Don't Worry Darling - A Review: Cinephiles should definitely worry darling!

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

My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. An absolute mess of a movie.

Don’t Worry Darling, the much-hyped and much-discussed sophomore directorial effort from actress Olivia Wilde, premiered with a resounding thud in theatres back on September 23rd and is now available to stream on HBO Max…and I just watched it.

My three-word review of Don’t Worry Darling would simply be, “definitely worry darling”. Unfortunately for you, brevity has never been my strong suit, and therefore neither has wit, so I’ll expound further upon my thoughts.

Don’t Worry Darling was actually deemed an Oscar contender heading into this year because Hollywood had crowned Olivia Wilde as the new “it” girl moviemaker after her first film Booksmart (2019) received positive reviews but underwhelmed at the box office.

I was less enthused about Booksmart and Ms. Wilde’s alleged directing abilities than my brethren in the critical community. It seemed to me that Booksmart, a middling rip-off of Superbad, was, like Lady Bird (2017), vastly overrated because Hollywood and weak-kneed critics wanted to celebrate a female filmmaker even when they made an at-best mediocre movie.

Booksmart and Lady Bird, and their directors Olivia Wilde and Greta Gerwig, were hyped beyond all proportion as a result of Hollywood and the access media being desperate to show allegiance to the #MeToo mania gripping Tinsel Town. Hollywood’s obsession post-2016 election and post-Weinstein scandal has been to hire as many female and minority moviemakers as possible, the overwhelming majority of which have been completely devoid of talent, skill and craftsmanship. If you want to understand why the movie industry and the cinematic arts are suffering so much right now, look no further than this blind addiction to diversity, representation and inclusion over talent, skill and craftsmanship. That’s not the only reason for the recent drought of good films, but it’s certainly a major reason for that shortage.

It was due to this current female filmmaker hype and hysteria that Don’t Worry Darling got labelled as an Oscar contender before anyone even saw it. But then the discussion about the film quickly shifted from the female empowerment of it all to the various “scandals” surrounding the production.

There was the alleged feud between the film’s star Florence Pugh and director Olivia Wilde. There was the rehashing of the firing of Shia LeBouf which included a back and forth about exactly why he was fired, the result of which revealed Olivia Wilde to be a bit of a liar. And then there was the allegation that Ms. Wilde was having an affair with LeBouf’s replacement, cast member and co-star Harry Styles, during filming…while she was married to Ted Lasso…oops, I mean Jason Sudeikis. Oh dear.

That’s a lot of negative press swirling around a movie. The problem though is that those gossipy stories are infinitely more compelling than anything that actually happens in Don’t Worry Darling.

Describing the plot of Don’t Worry Darling is a difficult if not impossible thing to do, not because I want to avoid spoilers but because it’s so ridiculously convoluted and incoherent.

The basic premise, I guess, is that there’s a couple, Alice and Jack, living in what someone suffering from #MeToo induced mania would describe as some sort of banal precursor to the Gilead of The Handmaid’s Tale disguised as a 1950’s supposed utopia in the California desert named Victory. Victory – a less than subtle declaration of victory for the patriarchy, is a company town where all the men work on the mysterious, top secret “Victory Project” for their boss Frank (Chris Pine), who seems more like a cult leader than anything else.

While Jack (Harry Styles), a bargain basement looking James Bond with the fancy car to match, and his fellow employees go off to work every day, their cadre of beautiful housewives stay home and cook, clean and gossip.

Alice, played by the ever-captivating Florence Pugh, is one of these sexy housewives who gossips with the other sexy housewives in between making sumptuous dinners, keeping a tidy house and having Harry Styles perform oral sex on her.

But something seems off. Alice can’t quite put a finger on what it is but she keeps having dreams and flashbacks to…something…that is not of this neat and controlled world she finds herself inhabiting.

As the plodding movie progresses and the plot further unfurls, all of the supposed promise of that premise evaporates into thin air. Eventually there’s absolutely nothing of any note left to hold onto.

The film is a D-level Stepford Wives for the modern generation as it’s obviously trying to make some profound statement about the patriarchy and the inherent evil of men, but to call the film’s gender politics trite would be the most profound of understatements.

To be fair to the film, there are some positives. For example, Florence Pugh is terrific. I remember the first time I see Pugh in a film, it was 2016’s Lady Macbeth, and I instantly recognized what a special actress she was, writing, “Pugh…has stardom written all over her. She is a beautiful woman, but her beauty never overshadows her talent. She is blessed with the skill of being able to convey her character's intentions and vivid inner life with the slightest of glances. Pugh is a charismatic and powerful screen presence who exudes an intelligence and strength that few young actresses possess. I am willing to bet that she has a most stellar career in front of her.”

Pugh is such a dynamic, magnetic and charismatic screen presence in Don’t Worry Darling that she’s able to overcome the albatross of the moronic script and middling moviemaking and avoid embarrassing herself.

Cinematographer Matthew Libatique also does notable work as he gives the film an appealingly crisp visual style and luscious, cinematic flair.

As for everything else…oh boy…its bad.

Screenwriter Katie Silberman needed at least three more drafts of this script as it simply makes absolutely no sense as currently structured.

Wilde also drops the ball consistently as the film’s pacing is relentlessly lethargic yet the plot also moves too fast in the second half to be remotely comprehensible.

Pugh aside, Wilde is incapable of drawing solid performances from her cast, most obviously from herself in a supporting role. Wilde’s acting is just as bad as her directing, as there’s a lot of posing and preening and histrionics but nothing believable.

I remember the first time I ever saw the film’s co-star Harry Styles. I had never heard of, or seen, his boy band One Direction, because, you know, I’m a grown man and not a teenage girl. But then while watching Sesame Street with my young son I saw this group of absurd pretty boys singing some song about the letter “U”. I had no clue who these people were or the tune they were using, but I immediately noticed this one guy who jumped off the screen. Upon further investigation I learned it was Harry Styles. As silly as this sounds, Styles’ Sesame Street performance impressed the hell out of me because it oozed with an effortless charisma and lack of self-consciousness that you just can’t teach. In addition, he seemed to innately understand how to fill a screen, another skill not easy for people to pick up.

I then saw Styles in Christopher Nolan’s magnificent movie Dunkirk, where he played a desperate British soldier trying to survive and escape France as the Germans closed in on Dunkirk. Styles’ role was pretty minimal in the movie, but once again I was impressed by him.

The next time I saw Styles was in a post-credit scene for the truly unwatchable Marvel monstrosity Eternals. I have no idea what Styles was doing in that moronic scene, and frankly, it looked like he had no clue either.

And now Styles, who is currently dating Olivia Wilde to much fanfare, has two movies out. The first is Don’t Worry Darling and the second is My Policeman, a film I intend to see very shortly.

As much as I had high hopes for Styles’ acting career, I see them fading very, very fast as the bloom is definitely off the Harry Styles acting rose. He’s truly, abysmally awful in Don’t Worry Darling. I’m rooting for this guy to be good and goddamn he is just one cringe after another in this movie. There are scenes where his amateur acting status is laid so bare as to be uncomfortable. And his girlfriend/director Olivia Wilde does him no favors as it seems he wasn’t “directed” at all but rather left to his own rather limited devices.

That said, I did find it somewhat amusing seeing pretty boy pop star Harry Styles with glasses, bad skin and greasy hair in one of the movie’s flashback/dream sequences.

The bottom line regarding Don’t Worry Darling is that the various controversies surrounding the film have nothing to do with how bad it is. To be clear, I don’t care who Olivia Wilde is sleeping with, unless of course she wants to sleep with me, something I’d be more than happy to accommodate.

What I want from Olivia Wilde is not juicy gossip but a good movie, something she seems incapable of delivering. On Don’t Worry Darling Wilde’s bloated ambition vastly exceeded her minimal talent, and the end result is a movie that is so poorly put together that it’s actually embarrassing.

My hope for Wilde’s next film, and she’ll definitely get another one, is that she reins in her inflated ego, loses the infatuation with trite cultural politics and instead focuses on the fundamentals of storytelling and the art of cinema. A man can dream.

©2022

Causeway: A Review - New Apple TV movie another wrong turn in Jennifer Lawrence's once-stellar career

****THIS REVIEW CONTAINS MINOR SPOILERS!! THIS IS NOT A SPOILER FREE REVIEW…BUT IT DOESN’T MATTER BECAUSE THIS MOVIE IS AWFUL AND YOU SHOULD NEVER WATCH IT!!****

My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. Abysmally amateurish movie that is entirely and utterly forgettable in every single way.

I’m old enough to remember when Jennifer Lawrence was a solid and sometimes spectacular actress who also happened to be the most captivating and compelling movie star in Hollywood.

In 2010, at the tender young age of 20, she had proven her acting bona fides by giving an absolutely scintillating, Oscar-nominated performance in the uncompromising arthouse gem Winter’s Bone.

She then made some extremely savvy career moves. First, she joined an existing popular film franchise, X-Men, as Mystique, and then originated a franchise as Katniss Evergreen in The Hunger Games. These moves, which made not only Lawrence but a lot of other people a lot of money, solidified her standing in the industry and with younger audiences, and set her up to consistently have high profile work with a built-in fan-base for the foreseeable future. Very smart.

She also made a savvy move to continue to reinforce her status in terms of prestige by following up her artistic success in Winter’s Bone by teaming with Hollywood auteur and Oscar darling David O. Russell for three films. The result of this collaboration was a Best Actress Oscar for Silver Linings Playbook (2012), which she won at 22 years old, followed by a Best Supporting Actress nomination for American Hustle (2013). Pretty impressive.

Back then Lawrence was a charming presence and a luminous beauty, with impressive acting chops and artistic bravado. She was also sexy yet approachable because she was goofy, grounded and genuine. She was the woman other women wanted to be and the woman guys didn’t just want to have sex with but hang out with.

But then things started, slowly but surely, to fall apart.

The Hunger Games franchise lost steam after the first two movies as budgets expanded and box office diminished. The final two movies of the four-film franchise continued to make money, but they failed to capture the cultural imagination of the earlier films.

The collaboration with Russell hit a snag as well with the 2015’s Joy, which saw Lawrence miscast and resulted in the movie being a misfire. Lawrence and Russell have not worked together since.

The X-Men franchise found new life with Lawrence in the cast for her first two movies, X-Men: First Class (2011) and Days of Future Past (2014), but then immolated with the abominable X-Men: Apocalypse  (2016) and the catastrophic to the point of ending the franchise, Dark Phoenix (2019).

Between Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix another auteur tried to use Lawrence to elevate an arthouse film. That auteur was Darren Aronofsky and the movie was Mother! (2017), a mindbogglingly ambitious cinematic enterprise that ended up being an epic disaster despite Lawrence’s noble efforts in it.

She also tried to start another franchise with Red Sparrow (2018), a spy thriller about a Russian woman trained in the art of sex and seduction. The movie garnered some headlines because Lawrence was naked in it, but unfortunately her nudity was the only good thing to be found in this dreadful dud.

This stretch of bad movies resulted in Lawrence stepping back from the industry for a bit. In 2019 she got married and in 2022 she gave birth to her first child.

This brief pause in her career could have been a reset, and Lawrence could’ve come back and reclaimed her title as the biggest star, or the best actress, or both. But that’s not what happened.

In 2021 she co-starred in Adam McKay’s apocalypse comedy Don’t Look Up. What was remarkable about Don’t Look Up is that it’s easy to forget that Jennifer Lawrence is in it. She isn’t bad in it, she just isn’t very memorable, which is not something you’d ever expect to say about Jennifer Lawrence.

The film is remembered, if it’s remembered at all, as a Leonardo DiCaprio movie first, and an Adam McKay movie second. Lawrence never comes into the equation.

Which brings us to Causeway, Jennifer Lawrence’s new film which is streaming on Apple TV +.

The movie is almost instantaneously forgettable for a variety of reasons, such as the meandering script and the amateurish direction. But what makes Causeway so alarmingly bland is that Jennifer Lawrence seems utterly lifeless and charisma-free in every scene she inhabits.

Yes, her character, Lynsey – who was wounded in Afghanistan and is now back home in New Orleans and trying to get back to Afghanistan, isn’t supposed to be some dynamic presence, but what is striking about Lawrence ‘s performance is that she is so dead behind her eyes. There is no internal life, no fire in her eyes, or belly or anywhere else. It was unimaginable to me that I would ever feel like Jennifer Lawrence was just going through the motions of a role, but here we are.

This dead-eyed performance is accentuated by the moribund script which gives Lynsey essentially zero character arc, but still, Lawrence used to be the type of actress that could fill this character with something…extraordinary. And now she’s unable to bring the most minimal bit of life to her.  

A great actress would’ve created something out of the nothing that is Lynsey. A movie star would have brought a boatload of charisma and magnetism to the Lynsey and made audiences root for her. As much as it pains me to say, Lawrence is no longer a great actress or a movie star, as she is incapable of doing either.

Another actor considered top-notch by some people in the know is Brian Tyree Henry, who plays James in Causeway, a local mechanic who fixes Lynsey’s truck and strikes up a friendship with her.

I’ve never thought Henry was as great as everybody else says he is…and his trite work in Causeway reinforces my skepticism.

To be fair to Lawrence and Henry, the acting is the least of the problems of Causeway.

The script is atrocious as the story goes nowhere, the characters have no arc and the drama is non-existent.

The biggest problem of all though is director Lila Neugebauer. Neugebauer is a theatre director and this is her first feature film…and it shows. The most rudimentary aspects of moviemaking go awry in Causeway. For example, a freshman film student knows to never put somebody smack dab in the center of the frame and yet this happens so consistently in Causeway as to be maddening.

In another scene, Henry’s James reveals an important piece of information about his body, that he has a prosthetic leg. In the scene James tells Lynsey about his leg and then lifts his pant leg up and shows it to her…but the director never shows  this to the audience either in the wide shot or in a close-up. It’s as if they couldn’t afford to just get a prosthetic leg and shoot it in a cutaway or something. What makes this all the more bizarre is that later in the film there’s an entire sequence showing that James has no leg. This is just the most rank amateur filmmaking possible.

In another scene, Lynsey visits her brother in prison and we find out her brother is deaf. Of course he’s deaf because everyone in this movie has to be either handicapped, gay, or gay and handicapped. Anyway, Lynsey and her brother have a long and seemingly important conversation through sign language at the prison, but for some inexplicable reason halfway through the scene the sub-titles disappear. I assume this is some artistic choice on the part of Neugebauer, and it’s a laughably bad one.

The bottom-line regarding Causeway is that it’s not just a dull, languid, listless misfire of a movie, it’s that it feels like the end of the line for Jennifer Lawrence being a relevant actress and movie star.

Lawrence could’ve gotten away with playing this type of role back when she was the life of the Hollywood party in 2013 or 2014. She could’ve been Lynsey and brought her vivacity and vibrant inner life to the work and screen and it would’ve been accepted by the audience and notable to critics, with the caveat that a different, much better, director were at the helm.

But now, with Lawrence having lost her movie star mojo and also apparently her acting chops, this role and this movie come across as nothing but an artistically anemic, dramatically lethargic, narratively meandering exercise of which there is no meaning or purpose.

I personally think the world is better when Jennifer Lawrence is a relevant movie star and actress, and I sincerely hope that happens again someday. But if I’m being honest, after watching Causeway and ruminating on the downward trend of her movies over the last decade, I’m not optimistic.

©2022

All Quiet on the Western Front (2022): A Review and Commentary

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

My Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. A fantastic film that tells a story that is as relevant today as it’s ever been.

It is morbidly ironic that as German director Edward Berger’s bleak and beautiful new remake of the classic World War I film All Quiet on the Western Front begins streaming on Netflix, that all is most definitely not quiet on Europe’s Eastern front.

It’s not insignificant that the movie, a remake of the 1930 Academy Award Best Picture winner based on the 1929 novel of the same name, which recounts the tale of a group of young German men intoxicated by the fantasy of fighting in World War I who are then eviscerated by the brutal reality of it, should premiere while a vicious war rages on Europe’s Eastern front between Ukraine and Russia.

The lesson of the book and all film iterations of All Quiet of the Western Front is that war is a fruitless, savage endeavor that, like an insatiable, gruesome beast, devours men’s bodies as it mangles their spirits and souls.

Of course, we know all of this to be true about war, and yet, we in the West, in the U.S. in particular, are such thoroughly disinformed, misinformed and propagandized Russo-phobic war fetishists and superhero fantasists that we convulse with glee at the notion of escalating the war in Ukraine – a war which we started via the U.S. backed Maidan coup and ensuing slaughter of ethnic Russians in the Donbas, up to and including calling for more muscular American military intervention and even the use of nuclear weapons.

This is all madness…but as All Quiet on the Western Front teaches us, all war is madness, and some form of extreme psychosis is required to participate in it. Berger’s two-and-a-half-hour film effectively captures this madness, from the young men’s giddy rush to enlist at all costs to their grim death sprint out of the open air coffin trenches and across the hell of no man’s land.

The movie is exquisitely and exceptionally photographed, and that cinematic beauty juxtaposed against the inhuman brutality of the behavior captured in the frame is jarring and deeply unnerving.

Berger also uses a technique which I almost always find off-putting but which works here, which is using modern music in a period piece. The music is a grinding, industrial guitar that accompanies the young German men as they take their first few steps out of the fantasy of war and into the reality of it. This music is used sparingly throughout, but it is remarkably effective in conveying the sense of this war, as is true of all wars, as being a mindless meat grinder, industrial in its level of dehumanization and carnage.

The opening of the film, of which I will refrain from revealing the specifics, is simple yet extraordinary in transmitting this same sensation of war as mass murder incorporated, and it sets the stage for the rest of the film to expound upon that thesis.

The battle scenes in All Quiet on the Western Front are realistic, disturbing and exceedingly well-executed. Director Berger and his cinematographer James Friend are able to maintain audience orientation while never sacrificing artistic vision. The battles look, and therefore feel, grounded, gritty and gruesome.

Cinematographer Friend masterfully lights and composes his frame not only in the battle scenes but in the quieter moments. There are shots of landscapes, trees and the sky in this film that would look right at home in a Malick movie or framed in a museum.

The acting, particularly Felix Kammerer as the lead Paul Baumer and Albrecht Schuch as Kat, are terrific as both men bring quiet intensity and sensitivity to their roles. Kammerer’s mastery of the thousand-yard stare and Schuch’s innate humanity elevate their performances and the movie.

The rest of the cast are subtle and superb as well, bringing life to what in lesser hands would be well-worn war movie stereotypes.

The film is not perfect though, as the narrative break aways to follow the ceasefire negotiations among the German contingent of bureaucrats, headed by the great Daniel Bruhl as Matthias Erzberger, feel like they should be in a different movie. These sections are interesting, but they break the spell of the film by removing the viewer from the myopic madness in the muck and mire of the front lines. I understand the desire to want to take a glimpse of things from 10,000 feet so to speak, but in this case, it works against the film’s better interests and drama.

That said, the rest of the movie is glorious as it vibrates with a sort of dramatic Malickian chaos mixed with existential inevitability that is captivating, compelling, exhausting and unnerving.

This movie should be mandatory viewing for Americans, the majority of whom are vociferous cheerleaders for the current war in Ukraine. These American idiots with Ukrainian flags in their Twitter bios are no different that the young German men at the center of All Quiet on the Western Front eager to prove their worth and courage, except, of course, that those Germans didn’t just pose and preen about war on social media, they actually went and fought and died in it.

The neo-con, armchair tough guys who’ve gotten us into every war of my lifetime, of which we’ve won none, from Vietnam to Afghanistan to Iraq and now Ukraine, are like the bloated and bloviating military bureaucrats in All Quiet on the Western Front as they’re eager for other men to pay dearly for the exorbitant faux-nationalist checks that their flag-waving egos were so excited to write. The neo-cons con is to destroy their host nation from within as they accuse dissenters from the self-destruction of being traitors (or in the case of Ukraine - Putin shills and apologists) . These nefarious neo-cons always demand other, more masculine, working class men sacrifice their bodies, minds and souls for the sake of the neo-con’s fragile eggshell egos and deep-seated genital insecurities.

If you follow media narratives throughout history, this war in Ukraine has all the markings of America’s typical modern war psyops/propaganda playbook. There’s scaremongering using the delusional domino theory about some expansionist enemy/ideology, be it communism (Vietnam), Islamism (Afghanistan/Iraq) or Putinism (Russia), that will conquer the earth if the U.S. don’t role play as Churchill to some new Hitler. And there’s always a new Hitler, an alleged madman who is a history breaking tyrant that is simultaneously an evil genius and an incorrigible, bloodthirsty idiot. Today it’s the media-crafted Bond villain Putin. Before him it was the madman Saddam, or the madman Qadaffi, or the madman Bin Laden, or the madman Ho Chi Minh and on and on and on.

Will watching All Quiet on the Western Front wake up American morons from the establishment media’s Russo-phobic propaganda spell and remove from the memory hole the U.S.’s and Ukraine’s role in starting and enflaming this war? No, probably not. Nor will it disabuse Americans of the notion that they are the good guys and that this is a good war, as there are no good wars and there are no good guys fighting in them.

All Quiet on the Western Front is a fantastic movie, but it’s not a miracle worker and it would take a miracle for America and the rest of the West to wake up from their propaganda-fueled dream of the war in Ukraine as history-making hero machine and to see it for what it really is, a senseless, money-making meat grinder, which contains within it the possibility of a worldwide war of unimaginable carnage.

All Quiet on the Western Front is Germany’s submission for the Academy Award for Best International Feature. It most definitely deserves to be nominated, and in my mind is thus far the number one contender for the award.

You should watch All Quiet on the Western Front because it’s an excellent film, and also because it contains lessons that we in the West should already know but apparently need to learn over again, and fast…namely, that war is hell and only devils want it.

©2022

Barbarian: A Review

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

My Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. A flawed but smart and original horror movie that keeps you on your toes. If you like horror, you’ll love this.

I must confess that I don’t consider myself to be much of a horror movie afficionado. That’s not to say that I dislike horror movies, just that a horror movie has to be very good movie for me to enjoy it. I know people who just adore the genre and watch every horror movie and love it just because it’s a horror movie, but that’s not me.

My taste in horror is pretty specific, I love supernatural horror movies like The Shining, The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby, and I also like classic horror films. For example, this year on the week of Halloween I watched George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead as well as the Universal Monster Movie classics Frankenstein, Dracula, The Wolf Man and The Creature from the Black Lagoon, and thoroughly enjoyed them all for their originality, craftsmanship and artistry.

In contrast, I didn’t watch the most recent and allegedly last movie in the seemingly endless Halloween franchise, Halloween Ends. I loved the original Halloween (and most John Carpenter films) but I just don’t see the need to ever watch another Halloween movie.

In the wake of Halloween, the holiday not the movie, I did sit down and watch a new horror movie that has generated some buzz recently and which is now streaming on HBO Max. That movie is Barbarian, which is written and directed by Zach Cregger, and stars Georgina Campbell, Bill Skarsgaard and Justin Long.

Barbarian was released in theatres in September and despite having the most minimal of marketing budgets, it generated an impressive box office of $43.5 million against a $4.5 million budget.

I knew nothing about Barbarian prior to seeing it and the HBO description simply says that it tells the story of a woman who gets stuck sharing an AirBnB with a strange guy. Red flags immediately went up for me when I read that description as I assumed the movie was going to be just another flaccid #MeToo-men-are-monsters movie. As a devout kidnapping enthusiast who over the years has kept a multitude of women captive in my incredibly creepy basement, the last thing I want to watch is another scolding “men are awful” movie, thank you very much.

Fortunately, Barbarian masterfully plays with that expectation, and while it most certainly is a meta-textual meditation on #MeToo and the menace of men, which at times gets a bit too heavy-handed, it’s also a sophisticated sub-textual criticism and fascinating deconstruction of the #MeToo archetype.

I will not even begin to delve into the plot of Barbarian in order to avoid any semblance of spoilers, but will only say that, thankfully, the movie is so deftly directed and written by Zach Cregger that it’s never what you expect it to be. In fact, the film uses viewer’s preconceived notions, assumptions and cultural conditioning against them to always keep them off-balance. The film keeps its audience on its toes and is always one step ahead.

The film is structured in three acts with each successive act luring viewers deeper and deeper into the disorienting maze that is Barbarian.

The first act, starring Campbell and Skarsgaard, is so well-done as to be astonishing. Cregger plants various notions into the audience’s mind as to what type of film this is going to be…a Detroit-based Amityville Horror? A mixed-race The Sixth Sense or a mixed gender Single White Female? A straight-forward rip-off of Saw? Or is it an homage to all of the above and more?

Just when you think you know what’s going on in Barbarian, Cregger nudges you in a different direction and leads you by your nose down into a very dark and disorienting path.

Act two features the criminally under-appreciated Justin Long in a fantastically Long-ian role that spotlights his likeability and immense talent. Once again, I will not get into specifics of plot, but the jump from act one to act two is so jarring as to be cinematically glorious.

I admit that act three is the weakest of the three, and I found it to be considerably less engaging, intelligent and challenging, but, once again without giving anything away, I think that has to do with the type of horror movie that act three is paying homage to…which is my least favorite type of horror.

The thing I enjoyed the most about Barbarian is that while it’s certainly a #MeToo movie, it never panders and or signals its socio-political virtue too much. It tackles that complex topic with a nuance and complexity that is shocking for a low budget horror film.

Also tantalizing is how Cregger turns the film into a profound statement not just on the predatory nature of men but also on the apocalyptic results of Reaganism on America and the dehumanizing nature of poverty.

While there were certainly some flaws in Zach Cregger’s directing, most notably in a scene shot in dim light that fumbles perspective (to avoid spoilers I won’t say anything more than that) and act three’s many mis-steps, he’s obviously a filmmaker with some interesting ideas. One can only hope that Barbarian is a stepping stone for Cregger to make even better things.

The bottom-line regarding Barbarian is that if you are a horror afficionado you’ll love this movie as it operates from a deeply well-informed position in the genre. If you are, like me, a rather fair-weather horror fan, or are less-inclined to enjoy the genre, Barbarian is good enough to be worthwhile even though it sort of loses its way in act three.

The reality is that 2022 has thus far been an utterly abysmal year for cinema, so Barbarian, despite its glaring act three flaws, stands out because it’s a well-crafted, original piece of work, and that is reason enough for me to recommend it.  

©2022

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 81 - Barbarian

On this episode, Barry and I head to Detroit to confront our darkest fears as we talk all things Barbarian, the sneaky-good horror hit currently streaming on HBO Max. Topics discussed include the joy of Justin Long, the misery of the Motor City, and why exactly does Barry feel so at home in creepy basements?

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 81 - Barbarian

Thanks for listening!

©2022

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 80 - Black Adam

On this episode, Barry and I head to Kahndaq to go toe-to-toe with Black Adam, the new DC superhero movie starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. Questions debated include to Rock or not to Rock? Will aliens murder us to put us out of our cinematic misery? And who ya got...The Rock or John Cena?

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 80 - Black Adam

Thanks for listening!

©2022

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 79 - The Greatest Beer Run Ever

On this episode, Barry and I grab our magical dufflebag filled with a never-ending yet mysteriously weightless supply of beer and head into a war zone to discuss The Greatest Beer Run Ever, the new Peter Farrelly movie currently streaming on Apple TV. Topics discussed include awful acting, bad movies about great stories, and the curse of endless and empty streaming content.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 79 - The Greatest Beer Run Ever

Thanks for listening!

©2022

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 78 - Blonde

On this episode, Barry and I let the wind blow up our dresses as we discuss the bleak Marylin Monroe bio-pic Blonde, directed by Andrew Dominik and starring Ana de Armas. Topics discussed include the mystery of Marilyn's Cuban accent and shifting aspect ratios, Netflix's curious foray into the land of NC-17, and the incandescence of the one and only Marilyn Monroe.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 78 - Blonde

Thanks for listening!

©2022

Werewolf by Night: A TV Review

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

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT/SEE IT. It’s not great. It’s not terrible. It just is.

I love Halloween. Due to my being a rather weird, Irish-Catholic, existentially-obsessed, netherwordly-adjacent, ethereal Jungian shadow-magnet-at-heart, it has always been my favorite holiday. The problem with Halloween though is the same problem with many horror movies or Halloween-themed series or shows…they’re much better in theory than in practice.

As much as I love Halloween it was always a letdown as a kid because no matter how demonically cool MY costume, growing up in the Northeast, my parents always forced me to wear a coat over it because it was cold and parents always ruin everything fun. Such is life.

That said, every Halloween I still get fired up and filled with hope for some profoundly spooky connection…either in the real world or the less apparent one.

Which brings us to Werewolf by Night, which is the first “Marvel Studios Special Presentation” currently streaming on Disney Plus. The hour-long Halloween special stars Gael Garcia Bernal and is written by Heather Quinn and directed by Michael Giacchino.

The show is based upon the comic of the same name and tells the tale of a group of monster hunters who, in the wake of the death of master monster hunter Ulysses Bloodstone, compete to kill a monster and become possessor of the powerful talisman the Bloodstone.

There are elements of Werewolf by Night which I really liked. For example, it’s very clever that the special is filmed in black and white and consciously recreates the aesthetic of the Universal Monster Movies from the 1930’s, 40’s and 50’s, like Dracula, Frankenstein, The Wolf Man and Creature from the Black Lagoon. The Universal Monster Movies are classics and I love them even if they are not quite as horrifying to modern eyes as they were back in the day, so I appreciated the aesthetic choice.

I also thought the casting of Gael Garcia Bernal, a terrific actor and pleasing screen presence, as the lead Jack Russell, was a wise decision, as was casting the always excellent Harriet Samson Harris, who nearly steals the show as the supporting character, Verussa Bloodstone.

I saw Harris on-stage in Chicago nearly twenty-five years ago in The Man Who Came to Dinner. Her performance was sublime but the play was inferior…such is life in the theatre. Here as Verussa Bloodstone she is gloriously weird and unnerving as a grieving widow and conniving step-mother.

And finally, there’s some top-notch CGI on display in the special in the form of the monster Man-Thing, a pleasant change from Marvel’s recent run of dismal special effects in both tv and film projects.

That said, the special also has some issues.

For instance, the Universal Monster Movie aesthetic is great but it’s undermined by the curious decision to insert somewhat graphic violence and explicit language – two things which were anathema back in the Universal heyday. To be clear, I’m definitely not someone fucking asshole opposed to violence and bad language in a tv show or movie! But the insertion of both things into Werewolf by Night is at cross-purposes with the throw-back atmospherics and ultimately ends up being a distraction and mood breaker.

Another issue is, as much as I agreed with Gael Garcia Bernal as the lead, the problem with Werewolf by Night is that it under-uses him, and instead focuses more of its attention and effort upon Laura Donnelly as Elsa Bloodstone. Donnelly is a less-than-compelling actress and Elsa a less-than-compelling character (at least in this special). Donnelly is like an acting vampire as every second she is on-screen she drains the life out of the show.

Thirdly, as good as the Man-Thing CGI is, the werewolf make-up/CGI is dreadful. If you’re going to update the Universal Monster Movies for the modern age, it’s the make-up CGI that has to do it, not inserting gratuitous violence and salty language.

The werewolf metamorphosis scene (of which I’ll give no relevant information regarding the characters involved so as to avoid spoilers) is good…until it isn’t. It starts off with the human to beast transition taking place in shadow on a wall behind a character as they watch in horror as it occurs in front of them. This works because its old-fashioned movie making where through camera placement and lighting, we see the transformation in shadow and the reaction to it in light. But then the camera slowly moves in for a close up of the reacting character’s face, and in so doing obscures the werewolf shadow until it is completely diminished. This is such directorial malpractice as to be criminal. The shot , if it moves at all, should’ve moved slightly in and down, putting the reacting face at the bottom of the screen and the werewolf shadow looming over it at the top, so viewers can see both simultaneously until the scene’s conclusion.

After that botched metamorphosis sequence, the werewolf comes into clear view and the make-up/CGI is so bad as to be laughable. This isn’t Teen Wolf level bad, this is I Was a Teenage Werewolf level bad.

As much as I like the Universal Monster Movies and admire the attempt to pay homage to them, I found director Michael Giacchino and the makers of this special lacked the skill and craft of their monster movie forefathers. They also certainly never earned the Wizard of Oz nod they gave themselves at the end of the special, which felt less like homage than blatant disrespect fueled by mis-placed ego indulgence.

I’ve not read the Werewolf by Night comics, so I have nothing invested in the success or failure of this Marvel special, but I couldn’t help feeling that it could have and should have been considerably better.

Ultimately, Werewolf by Night isn’t great and it isn’t terrible, it just is. And what it is - is an atmospheric, visually limited, narratively stunted, dramatically benign, rather slight, somewhat disappointing production devoid of horror.

I guess I’ll have to make a pilgrimage back to the original Universal Monster Movies again this Halloween to get my horror fix.

©2022

Blonde: A Review

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

My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. An ambitious mess of an arthouse movie that misfires on all cylinders.

If you’ve always wanted to see an artistically decadent, narratively and dramatically impotent, nearly three-hour-long slog that recounts the endless abuse Marilyn Monroe endured during her tumultuous life, starring an actress with an absurdly pronounced Cuban accent playing the American icon…have I got the movie for you!

Blonde, the new NC-17 rated Netflix film based on the novel of the same name by Joyce Carol Oates, which stars Ana de Armas and is directed by Andrew Dominik, is a most puzzling movie.

The film, like the novel upon which it is based, takes dramatic license with the facts of Monroe’s tragic and turbulent life, and is a fictional biography despite chronicling some true events.

The only way I can make sense of this baffling film is to look at it not as a bio-pic, but as a horror movie with Monroe reduced to being the pretty victim trying to survive the devil stalking her. The film does nothing but portray Marilyn as she endures the continuous nightmare of her existence. There’s no reprieve for Marilyn, or the audience, as she drags the heavy cross of her exploitable beauty on the death march to the New Golgotha known as Hollywood. There’s also no growth or salvation for Marilyn…or the audience…just the repetitious banging of the drum of despair.

On this journey Marilyn is subjected to a cavalcade of either vicious, or cruel, or viciously cruel men, all of whom are icons or icon adjacent, who use and abuse her like Roman centurions at a crucifixion, the only difference being the centurions assigned to torture Jesus knew not what they did, while Marilyn’s abusers know exactly what they were doing.

My thesis that this is a horror film, which to be clear - still doesn’t make it a good film, requires the audience to understand and accept the fact that Hollywood is a death cult, fame is an evil demon, and that Monroe’s beauty and powerful sexual energy were not blessings but curses inflicted upon her.

In real life, Marilyn Monroe was captured by an energy and archetype that absolutely devoured her. Like two other of her contemporaries, Elvis and Marlon Brando, who became avatars for explosive sexual energy during the sexually repressed 1950’s, Marilyn was ultimately destroyed under the weight of her archetypal burden. Think of it as Dionysus’s revenge.

Unfortunately, director Andrew Dominik is incapable of exploring his subject matter with any such depth, and instead simply turns Blonde into abuse porn, and in so doing turns other American icons, like JFK and Joe DiMaggio, into vacuous props meant to convey the obvious point about the nefariousness of the American patriarchy.

Dominik is a visual stylist, of that there is no doubt, and I genuinely enjoyed his film The Assassination of the Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, but on Blonde, Dominik is all style and no substance.

Dominik and cinematographer Chayse Irvin use a plethora of interesting stylistic choices, like going from black and white to color and back again, and changing aspect ratios, but these choices lack coherence and dramatic intent.

As I pondered the film and Dominik’s distinct visual choices, I wondered if he was attempting to make a larger statement about the disposable nature of Monroe’s life and career, something along the lines of things being ‘pretty but meaning-less’. Or maybe Dominik was trying to make a movie about the exploitation of Marilyn Monroe by actually exploiting the image of Marilyn Monroe, and the actress playing her. Those potential intentions are astonishingly vapid, but Blonde is so bad I’m left grasping at straws to decipher it.  

Even the film’s politics are incomprehensible and at cross-purposes as the movie is both making a statement against the patriarchy but then also presenting a rabidly pro-life argument in regards to abortion. And the abortion stuff is not some throw away scene, it’s a recurring theme and one that is actually the most disturbing and most effective part of the film, but it will no doubt infuriate the movie’s feminist target audience.

Blonde has gotten quite a bit of attention because it’s the first Netflix film to be rated NC-17. I’m sure that rating will attract a few perverts hoping to see my two favorite things, nudity and gratuitous sex, but I found the NC-17 rating to be, pardon the pun, overblown. While the movie does feature a bevy of boobs, all of which belong to Ana de Armas, which are both real and spectacular, the sex is extraordinarily subdued and the nudity confined to the waist up. And while there is some adult subject matter dramatized, it’s nothing that an R rating wouldn’t comfortably cover.

Speaking of Ana de Armas, she is undoubtedly a beauty, but she is no Marilyn Monroe. De Armas is not well cast as she doesn’t particularly look like Marilyn and she most definitely doesn’t sound like her. De Armas’ Cuban accent, which manifests in the cadence of her speech and in pronunciation of certain letters and words, is egregiously incessant and a constant distraction. De Armas playing Marilyn Monroe is like having Desi Arnaz play JFK, or Matthew McConaughey play Fidel Castro.

To her credit though, de Armas does give her all in the very demanding role, but that said she is still terribly miscast.

There are really no other performances of note in the film. Bobby Cannavale plays Joe DiMaggio and Adrien Brody plays Arthur Miller and there’s not anything of interest there. Julianne Nicholson plays Marilyn’s crazy mom and she does crazy mom things.

Blonde felt to me like an arthouse bio-pic gone wrong. It’s somewhat reminiscent of Jackie(2016), which is a much better film, and Spencer(2021), which is not as bad as Blonde but still isn’t a good film (both are by director Pablo Larrain). I also thought of David Lynch’s masterpiece Mulholland Drive, which does a substantially better job at depicting the corrosive and corrupt nature of Hollywood on women and the devil’s bargain that is fame.

Ultimately, Blonde is, unlike Marilyn Monroe, entirely forgettable. If I’m being generous, I’d call it an ambitious failure of a film. If I’m being blunt, I’d call it a rancid shit sandwich. Either way, Blonde is not something you should ever trouble yourself to watch even though it’s ‘free’ on Netflix. The time spent watching this misfire of a movie could be much better spent literally doing anything else…like seeing Marilyn Monroe’s performance in a small, breakout role in The Asphalt Jungle. When you see her on-screen for the first time you instantly get why Marilyn became the most famous woman of the 20th century.

©2022

Samaritan: A Review

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

My Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. An amateurish, derivative piece of superhero drivel.

Samaritan, starring once-upon-a-time Hollywood mega-star Sylvester Stallone, is a new superhero movie now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

The film, based on the Bragi F. Schut graphic novel of the same name, is written by Schut, directed by Julius Avery, and produced by Sly Stallone himself, and tells the story of Samaritan, a superhero who died decades ago in a face off against his supervillain twin brother Nemesis…or did he? Thirteen-year-old Sam (Javon Walton) thinks Samaritan is alive and well and living as his neighbor in a dilapidated apartment building in a rough and tumble section of Granite City. Joe Smith (Stallone) is the shredded old-man who works as a garbage man that Sam thinks is the superhero in hiding.

Sam and Samaritan’s hometown, Granite City, is on the brink of collapse and is populated by a group of Nemesis worshipers who want to see the world burn. These Nemesis lovers are led by Cyrus (Pilou Asbeak), who is sort of a poor man’s Bane. Sam, trying to help his single-mother pay the rent, gets mixed up with some bad seed Nemesis people and Joe Smith comes to his rescue and the story goes from there.

I’ve not read the Samaritan graphic novel, but its premise sounds intriguing and this film version certainly has similar potential. Samaritan is trying to be an original, grounded, alternative superhero movie, in the same vein as M. Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakable. But I know Unbreakable, and due to dreadfully amateurish direction and abysmal acting, Samaritan is no Unbreakable, in fact, it’s absolute garbage.

Director Julius Avery is an unquestionable hack behind the camera. Avery is entirely incapable of eliciting even remotely competent performances from his cast, with the lone exception being the magnetic Pilou Asbaek.

Javon Walton is ostensibly the lead and is an egregiously grating screen presence. Apparently, Walton is the next big thing among young actors, but his work in Samaritan is atrocious.

Speaking of atrocious, Sly Stallone is nearly unwatchable in the film.  Yes, Sly still has his absurdly ridiculous perfect body and surgically enhanced face to match, but he once again resurrects his usual sad-eyed, sullen-faced character of which he is so associated, without the least bit of aplomb. As evidenced by his decades long success playing Rocky and Rambo, you’d think Stallone could do tough-guy sad-sackery in his sleep, but Samaritan literally proves that thesis wrong as its just Sly sleep walking.

Stallone isn’t exactly Olivier, but he has always had his own distinct brand of charisma, but in Samaritan his dead-eyed performance is so awful as to be alarming. For example, Stallone’s monotone dialogue lacks all semblance of life as well as any natural rhythm. This isn’t Rocky mumbling some brain-damaged speech, in Samaritan Stallone sounds like a non-native English speaker reciting lines in a second or third language for the very first time. It’s like he’s an alien who has never heard people talk before. Sly is so appallingly bad in some scenes as to be astonishing.

Stallone was the producer on the film, so it’s not like he’s just playing the role for a quick buck, he’s invested in the movie, which is why his abominable performance is all the more concerning.

Stallone is so bad that one can’t help but blame not just Stallone but director Avery, who didn’t yell “Cut! Let’s do it again!” Maybe Avery felt he couldn’t actually direct his boss, who knows? Or maybe he just doesn’t know how to direct.

Another strike against director Avery is his work with cinematographer David Ungaro. There are some scenes in this movie that are so poorly filmed as to be ridiculous. For instance, there’s a rooftop confrontation in the movie where the lighting is so unprofessional that it would be laughed out of a student film.

As for the writing, the plot, its twists, and the rest of it, everything is second or third rate at best, including the production design which somehow makes the $50 million budget look like less than a million.

Samaritan is an MGM film and came over to Amazon when the Bezos behemoth bought the movie studio for $8.45 billion. Another MGM property which came to Amazon in that buy is the Rocky franchise, which propelled Sly Stallone to mega-stardom when it first hit big screens back in 1976.

My advice to anyone contemplating watching Samaritan is to do yourself a favor and skip this cheap, derivative piece of inanity, and just watch any of the Rocky movies, even the awful ones, instead. You’ll still see inanity aplenty in the Rocky movies, but at least you’ll also get to see Sly Stallone being a better version of Sly Stallone…one with life in his eyes.

©2022

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota - Episode 77: Prey

On this episode, Barry and I don our war paint and go toe-to-toe with Prey, the newest installment in the Predator franchise now streaming on Hulu. Topics discussed include the benefit of low expectations, the disadvantage of dismal directing, and the potential future of all things Predator.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota - Episode 77: Prey

Thanks for listening!

©2022

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota - Episode 76: Elvis

On this episode, Barry and I check into the Heartbreak Hotel and chat about the Baz Luhrmann film Elvis, starring Tom Hanks. Topics discussed include the pitfalls of biopics, Luhrmann's aggressive cinematic style, and the staggering magnetism and undeniable power of the real Elvis.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota - Episode 76: Elvis

Thanks for listening!

©2022

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota - Episode 74: The Rings of Power

On this episode, Barry and I get our hairy Hobbit feet moving and head to Middle-Earth to talk about the first two episodes of the new Amazon series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Questions discussed in this episode include, is this what a billion dollars buys you? Why is the acting so bad? And, why is this adaptation of Tolkien so terrible so far?

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota - Episode 74: The Rings of Power

Thanks for listening!

©2022

The Rehearsal (HBO Max): TV Review

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

My Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. Batshit, bizarre and brilliant.

“ONE TIME A THING OCCURRED TO ME, WHAT’S REAL AND WHAT’S FOR SALE?” – Vasoline by Stone Temple Pilots

It is very difficult to describe The Rehearsal, a new six-episode series written, directed and starring Nathan Fielder, now streaming on HBO Max.

At first glance, the series is a ‘reality tv’ show about Fielder helping regular people navigate their anxiety by directing elaborate rehearsals of difficult situations they will encounter in the future.

For example, in episode one Fielder assists a man who has been lying to a friend about his level of education and wants to come clean but is worried about how the friend will react. This is pretty standard reality tv stuff…nothing to see here. Except Fielder goes to extraordinary lengths to recreate the setting and the individuals involved in the encounter. He builds an exact replica of the bar where the conversation will take place, and hires actors to play everyone involved except for the man who wants to confess, and then rehearses the hell out of it trying to build a roadmap to follow for any contingency that may arise.

Episode one is amusing for how ridiculous Fielder is in his quest for “authenticity” regarding setting and cast…but it’s child’s play compared to what comes in episodes 2-6. That’s where the show turns the lunacy up to eleven and the absurdity up to infinity.

The first episode actually has almost nothing to do with the rest of the series. I won’t spoil anything vital from episodes 2-6 only because it simply has to be seen to be believed…and even seeing isn’t believing as I assume all of it is as phony as a smile on a two-dollar whore. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t fascinating and insightful.

I’ve never seen any of Nathan Fielder’s earlier work, but from what I understand he’s a comedian/actor and comedic provocateur, so The Rehearsal is, I guess, best described as a docu-comedy…or maybe a mocku-comedy, or maybe an off-the-rails, reality tv social experiment.

I’m a notoriously difficult audience for comedy and am incapable of giving pity laughs. The Rehearsal made me guffaw numerous times, and not with traditional build-ups and payoffs but with subtle, understated, insanely weird moments of glorious absurdity.

Nathan Fielder is the ethically and morally corrupt ringmaster and clown of this straight-faced, three-ring circus, and he’s a passive-aggressive, raging narcissist suffering from supreme self-absorption and cluelessness…and it’s hysterical to behold, even when, or maybe especially when, he acts so superior to the rubes he’s supposedly silently judging, despite being just as ignorant, oblivious and self-delusional as they are.

I have no idea if this Fielder persona is genuine or an act, and I don’t much care. Like Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp, Fielder’s persona is able to tell a complex story without ever needing to utter a word.

Fielder’s ‘act’ is, in some ways, sort of a more subdued version of Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat work, where he bonds with the audience because he’s in on the joke and uses ‘normal’ people as the punchline. But unlike Borat, Fielder’s insecurities and arrogance keeps slipping out from behind the mask.

The Rehearsal reminded me of a documentary/mockumentary from 1999 titled American Movie, which chronicled some passionate but unfortunate Midwestern filmmakers trying to make a movie that is destined to be terrible. American Movie was all the rage amongst a certain sect of hipster cinephiles back in the day. I even worked on a similar project as a cinematographer/actor in the same time frame. Similar to The Rehearsal, debates raged about whether American Movie was a real documentary or a mockumentary, and the answer is still elusive. I’m less in doubt about the dubious voracity of The Rehearsal.

The Rehearsal is also somewhat reminiscent of the Charlie Kaufman film Synecdoche, NY, which blurs reality and manufactured reality in a post-modern cauldron of existentialism.

And the last thing that The Rehearsal reminded me of was Bo Burnham’s Netflix comedy special, Inside. Although The Rehearsal is nothing like Bo Burnham’s Inside in content and character, it’s similar in the sense that it is undoubtedly a singular work of genius.

Many moons ago while studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, my class did a sort of Meisner-esque exercise where an actor sits on a chair and looks straight ahead. The actor is supposed to be still and just listen to the words other classmates say to them from across the room and see if they generate a genuine, spontaneous emotional or physical reaction.

It's an interesting exercise in that it is meant to remove the impulse of the actor to “show” or indicate and instead just open themselves up, to be and to react organically and naturally.

I had already gone to film school prior to the Royal Academy so I realized during this exercise that it was very similar to the Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein’s Theory of Montage. In layman’s terms Eisenstein’s theory claims that the context surrounding an image is what assists the audience in projecting onto it meaning and emotion. For example, the shot of a stoic face is given meaning if it is preceded or followed by different images. The audience projects upon the stoic face a pleasant demeanor if it is preceded by a baby laughing, and the audience projects a darker meaning if the stoic face is preceded by a shot of war or carnage.

All of this came to mind watching Nathan Fielder, as his usually expressionless face and monotonous voice is a blank canvass upon which the audience can project their own meaning, including their own bias and prejudice.

For example, for much of episodes 2-6, Christianity is often positioned to be the butt of the joke by Fielder, who is Jewish. So much so, that at one point that prejudiced sub-text bubbles to the surface as someone openly declares without any opposition, that being a Christian is itself an irredeemable act of anti-Semitism. But afterwards another discussion takes place regarding Judaism, and the previously espoused anti-Christian sentiment is then given more context and its meaning changes radically. This is an instance of Fielder finding insight because of his lack of self-awareness, not in spite of it.

In that class at the Royal Academy there was a student, I’ll call him “Tushy”, who was a recent Ivy league grad, came from a very wealthy family, and seemingly had everything going for him, and yet he still felt the need to tell everyone fantastical stories about the famous women he had dated. Everyone knew these stories were obviously untrue for a variety of reasons, the most obvious of which was that Tushy was very gay, but he and his stories were harmless so nobody really cared.

In the Meisner-esque exercise though, Tushy’s inability to just “be”, which is a form of being honest with yourself and thus your audience, proved a liability. Tushy was incapable of just “being” and had to push and indicate all of the feelings he thought he was supposed to have during the exercise. As an audience member and participant this was uncomfortable to watch because it was so painful, obvious and painfully obvious. The teacher, who was one of the best in the world, gently tried to remind him of the purpose of the exercise and re-direct him to stillness but Tushy would have none of it. He kept pushing and urging himself to have a profound reaction (in this case crying) because he wanted everyone to think he was a profound person having a profound reaction.

There’s a pivotal sequence in The Rehearsal where Nathan Fielder turns into Tushy, and is betrayed by his desperate yearning for profundity and therefore creates a manufactured profundity. Except in this case, Fielder’s forced profundity is actually profound in its own right as it exposes the deeper ‘reality’ about him, his series, and his audience, which is that our culture, marinated in malignant narcissism and saturated with social media, has devolved humanity to the point where we are no longer capable of ever feeling genuine empathy.

On its surface The Rehearsal is a simple bit of reality tv comedy, but beneath that façade is an astoundingly complex piece of work that speaks volumes about the diminished and depraved state of humanity.

The bottom line is that Nathan Fielder is a modern-American holy fool, and his series The Rehearsal is batshit, bizarre and absolutely brilliant.

©2022

House of the Dragon (HBO): Thoughts and Musings on Episode One

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

It’s surprising that Game of Thrones came to its rather ignominious end just three years ago, as those chaotic three years have felt like decades if not centuries. The way the once-glorious, must-see series badly stumbled at its conclusion seemed to make it disappear from the collective consciousness almost overnight. With stunning speed and alacrity viewers went from vociferously declaring “Winter is coming!”, to petulantly asking, “what’s next?”

Such is the nature of our current culture, where there’s a plethora of entertainment choices (notice I didn’t say “entertaining choices”) and virtually every movie or series ends up in the trash heap of forgettable fiction the moment it stops playing before our eyes.

2019 was a year of major endings, and not just for Game of Thrones. That same year Marvel’s miraculous narrative run from Iron Man (2008) to Avengers: Endgame (2019) came to a smashing conclusion. So, the biggest tv series and the biggest movie franchise, both of which dominated popular culture for a decade, came to an end in 2019 and ever since, pop culture has been struggling and staggering to find a center, be it cinematic or on television, around which to orient itself.

Marvel has tried to keep its brand at the forefront of the culture by expanding to tv as well as extending its cinematic universe, and for the most part the results have been dismal. Marvel movies and TV series are no longer cultural landmarks but instead, little but fodder for tedious culture wars.

Which brings us to House of the Dragon, the new Game of Thrones series which premiered on HBO on Sunday, August 21st. The series is a prequel set 172 years before the events of Game of Thrones that tells the story of the rule of the dragon-blooded Targaryens.

The series is undoubtedly attempting to re-create the culturally dominating experience of its predecessor. After watching the first episode of House of the Dragon, which broke viewing records at HBO and overloaded the servers at HBO Max, I’m still reticent to declare that “Westeros is back, baby!”

Game of Thrones‘ fatally flawed ending left a putrid taste in a great deal of viewer’s mouths, my own included, so it’s just about impossible that House of the Dragon will be a similar smash hit. Audiences may well be wary of giving it the time it needs to grow, and after the calamity that was Game of Thrones’ final season, with good reason.

It’s too soon to tell whether House of the Dragon will find the magic that Game of Thrones did, but it’s early yet. The first episode was fine. It wasn’t great. It wasn’t awful. It just was. Some of the CGI was terrific, some of it wasn’t. Some of the characters were compelling, some of them weren’t.

I remember watching season one of GOT and liking it but not really thinking it was anything remarkable until episode nine (out of ten) of season one.

In that episode, Ned Stark is set to be executed and I kept wondering how they were going to save him. I mean, you can’t execute Ned Stark as he’s played by Sean Bean, the biggest star on the show. But then in episode nine…they cut Ned’s goddamn head off. I remember yelling out from my couch when it happened because it was so viscerally shocking to see a tv show completely upend the conventions of its medium.

House of the Dragon will not be able to do such a thing because it’s already been done. Audiences are harder to shock a second and third time around…and considering that Game of Thrones continued to shock throughout its run (think the Red Wedding – holy shit!), House of the Dragon has an uphill climb.

I don’t know if it’s a help or hindrance that I haven’t read any of the Game of Thrones books, but I haven’t. On the plus side in terms of Game of Thrones, I had no idea what was coming, on the downside in terms of House of the Dragon, I don’t really know who anybody is or really care about them at the start.

In a real sense, I had almost no clue what was going on in Game of Thrones most of the time but enjoyed it because the acting was superb, the writing crisp, the production (sets, costumes, cinematography, sound) glorious and the world building brilliant. It also helped a great deal that there were a plethora of my three favorite things…nudity, strong sexual content and violence. You basically can never go too wrong with that combination.

With House of the Dragon, that same formula may be watered down in order to appease the social media Savanorolas who simply cannot tolerate anyone enjoying anything. Episode one of House of the Dragon had some violence and some sexual content and nudity, but not nearly enough for my voracious appetite, and certainly nothing up to the standards of Game of Thrones in its debauched heyday.

House of the Dragon does boast some fine performances thus far, most notably Matt Smith as rogue prince Daemon. Smith was last seen in The Crown playing a young Prince Philip (talk about a rogue prince – he’s the father of pedo prince Andrew…the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree), and he’s a terrific actor. As Daemon he believably transforms into a villainous and oddly charming brute.

Daemon’s brother, King Viserys, is played by the wondrous Paddy Considine, who brings to the role a palpable sense of fragility that augers trouble for the king.

Also excellent is Rhys Ifans as Ser Otto Hightower, the Hand of the King. Ifans, like so many of the actors from the original series and now its prequel, is just a damn good British actor who brings a formidable amount of craft and skill to his role and elevates the series in the process.

That said, there’s a much smaller cast in House of the Dragon as compared to Game of Thrones, there’s also fewer interesting characters. Daemon, King Viserys and Hightower are decent characters, but nothing spectacular. If they were in Game of Thrones they’d be C or D level, fringe characters, not the main attraction.

Speaking of main attractions, Viserys’ daughter Rhaenyra, played as a teen in the first episode by Milly Alcock – and played by Emma D’Arcy in later episodes as a grown woman, thus far isn’t the least bit interesting. Like Arya Stark, she shuns the lady-life and bristles at the restrictions of the patriarchy, but she is also a deluxe dullard of the highest order. Maybe that will change going forward…hopefully it will change going forward.

Equally dull is Alicent Hightower, Otto Hightower’s daughter and Rhaenyra’s best friend, played by Emily Carey as a young woman and later in the series by Olivia Cooke as an adult. Alicent is paper thin as a character in episode one, and given that she had a potentially blockbuster scene with the King at one crucial point, that is disappointing if not devastating.

Again, the series just started and has the potential to grow into greatness, but it must be said that episode one is a bit middling. Part of the reason for that is that the production lacks the crispness and visual lushness of Game of Thrones, including in the CGI department.

Not surprisingly, dragons play a big role in the story of House of the Dragon, and the dragons themselves look as good as ever, but when placed into settings the scenes look uncomfortably cheap…like a quick cut and paste job.

The sets and costumes also look to be downgraded in terms of quality on House of the Dragon, as do the costumes, both of which may be a result of some cost cutting in the wake of Game of Thrones ever expanding budget.  

Also notably sub-par was the sound design, which left much of the dialogue muddled under ambient noise or music.

House of the Dragon, which is NOT produced by Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, is apparently the first in a collection of Game of Thrones I.P. that HBO will be sending our way. The recent financial struggles at Discovery, which took on a massive amount of debt to purchase WarnerMedia (which includes HBO) could spell trouble for such pricey projects going forward though.

If belt tightening at Discovery/Warner leads to lesser quality in the Game of Thrones spin-offs, then they’d be better off not doing them at all. Of course, I’m only saying that from an artistic/fan perspective, as quality is my number one concern.

Speaking of fan perspective, House of the Dragon is chock full of fan service and Game of Thrones Easter eggs. No doubt fans of the original series will love that, but if House of the Dragon doesn’t improve in quality and catch dramatic fire sooner rather than later, fans will turn on it and HBO will be left with a bloody mess on their hands. Only time will tell.

I’ll check back in midway through season one of House of the Dragon with another review to see if things in Westeros are headed in the right direction.

©2022

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 73 - The Grey Man

On this episode, Barry and I try not to put a bullet through our gray matter as we suffer through The Grey Man, the new Russo Brothers directed Netflix action movie starring Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans. Topics discussed include awful acting, awful directing, awful writing, awful establishing shots, awful action sequences, awful Chris Evans and Netflix's awful future. On the bright side, listeners will get to hear Barry's spirit break when he learns some shocking news about the Grey Man movie universe.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 73 - The Grey Man

Thanks for listening!

©2022

Thor: Love and Thunder - A Review

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

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

 My Recommendation: SKIP IT. A manic misfire of a Marvel movie. If you are a Marvel completist then save your money and wait for it to stream on Disney +.

In order to set the context for my review of Thor: Love and Thunder, which premiered in theatres Friday July 8th and is the newest film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe – and the Marvel behemoth’s 29th movie overall, it’s important to note that I am an enormous fan of the film’s writer/director Taika Waititi.

Waititi directed my favorite Marvel movie, Thor: Ragnarok – of which Love and Thunder is a direct sequel, and also adapted his 2014 vampire comedy movie What We Do in the Shadows into my current favorite television show of the same name, which is set to premiere its fourth season on FX this coming Tuesday.

The reality is that Waititi’s distinctive comedic style is an acquired taste, and, like the new strain of Super Gonorrhea going around, I most certainly have acquired it.

Which brings us to Thor: Love and Thunder. As exhilarating as Thor: Ragnarok was, Thor: Love and Thunder is disappointing. Yes, it has its moments, but those moments are very few and very far between.

The film’s plot is relentlessly convoluted, and revolves around Gor the God Butcher, a surprisingly subdued Christian Bale, who seeks revenge on the gods for the death of his daughter. Gor kidnaps the kids of New Asgard, who are the perfect dream children for Disney’s human resources department because of their remarkable ethnic diversity, and uses them as bait to draw in Thor and his goofy companions.

The plot twists and turns make just about no sense at all, and the tonal shifts of the film are jarring to the extreme. Make no mistake about it, the film is a comedy, but it opens with a little girl dying and then puts other little kids in frightening peril as a key plot point. The comedic tone and the kids in peril plot mix together like birthday cake at a beheading.

Needless to say, this PG-13 movie is much too scary/dark to be suitable for kids under 13…and frankly, much too shabby to be worthwhile to adults with half a brain in their head.

There are some bright spots though, among them the brief appearance of the Asgard Players acting troupe, which features Matt Damon and Melissa McCarthy dramatizing great moments in Asgardian history on stage. As well as Korg, Thor’s sidekick (voiced by Waititi himself) repeatedly mis-stating Jane Foster’s name…a gag that made me laugh every time. There’s also an absolutely absurd appearance by a hammiest of hams Russell Crowe as Zeus. Crowe’s Zeus is a gonzo piece of bloated bizarreness but I found it amusing as hell.

Another very bright spot is Chris Hemsworth. Hemsworth is so good as Thor it’s simply miraculous. Hemsworth is, of course, buff beyond belief and impossibly handsome, but he’s also effortlessly charming and astoundingly funny.

Unfortunately, Natalie Portman is the exact opposite. Portman returns to the Thor franchise as Dr. Jane Foster, Thor’s ex-love interest, except this time, through some not very clear plot machinations, Dr. Foster is somehow turned into a Thor…and takes the title of The Mighty Thor.

Portman as Jane Foster/Mighty Thor is more wooden than a log cabin and makes a cigar store Indian seem lively in comparison. Portman pushes so hard to be frolicky and fun but she’s so stiff and unnatural that when she attempts to smile, she seems like a cadaver getting a colonoscopy.

Portman may very well be a talented actress, or she may not be, but what she definitely isn’t is a gifted comedic actress and that is glaringly obvious in Thor: Love and Thunder.

Other issues with the film abound. For example, Gor’s villainous minions are these shadow creatures that are so generic and bland as to be ridiculous.

These shadow creatures highlight the film’s other big problems, namely its lack of visual clarity and cinematic crispness, as well as its pedestrian fight sequences…in other words the movie features third-rate action sequences and looks like shit, which is criminal for a movie with a $250 million budget.

And last but not least, the movie, like seemingly all Marvel movies and tv shows nowadays, of course, features some heavy-handed human resources inspired social engineering and woke pandering and preaching. The previously mentioned rainbow of Asgardian kids being a perfect example. As is the cringiest of cringe scenes where Gor calls Portman’s Thor, “Lady Thor”, and she angrily responds “my name is The Mighty Thor! Or you can call me…DOCTOR! JANE! FOSTER!” My only wish was The Mighty Thor aka Dr. Jane Foster had been wearing a pink pussy hat in that scene for affect. That cringilicous scene along with the “female Avengers unite” scene from Avengers: Endgame, should only be legally permitted to be played in voluminous vomitoriums because they’re such gag-worthy, girl-power garbage.

On top of all that, the final act of the film is entirely rushed and completely devoid of any dramatic impact while being detached from narrative coherence.

Due to my love of Thor: Ragnarok and my Waititi fandom, I was looking forward to Thor: Love and Thunder. I was also curious to see if, after the cinematic and creative debacles (and for the most part, box office misfires) of the recent spate of Marvel movies, from Black Widow to Shang-Chi to The Eternals (God help us!) to Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Thor: Love and Thunder, with the brilliant Waititi at the helm and the equally brilliant Chris Hemsworth in the lead, could stop the bleeding over at the Marvel money factory that pays for Mickey Mouse’s mansions. I am here to report that it doesn’t.

Thor: Love and Thunder will do fine at the box office, but it won’t signal a return to Marvel magnificence. The reality is that Marvel is in deep shit, and if they don’t realize that then they’re delusional. Their new movies are sub-par, their tv shows are cratering in quality (I’ll have a review of Ms. Marvel out late this coming week – here’s a preview…”YIKES!”) and it is now very clear that the Marvel monstrosity has lost the plot and has their head’s so far up their asses they’re incapable of finding it.

Marvel has dominated cineplexes and our culture for nearly fifteen years, but Thor: Love and Thunder is just one more piece of proof that the bloom is off the Marvel rose and I’m here to tell you that it ain’t coming back.

The bottom line is that Thor: Love and Thunder is nothing but a major disappointment. If you are a Marvel completist, then wait for Thor: Love and Thunder to stream on Disney + in a few weeks or months, and watch it then, because it simply isn’t worth your time and hard-earned money to see in the theatres.

©2022

Stranger Things (Netflix) Season Four: A TV Review

My Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. It’s a piece of empty pop culture calories and shameless nostalgia delivery system but to its credit it is exceedingly well made.

When I sat down to watch the newly released season four of Stranger Things, Netflix’s hit sci-fi horror series, a ‘strange’ thing occurred.

Episode one began with a recap of what happened in season three as a reminder of what’s going on in the story…and I didn’t remember any of it…not a goddamn thing. I know I watched all of season three when it came out back in 2019, but for some reason I couldn’t recall a lick of it. So, I went back and actually watched all of season three again before diving into season four, and while it was vaguely familiar, it didn’t really ring any bells. I would’ve gone back and watched season one and two to jog my memory too but I just couldn’t commit that kind of time to something I’d completely forget anyway.

My Stranger Things amnesia could be a result of season three having premiered three long years ago, and goodness knows a lot has happened in those three years, in fact my failing memory could be a result of numerous head traumas inflicted over those three years as I banged my skull against the wall in a fruitless attempt to make the madness and moronity of our times disappear. Who knows?

Or maybe the reality is that I didn’t remember the details of Stranger Things because the details of Stranger Things are not worth remembering.

Which brings me to the one of the stranger things about Stranger Things, which is that while I have no idea what is going on in the convoluted plot, and while the four lead male actors, Finn Wolfhard, Gaten Matarazzo, Noah Schnapp and Caleb McLaughlin, are among the very worst and most annoying actors currently working in entertainment, I still find myself thoroughly enjoying the show.

The reason for that is because it’s exceedingly well made by creator/writer/directors the Duffer brothers. While “the Upside Down” and various monsters and nefarious government agencies and all of that are all a blur, what isn’t a blur is the show’s commitment to its aesthetic and how beautifully designed, structured and photographed this whole series is.

The Duffer brothers are a couple of gloriously old school storytellers paying homage to their directorial forefathers through their skilled use of shadow and light, color, sound and music to convey an entire mood, and that is what makes Stranger Things so enjoyable an experience and so seductive, if not addictive, a series.

The brilliance of the Duffer brothers is also obvious in the basic premise of the Stranger Things pitch, namely that it’s a glorious nostalgia delivery system for Gen Xers filled with a Gen Z cast in order to interest younger viewers that skillfully exploits the archetypes and storytelling tropes of both the sci-fi and horror genres in familiar but original ways.

To its credit, Stranger Things was one of the first series in the recent wave to use 80’s music as a siren song to attract Gen Xers to a show geared toward Millennial and Gen Z viewers. The success of that approach is seen in season four’s use of Kate Bush’s song “Running Up That Hill” as a plot point, which has led to a rousing resurgence of Ms. Bush back into the spotlight and her introduction to a whole new generation.

Another plus for the show is that despite the truly atrocious performances from the four lead male actors (who it seems get worse with every passing day), as well as poor Winona Ryder – who is just awful and is an astonishingly hollowed out shell of her former self, the cast are actually very good.

Millie Bobby Brown is sort of the break out star of the show because of her impeccable bone structure, and while she is certainly a beauty and is decent as Eleven, the psychic warrior/screwed up kid, it’s Sadie Sink that is the major talent on the show. Sink’s Max is a complex and conflicted character and her portrayal is never anything but utterly compelling. One can’t help but hope that Sink stays the course and we get to see what she can do as she gets older.

David Harbour is also great as the charmingly rough and tumble sheriff, as are Joe Keery, Maya Hawke and Natalia Dyer as Steve Harrington, Robin Buckley, and Nancy Wheeler respectively. Keery in particular is outstanding as a comical leading man, and his repartee with Hawke is a poor man’s version of a 1980’s Indiana-set, vacuous teenage Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn.

Season four was split into two parts, with the first seven episodes premiering on May 27th and the final two episodes premiering on July 1st. What was odd about this structure is that while the first part of season four was “normal” in that the episodes were roughly an hour long, the two episodes (episodes 8 and 9) of part two were an hour and a half and two and a half hours respectively. So, basically part two of season four is two feature films….which is kind of weird especially considering that it isn’t the series’ finale as season five is coming down the pike.

All that said, I had no problem with the length of those two episodes, and found them to be enjoyable enough that I kept watching them, so that says something. And the same is true of the entire series….it isn’t great or life changingly good, it is just an extremely well-made piece of pop entertainment.

If you like 80’s nostalgia, good music, horror and sci-fi movies and can tolerate a very uneven cast that is both brilliant and boorish, then Stranger Things is a very pleasant distraction from our often times infinitely stranger and more frightening reality.

©2022

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 69 - Operation Mincemeat

On this episode, Barry and I don a stiff upper lip as we try to grin and bear the new Netflix WWII movie Operation Mincemeat starring Colin Firth. Topics of discussion include the banality of evil that is sub-mediocre cinema, John Madden as great NFL coach and commentator but abysmal film director, and the missed opportunity of a Weekend at Bernies World War II movie.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 69 - Operation Mincemeat

Thanks for listening!

©2022