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

Dune: A Review

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

My Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT/SKIP IT. A visual marvel but ultimately a rather barren drama. Readers of the book will follow the action and bask in the film’s staggeringly sumptuous cinematography, but neophytes to the story will be left completely dumbfounded.

Dune, Frank Herbert’s classic sci-fi novel, has long been deemed “unfilmable”, and depending on your perspective regarding director Denis Villeneuve’s new ambitious big budget adaptation, that label may very well still apply.

Dune is a complex and complicated story of empires and religious mysticism set in a future that is structurally not too different from the medieval past. It’s sort of, but not exactly, a cross between Lawrence of Arabia and Star Wars…but nowhere near as good as either.

In Dune, the planet Arrakis, a barren and desolate sandscape, is a key piece on the political chessboard because it’s the only place in the universe that has “spice”, which is both a hallucinogenic drug used by the Fremen – the Bedouin’s of Arrakis, but more importantly, a vital element that makes interstellar travel possible. Dune appears to be a loose metaphor for various empires lust for oil in the Middle East over the years.

The machinations that bring the rulers of House Atreidis, Duke Leto (Oscar Isaac), Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) and their teenage son Paul (Timothee Chalamet) to Arrakis by imperial decree to replace the brutish House of Harkonnen, which has ruled the planet for generations, are never clearly spelled out in the film.

In fact, much of what happens in the film is not clearly spelled out, which is why the movie is so impenetrable for those who haven’t read the book. Fortunately for me, I’ve read enough of the book to know what was happening, but unfortunately not enough to why it’s happening.

The film is actually just “Part One” of Dune, and one can’t help but wonder if Warner Brothers is waiting to see how well the movie does at the box office before greenlighting further films.

It seems to me that the problem for Dune is that it’s much too esoteric and unexplainable to be able to generate enough of a box-office bonanza to induce funding for a second picture. This is also why the notion of Dune generating Star Wars/Marvel levels of excitement among audiences seems highly unlikely.

An issue with Dune is that, unlike the first Star Wars, it isn’t a stand-alone movie. Star Wars had a very a satisfying ending all its own – the destruction of the death star. The film’s sequels only added to that experience, they didn’t make it. With Dune, the ending of Part One is in no way satisfactory, and it’s relying on future films to elevate audience’s experiences.

In fact, Dune’s climactic scenes are so mundane and dramatically insignificant it feels like the main story hasn’t yet begun when the final credits roll.

What makes the Marvel franchise so successful is that it can be glorious for audience members who know the source material, as well as digestible and entertaining for viewers who’ve never read a comic book in their lives.

The same is not true for Dune. If you haven’t read ‘Dune’, you will, like the U.S. when it rolled into the Middle East thinking it would impose its will over cultures it didn’t know or understand, be overwhelmed by your ignorance and arrogance. The ‘Dune’ illiterate will be bogged down by their own ignorance-induced boredom, as the muck and mire of world building is a maze for which they lack a map. Forever lost amidst the dust and dizzying detritus of Dune, first-timers to the story will feel like foreigners and will quickly check out.

Director Villeneuve is known for making gorgeous looking films, the proof of which lies in the stunning cinematography of Sicario, Arrival and Blade Runner 2049, and Dune is certainly no exception.

The movie is a visual marvel, and if that’s your cup of tea then I highly recommend you see the movie in theatres as opposed to on HBO Max. It really is impressive to behold. But with that said, Villeneuve’s visual feasts are often vast and stunning, but they can also leave you hungry for drama and humanity, and Dune is a perfect example of that too.

Timothee Chalamet is the film’s lead and to be frank, he has always been a mystery to me. A pretty boy with little substance and no physical presence, he feels like a manifestation of a pre-teen girl’s platonic fantasies.

Chalamet is a whisp of an actor and is devoid of the intensity and magnetism to carry a single movie, never mind a big budget franchise.

I suppose Chalamet is just eye-candy, another weapon in Villeneuve’s prodigiously gorgeous cinematic palette. But like much of Villeneuve’s beautifying flourishes, Chalamet feels entirely empty, like a miniature statue of David, or a high-end department store mannequin.

I enjoyed Dune as a cinematic experience because it’s such a beautifully photographed film, but I also understand that my interest in cinematography is not shared among the general populace. And I readily admit that this movie may very well flop, which is disappointing because as frustrating as it is, I’d still like to see Villeneuve make one or two more Dune films as the sort of high-end alternative to other less visually ambitious franchise movies…like Star Wars and Marvel.

Ultimately, fans who loved the book should see Dune in theatres as they’ll most likely enjoy the movie as they marinate in Villeneuve’s cinematic grandeur. But if you haven’t read the book, Dune is, like Arrakis, a very forbidding and foreboding land that is best avoided.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

The Cinephile with Michael McCaffrey: The Last Duel

On this episode of The Cinephile with Michael McCaffrey, I review Matt Damon and Ben Affleck’s new movie directed by Ridley Scott, The Last Duel.

Thanks for watching!

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The Last Duel: Review and Commentary

****THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS MINOR PLOT POINTS AND SPOILERS FOR THE LAST DUEL!! IT IS NOT A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!!****

My Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. This is one of those rare films that is actually geared toward grown-ups. It has some major flaws, but it’s also well crafted and ultimately entertaining.

This article contains plot points and minor spoilers for The Last Duel.

Despite its best efforts to be a #MeToo movie, director Ridley Scott’s new movie The Last Duel is being chastised by some virtue-signaling critics.

The film, set in France in 1386, tells the true he-said, he-said, she-said tale of Sir Jean de Carrouges (a committed Matt Damon), Jacque Le Gris (a mis-cast Adam Driver), and Marguerite de Carrouges (a terrific Jodie Comer) – Jean’s wife, who claims that Le Gris raped her.

Ridley Scott, one of the great cinematic craftsmen of his generation, makes the wise decision to structure the film Rashomon-style, where the perspectives of three main characters are shown around the same single contentious event.

The story is broken down into three chapters titled “The truth according to…” Jean, Jacque and Marguerite. Unfortunately, Scott tips his rather heavy-hand when he lets on that it is Marguerite’s story that is really the “truth” of the incident.

This choice, to have Marguerite’s subjective experience be deemed the objective truth, greatly undermined both the dramatic and artistic potential of the film. This decision felt like it was made in order to appease the #MeToo mob that can become hysterical over any perceived slights.

The film’s star and co-writer, Matt Damon, knows this all too well, as he caught some serious flak when at the height of the #MeToo mania he dared to say something rational about how there’s a difference between a pat on the backside and rape, which infuriated the pussy-hat brigade.

The filmmakers (Ridley Scott and co-writers Damon, Ben Affleck and Nicole Holofcener) aggressively let the audience know they side with Marguerite, but excluding the actual rape, her version of events seem just as narcissistic, fantastical and delusional as Jean’s and Jacques’.

Jean and Jacques both self-righteously see themselves as noble and honorable warriors who are kind of heart. Their perspective is, of course, skewed by self-interest, but the filmmakers refuse to hold Marguerite to the same standard.

Marguerite sees both Jean and Jacques as beasts, and that may be true, but her vision of herself is so saintly as to be hilarious, as even the lie she tells is noble. Marguerite is portrayed not only as a loyal and well intentioned wife, but also brilliant. For instance, she effortlessly turns around illiterate Jean’s business fortunes, collecting debts and breeding horses, while he is off fighting a war for money.

As a female character in the film correctly declares, “There is no ‘right’, there is only the power of men!”, which is an unintentional and uncomfortable truth revealed not only about medieval men in question but also about modern-day feminism and its adherents. As The Last Duel shows, feminism is only born in a bubble of prosperity built by the brute force of ferocious men, and it’s a sign of decadence, if not delusion.

Yet, despite The Last Duel’s insipid #MeToo pandering and its cinematic flaws, and even in spite of myself, I actually liked the film and found it entertaining, which is a testament to both Ridley Scott’s directorial skill and my thirst for remotely decent, adult-oriented cinema in our current cultural desert.

Yes, some of the worst hair-dos in cinematic history are featured in The Last Duel, with Damon sporting a mule-kick of a medieval mullet, and Affleck – who chews-scenery as debauched royal Count Pierre, looking like he got a free bowl of soup with his haircut, but the movie also has an undeniable momentum to it that is cinematically compelling and climaxes with the bone-crunching, deliriously satisfying duel.

Unlike me, The New Yorker’s critic and resident virtue-signaler Richard Brody actually despised the film because it wasn’t feminist enough, calling it a “wannabe #MeToo movie”.

Brody got the vapors because Scott dared show the rape of Marguerite twice – once from Jacques’ perspective and once from Marguerite’s. To be clear, the rape is uncomfortable, it’s a rape after all, but it isn’t gratuitous, there’s no nudity and it’s as tasteful as it could be under the circumstances.

Despite this, Brody writes of the rape scene, “I was gripped with unease—not with horror but with a queasy sense of witnessing a visual exploitation of that horror.”

Brody, I’d like to remind you, wasn’t filled with any unease, but rather ecstatic glee, as he once gushed over the Netflix film Cuties, which graphically hyper-sexualized 11-year-old girls to an alarming degree, calling it “extraordinary”.

Maybe if Marguerite were an 11-year-old, scantily-clad girl Brody would’ve felt less queasy about The Last Duel’s rape scene, who knows?

Brody closes his review by chastising Scott, claiming he should’ve displayed “…the cinematic artistry and, even more, the cinematic ethic…” to not “…show the rape even once.”

According to Brody, Scott should have “put the cinematic onus on…himself – to affirm that Le Gris raped Marguerite, to believe her not because Scott himself created his own image of ostensible veracity to justify and prove her claim but because she said so.”

This is Brody turning the virtue signaling up to eleven by basically saying Ridley Scott didn’t rigorously enough embrace the ethic of “believe all women”.

The buffoonish Brody and his ilk are why no artist should ever try to pander to the insidiously woke. No matter what you do, it’ll never be enough. Nuance is never allowed, only reverence for the cause and compliance with the woke’s ever-changing demands.

The bottom line is that The Last Duel definitely has flaws, it’s most potentially fatal one being that it tried to appease the unpleasant and unpleasable #MeToo woke mob. But thanks to Ridley Scott’s craftsmanship, it’s a well-made enough movie to overcome its considerable shortcomings and short-sightedness to ultimately be deemed worthy of a watch.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

The Cinephile with Michael McCaffrey : The Many Saints of Newark - Video Review

Hello readers! Just wanted to share with you all the premiere episode of my new film review series for RT, The Cinephile with Michael McCaffrey.

First up…The Sopranos prequel - The Many Saints of Newark. Hope you enjoy and thanks for watching!

©2021

Y: The Last Man - TV Series Review and Commentary

****THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS MILD SPOILERS!!! THIS IS NOT A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!!****

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. The show inexplicably and frustratingly trades drama and suspense for vacuous trans virtue signaling.

Y: The Last Man is a new tv show on FX/Hulu that boasts a very intriguing premise – what if all the men of earth, but one, were wiped out in a mysterious plague.

The show, based on a popular graphic novel of the same name that ran from 2002-2008, premiered in mid-September and is now through six episodes in its first season.

The dystopian drama’s basic story is that a sudden bloody illness kills every male mammal on earth except for a guy named Yorick and his pet monkey Ampersand. In a mildly clever commentary on the current state of masculinity, the rather ridiculous and feckless poor Yorick, named after a dead clown in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, is alas, a failed magician, oops, I mean escape artist.

Yorick’s mother, Jennifer Brown, happens to be a U.S. Congresswoman and she succeeds to the presidency after all the men running things drop dead. If you thought women running the world would make it better, then not only have you never heard of Margaret Thatcher, but you’ll also be disappointed by Y: The Last Man.

Life in a woman’s world is filled with just as much violence, crime, chaos, corruption and cruelty as the man’s world it replaced. The only real difference between men and women ruling appears to be that women seem incapable of clearing away the hordes of dead bodies littered everywhere. Maybe they just lack the upper body strength to get the job done, who knows?

While the show has some bright spots, such as the performances of the terrific Ben Schnetzer as Yorrick, as well as Diane Lane, Amber Tamblyn, and Ashley Romans, it also has some major problems, namely its relentlessly predictable political agenda.

Most of the politics are of the usual vacuous variety you’d come to expect from Hollywood. All the villains are irrational right-wing Republicans and all the heroes are allegedly logical liberal Democrats. Tamblyn’s Kimberly derisively describes the new all-female administration as “a Rachel Maddow fever dream” and she’s correct.

But the most egregious example of the show’s political pandering is that it has veered sharply away from its source material by incorporating gender fluidity and trans men into the mix and in so doing has incomprehensibly castrated its own dramatic power.

In contrast to the comic book – which some deemed “trans-phobic” because it mostly ignored the trans community, trans men are featured predominantly throughout the tv show. A major character, Sam, and his merry band of trans men are one example, as are other groups of trans men who are referenced searching for their precious elixir testosterone, which ironically enough is tough to find.  

In the most recent episode gender fluidity was at the forefront as Dr. Allison Mann, a Harvard geneticist, passionately declares in a long monologue, “not everyone with a Y chromosome is a man!” She also rants about how transgenderism and gender fluidity are much more prevalent than we realize and how it wasn’t “just men” who died from the cataclysmic “event” but “all people with a Y chromosome”.

Ok…but I don’t think the title ‘Y: The Last Mammal with a Y Chromosome’ would inspire much interest.

A major dramatic device in the story is that Yorick is in danger because he’s literally the last man on earth and is the only hope for mankind’s survival. Trans men may “believe” they’re actually men, but the premise of this story, at least the graphic novel version, obliterates that subjective assertion. This is no doubt why trans activists were so up in arms about the show being made and why the producers were so quick to kneel before the altar of gender fluidity despite how that questionable notion neuters the premise and drama of their show.

For example, being the actual last man on earth means Yorick has the utmost value, and when you add in that he’s the current president’s son, then his value skyrockets even more. This is why he continuously wears a gas mask to hide his bearded face and he skulks in the shadows to avoid being discovered. But none of this makes any sense at all since trans men are so predominantly featured on the show.

In this context, if Yorick is discovered he could just say he’s a trans man, and according to the world of the show, no one would bat an eye. In fact, in the latest episode a group of rebel/terrorist women stumble upon Yorick and just assume he’s trans and tell him where a bunch of other trans men are who have testosterone, which needlessly defused a potentially very dramatic situation.

The bottom line is that Y: The Last Man could’ve been great, but its ultimately a foolish and unforgivable waste of a good sci-fi premise. The show is nothing but another example of pandering producers who’d rather signal their woke virtue and render impotent their project’s suspense and drama than actually make something interesting, challenging and worthwhile.

If a mysterious sudden plague ever comes that wipes out just the woke in Hollywood, I’ll look into the vacant skulls of these long-lost producers and muse, “where your gibes be now? Your gambols? Your songs? Your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on roar? Not one now to mock your own grinning? Quite chapfallen? Now get you to my lady’s chamber and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favor she must come. Make her laugh at that.”

Just kidding. What I’d actually say is “God bless and good riddance” and be merrily on my way.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Karen: A Review and Commentary

****THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS! THIS IS NOT A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!****

My Rating: 0.5 out of 5 stars 

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. This atrocity isn’t just terrible, its toxic, as it tries to make hating white women culturally cool.

When people inquire about what I do for a living and I tell them I’m a film critic, they often ask, “what’s that like?” My pat answer is “it’s better than digging ditches.”

After having suffered through the atrociously awful new Black Entertainment Television original movie Karen, I realize that statement isn’t true, as I would’ve been better off spending that hour and half digging a ditch in which to bury myself alive.

Karen tells the story of Malik and Imani, a young black couple who move into a mostly white suburb of Atlanta, and “Karen” is their white racist neighbor Karen Drexler, who’s like the creature from the white lagoon, as menacing music accompanies her every appearance on screen.

The word ‘Karen’ is a slur against busybody white women, so not surprisingly, every white woman in Karen is racist, either overtly or covertly, but Karen Drexler is really racist. If racism were sport Karen would be Muhammed Ali, Wayne Gretzky, Michael Jordan and Babe Ruth combined.

The movie opens with a shot from above of “Black Lives Matter” written in chalk on a street, and then Karen comes in and dumps water on it and starts frantically scrubbing it out. Subtle.

If that didn’t clue you in that Karen REALLY hates black people, the pictures of confederate soldiers on her bathroom walls as well as her confederate flag soap dispenser (I kid you not) should do the trick.

Karen is a widow and stay-at-home mom to two children, a teenage boy and a third-grade girl. Somehow neither of her children are racist, in fact, her third-grade daughter is so not-racist she has a black boyfriend named Kobe…and no I’m not making any of this up.

Karen is also the president of the Homeowners Association (HOA) for the Harvey Hill Homes, named after a confederate politician, and she wields her presidential power like a true tyrant. The only resistance is from Jan, an Asian board member, who dutifully points out all of the racist assumptions of the HOA, including correcting white people that they should use the term “African-American” instead of “black”. Good to know.

Now if you think Karen is bad, wait ‘til you get a load of her brother Mike Wind (yes, there’s actually a character named Mike Wind), an Atlanta cop who belongs to a racist secret society, “The Brotherhood”, that reaches throughout law enforcement, from cops to District Attorneys to judges.

As for Malik and Imani, they’re the most laughable cardboard cutout characters imaginable, with Malik working at a “community center” and Imani a “successful blogger”. Eye roll.

The couple says things to each other like, “you are a strong, beautiful and woke black man, and that’s why I married you”, and “you’re a college-educated, socially-aware, beautiful black woman”, and finish every sentence with the word “baby”. Cringe.

Speaking of cringe, Malik and Imani are having fertility issues, which may be linked to Imani’s reluctance to “bring a baby into this messed up racist world” with its “pandemics, police killing us and racism”. I was surprised to see that MSNBC didn’t get a screenwriting credit.

Eventually Karen is caught on video doing ‘Karen’ things and it goes viral so she turns her racism up to eleven. Her brother Mike unleashes his racism too and conspiracies and more bad cinema ensue.

Trying to point out the egregious sins of this asinine movie is like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500, but the turn the film takes in its final scenes is particularly egregious to the point of being insulting.

After all the flaccid drama, the movie ends with Ben Crump, the real-life lawyer for the family of George Floyd, giving a press conference with Malik and Imani standing next to him while accompanied by a trumpet player on the stage with them playing “America the Beautiful”. I shit you not.

As Crump’s shameless and very poorly-delivered speech rambles on the film cuts to the sign for the Harvey Hill Homes being changed to John Lewis Homes, thanks to new HOA president Imani. Then as Crump impotently utters the meant-to-be-profound final line “all lives can’t matter, until black lives matter too!”, we see Malik and a pregnant Imani standing at the door to their house staring deeply into the camera. Yikes.

Look, this movie is, at its very best, a ludicrous Saturday Night Live skit gone woefully awry. The script is garbage, the dialogue consistently laughable, the acting atrocious and the directing so dreadful as to be criminal.

Obviously, I loathed this steaming sack of crap, but this movie isn’t just bad, it’s toxic, because it’s marinated in the same mindless identity-based hate it allegedly claims to despise, but because that hate is directed at white women it’s deemed culturally acceptable.

If you’re one of those delusional, virtue signaling woke white women who has bought into the Black Lives Matter moral panic and believes America is in the grip of an epidemic of racism, you may consider yourself one of the ‘good ones’, but Karen disagrees, as it paints all white women as nefarious Karens at heart.

Just like the pernicious press, patronizing politicians and pandering corporations that stoke the fires of racial resentment and use emotionally manipulative misinformation to dupe sentimental simpletons, Karen is a relentlessly shallow, viciously vapid and rabidly racist movie that makes a mockery of a serious subject matter in an attempt to make money and spread anti-white animus.

If only someone would complain or call the cops on this movie and get this atrocity cancelled. Where’s a Karen when you really need one?

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Cry Macho: A Review and Commentary

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

My Rating: 1.75 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. A dismal and disappointing directing effort from Clint Eastwood that features some utterly embarrasing performances and a painfully thin script.

Hollywood icon Clint Eastwood has long been an avatar for America. From the phenomenal spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone to Dirty Harry to his genre closing masterpiece Unforgiven, Clint Eastwood has been an archetypal figure embodying America’s sense of itself and its masculinity.

Eastwood’s new movie Cry Macho, which he directs and stars in, isn’t in the same cinematic ballpark as Unforgiven or Dirty Harry, in fact, it’s a pretty dreadful movie, but that doesn’t mean it lacks archetypal insight.

Cry Macho features Eastwood once again mirroring America, but this time he unintentionally reveals a deeply delusional nation in steep decline.

The film tells the story of Mike Milo (Eastwood), a very old ranch hand hired by wealthy Texan Howard Polk to get his wayward teenage son, Rafo and pet rooster named Macho, from Mexico out of the clutches of Rafo’s drug dealing, abusive mother.

It is important at this juncture to unequivocally salute Clint Eastwood for making Cry Macho. Directing a movie requires a Herculean effort. Starring in a movie takes a super-human amount of energy. Clint Eastwood not only directing but starring in a movie at the age of 91 is a stunning and miraculous achievement.

While I have been highly critical of many of Eastwood’s late-stage films, and rightfully so, that does not diminish in my eyes his singular position in the history of American cinema and the breadth of his acting and directing career.

I respect Eastwood’s continued ambition and work ethic (but certainly question his work style) but I refuse to let sentimentality cloud my judgement of his work.

Eastwood has been starring in movies for 57 years, and while he’s never been a great actor, he’s always been a formidable and compelling screen presence. But Clint Eastwood is 91-years-old, and while he’s robust for a 91-year-old, that doesn’t make it any less delusional that he cast himself as a character that is 40 in the book upon which the movie is based. Hell, Eastwood even turned down this same role back in the 80’s when he was a much more age appropriate.

At 91, Eastwood doesn’t just seem old, but elderly and fragile, as he moves like an extra on Night of the Living Dead. The sight of him breaking horses, dancing the night away and punching thugs, beggars belief.

When a woman less than half his age is so overcome with sexual-attraction she tries to seduce him, and another about half his age falls madly in love with him, it’s utterly absurd.

This aggressive self-delusion is the perfect embodiment of the current state of the American empire, which is in a sorry state but sees the ruggedly handsome Clint Eastwood of 1965 in the mirror instead of the more accurate reflection of the feeble, infirm and geriatric Clint Eastwood of today.

This level of delusion is equivalent to those American voters who convinced themselves that Joe Biden wasn’t a dementia-addled, establishment whore or that Donald Trump was anything but a bloated, bloviating reality tv buffoon.

Like so much of America and American culture, Cry Macho is a cheap, sloppy, dramatically and narratively incoherent venture that features some of the worst acting you’ll ever see. When the best actor in your movie is a rooster, you’ve got serious problems.

Eastwood is famous, or infamous, for shooting minimal takes on his films in order to stay on time and on budget. When his cast consists of all-time greats like Morgan Freeman, Gene Hackman and Richard Harris, as it did on Unforgiven, this approach can work incredibly well. When, in an attempt to cut corners and save money, the cast is loaded with unknowns, as it is on Cry Macho, then the results can be frighteningly amateurish, which is painfully similar to the cast of characters currently starring in the stale drama of American politics. Who among us doesn’t think a rooster would be a significant upgrade from Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or any of the other vacuous and vapid villains inhabiting Washington?

Cry Macho, much like Unforgiven thirty years ago, highlights Eastwood wrestling with the darker side of his uniquely American archetype.

In Unforgiven he grappled with the ramifications of the violence he portrayed on-screen and that the American ethos unleashed upon the world. In Cry Macho the meditation is not nearly as profound, but it’s certainly there.

The teenage Rafo, one of the countless two-dimensional, third-world characters in the film that can either be a sinner or a saint and nothing in-between, is uncomfortably desperate to prove his masculinity, as Mike points out when he tells him how odd it is for “a man to name his cock Macho”.

Eastwood saying the lines “the macho thing is overrated” and “they don’t like that macho stuff in America” to Rafo feels like a frank admission that America has become so hyper-feminized that even Clint Eastwood, the archetype of American masculinity, is now admitting defeat.

But the most insightful dialogue comes from Rafo, who confronts Eastwood’s Mike and rips into him, and by extension, eviscerates the notion of American exceptionalism, when he says, “you used to be tough, now you’re weak…you used to be strong, and now you’re nothing.”

That’s uncomfortably insightful as the decrepit Clint Eastwood of today perfectly reflects the current state of America, as he’s delusional, infirm and feeble. The reality is that America pretending it’s anything but a decadent nation in a death spiral doesn’t change that fact, it just maintains the facade for those too frightened to admit the truth.

This is reminiscent of when Rafo continuously defends his pet rooster by telling Mike, “he’s not a chicken, he’s Macho!” Calling a chicken ‘Macho”, doesn’t change the fact that it’s a chicken, and sooner or later it will end up sliced and diced on the dinner table.

I wish Cry Macho was a better movie because it has something to say and didn’t say it very well, but the one obvious take away is that if the once-great but now over-the-hill Clint Eastwood is the embodiment of modern American masculinity, now is definitely the time to cry macho.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

'They Are Us' and the Tragedy Trap

The shutting down of ‘They Are Us’, the film about the Christchurch massacre of 2019, is the right thing to do for the wrong reason

Artists and audiences need time and emotional distance from a tragedy and trauma before they can make and appreciate any worthwhile cinema about it.

Last week pre-production for the film They Are Us, which intended to dramatize Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s response to the killing of 51 Muslim worshipers by a white supremacist in Christchurch in 2019, was shut down due to outrage from New Zealand’s Muslim community which deemed the project “insensitive” and “obscene”.

The film, which had Rose Byrne set to star as Ardern, is now “on hold” and may have a difficult time exiting its self-induced purgatory. And maybe that’s for the best, at least for the time being.

I’m conflicted when it comes to this controversy, as I don’t believe that any group of people being offended, even righteously offended, by a film should ever stifle a project, but I also think that making a movie out of a recent tragedy is a bad idea because it rarely produces worthwhile cinema.

Generally, when a movie rushes to recount a recent tragedy it’s either cynically exploiting trauma to make a quick dollar, or it’s a piece of propaganda meant to manipulate the public.

In the case of They Are Us, it may very well be a combination of the two.

It’s highly curious to make a film focusing on a politician’s reaction to a recent real-life tragedy when that politician is still active in the political arena. It seems likely that They Are Us would be cashing in on a horrific tragedy by making a two-hour campaign commercial for Jacinda Ardern, which doesn’t exactly sound very artistically compelling.

The They Are Us controversy brought to my mind Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper (2014), which told the story of Chris Kyle, a famed Navy SEAL murdered in 2013.

Kyle’s father told Eastwood “disrespect my son and I’ll unleash hell”, so the director dutifully made a hagiography that played up Kyle’s legend and ignored his fabulist tales of punching Jesse Ventura, shooting carjackers and sniping looters in New Orleans.

American Sniper was a propaganda popcorn movie and made tons of money by watering down not only Kyle’s complexity but the Iraq War’s as well. While commercially successful, artistically it was ultimately forgettable as it shamelessly promoted myth in favor of exploring truth.

I’ve a sneaking suspicion They Are Us would follow the same empty path regarding Ahearn and the massacre. Truth is that time and emotional distance are needed for artists to make noteworthy cinema about tragic events and audiences to be able to make sense of them.

For example, the bloodiest year for the U.S. in Vietnam was 1968 and it took a decade before Hollywood could adequately make a movie about that war. Deer Hunter (1978) and Apocalypse Now (1979) were the first to successfully ponder the Vietnam fiasco, with Oliver Stone’s Platoon (1986) and Born of the Fourth of July (1989), and Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket (1987) continuing the exploration nearly a decade later.

Time and emotional distance greatly aided these films, their filmmakers and the viewers who digested them, as artists and audiences simply weren’t capable of diving into the horror of Vietnam in its immediate aftermath.

Oliver Stone has often gone back to examine the unhealed wounds of the American psyche. Twenty-eight years after JFK’s assassination he made his masterpiece JFK (1991), and twenty years after Richard Nixon’s downfall he made the brilliantly astute Nixon (1995).

The previously mentioned Vietnam war films and the Oliver Stone historical dramas succeeded artistically because they were constructed on a foundation of reason, and upon that foundation emotion and drama were built, whereas films made closer to traumatic events are usually built on a flimsy foundation of heightened emotion and therefore lack all meaning and purpose besides emoting and manipulating.

Speaking of manipulation, a perfect example of a movie exploiting an event for propaganda purposes is Zero Dark Thirty, which purported to tell the tale of the hunt for Osama Bin Laden.

Zero Dark Thirty premiered in December of 2012, a quick year and nine months after Bin Laden’s killing, and was propaganda meant to lionize the Obama administration and the intelligence community as it played up the effectiveness of torture and played down its barbarity.

Similarly, United 93, directed by Paul Greengrass, premiered four and half years after 9-11 and exploited the raw emotion of that trauma to indelibly imprint upon the public’s consciousness through drama the government’s version of that heinous event.

Greengrass also made 22 July, about the 2011 massacre in Norway. 22 July came out in 2018, and like United 93, even some time had passed from the traumatic event it recounted, the emotional trauma was still too fresh. Both films are well made but the wounds they probed were too fresh for any valuable insights to be uncovered.

In contrast, Greengrass’s greatest film, Bloody Sunday, about the Bloody Sunday massacre in the north of Ireland by British troops in 1972, came out in 2002, thirty years after the events depicted. And while that movie is viscerally jarring and emotionally unnerving, it’s also powerfully poignant and insightful in ways that United 93 and 22 July simply aren’t because it had the benefit of time, distance and perspective.  

As for They Are Us, maybe a decade from now a worthwhile movie about the Christchurch massacre could be made as both artists and audiences will have had time to process that tragic event and be open to insights and interpretations of it that they’re immune to in the current, more emotionally fraught moment. Any movie made sooner than that will most assuredly only be exploiting trauma, rather exploring it for deeper meaning.

 A version fo this article was published at RT.

©2021

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota - Episode 42: No Sudden Move and Top Five Heist Movies

On this episode Barry and I try to make sense of director Steven Soderbergh's latest half-hearted effort No Sudden Move, and then shift gears for a wild discussion on their top 5 heist movies of all-time. Topics discussed include Frank Oz out in the cold in Montreal, the brilliance of Michael Mann, and an open invitation to John McTiernan.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota - Episode 42: No Sudden Move and Top Five Heist Movies

Thanks for listening!

©2021

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota - Episode 40: Tenet and Nolan's Top 5 Movies

On this episode Barry and I go back in time to try and make sense of Christopher Nolan's confounding Tenet. Then in the fiery second half of the show things get combative as we each share and compare our personal lists of Nolan's top five films.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota - Episode 40: Tenet and Nolan's Top 5 Movies

Thanks for listening!

©2021

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota - Episode 39: Cruella

On this episode Barry and I get dressed up for our date with DISNEY's Cruella, starring Emma Stone. This barn burner of an episode contains discussions on topics as varied as wasting $200 million on CGI dogs, the lost opportunity of a lady Joker and the Disney classics The Great Locomotive Chase and The Mandalorian.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota - Episode 39: Cruella

Thanks for listening!

©2021

Anne Boleyn and Color-Conscious Casting

Anne Boleyn is so dull that the lead’s race is the only worth discussing…as intended

The Channel 5 mini-series has attracted a lot of attention for its unconventional casting, but it is an underwhelming piece of television.

The first episode of the highly anticipated three-part drama, Anne Boleyn, which has generated a great deal of conversation because it cast Jodie Turner Smith, a black actress, in the titular role, premiered Tuesday night on BBC Channel 5.

The casting of a black actress to play a white historical figure has garnered much attention, which seems to be the point. I certainly wouldn’t have watched Anne Boleyn if it weren’t for the casting controversy…so mission accomplished.

This color-blind (casting without considering an actor’s race) or color-conscious (intentionally casting a minority because of their identity) casting approach has been a hot topic in recent years.

“Whitewashing”, where a white actor or actress plays a role that’s a minority in the source material, such as Scarlett Johansson in Ghost in the Shell or Tilda Swinton in Doctor Strange, or where white actors/actresses play “people of color” like Emma Stone in Aloha, Angelina Jolie in A Mighty Heart or Jonathon Pryce in Miss Saigon, has been labelled culturally insensitive and all but banned.

In a case of “race-washing for me but not for thee”, during this same time-period “artists of color” playing characters that are white in the source material, even when that source material is actual history, has been met with cheers for being a sign of victory for “diversity” and “inclusion”.

A Wrinkle in Time, Hamilton and Mary, Queen of Scots(2018) are just a few of the examples of the race-washing of white characters, including white historical figures, with actors of color in recent years.

As a traditionalist who believes in respecting source material, particularly when the source is history itself, I always find it ironic that the woke are so enthralled with color-blind or color-conscious casting when it comes to white historical figures or originally white characters yet are so addicted to classifying people by their racial identity in real life.

Of course, the argument from the pro-color-blind/color-conscious side is rather disingenuous and unserious. Author Miranda Kaufman’s recent article on the subject in the Telegraph is a perfect representation of the vacuousness and vapidity of that position.

Kaufman opens her piece by declaring she is “always exasperated by the uproar when a new historical drama comes out with a cast that isn’t solely white” and then goes on to reveal her ignorance and stunningly obtuse perspective on the issue.

According to Kaufman, since there were blacks in England during the Tudor era that means it’s no big deal if a black actress plays Anne Boleyn.

There were white people in the civil rights movement, so should Joaquin Phoenix, Daniel Day Lewis and Meryl Streep play Malcolm X, MLK and Rosa Parks? There were white abolitionists so should Sean Penn and Jennifer Lawrence play Frederick Douglas and Harriet Tubman? This is obviously absurd.

Equally absurd is Kaufman’s reasoning that because there were 200 free blacks out of a total of between 2 and 4 million people living in Tudor England, then a black Anne Boleyn is perfectly reasonable even though, as Kaufman admits, “of course” Boleyn wasn’t black.

Kaufman’s article is titled, “Yes, there were black Tudors – and they lived fascinating lives”, so why not make a tv show about one of them and cast black artists in the roles instead of turning history into fantasy by casting Jodie Tuner Smith as Boleyn?

My opposition to color-blind and color-conscious casting is purely a function of wanting to see the very best film and television possible. Film and tv is all about ‘make believe’, as the actors are playing ‘make believe’ in order to make the audience believe what they are witnessing is genuine.

This is why movie and tv studios pay millions of dollars for top-notch CGI to make it look like superheroes are really flying and dragons actually exist, and why taller actors play Abe Lincoln and pretty actresses play Marylin Monroe.

By casting a black woman as Anne Boleyn, or any other white figure, the critically important suspension of disbelief needed to lose oneself in entertainment has one more obstacle to overcome in our jaded age, and the ‘make believe’ is made markedly less believable.

Which brings us to Anne Boleyn.

I wanted Anne Boleyn to be good because I want every-thing I see to be good, but unfortunately it isn’t just Anne’s head that will roll in relation to this show, but viewer’s eyes as well.

This drama is a rather flimsy and flaccid retelling of the Boleyn tale that brings nothing new to the table except for the race of its leading lady.

The show is not underwhelming because of Jodie Turner Smith, it would probably be anemic regardless of who played the titular role, but it isn’t helped by her presence either.

Smith is an undeniable beauty but she’s not particularly charismatic, and she certainly lacks the magnetism and skill to elevate this rather shallow and stilted drama.

The rest of the cast, be they white, black or other, don’t fare any better, as the production feels decidedly cheap and devoid of drama.  

Episode two and three of Anne Boleyn air over the next two nights and maybe it will find its dramatic rhythm and improve significantly, but I doubt it as the first episode was so dull it left me wanting to chop my own head off.

The bottom-line reality regarding Anne Boleyn is that the virtue signaling of color-blind or color-conscious casting may make pandering studio executives and the woke feel good, but it often doesn’t make for good art and entertainment.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Cruella: Review and Commentary

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

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. Really not much of interest in this big budget misfire.

Cruella is the perfect kid’s movie for a culture that celebrates cruelty and malignant megalomania

Disney has discarded the old princess narrative and under the guise of self-empowerment are now teaching generations of young girls to embrace self-serving toxicity.

In the new Disney movie Cruella the Rolling Stones classic Sympathy for the Devil plays over the film’s final scene, which felt a bit too on the nose for the origin story of a notorious character that will go on to attempt to skin puppies for the sake of fashion.

Cruella, of course, is Cruella de Vil, the infamous arch villain of the iconic animated film One Hundred and One Dalmatians. With this new, live-action, reimagined reboot starring Emma Stone we discover why Cruella hates dalmatians so much and how she rose to power.

What we really learn though is that the suits at Disney will go to any lengths to plumb the depths of their intellectual property vault to make money and corrode the culture.

Cruella, whose real name is Estella, is at first set in a sort of Dickensian London, where we learn of her troubled childhood. The film then magically shifts into the stylishly swinging London of the 60’s and 70’s where Estella graduates from good girl gone bad to bad girl grown up.

The soundtrack, which is easily the best part of the movie, reflects that time period as it features an abundance of classics from The Doors, Queen, Nina Simone, ELO, Tina Turner, The Clash and the aforementioned Stones.

Unfortunately, like seemingly all Disney films, Cruella is a shameless money grab in the form of a two hour and fourteen-minute advertisement for Disney’s vast catalogue of past movie hits and its newfound woke politics.

Director Craig Gillespie has experience making movies about cartoonishly villainous women, as evidenced by his terrific film I, Tonya, about disgraced figure skater Tonya Harding, but on Cruella he seems desperately out of place.

The film’s star, Emma Stone, doesn’t fare much better. Stone is a likeable screen presence, but she is all bark and no bite as Cruella, as the thread bare script makes little human sense and reduces her acting to histrionics.

The lone bright spot in the cast though is Paul Walter Hauser who is glorious as always as the bumbling buffoon Horace Badun. The rotund Hauser is quickly becoming one of the best scene stealers and actors in the business.

The film’s massive $200 million budget doesn’t translate into stunning visuals either, as the film looks just ok and lacks any remarkable cinematic moments. It’s also painfully derivative, generously borrowing from other, much better films like The Devil Wears Prada, Joker, The Thomas Crown Affair and V for Vendetta.

The biggest problem with Cruella though is that it can’t quite figure out what exactly it wants to be. It’s too dark to be for kids and too silly to be for adults. Yet despite the movie’s PG13 rating, it would appear from the movie’s rather ludicrous plot and minimal character development that the target audience is impressionable pre-teen girls, which is unfortunate since the film’s moral perspective is less than idyllic.

Even though there are shades of Cinderella in Cruella, there are certainly no princesses to be found. The old days of the Disney princess are long gone and some may say good riddance, but now the corporate behemoth Mickey Mouse built is pivoting to not just churning out generic girl power movies, but with Cruella, bad-girl girl power movies.

This is a bad girl versus bad girl movie, a battle of the bitches if you will, where Cruella (Emma Stone) faces off against her fashion designer nemesis Baroness von Hellman (Emma Thompson – doing a second-rate Meryl Streep imitation), with the most-cruel and conniving female fashionista winning the stylish bad girl championship crown with belt to match.

I’m old enough to remember when Joker came out in 2019 and hysterical establishment critics shrieked in horror, declaring it dangerous because Joker was the “patron saint of incels” who’d inspire white men to violence. Joker was rated R and obviously geared towards adults, but Cruella? It’s for 10 year-old girls is designed under the guise of self-empowerment to encourage the selfish, bitchy and viciously toxic behavior of brats of all ages.

And don’t be fooled, Disney knows exactly what it’s doing as it clearly understands full well the power of pop culture to persuade, which is why it wouldn’t allow Stone to smoke as Cruella despite that being a signature trait of the character.

God only knows what deleterious effect Cruella will have on generations of girls in a nation already filled with a plethora of narcissistic Karen De Vils.

Of course, Cruella is inoculated against that sort of moral and/or cultural criticism from mainstream critics because it has the “proper” woke perspective and a “diverse” and “inclusive” cast where most of the “heroes” are women, minorities or both.

Among these heroes are Cruella, a genius taking on the small-minded patriarchy, Anita, the black female gossip columnist defiantly helping Cruella’s cause, Artie, the gay fashionista who fights for all things fabulous, and Jasper, Cruella’s right-hand person of color.

Ultimately, there’s nothing wrong with telling a story about an anti-hero or villain. These stories can have great value in that they help a culture assimilate its shadow and ultimately find catharsis. Joker is a perfect example of this, and so could be Cruella if it were made for adults.

Cruella though is a sign of a culture intent on destroying itself as it’s a kid’s movie that teaches young girls to identify with and have sympathy for this undeniably immoral and malignant megalomaniacal she-devil, all while it celebrates cruelty.

I guess a corrosive kid’s movie like Cruella was inevitable since we live in a popular, political and social culture populated with so many cruel, immoral, malignantly megalomaniacal adults. As the saying goes “you get what you pay for”…which is why I definitely wouldn’t recommend paying for Cruella.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

The Underground Railroad: Review and Commentary

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 19 seconds

This article contains minor spoilers for the series The Underground Railroad.

The Underground Railroad takes viewers on a long and ugly journey to nowhere

The highly anticipated drama about a runaway slave devolves into a vapid exercise in torture porn.

The Underground Railroad is the new critically-acclaimed limited series from Oscar winning filmmaker Barry Jenkins (Moonlight) now streaming on Amazon Prime.

The show, based on the Pulitzer prize winning novel by Colson Whitehead, tells the story of Cora, a slave who escapes the hell of a Georgia plantation by taking a train on a literal “underground railroad”.

Having the underground railroad be an actual subterranean train system as opposed to a collection of secret routes and safe houses is the lone piece of magic in this magical realist version of the much-told story of slavery in America.

Unfortunately, The Underground Railroad attempts to be profound and poignant but ends up being a shamelessly pretentious and egregiously pornographic arthouse poseur that reinforces the suffocating stasis of stereotypes by pandering, placating and patronizing to the lowest common racial denominator.

There are no insights to be found in this series, just a tenuous narrative and cardboard cutout characters used as torture and victimhood porn delivery systems.

Thuso Mbedu plays Cora and lacks the gravitas to carry the project. Mbedu is not a compelling actress and her decision to use a close-mouthed mumble as her dialect was a poor one, as I literally had to turn on the close caption in order to understand her (and only her).

Cora escapes the stereotypical cruel, fat white overseer and her viciously sadistic slave owner in Georgia, only to find the villainy and brutality of white supremacy is omnipresent across America.

In South Carolina she finds a society welcoming of blacks, but under that veneer she discovers the pulsating hatred of white supremacy in the form of eugenics. In North Carolina, the murder of blacks is ritualized as white supremacy is codified into law and religion. In Tennessee, white supremacy and its American imperative of expansion and domination has laid waste to the state and left it a veritable wasteland. In Indiana, blacks have carved out a seeming utopia, but the menace of white supremacy lurks on the margins ready to pounce at the slightest imagined provocation.

If that sounds narratively repetitious, it’s because it is.

The problem with The Underground Railroad in terms of storytelling is that Cora’s journey is simply physical and not a character arc. She undergoes no mythological, spiritual or psychological transformation at all. All Cora undergoes is one torture after another, with the only lesson learned being that all white people, including abolitionists, are awful if not evil.

The series is difficult to watch because of the relentless brutality, all of which seem gratuitous especially since there’s no emotional connection developed with the characters. All of the victims, Cora especially, are just one-dimensional punching bag props in the ten-hour diatribe against white supremacy. Maybe the novel does the hard work of character development, because the mini-series sure as hell doesn’t.

I couldn’t help but think of the cancelled-before-it-started HBO show Confederate, while watching The Underground Railroad. Confederate, which was the brain child of Game of Thrones show-runners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, imagined an alternate history where the Confederacy survived and slavery still existed. HBO backed away from the project in 2017 after social media went nuclear over the notion of “exploiting black suffering for the purposes of art and entertainment.”

The Underground Railroad is being hailed by critics despite doing that exact same thing.

Granted, the show is beautifully shot by cinematographer James Laxton, whose camera dances through the ugliness like a feather floating on a soft breeze, but using the best china and most elaborate garnish will not elevate a painfully thin gruel into a satisfying meal.

Director Barry Jenkins has said that he made The Underground Railroad to counter Trump’s slogan of “Make America Great Again”. “I think in that world there’s this vacuum in the historical record or this failure to acknowledge those things, then slogans like this, and even worse actions…will continue to proliferate. So I think it’s important to fill in those cavities and to acknowledge the truth of what this country is.”

Does Jenkins really think Americans, even lowly MAGA adherents, want a return of slavery? Or is he simply building an absurd strawman to give his vacuous mini-series some meaning in hindsight that it lacks upon viewing?

Jenkins strikes me as being as deluded about America as those people who in a recent poll believed that police killed over 10,000 unarmed black men in 2019.

He is as detached from reality as the MAGA monsters in his head that he sets out to counter with his magical realist enterprise The Underground Railroad.

The truth is that the story of how the savagery and barbarity of slavery in America distorted and damaged every soul and psyche it touched is an extremely important one, but there is no paucity of significantly better films and tv shows that express that horror more effectively. The iconic and epic Roots, the bone crushingly brilliant Best Picture winner 12 Years a Slave and even Quentin Tarantino’s exhilarating revenge fantasy Django Unchained are better resources worthy of your time because they create catharsis through creativity by utilizing originality, insightfulness and generating profundity.

Hell, even dismal cinematic efforts like Amistad, Beloved, Free State of Jones and The Birth of a Nation(2016) are superior to the slog that is this mini-series.

Ultimately, you have no need to buy a ticket to ride on The Underground Railroad because it’s an arduous ten-hour circular journey where you learn absolutely nothing and end up in the same damned place you started.

A version of this article was originally published at RT. 

©2021

7th Annual Mickey Awards™®: 2020 Edition

Estimated Reading Time: Ever prone to narcissistic indulgence, expect this awards show article to last, at a minimum, approximately 5 hours and 48 minutes.

Is everybody in? Is everybody in? The ceremony is about to begin…

After what seems like an endless year, the pinnacle of cinematic achievement, the Mickey Awards™®, is finally upon us.

The Mickeys™® and its shadow award the Slip-Me-A-Mickey™®, are always the final awards of the awards season, but since everything was pushed back due to covid, we are in the unprecedented situation of giving out awards in May. I realize this seems odd, and while the Mickey™® committee considered giving out our awards sooner, we decided to stick to tradition so as to not make the other awards (looking at you Oscar) even more irrelevant than they already are.

To be blunt, 2020 was not an a good year for movies. While there were certainly some good movies, none of them were great. This is especially apparent when contrasted with the stellar output of movies in 2019, which featured a murderer’s row of cinematic heavyweights.

On the bright side, at least some smaller movies got the spotlight this year, I just wish those movies could have been more convincing in making a case for others to join me in the cult of the arthouse.

Regardless of all that, the God of Cinema declares we must give out Mickey™® awards. For those of you who are unfamiliar…here is a quick rundown of the rules and regulations of The Mickeys™®. The Mickeys™® are selected by me. I am judge, jury and executioner. The only films eligible are films I have actually seen, be it in the theatre, via screener, cable, Netflix or VOD. I do not see every film because as we all know, the overwhelming majority of films are God-awful, and I am a working man so I must be pretty selective. So that means that just getting me to actually watch your movie is a tremendous accomplishment in and of itself…never mind being nominated or winning!

Winners of Mickey™® Awards receive an appropriately socially distanced meal at Fatburger and/or Shake Shack…on me! And yes, you can order a shake for your beverage! And the sterling conversation with me is included with the meal! You’re welcome.

Now that all that is out of the way…buckle up…IT’S MICKEY™® TIME!!

Best Cinematography

The nominees are…

Mank - Eric Messerschmidt : Gloriously shot film that utilized a luscious black and white and also featured a visual aesthetic that was an homage to its famous subject matter.

Nomadland - Joshua James Richards: Used gorgeous shots of vast, sparse and beautiful landscapes to set an intriguing mood and propel the story.

The Vast of Night - M.I. Litten-Menz : On a shoe string budget this movie looks like a big budget project and its intricate camera movements were astoundingly complex.

THE WINNER IS…. Mank. Messerschmidt won the Oscar with his crisp bleck and white cinematography but now he reaches the ultimate summit of cinematic excellence with his first Mickey award.

Best Adapted Screenplay

The nominees are…

Nomadland - Chloe Zhao: A solid integration of the original subject matter into a loosely coherent mood piece.

The Father - Florian Zeller: A fantastic adaptation of his own stage play that actually elevates the material instead of denigrating it, which is a rarity.

THE WINNER IS… The Father: The Father is an absolutely phenomenal script and Zeller justly deserves his first Mickey Award.

Best Original Screenplay

The nominees are…

Mank - Jack Fincher: An unruly behemoth of a story that is wrestled and transformed into a brutally insightful political statement. Astoundingly impressive piece of screenwriting.

Another Round - Thomas Vinterberg: A story about a mid-life crisis and death that focuses on life and manages to make its day drinking protagonist sympathetic and compelling.

Sound of Metal - Darius Marder: On the surface this is the most predictable and mundane of ideas…but Marder turns convention on its head and discovers profundity.

THE WINNER IS… Sound of Metal: From the mundane to the magical and the predictable to the profound, Darius Marder so fleshed out this story as to never write a cliche or false note. A well-deserved Mickey Award is his reward for excellence.

Best Supporting Actress

The nominees are…

Sierra McCormick - Vast of Night: A nobody from nowhere, McCormick absolutely crushed a role that was mind-bogglingly complicated and did it with enormous aplomb and magnetism.

Olivia Colman - The Father: The most intricate work of Colman’s career, she fills every scene and every shot with unstated meaning and anguish.

Amanda Seyfried - Mank: Who knew that Amanda Seyfried could be so good? As Hollywood starlet Marion Davies she looks amazing and matches her beauty with a nuanced and inspired performance.

Maria Bakalova - Borat: An absolutely balls to the wall performance that only she could pull off.

THE WINNER IS… Sierra McCormick: There’s an extended scene in The Vast of Night where nothing happens except McCormick talks and listens on a telephone…it is utterly mesmerizing, and is a testament to her talent, skill and craft.

Best Supporting Actor

The nominees are…

Daniel Kaluuya - Judas and the Black Messiah: Kaluuya is deliriously magnetic as Chairman Fred Hampton and completely owns the role and the film. It isn’t quite Denzel as Malcolm X, but it is still electrifying to behold.

Bo Burnham - Promising Young Woman: Burnham is fantastic in the darkly comedic/rom-com portion of this movie, and his chemistry with Mulligan is believable and charming.

Kingsley Ben-Adir - One Night in Miami: Ben-Adir masterfully avoids imitation and mimicry as he re-creates Malcolm X as less a cocksure firebrand and more an insecure outsider yearning for acceptance. A truly brilliant piece of acting.

Chadwick Boseman - Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom: Boseman has always been more movie star than great actor, but in Ma Rainey he taps into an energy and emotion that he had avoided in previous roles. This is far and away Boseman’s greatest performance.

THE WINNER IS… Daniel Kaluuya: Kaluuya is fast positioning himself as one of the best actors in the business…and his resume just got a tremendous boost with a prestigious Mickey Award.

Breakout Performance of the Year - Sierra McCormick: I had never heard of McCormick before The Vast of Night, but her unforgettable performance impressed me no end. I am willing to bet it impressed other Hollywood big wigs too…and I hope we get to see a lot more of her in movies that matter going forward.

Best Foreign Film - Another Round: Thomas Vinterberg is a great director and Another Round is a gloriously Vinterbergian film. Complex and layered yet darkly funny and philosophical, Another Round is unpredictable, satisfying and the type of movie that keeps you thinking about it and talking about for days afterward.

Best Actress

The nominees are…

Carey Mulligan - Promising Young Woman: Mulligan is one of the best actresses of her generation and she brings all her powers to bear on this absurdist and twisted dark fantasy. Impossible to imagine any other actress pulling this off.

Frances McDormand - Nomadland: McDormand gives a rare nuanced performance as Fern, the grieving wanderer searching for something out there on the fringes of society. I think McDormand is over-rated as an actress, but this is one of her very best performances.

Vanessa Kirby - Pieces of a Woman: The luminous Kirby gets down and dirty in this misfire of a movie, but her performance is powerful and poignant. I hope we see much more of this Vanessa Kirby going forward.

THE WINNER IS… Carey Mulligan: Mulligan’s versatility is extraordinary and is on full display in Promising Young Woman. In lesser hands this role is a disaster, in her skilled mitts it is artistry…and the Mickey Award is rightfully hers.

Best Actor

The nominees are…

Riz Ahmed - Sound of Metal: Ahmed is one of the best actors out there, and he brings all his talent to Sound of Metal. Ahmed has the uncanny ability to fill himself with an inner life that is vibrant and dynamic and it shows on screen. A stellar piece of acting.

Anthony Hopkins - The Father: Hopkins, ever the master of controlled fury, gives arguably his greatest performance in The Father, as he unravels the character with each passing scene.

Gary Oldman - Mank: Oldman brings a sloppy slice of life to the Hollywood legend and it makes for a combustibly cantankerous experience. Few, if any, actors would even attempt this, nevermind pull it off as well as Oldman.

Mads Mikkelson - Another Round: Mikkelson transforms throughout this film from a burdened, defeated man to a confident king, to a struggling sad sack. Mikkelson is one of the great under appreciated actors of his time, and Another Round is evidence of his brilliance.

THE WINNER IS…Anthony Hopkins: Hopkins is one of the very best actors of his generation, and his stunning work in The Father, filled with precision and specificity, has now given him the most prestigious award in cinema, The Mickey™®.

Best Ensemble - Mank - Gary Oldman is the straw that stirs Mank’s drink, but the cast is loaded with solid actors giving career best performances. Amanda Seyfried, Arliss Howard and Charles Dance in particular do stellar work that elevate the film.

Best Director

The nominees are…

David Fincher - Mank : Fincher’s fearlessness is on full display in Mank as he throws caution to the wind and makes a dizzyingly complex film that is a thumb in the eye to his corporate overlords.

Chloe Zhao - Nomadland : Zhao’s comfort with silence and space make Nomadland the film that it is, and lesser directors would have scuttled the ship.

Florian Zeller - The Father : Zeller masterfully puts his audience through the horror of dementia by relying on his exquisite script and his stellar cast. This movie was no easy task and Zeller proved himself a formidable filmmaker.

Darius Marder - Sound of Metal : Marder brought all the craft of old school movie making to Sound of Metal. A fundamentally brilliant bit of directing that drew the most out of his cast and his crew.

Thomas Vinterberg - Another Round : Vinterberg is one of the most interesting directors around, and Another Round is him at his most accessibly artistic.

Andrew Patterson - The Vast of Night: Patterson’s feature debut is stunning for its confidence and technical audacity. I truly cannot wait to see what he does next.

THE WINNER IS…Darius Marder : Marder’s artistic courage, commitment and deft directing touch brought his profoundly unique vision to life on Sound of Metal…and now he’s got a Mickey Award!

Best Documentary - Can’t Get You Out of My Head : Director Adam Curtis is the best documentarian in the business and has been for nearly two decades. His newest project is a six part series that debuted on BBC in February. Like Curtis’ other revelatory series Century of the Self, The Power of Nightmares and HyperNormalization, Can’t Get You Out of My Head is brilliant for taking a sprawling subject matter and profoundly transforming it into the psychological and personal. it is currently available on Youtube, and though it may feel impenetrable at first, I highly recommend you watch every episode.

Best Picture

9. One Night in Miami - Four excellent performances propel this stagey drama and make it a worthwhile watch.

8. Promising Young Woman - Director Emerald Fennell wraps a disturbing revenge fantasy in a bubblegum aesthetic, and though it is flawed it possesses an intriguing cinematic power.

7. Judas and the Black Messiah - An uneven but captivating film that highlights two fantastic performances from Daniel Kaluuya and LaKieth Stanfield.

6. The Vast of Night - This is a little movie with big ideas and it nearly pulls them all off. A staggering piece of technical filmmaking that boasts an intricate and detailed performance from Sierra McCormick.

5. Nomadland - An arthouse meditation on the dark side of the American dream that somehow manages to be decidedly corporate friendly. Despite its shallow philosophy, the film is well-made and well-acted and very well shot.

4. Another Round - A compelling Danish drama that is gloriously acted and exceedingly well directed. This movie not only has a sense of humor but a deep sense of the profound.

3. Mank - Mank got lost in the shuffle this year, and although it isn’t a perfect movie, it is a very good one. Filled with solid performances and Fincher’s brilliance, Mank gets better upon each re-watch.

2. The Father - I expected little from The Father, and got a whole hell of a lot. This movie is like a horror film as it traps viewers inside the experience of dementia, and it makes you pray you never suffer that fate. An exquisitely jarring cinematic experience.

1. Sound of Metal - A pretty basic movie and idea that is phenomenally well-directed and acted. A quiet movie that finds profundity in the silence.

Most Important Film of the Year: Nomadland

Nomadland is the most important film of the year…but not in a good way. What makes Nomadland so important is that is symbolizes an artistic acquiescence to corporate power and reinforces working class impotence.

As I’ve written before, it is shocking that Nomadland is a story about people who are victims of American capitalism but the movie entirely ignores that reality, and in fact bends over backwards to portray the corporate behemoths (like Amazon) that cause the suffering we see in the film, as the good guys. The film might as well have been produced by Gordon Gekko or the Koch brothers.

It isn’t an accident that Amazon were so happy to let Nomadland shoot in their workplace and create the impression that working there is a wonderful experience where they treat you well, you make new friends and you make good money. Of course, the reality is much, much different.

The thing that is so horrifying is that Hollywood, and most importantly - the artists in Hollywood, refused to speak up against Nomadland’’s deception and Amazon’s evil. The film, its director and lead actress won a bevy of awards and yet not once in their acceptance speeches did they hold Amazon to task for their poor treatment of workers or anti-union practices or even speak up about those left behind by American capitalism.

Just think, Sally Field once iconically held up a “Union” sign in Norma Rae, and now Frances McDormand shits in a bucket while swearing that anti-union Amazon is a terrific place to work. What a sign of the very bad times.

Last time McDormand won an Oscar, the brassy actress shouted and touted diversity and inclusion…but this time around she was as quiet as a church mouse in regards to Amazon and unionization and its poor treatment of working people. Funny how McDormand was so courageous when it costs her nothing but so cowardly when biting the hand that feeds would be the right thing to do. Class act that McDormand…loud when she can self-aggrandize but silent when it matters.

Nomadland and the universal and uncritical love for it, signals an end to artists pushing back against corporate hegemony, and instead genuflecting to corporate power. This new era feels Orwellian, as the only thing that matters now is identity politics. If Nomadland hadn’t been written and directed by a “woman of color”, I doubt it would’ve received so much critical love, or avoided the Amazon controversy.

And so…this is why corporate America is attached at the hip with woke politics, it is a means to a dastardly end. Corporate America can be as evil as it wants and can exploit its workers all it wants, just as long as it spouts woke platitudes about diversity and inclusion and “black lives mattering” or whatever other politically correct smokescreen it wants to use…and as Nomadland proves, this distractionary measure will work…and cinema, art and humanity will all suffer.

On that very down note….thus concludes an uninspired Mickey™® awards for an uninspired year of movies!! Congratulations to all the winners and to all of my readers for surviving this decidedly heinous year. Keep an eye out for the Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® Awards…which will be coming soon to celebrate the very worst in cinema and culture!

Here’s to a better 2021! See you next year!

©2021

The Oscar Train Wreck

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 20 seconds

My biggest question regarding last night’s egregiously bungled and boring Oscar telecast is…if an awards show collapses but no one is watching, does it make a sound?

Interest in the Oscars has been in steep decline for years now, and after suffering through the entire three hour and twenty-minute show last night I can dutifully report that the 93rd Academy Awards came in with a whimper and left with a whimper too.

The night’s climactic moment was a dud as the show ran long, as usual, and then rushed to announce Best Actor, which everyone thought would be an emotional moment as it was expected to go to the late Chadwick Boseman. The award instead went to went to Anthony Hopkins. Uh-oh.

Hopkins is most deserving of the award, but his victory will no doubt spur more cries of “racism” from the usual woke suspects. Adding to the discomfort was the fact that Hopkins wasn’t present at the show, and so the telecast ended basically with everybody standing around looking at one another like they were waiting for a train.

Speaking of which, the show was held at Los Angeles’ Union Station – which is a train station, which is apropos since the show was an absolute train-wreck.

Union Station is known as a hub for hordes of homeless in Los Angeles, and I’m sure that as much as homeless people have defecated in that public space over the years they’ve never made a stink as odious as Oscar’s producer Steven Soderbergh did last night.

Soderbergh put his stamp on the show as he shot it like a movie, with more handheld cameras than static shots, and by mixing up the order of awards. For instance, contrary to previous Oscar ceremonies Best Director came early in the proceedings and Best Picture wasn’t the last award.

Of course, the Oscars are going to be the Oscars, so the show was filled with the usual rambling speeches, self-righteous political pandering, and the airing of racial grievances, but what it didn’t have was any clips of the nominated work. Want to see the nominated cinematography, acting, costumes, hair and makeup or production designs? Not on Soderbergh’s watch!

Instead Soderbergh had presenters share inane “fun factoids” about each nominee like a kindergarten teacher handing out Valentine’s Day cards in class. This was accompanied by a roving camera desperately whirling around searching the room for these unfamous nominees like a toddler lost in a train station frantically looking for its parents.

The lowlight in the evening of lowlights was a “music game” where nominees guessed if a song played by DJ Questlove (who replaced the traditional orchestra) was an Oscar winning song. This hapless and ham-handed bit deteriorated into Glenn Close pretending she knew the song “Da Butt” and then humiliating herself by getting up and doing “Da Butt” dance. If Glenn Close ever had a relationship with dignity, it ended in a ferocious divorce last night.

The entire endless evening felt like one long extended version of Glenn Close doing “Da Butt”, and conjured all the gravitas of a junior high school drama club awards night.

The Oscars did make history though regarding diversity with “artists of color” winning two of the four acting categories and Chloe Zhao being the first woman of color ever to win Best Director and Best Picture.

So maybe #OscarsSoWhite has transformed into #OscarsSoWhat*? Unfortunately, I’m sure the Academy would prefer even the righteous anger of racial resentment to the overwhelming apathy that hangs over the festivities like a toxic cloud of poisonous gas.

Even the stars who came out to aid Soderbergh in his time of need, like Halle Berry and Harrison Ford, looked disinterested. The usually luminous Berry looked like she had slept at Union Station or was suffering a hellacious flu when she presented an award, while Ford just seemed like he was baked off his ass as he mumbled through a presentation.

Soderbergh did not limit the award winners in the length of their speeches, which led to some unnecessary verbosity, but also to some moments of profundity. Director Thomas Vinterberg’s speech after winning Best International Feature Film for Another Round, was painfully poignant as he spoke about the tragic death of his daughter Ida during filming.

In contrast, Frances McDormand’s grating short speeches managed to remind everyone she’s the most annoying person in all of Hollywood, which is an achievement even greater than her three Best Actress Oscars.

As shrill and grating as she is, McDormand’s movie Nomadland was the biggest winner of the night as it won Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actress.

The biggest losers of the night though were any poor bastards like me who stayed up to watch, and of course, the Academy Awards themselves.

If last night’s abysmal Oscar ceremony proves anything it is that the Academy Awards are on the fast track to irrelevancy, and even though the show ran late, that train left Union Station right on time.  

*Joke courtesy of Leo - Da Irish Poet!

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Epsidoe 34 - Oscars Predictions

On this episode of everybody's favorite cinema podcast, Barry and I get all dressed up and go to the Oscars. Tune in to listen to our Oscar predictions, Oscar dream scenarios and Oscar nightmares, as well as lamentations for the sorry state of the movie industry.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 34 - Oscar Predictions

Thanks for listening!

©2021

93rd Academy Awards: The 2021 Oscar Prediction Post

Estimated Reading Time: 3 hours 47 minutes 22 seconds

The Academy Awards are once again upon us and the biggest question about them is…does anyone give a rat’s ass?

As the show’s dwindling ratings prove, interest in the once mighty Oscars has been in steep decline in recent years. It would seem the perfect storm of a plethora of streaming service tv shows and reduced attention spans, as well as a paucity of genuine movie stars and a plenitude of identity politics has wounded, maybe fatally, the once iconic awards.

As a denizen of Hollywood, I’ve never experienced an awards season that has generated so little interest. It appears that even though, due to streaming services, movies are more available to more people than ever before, they seem to have never mattered less.

Part of the reason for that is that, for a vareity of reasons - not the least of which was Covid, 2020 was just a cinematically lackluster year. A handful of good movies came out this year, but no truly great ones, and certainly no films that ignited the public’s passions.

With that said, the reality is that it is my sworn and solemn obligation to share with you my Oscar picks. Please remember that these picks are NOT TO BE USED FOR GAMBLING PURPOSES!!

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Who will win: Yuh-Jung Youn (Minari) - Not a fan of this movie or this performance, but it checks a diversity box Academy members want to celebrate. I personally think Amanda Seyfried (Mank), Olivia Colman (The Father) and Maria Bakalove (Borat) are considerably more deserving. There’s an outside chance Bakalove pulls the upset…but don’t bet on it.

Who should win: Seyfried or Colman.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Who will win: Daniel Kaluuya (Judas and the Black Messiah) - This is a slam dunk, and deservedly so. While I liked Paul Raci (Sound of Metal) and LaKeith Stanfield (Judas and the Black Messiah), Kaluuya crushes his role as Fred Hampton.

Who should win: Kaluuya

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Who will win: Promising Young Woman - Emerald Fennel : This is one of the few interesting categories. I think Fennel wins because the Academy is desperate to to appease the woke wolves at its door, and Fennel is a woman so she qualifies. There’s a pretty good chance that they give the award to Aaron Sorkin for his atrocious The Trial of the Chicago 7. That movie is dreadful and the script a joke, but it taps into the whole self-righteousness of the moment. That said…I think Fennel gets the nod.

Who should win: Sound of Metal - Darius Marder

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

Who will win: Nomadland - Chloe Zhao: I think Zhao and Nomadland are the big winners come Oscar night…but if Florian Zeller wins this award (which I think he should) for his adaptation of The Father, it could be a monkey wrench into the Nomadland dominance.

Who should win: The Father - Florian Zeller

ANIMATED FEATURE

Who will win: Soul. This is a no-brainer. I liked Soul and it is certainly an antidote to our tumultuous times. Also…the Pixar machine is unstoppable.

Who should win: Soul I guess.

PRODUCTION DESIGN

Who will win: Mank - I think Mank finally gets on the board here. if it loses this category it may very well get shut out of all awards. The big competition will come from Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.

Who should won: Mank.

COSTUME DESIGN

Who will win: Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom - I think Ma Rainey and its popular costume crew win here for a variety of non-merit based reasons. If Mank wins, which it could, that is a big deal and could portend a mini-Mank run in some behind the camera categories.

Who should win: Mank.

MAKEUP AND HAIR

Who will win: Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Same as above.

Who should win: Mank.

EDITING

Who will win: Sound of Metal - There’s a chance that Trial of the Chicago 7 could win (God help us), but I think Sound of Metal pulls it off. If Nomadland win then look out, that is a sign it will win a huge amount of hardware on Oscar night.

Who should win: Sound of Metal

SOUND

Who should win: Sound of Metal - Outside chance that Mank or Soul win, but that seems very unlikely. if Mank wins it is another sign of a big night for that movie…but that seems unlikely.

Who should win: Sound of Metal

VISUAL EFFECTS

Who will win: Tenet - This seems like it’s going to happen.

Who should win: I’ll be honest…I don’t know.

SCORE

Who will win: Soul - Jon Batiste, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross: This seems like a slam dunk too. An outside chance Terence Blanchard wins for his bombastic score to the equally awful Da 5 Bloods.

Who should win: Soul.

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

Who will win: My Octopus Teacher - I’m not sure why but people love this movie and I think the votes for potential winners Collective, Crip Camp and Time get split and the octopus wins.

Who should win: No idea.

INTERNATIONAL FEATURE

Who will win: Another Round - I think this beats out Qou Vadis, Aida by a nose.

Who should win: Another Round.

CINEMATOGRAPHY

Who will win: Nomadland - This is a bellwether award…if everything goes to plan then Nomadland should win and clean up at the Oscars. If Mank wins…its gonna be an interesting night because that signals Mank has a ground swell of support and Nomadland is floundering.

Who should win: Mank. Nomadland is extremely well shot by Joshua James Richards, no doubt about it, but my tastes run slightly more towards Erik Messerschmidt and Mank.

BEST ACTOR

Who will win: Chadwick Boseman (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom) - This is set in stone. With Boseman’s tragic death and the narrative around the award, it would be an absolute shocker of the highest order if anyone else won. The only other potential winner is Anthony Hopkins for The Father…but that ain’t happening.

Who should win: Anthony Hopkins. Boseman is very good in Ma Rainey…but Hopkins is on another level in The Father.

BEST ACTRESS

Who will win: Viola Davis - Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom : This is one of the very few interesting categories. Frances McDormand is the front runner but I think that the fact that she won recently (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri) and a win here would put her in Meryl Streep territory with 3 Oscar wins, the Academy will look to feed the diversity beast by awarding Davis for her sub-par performance in that dreadful movie.

Who should win: Carey Mulligan - Promising Young Woman : I thought Mulligan was better than everybody else.

BEST DIRECTOR

Who will win: Chloe Zhao - Nomadland : This too is a slam dunk. No way Fincher or Vinterberg pull of an upset. Just impossible.

Who should win: Fincher, Vinterberg or Zhao. Three different directors making very different films all did solid work.

BEST PICTURE

Who will win: Nomadland - This is happening. There is no stopping the Nomadland juggernaut. If Mank or (GOD HELP US ALL) The Trial of the Chicago 7 win, that is a sure sign of the apocalypse.

Who should win: Mank or Sound of Metal. They won’t win but I think they should. Nomadland is a good movie, but I thought these two were a little better.

Here’s the rest of the categories of which I have no opinion just a guess…

ORIGINAL SONG- One Night in Miami

LIVE ACTION SHORT - Two Distant Strangers

DOCUMENTARY SHORT - Concerto is Conversation

©2021

The Father and the Media's Dementia Simulation Machine

The Oscar-nominated The Father is a masterful film about living with dementia…and a reminder that the mainstream media is a dementia simulation machine.

The film immerses viewers in the confusion of dementia – the same sort of bewilderment caused by US media misinformation to disorient the public and make them easier to control and manipulate. 

The Father is a terrific movie that tells the story of an aging man struggling with dementia, and it has left me rattled as it’s uncomfortably reminiscent of the delusional and disorienting nature of American life.  

The film is rightfully nominated for Best Picture at the upcoming Academy Awards as it showcases a superb performance by Anthony Hopkins who was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for his stellar work.

What makes The Father such a poignant and insightful film is that director Florian Zeller doesn’t just show the effects of dementia on the screen, he immerses the audience in the excruciating experience of dementia.

Watching the film and experiencing that disease-imposed confusion, I couldn’t help but think about how, here in the U.S. at least, it feels as if our entire culture is suffering from a collective dementia. The disorientation and detachment from reality that come with that dreaded disease are entirely commonplace in America, where we seem incapable of remembering the past, or of clearly seeing the present.

This rapacious American dementia is fueled first and foremost by the mainstream media’s manipulation and misinformation.

The establishment media have long distorted reality in order to manufacture consent around a desired narrative. This is why Americans always see themselves as the “good guys” on the world stage and not as the imperialist aggressors and colonialist exploiters that we are.

For proof just look at the flag-waving coverage surrounding the Iraq war and the WMD nonsense, or the egregious media assaults on Julian Assange and Edward Snowden compared to the genuflecting coverage of infamous bs artists like Chris Kyle, George W. Bush and Barrack Obama.

This duplicitous media approach can often be so blatant as to be ridiculously absurd, such as when CNN described the rioting, looting and arson last Summer as “mostly peaceful” protests.

The same is true regarding the current wave of anti-Asian violence. The media blame the attacks on the ever-expanding yet conveniently amorphous label of “white supremacy”, but the videos and statistics regarding these repugnant attacks against Asians show black people are the majority of perpetrators, a fact the media steadfastly fail to mention.

Another dementia-like distortion caused by the media is the perception that police are killing black people en-masse.

As a 2021 Skeptic Research Poll found, most Americans greatly over-estimate the number of unarmed black people killed by police.

When asked “How many unarmed Black men were killed by police in 2019?”, 53.3 % of those self-described as “very liberal” estimated that over 1,000 unarmed black men had been killed by police, even though the actual number is believed to be between 60 – 100.

According to the same study, 24.9% of people killed by police are black, yet those self-describing as “liberal” or “very liberal” estimated the number to be 56% and 60% respectively.

This detachment from reality is no shock as according to a Gallup poll over half the country already over-estimates the size of the black population in general, believing it to be over 30% when in reality it is roughly 14%.

The over-estimation of police killings of unarmed black men is to be expected as every killing of a black person by the police or by a white person results in massive media coverage and a declaration that the only motivation for the incident is racism. In contrast the deaths of white people at the hands of police or by black perpetrators are not considered noteworthy.

The anti-Russia hysteria is another establishment media manufactured narrative that is directly at odds with reality, but that is deeply rooted in the American psyche.

Russiagate, hacking of electrical grids, using super-secret microwave weapons to attack U.S. diplomats, and putting bounties on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, are just a few of the dominant pieces of anti-Russian disinformation devoid of fact that the media tout as gospel truth.

The immigration crisis is another bewildering story disorienting Americans. The media vehemently chanted the mantra “kids in cages” when Trump detained children at the border, but were silent when Obama did the exact same thing during his presidency. And now that Biden is doing it too, the media are back to downplaying its significance or ignoring it entirely.

And of course, the most perplexing media coverage surrounds the coronavirus. Originally the press excoriated anyone who raised the notion that the disease may have come from a lab in China, but now the truth that they aren’t sure where it initially came from is acknowledged.

The medical establishment is just as perfidious and deceitful as the media.

For example, Dr. Fauci knowingly lied early in the pandemic about the need for masks.

And last Summer a collection of medical professionals said that no large groups should gather, except for Black Lives Matter protests, making the obscene and absurd claim that the media manufactured “epidemic” of racism was just as bad as the coronavirus pandemic.  

In addition, concerns over vaccinations are broken down by race, with white concerns stigmatized and black concerns gently understood.

Just like dementia, this insidious media and medical duplicity creates stress, irritability and aggression among the populace.

In conclusion, The Father is a masterful film insightfully exploring the tragedy of dementia, and the hypocritical, pernicious, frivolous and mendacious establishment media are a relentless dementia simulation machine. The former is worth indulging, the latter is terminal and should be avoided at all costs.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT. 

©2021