West Side Story: A Review

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

My Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

The Forever Prisoner: A Documentary Review

My Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. Documentarian Alex Gibney once again expertly exposes the origins of the U.S. torture program, although he doesn’t adequately shame the ruling elites responsible for the moral and ethical atrocity of torture.

 Watching the new HBO documentary, The Forever Prisoner, by Academy Award winning filmmaker Alex Gibney now available on HBO Max, is an at times infuriating experience.

 The film isn’t infuriating because it’s a flawed but damning reminder of America’s hypocrisy and brutality as it examines the birth of the CIA’s post-9/11 torture program and the death of the delusion of American ideals. No, it’s infuriating because you know no one of any consequence will be held accountable for the gruesome crime being exposed in heinous detail before you.

‘The Forever Prisoner’ of the title is Abu Zubaydah, the alleged terrorist mastermind captured in Pakistan in 2002 who was savagely tortured by the CIA for months and now resides in an endless legal limbo in Guantanamo Bay.

 Zubaydah’s torture, which included isolation, sleep deprivation, freezing, beatings, stress positions, and 83 water boarding sessions, is shown to have been the blueprint for CIA and U.S. military torture programs from Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan to Abu Ghraib in Iraq to Guantanamo Bay in the War on Terror.

Zubaydah was no innocent, but he also wasn’t the al Qaeda heavy hitter that the CIA claimed him to be. That said, he was a useful asset, as FBI agent Ali Soufan was able to extract vital information from him during the early, pre-torture days of his interrogation.

As Soufan explains, it was non-torture interrogation techniques that got Zubaydah to identify Khalid Sheikh Muhammed as an al Qaeda leader and mastermind of 9/11.

But when word got back to CIA director George Tenet that it was FBI agents getting info from Zubaydah and not the CIA, the ever-territorial Tenet went ballistic.

So, FBI agent Soufan was out and after a 47-day isolation period where Zubaydah saw and spoke to no one – a clear indication that the ticking time bomb scenario so often used to justify torture was invalid, the insidious clown show that was the CIA took over and the torture program kicked off.

The CIA man who developed the torture regime used on Zubaydah which became the playbook for America’s torture program, James Mitchell, is featured in The Forever Prisoner and vociferously but poorly defends himself and his work.

As the film shows, the CIA were so desperate to create an “enhanced interrogation” system they chose the eager Mitchell with virtually no vetting and despite the fact that he had no experience in actual interrogation.

Mitchell and his partner Dr. Bruce Jensen’s only remotely relevant experience was in working with the SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Extraction) program which teaches U.S. military personnel how to avoid being captured and how to resist torture techniques.

The CIA reverse engineering SERE to create an interrogation program creates obvious legal and operational contradictions as the SERE program clearly states that torture techniques only extract false confessions and empty propaganda victories.

Not surprisingly, Mitchell and Jensen’s immoral and unethical torture program was also ineffective, as it failed miserably to garner any useful intelligence, but despite their abysmal failure they were paid by the CIA an astonishing $81 million as torture teachers.

The man who led the CIA torture program and signed those checks was Director of the CIA Counterterrorism Center, Jose Rodriguez, and he knew the evil and illegality he was perpetrating, as evidenced by his telling his subordinates, “Do not put your legal concerns in writing. Not helpful.”

Rodriguez and his Chief of Staff, Gina Haspel, were also the ones who illegally destroyed the videotapes of the Zubaydah torture sessions, against the advice of legal counsel.

Haspel and Rodriguez never faced any legal recourse for their part in the torture program or for destroying evidence. In fact, Haspel later became Director of the CIA and then Director of National Intelligence, while Rodriguez became wealthy as a consultant with an impressive car collection.

Deep State darlings like General Michael Hayden and John Brennan avoided consequences as well, as they’re now warmly welcomed on CNN and MSNBC and even get fellated by Bill Maher for being “heroes”.

Of course, George W. Bush was never held to account for his torture program, and liberals now adore him because he once gave a candy to Michelle Obama.

President Obama too gets a pass for his complicity after the fact regarding the torture program, as he refused to investigate or prosecute any of these war criminals, instead only admitting that “we tortured some folks”, but then calling the torturers “real patriots”. I suppose that just as one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter, one man’s war criminal is another man’s “real patriot”.

Zubaydah has never been charged for a crime but he still may very well deserve his lifetime imprisonment in Guantanamo Bay. But also deserving of that dismal fate are the Washington ghouls like Bush, Cheney, Brennan, Hayden, Haspel, and Obama who were either directly responsible, complicit or aided and abetted some of the worst war crimes of the War on Terror era.

While The Forever Prisoner viscerally recounts the crimes committed upon Abu Zubaydah, often using his own drawings as a visual guide, like the establishment media, it unfortunately doesn’t do enough to shame the murderer’s row of Washington war criminals listed above.

Like Gibney’s Oscar winning film, Taxi to the Dark Side, The Forever Prisoner dutifully and skillfully exposes the depravity unleashed by the U.S. in the wake of 9/11, but it’s ultimately a frustrating film because it fails to adequately target the brutal and barbaric elites that conjured the evil of torture and yet managed to maintain their reputations despite the blood on their hands.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 53 - King Richard

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

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 53 - King Richard

Thanks for listening!

©2021

The Power of the Dog: A Review

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

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Get Back: Documentary Review

****THIS REVIEW CONTAINS MINOR SPOILERS - BUT ITS A MOVIE ABOUT THE BEATLES SO THEY AREN’T REALLY SPOILERS UNLESS YOU’VE BEEN LIVING UNDER A ROCK FOR THE LAST 50 YEARS!! YOU’VE BEEN WARNED!!****

My Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. At first meandering, this immersive, experiential documentary becomes utterly mesmerizing as it chronicles the beginning of the end of the Fab Four and basks in the the glory of their musical genius.

The recording of Let It Be, The Beatles 12th and final studio album, in January of 1969, is often regarded as the moment when the Fab Four finally fell apart and began the process of going their separate ways.

After watching Get Back, the new exhaustive, nearly eight-hour, three-part documentary mini-series from Academy Award winning director Peter Jackson which chronicles that allegedly tempestuous recording session, I can report that Let It Be didn’t leave The Beatles broken, but you could certainly see the cracks.  

The band’s next recording session, for the album Abbey Road (which would be released before Let It Be), took place just months later in 1969 and that led to The Beatles, the most important band in rock and roll history, officially breaking up.

Originally, Let It Be was ambitiously conceived as an album, a TV special and a live concert, all of which were to be captured over a three-week span in January of 1969.

Documentarian Michael Lindsay-Hogg was there with cameras rolling as John, Paul, George and Ringo, a walking, talking rock and roll Mount Rushmore, tried to write an album’s worth of material from scratch and prepare for a live show all while being under the microscope of cameras.

Lindsay-Hogg shot and recorded 60 hours of film footage and 150 hours of audio, and while the tv show idea was scrapped, Hogg eventually released his own hour and twenty-minute length film titled Let it Be which came out just after the album of the same name in 1970.

Peter Jackson, of The Lord of the Rings fame, has taken a deep dive into Lindsay-Hogg’s ocean of material and come up with Get Back which was meant to be two-hours long and theatrically released but morphed into the massive eight-hour mini-series now streaming on Disney Plus.

Get Back opens as The Beatles move into a rather lifeless, makeshift recording studio at Twickenham Film Studios where the band attempts to write songs and rehearse for their album and their impending live show, which will be their first in nearly three years.

The documentary at first feels rudderless, as there’s no talking heads or guide to narrate the action, it’s just The Beatles and their entourage hanging out, eating toast, drinking tea, smoking cigarettes and getting little accomplished as the clock ticks.

This opening episode is relentlessly frustrating, but that’s the point. Peter Jackson turns The Beatles’ malaise into the viewer’s malaise, and while the documentary at first feels meandering, as it moves forward it becomes mesmerizing.

Remarkably, Get Back makes you feel, if not like a silent member of The Beatles (like Ringo!), then at least like a fly on the wall as these icons wade into and out of the morass of the magical mystery tour of music making.

The cast of characters and archetypes of The Beatles drama is well known and they’re all on display in Get Back. There’s the rebellious genius, John. The brilliant, ambitious nice-guy, Paul. The quiet yet gifted and sometimes disgruntled middle-child, George. As well as the under-appreciated, lovable lug Ringo.

There’s also the omnipresent Yoko, looming like a gargoyle succubus whispering into John’s ear and occasionally screeching into microphones.

As you spend nearly eight hours with The Beatles, the one thing about them that becomes crystal clear is how incredibly normal and good-natured they appear to be. They certainly disagree with one another but even their clashes are mostly respectful and polite, especially when you consider how pampered and wealthy they were, how much pressure they were under, and how sick of each other they must have been by that point.

And while there’s a decent amount of gossipy band drama on display in the documentary, like watching Paul trying to be the boss, George asserting himself, John withdrawing and Ringo just being an all-around great guy, that ultimately feels entirely secondary to the joy of simply experiencing their unadulterated genius.

Watching The Beatles, the godfathers of basically every pop and rock song over the last fifty years, jam and create music, such as when Paul takes mere moments to conjure out of thin air the song ‘Get Back’, is astonishing and exhilarating.

It’s also pretty fascinating watching the inter-personal dynamics of the band change when the brilliant Billy Preston enters the sessions as a keyboardist and when the venue changes from the cold and cavernous Twickenham to the comfortable confines at their Apple studio.

There are a few moments in the mini-series that stood out. For instance, the audio recording of John and Paul’s conversation after George exits the band radiates with a palpable emotion built by an intense personal history and is undeniably captivating and compelling.

Other moments too stand out, such as when Paul says to the crew, “it’s silly, fifty years from now they’re going to say that ‘The Beatles’ broke up because Yoko sat on an amp”, which is ironically insightful. In contrast, after George leaves the band and John is missing from rehearsal, Paul says to Ringo, “and then there were two”, and it feels ominously prescient considering the eventual murder of John Lennon and George Harrison’s untimely death from cancer.

Ultimately, if you’re a Beatles fanatic or even just a fan of music, then Get Back is most definitely for you as it’s a powerful nostalgia hit that reminds us what musical genius truly looks like. In our current age where “rock is dead” and musicianship and musicality, never mind musical genius, are sorely lacking if not utterly devoid from popular music, that has tremendous value.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

 ©2021

House of Gucci: A Review

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

My Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Hawkeye: A Review - of the First Two Episodes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 52 - Ghostbusters: Afterlife

Who you gonna call? Well, Barry and I of course! On this episode your intrepid hosts bust some ghosts as we grapple with Ghostbusters: Afterlife. Topics discussed include lessons on how not to restart a franchise, the magic of Paul Rudd and mini Stay-Puff Marshmellow Men, and the sheer genius of Bill Murray and Harold Ramis.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 52 - Ghostbusters: Afterlife

Thanks for listening!

©2021

King Richard: A Review

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

My Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 51 - Finch

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

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 51 - Finch

Thanks for listening!

©2021

The Cinephile with Michael McCaffrey - JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass

On the newest episode of The Cinephile with Michael McCaffrey, I talk about Oliver Stone’s new JFK Assassination documentary, JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass.

Thanks for watching!

©2021

J.K. Rowling Cast Out of Harry Potter Reunion

The Harry Potter movies are having a reunion, but a spell has been cast to keep J.K. Rowling and her alleged transphobia away from the festivities.

HBO Max will air the 20th anniversary reunion special but the creator of Harry Potter is persona non grata because she dared to speak the truth about the trans movement.

Twenty years-ago the magic of Harry Potter jumped from the page to the screen as Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, the first movie of the Harry Potter franchise, premiered in cineplexes across the globe.

Now, after 8 total films based on books that sold more than 500 million copies, which raked in more than 7 billion galleons at the box office, Warner Brothers is celebrating the Harry Potter film franchise with a tv reunion set to air on HBO Max on January 1st, 2022.

All the surviving stars of the films and their directors will be there, including Daniel Radcliff (Harry Potter), Emma Watson (Hermione), Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley) as well as Helena Bonham Carter (Bellatrix Lestrange), Robbie Coltrane (Hagrid), Ralph Fiennes (Voldemort), Gary Oldman (Sirius Black) and even Draco Malfoy himself, Tom Felton.

But, like a god cast out of an Eden of her own making, J.K. Rowling, creator of Harry Potter and literary hero to a whole generation of readers, will not be there to bask in the glow of her creative genius.

Neither Warner Brothers nor Rowling have explicitly stated so, but it appears that the author of the Harry Potter books who was intimately involved in the making of the movies, wasn’t invited to this Harry Potter party.  

Rowling’s egregious sin for which she has been banished from wizarding world and forced to wear a scarlet “T” for transphobe, is that she is a dutiful progressive on nearly every issue imaginable, but she just can’t bring herself to ignore objective biological reality and therefore refuses to fall under the insidious spell of the subjective lunacy of transgenderism.

The Rowling row heated up last year when, in response to an article that used the term “people who menstruate” instead of the word “women”, Ms. Rowling had the temerity to tweet, “People who menstruate, I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben?  Wimpund? Woomud?”

She followed that up with a tweet saying, “I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives. It isn’t hate to speak the truth.”

I whole-heartedly agree, but Rowling’s naivete is charming, as anyone with a first year Hogwarts education knows that in our damned world of lies, daring to speak the truth is now considered an expression of violent hate, if not an outright crime.

The author of Harry Potter becoming a scapegoat and being crucified on the “T” cross by trans radicals who live in their own imaginary and fantastical world with a bizarre vocabulary all its own, is such a deliriously delicious turn of events, I can’t help but think that Ms. Rowling appreciates both the irony and literary profundity of it all.

Rowling is now the muggle, a person without magical powers, who lives in ignorance of the wondrous wizarding world of the transgender. In her muggledom she is incapable of understanding the transfiguration, the art of turning one thing into another, of the trans, and is so far lost she can’t see the trans for the glorious centaurs that they are.

The real magic in this story is the black arts performed by the woke who have cast a spell that has transformed a resilient woman who left an abusive marriage and rose from abject poverty to build a multi-billion dollar empire, despite being labelled a purveyor of the occult by fundamentalist Christians, by using nothing but the power of her imagination to charm and enchant children and families across the globe, into a pilloried pariah because she “refuses to ‘bow down’ to  a movement seeking ‘to erode women as a political and biological class.”

The insipid ‘pronouned’ woke, who proudly declare their pronouns of choice, and those who are trans or who reflexively support the trans movement, are at war with not just J.K. Rowling, but with the English language and biological and objective reality.

I’m not a Harry Potter fan, but as I’ve watched her be relentlessly chastised in this culture war battle by these malicious and nefarious nit-wits, I’ve become a fan of JK Rowling.  

Unlike the spineless fools at Warner Brothers who have lined their pockets on her creation, and the ungrateful simps like Radcliffe, Watson and Grint, who wouldn’t have careers if it weren’t for Rowling, and who now chastise and shun her, J.K. Rowling actually has a moral, ethical and intellectual compass. Unlike them she won’t play the rigged game of transgender quidditch and bend the knee to appease a loud but absurdly inane movement trying to force everyone to accept a distorted subjective experience as unquestioned objective reality.

Good for her.

Now instead of wasting her time at the HBO Max Harry Potter reunion hob-knobbing with artistic midgets who all lack her genius, resilience and courage, and who degrade themselves by worshipping at the golden calf of transgender wokeness, Rowling can sit in her castle made of money and bask in her own brilliance knowing that she alone in the extended Harry Potter world has the most elusive yet magical power of all…integrity.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 50 - Eternals

On this episode, newly crowned B-listers Barry and I examine the Marvel monstrosity, Eternals, directed by Chloe Zhao. Topics discussed include Ms. Zhao's shortcomings, Marvel's misfires and its murky future going forward, as well as my lamenting "what happened to Harry Styles?"

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 50 - Eternals

Thanks for listening!

©2021

Mayor Pete: Documentary Review and Commentary

My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. A contrived, and unintentionally hysterical, hour and half long campaign commercial for Pete Buttigieg, the relentlessly vapid and vacuous narcissistic sociopath White House wannabe.

This year has been a banner one for sycophantic documentaries of political figures.

First there was the eye-rolling, ass-kissing HBO documentary mini-series Obama: In Pursuit of a More Perfect Union. Then National Geographic gave us the insidiously fawning Fauci.

Now Amazon has rolled out what may be the most unintentionally funny bit of homosexual hagiography in documentary history, Mayor Pete, which chronicles Pete Buttigieg’s 2020 presidential campaign.

The film starts one year before the Iowa Caucuses with South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg gearing up for his historic run as the first openly gay candidate for the presidency.

The opening sequence begins with a voice off-camera, I think it is Pete Buttigieg’s husband Chasten Buttigieg, lovingly telling the candidate, “don’t bullshit us, Peter!”

Mayor Pete and its diminutive subject then spend the next hour and half relentlessly bullshitting us, as this movie is less a documentary than it is an hour and a half long campaign commercial.

What’s so funny about Mayor Pete is that the couple at its center, Pete and his husband Chasten, who both appear to have been the recipients of charisma bypass surgery, have all the chemistry of two strangers sitting across from each other in the waiting room of a contagious disease clinic. When the two of them kiss it’s like watching lip-transplant patients trying to kiss for the first time. I suppose it’s a sign of progress that an openly gay man can now run for president and be in just as loveless a marriage as all of the straight candidates he’s competing against.

Another amusing thing about the documentary was that as it wore on, I realized of whom Pete Buttigieg reminded me…it’s the sociopathic serial killer Dexter who, coincidentally, recently returned to television after an eight-year absence. Did Dexter flee Miami after his last killing spree and hide out in South Bend, become mayor, and is now running for president? Find out on Dexter: New Blood.

Like Dexter, the wooden Pete works extremely hard to try to convince people he’s a normal person, yet his dead eyes give away the game. The guy exerts so much energy pretending to be human, he comes across as entirely inhuman.

Like the film that documents him, Pete Buttigieg is so contrived and manufactured I didn’t believe anything about him. I spent half the time wondering if Pete’s face was a skin-mask from one of his alter-ego Dexter’s unfortunate victims, or if he was just pretending to be gay in order to increase his electoral chances.   

Pete so aggressively pushes his homosexuality as his main selling point the ridiculous notion of his sexuality being just a function of branding and not biology started to seem considerably less absurd. Would any Democrat pay any attention at all to Pete if he were straight? No, of course not.

This is why Pete puts his homosexuality front and center, it gives him the precious political commodity of victimhood which translates to credibility in the eyes of identity-obsessed Democrats. This victimhood is enhanced in the movie with two scenes of homophobic protests against Pete, which are so buffoonish they feel staged.

Buttigieg’s husband Chasten too makes being gay the be all and end all of his identity. There’s a sequence in the film where Chasten goes to a gay camp for kids and leads them in the pledge of allegiance to the gay camp flag, and then dresses potatoes up as drag queens, which felt like the funniest skit Saturday Night Live has never aired.

There’s another sequence where Chasten is complaining that all the Democratic candidates have their wives on stage with them on election night in Iowa, except for Pete. Even Pete grows tired of Chasten’s whining at this point and resorts to ignoring him when placating fails.

Another immensely amusing thing about Mayor Pete is watching Buttigieg navigate the victimhood pyramid of the Democratic party.

Pete is constantly seen contemplating, rehearsing and then spouting platitudes regarding race. Most notably at a town hall in South Bend after a white cop kills a black man in the city.

In another scene, Pete is seen strategizing over race and he says of his efforts, “make sure it doesn’t read as very white.” Then the documentary cuts to Pete and Al Sharpton having lunch together in Harlem. Chef’s kiss.

As funny as that is, it pales in comparison to the ass-kissing of Joe Biden that the film and its subject engage in.

For example, after an impromptu conversation between Biden and Buttigieg in Iowa, the film cuts to Pete enthusiastically telling an aide that Biden is “such a good guy!”

Later after Buttigieg drops his presidential bid, he gets a call from Biden, and we eavesdrop on the conversation between the two. Mayor Pete the movie, and Mayor Pete the man, are both so affected and manipulative I couldn’t help but wonder if all of these scenes about Biden were staged well after the events of the 2020 primary.

Biden ultimately made Buttigieg the youngest and first openly gay Secretary of Transportation in U.S. history. In that role his greatest accomplishments thus far are taking paternity leave and saying that some roads are racist.

Fans of Buttigieg shouldn’t fret though, because as Mayor Pete reveals, Pete is addicted to style and allergic to substance, and is also malignantly vapid, vacuous, ambitious, narcissistic and sociopathic, which means he meets all the requirements to be the President of the United States of America. His ascension feels inevitable. God help us all.  

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass - Documentary Review and Commetary

My Rating: 3.8 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. An insightful documentary well worth a watch. It isn’t perfect, but it is important.

Oliver Stone’s JFK hit theaters in 1991 and sent shockwaves through Washington and the corporate media because it was a compelling cinematic counter-myth to the equally fantastical Warren Report.

The Praetorian guards of the establishment in the halls of power and press met the film with ferocity as they set out to debunk and defang it, as it directly challenged their narrative and thus their authority. They failed. JFK was nominated for 8 Academy Awards and brought in over $200 million at the box office. More importantly though, it broke the spell of public indifference and somewhat loosened establishment obstruction in regards to the JFK assassination.

In the film’s wake the President John F Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 was passed and the Assassination Records Review Board set up and funded.

Now, thirty years later Oliver Stone is back, this time with a documentary streaming on Showtime, JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass, which sticks its thumb in the eye of those who mindlessly espouse the “official” story of JFK’s assassination as the truth.

As someone interested in the JFK assassination, and who has read a multitude of books on the subject across the spectrum, from Gerald Posner’s ‘Case Closed’ and Vincent Bugliosi’s ‘Reclaiming History’ to Jim Marrs’ ‘Crossfire’ and James W. Douglass’ ‘JFK and the Unspeakable’, finding a decent documentary worthy of a watch on the topic is a challenge.

Thankfully, Stone has stepped up to the plate with JFK Revisited, a serious work and worthy documentary that offers a coherent, if limited, counter theory to the official JFK assassination story.

The film runs a brisk two-hours, features a bevy of talking heads, including John M. Newman (whose two books ‘JFK and Vietnam’ and ‘Oswald and the CIA’ are terrific), David Talbot (who wrote ‘The Devil’s Chessboard’ – another fantastic book), Robert F. Kennedy Jr., James K. Galbraith, Dr. Cyril Wecht and Dr. Henry Lee, and is a well-paced primer that would be a useful launching pad for anyone interested in diving even deeper into the assassination.

There is a four-hour cut of the film which will allegedly be made available to the public in the new year, and I’m looking forward to seeing that version as I assume it gets more into the specifics of who did the actual shooting, a subject the at-times rushed two-hour version foregoes in favor of more foundational topics.

The film does examine a plethora of fascinating JFK assassination topics though, including Oswald’s numerous and obvious connections to the intelligence community. The Warren Commission’s, the intel community’s and the media’s knowing distortions and deceptions regarding the assassination. The fantasy of the magic bullet theory. The contradictory medical evidence from Parkland Hospital in Dallas and the autopsy at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland. The other remarkably similar plots to kill Kennedy in Chicago and Tampa leading up to Dallas, which included other Oswald-esque patsies Thomas Arthur Vallee and Gilberto Lopez. As well as the story of Abraham Bolden, the first black secret service agent, who tried to inform authorities of the Chicago plot but instead of being hailed a hero was railroaded and sent to prison.

JFK Revisited also spotlights the struggle between Kennedy and the political establishment. Kennedy’s famed American University speech of June 1963, where he laid out his vision for a newfound, peaceful American foreign policy, opens the film. This vision is foundational to ‘the why’ of Stone’s theory regarding the assassination as it provides motive for the intelligence agencies and military to act to remove a president they deemed soft on communism and weak in general.

Kennedy wanted to promote anti-colonialism, normalize relations with Cuba, not make the same mistake as the French in Vietnam, and have détente with the Soviets, even including combining efforts in the space race.

The Intelligence community and Pentagon had a very different and much more nefarious agenda. They were busy eliminating Lumumba in the Congo, fomenting a military coup in France, conjuring both the Bay of Pigs and Operation Northwoods – which would use false flag terror attacks on U.S. targets to force a war in Cuba, and pushing for American escalation in Vietnam.

This is why Kennedy moved to reduce the CIA budget by 20%, fired CIA warhorse Allen Dulles (who curiously enough would become a powerful member of the Warren Commission), and famously declared he would shatter the CIA into a million pieces. According to Stone, the CIA beat Kennedy to the punch as it shattered his skull into a million pieces in Dealey Plaza, on November 22nd, 1963.

The gaping, gangrenous wound at the heart of America that rots our national soul, was born on that fateful day, and it still festers and it still matters.

Unlike both malignant political parties and the shameless corporate media, Oliver Stone, whose status as pariah is the fuel that powers all his documentaries, understands this, and he’s trying to heal that wound by seeking out the truth regarding JFK’s killing.

While the establishment may ignore JFK Revisited, the general public shouldn’t. It’s a useful and insightful film for anyone who wants to understand their government and what it’s willing to do in order to maintain its grip on power and the lucrative status quo.

Seek JFK Revisited out and watch it, it isn’t perfect, but it is vitally important.

For other JFK assassination related articles - check these out.

JFK and the Conspiracy Coundrum

JFK and the Media: The House Always Wins

JFK and the Big Lie

Oliver Stone, JFK Revisited and the Establishment Media

The Media Hates Conspiracy Theories…Except When They Don’t

Oliver Stone: Top Five Films

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

The Cinephile with Michael McCaffrey: Eternals

On this episode of The Cinephile with Michael McCaffrey I review the newest Marvel monstrosity Eternals.

Thanks for watching!

©2021

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 49 - Dune

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

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 49 - Dune

Thanks for listening!

©2021

Eternals: A Review and Commentary

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

My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Succession is Glorious Fun, but the Oligarchical Media Empire it Dramatizes is a Harsh Reality

HBO’s ‘Succession’ is a glorious guilty pleasure but the oligarchical family run media empire it dramatizes is actually a horrifying and harsh reality.

Four families control the majority of American media, and the Roy family of ‘Succession’ is an entertaining and clever amalgam of the dysfunction of them all.

Succession, HBO’s deliriously addictive and seductive soap opera that follows the travails of the Roy family dynasty and their media and business empire, is back in full swing for its highly anticipated third season.

The show is obviously a work of fiction, but the blueprint of the story is frighteningly familiar to anyone paying attention to our ever-consolidating media landscape lorded over by an oligarchy of just four families.

If you’ve not seen it, Succession is a sort of Shakespearean stew of palace intrigue set in the uber-wealthy and powerful world of monopolized media’s master class. It’s kind of what you’d get if you tossed King Lear, Richard III, Macbeth and Hamlet into a witch’s brew with the Murdoch, Redstone, Cox and Roberts families that control most of America’s media market.

The Roy family of Succession, with patriarch Logan and sons Kendall, Roman and Connor and daughter Siobhan, is most often likened to the media mogul Murdoch family.

The 80-year-old Logan, played with scowling ferocity by the inimitable Bryan Cox, is reminiscent of Rupert Murdoch’s combative and domineering leadership of NewsCorp. Logan’s sprawling media conglomerate Waystar RoyCo and its conservative cable news channels certainly bear a resemblance to the star-spangled simp-fest of Fox News.

Logan’s dueling sons Kendall, exquisitely portrayed by Jeremy Strong, and Roman, a fantastic Kieran Culkin, also bear some similarities to Murdoch’s sons, James and Lachlan, as does their internecine warfare to find favor with, or advantage over, their powerful father.

The scandal that befalls Waystar RoyCo, with accusations of sexual misconduct and the like, is also eerily familiar to the tawdry accusations that knee-capped Fox News and its leader Roger Ailes and star Bill O’Reilly.

But the Murdochs aren’t the only family dynasty running a media empire for Succession to emulate. Another is the Redstone family, long led by Sumner Redstone, who died in 2020.

Sumner’s media empire of Viacom/CBS/Paramount certainly resembled Waystar, and his personal life is akin to Logan Roy’s too, as it’s littered with adultery, charges of cruelty and failed relationships with women.

The most striking resemblance though between Logan Roy and Sumner Redstone is that they both have/had ambitious daughters. Logan’s daughter, Siobhan, gloriously portrayed by the beguiling Sarah Snook, is making a calculated bid for the family throne, similar to Sumner’s daughter Shari, who battled with her father over control of the family business and ultimately took over his vast empire after his death.

Sumner’s son, Brent, who in Roy-esque fashion sued his father and sister Shari, and was eventually bought out after he was removed from the board of Viacom’s parent company National Amusements.

Besides the Murdochs and the Redstones, the Cox and Roberts families are also Succession-like dynasties whose family business is media empire.

Cox Enterprises, with its major subsidiaries Cox Communications and Cox Media Group, is run by James Cox Kennedy, grandson of the company’s founder, James M. Cox, a two-time Governor of Ohio.

Kennedy’s earthy mother, Barbara Cox Anthony, and his cosmopolitan aunt, Anna Cox Chambers, long had controlling intertest of the family empire in spite of their love/hate, very distant relationship, which seems eerily similar to Logan Roy’s relationship with his estranged brother Ewan Roy.

Kennedy eventually took over the massive company from his aunt at the age of 41, and while the aristocratic Cox family isn’t as prone to paparazzi or media prying as the Redstones and Murdochs, they’re just as powerful.

The same is true of the Roberts family, which founded and runs mammoth telecommunications conglomerate Comcast. Billionaire Brian L. Roberts took over Comcast at the tender young age of 31 from his father Ralph and now runs the media monster that includes NBC/Universal.

Brian’s ascent to corporate power was swift, but despite siblings having no interest in the family business, he still solidified his powerful position as CEO and Chairman by pulling up the drawbridge and literally having his leadership written into Comcast’s articles of incorporation. There will be no sibling coup d’etat at Comcast.

The same is certainly not true on Succession which is why it’s such a fun show to watch. But despite being an eminently compelling and entertaining piece of capitalism porn, the reality it dramatizes is both horrifying and dispiriting.

Having just four families be the movers, shakers and opinion makers controlling so much of America’s media, controlling discourse, manufacturing consent and silencing dissent, is detrimental to democracy if not terminal to the republic.

These aristocrats and oligarchs, despite their pretentious and vacuous displays of philanthropy, are populated by spoiled and sadistic monsters who only care about preserving the status quo in order to secure and ensure their egregious wealth and power.

These monopolist corporate tyrants use their wealth and propaganda power to influence politicians tasked with regulating them to get further expansion of their family businesses, so that they can then use their expanded wealth and propaganda power to further pressure politicians to allow further expansion of their wealth and propaganda power. This endless cycle of corruption is corroding the core foundations of American democracy as it allows these family run media misinformation manufacturers to keep the public perpetually disinformed and deceived.

Ultimately, we can turn off Succession and walk away from its spectacle of egregious privilege and dramatic display of family intrigue, but unfortunately reality is just a less entertaining but more depressing version of the same insidious disease.

I love Succession, I just wish it was total fantasy and not a terrifyingly real glimpse of the four oligarchical families manipulating our minds through their mendacious media machines.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Colin in Black and White: Miniseries Review and Commentary

Colin Kaepernick’s new Netflix autobiography ‘Colin in Black and White’ is the Super Bowl of self-pitying narcissism that reveals hims to be an entitled, self-absorbed jerk.  

Colin in Black and White is the new mini-series on Netflix that dramatizes Colin Kaepernick’s teenage years where he struggles against racism and to be taken seriously as a quarterback.

Kaepernick, if you’ll remember, once led the San Francisco 49ers to the Super Bowl and made a name for himself by kneeling during the national anthem at NFL games to protest against racial injustice, police brutality and systematic oppression.

I utterly loathe flag fetishism as a mindless display of vacuousness, so I never had a problem with Kaepernick’s protests. I disagree with him on some of the specifics of his stance, but I always respected his kneeling. The way I see it, if the NFL wants to turn their games into de facto celebrations of militarism, then players kneeling shouldn’t be beyond the pale.

I also think it’s obvious that Kaepernick was unjustly black-balled by the league for his protests. While I admit that Kaepernick is a very specific and unique QB talent and that his skill set isn’t a fit on every team, it’s ludicrous to think he couldn’t at least have been a back-up somewhere. Of course, that brings up the question of whether he would accept that secondary role and at a price below what he thinks he deserves.

The reason I mention my moderate stance on the controversial Kaepernick is because I want to make it clear I went into watching Colin in Black and White without an axe to grind against the man, quite the opposite actually.

Having said that, let me tell you that Colin in Black and White isn’t just an amateurish tv show so awful it would be laughable as an after school special, it also exposes Kaepernick as being quite a despicable and deplorable human being.

This show is like the Super Bowl of self-pitying narcissism and Kaepernick is Bart Starr, Joe Montana and Tom Brady wrapped into one.

The series opens by literally transforming the NFL combine into a slave auction. Besides the fact that the NFL combine is something so elitist most football players of any race can only ever dream about attending, and that players at the combine have worked their whole lives to get there and are competing to become draft picks and multi-millionaires with generational wealth who’ll be worshiped like gods in our culture…yeah…the combine is EXACTLY like a slave auction.

Colin Kaepernick’s ignorance about the horrors of actual slavery is to be expected though since his social justice warrior pose and victimhood addiction apparently makes him blind, deaf and dumb regarding Nike, the company he has a big endorsement deal with that uses slave labor to make its profits. Of course, Nike is immune from Kaepernick’s social justice posing because they give him a fair share of their blood money.

It’s equally absurd witnessing real-life Colin watch and comment as his teenage screen version pouts and preens like a cheap tart at a red-light street over his anger and disappointment that the best colleges in the country want to give him a baseball scholarship, and Major League Baseball wants to draft him and give him a million-dollar signing bonus, and the prettiest white girls in school throw themselves at him, while all little Colin wants is to get a scholarship to play QB and have a black girlfriend. Boo fucking hoo.

What really turned my stomach though about Colin in Black and White is that Kaepernick’s adoptive, working-class white parents, insipidly portrayed by Mary Louise Parker and Nick Offerman, are depicted as vapid racist caricatures.

The fact that Kaepernick, who co-created this series with Ava Duvernay, would belittle, demean and slander the couple (who are still alive) that raised, loved and nurtured him from infancy, and shelled out big bucks by paying for travel baseball and high-end specialized QB coaches to help him achieve his dream, is repugnant and repulsive.

In one episode where Kaepernick’s adoption is briefly explored, the show frames his soon-to-be parents as deciding to adopt Colin only after another adoption falls through. Kaepernick then chimes in with his woe-is-me wail that “since the day I was born, I’ve never been anyone’s first choice.”

Again, boo fucking hoo Kaepernick, you sad sack clown. Your parents actually chose you. They got up in the middle of the night to feed you and change you, they held you and loved you, they gave everything to you and they moved heaven and earth to make your dreams come true, and because they’re a different skin color than you, you reward them, not with gratitude, or respect, or love, but with a tv show that bends over backwards to publicly ridicule them. That says more about you, Kaepernick, than it does about your parents.

Of course, Kaepernick turns everything into racism because he’s a nitwit incapable of understanding anything else. So, when he and his parents disagree over the usual things teenagers and parents disagree over…hair styles, facial hair, wardrobe, choice in girlfriends, Colin sees this as proof of the racist conspiracy against him.

Due to Kaepernick’s desperate need for victimhood, everyone is racist in his eyes…coaches, referees, umpires, opposing fans, opponents, hotel employees, his parents. The fact that schools weren’t tripping over Kaepernick too is because of racism.

The word that kept popping into my head as I watched this self-pitying shitshow was pathetic.  There is absolutely nothing quite as egregiously pathetic as a grown man wallowing in long past perceived slights from adolescence. Nothing.

Adding to the idiocy is that Kaepernick, dressed all in black with a massive afro, looking like Morpheus from The Matrix wearing a wig as a joke, interjects various tidbits of racial knowledge throughout the show. Kaepernick is so hysterically ridiculous in these segments he seems like a character from Dave Chappelle on The Chappelle Show or Eddie Murphy on Saturday Night Live.

On the bright-side, Jaden Michael plays teenage Kaepernick on the show, and as bad as the show is, he’s terrific. Despite not having a lick of athleticism in his body, he’s a compelling screen presence and an actor who conveys an intriguing inner life. He’s a talent to watch.

A talent not to watch is Colin Kaepernick, whose NFL career is most certainly over, and considering his dead-eyed appearance on the self-serving, self-aggrandizing, self-pitying, celebration of delusional victimhood, Colin in Black and White, which reveals his truly loathsome nature and intellectual midgetry, one can only hope he disappears from the public eye as well. The sooner the better.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021