The 12th Annual Slip-Me-A-Mickey Awards (2025)

THE 12th ANNUAL SLIP-ME-A-MICKEY AWARDS

The Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® awards are the final award of the interminably long awards season. The Slip-Me-A-Mickey™®, or as some lovingly call them, The Mockeys™®, are a robust tribute to the absolute worst that film and entertainment has to offer for the year.

Again, the qualifying rules are simple, I just had to have seen the film for it to be eligible. This means that at one point I had an interest in the film and put the effort in to see it, which may explain why I am so angry about it being awful. So, any vitriol I may spew during this awards presentation shouldn't be taken personally by the people mentioned, it is really anger at myself for getting duped into watching.

The prizes are also pretty simple. The winners/losers receive nothing but my temporary scorn. If you are a winner/loser don't fret, because this year’s Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® loser/winner could always be next year’s Mickey™® winner!! Remember…you are only as good as your last film!!

Now…onto the awards!

WORST FILM OF THE YEAR –

Caught Stealing – I’m old enough to remember when Darren Aronofsky was the cool kid on the cinephile block…oh how the mighty have fallen. Caught Stealing is the most idiotic, moronic, and laziest film imaginable. So stupid as to be offensive. Darren Aronofsky should be banned from making any more movies after this criminally dreadful film.

Alto Knights – I’m also old enough to remember when Barry Levinson was an important filmmaker. I’m very old. Levinson’s attempt at a mob epic is a staggeringly incoherent exercise that is shocking in its ineptitude.

Jay Kelly – Director Noah Baumbach and stars George Clooney and Adam Sandler are a Murderer’s Row of putrid and pedestrian performers…and for proof of that you need look no further than the saccharine shitbag of a movie that is Jay Kelly.

After the Hunt – Luca Guadagnino is a critical darling addicted to all things queer…in After the Hunt he once again shows himself to be a philosophically trite and painfully limited filmmaker. A tremendously putrid waste of time.

Song Sung Blue – The most batshit, tone-deaf, bizarro movie experience I had in 2025. An alarmingly awful movie that features some of the cheesiest supporting turns in recent memory.

And the Slip-Me-A-Mickey award goes to…

CAUGHT STEALING: As much as all these movies suck…most of them have at least one little thing about them that is a tiny bit redeeming. For example, Alto-Knights is awful but DeNiro is ok playing dual roles (and does it considerably better than Best Actor Oscar winner Michael B. Jordan). After the Hunt is atrocious but Julia Roberts does a pretty good job in it. Song Sung Blue is so bad it is amusing. Jay Kelly is terrible but ultimately it is a harmless little George Clooney attempt (and fail) at being charming and relevant again. But Caught Stealing? Caught Stealing has absolutely nothing redeeming about it. All of it is absolutely awful…which is a great asset when it comes to this category. So..congrats Caught Stealing!!

WORST PERFORMANCE OF THE YEAR –

Michael B. Jordan – Sinners: Mr. Jordan just won a Best Actor Oscar for a performance that is so amateurish and underwhelming it would make not just Sly Stallone, but Frank Stallone, blush. Jordan plays twins but is completely incapable of differentiating between the two of them – so much so that he has to wear different color hats so that we…and he…can know which one is which. Add in Jordan’s acting style – nothing but posing and preening, and his vocal style – mush mouth akin to talking with two Snickers bars in his mouth…and you’re left with a truly terrible, two-bit performance.

Adam Sandler – Jay Kelly: Adam Sandler’s career strategy is to be awful in as many shitty movies as he can and then give the most minimal of effort in an allegedly less shitty movie and have critics slobber all over him for his dramatic abilities. Don’t be fooled. Adam Sandler sucks. He is a shitty actor….and his soft talking, “aww shucks”, acting technique in Jay Kelly is an embarrassment to anyone who has the slightest bit of knowledge about the craft of acting. Dear Adam – please go away forever. Dear Adam Sandler apologists – you will burn in hell forever.

Ayo Edebiri – After the Hunt: Ayo Edebiri is so abysmal in After the Hunt it felt like she had never acted before and was thrown before the cameras with no preparation or notice – like a Make-A-Wish kid having their dying wish to be in a movie come true. As wooden and dead-eyed a performance as you will ever see. Truly remarkable for how awful it was.

Idris Elba – A House of Dynamite: Idris Elba is great…but he was definitely not great in A House of Dynamite as the President of the U.S.A. Elba was like a fish out of water…literally. He could barely walk like a human being…and his speaking wasn’t much better either. I would be relieved if I read that Elba was strung out on heroin and LSD while he shot this movie…but unfortunately that wasn’t the case.

Anthony Ramos – A House of Dynamite: This dude starred in Hamilton on Broadway and has been so fucking terrible in every single thing he’s done since then it is actually shocking to behold. In A House of Dynamite, he puts on a masterclass in awful acting…so much so that if it were a stage play I wouldn’t throw tomatoes at him, I’d throw rocks…sharp rocks.

And the Slip-Me-A-Mickey award goes to…

AYO EDEBIRI – AFTER THE HUNT: Ms. Edebiri is a big tv star on the show The Bear…but I simply can’t bear to watch her be such a shitty actor in After the Hunt. She’s such a bad actress she should not only stay away from doing movies…she should stay away from even watching them.

Worst Scene of the Year –

JAY KELLY - A CHRISTMAS CAROL-STYLE FLASHBACKS: When the character Jay Kelly starts walking through his past and is watching his young self (played by a different actor) go through critical moments in his life, I wanted to kill myself…but not before killing Noah Baumbach who wrote this shit and George Clooney who’s terrible acting in it. An all-time embarrassing piece of cinematic detritus.

MOST OVERRATED FILM OF THE YEAR –

Sinners – Ah yes…Sinners…a second-rate vampire movie that dipshits and dopes adore but that is so amateurish it pains to even recount. This film was slathered over by every numbnuts know-nothing ignorant of cinema…it is like every online asshole’s favorite movie ever. As I so astutely observed in my review of this nothing burger – this is the type of movie that dumb people think is deep and stupid people think is smart. Critics and many “fans” loved it because they were afraid to tell the truth about its artistic mundanity out of fear of being called “racist”. Yawn.

One Battle After Another – As a “film bros” and a PT Anderson fan, it pained me to see other film bros and PTA fans get a giant boner over this middling mess of a movie. This movie was so over-hyped and underwhelming it gave me the bends. Stop with the slurping already – this ain’t no masterpiece…it is bottom-tier PTA, plain and simple. Deal with it.

Marty Supreme – I diverge from the Film Bros community when it comes to the Safdie Brothers…they love them, I can do without them. Josh Safdie wrote and directed this grating and annoying and seemingly endless film…and he did it very, very poorly. A toxic and odious odyssey of Jewish arrogance and self-loathing that goes down like a matzo ball of shit and makes you want to retch….but critics loved it! Yuck.

And the Slip-Me-A-Mickey award goes to…

SINNERS – Sinners is such a second-rate piece of moviemaking it makes my colon twinge just at the thought of rewatching it. Pedestrian and puerile through and through…it is embarrassing that this movie was both a big hit and shameful that it received more Oscar nominations than any other film in Academy Award history. It is unquestionably the most overrated film of the year.

SPECIAL ACHIEVEMENT IN CINEMATIC MALPRACTICE –

James Gunn, Spike Lee, Guillermo del Toro, Steven Soderberg: These are the Four Horsemen of the Shit-pocalypse who have taken a shit all over either their careers, their films or their audiences.

James Gunn got handed the reigns of the DC universe and promptly took a shit all over it with the truly awful Superman. The fact that we have at least a whole decade of Gunn taking shits all over the already shat upon DC universe does not fill me with any semblance of joy.

Spike Lee is such a spent creative force he did a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s masterpiece High and Low – and to show how creative Spike is he titled it Highest 2 Lowest…yawn. To top it all off Highest 2 Lowest isn’t just an embarrassment of a title, it is an embarrassment of a movie.

The great Guillermo del Toro got to make his dream film – Frankenstein…and promptly made one of his very worst movies…and absolute muddled mess. Now he will never get to make his dream project again.

And finally, Steven Soderberg had all the pieces in place to finally return to form and actually make a great and meaningful movie once again…and dropped the ball entirely. Black Bag, starring the great Cate Blanchet and Michael Fassbender, was so forgettable you forget it exists even while you’re watching it.

These four heavy hitters should be ashamed of themselves for their shoddy work on these shitty movies.

POS ALL-STARS –

BLAKE LIVELY AND JUSTIN BALDONI AND ANYONE WHO CARES OR HAS AN OPINION ABOUT BLAKE LIVELY AND JUSTIN BALDONI – I have no idea what this entire story is about, but the fact that anyone gives a shit about these two twats irritates the living shit out of me. I want Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni to be locked in a septic tank together for the rest of their lives. I want anyone who cares about the Blake Lively – Justin Baldoni story to be boiled alive in a vat of elephant excrement.

BILL MAHER – Little Bill loves to fellate all things Israel and Military/Intelligence Industrial Complex. He is such a Zio-whore and so blind to his own hypocrisy and ignorance he has devolved from being hate-watchable to simply unwatchable. On the bright side…he has never been less relevant!!

JAKE PAUL/LOGAN PAUL – I don’t give two shits about who or what these two shitsticks are. I just want them to go away. If you want to be some asshole influencer who makes a trillion dollars off of dumbass Youtube viewers…go ahead. But once you cross over into my life…and things I am interested in…like boxing…then we have a problem. I’m glad Jake Paul got his jaw broken in two places by Anthony Joshua…I only wish I was the one doing the jaw-breaking. Fingers crossed someone cracks Logan Paul’s skull open soon.

POS HALL OF FAME –

PRINCE ANDREW – Imagine being born into endless wealth and privilege and never having to work a single day in your life and instead of being grateful and living a life of charity and good will…you decide to be a sexual predator who fucks young girls simply because you can.

Prince Andrew is the worst in a family full of worsts…quite an accomplishment.

Jeffrey Epstein’s dear friend Andrew, is like the rest of his in-bred, arrogant, parasitic, useless family, a predator to the core who loves to prey upon the poor and the weak. He despises those beneath him, both literally and figuratively.

He preyed upon the girls provided by Epstein not because he couldn’t get laid in the real world, but because he wanted to force a young girl to suffer for his pleasure. He wanted her to be uncomfortable…to be subservient to him…because that is how he is wired.

Truth is his whole filthy fucking family is wired like that. These royal vermin should be stripped on their titles, their lands, their wealth and their limbs…like William Wallace…drawn and quartered in the public square. That won’t happen, of course, because the rules don’t apply to people like Prince Andrew or the rest of his cohorts in the elite Epstein Class. They get to dance between the raindrops while we drown in the deluge of their depravity and destruction.

The best-case scenario for the Epstein class regarding Prince Andrew is what happened to his friend Jeffery Epstein…happens to him too. He is “suicided” and quickly thrown in the bin of forgotten history so that his story goes away as quickly as possible.

Worst case scenario for Andrew is that they lock him in a room with me for fifteen minutes. Now that would be entertaining!

And thus ends the 12th Annual Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® Awards!!! To the winners/losers…don't take it personally…and God knows I hope I don't see you again next year!! To you dear reader…thanks for tuning in and we'll see you again next year!!

©2026

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 141 - A House of Dynamite

On this episode, Barry and I man the controls in the situation room and give our thoughts on the nuclear bomb that is Kathryn Bigelow's new Netflix movie A House of Dynamite. Topics discuss include Bigelow's up and down filmography, debatable creative choices and casting issues in this movie, and the beautiful, eternal, undying love shared between Rebecca Ferguson and I. 

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota" Episode 141 - A House of Dynamite

Thanks for listening!

©2025

A House of Dynamite: A Review - A Nuclear Dud

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

My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. An instantaneously forgettable cinematic exercise that is so lifeless and inert as to be frustrating.

A House of Dynamite, directed by Academy-Award winner Kathryn Bigelow, examines the reaction from the U.S. government and military to the launch of a nuclear missile aimed at the United States.

The film, which is streaming on Netflix, features a cast that includes Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson, Tracy Letts, Jared Harris and Anthony Ramos among many others.

There have been many notable films made throughout the years about the dire threat and fear of nuclear annihilation, Fail Safe and Dr. Strangelove immediately come to mind. Rest assured A House of Dynamite is not even remotely in the same class as either of those two classics.

In fact, A House of Dynamite is such a tepid, thin gruel, it barely even feels like a movie, never mind a good one. It looks, sounds and feels like a post-9/11, self-serious ABC Wednesday night drama series or something as equally superficial and vapid.

The movie is structured in three acts that are less acts as they are episodes…thus making the entire enterprise seem like one big “very special episode” of 24, Designated Survivor and The West Wing combined.

Unfortunately, it is also shot like a tv show, with very flat visuals, orthodox and rudimentary framing and camera work, obvious sets and forced melo-drama.  

The opening act of the movie holds a modicum of promise as it follows the people working the Situation Room at the White House when the alert comes that a missile launch has occurred. It isn’t great by any means, but compared to what comes in acts two and three, act one seems downright riveting.

In acts two and three, despite the countdown clock to the missile hitting the U.S., the film becomes remarkably inert dramatically. Act two and three are so poorly written, poorly directed and poorly acted that it is embarrassing to behold.

The film thinks it has something profound to say but its politics are as trite and vacuous as its drama. The whole venture is so devoid of gravitas it ultimately feels like a blackhole of self-seriousness that eliminates all responses to it except for derisive laughter – the most notable example of this is the film’s ignominious ending (which I won’t spoil).

Speaking of derisive laughter, there are a bevy of really bad performances in this movie, and some of them come from very good actors, which is baffling.

For example, Idris Elba is a terrific actor, but he is so afwul as the president in this movie it is jarring, and painful, to watch. He is so disconnected from the role, and to be fair it is horribly written, but he is also devoid of any charisma – which is shocking.

Jared Harris is another actor I really like but he is extraordinarily bad as the Secretary of Defense. Harris, like Elba, is British, and like Elba his American accent is sort of all over the place and entirely distracting. It also doesn’t help that his character is egregiously written as well.

Thankfully Anthony Ramos, of Hamilton fame, is American…but unfortunately, he is also an absolutely atrocious actor. I am sorry to say but it isn’t just Ramos’ work on A House of Dynamite…it is every film he does. Guy is a terrible actor. Please Hollywood…please just make Anthony Ramos go away.

To be fair to the cast, who are all not great in the movie (with the exception of the ultra-luminous Rebecca Ferguson who has one moment in the movie that is the only moment that feels real), the script is utterly appalling….and the direction is amateurish as well.

Which brings us to Kathryn Bigelow.

Bigelow is absolutely adored by some in the movie industry. I am not one of those people. I don’t have any inherent dislike of Bigelow’s work, in fact I have admired some of it, but I also have no time for false filmmaking idols.

Bigelow has made some popular movies, like Point Break, that I find to be forgettable popcorn nonsense. She has also made some serious pieces of cinema…like The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty. You can quibble with the politics of Zero Dark Thirty, but there is no quibbling over the quality of the deft and skillful filmmaking on display. The same is true, at least regarding the filmmaking, of Bigelow’s Academy Award winning film The Hurt Locker.

But unfortunately, those films were the undeniable apex of Bigelow’s career. Her follow up to Zero Dark Thirty, and her film previous to A House of Dynamite, was 2017’s Detroit…which was an absolute shitshow of a movie. It is one of the very worst films of this century…and maybe the last one too.

A funny anecdote, but after writing a much-deserved scathing review of Detroit, I had a dear friend cut me out of her life entirely in a rage. This was the height of the first Trump hysteria (God helps us that I had to say “first”) and the #MeToo and #OscarsSoWhite nonsense that gripped Hollywood (and much of the country) at the time. My former friend was suffering with Stage Four of Trump/MeToo/OscarsSoWhite/BlackLivesMatter hysteria – and I was immune to it. Due to her ailment, she apparently got so furiously enraged that I had the temerity to not adore Detroit – a movie about a racist police incident from the 60’s, that she could no longer bear to know me or read anything I wrote because apparently, I was a racist or sexist…or both…or something like that. At the time I thought that was bizarre to the point of being literally insane…in hindsight I still think I am 100% accurate in my diagnosis.

To be clear, not wanting to be my friend is not insane, actually it’s a very rational notion and a sign of good taste, but what is insane (and also a sign of the very worst of taste) is not thinking that the movie Detroit is nothing but an odious pile of elephant excrement. (I wholly encourage you to read my review of Detroit)

Regardless…or as some like to say…”irregardless”…Detroit was a mess of a movie, and while A House of Dynamite isn’t quite as insufferable as that, it is still close enough to be quite an uncinematic embarrassment.

The bottom line is that A House of Dynamite yearns to be a taut thriller chock full of profundities about the dangerous nature of our world and the current moment – a truly noble cause, but it is so dreadfully written, poorly constructed and amateurishly executed that it is rendered a dramatically impotent and cinematically flaccid affair.

The truth is that the vitally important topics addressed in the film deserved considerably better…and so do audiences. Unfortunately, audiences would’ve been better served, and definitely more entertained, if A House of Dynamite was titled A House of Dyn-O-Mite! and was a gritty drama about the golden years of JJ Walker from Good Times (only old people will get this joke).

Jokes aside, A House of Dynamite is streaming on Netflix, but it is so instantaneously forgettable that you shouldn’t waste even a single second of your time watching it.

©2025