather than exploration, with Craig being so superficially committed to his character’s gayness it appeared like he just wanted to kiss a man in public to see if he could get away with it.

Challengers was the hipster choice for film of the year in 2024, but apparently, I am not a hipster because I found it to be so ridiculous as to be inane.

The film, which stars Zendaya, Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist, is supposed to be this sexy jaunt through the world of tennis, but it, and its two lead males, is so transparently gay from the get-go, and features such unappealing dullards as the main actors, that I found watching it to be a tedious undertaking.

Let’s start with Zendaya. I just don’t get it. I admit I have not seen all of her work, for instance I tried watching the HBO drama Euphoria and thought it was garbage so I bailed…so maybe she is great in that…who knows? But everything I have seen her in she is an awful, anemic actress. The Spider-Man movies, Dune, and now Challengers. Just consistently bad, boring, dead-eyed and lifeless.

Josh O’Connor is supposed to bring a bevy of sex appeal to his role of Patrick, a talented but down on his luck tennis player, but he strikes me as a dullard and dopey looking doofus – which is probably why he was so good as Prince Charles in The Crown.

As forgettable as O’Connor is in this film, Mike Faist, who plays Art, his tennis and love rival, is like the invisible man. Faist, who I last saw in Spielberg’s useless remake of West Side Story, is a song and dance man, good for him, but he is so devoid of charisma he might as well be a tumbleweed. Good lord.

As Challengers goes on the story becomes more and more grating, as do the performances, until it all climaxes with the single most ridiculous, and gay, climax imaginable for a tennis movie…when Patrick and Art literally fall into each other’s arms in the middle of a tennis match.

What struck me about Challengers in the context of Guadagnino’s other work, is that the director really does seem to be incapable of understanding that people could not be gay.

Guadagnino’s approach on Challengers (and the father character in Call Me by Your Name) would be like a straight director making a movie about the Gay Men’s Chorus of San Francisco but the gay men in the chorus are actually, deep down, secretly straight.

Having typed out that last paragraph I now realize that I may have just revealed a billion-dollar movie idea…so remember that this material is copyrighted!!

In all seriousness, Challengers could have been an interesting movie set in a unique world, and the same is true of Queer, but Guadagnino has such a repetitive, one-track mind, that he is incapable of bringing any nuance, subtlety, intricacy or dramatic depth to his work. And so we are left with a one-note representation of gayness as some irrepressible truth that lies deep within us all. Sigh.

The bottom line is that both Challengers and Queer could have, and should have, been good, but neither rises to even the minimal level of being interesting, never mind entertaining.

In other words, you do not have to waste your time watching Queer or Challengers because I wasted my time watching Queer and Challengers. You’re welcome.

©2025

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 135 - Heretic

On this episode, Barry and Mike go door to door to spread the word about Heretic, the horror/thriller starring Hugh Grant now available on MAX. Topics discussed include the terrific cast, the fantastic first half of the film, and the trouble with finals acts.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 135 - Heretic

Thanks for listening!

©2025

RIP Val Kilmer - My Best Friend

Val Kilmer – My Best Friend

When I woke up this morning, I was rudely greeted with a text from one of my oldest friends, Fat Tony, alerting me to the fact that Val Kilmer – my best friend, had died of pneumonia at the age of 65.

The story of how Val Kilmer became my best friend is one of my favorite tales to tell, but also one that I mostly keep to myself because it means so much to me. But now that Val is gone, it seems fitting to share the story in his honor.

The truth is that Val Kilmer was not really my best friend…but I did meet him and work with him once many, many moons ago.

The year was 1996, the place is New York City, and Val was doing promotional work for The Ghost and the Darkness, which he starred in with my uncle Michael Douglas. Ok…Michael Douglas isn’t my uncle either but you’ll understand the reference a bit later.

So Val Kilmer, who by this time had already given truly monumental performances in The Doors – as Jim Morrison, and Tombstone – as Doc Holliday, as well as superb supporting turns in Top Gun and Heat, and had starred as Batman, was doing the rounds trying to promote The Ghost and the Darkness, a movie about two lions in Africa that were hungry for human blood. (The Ghost and the Darkness is also where I learned that the most deadly animal in Africa is the hippo, and that hippos fart out of their mouth.)

On this promotional tour Val went to MTV to do an interview. Fat Tony, who has been my friend since we met in high school and once upon a time was my roommate in the big city, was working at MTV at the time and he came up with a little comedy bit to get me on the air with some celebrities. So Fat Tony called me up one day and said, “hey, you wanna do a scene with Val Kilmer?”

Needless to say, I said yes.

The next day I went to MTV and was sitting in my buddy’s dressing room and he was explaining the idea for the bit and also letting me know that everyone was really nervous about Val coming. You see, at this time Val Kilmer had the worst reputation of any actor of which I’ve ever heard. He was known in the industry as being very, very difficult…so much so that he was actually on the cover of Entertainment Weekly with the title “The Man Hollywood Loves to Hate”. Yikes.

Val’s reputation as a belligerent asshole was legend at this point, and the MTV staff were scared shitless of having to deal with him and prepared for an hour or so of eggshell ballet in order to just get the interview in the can and Val out the door.

Fat Tony and I didn’t know what to expect, and the producers at MTV were, out of fear, dead set against me doing my comedy bit with Val, but Fat Tony convinced them to leave it to him to ask Val if he was cool with it. I considered this a victory even though it seemed obvious that the petulant Val wouldn’t go for it.

Then there’s a big commotion and headsets buzzing and everyone at MTV is scrambling…the eagle has landed…Val is in the building. Val played both Jim Morrison and Elvis in different films and he set the MTV staffers into such a frenzy you’d think the real Jim Morrison AND Elvis had entered the building.

The tension was palpable in the building, but since I was with Fat Tony, a guy with whom I’d seen and survived a lot of dark and precarious situations – up to and including raging streetfights, I wasn’t nervous, just curious.

Then something remarkable happened…Val walked into the dressing room, looked Fat Tony and I in the eyes, introduced himself, shook our hands, sat down, and then just hung out bullshitting with us…for a few hours.

Much to our shock and delight, Val was just another dude who liked hanging out talking about movies, music, art, and all sorts of crazy shit.

At one point I chatted with him about the movie The Island of Dr. Moreau, which also came out in 1996. The movie was awful, and Val was the one who offered that assessment, but he talked about the joy and insanity of working with Marlon Brando on the film. His story of Brando just showing up one day covered in white pancake make-up and wearing a giant muumuu was hysterical and included a spot-on Brando impersonation.

Fat Tony and I then talked with him about The Ghost and the Darkness and how we used to tell girls that Val’s co-star on that film, Michael Douglas, was my uncle – which some people fell for because I had the most remote resemblance to him. Val laughed his ass off at that and then admitted he could see the resemblance…and then talked about similar pranks he pulled off as a younger man while at Julliard (none I’ll recount here).

The conversation with Val was wide-ranging and entirely engaging. He was just a good guy and he seemed to cherish the opportunity to talk to two regular dudes about regular dude stuff. Throughout the conversation he was gracious, charming, easy with a smile and a laugh, and persistently engaging and interested.

Towards the end of this rather magical few hours, Fat Tony very subtly brought up the idea of Val doing a comedy bit with me during the interview…and Val didn’t just go for it, he was excited by the idea, and we spent the next half hour or so talking about it and riffing about stuff we could do.

The conversation ran so long that producers got stressed because we were already way over time and so we cut the conversation short and had to shoot the interview. Val made it clear he didn’t care how late we ran…he was good to go.

So Fat Tony interviewed Val in the studio, and I set up out on the street for my “man on the street” question gag.

Then the time came for the bit and just as we had discussed previously, Val and I improvised a comedic question and answer thing, and he was awesome. He totally bought into the bit and he did his part with aplomb which made my part infinitely easier and we had a great time and then it was over.

The MTV people thought it was funny…Fat Tony thought it was funny…and Val thought it was funny. Success.

The interview then continued for a bit and I returned to the studio. When the interview ended Val could’ve just whisked off to the next thing but he didn’t. He made a beeline for me and he shook my hand and said “that was great”. I said “thanks for doing that, I really appreciate it”, and he replied, “any time brother”.

I then joked with him by saying “I don’t care what anybody says, I’ll work with you again”. He laughed, gave me a slight punch to the chest, and said amusingly, “and I appreciate that”.

After some more jocular conversation Val shook hands with Fat Tony and I and then went on his way with a smile. It is not hyperbolic for me to say that my interaction with Val Kilmer on this ultimately forgettable little comedy bit is, at least in my mind, the absolute apex of my rather abysmal acting career, and it’s all because Val Kilmer wasn’t just a great actor but a really good guy. Val didn’t just make my day by being so cool and kind and generous, he made my career. He was, without question, a bright light in this very dark world, and I am eternally grateful for his small act of acting kindness which remained illuminated through many a dark and dismal year.

HOLLYWOOD SIGNS

The “Val Kilmer is my best friend” joke between Fat Tony and I began on that day and whenever Val’s name came up in conversation it would always be preceded by “my best friend”.

Three or four years after my Val Kilmer scene, I was in Hollywood shooting a small movie. It was my first time in Los Angeles and I was actually staying on Fat Tony’s couch – he had moved there a few years earlier.

During my stay I went to a dinner with Fat Tony and a bunch of Hollywood producers…and I was in well over my head…and at one point the name Val Kilmer came up and I chimed in jokingly that “Val Kilmer is my best friend”…repeating the recurring joke between me and Fat Tony.  Well…the funny thing was that this is Hollywood and I didn’t realize this but to everyone else in the room it was very possible that I actually WAS Val Kilmer’s best friend…so they didn’t get the joke…and Fat Tony – amusingly enough…left me out to dry and scramble through the conversation on my own.

Immediately after saying Val was my best friend, a pall came over the table and one of the producers spoke up and said to me in all seriousness that I “should talk to Val about his behavior…he’s got a bad reputation”. My response to this was to stifle a laugh and just look mockingly concerned and condescendingly say “is that right?”

The producer didn’t know I was joking – and didn’t get my sense of humor, so needless to say, after that dinner my reputation in Hollywood was just as bad as Val Kilmer’s, but at least the “Val Kilmer is my best friend” gag was still wholly intact and would remain so to this day.

DARK SYNCHRONICITY

Another oddity, or irony, or dark synchronicity, regarding my best friend Val Kilmer is that Kilmer was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2015 or so, and went through years of brutal treatment which included surgery and chemotherapy which left him ultimately unable to speak clearly. My faux uncle Michael Douglas was diagnosed with the same cancer in 2010 and went through similar treatment, but came out of it more whole than Kilmer did. And here’s the topper…in 2011 my friend Fat Tony got the same exact cancer as Kilmer and Douglas and has gone through brutal treatment, including surgery and chemotherapy, for over a decade – he is thankfully cancer free today.

That Val Kilmer, Michael Douglas and Fat Tony, three people integral to that magical moment in my life those nearly thirty years ago, would all be stricken by such a particular, and particularly cruel, form of cancer, is something that has baffled and unnerved me for years.

THE BRILLIANCE AND THE BATTLEFIELD

I just happened to have watched both The Doors and Heat in the past week, and as always was captivated by Val’s brilliance. He was one of the more enigmatic actors of his age, and when he was locked in to a role with a great director, there was nothing he couldn’t do.

In many ways, Val Kilmer’s career is a conundrum…he was never as big or as famous or as accomplished as he should have been. Many will chalk that up to his “difficult” attitude…but I don’t, I chalk it up to Hollywood’s limited imagination and artistic ambivalence…and I chalk up his “difficult” reputation to small-minded, gossip-fueled company men who kissed up and kicked down and never gave a flying shit about artistry or what acting really is and what it means.

I think Val Kilmer never reached his full potential as a movie star was because he was an actor stuck in a movie star’s body. He was impossibly handsome and so Hollywood thought he should be a leading man, but Val’s soul was that of an actor, an artist, always searching for that ethereal and fleeting moment of artistic transcendence that drives all great artists.

There were times when he hit the sweet spot in a film where he was both movie star and actor…The Doors comes to mind. Kilmer’s performance as Jim Morrison is absolutely stunning. It is a work of great humanity, charisma and pathos. That Kilmer wasn’t at least nominated for Best Actor in 1991 for that film is a crime…and I believe he should have won the award. I think it is unquestionably true that Val Kilmer’s work as Jim Morrison is the best performance in film history to have not been nominated for a Best Actor Academy Award.

Another, less seen, film that I recommend is 1992’s Thunderheart, the story of an FBI agent sent to investigate murders on a Sioux reservation. In that film Kilmer gives one of the more layered, subtle and compelling leading man performances of the era.

Of course, the other films worth watching are Top Gun, where he brings the heat to his work as Ice Man, as well as his comedic early films Top Secret! And Real Genius, which show his silly side.

The 2021 documentary Val is another must-watch as it gives us a glimpse into Val’s lifebefore and after throat cancer, and it is very well-made and heart-breaking. The film, which I highly recommend, shows Kilmer to be much like he was with me in our brief time together back at MTV…engaging, interesting and interested.

And finally…no Val Kilmer film festival is complete without showing the true gems Heat, Tombstone, and Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang.

TOMORROW AND TOMORROW AND TOMORROW

I never saw or spoke to Val Kilmer again after our little scene together at MTV oh so many years ago…but I never forgot what a cool guy he was, how kind he was, how adventurous he was, and how professional he was. He didn’t have to be any of those things to a nobody like me, but he was, and that says a great deal about him, his character, his artistry and his humanity.

I’d like to think that when I shuffle off this mortal coil, and head to the undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveller returns, that I will be greeted by, among others, a smiling Val Kilmer, who will give me a punch to the chest and say, “hey brother, you wanna do this scene with me?”

Yes Val, I do…in fact, it would be an absolute honor.

©2025

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 134 - Sing Sing

On this episode, Barry and I head to maximum security to discuss the prison drama Sing Sing, starring Best Actor Oscar nominee Colman Domingo. Topics discussed include the terrific cast, the terrible marketing, and the paucity of quality films like Sing Sing. Stick around for the bonus discussion about the 'Mike-terion Collection' - the best of the movies that Barry and I have reviewed. 

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 134 - Sing Sing

Thanks for listening!!

©2025

Heretic and Longlegs: Two Horror Reviews for the Price of One!!

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

Heretic – 2.75 out of 5 stars. SEE IT/SKIP IT.

Longlegs – 2 out of 5 stars. SKIP IT.

Heretic, written and directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, is a horror film that tells the tale of two Mormon missionaries, Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton, who attempt to convert Mr. Reed, a man who is not what he seems.

The film, which stars Hugh Grant as Mr. Reed, opened in the U.S. on November 8th 2024 and is available to stream on MAX, where it is currently the number one ranked movie.

Heretic was a success at the box office, raking in $58 million on a $10 million budget, and it garnered some positive buzz and even some awards consideration, with Grant receiving Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations.

I missed Heretic in the theatre but recently checked it out on MAX.

Heretic is one of those tantalizing movies that has a stellar premise, a wonderful set-up, terrific performances and a gripping first half, but that loses its way in its second half/final act and ultimately suffers greatly because of it. In this way Heretic reminds me Barbarian (2022), another horror film from a few years ago that was phenomenal for two acts and then stumbled badly in its final act.

The first half of Heretic really is remarkable as it deftly presents its characters and subtly creates tension. The film is at its best when it is essentially a philosophical and theological debate between the Mormon missionaries and Mr. Reed. The interplay between the three of them and Reed’s intellectual chess playing is extraordinarily compelling to watch.

Hugh Grant’s performance in the first half is outstanding as he chews the scenery and spits out dialogue with aplomb.

Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East as Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton respectively, also give top notch and very layered performances that in lesser hands would have been easily botched.

The dramatic interplay between Grant, Thatcher and East is a glorious stew for the first half of the film…but then a shift occurs (to avoid spoilers I won’t reveal it) and the script loses its way, and the film loses a great deal of its tension, and it is no longer as captivating a cat and mouse game.

Unfortunately, the film spins out of control in its final third to an alarming degree and it diminishes all that came before it. Gone is the intrigue, the tension, the intelligence, and in its place are some rather tired horror tropes – well executed but tropes nonetheless.

Again, Heretic’s fumbled final act reminded me a great deal of Barbarian because Barbarian made similar mistakes, such as expanding its story and setting unnecessarily which egregiously dissipated dramatic tension.

That said, there is no doubt that writer/directors Beck and Woods are skilled filmmakers as this movie is well-made, and are interesting thinkers…they just need to be more concise and more contained storytellers in order to make the most of their moviemaking opportunities.

Another horror film from last year that I just checked out was Longlegs, which hit theatres on July 12th, 2024 and is now available to stream on Hulu.

Longlegs was a big hit, making $126 million on a $10 million budget. It was well-marketed, and had very positive word of mouth, with many calling it the “scariest movie ever made!”

I missed Longlegs in the theatre and just watched it on Hulu and I can testify that Longlegs is most definitely NOT the scariest movie ever made. It is definitely creepy, and has some scary moments, but over-all it isn’t that scary and it also isn’t very good.

Longlegs is an exercise in creating mood, and it excels at that, but what it has in mood it lacks in story and character.

The basic premise of Longlegs is that it follows the travails of Lee Harker, and FBI agent in the 1990s assigned to the mysterious serial killer case Longlegs. Harker has the gift of clairvoyance and uses it in her FBI work, and so it seems she is a good choice to track down this killer.

As the story progresses, we learn more about Harker, and about Longlegs, and the more we learn the less it makes sense and the less we care about any of it.

The film is undoubtedly trying to pay homage to The Silence of the Lambs and create a newer more esoteric version of it, and it does a respectable job of capturing the weird and creepy essence of that film, but it lacks a coherent and compelling narrative to drive the story forward, and once again, it loses the plot in its second half.

The performances in Longlegs are all just a bit underwhelming as well. Maika Monroe does a decent enough job as Agent Harker, but shenever quite completely takes the role into her possession and instead seems just a bit too contained.

Nicholas Cage as Longlegs is certainly unnerving, but Nicholas Cage not as Longlegs is unnerving too. Cage never truly inhabits this sicko character but rather play acts at being a sicko…which has been the story of Cage’s career from the get go.

Blair Underwood and Alicia Witt have two supporting roles and neither of them feel fully fleshed out or adequately performed.

I left Longlegs with a certain sense of admiration for the film’s ambitions, and a certain level of irritation because it only succeeded in creating a marketing movement around itself rather than a great horror movie.

The reality is that Longlegs is a creepy vibes movie with some distinctly disturbing sequences that are nightmare fuel, but it is not a movie I would recommend because it never coalesces into a thoroughly successful horror venture. It ultimately falls flat in its fear-mongering because it can’t find a way to fulfill its promise and adequately finish.

Out of Heretic and Longlegs I would definitely choose Heretic even with its flaws, because it is vastly superior to Longlegs when at its best. Longlegs strikes me as the type of movie that pre-teens will absolutely freak out watching at a slumber party and keep themselves up all night trying to avoid nightmares…but unless you fit that demographic – I don’t recommend it.

If you’re a horror aficionado, then you’ll watch both of these movies…so my opinion is meaningless. But if you’re a regular person who only occasionally wanders into the horror genre, then I’d say the best option out of these two is Heretic.

©2025