Licorice Pizza: A Review

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

My Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT/SEE IT: A rather disappointing work from the usually brilliant PT Anderson that you can skip at the theatre and check out when it comes to a streaming service.

If Paul Thomas Anderson isn’t the greatest filmmaker working today, he is certainly in the discussion. From his earliest masterpiece Boogie Nights to his most recent, Phantom Thread, as well as with There Will Be Blood, The Master and Magnolia in between, Anderson has shown himself to be a true auteur and master craftsman.

After having suffered through this apocalyptically awful year of cinema, my hope was that PT Anderson would ride in and save the day with his newest film Licorice Pizza, which opened in L.A. and NY on November 26th and went nationwide on Christmas Day.

Unfortunately, Licorice Pizza cannot redeem 2021, as it is not a great film. Yes, it’s well shot and occasionally amusing, but also often meandering and repetitive. Ultimately, it’s little more than an endearing and pleasant but mostly forgettable movie. That said, cinema this year is the land of the lollipop kids and Licorice Pizza may very well be the tallest midget.

When glancing at PT Anderson’s filmography, it’s a staggering collection of brilliant works, and Licorice Pizza wouldn’t even come close to cracking his top 6, despite arguably being one of the best film’s of 2021, which is more an indictment of the cinema of 2021 than it is an endorsement of Licorice Pizza.

The film is a coming of age story that revolves around Gary, a 15 year old child actor, and Alana, a 25 (or so) year old ne’er do well, as they navigate their tumultuous friendship/relationship. Making their feature film debuts, Cooper Hoffman (Philip Seymour Hoffman’s son) plays Gary and Alana Haim (member of the pop-rock sister band Haim) plays Alana.

Cooper Hoffman and Alana Haim are fine in the film, a bit one-note, but fine. They aren’t particularly charismatic or compelling, but they aren’t repulsive either. They don’t seem overwhelmed on-screen, but they also don’t quite have the tools to do the work necessary to make the rather thin story work.

Less a coherent narrative than a series of loosely related vignettes, the film deftly transports the viewer back in time to Los Angeles in the 1970’s. The 70’s were a great time for music and a lack of bras, both of which are duly highlighted in Licorice Pizza.

This loose cinematic structure results in an often meandering movie that lacks heft, both dramatically and psychologically, and creates an absence of character evolution and dramatic arc.

The film’s decided lack of character arc, development and depth, and its superior sense of setting, transform the film into a “hang out” movie, one of my least favorite genre of film (other famous hang out movies are American Graffiti, Dazed and Confused and Frances Ha). Gone is a driving narrative and in its place the audience just gets to hang out and experience rather than being taken for a ride.

The one thing I found somewhat intriguing about Licorice Pizza was that it often seemed like a savvy but subtle meditation on American capitalism, as the movie’s de facto lead character, Gary, is incessantly entrepreneurial. Also feeding that notion are the featured gas shortages of that era - and their accompanying rage, as well as upper class tyrants like Jon Peters (a savage Bradley Cooper) and “Jack” Holden (Sean Penn) preying upon those beneath them.

The film is, not surprisingly, beautifully shot, with PT Anderson and Michael Bauman sharing Director of Photography credit, and boasts a terrific and well utilized soundtrack that features The Doors, Paul McCartney and Wings, David Bowie, Gordon Lightfoot and Blood, Sweat and Tears.

But while the beautiful visuals and luscious soundtrack elevate the movie, they also highlight its lack of substance and dramatic vigor. Licorice Pizza isn’t a case of the emperor having no clothes, it’s more a case of a beautiful wardrobe having no emperor.

There just isn’t enough meat on these bones to satisfy the most basic hunger for drama and character, and thus Licorice Pizza ultimately feels fanciful but also fleeting and forgettable.

The bottom line is that Licorice Pizza is a disappointment, a beautiful disappointment, but a disappointment none the less. If you’re a fan of PT Anderson, lower your expectations and try to find a 35 mm screening, and then it might be worth it. For everyone else, just wait for it to come out on a streaming service and check it out then…when you can “hang out” with it in the comfort of your own home.

©2021

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota : Episode 57 - Spider-Man: No Way Home

Barry and I show off our new technical and audio prowess in this scintillating episode that is the season three premiere of everybody's favorite cinema podcast. The film discussed on this glorious episode is blockbuster Spider-Man: No Way Home. The wide ranging discussion touches upon such diverse topics as the Sony-Disney soon to be not-so-civil war, good guy Andrew Garfield, stealing from the Dennis Hopper film Colors, and dreams of The Flash and Jack Nicholson's price to reprise the Joker.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota : Episode 57 - Spider-Man: No Way Home

Thanks for listening!

©2021

A Very British Scandal: A Review

BBC’s ‘A Very British Scandal’ is a frigid, flaccid and frustrating affair

The mini-series about the scandalous divorce between the Duke and Duchess of Argyll doesn’t trust its audience to learn the proper lessons from its tale of aristocratic lust gone wrong.

The new BBC mini-series, A Very British Scandal, recounts the tumultuous marriage of the Duke of Argyll, Ian Campbell, and his third wife, Margaret Whigham, and their very public and seedy divorce in 1963.

The scandalous part of this very British story is that during the divorce proceedings, Ian accused Margaret of adultery and had the pictures to prove it. Most notable of these saucy photos showed Margaret performing oral sex on a mysterious ‘headless man’, so dubbed because his head was not visible in the picture.

Margaret ‘The Dirty Duchess’ giving a blow job to a “headless-man” sounds like either the strangest horror movie porn imaginable or the wet dream of a tabloid headline writer, but this very British scandal is all too true.

A Very British Scandal is an often frustrating, uneven, mixed bag of a drama. It stars Claire Foy, best known for her role as Queen Elizabeth II on The Crown, as Margaret, the rich and beautiful socialite who claims to “love sex” and be “very good at it”. Margaret is sort of like a 1950’s Kardashian as she is a socialite celebrity with a bevy of paparazzi trailing her every move.

After Margaret divorces her first husband, she meets the caddish Captain Ian Campbell (Paul Bettany), the newly anointed Duke of Argyll, who is married to his second wife and apparently actively looking for his third.

Foy is an appealing actress, but as beautiful as she is, she seems somewhat miscast as the “highly sexed woman” Margaret. Foy is a rather rigid and frigid on-screen presence, and therefore is not a comfortable fit as the libidinous Margaret.

Like Foy, Bettany too is a skilled actor, but doesn’t quite work as Ian. While Bettany certainly looks like an often crazy and lazy lord, he does not strike one as much of a lothario.

Despite its flaws, what is appealing about A Very British Scandal is that, at first anyway, it appears to be more interested in telling a semblance of the truth rather than pandering to its lesser cultural political instincts.

For example, neither Margaret nor Ian come across as the good guy in this tale of woe. In fact, the show most often seems like a case of two horrible people doing horrible things to each other.

Margaret is a shameless, near-compulsive liar and her non-sexual sins are substantially more egregious than her alleged sexual ones. For instance, she forges love letters to Ian’s ex-wife and sends them to Ian, forcing him to doubt the paternity of his children. She also tries to run a scam where she would buy a baby (she’s incapable of carrying a child after an accident) and claim it’s her and Ian’s and thus an heir to the Duke of Argyll title. And then there’s the time she publicly accused her step-mother of having an affair with Ian…thus basically stressing her already ill father to death.

Ian is a real piece of work too. At best he’s a lazy aristocratic womanizer suffering from WWII prison camp related PTSD. At worst, he’s an erratic, volatile, violent, abusive, alcoholic, amphetamine-addicted sociopath. Ian is like a vampire who sinks his teeth into women and drains them of their life force and their bank accounts of any money.  

Like I said, these are two horrible people doing horrible things to each other.

There is no hero here and no noble victim, just two entitled upper-class twits trying to entertain themselves while their worthless lives slowly pass.

Unfortunately, after spending its three-hour run time allowing its audience to see the ugly and unvarnished truth about its subjects, A Very British Scandal makes the most curious of decisions when concluding.

After the action ended a post-script popped up on-screen that set out to remove all agency from the audience by informing them what they were supposed to think about the preceding drama.

The ham-handed post-script tells viewers that what they just witnessed was the “first time a woman was publicly shamed by the UK mass media”. Oh, is that what it was?

It also informs the viewer that the dastardly Duke of Argyll married an American heiress five months after the divorce, and just to prove in contrast how noble Margaret truly was, it also tells the audience that she never revealed the name of the “headless” man she sexually serviced.

It’s utterly pathetic that the producers of this show felt they needed to hammer the audience over the head with the “proper” conclusions they were supposed to reach. God forbid anyone walk away from this series without understanding that what it’s really all about is feminist victimhood and the suffocating power of the patriarchy.

If you thought this was maybe a story about two hurt and wounded people hurting and wounding each other because they were raised in a vapid and corrupted aristocracy devoid of any substance, purpose, meaning, or moral and ethical grounding, then the producers want you to know that you’re not only wrong but bad.

By so shamelessly not trusting their audience and their own storytelling ability, the producers of A Very British Scandal not only undermined the power of their drama but also neutered their own credibility.

A Very British Scandal is at best a forgettable mediocrity, and the people who made it would be wise to worry more about putting out a quality product than about insulting their viewers by trying to control the conclusions they reach.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

The Book of Boba Fett -Episode One Initial Reaction

‘The Book of Boba Fett’ series is bursting with potential but is off to a very slow start.

The new Disney Plus show can go either way after its uneven first episode is a mixed-bag of flashbacks and mediocre fight sequences.

This article contains minor spoilers for The Book of Boba Fett.

In the wake of the critically and commercially successful Star Wars series The Mandalorian, streaming service Disney Plus has gone back to the well with the new spin-off series, The Book of Boba Fett.

Boba Fett, the bounty hunter who famously bagged Han Solo in The Empire Strikes Back, is a character that has long been adored by Star Wars fans, and when he made his surprising return in The Mandalorian (surprising because he had seemingly died in Return of the Jedi), it was met with raucous applause from the Star Wars faithful.

Now Boba is no longer a background or supporting player, his name is on the marquee, but after watching the somewhat uneven first episode of The Book of Boba Fett, it’s too soon to tell if the infamous bounty hunter has the star power to hold audience’s attention over the course of a seven-episode series.

The Book of Boba Fett, which stars Temuera Morrison as Fett and Ming-Na Wen as Fennec Shand, a mercenary and assassin, premiered its first episode on Wednesday December 28, and will release a new episode for the next six Wednesdays, for a total of seven in all.  

The opening episode, written by Jon Favreau (director of Iron Man and creator of The Mandalorian) and directed by Robert Rodriguez, is titled ‘Stranger in a Strange Land’, and it uses flashbacks to show some of Boba Fett’s strange journey after he went into the Sarlacc’s mouth on Tattooine in Return of the Jedi, up to the present day where he is a crime boss sitting on Jabba the Hutt’s old throne.

Fett’s history deeply informs his present, and so the flashbacks make complete narrative sense, but that said, they also slow down the pace of the program, leaving it at times on the precipice of tedium.

Also hampering the show, at least thus far, are some pretty sub-par action sequences. One fight with Boba Fett and Fennec Shand against a group of anonymous ninja assassins on the streets of Mos Espa, is very poorly choreographed and shot, so much so that it looks amateurish.

Although in contrast, there is a solid sand battle between Boba Fett and a very cool looking sand beast in one of the many flashbacks. Hopefully this sequence, and not the predictable and dull fight in Mos Espa, is a preview of the type of action we can expect in the coming episodes.

The visuals of the show also leave something to be desired, as the cinematography of the first episode is painfully rudimentary, and lacks imagination or cinematic flair.

As for the cast, again, thus far it could go either way. Morrison is not a particularly compelling screen presence, and neither is Ming-Na Wen, but there’s always the possibility that they find their sea legs and grow into their characters as the series continues.

As the show moves forward, there are some potentially intriguing storylines. For example, the mayor of Mos Espa refuses to pay tribute to Boba, and his representative even delivers an ominous threat to the crime boss, something which should lead to some fireworks down the road.

Another somewhat intriguing angle in the story is that while Boba Fett is obviously no shrinking violet as a crime lord, he also doesn’t want to be an arrogant and brutal tyrant like Jabba the Hutt.

For instance, Boba demands he walk around “on his own two feet” as he patrols the city of Mos Espa, because unlike Jabba he won’t be “carried around like a useless noble”. He follows that up with, “Jabba ruled with fear. I intend to rule with respect.”

Fett is no Jabba, he’s a working man’s crime boss. And he isn’t the cold-blooded bounty hunter of the past either, he is more forgiving. For example, he pardons two of Jabba’s bodyguards because they were loyal, and by sparing their lives they become loyal to him.

That said, Boba Fett still has the killer instinct when he needs to, like when he gloriously obliterates one of the ninja assassins who ambush him on the streets of Mos Espa in the best shot of the show so far.

This conflict within Boba Fett, and between Boba Fett and the world, has a great deal of dramatic and narrative promise, but the first episode leaves me uncertain as to whether this promise can ever be fulfilled.

I have to say, I felt the same way about The Mandalorian at first too. And the reason I am so cautious in my criticism of The Book of Boba Fett is because The Mandalorian got better and better with each episode, and I ended up absolutely loving the series even though I’m not much of a Star Wars aficionado.

Ultimately, after just one episode The Book of Boba Fett is too much of a mixed-bag and too uneven to make any judgements on whether the overall series will be worthwhile or not. Hopefully, this flawed series opener is the bottom and everything goes up from here.

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 56 - Don't Look Up

On this episode, Barry and I brace for impact as we critique Adam McKay's polarizing, darkly comedic, climate change satire Don't Look Up starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence. Topics discussed include the trouble with satirizing the already absurd, the genius of Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove and Barry's continuing obsession with Timothee Chalamet. Make sure to stay tuned for a post-credit nude scene!

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 56 - Don't Look Up

Thanks for listening!

©2021

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 55 - West Side Story

On this episode, Barry and I don our dance belts, flash our jazz hands and dance/fight over Steven Spielberg's remake of West Side Story. Topics discussed include pondering why on earth Spielberg would make this movie, Barry's resistance to Janusz Kaminski's cinematography and my brush with greatness starring Rita Moreno.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 55 - West Side Story

Thanks for listening!

©2021

Don't Look Up: A Review

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

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. An ultimately instantly forgettable cinematic venture that tries to satirize our already-absurd reality in vain. The allegorical climate change comedy wastes its star-studded lineup’s brilliant performance in a flaccid and unfocused attempt at comedy.

The new Netflix movie, Don’t Look Up, an apocalyptic black comedy that uses the narrative of a huge meteor heading towards earth as an allegory for climate change, seemingly has a lot going for it.

For instance, the movie, which premiered on the streaming service on December 24th, boasts an impressive cast, as Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence star with Cate Blanchett, Meryl Streep, Jonah Hill, Mark Rylance and Timothee Chalamet in supporting roles.

In addition, the movie is written and directed by Adam McKay, who has shown himself, most notably with his stellar film The Big Short, to be a clever and ambitious filmmaker.

Despite bursting at the seams with comedic potential and its bevy of formidable assets, the laughs of Don’t Look Up unfortunately never blossom, but instead die on the vine. Unfortunately, the comedy and the film just don’t work.

The film opens with Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence), a PhD candidate at Michigan State, discovering a mammoth comet as she does research at an observatory.

Her professor, Dr. Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio), does the calculations and realizes that the comet is heading toward earth and will arrive and destroy all life on the planet, in roughly six months.

From there, Dr. Mindy and Dibiasky try and warn humanity but constantly run up against the worst of mankind, from the vapid, vacuous and venal President Orlean (Meryl Streep) to the sociopathic tech guru Peter Ishwell (Mark Rylance) and everyone in between, trying to thwart them and subvert the truth.

Part of the problem with Don’t Look Up is that it intends to be an ambitious satirical social commentary about media, big tech, social media, celebrity culture and our politics, but how do you successfully satirize things that are already so absurd as to be parodies of themselves?

For example, The New York Times, which the film briefly pokes fun at, wrote an article titled “A Comedy Nails the Media Apocalypse” about Don’t Look Up and the media’s alleged inability to focus on climate change because it keeps getting distracted by superfluous side stories.

In the article, as the writer, Ben Smith, opines about two empty-headed tv hosts in the film who can’t stay on topic even when that topic is the potential end of humanity, he himself gets distracted by a superfluous side story and ends up writing an aside where he chastises director McKay for having the film’s female tv host (a Mika Brzezinski type played by Cate Blanchett) sleep with DiCaprio’s Dr. Mindy character.

Smith writes, “I did ask Mr. McKay if we could have a moratorium on fictional female journalists sleeping with their subjects, even if they’re Mr. DiCaprio in the guise of a nerdy scientist.”

Mr. Smith is oblivious to his inane ridiculousness and only succeeds in raising the question in regard to this movie and the media, namely, how can you satirize something that is so absurd and obscene as to be beyond satire?

There are some bright spots in the film. The first of which is that both Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence give solid performances. DiCaprio, who plays a somewhat Dr. Fauci-esque scientist the media and public falls madly in love with, is particularly good in moments.

Lawrence is terrific as well, as movie star charisma, as well as her dry delivery and impeccable timing, show themselves at times to great effect.

The supporting cast, most notably Mark Rylance as the creepy tech guru and Jonah Hill as the chief of staff and son to the president, give delicious performances. As do Cate Blanchett as the aforementioned horny tv host and Meryl Streep as the shameless, Trumpian president.

But despite such a bevy of top-notch performances, the comedy of Don’t Look Up just never coalesces enough to make it a compelling cinematic venture.

The main culprit in the failure of the film is writer/director McKay.

McKay is trying to make Don’t Look Up be to climate change what Stanley Kurbick’s Dr. Strangelove was to the cold war.

The problem, of course, is that for as interesting as McKay can be as a filmmaker, he is no Stanley Kubrick. Not even close.

Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove works because he never preaches or panders or allows his film to become a pure partisan political polemic. In contrast, McKay is unable to restrain his more-base impulses and simply cannot resist needlessly preaching and pandering. The result is an often-times partisan political polemic that comes across more as self-righteous, pretentious and smug than comedically insightful or enlightening. 

The ironic thing is that McKay’s film is commenting on the short-attention span and scatterbrained nature of our current culture, but it fails as a film because it is scatterbrained and lacks the unflinching focus of Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove. Ultimately, Don’t Look Up tries to say too much about too many things and ends up saying nothing of any substance about anything.

Like so many films this year, Don’t Look Up isn’t a great movie, or a funny movie or even an interesting movie, it is just a movie you sit through and when it’s over you move on and never once think about it again. Which is a shame, because it could have been, and should have been, so much better.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Being the Ricardos: A Review

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

My Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars.

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. This is a sub-mediocre, made-for-tv type of movie that is at times, insufferable.

Being the Ricardos, the Aaron Sorkin written and directed bio-pic that attempts to tell the tale of a very tumultuous week in the life of iconic comedienne Lucille Ball and her husband Desi Arnaz Jr., has been making headlines for all the wrong reasons.

The film itself, which made its streaming premiere on Amazon on Tuesday December 21st, is a rather pedestrian affair that suffers from an unsound narrative structure, tonal inconsistencies and a painfully poor script.

Sorkin’s writing style, which can best be describes as ‘walking, talking and exposition’, is an acquired taste, one which I have yet to acquire. I find his dialogue to be insufferable and his storytelling ability flaccid.

Making matters worse is that Sorkin’s quirky writing desperately needs a master craftsman director to make it work, like David Fincher on The Social Network, but Sorkin is a hack behind the camera and thus Being the Ricardos falls flat on its phony face.

The movie feels like a very special episode of a bad sitcom about a good sitcom. Adding to the lack of genuine drama is the fact that every sentient being with half a brain in their heads with a minimal relationship to the history of television knows exactly how the story ends. All of the drama is therefore devoid of any power.

But the reason Being the Ricardos is making headlines is not because it’s a mindless and middling affair. No, the film is getting attention because it’s mired in the most manufactured of controversies.  

Apparently the film committed the most unforgivable of sins by casting Oscar winning actor Javier Bardem as Arnaz opposite Oscar winning actress Nicole Kidman as Lucy. Why is Bardem playing Desi Arnaz a problem? Well, Bardem is a Spaniard and Arnaz a Cuban, which somehow violates some sacred woke law of diversity, inclusion and representation. To quote Colonel Kurtz from Apocalypse Now, “The Horror. The Horror.”

One know-nothing guardian of the grievance culture complained that Bardem was, like his Spanish ancestors, being a “colonizer” by playing the Cuban Arnaz.

“They (the Spanish) came in and erased who we (Latinos) were, and I can’t help but feel the same way when Bardem gets roles meant to share the Latinx experience.”

That bit of hysterical hyperbole overlooks the fact that many Hispanic and Latino families proudly identify not just with their national origins but with their distant Spanish roots out of class-consciousness, and that Desi’s wealthy, upper-class Cuban family most likely did too.

Director Sorkin tried to defend his casting of Bardem, saying, “it’s heartbreaking and a little chilling to see members of the artistic community resegregating ourselves.”

Considering Sorkin’s long-time, mealy-mouthed complicity with Hollywood’s diversity-obsessed woke warriors more interested in ‘representation’ than in artistry or quality, that statement is the equivalent of someone who made it rain outside complaining about the weather.

Another amusing thing about this contrived controversy is that no one is making a stink about Nicole Kidman, an Aussie non-comedienne, playing the most iconic American comedienne of all time, Lucille Ball. OK, Kidman may have technically been born in Hawaii, but to Australian parents only there on student visas. I’ve heard her ‘g’day mate’ accent and I bet she likes cricket, wombats, and ‘Men at Work’ too. She’s not a real American.

No one ever cares when British or Australian actors play Americans, and do so with their tone deaf, nasally attempts at an American accent. For instance, why isn’t there an uproar over Brit Tom Holland playing all-American hero Spider-Man, whose friendly neighborhood is Queens, New York? Are there no actors from Queens available?

These woke fools bitching about Bardem’s Spanish ancestry also rarely care when British actors of color, like Daniel Kaluuya, play African-Americans, like he did in Get Out and Judas and the Black Messiah.

The truth is, American actors of all colors and ethnicities miss out when British, Irish, Canadian and Australian actors play American roles. This injustice must be stopped!

Obviously, I’m joking. When casting, focusing on the specificity of an actor’s national background rather than their talent and skill is irrational and imbecilic and runs completely counter to the art and craft of acting.

As the ever-eloquent Bardem astutely pointed out in a Hollywood Reporter article,

“I’m an actor, and that’s what I do for a living: try to be people that I’m not. What do we do with Marlon Brando playing Vito Corleone? What do we do with Margaret Thatcher played by Meryl Streep? Daniel Day-Lewis playing Lincoln?...if we want to open that can of worms, let’s open it for everyone…we should all start not allowing anybody to play Hamlet unless they were born in Denmark.”

Bardem is a great actor, as evidenced by his Best Actor Oscar nominated performance as, ironically enough, gay Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas in the Julian Schnabel’s As Night Falls (2000).

His being attacked for his improper ethnic or national background is, unfortunately, something that is becoming common place in Hollywood when it comes to casting Latino roles.

For example, In the Heights shamelessly marketed itself as a celebration of diversity as its Asian director (John Chu), Latino writer (Lin Manuel-Miranda) and mostly Latino cast told the story of a Latino neighborhood in New York City. But the movie came under fire from the woke brigade for its lack of “Afro-Latinx” representation.

Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story was sold as the righting of a historical wrong as, unlike the 1961 original movie, it cast only Latinos in Latino roles. Some still complained though that the lead role, Maria, was played by a woman of Columbian descent instead of a Puerto Rican.

The funny thing about this Being the Ricardos casting controversy is that Javier Bardem and Nicole Kidman, despite not being Cuban or American respectively, and despite the vacuous script and dreadful direction guiding them, are the two best things in this awful movie.

Thankfully, neither actor tries to do an impersonation of their famous character. Instead they attempt to create actual human beings and not caricatures. Unfortunately, Sorkin’s script does not support them in this endeavor, but Kidman and Bardem should at least be recognized for their honest attempt, no matter how far they fall short.

The lessons that needs to be learned from Being the Ricardos and the surrounding casting contrvoersy are that, one - Aaron Sorkin is a truly terrible director. And two, within reason, we just need to let actors actually, you know, act…and we should leave the social justice preening for the college campus and the New York Times. Hollywood, its movies, its audiences, and the art of acting, would be much better served if we did.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 54 - Dopesick

On this combustible episode, Barry and I talk about the Barry Levinson produced Hulu mini-series Dopesick, which examines the opioid epidemic sparked by Purdue Pharma's alleged wonder drug Oxycontin. Topics discussed include Michael Keaton's brilliance, Purdue Pharma's villainy, the scourge of government and corporate corruption and the hell that is addiction. Love me or loathe me, if you’ve ever wanted the briefest of glimpses into the heart of darkness beating within me...listen to this episode, particularly the last ten minutes.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 54 - Dopesick

Thanks for listening!

©2021

'And Just Like That...' - I Threw Up in My Mouth.

Old HBO warhorse Sex in the City is back with the new show ‘And Just Like That…’, which is devoutly committed to “inclusivity” and also apparently to being dreadful.  

The new show claims it eschews tokenism as it tries to make amends for its original sin of whiteness, ‘And Just Like That…’ I threw up in my mouth.

The comedy/drama Sex and the City, which told the tale of Carrie Bradshaw and her three friends Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte as they navigated life, love and lust in New York City, was one of HBO’s most iconic shows when it ran from 1998 to 2004.

Now, seventeen years after the original went off the air, and after two abysmal feature films, Sex and the City (2008) and Sex and the City 2 (2010), the sassy strumpets are back with a new series on HBO titled, And Just Like That…

Sex and the City was wildly popular with a very particular brand of oblivious, feminist, upper-middle class aspiring white women.

The four whores of the apocalypse, the bright and allegedly beautiful Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), the over-sexed Samantha (Kim Cattrall), the feminist firebrand Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) and the uptight Charlotte (Kristen Davis), became the archetypes that these clueless white women latched on to and desperately tried to emulate.

I disliked Sex and the City first and foremost because of its egregious writing, decrepit direction and deplorable acting. But what made the show truly insidious as a pop culture phenomenon was that it inspired a whole generation of Karens-in-waiting to embrace narcissistic feminism and vapid consumerism. It was unadulterated capitalism porn meant to deceive gullible women into craving clothes they didn’t need at prices they couldn’t afford in order to purchase a false feeling of fulfillment and freedom. It was the feminist tv version of “slavery is freedom”.

And despite ostensibly being a comedy, it was never even remotely funny. It was basically an absurd and philosophically obscene soap opera about four homely, horny harlots who had more money than sense, and when the show faded from the spotlight the world was better for it.

Although Sex and the City was never funny, a funny thing happened to it after it finished its run, namely that the woke court of political correctness deemed it to be “problematic” for its relentless whiteness and lack of diversity.

The stars of the show don’t even contest this charge, as Cynthia Nixon said that the lack of diversity on Sex and the City was “the Achilles heel of the show…”

It was in this spirit of self-flagellating that And Just Like That…was born. The show’s sole purpose being to wash away Sex and the City’s sin of whiteness by embracing “inclusivity”…and also to make everybody involved lots of money.

Star and producer Sarah Jessica Parker said she is committed to And Just Like That… being ‘inclusive’, but without resorting to “tokenism”. Yeah, sure.

After watching the first two episodes which premiered on HBO Max on Thursday, I can report that And Just Like That… is such a brazen testament to tokenism, and strains so hard to be vacuously diverse, it nearly soils its lacy undergarments.

And Just Like That… returns all of the Sex and the City regulars…all except for Samantha, as Kim Cattrall basically declared there’s no amount of money that would make her work with Sarah Jessica Parker ever again. Respect.

But in order to appease the woke gods of inclusivity, tokens are dispersed throughout to check boxes and darken the show’s color palette.

The tokens thus far are, Lisa Todd Wexley, a fabulous black mom and friend to Charlotte. Dr. Nya Wallace, a black college professor who Miranda befriends. And finally, Che Diaz, who is a non-binary, queer, Latinx comedian who hosts a podcast with Carrie.

These one-dimensional minorities are such obvious tokens you could use them to pay for a ride on the 4 train to Union Square to take part in a Black Lives Matter protest or to buy a custom-made pussy hat.

And Just Like That… is also a monument to the ravages of age. Carrie, Miranda and Charlotte are no longer sexy and sassy, but are now a trio of taut-faced, time-worn tarts. As they say down on the farm, these botoxed brauds look ‘rode hard and put up wet’.

Father Time is undefeated and proof of that is that Carrie now looks like one of the high-priced leather hand bags that she hoards, Miranda looks like she wandered in from the set of The Night of the Living Dead and Charlotte’s face is so medically altered she bears a striking resemblance to the Joker.

There’s also not a single laugh to be found in this shameless money grab, as the writing is as stale as a month-old bagel and the performances as wooden as a cigar store Indian.

The one thing I did find amusing though is how these allegedly strong female characters have become such spineless, eager to please, groveling cowards.

In the 90’s they all strutted their stuff and didn’t care what people thought. Now, these supposedly free-thinking, free-spirited feminist characters (and the actors who play them) are so fearful they might offend, they reflexively comply and conform, instinctively never challenging but rather genuflecting to the suffocating and irrational restrictions placed upon them by woke culture.

In this way, Carrie, Miranda and Charlotte perfectly reflect their now middle-aged, Hillary and Kamala loving, upper-middle class female fans who are just as compliant, just as conformist and just as cowardly, and who, no doubt, are waiting to be told if And Just Like That… is woke enough and if they’re allowed to like it.

I don’t know if the show is woke-approved, but I do know it’s devoid of anything even mildly interesting or entertaining and has absolutely no redeeming qualities to it. Same as it ever was.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT. 

©2021

West Side Story: A Review

****THIS FILM CONTAINS MILD SPOILERS!! THIS IS TECHNICALLY NOT A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! YOU’VE BEEN WARNED!! ****

My Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

 My Recommendation: SEE IT/SKIP IT. The music is great (it’s West Side Story for goodness sakes!). The movie is not. If you’re a musical theatre nerd, then see it in the theatre. But if you’re ambivalent on musicals or are just a straight-up cinephile, you can skip it and wait to see it on streaming when it comes available.

 When I heard that Steven Spielberg was remaking the 1961 classic film musical West Side Story, I wondered why the most powerful director on earth would do such a trite thing.

Spielberg can make any movie he wants, so why, when no one was clamoring for a re-make, would he re-make a movie classic that is not in need of a re-make?

Having seen the movie, I still have no answer to that question, except maybe that Spielberg was looking for a film where he could most clearly signal his virtue in the hopes of getting an Oscar.

In 1961, West Side Story, directed by Robert Wise and famed choreographer Jerome Robbins, featuring music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Steven Sondheim, and starring the luminous Natalie Wood and the glorious Rita Moreno, captured America’s imagination as well as an astounding ten Academy Awards.

West Side Story, of course, tells the Romeo and Juliet tale of star-crossed lovers, Tony and Maria, who are caught between rival gangs of working class whites, the Jets, and Puerto Rican immigrants, the Sharks.

The 1961 film is great for its time, but it’s been labelled “problematic” by the modern politburo of political correctness due to its alleged stereotypical presentation of Puerto Ricans, including using make-up to darken the skin of actors, as well as committing the mortal sin of casting non-Latina Natalie Wood in the lead role of Maria, a Puerto Rican girl.

Spielberg’s remake keeps the story and setting the same, but in order to get maximum virtue signaling value he imposes a sort of meta update by projecting the woke politics of our current age onto the production as a way to ‘right the wrongs of cinema history’ or something.

For example, Spielberg boldly declared “the first thing I said was every single Shark, boy and girl, needs to come from the Latinx communities. And without fail.”  How courageous…and to use the term “Latinx”…bravo!

To prove his progressive bona fides, Spielberg also has numerous critical scenes in the film where only Spanish is spoken, but refuses to ever use subtitles in order to “not give English the power”. Again…these aren’t just throwaway scenes, they’re critical and if you don’t speak Spanish you have no clue what’s happening. This tactic dramatically undermines the film and ends up leaving Spanish-only speaking viewers confused half the time and English-only speaking viewers confused the other half.

Another piece of pathetic pandering is that Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner have turned the character Anybodys, which in the original was a tomboy on the fringe of the story, into a more featured character that is transgender. They even added scenes to beef up the trans aspects of Anybodys, including one where they/them beats up not only a group of Jets but also cops. Apparently in Spielberg’s 1950’s New York, trans people have super powers. And without giving anything away, I have to say, the final line of dialogue spoken to Anybodys in the movie is the absolute cringiest thing you’ll ever see….just atrociously awful in the most Spielbergian way.

The marketing campaign for West Side Story is astounding as everyday there’s a cavalcade of articles promoting how politically correct the production was, and how important and noble its representation, diversity and inclusion.

I saw a similar level of hype and woke self-congratulations earlier this year with the movie In the Heights, the musical film based on the Tony award musical by establishment darling Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator and star of middlebrow juggernaut Hamilton.

In the Heights had a massive advertising blitz touting the movie’s diversity and ethnic storyline, and critics gushed over how important it was for diversity in film.

But then the narrative quickly turned as some wokesters complained that the cast of In the Heights didn’t have enough dark-skinned Latinos. So, the film that was supposed to be super woke ended up being derailed by wokeness. How poetic.

As a result of the controversy (and also because, despite critics adoration, it wasn’t any good), In the Heights bombed at the box office and faded into obscurity.

Spielberg’s pre-release pre-emptive defense will probably work, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some cracks already showing.

For instance, I saw an article titled, “Why can’t West Side Story just cast a Puerto Rican Maria?” in the Daily Beast. The writer is furious that Rachel Zegler, Maria in Spielberg’s film, is of Columbian and Polish descent and not from Puerto Rico.  

If you are a disciple of the religion of woke addicted to identity politics, then that argument holds a great deal of sway. Of course, it is egregiously restrictive artistically, but if those are the new rules of the game, then those are the new rules of the game.

The reality is that, in terms of actual identity, the Latino community is not a monolith, it’s a very diverse collection of very specific group identities (and of course within those group identities are very diverse people). Just like the Irish, English, Welsh and Scottish are very different and distinct people who don’t take kindly to being lumped together, the same is true for Puerto Ricans, who are not Columbians, who aren’t Mexicans, who aren’t Hondurans, who aren’t Panamanians, who aren’t Cubans, who aren’t Dominicans, who aren’t Puerto Ricans and on and on.

I tend to doubt this identity-based line of attack against West Side Story will gain much steam because Spielberg has the media so deep in his pocket. But with that said, there are other areas where the film could run afoul of the woke gatekeepers of the culture, most notably the fact that this story about minorities is being told by “straight white men” and that Ansel Elgort has been accused of sexual assault.

It will be fascinating to see if any of those “issues” derail the West Side Story train, and even if they don’t it will still be interesting to see how the film performs at the box office, as this year has been very cruel to movie musicals, as audiences have stayed away in droves. But this year’s movie musical failures, In the Heights, Dear Evan Hansen and Tick, Tick…Boom are different from West Side Story in one very important way…Steven Spielberg didn’t direct them.

As for the merits of Spielberg’s West Side Story, it’s obvious he’s desperate for Oscar recognition, hence the virtue signaling, and that may work despite the fact that his movie is, at best, relentlessly mediocre. Something else in his favor is that this year has been an utter catastrophe for the art of cinema, so his competition is extraordinarily slim.

On the bright side, West Side Story is shot well by acclaimed cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, and has some interesting visual flair to it, but it isn’t all that different cinematically from the original.

Another thing going for it is…well…it’s West Side Story. The music is terrific, although many of the performances of those great songs leave a lot to be desired.

Also noteworthy is actress Ariana DeBose, who plays Anita. DuBose is a vibrant and dynamic screen presence. In every scene in which she appears, she is the radiant sun and everyone else orbits around her and is blinded by her luminosity.

DuBose’s rendition of “America” and Spielberg’s direction of that sequence, is easily the best thing in the movie. That musical number crackles with a visceral vibrancy that is undeniable and is a joy to behold, most especially because DuBose is like a supernova on-screen during the performance.

As for the rest of the cast, particularly leads Rachel Zegler as Maria and Ansel Elgort as Tony, they are unimpressive. Ziegler and Elgort specifically are anemic performers, like two black holes of anti-charisma.

Elgort’s Tony is supposed to have just gotten out of prison after nearly killing a kid in a rumble (a change by Kushner from the original story), but Elgort doesn’t look like a tough guy, in fact, he looks like someone whose dance card would’ve been pretty full in the prison showers.

That’s always been a big issue with West Side Story, either today or back in 1961, and that is that the actors playing the Jets and the Sharks gang members are about as menacing as a modern jazz dance troupe…because that’s what they are.

Speaking of which, the distinctive Jerome Robbins choreography, which borders on the hysterical in the original when the gangs dance/fight, has been altered or replaced in the new movie, but Robbins’ dance DNA is still present and, as great as it is – and it is great, it still made me chuckle at times.

In keeping with this painfully awful year in movies, West Side Story is a consistently unremarkable piece of cinema, but as an example of shameless self-promotion, virtue signaling and woke pandering, it’s the bees knees.

The bottom line is that the last time Spielberg made a move with a shark in it, it turned out a hell of a lot better than this one.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 53 - King Richard

On this episode, Barry and I volley back and forth over the new Will Smith movie King Richard, which tells the story of Richard Williams, the father of tennis prodigies Venus and Serena Williams. Topics discussed include the sorry state of cinema in the age of mediocrity, the perils of the biopic and the problem of Will Smith. Included is a brief bonus chat about the upcoming Spielberg movie West Side Story.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 53 - King Richard

Thanks for listening!

©2021

The Power of the Dog: A Review

****THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS!! THIS IS NOT A SPOILER FREE REVIEW - YOU’VE BEEN WARNED!!****

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. A self-indulgent, dramatically inert and suffocatingly dull piece of empty Oscar-bait and arthouse fool’s gold that is as vapid as it is predictable and trite.

There has been a considerable amount of Oscar buzz and critical acclaim swirling around the new Netflix film The Power of the Dog, and understandably so, as it stars one-time Oscar nominee Benedict Cumberbatch and is written and directed by Jane Campion, who won a Best Original Screenplay Academy Award back in 1993 for The Piano.

The movie, based on Thomas Savage’s 1967 novel of the same name, tells the tale of the Burbank brothers, Phil (Cumberbatch) and George (Jesse Plemons), two cattle ranchers in Montana in 1925. The brothers are very different people, with Phil the grizzled, hard-edged cowboy and George the more reserved, rotund and less respected suit-wearer.

When George marries a local widow, Rose (Kirsten Dunst), and becomes step-father to her very “special” son Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee), the story takes a turn.

As a devotee of the arthouse, The Power of the Dog, which on its surface appears to be an intricate, gritty, western drama in the vein of Paul Thomas Anderson’s brilliant There Will Be Blood, would seem to be right up my alley.

After having watched the film all I can really say is looks can be deceiving.

Critics are fawning all over the self-indulgent, dramatically inert and suffocatingly dull The Power of the Dog, giving it a 95% rating at Rotten Tomatoes, but I think the only reason for that is because the film is allegedly a mediation on “toxic masculinity” and it’s directed by a woman.  

For instance, Brian Truitt of USA Today gushed over the movie declaring it “a picturesque, enthralling exploration of male ego and toxic masculinity, crafted by an extremely talented woman…”

Peter Travers of ABC ejaculated, “Can Jane Campion’s western about toxic masculinity and repressed sexuality win Netflix its first best Picture Oscar? Let’s just say that no list of the year’s best movies will be complete without this cinematic powder keg.”

The problem with these critics, and with director Jane Campion, is that apparently, they not only have no idea what great cinema is anymore, but they also have absolutely no idea what genuine masculinity is either, nevermind its toxic variety.

The biggest example of that is the praise Benedict Cumberbatch is receiving for his portrayal of Phil, the supposedly toxically masculine cowboy who bullies and berates those around him with abandon.

I like Benedict Cumberbatch as an actor, but let’s be honest, he isn’t exactly the picture of robust masculinity. In fact, he is so miscast as Phil that watching him strut and prance around in his cowboy regalia and put on a faux tough guy pose, takes on a most comical of airs. The main reason for that is Cumberbatch’s inherent delicateness and utter lack of manliness.

Phil needs to be a menacing, ominous physical presence, but Cumberbatch is a dainty posh Englishman and with his mannered American accent he comes across, as they say in Texas, as ‘all hat and no cattle’.

Phil is supposed to be an emasculating bully – so much so that, just like Jane Campion slaughters subtlety, he actually castrates young bulls by hand. But Phil comes across less like a bully and more like a High School mean girl brat who isn’t going to beat anyone up but sure as hell will say something catty and hurtful.

One of the main targets of Phil’s “toxic masculinity” is Rose’s teenage son Peter. Peter is a painfully thin, very effeminate young man who dresses like a dandy and likes to make flowers out of paper. Just so audiences are made completely aware of how effeminate the character is, and also so that nuance can be completely dispatched and unintentional comedy heightened to the maximum, when Peter is demeaned by Phil and a bunch of ranch hands at a dinner, he responds by going out behind the house and frantically blowing off steam by using a hula hoop. No, I’m not making that up.

The film’s insight regarding masculinity and its toxicity is as deep as a pool of cow’s piss on a flat rock. For example, not to ruin the surprise for you, but… in a plot twist you could see coming from miles away like a steam train crossing the plains on a cloudless morning…the reason Phil is a mean-spirited son of a bitch is because he’s a closet case homosexual.

Let’s be clear, you don’t exactly need the most advanced form of gaydar to see Phil’s hidden, super-secret sexual yearnings. Phil’s sexual proclivities are pretty obvious when he’s waxing nostalgic about his dead friend Bronco Henry as he delicately strokes Henry’s old saddle.

One of the few things I did like about The Power of the Dog was its score by Radiohead guitarist Johnny Greenwood. But even that has its downside, as Greenwood’s score for The Power of the Dog is very reminiscent of his score for There Will Be Blood…and conjuring that masterpiece does no favors to this flaccid film.  

Come to think of it, I suppose The Power of the Dog is sort of like a cross between There Will Be Blood and Brokeback Mountain, but just without the powerful performances, insightful scripts or deft direction.

Ultimately, The Power of the Dog is not man’s best friend because it’s a movie about masculinity made by people who know nothing about the subject. It’s empty Oscar-bait and arthouse fool’s gold that is nothing more than a symptom of the plague of mediocrity that is currently ravaging the art of cinema.

So don’t waste your time on The Power of the Dog as this mangy old mutt needs to be taken out behind the barn and put out of its misery.  

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

House of Gucci: A Review

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

My Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. This star-studded, dramatically incoherent, big-budget soap opera isn’t so bad it’s good, it’s just really bad.

It is somewhat ironic that this Thanksgiving iconic director Ridley Scott has bestowed upon audiences an absolute turkey of a movie filled with an inexcusable and excessive amount of ham.

The turkey of a movie of which I speak is the remarkably ridiculous House of Gucci, and the ham is supplied by the cavalcade of over-acting movie stars among its cast, including Lady Gaga, Adam Driver, Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons, Jared Leto, and Salma Hayek.

House of Gucci, which is currently only available in theatres, attempts to tell the based-on-a-true-story of the Gucci family fashion empire in the 1980’s into the 1990’s, particularly the courtship, then tumultuous marriage, between the heir to the Gucci throne, Maurizio Gucci (Adam Driver), and Patrizia Reggiani (Lady Gaga), a sexy and sassy daughter of a blue-collar trucking business impresario.

Maurizio’s family has mixed reactions to his marriage with the ever-ambitious and insistent Patrizia. Maurizio’s father, Rodolfo (Jeremy Irons), sees her as a social climber to be shunned. Rodolfo’s brother and business partner Aldo, sees Patrizia as a potential opportunity to gain more control over the family business by pulling Maurizio away from his father and over to him.  

House of Gucci starts off as somewhat of a misplaced love story, but then devolves into a sprawling and scattershot piece of corporate palace intrigue and capitalism porn.

The characters wear highly fashionable, gorgeous clothes, drive ludicrously fantastic cars and live in astonishingly lavish homes and high-rise apartments.

But all of this ostentatious display of wealth and beauty doesn’t give the characters any depth or dimension, nor does it conjure any genuine drama or aid in making the story coherent.

All it really does is make House of Gucci a very well-budgeted, high-end, melodramatic soap-opera.

I suppose the argument could be made that the vapid, vacuous and venal characters in the movie are meant to represent the fact that the decade featured in the film, the 1980’s, was the height of vapidity, vacuousness and venality, but I think that gives the film too much credit.

The movie doesn’t feel in on the joke of its empty campiness because it too frequently vacillates in tone from feverish fun to strenuous seriousness.

The most asinine irritating thing about the movie though is the obscene and absurd amount of over-acting in which the cast indulges.

Al Pacino and Jared Leto, the Ali and Frazier of over-acting, pull absolutely no punches in House of Gucci. These two bulls in the acting China shop chew more scenery than the pampered Gucci cows in bucolic Italian towns who provide the leather for over-priced handbags.

Leto, who is unrecognizable as the dim-witted Paolo Gucci – son of Aldo and cousin to Maurizio, is particularly awful, as his over-bearing Italian caricature makes Don Novello’s comic SNL character Father Guido Sarducci look like Marcello Mastroianni in La Dolce Vita.

Not to be outdone, Jeremy Irons brings his ham-fisted ‘A-game’ to keep up with his inane co-stars in this unbridled ham-fest. Irons is so completely committed to caricature his eyes look like Gucci sunglasses even on the rare occasions he isn’t wearing them.

But the queen of over-acting in House of Gucci is unquestionably Lady Gaga, who brings enough ham to the festivities to feed the world for the foreseeable future. Watching the thirsty Gaga, sporting a bizarre Transylvanian accent for some reason, pout and preen through a multitude of hair and costume changes like a cheap tart at a red-light street, but never once resemble an actual human being, is astonishing to behold.

Adam Driver avoids the over-acting bug, but he is terribly miscast in the film all the same, just like he was miscast in Scott’s The Last Duel. Driver, who looks like one of Dr. Frankenstein’s early discarded attempts, seems perpetually miscast to me, but maybe he isn’t miscast, maybe he’s just a bad actor.

Director Ridley Scott is one of the great filmmakers of his generation whose body of work includes such phenomenal films as Alien, Blade Runner, Thelma and Louise, Gladiator, Blackhawk Down and Matchstick Men.

In comparison, House of Gucci feels like a very cheap Ridley Scott knock-off you could get from a street corner vendor for next to nothing.

Scott is now 83 years-old and the fact that House of Gucci is the second film he’s released this year along with The Last Duel, is utterly astonishing. It’s also unfortunate. Hopefully he’s able to make a few more quality films, like the flawed The Last Duel, in his golden years in order to get the rancid taste of House of Gucci out of movie-goers mouths.

I know you’re supposed to leave them laughing, but in the case of House of Gucci – which is sure to be a massive flop at the box office, it would feel like audiences are laughing at Ridley Scott and not with him as he nears the exit of his career, and that would be a tragedy for such a brilliant artist.

About an hour and a half into the two hour and thirty-seven-minute House of Gucci, in one of those rare moments where a film unintentionally tells the truth about itself, Adam Driver’s Maurizio sternly says to Lady Gaga’s Patrizia, “You’re humiliating yourself!”

My reaction to that dialogue was to nod and say aloud to myself in the very empty theatre where I saw the film, “I concur”. Everyone involved with this movie is humiliating themselves, myself included for having seen it.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Hawkeye: A Review - of the First Two Episodes

Marvel’s new series Hawkeye, at least so far, not only avoids virtue signaling and woke pandering, it’s actually pretty funny.

The show has its flaws, but it’s a breath of fresh air from Marvel, which has in recent years been more interested in preaching than entertaining.

In the wake of Marvel’s miraculous run of movies which began with Iron Man in 2008 and culminated with Endgame in 2019, Disney’s money-making superhero division has been searching for a creative way forward with their storytelling in both film and television.

That search has usually resulted in pathetic woke pandering and virtue signaling on social issues, or mind-time-world bending extravagancies, or an unwieldy combination of both.

For example, Black Widow boasted a shamelessly shallow girl power, patriarchy-busting narrative and Falcon and the Winter Soldier pathetically pandered on racism, both with lackluster results.

WandaVision and Loki, on the other hand, toyed with audience’s minds as they bent time and storylines, thankfully they were at least interesting.

And finally, What if? and Eternals both went all in on virtue signaling and off-world in terms of time bending, and ended up being excruciatingly laborious.   

Now with the new six-episode mini-series Hawkeye – the first two episodes of which began streaming on Disney Plus on Wednesday with new episodes released every week for the next month, Marvel is trying a somewhat different approach.

After watching the first two episodes of Hawkeye I can report that thus far, thankfully, wokeness has not overtly reared its ugly head and no gods or time - bending wizards have showed up to mess with reality either.

In fact, Hawkeye is the most-grounded, most “realistic” and most authentic piece of storytelling in recent Marvel history, which isn’t a high bar to reach but at least they reached it.

Hawkeye tells the story of Clint Barton, aka Hawkeye – the family man and badass superhero archer from the Avenger’s movies, and Kate Bishop, a Hawkeye wannabe who stumbles into trouble. They both end up working together after the costume of the vigilante Ronin turns up and falls into the wrong hands.

The series, or at least the first two episodes of the series, is certainly flawed, but it’s also unique and interesting because at its core it’s really a droll comedy wrapped in the superhero cloak of an action-mystery.

Marvel has always had an undercurrent of comedy in their films, but that was always more a function of the impeccable comedic timing of Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man and the glorious obliviousness of Chris Hemsworth’s Thor, than anything else.

Hawkeye though is legitimately and genuinely funny in the most subtle, self-ware, un-Marvel way.  

For instance, the series opens with Clint/Hawkeye in New York City for the Christmas season. As a treat, one that he quickly regrets, Clint brings his kids to see the big Broadway musical hit Rogers – which is based on Captain America Steve Rogers and the Avenger’s defense of New York, of which Hawkeye was a vital part.

The scenes of the musical are hysterical, like something out of The Simpsons’ (another Disney property) famous Planet of the Apes Musical starring Troy McClure, not just because they’re so dreadful, but also because they’re so horrifyingly believable.

This heinously egregious Captain America musical is a gloriously savage but subtle dig at the vapid and vacuous culture that made the insidious and insipid awfulness of Lin Manuel-Miranda’s Hamilton a landmark achievement and rabid sensation.

Watching the theater muffin versions of the Avengers sing “Hulk…SMASH!” and “I could do this all day” literally made me laugh out loud, most especially because the corporate pimps at Disney are bound to produce either that exact same show or one frighteningly similar to it. It doesn’t take much imagination to conjure the painful image of say U2, who once actually wrote the score for a disastrous Broadway superhero musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, teaming with establishment darling and abysmal, talentless shill Lin Manuel-Miranda to make some corporate-friendly musical like Rogers: The Musical.

Other scenes, like the one where Clint and Kate see people dressed as superheroes and Kate opines on the superhero Hawkeye’s failure to resonate with the broader culture being a function of branding issues and poor marketing, or when Hawkeye himself goes to a LARP (live action role play) event, are Marvel making fun of Marvel to the most Marvel-ous degree.

The main reason for Hawkeye’s success though is that its stars, Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye and Hailee Stanfield as Kate Bishop, are terrific in their roles.

Renner’s gruff, dead-pan delivery is deliriously good, and the luminous Stanfield is absolutely masterful with her comedic timing as well, like when she says the name of the Track Suit Mafia is “a little too on the nose.”

In Hawkeye, Renner and Stanfield are like some bizarro-world, asexual, Marvel version of Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn…if Grant and Hepburn had to fight and shoot arrows at bad guys.

To be sure, Hawkeye has flaws. For instance, it can be a little slow at times and the few action sequences featured so far are not very noteworthy.

But with that said, I found myself pleased to see Marvel trying something new that didn’t involve overt woke preening and aggressive virtue signaling.

It would appear from the first two episodes that Marvel has given us a little early Christmas present this year, as the subtle, self-aware comedy on display in Hawkeye won’t work in too many other projects going forward for Marvel, but fortunately it does work well here.

We will see where the series goes from here, but thus far, I’m grateful that Hawkeye appears to be a little piece of harmless holiday fun. Let’s hope it stays that way.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

King Richard: A Review

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!!!! THIS REVIEW IS SPOILER FREE!!!****

My Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT/SKIP IT. This is a predictable yet pleasant enough bio-pic that isn’t great but is a benign, family friendly, moderately entertaining movie that should have enough broad-based appeal for people of different stripes to watch together over the holidays.

As neither a fan of the Williams sisters nor of Will Smith, I expected to dislike King Richard, the new bio-pic starring Smith as Richard Williams, the father of tennis prodigies Venus and Serena Williams, who aided his daughters as they navigated the violence of gang-infested Compton, California and the entitlement of the lily-white tennis world.

I assumed King Richard, executive produced by the Williams sisters, would sing the same tune that Venus and Serena and their fans often croon, namely crying racism over the most banal of critiques and shamelessly playing the victim card whenever possible.

But then I watched the movie and was pleasantly surprised by the appeal of its broad-based message and how moderately enjoyable I found it to be.

To be clear, King Richard, currently in theatres and streaming on HBO Max, is not a great movie or artistic achievement. It’s a formulaic, relentlessly middlebrow, crowd-pleasing sports movie/bio-pic that is devoid of any true suspense or tension as we all know how the story turns out, with Richard crowned the king of the sports dads as Venus and Serena win 30 Grand Slam singles titles between them.

The sports movie/bio-pic genre almost always demands that the rough edges of its characters be smoothed away in order to make the simplistic story go down smoother with audiences, and King Richard is no exception.

In real life Richard Williams is a much more complicated man than the hagiography of King Richard would ever explore. For instance, Richard has always been a force of nature when it comes to protecting his daughters and advancing their careers, but he’s also a philanderer who has fathered children with other women and is prone to levels of self-aggrandizement and egotism that would make Barnum and Bailey blush.

But with all that said, the most compelling thing about King Richard is that it’s an all-American story about a dedicated working-class guy, Richard Williams, who dreamed up his daughter’s tennis dominance even before they were born, wrote it out in a 78-page manifesto, and then went out and moved heaven and earth to make it happen.

Richard was driven, maniacal and controlling when it came to his daughters, and pushed them extremely hard, and despite, or maybe even because of, their race they became ridiculously successful and wealthy, and unlike say Tiger Woods, they did so without becoming self-destructive.

That’s an incredible story, Shakespearean in its family dynamics and emotional power, and while King Richard is a better story than it is a movie, that story is powerful enough to make the movie worth watching.

As it is in nearly everything these days, the specter of racism is certainly present in King Richard, but considering the hyper-sensitive, victimhood celebrating, grievance culture in which we live, it is never egregiously heavy-handed.

In fact, one of the more fascinating revelations in the film is that the Williams family had as many obstacles to overcome in their black community of Compton in the form of violence, jealousy and negativity, as they did in the parochial, white dominated infrastructure of the tennis world.  

When the notion of racism does bubble to the surface, it does so in ways that aren’t so black and white. For example, there’s a scene smack dab in the middle of the movie where Richard becomes incensed when a white agent who is trying to sign Venus Williams says that what Richard has accomplished with his daughters is “incredible”.

An offended Richard cuts through the niceties of this business meeting and rants at the agent that the only reason he used the word “incredible” is because of Richard’s race. When the agent protests this charge, Richard defiantly farts and indignantly walks away.

What is so striking about this scene is that literally the only reason there’s a movie about Richard Williams’ “incredible” accomplishment is because he and his daughters are black. This is why we aren’t watching a bio-pic about Martina Navratilova’s father, or Chris Evert’s father, or Roger Federer’s father. Richard Williams has built an entire brand and persona around he and his daughters overcoming the supposed limitations imposed on them because of their race, and King Richard is proof of that.

This scene feels insightful, even if unintentionally so, as it perfectly sums up the current minefield of racial dialogue, where no matter what a white person says, it’s twisted into being perceived as racist.

As for Will Smith, I’ve always found him to be one of the more grating entities in entertainment. His acting, just like his insipidly embarrassing music, is always manipulative and manufactured, as is his persona.

Thankfully, in King Richard, Will Smith doesn’t so much make his cheesiness disappear as he does mute it. His performance isn’t transcendent or even all that good, but thankfully it isn’t distracting. For his middling efforts I’m sure he’ll be rewarded with an Academy Award come Oscar time.

Smith is working over time for an Oscar this time around. To coincide with the release of this Oscar-bait movie, he has released his autobiography so that he can be out working the Oscar circuit under teh guise of pushing his book.

The contents of the book, from what I can gather from news reports, is part of his Oscar push as well.

Apparently in the book, Smith talks about how he was such a committed Method actor early in his career that it messed with his marriage. Smith claims that he never broke character even off-set while working on his 1993 film Six Degrees of Separation, so much so that he fell in love with Stockard Channing, his co-star who is 24 years his senior.

To be clear, Smith doesn’t say he had an affair with Channing, only that he fell in love with her because he was so committed to his craft. Channing has basically responded by saying “that’s nice”.

What makes this story so ridiculous and incredulous, and so predictably manufactured and contrived, is that Will Smith was such a committed Method Actor while filming Six Degrees of Separation, that he quite famously refused to kiss a man on screen despite his character being gay. This was well reported at the time but Smith is pretending like it didn’t happen. It did, and part of why it did is that Denzel Washington was the one who advised Smith not to kiss a man on-screen.

I’m sorry, but if you’re a committed “Method Actor” (the actual definition of which has been so distorted and contorted by public mis-perception as to be useless, particularly from a acting teacher point of view) and yet you won’t do something on-screen because it will damage “your brand”, then you aren’t an actor, your a celebrity. Will Smith is now, and always has been, a celebrity, not an actor or artist.

Obviously, anyone who has ever seen Will Smith act knows he isn’t committed to his craft or art or anything of the sort, but only to his ego, his image and his career. Further proof of this is his “music” career, where he churned some of the most fucking horrendous and embarrassingly awful music in the history of rap with the cornball cheesiness that was “Parents Just Don’t Understand”.

The goal for Will Smith as a rapper and as an actor is to be famous, not to be an artist. Unfortunately, he’ll probably win an Oscar this year for simply not being as awful as he usually is…what can you do?

As for King Richard, while isn’t a great film, it is an inspiring one. Hopefully audiences learn the proper lesson of the value of hard work, self-discipline and familial love from the movie, as opposed to it inspiring a cavalcade of parent/coaches to try and turn their poor kids into lottery tickets through sports.

Ultimately, the best thing about King Richard is that it’s a benign, mildly entertaining, family friendly movie that people of varying philosophical dispositions and artistic tastes gathering together for the holidays can watch without having it spark arguments. That’s no small feat and something for which to be thankful in these polarizing times.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 51 - Finch

On this episode of everybody's favorite cinema podcast, Barry and I head to the post-apocalyptic world of Finch, the new Apple TV + movie starring Tom Hanks. Topics discussed include a Tom Hanks holiday, a list of his best movies, yearning for a Mel Gibson cameo, and lessons learned taking care of sick dogs.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 51 - Finch

Thanks for listening!

©2021

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 49 - Dune

On this episode, Barry and I head to Arrakis to ponder Denis Villaneuve's sprawling space epic Dune. Topics touched upon include Villaneuve's appealing style but curious lack of brand, Jason Mamoa as a force of nature, and Barry's highly erotic and inappropriate man-crush on Timothee Chalamet.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 49 - Dune

Thanks for listening!

©2021

Eternals: A Review and Commentary

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

My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. Just a dismal, dull and dopey god-awful mess of a movie which is in the running to be the worst Marvel movie ever.

The new Marvel movie Eternals, written and directed by Oscar winning Best Director Chloe Zhao, and starring a cavalcade of stars including Angelina Jolie, is supposed to be the blue print for the newest phase of the multi-billion-dollar Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).

Kevin Feige, the MCU mastermind who intricately weaved 25 movies into a coherent over-arching narrative that dominated pop culture for almost 15 years, said of the movie, “The impact Eternals will have on the MCU will be nothing less than redefining the cinematic universe entirely.”

That declaration should scare the crap out of Marvel fanatics and Disney executives alike because Eternals is as catastrophically atrocious a cinematic venture as Marvel has churned out in their 26-film run.

The film, which has an ungodly two-hour and thirty-seven-minute run time that often feels eternal, tells the story of the Eternals, a bunch of immortal super-beings sent to earth to protect humanity from the Deviants, a group of vicious, wiry monsters. Superhero movies are often only as good as their villains, and the Deviants are as generic as it gets.

I’d dive deeper into the plot, which frequently jumps back and forth in time, but it’s so convoluted as to be incoherent.

Think of the Eternals as sort Avengers Plus, as they’re more akin to ancient gods than they are to modern superheroes. The Eternals are comprised of Sersi, Ikaris, Thena, Kingo, Phastos, Sprite, Makkari, Druig, Gilgamesh and Ajak.

Unlike with The Avenger films, which featured well-known characters, many of which had already had multiple solo films to explore their background and inner life, part of the problem with Eternals is that the superheroes on display are not well-known to casual fans. So, the movie must try and develop the characters and the audience’s connections to them on the fly while also attempting to entertain. It fails miserably at all of these endeavors.

The blame for these failings falls on writer/director Chloe Zhao, who is utterly hapless and hopeless at the helm. Zhao, who is respected as a maker of small, intimate, introspective films like Nomadland, is completely out of her depth on the sprawling Eternals as she flounders in every aspect of the storytelling. The pacing is abysmal, the character development nearly non-existent and the dialogue forced, trite and overwhelmed with exposition.

In addition, the visuals of the film are flat, the CGI second-rate, and the action sequences dull, unimaginative and repetitive. Every fight sequence features someone being “unexpectedly” saved from sure death by the swift action of an unseen superhero off-screen swooping in at the last minute, and consistently throughout “Eternals assemble” type shots - where all the characters come together in a line in a movie poster pose, rear their manufactured head.

Another major problem with Eternals is that in our age of wokeness and corporate virtue signaling, it seems more concerned with waving the diversity, representation and inclusion flag than with making an entertaining movie.

The wokeness on display in Eternals is so inane as to be ridiculous. For example, in the comics, Ajak, leader of the Eternals, is a man, but in the movie he’s a middle-aged Mexican woman (an uncharismatic Salma Hayek). Latina box checked.

Makkari, the Eternals’ Flash-like superhero, is no longer a white guy like in the comics, but instead is now a mixed-race woman who is deaf for some inexplicable reason, and of course, is played by a mixed-race, deaf actress, Lauren Ridloff. Disability box checked.

In the comics, Phastos is a muscular bad-ass black man, but in the movie, he’s transformed into a frumpy gay guy played by Brian Tyree Henry. It goes without saying that a gay kiss is featured in the film, no doubt used to hit over the head the people too dense to pick up on Phastos’ homosexuality by the fact that he has a husband. LGBTQ box checked.

Considering that Marvel movies are usually populated by beautiful people in skin tight outfits, Henry is an odd choice to play the first openly gay character in a Marvel movie. Unlike his co-star Kumail Nunjiani, who obviously spent an inordinate amount of time in the gym transforming his body to look more Marvel-ish to play the comic relief character Kingo, Henry looks as if he’s allergic to exercise in general and barbells in particular. I like Henry as an actor, but he is woefully miscast in this role.

Speaking of the casting, the usually luminous Angelina Jolie just looks odd and bored as Thena, and the beautiful Gemma Chan is exposed as being rather anemic as the film’s lead Sersi.

The only bright spot was Richard Madden, who was surprisingly dynamic as Ikaris, so much so that I actually thought he might make a passable James Bond should the opportunity ever present itself.

As of this writing, Eternals has a well-earned Rotten Tomatoes critical score of 49%, the lowest in MCU history. Considering all the blatant woke pandering in the film, and critics’ consistent genuflection at the altar of all things “diverse”, the dismal Rotten Tomatoes critical score is even more damning.

Making money is currently baked into the Marvel cake, and Eternals will no doubt have decent box office returns, but the film is the poster child for Marvel entering the creative bankruptcy phase of its self-destruction.

If, as Marvel guru Feige claims, Eternals is the blue print for the next phase of the MCU, then “get woke, go broke” will be made manifest as Disney/Marvel are killing their cinematic cash cow by worshipping the golden calf of wokeness and sacrificing quality and entertainment at its altar.

Eventually, audiences will tire of this type of hackneyed and hollow identity-politics based pandering and shoddy filmmaking, and Disney/Marvel will have no one to blame but themselves.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Dopesick: Miniseries Review and Commentary

Hulu’s new opioid epidemic drama, Dopesick, is a must-see mini-series in the age of vaccine mandates.

The series dramatizes the mendacity and corruption of big pharma and lays bare how the powerful in business and government callously and cruelly harm regular folks for ungodly profits and unchallenged power.

Dopesick, the new dramatic mini-series about the opioid crisis on Hulu, is a flawed show, but despite its shortcomings, it’s most definitely must-see television.

The eight-episode series is compulsory viewing because in this age of vaccine mandates, where anything short of unabashed adoration of big pharma and government health agencies, as well as compulsive compliance to their edicts, leaves you ostracized from society, it lays bare the corrosive corruption of capitalism on “science” and exposes egregious government complicity with a pharmaceutical company that directly led to the holocaust of the opioid epidemic.

Dopesick is based upon Beth Macy’s non-fiction book of the same name and that, as well as ‘Pain Killer: An Empire of Deceit and the Origin of America’s Opioid Epidemic’ by Barry Meier, ‘American Overdose: The Opioid Tragedy in Three Acts’ by Chris McGreal, and ‘Dreamland’ by Sam Quinones, should be mandatory reading for everyone in order to understand the scope and scale of the opioid epidemic as well as the sinister machinations that launched it.

The Hulu mini-series tells the story of the hell unleashed when OxyContin hit the market. Unfortunately, the performances can sometimes be a bit uneven, and the show also does falter when it unnecessarily gets distracted with woke pandering on feminist and LGBT issues, but thankfully that irritant doesn’t diminish the vital tale of big pharma mendacity and government malfeasance at the heart of the story.

Some of the interesting stories featured include Dr. Finnix (a terrific Michael Keaton), a small-town doctor who gets seduced first by the drug company and then by the drug itself, Betsy Mallum (Kaitlyn Dever), a working-class girl who became a slave to Oxy and Federal Prosecutor Rick Mountcastle (Peter Sarsgaard) and DEA agent Bridget Meyer (a dismal Rosario Dawson), both swimming against the tide as they try to hold Purdue Pharma accountable for the carnage it has unleashed.

Also dramatized are the wholly dysfunctional Sackler clan, owners of Purdue Pharma.

The Sacklers are a greedy and loathsome bunch. Arthur Sackler invented medical marketing back in the 1940’s and 50’s, and came up with Valium as “mother’s little helper”, also creating a use for the drug to treat the ever-amorphous ailment of general anxiety.

Arthur’s nephew Richard Sackler (Michael Stuhlbarg) attempted much the same with OxyContin.

In the late 1980’s, Purdue Pharma was in danger of losing its patent on MS Contin, a morphine pill for cancer patients that was the company’s main source of income, and would face a financial calamity when cheaper generic versions of the drug hit the market.

It was in this desperation that OxyContin, a longer lasting version of the opioid oxycodone, was born. The drug was introduced in 1996 and was aggressively promoted.

Purdue created dummy pain organizations and media outlets as their propaganda division to push the narrative of an “epidemic of untreated pain” ravaging America. These organizations, like the American Pain Society, lobbied the medical establishment to make pain the “fifth vital sign”, and succeeded.

Remarkably, Purdue then got the FDA, despite no studies showing this claim to be true, to allow the company to put a label on OxyContin saying that danger of addiction was extremely low. In a stunning coincidence, the FDA official who granted this extraordinary label request, Curtis Wright, months later left the FDA to take a $400,000 job at…Purdue Pharma.

Purdue then unleashed its hyper-aggressive salesforce armed with the carrot of gifts, free meals and vacations, as well as the stick of lawsuits from patients if doctors didn’t prescribe Oxy, into medical offices specifically targeted by a database that focused on painkiller prescriptions, disability claims and loose regulations.  

The salesforce was also armed with a plethora of dubious marketing materials that claimed “less than 1%” of users will become addicted to Oxy.

The sales staff referenced the Porter-Jick study as proof of the ‘less than 1%” claim, and that became the cornerstone of the “pain treatment” movement and was even taught in medical schools across the country.

The stunning revelation about the Porter-Jick study is that it isn’t a study at all. It’s just the anecdotal observations of a crank doctor complaining in a five-sentence letter to the editor in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Purdue’s strategy only became more dubious and depraved as time wore on.

Oxy was supposed to work for 12 hours a dose, but for many people the effect didn’t last nearly that long. Purdue called this issue, “breakthrough pain”, which sounds an awful lot like “breakthrough infections” in regard to Covid.

“Breakthrough pain” was treated by doubling the dose. When the 10mg fails, you go to 20mg, then to 40mg…on up to the mother of all pills the 160mg.

When addiction quickly followed, Purdue claimed that the signs and symptoms of addiction weren’t really addiction, it was an ailment called “pseudo-addiction”, and pseudo-addiction is really just untreated pain and the only remedy for it is…you guessed it…more OxyContin.

The answer to everything was more OxyContin. And of course, with more Oxy comes more addiction, more death, more suffering, more despair, and more profits.

A similar paradigm seems to be in play regarding Covid vaccines, which when they fail results in calls for boosters, which in turn leads to more profit for big pharma. Like with the financial collapse of 2007/2008, failure can be remarkably profitable for big shots.

To be clear, I’m not advocating for or against vaccines, I’m advocating for critical thinking. The gullible and the goaded are fools to take big pharma or government’s word for gospel truth, be it about Covid, WMDs, or anything else, especially when profit and power can be gained by lying. As Dopesick teaches us, the wisest approach is skepticism regarding big pharma and government’s claims and cynicism regarding their motives.

Ultimately, Dopesick is a worthy watch because it tells the ugly truth about what the powerful are willing to do to regular folks, up to and including killing them, in order to make an ungodly profit.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021