Asteroid City: A Review - The Unbearable Quirkiness of Wes Anderson

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

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT/SEE IT. Cinephiles should watch it because it really is masterfully photographed, but normal people will find its excessive twee-ness and unorthodox storytelling tiresome and/or irritating.

The word “twee” is defined in the dictionary as “excessively or affectedly quaint, pretty or sentimental.” Surprisingly, filmmaker Wes Anderson, whose films include Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, The Darjeeling Limited, Moonrise Kingdom, The Fantastic Mr. Fox, Isle of Dogs, The Grand Budapest Hotel, The French Dispatch and his newest cinematic venture, Asteroid City, is not pictured next to that definition in the dictionary since his movies are the ultimate cinematic embodiment of the word – for good or for ill.

Asteroid City, Anderson’s 11th film, hit theatres this past June 16th and barely anyone noticed. The film, which boasts a large ensemble cast of stars, including such luminaries as Scarlet Johansson and Tom Hanks, quickly came and went, but it just premiered on the streaming service Peacock – where I got a chance to finally see it.

As a general rule I love that Wes Anderson films exist even when I don’t love the Wes Anderson film I’m watching. This is very true of Asteroid City as it is an impeccable piece of cinema, but not a very good movie.

On its surface, the film, set in a sort of hyper-stylistic 1950’s America, follows the travails of a disparate group of people who come to a remote desert town (Asteroid City) for a youth astronomy convention and science competition.

Of course, Wes Anderson being Wes Anderson, he doesn’t just tell a straight forward story about people and a place. Asteroid City is really like a cinematic Matryoshka Doll (Russian Nesting Doll), as it is really a stage play, within a stage play, within a stage play, within a movie.

That set up is as twee as can be, and the execution of the film is twee too…but in a good way.

Anderson, as always, shoots a glorious movie. His highly stylized approach is visually stunning and includes sharp framing, crisp camera movements and exquisite colors and lighting. Anderson and his longtime collaborator, cinematographer Robert Yoeman, once again create a film with a stunning level of visual precision to it that is greatly appealing and extraordinarily impressive.

But despite the visual feast on display, the film’s storytelling and drama is pretty thin gruel.

There are, as is par for the course in a Wes Anderson movie, the cavalcade of eccentric, emotionally distant characters who behave in idiosyncratic ways as they experience dramatic life anomalies.

In terms of storytelling and character development, like much of Anderson’s recent work, it falls very flat. Yes, the story is clever…but much too clever for its own good, and the end result is a film that feels too cute by half…or considerably more than half.

The story’s Matryushka Doll/multiple layers don’t add to the drama but consistently detract from it and feel like a cheap cinematic parlor trick to try and enhance a shallow idea. The characters are all thin caricatures, and the dialogue feels less stagey and theatrical than just plain phony.

The lead of the film is Jason Schwartzman, a frequent face in Anderson’s films. Schwartzman is a mystery to me as he has never been good in anything in which I’ve ever seen him. Schwartzman is cousins with the co-creator of the story for Asteroid City, Roman Coppola of the vast and impressive Coppola family. Hmmm…maybe I’m beginning to understand why Jason Schwartzman has a career despite his minimal talent.

Scarlet Johansson is very good in Asteroid City as Midge Campbell, an actress and mother, and her work in this film is a pretty notable reminder that she is a movie star and would’ve been one in any era of Hollywood.

The rest of the cast are fine, I guess. From Tom Hanks to Bryan Cranston to Tilda Swinton to Maya Hawke to Jeffrey Wright to Steve Carrell and on and on, are all pretty forgettable. Watching this cast perform this script is unfortunately like watching a junior high drama class play out an inside joke that no one else gets or even remotely cares about.

Like seemingly all of Wes Anderson’s films, the movie also features oddball teenagers and kids who act like adults, and goofy adults who act like kids. This formula has occasionally worked in Anderson’s past, but here it feels tired to the point of cliché.

As for the deeper analysis of Asteroid City, it is interesting that it deals with the notion of aliens, UFOs and visitation all while those topics are in the headlines in the real world.

As congress holds hearings on alleged crashed UFOs that have been retrieved along with Non-Human Biological Entities, and military pilots share their stories and data of interactions with UFOs, it is pretty interesting to watch a film that somewhat grapples with the question of how earthlings would handle the notion of not being alone in the universe, or that they’re not on top of the knowledge food chain.

I’ve been interested in, and studying the UFO topic for a very long time, and Asteroid City portrays a scenario which feels surprisingly pretty realistic despite being played for laughs.

If a UFO landed on the White House lawn and aliens got out and waved for the cameras, there would probably be a gigantic freak out by the populace accompanied by a reflexively authoritarian and tyrannical response from government. And then, after a few weeks (or even days considering our attention deficit culture) people would basically go back to their lives and their usual petty bullshit. Governments, of course, would keep their newly pronounced and always-expanding powers – in order to consolidate their power, silence dissent, line their own pockets and cover their own asses, forever and ever.

The aliens would probably not really care about us one way or the other, which may be the most frightening prospect of all…that the human race is utterly irrelevant.

Anyway, those are the thoughts I had after watching Asteroid City, which to its credit, at least had me mulling the future of mankind, aliens and the impact of disclosure.

As for whether I recommend Asteroid City? Well, if you work in the film industry or are a cinephile, then yes, I’d say you should watch it because Wes Anderson is a very particular talent and his films are important in the grander arc of cinematic history and within the current art of cinema. But if you’re a normal human being who just wants to watch a good movie, maybe be entertained or enlightened or deeply moved, then Asteroid City is not for you because, unfortunately, it doesn’t really do any of those things.

 Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo

©2023

Barbie: A Review - Pink Bubblegum Bullshit

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

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. Underwhelming and disappointing. If you’re desperate to see it I’d say save your money and wait until it hits a streaming service.

I had no intention of seeing Barbie, the new blockbuster about the iconic Mattel doll starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, because I didn’t HAVE to see Barbie. You see, when I worked as a cultural critic for RT I had to watch and write about a lot of stuff I wasn’t that interested in simply because other people were interested in it which meant that it was culturally relevant. Well, I no longer work for RT so I no longer have to do that.

So, when Barbie came along, I just thought, due to the film’s obvious cultural politics and the fact that the film’s writer/director is Greta Gerwig – someone whose work I’ve never thought much of, it wasn’t for me so I’d skip this new battle in the endless and tiresome culture war.

But then Barbie, due to its relentless and highly effective marketing campaign, became an undeniable phenomenon, hauling in over a billion dollars at the box office and igniting a fan frenzy not seen at cineplexes in years, so I thought maybe I should see it. And then my wife said she wanted to see it…and whatever Lola wants…Lola gets! My thinking was, if people are going so nuts for this film - then maybe it’s worth seeing.

I went to a 10:30 AM screening on a Tuesday morning. Barbie had been in theaters for over two weeks at this point and still my screening here in mundane Middle America was totally sold out. Barbie is, like the recent Taylor Swift tour, satiating a primal need among our collective feminine culture for a massive communal “event”. An example of this eventizing impulse was that the theater I attended, which admittedly is not particularly big, looked like a sea of Pepto Bismol as it was overwhelmingly packed with pink wearing middle aged women (including one wearing just a big pink t-shirt…which didn’t cover nearly enough of her nether regions as it should have!) as well as teenage and pre-pubescent girls donning a ton of pink…along with some rather unfortunate looking pink-clad teen boys imprisoned in the friend zone desperate to win favor with their girl crushes with whom they were attending the screening.

My hope in seeing Barbie was that it was good and that I’d like it – I wasn’t the least bit interested in hate watching it. I fully expected to dislike the de rigueur girl power politics – something which I find to be pitiful and pathetic, but I hoped to like the film despite its predictable politics…something which I often do (for example my review of Promising Young Woman) if for no other reason than my own personal politics are so unorthodox.

The opening scene was a perfect example of what I was hoping for…as the film opens with a glorious homage to Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, where Gerwig replaces Kubrick’s monkeys with little girls playing with baby dolls and the mysterious monolith is replaced with a towering Margot Robbie as Barbie. While I was off-put by the visual of little girls smashing babies (even if they are dolls) in reaction to their newfound Barbie evolution, I still nodded in approval at this brilliant bit of moviemaking and it filled me with great anticipation for what followed.

And then I watched the rest of the movie. Unfortunately, it was all downhill from there as the film meandered aimlessly through a convoluted yet corporate cookie-cutter plot, allergic to profundity or purpose, and never even remotely approaching the genius of its opening.

In totality Barbie is an underwhelming, disappointing, cheap, shoddy, shitty, bland, boring, corporate money-grab wrapped in a vacant, vapid and vacuous feminist manifesto. In other words, Barbie is a poorly made version of exactly the thing it often pretends to belittle and/or satirize.

The film begins in Barbieland, a matriarchal utopia devoid of not only male power but babies or children….even the lone pregnant Barbie is exiled to the outskirts of girl boss heaven. The bit of the film initially set in Barbieland is ever-so-slightly amusing at first and then it gets old very, very fast. There’s a dance number in this Barbieland sequence that is supposed to be fun and funny but that is so anemic and tiresome as to be astounding. The low point is when Gerwig uses a ridiculously cliched record scratch to inject reality into the phony festivities. Yawn.

The final two-thirds of the film feature Barbie venturing to the “real world” – which is nothing like the actual real world, and the “real world” venturing in to Barbieland. All of it is sloppy but the scenes in the “real world”, in particular, are a total storytelling and cinematic shit show devoid of any redeeming cinematic qualities. The Barbie in the real-world, fish-out-of-water stuff shockingly doesn’t even muster a minimal amount of comedy.

To be fair, I did laugh out loud a few times during Barbie, all thanks to the aggressively amusing Ryan Gosling who absolutely crushes it as the desperate and dim-witted Ken. Gosling is destined to be nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his unbreakable and unshakeable performance as Barbie’s platonic boy toy.

Speaking of the Oscars, it’s 100% guaranteed that there will be a Barbie-themed musical number at this year’s Oscar ceremony. You can absolutely bet your life on that. You can also count on Mattel to turn the success of the Barbie movie into a Broadway musical…which is an eerily similar concept to the hysterically funny Marvel musical featured in the Disney Plus series Hawkeye…except Mattel won’t be making the Barbie musical ironically.

Margot Robbie is ridiculously gorgeous and perfect as Barbie but there isn’t much there, there. Robbie’s physical perfection is all she needs to play this part and when she’s asked to do more than that her acting is undercut by a really abysmal script that is chock full of cringe, freshman level women’s studies diatribes that ring hollow and feel forced making Barbie feel less human than she already is.

Besides the glorious Gosling, the other supporting performances in Barbie are shockingly devoid of life.

Who knew that both Kate McKinnon and Will Ferrell could not only be so unfunny, but so bland and so forgettable? You’d be hard pressed to find two more energized comedic actors but on Barbie they seem constrained to the point of comatose.

Somewhat surprising is that for a movie full of Barbies, there’s only one attractive one in the bunch – Margot Robbie…and she is certainly very attractive despite the sneaky and obtuse internet marketing campaign prior to the film’s release arguing that she isn’t. I have no problem with a Barbie movie featuring the vast diversity of the Barbie doll collection…which means we get a black Barbie, a fat Barbie, a wheelchair Barbie, a trans-Barbie and so on…but what befuddles me is why do all these Barbies have to be so “beauty-impaired” and visually unappealing?

The rest of the supporting cast are all interchangeable, dull and completely forgettable. Issa Rae and Simu Liu are like two sides of the same charisma-deficient coin. Neither one is remotely interesting or likeable.

Michael Cera as Allan feels like he’s in an entirely different movie…maybe because the script he has to work with is so incoherent and idiotic.

America Ferrera plays Gloria, a mom and Mattel employee, and she is utterly abysmal. She does get to have the big monologue in the movie which begins with “it’s literally impossible to be a woman…” and goes downhill from there. This monologue has middle-aged women across the nation pumping their fists in the air like gold chain and muscle shirt wearing Guidos at a Rocky movie when the Italian Stallion gets off the canvas and beats the shit out of the villain du jour. But here’s the thing…I understand the perspective behind the “it’s literally impossible to be a woman” monologue, but the fact is it isn’t “literally” impossible to be a woman…billions of women do it every minute of every day. Yes, it is no doubt difficult to be a woman due to the constant contradictions one must navigate…but you know what else is equally difficult…being a man. The obstacles and difficulties one must face and overcome as a woman are no harder than the ones men must overcome, they’re just different.

Life is hard for human beings, and for modern day feminists to claim empowerment by perpetually play the victim all while demonizing men, is pretty repugnant and frankly counterproductive.

Barbie also does what our awful culture has normalized which is to conflate masculinity with toxic masculinity, a perilous proposition since it is unquestionably masculine men that carved out a safe space in a dangerous world where women are free to make insipid and insidious films about how awful men are.

My wife, a very, very independent, powerful and, dare I say it, feminist woman, turned to me after the film and the first thing she said was that she found it to be “damaging”. As the mother of a young son, she felt the film sent a negative message to girls and woman not just about the nature of men and boys but about what it means to be a girl/woman, so much so that it depressed her and made her fear for the future. And I must say, I completely concur with her astute observations.

I’ve heard it said that Barbie is Black Panther for white women, and that is very true as Black Panther was an overhyped, shitty movie too that became super successful because seeing it was an act of cultural-political virtue signaling.

Other movies have somewhat captured the cultural political zeitgeist in the same way that Barbie has but from a different angle. For example, Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper was a terrible movie but flag waving numbskulls flocked to see and support it because it reinforced their patriotic – or rather anti-liberal, bona fides. That American Sniper was a God-awful movie regardless of its politics was irrelevant as all the flag-wavers loved it even before it started – they loved it simply because it existed…just like the pink clad buffoons are enamored by Barbie regardless of how obviously bad it is.

Sound of Freedom is another movie that is a virtue signal movie currently in theatres. Sound of Freedom is about the scourge of child trafficking and has become a cause celebre for anti-libtard right wingers and as a result has done exceedingly well at the box office – raking in over a hundred million dollars. No doubt the crossover of American Sniper fans with Sound of Freedom fans is enormous. I’ve not seen Sound of Freedom…mostly because I just assume it is poorly made…but I can plainly see that it’s a virtue signal movie just like Barbie.

Another film I thought of when watching Barbie was, ironically enough, The Passion of the Christ. Mel Gibson’s 2004 film smashed box office records for an independent film and made him something like half a billion dollars since he financed it himself. Gibson wisely marketed the film directly to churches and church groups and it became a cultural signifier among Bush loving right wingers.

The marketing of The Passion of the Christ was remarkable, as, just like Barbie, everyone was talking about it even if they hadn’t seen it. Barbie’s marketing was brilliant because it removed the film’s politics from the campaign, made it seem as if it were for adults AND kids (it’s not for kids!) and it was absolutely everywhere. You couldn’t escape the Barbie marketing machine, and frankly still can’t. That the marketing campaign has succeeded in making Barbie a cultural phenomenon doesn’t diminish the fact that the movie is garbage.

Truth be told I’ve never understood the critical love for Greta Gerwig’s films. Gerwig’s 2017 film Lady Bird was so overrated as to be astonishing. Critics adored the film yet I found it to be painfully thin and embarrassingly amateurish. It seemed to me that Gerwig, much like Jordan Peele who came out with Get Out in the same year (2017), was cashing in on the angry liberal political hysteria of the post-Trump election and were being elevated due to their race and gender, not their talent. Having seen both of Gerwig’s and Peele’s films since 2017 has only reinforced my belief regarding their lack of talent and skill and the absurd critical love they’ve received.

As for Barbie, I’ve had a rather interesting perspective on the film as I’ve watched from a distance as the usual suspects on both the left and right instinctively and reflexively loved or hated the film. Having finally seen the movie I can say that people who love it, who when pressed on its numerous shortcomings all say the same thing in defense of it, namely that “it’s fun!”, are delusional dupes and dopes. On the flip side, many of the critics reflexively hating it are so stuck on its politics that they don’t even care to examine the filmmaking….which feels less delusional than just plain disingenuous.

As for me, I didn’t like Barbie for the sole reason that Barbie isn’t a good movie.  Barbie isn’t funny and it isn’t interesting. That the film pretends to be rebellious, if not revolutionary, in its messaging, but then spews out the most corporate-friendly and approved, pedantic neo-feminist pablum, wrapped in a cavalcade of visually listless, dramatically lifeless, comedically flaccid scenes, makes it feel like watching a pink-hued Human Resources film for corporate employees to learn the new Diversity, Equity and Inclusion office rules.

The bottom line is that the masses being so enamored of Barbie says considerably less about the quality of the movie than it does about the easily manipulated morons populating our world and their astonishing level of group-think and gullibility, as well as the sorry state of our society and cinema.

Unfortunately, so few people nowadays are self-aware or introspective enough to resist massive marketing campaigns like the one around Barbie, which brainwashed otherwise intelligent people into not only mindlessly devouring this odious, rancid corporate pink taco but declaring they love it. I too succumbed and took a bite of the gigantic, rancid corporate pink taco that is Barbie, but to my minimal credit I at least am not foolish enough to don an oversized pink t-shirt sans pants and shriek “yummy…how fun!”

In conclusion, it is literally impossible for me to recommend Barbie.

Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo

©2023

Meg 2: The Trench - A Review : I Don't Love the Smell of Rotting Fish in the Morning

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

My Rating: ½ stars out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. This is bad…and not so-bad-it’s-good type of bad…just plain old bad.

Meg 2: The Trench, starring Jason Statham and directed by Ben Wheatley, could technically be classified as a docu-drama as it dramatizes the greatest threat we as humans face in the 21st century…Megalodons escaping from a prehistoric deep sea trench and wreaking havoc upon mini-submarines and expensive island resorts populated by wealthy Chinese social media influencers.

The scourge of Megalodons upon the earth is a topic very close to my heart as my cousin Rusty was killed by one five years ago while nude para-sailing in the South China Sea. In the wake of Rusty’s tragic, yet erotically-charged death, I studied up on the subject and learned that Megalodons are the leading cause of death for people nude para-sailing as well as for those driving mini-subs into a pre-historic deep-sea trench.

Due to my sad history with Megalodons, I knew that watching Meg 2: The Trench would be emotionally taxing. And it was…so very, very taxing. But I also knew that I was in good hands on my Meg 2 journey as the film’s star Jason Statham is unquestionably the world’s greatest actor, and the film’s director, Ben Wheatley, is arguably the greatest filmmaker in the history of cinema.

Speaking of the history of cinema, as a student of film history I often try to put the films I review into the broader context of the overall expanse of the art form. In the case of Meg 2: The Trench, I can confidently say that one hundred years from now people will look back and clearly be able to delineate that cinema history is broken down into to two basic eras…Before Meg 2: The Trench, and After Meg 2: The Trench.

The specifics as to why Meg 2: The Trench is so astounding are almost too long to list, but I’ll try.

First there’s the story. Thankfully screenwriters Jon and Erich Hoeber decided to discard a coherent approach and instead threw together some incomprehensible scenes that don’t seem to have any connection to one another at all.

The decision by the Hoebers to avoid creating any interesting characters, or writing compelling scenes or action sequences, was also a wise choice, as it forces the audience to imagine a better movie in their heads while stuck watching this movie. To force imagination exercises upon audiences is a courageous and much-needed decision by the writers of Meg 2, as audiences have coasted long enough by having stories told to them and not having to make up their own in order to pass the longest two-hours of their life.

The editing on Meg 2 is particularly noteworthy as it borrows heavily and poorly from the French New Wave movement by splicing together scenes and movements which have no connection at all. The editing jumps around so much that characters appear in places at which they shouldn’t appear, which makes the whole thing very confusing and gives the audience the sense that they have suffered severe head trauma. Bravo to the editors for forcing audiences to better understand the experience of head trauma survivors!

Director Wheatley’s mastery of underwater filmmaking is on full display in the cinematically muddled and dramatically inert deep-sea hike that is completely incomprehensible. Wheatley’s decision to remove the drama from the film by eliminating peril to any of the main characters by basically giving them superpowers, is also a masterstroke, as is his sprinkling in of impotent jump scares throughout. Equally brilliant was the idea to have the Megalodons be basically background actors in their own movie. And adding in some bizarre, amphibious deep-sea dog monsters is just another piece of evidence that Ben Wheatley is the Kurosawa of the 21st Century.

But the greatest part of the film is undoubtedly the cast, most notably star Jason Statham. Statham’s Olivier-esque performance is not surprising considering his past work, but it is still jaw-dropping. No one, and I mean no one, can act on a Jet Ski as well as Statham. Statham’s connection with his Jet Ski is considerably more believable than his character’s alleged parental love for a teen orphan he’s sort of adopted.

The rest of the cast are equally magnetic and compelling. Wu Jing is a Chinese guy who can’t act and plays a Chinese guy. Sophia Cai is a Chinese girl who can’t act who plays a Chinese girl. Sienna Guillory is a white woman who can’t act and she plays an evil white woman…the same is true of Skyler Samuels. Not to be outdone by any of the other bad actors is Sergio Peris-Monchetta, who is a Latino guy who can’t act who plays a Latino bad guy. As an ensemble, this group is remarkably both wooden and lifeless as well as ridiculously over-the-top, and one can only tip their cap to their dedication to entirely ignoring their craft.

Meg 2: The Trench is the sequel to 2018’s The Meg. If you haven’t seen The Meg you might be a bit confused watching Meg 2, but to be fair I saw The Meg (and thought it was a harmless, silly bit of fun) and was a more than a bit confused watching Meg 2, so who knows, maybe it doesn’t matter…and not to get all existential on you, but after watching Meg 2: The Trench I’m feeling like maybe nothing matters.

 Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo

©2023

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 105 - Oppenheimer

On this apocalyptically combustible episode, Barry and I go nuclear in our discussion of Christopher Nolan's new movie Oppenheimer. Topics discussed include a heated debate over the movie, musings on Nolan's career and a ranking of his filmography from top to bottom. 

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 105 - Oppenheimer

Thanks for listening!

©2023

Jury Duty: A TV Review - Guilty of Being Funny

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

My Rating: 3.25 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. Brevity is the soul of wit and this quick hitting reality/hoax series is brief and funny.

I finally got around to watching Jury Duty, the much-talked-about reality/hoax/sitcom series that premiered in April of this year on Amazon, and I have some thoughts.

The premise of Jury Duty is that a collection of people are called to serve jury duty for a civil trial in Los Angeles. But the twist is that the entire trial is fake, and all of the jurors except one – the target of the hoax, are actors who are in on the scam, as are the fake judge, bailiff, plaintiff and defendant.

The thing about Jury Duty that really surprised me was that unlike nearly every other reality tv show ever made, it actually left me with some hope for humanity.

The “regular guy” who is the target of the hoax is Ronald Gladden, who is the most normal of normal guys imaginable, and he is a really good dude. He treats everyone, no matter how weird or annoying they may be…and they are often very weird and very annoying, with not just respect but with genuine kindness. He also takes his civil duty as a juror seriously and doesn’t just bide his time on jury duty but actually fully engages with the process.

Watching Ronald navigate some very potentially uncomfortable-to-the-point-of-being-ludicrous situations with grace and good-nature restored some of my long-lost hope in humanity.  

The reality, pardon the pun, is that the majority of people in the world are like Ronald, but the vast majority of reality tv, the most loathsome of television genres, is about rewarding boorish behavior and spotlighting self-serving, self-centered, fame-whoring anti-Ronalds.

For this reason, I was skeptical of even giving Jury Duty a try as I assumed it was the usual soulless formula of talentless/narcissistic people masquerading as real people acting like fake people reality tv bullshit that always leaves me irritated, aggravated and depressed. But watching Ronald thoughtfully negotiate through the bizarre situations he is thrust into, and do it with such a pleasant and appealing attitude, not only left me laughing but also optimistic…not a state I’m used to.

Jury duty in real life is like spending time in Darwin’s waiting room, and the series Jury Duty is no different as the fake jurors are a perfect and hilarious encapsulation of the army of morons and misfits that inhabit our world.

For example, there’s Todd, the socially awkward pseudo-inventor, who never fails to be incessantly weird. The actor who plays Todd, David Brown, is remarkable as he repeatedly does the most insane and inane things but never even approaches breaking character or laughing…a Herculean accomplishment.

Joining Todd is Noah, the clueless Mormon, and the far-out floozy Jeannie, who is hungry to take Noah’s virginity.

There’s also the crotchety old lady, Barbara, and Ken, a slow-talking Korean, who are unique enough to be realistic but not so odd as to raise red flags. The same is true of Nikki the bailiff, who I never expected to NOT be a real-life bailiff.

The “star” of the show is actor James Marsden who plays a hyper-narcissistic version of himself. This version of Marsden is constantly talking about his fame and his movies and even gets his own private bailiff so he can stay at home and not be sequestered with the riff raff at a hotel for the trial. Ronald takes all of Marsden’s celebrity quirks in stride and with a smile…even when Marsden takes egregious advantage of him in the most odious (literally) of ways.

I am a pretty tough audience, but Jury Duty was actually able to make me laugh out loud on numerous occasions, something that rarely happens when I watch tv.

The last show that had me laughing and cringing this much was last year’s bizarre, pseudo-reality show The Rehearsal on HBO. In fact, The Rehearsal and Jury Duty would be a fascinating and fantastic double feature to watch back-to-back, as they somewhat inhabit the same documentary/hoax genre but approach it in very different ways.

Jury Duty is a breezy watch, as each of its eight episodes average a brisk 24 minutes or so and keep you engaged the whole time.

So, if you want to experience the absurdist humor of serving on a jury without having to experience the hell of actually serving on a jury, then I strongly recommend you hop into the bizarro-world of Jury Duty.

My final verdict on this show is that it is NOT GUILTY of being the usual reality tv junk and is definitely GUILTY of being funny…and maybe…just maybe…a little bit profound…or at least inspirational.

 Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo

©2023

Oppenheimer: A Review - Destroyer of Worlds, Creator of Great Cinema

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

My Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. The rarest of the rare in our current culture, an exquisitely crafted movie made for grown-ups. A masterful work that deserves to be seen on the big screen.

Oppenheimer, the new film written and directed by Christopher Nolan which recounts the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the man who first made the atomic bomb, is a stunning accomplishment for a variety of reasons.

The first of which is that it is made with a level of technical and cinematic proficiency rarely seen in our current age of mundane, mind-numbing, moviemaking sub-mediocrity.

Secondly, Oppenheimer is remarkable because it’s a mature movie made for adults that features zero fights and car chases that has generated a tremendous amount of interest, and if reports are to be believed, box office.

My screening here in flyover country (I’m currently living on a farm in an undisclosed part of Middle America) at noon on a Saturday was packed with a striking cross section of regular folks, the overwhelming majority of which I can confidently assume do not consider themselves cinephiles or even count themselves among regular movie goers.

As I watched the three-hour film that consists almost entirely of dramatic scenes of people talking unfold before me, I couldn’t help but wonder if these ‘regular’ people around me liked this film as much as I did.

Oppenheimer tells the sprawling story of its protagonist’s struggle with the moral and ethical burdens of his world-altering calling, but compresses it into an intimate drama that, much like how Oppenheimer builds the first atomic bomb, explodes inward first, which then triggers the greater outward conflagration.

Watching Oppenheimer, one cannot help but marvel at a filmmaker bristling with confidence and competence, the former of which is all too common (and unearned) and the latter of which all too rare nowadays. This is an ambitious movie to the point of being audacious, and I cannot think of another living filmmaker who has the unique artistic style and populist storytelling skillset of Christopher Nolan who could even approach pulling it off.

To be clear, I am not some Nolan fanboy. I respect him greatly but have had some mixed feelings about his previous work. For instance, I thought both The Dark Knight and Dunkirk were masterpieces (I think Dunkirk is his greatest film and one of the very best films of the 21st Century), but I thought Interstellar and Tenet were garbage. On the whole I find him to be a sort of new generation Spielberg without the shmaltz and obsession with children. He is the rare auteur nowadays who makes big budget – big box office, popular movies.

Nolan empties his bag of moviemaking tricks on this one as he uses time jumps, different film stocks and aspect ratios, and wonderfully deft editing to create a mainstream movie that often feels like an impressionistic fever dream.

The key to the success of this massive undertaking is Cillian Murphy who plays Oppenheimer – the American Prometheus who gives the ultimate fire to humanity. Like Dr. Frankenstein, he meddles with powers beyond his moral comprehension that ultimately hunt and haunt him for the rest of his life. If Murphy fails even a little bit in the role this movie crumbles under the weight of its own ambition, but he never stumbles, not even a little.

Murphy is able to convey the vivid, rich inner life of his character with a single, hollow-eyed close-up, and Nolan takes full advantage of his talents. Over the course of the film Murphy’s Oppenheimer goes from being a ravenously ambitious student to a callously arrogant expert to a hollowed-out martyr desperate to be punished for his egregious moral sins and all of it feels grounded and genuine and gloriously compelling.

Another very effective performance comes from Robert Downey Jr. as Lewis Strauss, an administrative admirer of Oppenheimer and bureaucratic bully. It was an absolute joy to see Downey back to serious acting after his long and fruitful run as Iron Man. Downey has not lost his chops as his Strauss is a cauldron of conflicting and conniving energy that is captivating to watch.

The other stand out performance comes from Gary Oldman, who has just one scene, but he is phenomenal in it. It’s a testament to Oldman’s prodigious talent that he can be so thoroughly unforgettable in a mere matter of moments in a movie.

The rest of the cast, for the most part, acquit themselves well enough. Matt Damon as a demanding American General Leslie Groves, is fine, as are the cavalcade of actors like Casey Affleck, Kenneth Branagh, Rami Malek and Josh Hartnett who pepper the cast.

Florence Pugh and Emily Blunt are the two main actresses and they do the best they can with roles that feel underwritten and a bit uneven. Pugh is always terrific and brings her dark magnificent energy to bear here. Blunt at first feels out of sorts in her role as Oppenheimer’s wife, but she finds her stride in the last third of the film and nails one critical scene when it matters most.

The only performances I thought were notably underwhelming were Benny Safdie as Edward Teller and Rami Malek as David Hill. Both seem out of place and rather awkward in their roles.

On the bright side, it seems definite that Cillian Murphy will be nominated for Best Actor and will probably be the odds-on favorite to win. Downey Jr. will also likely be nominated for Best Supporting Actor.

The film is beautifully photographed by cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, who himself could be staring at a second Oscar nomination (his first was for Nolan’s 2017 film Dunkirk). Hoytema’s framing, close-ups in particular, are exquisite, as is his use of color and contrast.

The soundtrack by Ludwig Goransson is also very effective and well-done. It skillfully but subtly enhances the drama of the film without over-imposing itself and feeling manipulative.

As good as the cinematography and music were, the editing by Jennifer Lame really stands out. The film jumps back and forth in time and yet never loses coherence thanks to Lame’s deft and skillful work.

It is always difficult to discern any sort of political or cultural meaning from Nolan’s films, but they seem much more apparent than usual in Oppenheimer, at least to me. Of course, one must be self-aware enough to know that they may be projecting their own ideological perspective onto a film rather than discovering the director’s intent.

For example, after Nolan’s superhero masterpiece The Dark Knight came out in 2008 there was lots of talk among members of the George W. Bush torture and death-cult that the film was about Bush as Batman being scapegoated for what he has to do to defeat the Joker/Bin Laden, the ultimate terrorist agent of chaos. I never found that argument compelling and always thought it had more to do with the guilty conscience and vacuous ideology of its adherents rather than with Nolan’s intended sub-text.

The same may be true of my reading on Oppenheimer, which seems to me to be a movie that speaks to much of our current era’s issues. For instance, Oppenheimer is persecuted for speaking out against establishment orthodoxy and for holding views deemed to be dangerous. That seems to be very relevant to our current times where wrong-think is a cultural crime as has been well documented here and elsewhere.

Oppenheimer is also a stark reminder of the destructive power and nature of human beings, and how serious that subject is but how we often take it much too lightly.

For example, we have both liberals and conservatives in this country hell bent on escalating the proxy war in Ukraine up to and including to the point of direct conflict with Russia, a nuclear armed state, in order to desperately cling to our self-delusional empire. Oppenheimer eventually came to understand the power he unleashed by building an atomic bomb, but somehow our modern culture has forgotten the earth destroying ability it possesses and feels so comfortable toying with.

And finally, one can’t help but think of Artificial Intelligence while watching Oppenheimer. AI is a great achievement for scientists but like the team at Los Alamos that unleashed the destructive power of the gods onto humans, the unintended and long-term consequences of AI seem to be a moral and ethical minefield for which its creators never seriously prepared or even remotely considered. The impending, and most likely inevitable, dire consequences of artificial intelligence feel all the more chilling when considered in the context of the moral dilemma and outcome of Oppenheimer.

Whether the film is actually about those things or I am just projecting my own fears and ideologies on to it, is ultimately irrelevant, as the film stands on its cinematic artistry alone regardless of its deeper or wider meaning.

The thing that stood out to me the most regarding Oppenheimer was just the fact that it exists and that regular people are interested in seeing it.

For decades the art of cinema has been in steep decline and in recent years the business of movies has followed suit. For the entirety of this century Hollywood has been training audiences to watch nothing but dumbed down bullshit and to instinctively yearn for mindless entertainment. Oppenheimer is counter to that. To be clear, this film isn’t highbrow or arthouse, but it is definitely elevated, adult, populist moviemaking, storytelling and entertainment.

I doubt this will turn the tide of franchise excrement coming from Hollywood, but it is a sliver of hope. In the sea of shit that has been movies over the last four years, original, mature stories from auteurs have been few and far between and even the ones that did come out were among the lesser of the director’s filmography. But with Oppenheimer we have Christopher Nolan, one of the more successful directors in recent Hollywood history, putting out an original, adult-targeted film, and one of his very best films, when all hope seemed lost in the industry for this sort of thing.

Audiences are desperately hungry for quality films that are made for grown-ups…and with Oppenheimer Christopher Nolan has delivered. I, for one, am grateful.

 Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo

©2023

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota - Episode 104: Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One

Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to listen to Barry and I as we jump off a cliff on a motorcycle while discussing all things M:I 7 - Dead Reckoning, the newest installment of Tom Cruise's long-running Mission: Impossible action franchise.  Topics discussed include the franchise's unique history, the odd stunt-obsessed turn in Cruise's later career, and Barry's attraction to various women like Rebecca Ferguson, Hayley Atwell and Vaness Kirby...as well as a special prediction segment where we guess the box office for Barbie and Oppenheimer's first weekend. This podcast will, like its hosts, self-destruct every five seconds or so.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota - Episode 104: Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One

Thanks for listening!

©2023

Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One: A Review - Assume the Missionary Position

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

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Popcorn Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT/SKIP IT. Compared to all the other vapid junk recently available at the cineplex, this is the best of the vapid junk. If you love Mission Impossible movies you will love this one. If you loathe those movies or Tom Cruise, you’ll definitely hate this one.

I can say without reservation that Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One, the seventh film in the Tom Cruise starring Mission: Impossible franchise, is most definitely a movie…but whether it’s a good one or not is a much more complicated question.

Mission: Impossible is one of the more confounding film franchises in cinema history. Astoundingly, it has been around for nearly thirty years (Cruise was 33 on the first one and is 61 now!), and for the majority of those years it has been considered pretty forgettable, second tier entertainment at best.

Oddly, the films have become more popular as the series has gone along. The films always made money…but they never made that much money. The first three films generated a respectable but not earth-shattering $457M, $546M and $398M respectively at the box office…but with budgets of $80M, $125 and $150m.  Movies four, five and six made a much more impressive $694M, $682M and $791M respectively with budgets of $145M, $150m and $175m.

In addition, fans and critics were lukewarm at best on the first three films, with Rotten Tomato scores of 66 critical/71 audience, 56 critical/42 audience and 71 critical/69 audience respectively for films one, two and three. Interestingly enough, starting with the fourth film, both critics and audience’s love for the films has grown exponentially, with the RT scores being 93 critical/76 audience, 94 critical/87 audience and 97 critical/88 audience for films four, five and six respectively.

That Mission: Impossible survived its first three middling movies to become a respectable franchise is pretty astonishing. It would not have been surprising if, after any of the first three films, the studio (and Cruise) just decided to close up the Mission: Impossible shop.

But what happened instead is that the films stopped being films and transformed into the Tom Cruise Stunt Experience. Starting with the fourth movie, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, the franchise’s focus became less about the stories it told and more about the insane stunts Tom Cruise performed in each movie. For example, in Ghost Protocol, Cruise climbed the tallest skyscraper in the world – the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. The marketing around the film was all about Cruise’s insane stunt work, and not about the film itself.

That approach has only grown more vociferous since, with the focus of the Mission: Impossible films being Cruise’s increasingly daring stunt work as opposed to…I don’t know…his acting or the story. There was the famous scene in Rogue Nation (film #5) where Cruise hung off of an Airbus as it took off and flew, and then the HALO parachute jump into Paris in M:I 6.

The marketing approach of highlighting Cruise’s death-defying stunts has worked incredibly well, even when those stunts don’t look particularly good on-screen – like the HALO jump. But the point of the stunts isn’t for them to look good but to distract people from the actual movie by making them mutter in amazement, “wow, Tom Cruise just did that crazy thing!”

The newest film, Dead Reckoning Part One, written and directed by longtime Tom Cruise collaborator Christopher McQuarrie, is no exception. The marketing around the movie is all about Cruise’s motorcycle/parachute jump off a cliff. The stunt is no doubt impressive even if it doesn’t exactly visually translate very well once Cruise and his motorcycle leave terra firma.

The rest of the movie is…fine…I guess. I mean it’s good for a Mission: Impossible movie, considering the franchise that has always been a parody of itself. Yes, it’s utterly ridiculous and absolutely absurd, but I did find myself mostly engaged for the rather bloated two-hour and forty-five-minute runtime, but I also found myself pondering a more existential question in the wake of watching Dead Reckoning, namely is this movie now considered good because everything else is so bad?

In my case, the last two movies I saw before this were The Flash and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Those two movies were, like most of the movies I’ve seen over the last few years, dreadfully bad, and Dead Reckoning is much better than them, but that doesn’t necessarily make it good.

My theory is this…it seems to me that cinema in particular, and our culture in general, has been decaying for the last decade, and in precipitous decline for the past four years, so much so that what was once second-tier, forgettable garbage like Mission: Impossible, is now considered elite franchise filmmaking.

This is a round-about way of saying that objectively, Dead Reckoning isn’t a good movie, but in the context of the shit filling the cineplex these days, it is entertaining and enjoyable.

What makes it entertaining and enjoyable? Well, first off, it makes the rather rudimentary and obvious decision, which Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny ignored, to fill itself to the brim with a cavalcade of sumptuous eye-candy.

The eye-candy comes in the gorgeous form of Hayley Atwell, Vanessa Kirby and Rebecca Ferguson. These three women are not only attractive, they’re very talented. Contrast that to Indiana Jones which featured only one woman prominently, and that was the ungainly Phoebe Waller-Bridge, a sub-par and rather unattractive actress.

Hayley Atwell is the best thing about Dead Reckoning and it isn’t even close. Atwell is charismatic, compelling and fun as Grace, the pickpocket/con artist who gives Cruise’s Ethan Hunt a run for his money. Atwell is so appealing she’s actually able to make it seem like she and the dead-eyed Cruise have chemistry…which brings to mind the Rolling Stones lyric from Start Me Up – “you made a dead man come!”

Vanessa Kirby is back as Alana - the White Widow, a sexy arms dealer and she is, as always, undeniably magnetic. Kirby smolders with a palpable dynamism that jumps off the screen. Kirby needs to be a bigger movie star than she already is.

Rebecca Ferguson is the rogue MI 6 agent Ilsa Faust who may or may not have stolen Ethan Hunt’s heart. Ferguson is actually quite good in this enigmatic role, which is no easy task opposite the often lifeless Cruise.

As for the eye-candy for women…well…sorry ladies…all you get is Tom Cruise. Cruise is in absolutely incredible shape but his boyish good looks are long gone and left in their place is a sort of strangely puffy, post-plastic surgery face that always looks just a bit off.

Cruise doesn’t so much act in these movies, as play-act, and it can be pretty cringe-worthy. Cruise is undeniably one of the biggest movie stars of the last forty years, but he is not a particularly good actor, and he lacks a physical presence and dynamism that you’d expect to see from someone of his standing.

Cruise’s attempts at being sincere always feel manufactured and his attempts at being tough feel hollow. But on the bright side we at least get to see Cruise run in this movie…a lot. Cruise’s Mission Impossible running is legendary to the point of being hysterical. It never fails to make me laugh when Cruise’s Ethan Hunt, busts out his hyper-focused sprint. That all of these movies feature numerous scenes of Cruise sprinting, and they all hold those shots of him running for roughly twenty to thirty seconds too long, is one of the more puzzling things about them. Are Cruise and the filmmakers in on the joke or do they think this is really awesome? Who knows?

For a franchise that has been around now for seven movies and nearly thirty years, it should come as no surprise that it is cannibalizing itself. For example, in Dead Reckoning Ethan Hunt is once again facing a villain intent on destroying the world. And once again this villain, a sentient AI named the Entity (no I’m not joking), is so omnipotent that it predicts what all of the Mission Impossible guys and gals will do before they do it…which leads to dialogue about ‘should we do this? – But the Entity KNOWS we’ll do it!!’ This is all very reminiscent of The Syndicate and The Apostles and every other villain in recent MI history.

Dead Reckoning is also seemingly stealing/paying tribute to other films including earlier Mission Impossible ones. For instance, there is yet another sandstorm featured prominently in a sequence in this movie, which also occurred in Ghost Protocol. There’s also a climactic train sequence, which is similar to the one from the very first M:I movie.

Other movies are borrowed from as well, like The Hunt for Red October and Jurassic Park 2. It is never clear if these are a result of homage or creative bankruptcy.

Ultimately, all Mission: Impossible films feel like ego-events with Tom Cruise playing messiah. Dead Reckoning is no exception. That said, it is much better and more entertaining than the vast majority of junk I’ve had to sit through in recent years, including Indiana Jones, The Flash and even everyone’s favorite piece of rancid pop culture shit Top Gun: Maverick.

If you liked any or all of those movies (God, help us!), you’ll think Dead Reckoning is Citizen Kane mixed with The Godfather. If, like me, you loathed those movies, you’ll find Dead Reckoning, filled with pretty woman and beautiful locations, to be a passable piece of franchise entertainment in a culture deeply enmeshed in a seemingly endless entertainment drought.

 Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo

©2023

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 103 - Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

On this episode Barry and I go on an archeological dig to try and discover why Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny was such a flop...and we find a treasure trove of answers. Topics discussed include Phoebe Waller-Bridge and the fool's gold of Fleabag, the cornucopia of abysmal supporting performances in this disappointing movie, and the storytelling power of science vs religion.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 103 - Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

Thanks for listening!

©2023

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 102 - The Flash

On  this episode, Barry and I sprint as fast as we can away from the DC superhero movie The Flash. This rip-roaring, profanity-laced episode contains boisterous discussions about the disaster area that is DC Films, Ezra Miller's multitude of failures, and the awfulness of George Clooney. 

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 102 - The Flash

Thanks for listening!

©2023

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny: A Review - Dial D for Dull

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

My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

Popcorn Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. If you’re desperate to be an Indiana Jones completist, wait until this underwhelming movie hits Disney + to watch it.

The Indiana Jones franchise gloriously burst onto the scene with 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark, a deliriously entertaining throwback to early Hollywood action-adventure serial cliffhangers that was perfectly directed by Steven Spielberg and created/produced by George Lucas, which became a massive blockbuster and captured the culture’s imagination.

Raiders made Harrison Ford, who was already an enormous star for his turn as the charming rogue Han Solo in the Star Wars movies, a megastar for his portrayal of the swashbuckling, Nazi-punching archeologist Indiana Jones.

Now, forty years and four films later, Harrison Ford is back once again in the iconic title role in the new film Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, which is the fifth, and maybe, probably, hopefully, the last film in the franchise.

The Dial of Destiny is the first Indiana Jones film to not be directed by Steven Spielberg. This time James Mangold (Ford v Ferrari, Logan) is at the helm and joining Ford in the cast are Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Antonio Banderas, Boyd Holbrook, Mads Mikkelsen and Toby Jones.

The film tells the story of the incomparable Indiana Jones as he struggles to make his way in the modern world of 1969 as a retiring professor of archeology. His retirement plans get scattered to the wind when his goddaughter Helena shows up talking about an ancient relic called the dial of destiny…and so the adventure begins.

The Indiana Jones film series has, with one notable exception, been a case of diminishing returns as the franchise went along. Raiders was impeccable entertainment, but its sequel, 1984’s The Temple of Doom, was a major drop off from its predecessor. Thankfully 1989’s The Last Crusade, which featured a supporting turn by Sean Connery, got things back on track as it was nearly an equal to Raiders. Then fans had to wait 19 years for the next Indiana Jones movie, and that was 2008’s The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull…it was not worth the wait.

I had never seen Kingdom of the Crystal Skull but to prepare for Dial of Destiny I watched it and came away thinking that while the first act was fine, the second act was pretty bad and the third act was unconscionably awful.

As bad as The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was, and it really was bad as it was riddled with the most basic filmmaking and storytelling errors, believe it or not, it is still better than The Dial of Destiny.

I saw The Dial of Destiny a day ago and I cannot, for the life of me, remember a single frame from the film. While my cognitive decline may be partially responsible for that lack of recall, it isn’t totally to blame as the movie itself shoulders the majority of it.

The biggest problem with The Dial of Destiny, and it is riddled with a cavalcade of problems, is that it’s shockingly, unforgivably dull. The dial of dullness was turned up to 11 on this movie.

Why Ford, who is now 80 years-old, would dust off Indy’s signature fedora and bullwhip for this insipid script and lackluster movie, is beyond me. It’s not like he needs the money.

Indiana Jones has always had a partner in these movies, be it romantic or familial. In Raiders there was Karen Allen’s spectacular spitfire Marion. In Temple of Doom it was the awful Kate Capshaw as singer/actress Willie. In Last Crusade, of course, it was Sean Connery as Indy’s dad Henry. In Kingdom of the Crystal Skull it was Shia LeBeouf as Indy’s son, Mutt. And now in Dial of Destiny it is Phoebe Waller-Bridge as Helena Shaw, Indy’s Goddaughter.

As terrible as Kate Capshaw and Shia LeBeouf are in their Indy supporting roles, Waller-Bridge is, astonishingly, even worse.

Waller-Bridge is best known for her award-winning performance in the tv series Fleabag, which she also wrote. I absolutely loved Fleabag and Waller-Bridge in it. I thought she was utterly phenomenal as the self-destructive, self-sabotaging lead in the series.

But in Dial of Destiny, Waller-Bridge, who has not done much if any acting work since Fleabag, is exposed for simply not being ready for prime time. Her quirkiness was extremely appealing on the small screen in Fleabag, but on the big screen she is revealed as being a charisma-free, small, rather poor actress.

Waller-Bridge is remarkably wooden, if not leaden, in the film. As a comedic presence she is underwhelming, annoying and decidedly unfunny. As a physical actress she is uncomfortable, ungainly, ungraceful and unathletic, four things that individually are difficult to deal with in an action movie, but in unison are impossible to overcome.

Casting Waller-Bridge, who is, frankly, physically unattractive, and who runs like a baby giraffe with rickets and a club foot, as a co-lead in an action-adventure film next to a crumbling 80-year-old man, is so egregious as to be criminal.

At least with 80-year-old Harrison Ford they de-age him for the first part of the film so we don’t have to watch his decrepit body creak and ache for the full, and excruciatingly long, two hours and thirty-four-minute run time. Unfortunately for Waller-Bridge, and us, no technology exists that can alter her awkward, grating presence and unappealing appearance in this movie.

As for Ford, the truth is he has never been a particularly good actor. He’s certainly a very charming screen presence, but he’s always been pretty limited in what he’s able to do acting-wise. If you watch him in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull he’s actually egregiously bad, but in Dial of Destiny he has some brief moments.

For example, when Indy dutifully recites some exposition about why Mutt (his son from Kingdom of the Crystal Skull) isn’t in this movie, it is actually quite moving…and is the most emotionally packed sequence in any Indiana Jones film and maybe in Ford’s career.

Unfortunately, that is the only moment in the entire film that has any life to it. The rest of it is generic action after generic action all riddled with derivative dialogue around a pointless plot.

Speaking of generic, the bad guys in this movie, Nazi scientist Jurgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen) and Klaber (Boyd Holbrooke), are such cardboard cutouts I’m surprised they didn’t blow away in the wind. I like both Mikkelsen and Holbrooke but these bad guys have no depth or direction to them. Klaber in particular is totally incomprehensible and incoherent.

Another absurd character is Mason, a black, female CIA agent, poorly played by Shaunette Renee Wilson. Mason is a sassy CIA agent with a heart of gold and a strong moral compass. How realistic. That Wilson is unable to bring any life or depth to the character only adds to that undeniable sinking feeling whenever she’s on-screen.

In a recent article Wilson described how she got her character’s dramatic exit from the story changed because she thought it had offensive language in it and was unduly harsh. The ending that ultimately ended up on-screen is so banal as to be ridiculous so…congrats to Ms. Wilson?

It is also amusing that Ms. Wilson was offended by some language spoken to her character in her original final scene, which no doubt was racially tinged considering the scenes are set in 1969 and her opponent is the Nazi henchmen Klaber, but she felt completely comfortable using the term “cracker” on-screen. Apparently, what is good for the goose is most definitely not also good for the gander.

That James Mangold agreed to Ms. Wilson’s changing of the script speaks to not only his spineless and sackless nature but also his complete lack of understanding about drama. Kluber would’ve been a more compelling, interesting and comprehensible character if we could’ve seen his visceral hatred of Mason in the actual movie. But it was “offensive” so we have to deter to a no-name, third rate actress’s feelings instead. Good grief.

Speaking of Mangold, who I thought did fantastic work on both Logan and Ford v Ferrari, he brings nothing to the table on Dial of Destiny. The film isn’t even a cheap knock-off of Spielberg, which Spielberg himself already did on Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, it’s just an overly long exercise in bad decisions.

For example, why does Mangold shoot an underwater scene which is impossible to see and dramatically nonsensical? Why does he shoot so much at night, which results in bland visuals with no sharp contrast? These decisions, along with the decision to cast Waller-Bridge and Shaunette Renee Wilson, are inexplicable, and they are an albatross around the movie’s neck. And don’t even get me started on the character Teddy (Ethann Isidore), who is like Short Round (from Temple of Doom) but worse, believe it or not. Yikes.

Another enormous problem with Dial of Destiny is that its story undermines what made both Raiders and Last Crusade so archetypally compelling, namely, it eschews the magic and mysticism of religion in favor of “science”.

The plot of Dial of Destiny revolves around the Antikythera, a time travel device built by Greek mathematician Archimedes. There is nothing mystical about this device, it is supposed to be based on actual science.

Indiana Jones is himself a scientist, which is why his grappling with the magical religious powers of the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail, in Raiders and Last Crusade respectively, is so captivating and compelling.

When Indy is faced with dubious science, as in Crystal Skull and Dial of Destiny, it works at cross-purposes with the character’s archetype and mythology. In other words, it disengages the audience on an unconscious level, thus neutering the story and its dramatic power.

The Lance of Longinus or Holy Lance, which was used to pierce Christ’s side at the crucifixion, is a relic that is momentarily presented on-screen in the movie but then narratively disposed of in favor of Archimedes’ dial of destiny.

It seems to me that the Holy Lance was a better option to use as a narrative device in this film. It could have been presented as a way for the aging Indy to find both redemption and forgiveness for whatever sins he may be burdened with…like the ones regarding his son and ex-wife. And it could also have been a weapon of great power used by the usual suspects, the Nazis, to take over the world.

But instead, we get the rather flaccid dial of destiny, which Indy doesn’t even use to reverse the errors he’s made in his personal life, but only a really lame final act involving Archimedes himself that feels like a bad attraction at a second-rate amusement park. Sigh.

If I had the dial of destiny in my possession I would travel back in time and erase all of the Indiana Jones movies except for Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade. I would also make sure the diabolical producer from Lucasfilm, Kathleen Kennedy, was never born, thus saving both the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises from her malignantly evil grasp. I have no doubt that I would be received as a great hero to all people with good taste.

Oh, to dream.

Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo

©2023

The Flash: A Review - Running on Empty

****THIS REVIEW IS MOSTLY SPOILER FREE BUT DOES CONTAIN A CLEARLY MARKED SECTION WITH SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

Popcorn Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. A mess of a movie that is a major letdown. If you really want to see it wait a few months until it’s streaming on Max.

In the weeks and months leading up to the release of the DC film The Flash there was a relentless stream of industry people vociferously declaring it to be a superhero movie masterpiece.

James Gunn, filmmaker and new co-CEO of DC Films, said prior to release that The Flash was “one of the best superhero movies (he’s) ever seen.”

Warner Brothers CEO David Zaslav said that The Flash was flat out “the greatest superhero movie” ever.

It wasn’t just Warner Brother lackeys either, as none other than the Lord and Saviour of Scientology and Hollywood, Tom Cruise, allegedly called the film’s director Andy Muschietti after an early screening and raved about how much he loved it.

Even horror writer Stephen King got in on the action declaring of The Flash on Twitter, “This one is special. It’s heartfelt, funny, and eye-popping. I loved it.”

I went to see The Flash on its opening Friday and I can report that James Gunn, David Zaslav, Tom Cruise and Stephen King are all either shameless liars or mental defectives with severe cinematic taste dysmorphia.

The reality is that The Flash is, much to my deep, deep chagrin, at its very best, a sub-mediocrity, and at its worst, terrible.

Let me start off by saying that I really like the Flash as a comic-book character, and I think he’s very deserving of a major motion picture. Let me also say that I actually liked Ezra Miller in the supporting role of Flash in the previous Snyder-verse films…and on top of that I actually liked the Snyder-verse films (the director’s cuts anyway) considerably more than most…and on top of that in general I lean much more toward DC than I do Marvel.

That is a long-winded way of saying that I was predisposed to liking The Flash. And then I saw The Flash.

The movie is just a mess. Superhero fatigue is a real thing, and the abysmal failure of The Flash, both creatively and at the box office, is proof that the genre is running on fumes at the moment.

A big part of the problem with The Flash is that the story is convoluted and incoherent. There’s lots of talk about multiverses and time travel and such but the very core of the story, the murder of Barry Allen/The Flash’s mom, is a muddled and jumbled event that carries no weight because it makes zero sense.

Another major issue is that the CGI is egregiously abominable. The opening to the film features an action sequence where Flash has to save a bunch of babies falling from a collapsing building. The scene is reminiscent of the horrors of 9/11 but this time with babies in peril, which why I raised an eyebrow when Flash checks his watch during the action and it reads “9:10”. How odd.

The CGI in this sequence and throughout the film is just atrocious to the point of being ridiculous. Director Andy Muschietti has stated that the poor CGI was intentional as it gives the viewers the perspective of Flash…ummm…yeah, ok…and I intentionally failed trigonometry in high school so I could share the perspective of stupid people. Come on, that Muschietti claim is utter horseshit. The CGI is cheap and laughably bad and no manufactured, half-assed hindsight story is going to change that. The awful CGI matters because it undercuts the entirety of the cinematic enterprise from the get go.

On top of all that, Ezra Miller, who as I stated I liked in a comedic supporting role as Flash in the earlier Snyder-verse films, is simply not able to carry a feature film. Miller is a distinct type of actor, and he becomes more and more grating the more time you spend with him on-screen. That is only heightened in The Flash when you spend a great deal of time with him AND there are two of him…which is as annoying as it sounds.

To be clear, I actually don’t care about Ezra Miller’s much publicized legal issues – which have kept him from doing any publicity for the film, nor do I care about HIS preferred pronouns. I just find it mildly amusing and somewhat ironic that Ezra Miller is obviously batshit crazy and now stars in a movie featuring a bevy of Batmen.  

What made The Flash so frustrating was that it so easily could have and should have been not only so much better, but actually great. And the path to greatness, or at least making it better, is painfully obvious to anyone with half a brain in their head.

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD. SKIP AHEAD IF YOU WANT TO AVOID SPOILERS!!!

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Much Like Spider-Man: No Way Home, which featured three Spider-men and a cavalcade of villains from previous film versions of Spider-Man, The Flash could’ve exploited the deep reservoir of DC films and tv shows to deliver fan service, laughs and drama. Instead, the film badly stumbles in its attempt to be clever and pay tribute to the superhero projects that preceded it.

The marketing of The Flash made it clear that both Ben Affleck and Michael Keaton would be playing Batman in the film. Keaton’s return was, much to my chagrin since I like movies to keep their secrets, much hyped and given away in the trailers.

The prospect of two Batmen is pretty intriguing, but The Flash does nothing with it. It also does nothing with the cavalcade of other DC superheroes it very briefly visually references….like Christopher Reeves’ Superman, Helen Slater’s Supergirl, George Reeve’s Superman and Adam West’s Batman.

That The Flash is unable to adequately exploit DC’s back catalogue effectively for drama or comedy is cinematic malpractice criminal scale.

What the film should have done is Forest Gump (yes, I’m using Forest Gump as a verb!) the Flash’s red ass into quick scenes from the actual George Reeves Superman and Adam West Batman tv shows and get a laugh when Flash realizes he’s in the wrong universe.

Do the same and put Flash into Christopher Reeves’ Superman films (maybe even in a scene with Richard Pryor!). The same is true for the Nicholas Cage Superman movie that never got made – yes, Cage’s Superman is briefly seen in The Flash, but it could have been used in a more substantial way. Hell, why not use all the Supermen…like Henry Cavill, Brandon Routh (from Superman Returns), Tom Welling (from Smallville) and Dean Cain (from Lois and Clark) even if briefly and even if only for comic effect?

Same with Batman…why not exploit all the weird villains from earlier films, like DeVito’s Penguin, Pfeiffer’s Catwoman, Schwarzenegger’s Mr. Freeze and Jim Carrey’s Riddler? Maybe even get a cheer by putting Flash in the Val Kilmer Batman universe. You could even steal from Top Gun: Maverick and have an emotional scene with a sick Val Kilmer as an aged and beaten Batman on his deathbed meeting Flash yet unable to speak to him.  

And you could also do a brief crossover with the Flash tv show on the CW and have Miller’s Flash bump into CW Flash’s Grant Gustin in some weird speed force intersection. I’ve never seen the CW show but why not use and exploit all the IP in your power? Fans love that stuff and it would give this project a sense of scope and scale, and God knows Warner Brothers loves nothing more than self-congratulatory commercials for itself (see the LeBron James Space Jam movie…actually don’t, it’s awful).

As for the two Batmen most prominently featured in the movie, Michael Keaton and Ben Affleck, instead of having two Ezra Miller Barry Allen/Flash characters meet up, have Affleck and Keaton’s Batman characters jump into the other’s universe and meet up. It would be much more entertaining and much more dramatically and comedically satisfying to have Affleck and Keaton squaring off saying “I’m Batman” at each other and recounting how their parents died for the millionth time than to have Ezra Miller bantering back and forth with Ezra Miller for two hours.

Hell, imagine a fight between Affleck’s Batman and Keaton’s Batman, and then later they come together to fight against Zod or whomever. People would love that and come out to the theatre to see it.

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END OF SPOILERS END OF SPOILERS END OF SPOILERS

See, the possibilities for plumbing the depths of the DC catalogue for comedy and drama are endless, and yet what The Flash comes up with is the least creative, least interesting, least intriguing of all the possibilities.

The bottom line is that The Flash is the most disappointing movie in recent memory because it really should have and could have been at the very least entertaining…and maybe even great. But it’s neither of those things. What it is, ultimately, is a rather cheap, completely empty exercise in squeezing the very last vestiges of life from the superhero genre.

 Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo

©2023

Ted Lasso - Season Three: A Review - Feminized and Unfunny

****THIS REVIEW REVEALS PLOT POINTS!!! THIS IS TECHNICALLY NOT A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!!****

My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. This once great show is now truly awful.

Season one of Ted Lasso premiered on the fledgling streaming service Apple TV+ back in August of 2020, a very toxic, turbulent and tumultuous time as the U.S. presidential election between Trump and Biden was kicking into high gear.

The amusing show about a good-natured simpleton from Middle America thrown into the cutthroat swamp of high stakes British football became a phenomenon for the sole reason that it was relentlessly benign in a culture growing more aggressively malignant by the moment.

Ted Lasso, both the show and the character, was like a cool breeze on a sweltering day as its optimism was a satisfying reprieve from the suffocating negativity that had, and has, come to dominate American discourse.

The first season was crisp, concise and comedically coherent. It featured a charming, Emmy-winning performance from Jason Sudeikis as the fish-out-of-water title character, and also from an ensemble cast portraying a wide array of amusing soccer misfits.

Unfortunately, the show fell into the trap of believing all the “nice-guy” hype surrounding it and as a result lost its way on season two, which premiered in July of 2021. Gone were the numerous obstacles Ted had to face in season one, like a boss yearning for his failure, and in their place came nothing but vacuous soft smiles and vapid platitudes.

As bad as season two was, it pales in comparison to the atrocity that is season three, which premiered on March 15, 2023 and is supposedly the series finale.

To be as succinct as possible, Ted Lasso season three is a steaming pile of shite.

Season three feels like it was written by a group of liberal, Los Angeles, wine moms who simply can’t comprehend anyone disagreeing with their insipid, insidious and ideologically impotent beliefs, and who ban anyone who dare do such a hateful and hurtful thing.

The show’s infectiously benign nature featured in season one is now long gone, replaced by phony and flaccid politically correct posturing that is egregiously unfunny and frankly repulsive for its shameless pandering.

All of the male characters are now completely castrated, as is all of the conflict and therefore comedy. Gay themes, women’s empowerment and immigration politics take center stage, while comedy exits stage left. Gay story lines or political topics would be fine for the show to explore if there were actual comedy to extract from them, but conflict is necessary for comedy and season three of Ted Lasso is deathly allergic to any and all conflict.

For example, the gay relationships on display are embraced whole-heartedly by every single character with no exceptions. The working-class Brits and the third-world immigrants on the AFC Richmond roster not only accept but celebrate their gay teammate instantaneously…how realistic. The only holdout among the team is because the gay player lied, not because he’s gay. No players even good-naturedly tease the gay player, never mind torment him. Ted Lasso even gives a speech saying basically that being accepting of the gay player isn’t enough…you have to actively affirm his sexual preference.

Then there’s the gay relationship public relations tart Keely (Juno Temple) gets in to with her female venture capitalist boss Jack (Jodi Balfour). First off, it’s very odd that neither of Keely’s ex-lovers, Jamie and Roy, notice her new sexual orientation or comment on it at all.

In addition, if Jack were a man, she’d be easy to peg as a sexual predator and asshole, but because she’s a lesbian no one bats an eye to her controlling and predatory behavior.

Counter to that, Rupert (Anthony Head), former owner of AFC Richmond and ex-husband to its current owner Rebecca (Hannah Waddington), is a philandering, low-life piece of shit and that is made abundantly clear as the show goes out of its way to punish and humiliate him. What makes a rich lech like Rupert different than Jack? He’s using his money and power to sexually exploit women…just like Jack…but Rupert has a penis which apparently makes him the devil.

Ted Lasso is infected with a virulent misandry and repugnant male-phobia as it seemingly can’t do anything but hate and ridicule men. All of the male characters are weak-kneed caricatures of what faux feminists think men should be, as opposed to what they really are.

For example, most real men (but certainly not all) would accept their gay teammate, but they would also relentlessly bust his balls…and the gay teammate would feel accepted because his buddies were busting his balls like they bust everybody else’s balls. This is how actual men behave around one another and communicate with one another.

And then there’s the ridiculous immigration garbage. Sam (Toheeb Jimoh), a Nigerian player on Richmond, gets into a Twitter kerfuffle with some British politician over turning away boats of African immigrants. You think the working-class British players on the team might have some different opinions on immigration than Sam? You think Jamie Tarrt (Phil Dunster), the Manchester-born, blue-collar boy who is thrilled to play for the English national team, might want to tell Sam to shut the fuck up and go back to Nigeria – the country he so desperately wants to represent in the World Cup? You think a real football rough guy like Roy Kent might think “England for the English” and might get in Sam’s face over it?

A clash between Sam and Jamie over immigration might actually be really funny, since neither one of them are particularly bright (poor Sam seems mildly retarded as all he ever does is smile). Instead, the show just has Sam’s restaurant trashed by supposed white supremacists and then the whole team comes together to clean it up. How hysterically funny. Just kidding…it isn’t.

The worst character of all is team owner Rebecca, played with nauseous self-righteousness by Emmy winner Hannah Waddingham. Rebecca is no longer the villain – because it is forbidden for women to be villains on Ted Lasso, instead she is now a picture of feminist power…yet does little more than smile every two seconds like a brain-damaged toddler.

That Rebecca, who only owns the team because she was a bartender who fucked the married owner – Rupert – who she then divorced and took for half his fortune, is held up as a paragon of modern feminist virtue and entrepreneurial verve is one of the more unintentionally funny things in the entire show. That the big conclusion to Rebecca and Keely’s stories – is that they decide to start an AFC Richmond Women’s soccer team, made me laugh out loud for its impotence, idiocy and desperate pandering. As an aside…the only thing in the world worse than women’s soccer…is women’s basketball.

What isn’t funny about Ted Lasso is poor Ted Lasso, who is now reduced to just blurting out his inane, folksy words of wisdom like a coked-up Tony Robbins with Tourette’s. Sudeikis is obviously mailing it in at this point and his Lasso is as lackluster as it is deeply depressing.

What is even more bizarre than its total lack of comedy and humor is that season three of Ted Lasso makes virtually no sense in terms of storylines.

Nate the “wunderkid” (Nick Mohammed), has a story arc that is so incoherent it boggles the mind. The same is true of alleged tough guy Roy Kent, played by Brett Goldstein, who is as believable as a tough guy as Richard Simmons. Both Roy and Jamie Tartt were two of the more interesting characters at the start of the show and season three turns them into eunuchs and then takes a gigantic, sloppy shit right on top of them leaving behind an odious mess.

To be clear, I absolutely fucking hated Ted Lasso season three. FUCKING HATED IT. Part of why I hated it is because I liked season one so much. But after season one all the male characters got castrated and all the funny went right out of the show.

If you hate men and hate to laugh yet love soft smiles accompanied by gentle guitar and piano music, then season three of Ted Lasso is definitely for you. If you don’t…then Ted Lasso is not for you and you should avoid it at all costs as it will only infuriate you with its cornucopia of feminized anti-comedy.

 Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo

©2023

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 101 - Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

On this episode, Barry and I don our Spidey-tights and do battle over Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. We friendly-neighborhood movie critics web-sling through such topics as the film's truly spectacular animation and it's creative rejuvenation of comic book cinema, but also it's uneven storytelling and bloated run time. 

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 101 - Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Thanks for listening!

©2023

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse - A Review: Your Friendly Multiverse Spider-Man

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

My Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Popcorn Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. As visually stunning and original a film as you’ll see, but it is burdened by poor sound quality and some storytelling mis-steps. Not as good as the original but overall worth seeing.

The new film web-slinging atop the box office is Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, the highly-anticipated sequel to the 2018 Best Animated Film Academy Award-winner Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. The movie picks up where the original left off telling the story of neophyte Spider-Man Miles Morales as he navigates the pitfalls of life as an adolescent superhero.

The first film, Into the Spider-Verse, which I rewatched prior to venturing out to the theatre to see Across the Spider-Verse, was as entertaining as it gets in both animation and the superhero genre. It was cool, touching and funny. In other words, the sequel Across the Spider-Verse is burdened with very big shoes to fill and, unfortunately, it isn’t quite up to that Herculean task.

Let’s start with the good news.

First off, the animation on Across the Spider-Verse is simply spectacular. The filmmakers create an aesthetically glorious work of art by seamlessly blending together a wide variety of distinct animation styles to create a moving visual masterpiece that pays tribute to the great comic book artists that built Spider-Man throughout the years.

In particular, Spider-Punk, a black brit punk rocking Spider-Man deftly voiced by Daniel Kaluuya, is a standout. The character is designed like a modern art collage and its contrast to the other Spider-People makes for transcendent visuals.

Then there’s the throwbacks to a bevy of old comic book Spider-Men, some shots of live-action movie Spider-Men and even a Lego world Spider-Man. Even the more standard Spider-People, like Miguel O’Hara/Spider-Man 2099 (voiced by Oscar Isaac), look totally badass. All-in-all the film with its vibrant color scheme and distinct style, looks unique, original and absolutely gorgeous.

In terms of the plot, I have to say it’s a bit of a mixed bag for a variety of reasons. All Spider-Man stories, and Across the Spider-Verse is no exception, thrive when grappling with not only adolescent angst but existential profundity. In this film we see both Miles Morales and Gwen Stacey struggle with both things and those are the more resonant storylines.

But the increased focus on Gwen Stacey/Spider-Woman (voiced by the wondrous Hailee Steinfeld) felt too long, ineffective and ultimately distracting because viewers have never been given a fully-fleshed out origin story with Gwen with which to build rapport with the character, which would’ve made her storyline more compelling.

The film also expands into a vast multiverse plot which gets into a wide array of topics including a clever foray into the importance of canon, and all of that is a nice bit of self-reverential fan service from the filmmakers, but it also gets a bit convoluted and burdensome.

That said, I felt the brief foray into the world of Pavitr Prabhakar/Spider-Man India was really well-done (and looked great) but was much too short-lived.

Now for the bad news.

The sound mixing on Across the Spider-Verse is absolutely atrocious. Just utterly abysmal. The dialogue of characters is much too low in the mix and the pounding music much too high, particularly in the opening sequence. A great deal of dialogue gets lost in this muddied mess of a mix and it is irritating, aggravating and frustrating.

At first, I thought the sound problems were a result of my sub-par theatre and their lackluster audio equipment but no, the poor sound mixing on Across the Spider-Verse is a real and much complained about thing, so much so that Sony is sending out new versions of the film with improved sound quality. Too little too late as far as I’m concerned. I mean, how in the hell does a studio put out a major motion picture with such third-rate sound, especially one that is animated and built entirely in a computer? It would be one thing to have sound issues if you’re recording natural sound out in the world but these movie makers haven’t seen sun light in like five years so that’s not the case here. Simply unacceptable and totally inexcusable.

Another issue with the film is that, at two hours and twenty-minutes, it’s definitely at least forty minutes too long. Unlike the original, the story here feels decidedly bloated.

Making matters worse is that the film ends unexpectedly with a sort of cliffhanger that isn’t a cliffhanger but more like a poorly timed and entirely unearned abrupt ending that feels very money-grabby. The ending is so abrupt it’s jarring as the dramatic and emotional beats are left mid-arc and feel unfulfilled and unsatisfied. Having to tune in to a third Spider-Verse movie five years from now in order to fulfill the emotional and narrative beats left dangling at the end of this movie does not quench viewer’s dramatic thirst.

One more problem is that the villain, the Spot – a D-list Marvel bad guy, is not the least bit interesting or captivating. Also, due to the structure of the plot, the Spot isn’t really the main villain he’s just a very thin sideshow. I won’t get into it too much in order to avoid spoilers but will only say the lack of a substantial villain and more clearly defined and understandable narrative obstacles for Miles to overcome drains some of the power and drama from the film.

Overall, it felt like screenwriters Phil Lord and Christopher Miller - who also wrote Into the Spider-Verse, and co-directors Joaquim Dos Santos and Kemp Powers (new to the Spider-verse), stumbled in trying to expand the Miles Morales story that was so eloquently told in the first film.

To be clear, Across the Spider-Verse isn’t a bad film, it’s entertaining and enjoyable and features spectacular animation. But it’s nowhere near as good as the original film as it’s marred by some major audio issues (which allegedly are being remedied) as well as storytelling missteps and bloat that reduce its quality and effectiveness.

Across the Spider-Verse could have and should have been great, as it features the most visually stunning and mind-blowing animation you’ll ever come across, but unfortunately it never quite lives up to its predecessor or its unquestionable visual brilliance.

 Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo

©2023

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 100 Part Two - Popular Streaming Platform Recommendations

On the conclusion of our 100th episode celebration, Barry and I finish up our streaming service  film/tv recommendations. Topics discussed include the wonders of the Criterion Channel, the god-awful shit that is Peacock, and how HBO Max was better before it became Max. Oh...and a flock of geese gets slaughtered on air for no apparent reason. 

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 100 Part Two

Thanks for listening!

©2023

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 100!! Recommendations for Movies and Shows Currently Available on Streaming Services - Part One

On this very special episode, Barry and I host a massive party at LCFM headquarters to celebrate our 100th episode. In part one of this historic podcasting event, we not only name drop our bevy of celebrity friends, but also give our selections for good movies and shows to watch currently available on each streaming service. Stay tuned for part two of this blockbuster celebratory event in the coming days.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 100!! Top Movies and Shows Currently Available on Streaming Services

Thanks for listening!

©2023

Barry (HBO): Final Season Review - Lights Out for Glorious Dark Comedy

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

My Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: WATCH IT. This very dark comedy which features stellar writing, acting directing and action sequences, is as good, and as weird, as it gets.

Last week was a big one at HBO. The true crime miniseries Love and Death starring Elizabeth Olsen concluded, the prestige TV king-of-the-moment Succession unveiled its much-anticipated series finale, and the sterling streaming service HBO Max was tossed into the trash heap of history and replaced by the god-awful garbage streaming service Max. What a week! Oh…and lost amongst all that the best TV comedy series of the 21st Century and maybe the darkest comedy of all-time, Barry, came to its conclusion after four stellar seasons.

Barry, which is created by and stars Bill Hader, aired its finale on HBO right after Succession’s finale, and thus no one is talking about it which I think is a shame because while I thoroughly enjoyed Succession, I think Barry is at the very least its comedy equivalent, if not better.

If you haven’t watched Barry – and I know a lot of you haven’t, you really should. And I will make this series/season review totally spoiler free in order to encourage you to take the Barry plunge.

Barry tells the tale of Barry Berkman (Bill Hader), a former Marine war veteran who post-war works as an assassin. Barry finds himself in Los Angeles and ultimately ends up in an acting class taught by the esteemed Gene Cousineau (Henry Winkler). Barry gets the acting bug and tries to juggle his newfound emotional growth fueled by Cousineau’s acting classes with his rather cold-blooded occupation of killer-for-hire.

Seasons one and two of Barry were spectacular as they masterfully eviscerated the world of acting, acting classes, acting teachers and Hollywood. As someone who navigated all of those horribly inane things in real life, I found Barry to be not just insanely funny but astonishingly insightful.

Season three was a major shift for Barry as the series became much more surreal and existential. This shift at first was confusing and off-putting, but once it took hold (or I took hold of it) it elevated the show to extraordinary heights, morphing it from being an insightful comedy to a deeply and darkly profound one.

What made Barry such a remarkable viewing experience was that in addition to fantastic filmmaking, exquisite action sequences, great writing and even greater acting, every major character had a distinct and compelling dramatic arc that played out in completely unpredictable ways.

For example, Barry went from being a compliant soldier and cold-blooded killer to grappling with his conscience, his past, his mortality and God. Monroe Fuches, Barry’s murder-for-hire handler, went to hell and back and came out a considerably different man. Gene Cousineau, Barry’s self-absorbed acting teacher, went on an absurd roller coaster ride and ended up where he always wanted to be but not how he expected to be there. Barry’s self-absorbed girlfriend Sally went on a tumultuous journey but could never escape from her true, awful self. Chechen gangster NoHo Hank went from being a throwaway punchline to being a heartbreaking Shakespearean dramatic figure.

These captivating characters arcs were elevated by truly stunning performances across the board. In the first two seasons in particular, Henry Winkler as Gene Cousineau was as good as anyone has ever been in a television comedy. Winkler’s Cousineau was every acting teacher I’ve ever had…part Jesus Christ, part John Wayne Gacy, part Hitler, part Richard Simmons, part Mao and all arrogant, egotistical, insecure asshole, and Winkler’s singular, relentless brilliance made him must see tv.

Stephen Root as Fuches was incredible across all four seasons but was utterly sublime in season four. Root brought an extraordinary yet subtle sensitivity to this seemingly obtuse role and it was an absolute joy to behold.

Anthony Carrigan as NoHo Hank went from giving hysterical line readings in the first few seasons to giving a deeply-felt and moving turn as a broken man in season four.

Sarah Goldberg was fantastic as the narcissistic Sally from the get go but in season four she allowed the character’s narcissism to devour her from the inside out. Goldberg’s work in this series was really and truly special.

All of the acting in this series was top-notch. Obviously, Bill Hader was brilliant as the endearing sociopath Barry and carried the series in his subdued and subtle way from start to finish. But even actors in small roles rose to the occasion on Barry, like the fantastic and often under-appreciated Eddie Alfano, who was superb in a supporting role as a thoughtful but dim-witted tough guy in season four.

The final season of Barry is more akin to the existentially soaked sur-reality of season three than the more straight-forward comedy of seasons one and two. Season four, like season three, is filled with much psychological symbolism and often feels like a bizarre dream.

The threat not just of death but of divine judgement hovers over season four like a funnel cloud looking for the perfect place to touch ground. All the characters feel like ghosts haunting their own lives or like dream characters unable to wake from a recurring nightmare.

This may not sound like a fun comedy to you, and in some ways, it isn’t fun despite being funny, but make no mistake, it is a comedy, an extremely dark comedy, just not like any we’ve seen before.

Barry’s finale episode was as gloriously weird as everything that preceded it, and ultimately, and this is no spoiler, you could argue that no one ended up the “winner” in Barry…except, of course, the viewer.

But I must say that I felt the finale did stumble in its final sequence. Again, I won’t give anything away, but for a series that was so exquisitely profound for its first 31 ¾ episodes, the final sequence of the series was impossibly, almost irrevocably, trite.

The ending sequence felt so beneath the philosophical profundity of everything that came before it that it felt like either a lame joke or a cheap cop out. An ending that disappointing and unsatisfying can make you question an entire series in hindsight. While I feel strongly about that sequence’s failure, I don’t feel that strongly about it, and can see the wider point Hader was trying to make…notice I didn’t say “deeper point”, but that wider point was too banal and cliched and well beneath the standard that the great Bill Hader had set with his groundbreaking series.

So, yes, I was disappointed with how Barry ended, but I wasn’t on the whole I wasn’t disappointed with season four or the series overall. To me, Barry is the best comedy series HBO has ever produced. Veep is a close second, but I felt Veep stumbled in its final season more substantially way than Barry did in its final sequence. Since I am discussing the greatest HBO comedies of all-time I know people will ask so let me be very clear, I am not a Curb Your Enthusiasm guy in any way, shape or form. I simply cannot get through a single episode of that shitty show. I just don’t understand the appeal of Larry David in the least as I find him not only actively unfunny but aggressively repulsive.

In conclusion, Barry’s final season is a strange and surreal one but is both very funny and deeply profound despite missing the mark with the last sequence in the last episode.

If you haven’t watched Barry or you bailed on during the weirdness of season three, my recommendation is to go back and watch it all from start to finish. It isn’t what you think it is and isn’t what you expect, which is why it is so worthwhile.

 Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo

©2023

Succession (HBO): Final Season Review - All's Well That Ends Well...Enough

****THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS SOME SEASON 4 SPOILERS!!! THIS IS NOT A SPOILER FREE ARTICLE!!****

Season 4 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Overall Series Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: WATCH IT. Great acting and great writing make for some great TV.

Succession is dead. Long live Succession.

The HBO prestige drama about the dysfunctional Roy family and its mega-media empire had its season four and series finale last night.

For its four seasons Succession has been a glorious dramatic feast served in an era where both film and television have consistently fed us mostly middling, mind-numbing, middlebrow mush.

Watching patriarch Logan (Brian Cox) and his ne’er-do-well offspring Kendall, Shiv and Roman run roughshod over America and its culture was insidiously entertaining but also bone chilling because of its unnerving similarity to the real-world.

The Roys are part Murdoch (Fox), part Redstone (Viacom/CBS/Paramount), part Cox (Cox Communications) and part Roberts (Comcast), and like them all, entirely awful.

Despite being a toxic brew of capitalism porn and media mogul soap opera, Succession never failed to be a joy to behold and the reason for that is two-fold.

First, the acting was superb across the board. Secondly, the dialogue brought to life by these actors was razor sharp and never failed to be anything but modern-day Shakespeare.

That all said, season four was the weakest of the Succession seasons. It wasn’t terrible at all, in fact, it featured the greatest episode not only of the series (episode 3) but of any series in recent memory. But it felt like season four was less dramatically and narratively crisp as the seasons that preceded it.

Part of the issue with season four was that it didn’t earn much of the drama it tried to use. For example, the political election storyline felt trite and shallow because the stakes of the election were not sufficiently developed, and then when they were upon us felt artificially heightened…much like our own real elections.

The same was true for the climax of the finale. Without giving too much away, there is a confrontation between the siblings at a crucial moment that rang surprisingly hollow and underwhelming because it just seemed forced and manufactured, which is not something that happened throughout the run of the series.

This crucial confrontation needed more lead time in order to be more developed and more believable. Unfortunately, the lack of believability around this confrontation undercut the dramatic momentum of the episode, season and series.

Season four was also hamstrung by killing off its most compelling character, Logan, early in the season. Logan was the center of the Succession universe and while it was amusing watching the Roy children try and fill the gaping void left in his absence, it was never quite as profound as when Logan was sitting atop the throne.

Speaking of King Lear…oops…I mean Logan, Brian Cox was absolutely phenomenal in this series. Cox’s Shakespearean speechifying was as good as it gets and has ever gotten in television. Cox’s Logan was a combustible and curmudgeonly king and we should all bow down to his combativeness.

Kieran Culkin as Roman Roy was also spectacular. Watching Roman go full Fredo…and you never go full Fredo, in the final season was extraordinary. Culkin’s ability to bring Roman’s self-loathing and searing, rapier wit to life with such skill and verve was among the show’s highlights.

Sarah Snook’s oh so human, desperate and transparently wounded Shiv was a consistent pleasure to watch as she was Lady MacBeth, Goneril and Gertrude (Hamlet’s mother) all rolled in to one.

Jeremy Strong was outstanding as Kendall, the broken boy who would be king but can’t get out of his own way. Strong’s unrelenting commitment to the vacuous and vacant Kendall was impressive.

In season four, Alexander Skarsgard was exquisite as Swedish tech guru Lukas Mattson. Skarsgard was so great in season four as the GoJo CEO he basically took over the show with his quirky, nerd guy darkness.

But of all the great actors on Succession, nobody tops Matthew Macfadyen who played Shiv’s pain sponge, sycophant husband Tom Wambsgans. Tom reeked of shameless ambition and sweaty desperation but never succumbed to self-pity, only to self-interest.

Tom’s whipping boy, cousin Greg, played by Nicholas Braun, yearned to be part of the amoral and incompetent Roy sibling “quad” and would do anything to make it happen or to make anything happen for himself. Braun was outstanding as he stole scenes and episodes with his priceless line readings and his character’s insecure maneuvering and backdoor bravado.

I suppose the reason why, despite its faults and despite having watched the finale on the new, annoyingly glitchy, streaming service Max (fuck you, Max!), I liked Succession so much was that it accurately spoke to our current time and current predicament.  

Watching a Shakespearean-esque dramatization of the ruling elite and ownership class of America, filled with an endless supply of second and third-rate fucktard, mid-wit nepo-babies devoid of balls but ravenous for power, who surround themselves with sycophantic psychopaths whose only ambition is to hold onto their own tiny, Mordor adjacent fiefdoms, was as entertaining as it was unnerving because this is exactly how empires, like America, fail and fall.

For instance, anyone who is even remotely aware can see that America’s ruling class are a decidedly spent force. For God’s sake we are on our way to having another election between fourth-rate, incompetent shitstains Joe Biden and Donald Trump. In a country of over 350 million people, it is impossible that we must choose between a compulsively lying, narcissistic, dementia-addled, pedophile politician and a bloated, incoherent, shameless, compulsively lying, nepo-brat, failure.

Of course, the truth is we only have a choice between these two asshats because we don’t actually have any choice…only the illusion of choice. Succession makes it clear that the decision between who rules and who is ruled is not a decision at all…it’s simply theatre, meant to entertain and distract while the Logan Roys and Lukas Mattsons – the ruling elites of the world, sit on high and pull all the strings.

It was great fun while it lasted, but Succession, like America’s global empire and the dollar’s dominance, is over…and frankly…it needed to be over. Succession needed to end because it ran out of runway for its drama and the American empire needed to end because it, like all empires before it, has grown much too decadent and depraved whilst wearing the crown to survive.

America will no doubt deeply miss its empirical power when it’s gone because if Succession has taught us anything it’s that while being in power is a cold, barren, miserable, sterile, lonely, painful existence, life without power is much, much worse.

 Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo

©2023

Love and Death (HBO) - Miniseries Review: Trite True Crime Deep in the Heart of Texas

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

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. Despite a great cast this is just another true crime retread with a prestige tv veneer.

The HBO miniseries Love and Death, which stars Elizabeth Olsen and Jesse Plemons and tells the true story of an extra-marital affair and murder in the small town of Wylie, Texas in 1980, finished its seven-episode run on Thursday.

The series, which was written by David E. Kelley, recounts the salacious tale of Candy Montgomery, a mild-mannered Texas housewife and church choir member who has an affair with a fellow married church member Allan Gore. Months after the affair ends Allan’s wife Betty is found brutally murdered with an axe.

Despite the fact that this is apparently a well-known tale and has already been made into a Hulu miniseries (Candy – starring Jessica Biel – which I have not seen), I did not know the Candy Montgomery story prior to watching Love and Death and so I won’t recount it in detail here for you in order to preserve spoilers for any of you who are in the same boat as I am.

The verdict regarding Love and Death is that it’s little more than a true-crime, Lifetime movie with an HBO prestige veneer and some top-notch acting.

Elizabeth Olsen is particularly good as Candy, as she masterfully captures the performative nature of a certain breed of Southern woman. Candy’s mask is so effective it even fools Candy into thinking she’s not who she really is.

As evidenced by her breakout role in Martha, Marcy, Mae, Marlene (2011), Olsen is a terrific actress but her career seems to be a bit stuck at the moment after getting caught in the MCU cul-de-sac. Her performances in the MCU films as Scarlet Witch have not been notable, but her work in the MCU TV series Wandavision was magnificent for the intriguing first half of that flawed season.

One can only hope that Olsen has put the MCU in the rearview mirror and now that she’s financially secure can explore more interesting projects and roles. Love and Death may have been her attempt at doing that, but unfortunately the series never lives up to her stellar work in it.

Jesse Plemons is also very good as the subdued and rather odd character Allan Gore, who sports a hairdo that is a first ballot Hellacious Haircut Hall of Famer.

Plemons is a master at filling quiet characters with a peculiar and pulsating inner life, and his Allan, who we are told has a “perfectly formed penis” – good for him, is bustling just under the surface and behind those curiously dead eyes but is always assiduously contained and constrained.

Plemons is one of the more oddly compelling actors of his generation and it’s always a treat when he’s on screen, even here in the tepid Love and Death, but he deserves better than this series.

Tom Pelphrey, who recently made a name for himself in the Netflix show Ozark, is terrific in the under-written role of the passionate and combative lawyer Don Crowder. After reading the post script at the end of the series I have to say that Crowder’s life seems to be much more interesting post Love and Death than it is during this story, and would prefer to have seen that tale told.

And finally, Lily Rabe does the very best she can with the unfinished character Betty Gore, and she too deserved much better than what was written for her.

As good as the cast is across the board, the problem with Love and Death is without a doubt the overrated writer David E. Kelley, who simply never elevates the story or makes it more than just another recounting of a true crime in a culture awash in true crime.

Kelley is considered one of the untouchables in Hollywood but I’ve never understood his appeal. Doogie Howser, Picket Fences, Chicago Hope, The Practice, Boston Legal, Ally McBeal and Big Little Lies are his most famous series and they’re all egregiously awful to the point of being entirely unwatchable. I’ve never liked a single one of his shows and never understood why others fawn all over him.

The failure of Love and Death lies at the feet of Kelley, who across his career has seemed allergic to insight and addicted to disingenuousness. Kelley’s consistent vacuousness as a writer and his vapidity as a storyteller infects Love and Death and leaves it completely devoid of profundity and power.

Love and Death reminded me of another true crime story given the HBO prestige treatment last year, The Staircase. That series, which starred Colin Firth and Toni Collette, was intriguing on its salacious surface but once you dig in to it there was nothing there…as it was devoid of even an ounce of drama or insight.

Like The Staircase, Love and Death is underwhelming as the longer the series went on the less interesting it became until finally you only finish watching it out of a demented sense of obligation or in my case, completion OCD.

Ultimately, Love and Death plays acts at being meaningful but is a rather vacant exercise in true crime exploitation and failed titillation. If you haven’t watched the series then trust me when I tell you that you never need to start. And if you have watched it then I assume, like me, you either regret the time committed or have entirely forgotten it.

 Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo

©2023