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And Just Like That...You’re a Sixty-Year-Old Single Woman With a Cat: How Sex and the City Had To End

August 2025

 

And just like that... it’s over...

 

And Carrie ended up just as I predicted...

When Sex and the City debuted twenty-seven years ago...

 

Alone...

 

A sixty-year-old single woman with a cat...

 

And for a show that sold fantasy...

About New York real estate, clothes...

But especially about the romantic prospects of four women...

 

That ending was surprisingly real...

 

And although I suspect SJP and Michael Patrick King

Intended it as a celebration of Carrie’s transformation

From romance-obsessed young writer living in New York...

To a mature accomplished woman ...

For whom her own company was more than enough...

 

Because Carrie had finally realized...

That she was so special...

That a man had nothing to add to her already fantastic life...

As she pranced around that multimillion-dollar Gramercy Park mansion

In her designer clothes...

 

Now if Michael Patrick King were a better writer...

He could have written a version of that “Cool Girl Speech” from Gone Girl ...

As a coda to Carrie’s embrace of her singlehood...

 

But he’s not...

 

Which is why Sex and the City and And Just Like That...

Were filled with lines that sounded like they came from a fortune cookie...

 

But King was the Gen X Jane Austen...

Because he chronicled the social milieu in which Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha...

Swam like a school of fish looking for the “right” man...

So every week was a new courtship plot...

During which the girls navigated their way through life in New York City ...

 

So the original series’ draw was that it was aspirational for that generation...

At a time when investment bankers ruled and New York was basking in the glow of its Giuliani years...

All shiny and fun again...

 

And, of course...

 

There were...

 

The clothes...

 

And they were spectacular...

And to her credit SJP wore them well...

 

Even if someone like Carrie would never have been able to afford them..

 

Until she married Big...

 

And like Austen’s male characters...

Big was rich, handsome...

And emotionally unavailable...

 

So Carrie had to chase him for six seasons...

Until he underwent a transformation...

Much Like Mister Darcy...

 

To finally see what a special woman that Carrie Bradshaw was...

And so he jetted off to Paris to bring her back to New York... and into his arms

 

So just as in the Austen novels...

Several of the Sex and the City characters married rich men...

And moved on from economic precarity...

 

But in contrast to the Austen women...

When they were single, the Sex and the City girls never seemed to seriously worry about how they were going to afford that next pair of spectacular shoes ..

 

But, now, thanks to rich husbands ...

They were able to spend the rest of their lives wandering around fabulous apartments...

Never having to worry again about the cost of Manolo’s...

 

Now...this was all a bill of goods...

 

But a generation bought it...

 

And talked endlessly about whether they were a Miranda or a Charlotte...

 

So Sex and the City became a cultural lodestar...

 

Especially the part about how these women just churned through men...

 

And they were always presented as so alluring..

That most of the men they dated were not worthy of them...

 

Or so they thought...

 

And because there was a lot of discussion about sex...

The through line from Sex and the City to Miranda July’s All Fours to Baby Girl..

Is obvious....

 

But then eleven years after the last Sex and the City movie ended...

SJP decided to bring back the girls...now all past menopause

In a new series... And Just Like That

 

That was so cringe... it was embarrassing...

 

As Michael Patrick King and SJP tried to make these sixty-year-old women..

Not look like dinosaurs in 2021 New York...

 

So Carrie becomes a sex podcaster..

Miranda goes gay...

And has a romance with a Hispanic trans comic

Charlotte’s daughter wants to be a boy...

 

Now, in fairness, the showrunners did occasionally hit a ripe target...

 

The college admission counselor who tells the wealthy black kids they need to drop lacrosse and be more “ghetto” to be competitive...

And the insufferable Gen Z guests at Thanksgiving...

 

Were a nice surprise in a series...

 

That had a character licking stamps...

 

But because the original series had been pretty lily white...

POC show up in And Just Like That

 

Now... Nicole Ari Parker was a nice addition as the new black friend

Rich of course...

And that woman looks great in everything...

But for some reason they kept dressing her in a riot of primary colors like a clown in the circus...

With enormous necklaces that looked like they came from the table décor section at Pottery Barn

 

And then there was Sarita Choudhury as Seema...

The Samantha replacement....

A singularly unattractive South Asian woman who looks like the Hindu god Nandi..

Which made it hard to believe some hot young gardener would ever be interested...

 

Which was a casting decision that made no sense..

 

Was Priyanka Chopra not available?

Nor any of the many other beautiful South Asian women?

 

Now Kim Cattrall wisely decided to forgo this turkey...

Which meant poor Miranda became the new target for the humiliation

That SJP likes to visit on a selected character ...

 

So we get a newly gay Miranda pathetically trying to pick up women in a bar like it was still the 90s...

Or pity sleeping with Rosie O’Donnell ...

Who plays a nun the girls make fun of because she’s a tourist who wants to go to The Tavern on the Green and Times Square...

 

Because this franchise always dripped with condescension toward anyone not from Manhattan...

 

Which, of course, everyone should know is the center of the universe...

 

And those poor rubes from elsewhere are often identified by the fact that they wore scrunchies...

So when one of Carrie’s boyfriends fails to pick up this cultural clue in the original series...

She thought about dumping him...

 

And the English author Carrie flirts with in And Just Like That...

Has a beard, makes tea... and smokes a pipe...

Because if you are not from New York

You are going to be a stereotype...

 

So when Carrie goes to visit Aidan in Virginia..

She dresses like a sister wife...

Because isn’t that what they do in the wilds outside New York City?

 

But, of course, she would NEVER consider living in Virginia...

Even to save her relationship with the man she “loves”...

 

Which gets us to the essence of Carrie...

 

And why the ending of And Just Like That was so spot on...

 

SJP worked very hard to make us believe that Carrie was...

 

So special...

Her friends keep telling her so...

 

So talented...

Look Carrie wrote a great novel on the first try...

 

So cool...

The clothes, the shoes, the fabulous apartment....

 

And such a good friend...

 

Uh...well... maybe not...

 

Now one of this franchise’s enduring tropes ...

Was that the girls were true friends and each other’s surrogate family...

Who would always be there for each other...

 

But let’s unpack for a minute what kind of friend Carrie truly was...

 

She bullied Charlotte in Sex and the City into lending her money...

She belittles Miranda for bringing a karaoke machine to a party...

She frequently snaps at any of the girls who try to tell her the truth...

And then ghosts them until they apologize...

 

Yes... Carrie will show up for you in a crisis...

If she has nothing better to do...

Like when it’s New Year’s Eve and she doesn’t have a date...

 

So let’s be honest... Carrie is often insufferable...

She’s selfish, entitled, demanding...

And unwilling to take into consideration the needs of others if it would require a real sacrifice on her part...

 

So when Big comes home at night dog tired from a long stressful day at work...

And just wants to decompress on the couch...

She hectors him into going out to a bar...

 

So she can have fun...

 

Because that’s Carrie...

 

So the ending of And Just Like That had a certain karma...

 

Because after dealing with the usual issues that strain relationships..

And questioning whether it is really worth it....

 

All of Carrie’s friends have a Come to Jesus moment

(Interestingly, after they attend a wedding dress fashion show)

About what it means to be with someone you love...

And how you need to make sacrifices....

Because your relationship is worth it in the end...

 

Which was something Carrie was never willing to do...

 

But that means Carrie’s surrogate family leaves her on Thanksgiving...

To tend to the needs of their partners...

 

And she is left to go home alone ...

To her cat and her shoes...

 

Which was what I always thought would happen...

 

So although SJP and Michael Patrick King wanted us to think of this ending as a brave statement about female empowerment...

 

I was left thinking...

 

Carrie... you’re now sixty...

 

If they do another sequel in eleven years...

 

Will your friends have all moved away to be taken care of by their families ...

 

While you sit alone in an assisted living facility...
Visited only by your conservator?
 

The Naked Gun: How Bill Cosby, Sydney Sweeney, and OJ Simpson Ended Up in a Movie Review  

August 2025

 

Some quick takes on The Naked Gun...

 

Liam Neeson

AKA.. the world’s oldest action movie star...

 

Can play a killer...

But he can’t do comedy...

 

He can kick you down the stairs...

Throw you off a bridge...

 

But the dude has one expression...

Which is the glacial flat affect of someone who will not be deterred...

From taking cold hard revenge...

That’s going to hurt... a lot

 

So trying to make him a bumbling fool...

 

Is a bridge too far for anyone who has seen The Grey, Cold Pursuit...

Or better yet...

Heard that speech from Taken...

Which became its own meme...

 

So I do have to wonder about the casting agent for this movie..

Because Neeson is just all wrong for this role...

 

And it doesn’t help that at 6’4” he looks like a giant...

Wandering around with a bunch of lilliputians...

That he could crush without breaking a sweat...

 

So it’s just not believable that this guy could be a buffoon...

 

Neeson did, however, seem to really enjoy kissing Pamela Anderson...

So there was definitely something going on between those two...

 

But The Naked Gun...

Needed someone who could do deadpan...

And deliver a joke...

 

Because some of the lines were actually funny...

 

The bit about pouring a lady a drink from the Bill Cosby Wine Collection was clever...

And I liked how it opened with the stolen object labeled “Plot Device”

 

But no one in the cast had any comedy chops...

So this film’s humor was largely wasted...

 

Unless you happen to be a middle school boy...

 

Which was a shame...

 

And made me really miss Leslie Nielsen...

 

But I was left with this thought...

 

The Naked Gun is filled with scenes...

Where the characters....

For comic effect...

 

Take everything said... literally

 

So I wondered if it had occurred to the screenwriter...

That we are living at a time...

Where one out of every thirty-one children are said to be on the spectrum ...

 

So this film did seem to be asking for trouble...

 

Especially in a week...

When a comely young woman advertising American Eagle jeans...

Generated a fierce backlash...

 

From the usual online scolds ...

Who are always asking to speak to the manager of the moral universe...

 

But maybe a film that freely acknowledges that OJ Simpson was in the original...

And puts his picture on the wall with the other heroes of the First Police Squad....

​

Had zero f...ks to give...

​

The Fantastic Four: First Steps Has the Tomorrowland Problem

August 2025

 

What do you get when you have a middle-aged superhero...

 

A pregnant superhero...

 

A hot superhero...

Who doesn’t look like he’s been mainlining testosterone...

 

And I’m going to keep an eye on Joseph Quinn ...

Because those baby blues almost stole the movie from Pedro Pascal and Vanessa Kirby...

 

A superhero in a bulked up body suit who looks like he is covered in wood shingles...

 

And a word, Ebon Moss-Bachrach... why did you take this role?

No one is going to know it was you under that costume...

 

A villainess who looks like she was found in the prop shop of Goldfinger...

 

And a massive super villain made of metal parts that appear to have been  purloined from a junk yard...

But with a headdress that might have been worn by a Mayan king...

If they had access to iron... which they didn’t...

 

So...drum roll please...

 

Put all these things together..

 

And you get...

 

ANOTHER SUPERHERO MOVIE...

 

Color me excited...NOT

 

Although they did spare me the overly complicated plot this time...

But there was no reason to waste time with the introduction to the origin story of the Fantastic Four...

The trailer had already taken care of that...

 

Now... this is all set in Tomorrowland...

 

And not the Tomorrowland of today...

Which is a bleak dystopian homage to Star Wars ...

 

But the original Disneyland Tomorrowland...

That was all shiny and white...

And mostly product placement...

Because Uncle Walt had run out of money at that point...

 

The Fantastic Four: First Steps

Does have a Canada Dry ad in every scene...

But we are used to that now...

 

So it isn’t quite as novel as it was when Walt did it in 1955

 

Obviously, this film...

Is very retro...

 

Everyone is dressed like it was the early 60s...

And are sooo excited about a rocket launch...

That I think I almost heard Walter Cronkite narrating the takeoff...

 

And it is full of props that seemed so futuristic at the time...

Flying cars, computers, robots...

Which gave it a real Jetsons feel...

 

But the robot is powered by a reel to reel tape...

And the Superheroes record messages from outer space on vinyl...

And then play it back on a record player...

 

So you get the feeling that you are stuck in the original Tomorrowland...

That Disney was smart enough to cashier years ago...

 

Because it was dated almost as soon as it was built......

 

So this movie has the Tomorrowland problem

 

Which leads to cognitive dissonance...

 

Because how are we supposed to be impressed with Superheroes...

 

Who are using technology to save the world...

That most of the audience is too young to even remember....

Because it is....so old
 

Don’t Be Fooled: Eddington Is Not Satire... It’s a Warning

July 2025

 

When the private jet shows up...

Filled with Antifa posters...

And black clad operatives...

Who after they deplane, pile into black SUVS...

And start shooting policemen...

 

My first thought was....

Much like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid...

 

“Who are these guys?”

 

 But at that point...

 

I wasn’t quite sure where Ari Aster was trying to take this movie...

 

And I apologize for all the spoilers ahead..

But there is no way to talk about this film..

Without wading into its plot...

Which rocks back and forth...

Like a car trying struggling to get out of a snowdrift...

 

Now Eddington is set in a small dying town in New Mexico

During the height of the Covid epidemic...

 

A sort of Hell or High Water set on the Mesa...

But with a pandemic looming in the background

 

And at first this film seems to sympathize with the local sheriff

Played by Joaquin Phoenix...

 

A man who cares about his community

And his wife...played by Emma Stone...

Who is almost catatonic with depression...

 

While trying to tolerate his hectoring mother-in-law...

Who has gone deeply down the rabbit hole of QAnon conspiracies...

 

Joe is a simple, if naïve man...

Who will prove, over the course of the film, to be far too credulous...

 

Yet his initial instinct is to handle situations with common sense...

Rather than lashing himself to the mast of some rigid ideological position...

 

And his heart is in the right place... at least initially

As he tries to help an old man who is refused entry into the town grocery store...

When he refuses to wear a mask...

Because he has COPD and can’t breathe with one on..

 

Joe understands this because he has asthma..

And he can’t breathe with the mask on either....

 

Plus, he knows Eddington has not yet had a single case of Covid...

 

Now sitting in the theater in 2025...

 

I wondered how Aster was going to handle this issue...

 

Considering what we now know about the efficacy ... and the impact

Of the mandates, shutdowns...and everything else that came with the government’s heavy-handed response to the pandemic...

But that at the time divided the Red and the Blue parts of the country...

 

So when Joe tries to help the old man gain entry to the store...

He meets the Karens...

Led by the current mayor...

 

Played by Pedro Pascal...

Who seems to be in everything these days...

 

Pascal’s Ted is in cahoots with a multinational corporation...

That wants to build an AI facility in the town...powered of course by Green Energy...

But that the locals think will take all their water...

 

Today we know they should be worried about more than that...

But in 2020 such concerns were in the future...

Yet the things we know now...

Loom a bit too heavily over much of this film...

 

Now when Joe confronts Ted about how the old man was treated...

The mayor says the state is making him enforce the mask mandate...

So there can be no room for any exceptions...

 

But Joe is offended by rules imposed by a distant authority...

That allow no room for what he sees as empathy...

For how rigidly enforcing these mandates...

Impacts the lives of the citizens of his town...

 

So let's now remember all those grannies dying alone in nursing homes during the pandemic......

 

So Joe decides to run for mayor...

 

Now at this point I’m thinking are we about to have a Red State Mr. Smith Goes To Washington...

 

Nope...

 

Because then George Floyd dies...

And the youngin’s in the town flood the town square...

With protests calling for social justice...

 

And defunding the three person police force...

 

While lecturing everyone they can find about how their white privilege has caused all the evil in the world...

And also harassing the black deputy ...

Who appears to be the only black in town...

For not supporting his people...

 

Now, of course, the protestors are mostly white....

And obnoxious...

 

And so the best line in the film is when one of the parents...

Responds to a lecture from his son....

That is full of platitudes from critical race theory ....

By asking the kid if he is retarded...

 

So of course, things spin out of control...

Fueled by social media...

Out-of-town interlopers from neighboring activist communities...

And the sheriff’s overreaction...

 

But much of what is going on is not purely political...

As these things rarely are...

 

The sheriff and the mayor have been at odds for years

Over an event that involved the sheriff’s wife...

The mayor’s son becomes a leader of the activists...

In order to impress the white girl...

Who is harassing the black deputy for not being black enough...

But who is really upset because the deputy broke up with her...

 

So at this point Aster seems to be taking on the Left...

 

Then the following things happen that spin the axis of the film away from its initial sympathy for the Right ...

 

Austin Butler shows up as a smooth seductive huckster ...

An influencer spinning tales about widespread pedo rings...

 

Pizza Gate anyone?

 

While the real pedophilia is revealed to have taken place closer to home...

And been enabled by someone on the Right...

 

I think this is when we were supposed to think of Denny Hastert...

 

Then someone is shot... to prevent him from bringing Covid to the town

And the person who shot him is someone who refused to wear a mask

Who then comes down with the disease...

The black deputy is framed for a crime...

Because it turns out the entire sheriff’s office really are racists ..

Then Joe threatens armed rebellion against the outside forces he believes are destroying his community...

And warns them his town is full of people with guns...

 

At this point, you can almost see Merritt Garland opening a file on Eddington...

 

Oh... and a Kyle Rittenhouse character shows up...

Who later makes bank on his newfound fame...

 

So now it looks like Aster is not going to leave untouched...

Any unflattering trope about the Right ...

 

Because we not only have Dumb and Dumber policing Eddington...

Men who are too stupid to do anything right...

And look ridiculous and ineffectual when they try...

 

Which I think was intended to bring to mind the image of the J6 Shaman  ...

 

And there are also influencers peddling right-wing conspiracy theories...

Who, of course, turn out to be just in it for the bucks...

But, nevertheless, lead their followers like sheep into dark crevices of paranoia...

 

Now at this point you think you know where this is going...

 

Which was why I started to understand why Pascal...

Who is not shy about his politics...

Agreed to be in this movie...

 

Because Ted is the one character in Eddington who is not a hapless idiot...

While everyone else is a fool...   

 

But then ...

 

That private jet shows up...

 

And its Anti-fa shock troops...

Start trying to take out the policemen...

 

So are they on the payroll of George Soros?

Or do they have something to do with Black helicopters...

And the World Economic Forum?

Or the company that wants to build the AI facility...

 

It’s hard to tell....

 

But it’s made clear...

 

The folks on the Right are being hunted...

 

By something much more powerful...

 

And then Eddington ends...

In the most farcical way ever...

 

But this film is not a send-up...

 

Because even though Aster does his best to be a provocateur...

Poking at both the Left and Right...

 

The Right is mostly made to look stupid...

And outmatched by the Left...

 

So when he gives credence to one of the Right’s conspiracy theories...

You realize where Aster has really taken his movie...

 

Because Eddington is not a satire...

It’s far too sad to be that......

 

For at its core, it’s the story of the emasculation ...

Of the clearly outmatched sheriff...

Which leads to the radicalization...

That in the end destroys him...

 

So...

 

According to this movie...

 

The Right may be paranoid... but that does not mean they are always wrong...

 

There are powerful forces aligned against them ...

 

That will prevail in the end...

 

Because men like Joe...

Will never be smart enough to outwit them...

 

So...you guessed it...

Eddington was really mean to be a warning....
 

Untamed: It’s Not Just the Rock Climbers Who Are Left Hanging In This Series

July 2025

 

The opening scene of Untamed ...

In which two climbers high up on El Capitan are almost killed by something totally unexpected..

 

Is truly riveting...

 

And the cinematography...

Showcases Yosemite in all its glory...

 

Or at least the parts of this series that were actually filmed there...

Which were mostly the drone shots...

 

Because...

 

Have you actually tried to get into the Park lately?

Forget communing with nature...

You will end up fighting for a parking space...

And standing in line for everything...

 

But Untamed lingers on the magnificent vistas of Yosemite...

The stark rock faces that so captivated John Muir...

Which rise up from the wooded landscape and quite meadows...

As if to say this land belongs to us...

 

So come at your own risk...

 

And it’s well known that tourists die every year in the Park...

They fall over waterfalls...

Off rocks...

Or drown in the Merced River...

 

So although large parts of this series were filmed elsewhere...

It’s the drama of a wild and untamed Yosemite

That is the fitting backdrop for this story ...

 

And this series starts very strong...

With a mystery that you know will take several episodes to unravel...

 

A True Detective set in a National Park...

 

But this particular Park seems to draw people like Cary Stayner...

And Kenneth Parnell...

Who kidnapped and abused Cary’s younger brother, Steven...

 

Years before Cary sexually assaulted and murdered three tourists in Yosemite...

Whose deaths remained a mystery for months...

Until Cary struck again and beheaded a naturalist who was working at the Park

 

And yes...

The same Park that employed Cary...

Also employed Parnell....

Before he kidnapped Cary’s brother...

 

So amidst its beauty...

Yosemite has been the site of some dark deeds...

Done by some of its employees...

 

So setting a murder mystery in the Park seemed fitting...

 

And this one stars Eric Bana... he of good hair...

And few words...

Sam Neill ... who looks great for his age...

But doesn’t do much but give his famous side eye...

And Rosemarie DeWitt...

Who never should have consented to that awful haircut...

 

But after a spectacular beginning...

Everything goes downhill...

 

Which made me wonder if the showrunner had a stroke...

 

And not just because no one...

 

And I mean no one...

 

Would cook meth deep in the bowels of an abandoned mine shaft...

 

There are plenty of places with better ventilation...

In nearby Mariposa to do that...

A fact that those of us who have lived in the Central Valley...

Otherwise known as the Gateway to Yosemite...

Are very much aware...

 

And Park Service employees are not going to hang out at the bar at the Ahwahnee...

Because they are not paid that well...

 

But the real problem with Untamed...

 

Is that as the plot unfolds...

It becomes so contrived...

And feels so rushed at the end...

That you end up thinking...

Did someone tell the showrunner they needed to wrap this thing up... fast

 

So intriguing plot points are left hanging...

While others are shoved in at the last minute...

 

So... no...

 

Untamed is not a replacement for Yellowstone...

As some have claimed...

 

Yes... there is spectacular scenery...

And Native Americans talk a lot about their culture...

And complain about the white man...

 

But that’s about it...

 

Because if you saw The Revenant...

You know dialogue is not Mark Smith’s thing...

Nor are main characters who do anything other than hang out in a harsh but beautiful land...

Mostly suffering in silence...

 

They may grunt every now and then...

Or simply walk wordlessly away....

Which Bana does one time too many in this series...

 

So...


This leaves the landscape to steal the show ...

Which is why it's the drone that deserves the Emmy....

 

Superman Saves a Squirrel? Why This Superhero Can’t Do Camp.

July 2025

 

Strong of jaw...

And possessed of sufficient upper body musculature...

 

David Corenswet can pull off the Superman costume...

Which isn’t easy...

 

Because from the looks of the preview for the Fantastic Four..

Pedro Pascal is so cringe in that blue bodysuit...

Maybe he should have reconsidered taking that role...

 

Because he looks like an SNL skit in the making...

 

Now it helps that Corenswet has a big head...

Which helps distract from a costume...

That looks like it belongs on a circus acrobat...

Who is wearing a big red diaper...

 

And did James Gunn lose a bet to Nathan Fillion?

Because he keeps putting him in his movies...

And he is way too old and out of shape to be believable as a superhero

Which is probably why he was spared the bodysuit...

 

But what was with that awful bowl haircut?

Did Stana Katic secretly bribe the film’s hairdresser...

 

And for those of you not up to speed on entertainment gossip... Katic hated Fillion with a passion when she played his love interest on Castle....

So that must have been a fun set to work on...

 

The dog, however, looked great...

Which was about the only CGI product in this film...

That had any quality...

 

And that is not this film’s only problem...

 

Because Superman looks like a movie that was made by someone with a serious case of ADHD...

Who has consumed 10 Red Bulls in a couple of hours...

While in the throes of the manic phase of an untreated bipolar disorder...

 

And has decided to put every plot point he can think of this movie...

 

Which then come at you in such rapid succession ...

That you feel like they have been fired out of a machine gun loaded with action movie storylines...

 

So we have a Godzilla-like character...

Lots of gadgets...

Disaster movie set pieces...

Some mutants with strange powers...

A science fiction subplot about portals and black holes...

An evil twin who has been cloned from the DNA of our Superhero...

Some bald guys who look like they were left over from Dune: Part 2

An evil tech bro trying to take over the world...

Superheroes brought in from other movies...

An army of furiously typing monkey bots manipulating social media...

Enforcers who look like bulked-up transformers...

And, of course, a fight scene every five minutes...

Interspersed between long monologues that attempt to explain the overly complicated plot...

 

And in the final scene... a character from the planned sequel shows up ...

 

Because don’t they always...

 

And I’m sure I’ve forgotten some others...

 

Because they all came so fast it was hard to keep up...

And frankly, I really didn’t care...

Because it was all a mess...

 

And then, of course, there has to be the social message of the day...

 

Which in this case is Superman is an alien... aka an immigrant ...

Who threatens the people in power and their culture...

And is manhandled by ICE like soldiers...

Who put him in...

 

Are you ready...

 

A cage...

 

Which made me wonder if Karen Bass was a consultant on this movie...

 

And Superman wants to stop the war between Boravia...

Which is a Russian stand-in...

With a leader who looks like a cross between Einstein and Graydon Carter..

 

And Jarhanpur...

Which is the plucky underdog...

Who is outmanned by Boravia...

And reduced to making weapons out of sticks

 

In a scene that I think was meant to be an homage to Braveheart...

 

Nothing subtle about any of this...

 

And, of course, Clark Kent’s Kansas parents are hicks...

Who speak with a very southern accent..

 

But since Gunn was born in Missouri...

He should have known better...

 

Now there were some attempts at humor...

 

The robot did say he didn’t want to be renamed Gary...

 

But most of them largely fell flat...

 

So I guess it’s not a good idea to use the same writer...

Who is responsible for the screenplays...

For not one...but two... Scooby-Doo movies...

 

And yes... I know Gunn wrote Guardians of the Galaxy...

But you wouldn’t know that from watching Superman...

 

But I will give Gunn credit for the bit about the 34 different Superman fight moves...

That Lex Luther has programmed into his computer...

Because I have long suspected that is how Hollywood puts together

Those endlessly derivative fight scenes that now clog up every action flick

 

But the real problem with making a Superman movie...

 

Is that this is a character defined by an earnestness...

That is completely out of sync with the current zeitgeist...

​

As well as what’s trending now in superhero movies

Which are populated with the ironic asides..

That make films like Deadpool and Wolverine watchable

 

But that doesn’t work with Superman...

Because he is a character who resists irony...

 

He’s a throwback to a simpler, more naïve age...

 

Plus, by current superhero standards...

His powers are so last century...

 

Because about all he can do is fly fast...

And keep buildings from falling on people...

 

So it’s the other superheroes in this film who have to figure out how to save the world...

From the madman with the supercomputer ...

While Superman is off saving a squirrel from a falling building...

 

The Bear Is About People Who Should Never Try To Run a Restaurant

June 2025

 

You know the guy ...

 

Who in Season One of The Bear...

 

Put a bottle of Xanax in the punch at a kid’s birthday party he and Carmie were catering...

 

The screwup  ...

And lead singer in the chorus of screamers that filled the kitchen with chaos...

Where everyone was so busy yelling at each other...

It’s a wonder they had time to actually cook the food...

 

Well...someone decided to make that guy....Richie

The only adult in the room in Season Four of The Bear...

 

Or rather... the only adult in a restaurant

That is struggling to stay alive...

 

Talk about a character arc...

 

That I certainly didn’t see coming....

 

But now in this fourth season...

Richie is calm, centered...

And as the maître d...

About the only one who has figured out what he needs to do to keep The Bear from going under...

 

Because the restaurant is his lifeline...

And he knows it...

So he is desperately trying to save it...

 

And it turns out Richie is now good at what he does...

 

While head chef Carmie is still depressed...and creating a menu that is so all over the place...

That no one can figure out where his restaurant fits in the greater landscape of Chicago fine dining ...

Syd is still paralyzed and incapable of making a decision...

And the kitchen continues to be chaotic and dysfunctional...

 

So not much has changed...

 

But by Season Four it has become clear that none of these people...

Except maybe Richie...

Have any business running a restaurant...

 

Cooking maybe... but not running a restaurant that needs to make money...

 

Nope...

 

And what brought me originally to The Bear... the food...

That mouthwatering sandwich, the freshly baked bread, the perfectly seared steak...

Are gone...

 

Now replaced by a main course that has the cadaverous grey tinge of something that has sat in the sous vide for too long...

 

And that rhubarb panna cotta was such a bizarre magenta...

It looked like it belonged in a cartoon rather than a dessert plate

 

And if I had to watch Tina cook that pasta dish one more time I was going to scream...

Because, frankly, it looked like something that could have come out of a can...

 

But...

 

None of this matters...

 

Because Season Four of The Bear is a tour de force...

With some of the finest acting I have seen in a long time...

 

And I consume a lot of entertainment...

 

Jeremy Allen White, Ayo Edebiri, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach...

Are simply fantastic....

 

As characters who are each raw with pain...

Struggling to suppress... or manage it...

Because it is bleeding into their lives...

And preventing them from functioning as adults when they really need to...

 

Now none of these actors will ever be what one would call a real movie star...
Of the likes of a Brad Pitt or a Tom Cruise...

Who can carry a movie no matter what...

 

Because they do not have the kind of screen presence...

That made you realize the minute Pitt showed up in Thelma and Louise...

That this kid was going to be a star...

 

Few do...

 

But these actors have something else...

 

A subtle way of conveying a suppressed emotion...

Or dominating a scene with such a volcanic eruption of raw emotional force

That you just go.. wow...

 

So The Bear’s true strength...

 

Ended up not being the story of a restaurant...

Or the food...

 

But of a dysfunctional family writ large...

Of alcoholics... and their children

Emotionally abusive parents.. and emotionally stunted children...

With a side of insecure friends, comic screwups...

And loving family members who keep trying to hold everything together...

 

A kaleidoscope of Chicago characters ...

 

But without the darkness that would hang over this story if it had been written by Tracy Letts or David Mamet ...

Because Christopher Storer hints at the possibility of redemption for his characters...

 

But he doesn’t have the talent of these more famous Chicago writers...

So as a result The Bear often drags... or veers off in wayward directions...

 

But Storer should get some credit for hiring Andrew Wehde...

Because the cinematography this season has been superb...

 

But it is the cast that rescues this series from Storer’s disjointed storytelling...

 

Because they are the kind of skilled performers...

Who often do not get enough credit...

 

Because they aren’t Shakespearean...

Muscled up...

Beautiful...

Or charismatic...

 

But they are really good...

And as a result...so is The Bear
 

F1: Real Men Are Back in a Blockbuster of a Movie... Which Is How You Get Grandma To Go To A Racing Movie

June 2025

 

The real men are back...

 

And I mean real movie stars...

 

And it’s about time...

 

Because I’m pretty tired of the Beta Boys...

Timothée Chalamet, Andrew Garfield, Tom Holland...

Who look like they couldn’t take down an 80-year-old grandmother...

 

And the ones that could...

 

Chris and Liam Hemsworth, Dwayne Johnson, Channing Tatum, and Tom Hardy...

Are so muscled up...

They look like one of those plumped-up roast chickens they sell at Costco...

 

And then there are the Ryans...

 

You know... the Canadians...

Reynolds and Gosling...

Who seem to have the kind of personality one would expect from someone who hails from our neighbor to the North...

And I doubt we would even remember them if they hadn’t been in a Superhero costume or shirtless...

 

Now I’m leaving out the Brits here... Benedict Cumberbatch, Eddie Redmayne, and

Cillian Murphy...

Who are terrific actors...

But are not particularly charismatic...

And so can rarely carry a movie...

 

But guess who can... Brad Pitt

 

Because there are few films where Brad Pitt’s performance wasn’t what you most remembered about the movie...

His five minutes in The Big Short overshadowed Christian Bale’s performance...

Moneyball would have been a snooze without him...

And he almost saved Bullet Train...

 

The guy has presence...

Even at 60...

 

And if he didn’t have a body double in F1...then I’m impressed

Because the dude is in great shape for that age...

And not in that “I live in the gym and take my testosterone daily” RFK, Jr. kind of way ...

 

And Pitt’s calm, cool, collected, charismatic persona...

Just works on the silver screen...

 

So he owns this movie...

 

And in F1 he doesn’t have to do much but just be there...

Because a racing movie...

Isn’t Hamlet...

 

But then you add in Javier Bardem...

 

And not the Javier Bardem from No Country for Old Men...

Who is the stuff of nightmares...

 

But the guy who was so alluringly charming in Vicki Cristina Barcelona

That you say...

Sure...I’ll go away with you for the weekend...

Even though I only met you five minutes ago...

 

And then you have a combination...

That will get someone like me...

 

Who couldn’t make it through a single episode of Drive to Survive

To go to a racing movie..

 

And walk out of the film thinking...

 

Wow... I’ve really missed this...

 

Because I haven’t seen this much male movie star firepower in a single film...

Since the days of Redford and Newman...

 

Then add in a rousing score by Hans Zimmer...

Jerry Bruckheimer as a producer...

Who definitely knows what he is doing...

The director of Top Gun Maverick...

Glamorous locations... especially the scenes set in Vegas and Abu Dhabi...

The pageantry of Formula One racing...

Along with the amazing technology behind impressive cars...

 

That travel down the race track at 300 miles an hour...

Generating the kind of G force that makes them mini rocket ships ...

 

And you have summer movie that is worth leaving your house for...

Because F1 is the kind of film that should be seen on the big screen...

 

So I was a bit surprised that it was made by Apple TV

Which means it will be streaming soon...

 

While far lesser films have been hanging on at my local theater for what seems like forever...

 

Now I am not usually a fan of racing movies...

Because usually only two things happen...

 

A car goes around a track...

 

For what always seems like an interminable number of laps...

 

Someone usually crashes to bring in some drama..

And sometimes a secondary character will die...

 

But never the lead...

Who always has to win...

 

And there will always be some backstory about the driver...

Or the team...

To add some color...

(See Ford vs Ferrari and Ferrari...)

 

F1 has most of these devices...

 

But it is actually exciting... because it is unpredictable...

And brings in elements about racing strategy...

That involve more than just who has the fastest car...

Or the best driver...

 

Because this is a film about the impact of team dynamics...

Involving more than the pit crew...

 

Plus, it is such a well-made movie...

 

And I’ve seen so few of those lately...

 

So after struggling to stay awake through the way too many action films lately...

 

It was nice for once...

To actually be on the edge of my seat...

 

As the camera gave me a feel of what it is like to be behind the wheel of a powerful machine...

Travelling at an exceptionally high rate of speed...

Weaving its way around other cars as they try to fly past ...

 

Which at my age...

Is not that dissimilar to how I feel driving on the freeway these days...

 

But at least in the theater I had Brad Pitt and Javier Bardem to gaze upon...

And a big glossy summer blockbuster to enjoy...
 

Ballerina: Why My X Feed Has More Suspense Than This Movie

June 2025

 

“Fight Like a girl!”

 

Well... that was the most memorable line in Ballerina ...

 

And that is a new one for an action movie...

 

And Eve.... the supposed bad ass assassin in this film 

Follows that advice...

 

So many men are kicked in the groin...

Dishes are broken over the head of an enemy..

And ice skates are used as a weapon...

 

Oh... scary

 

So I kept waiting for a high heel to be used to sever a carotid artery...

Or for a hot curling iron to be shoved up you know where......

 

Now, in fairness, there was creative use of a flamethrower...

 

Some old actors do show up...

Ian McShane, Gabriel Byrne... and Anjelica Huston...

 

And of course, John Wick himself arrives...

 

So they have to talk about the puppy...

 

But he gets very little screen time...

 

Which is a shame because there is just something about Keanu Reeves

That radiates a kind of authentic decency...

That action films could use more of these days...

 

But not much else of note happens in this latest installment of the John Wick Franchise...

 

Which clearly refuses to die...

Weren’t five.. and soon to be six movies...

A tv series..

And a couple of video games ...

 

Enough?

 

And I’m sorry...

It’s just not believable...

That one girl could take down an entire village of bad guys...

Who are armed to the teeth...

 

Now... I get it Hollywood...

Action movies sell well overseas...

Where a lot of dialogue would just be a nuisance...

And hardly anyone can write a good screenplay these days anyway...

 

But do you have to keep doing the same thing... over and over?

Endless fight scenes that have been drained of all suspense because we always know who is going to win...

 

Maybe a Ned Stark moment or two might be useful...

 

And look around...

 

Lately the Mossad have been writing plot lines for you...

 

Because right now there is more suspense in my X feed...

Than in your movies...
 


28 Years Later: It Looks Like They Needed More Spoons and Men in Velour Track Suits

To Save Them From the Zombies

June 2025



For a moment I thought ...

 
Did David Lee Roth just show up...

To rescue The Boy in the final scene of 28 Years Later?

 
I mean that high kick did look familiar...

And there were those long blond locks..

Coupled with a pose that did remind me of his Van Halen days...

 
But Roth would never be seen wearing a black velour tracksuit...

Nor brandishing the kind of gold jewelry one would find in a rap video...

 

Or be hanging out with a crew that looked like they were refugees from some obscure 1980s MTV
video...

All dressed in multicolored matching velour tracksuits...

 
And this was who was going to save The Boy from the zombies?

 

And with moves that looked like the director had watched one too many Jackie Chan movies...

Which did come as a bit of a shock...

 

Because up until that point ...

28 Years Later had avoided the martial arts moves...

That seem to be de rigueur of so many films these days...

 

Because I guess you really don’t want to touch a zombie...

 

So I thought... who are these guys?

 

Now this was after The Boy had fought off multiple zombie attacks with a bow and arrow...

That he had been trained to use by his community...

 

28 years after “The Infection” had turned people into raging killers

 

So I think we know where the idea for The Last of Us came from...

 

As well as just about every other zombie movie and video game since 2002..

Because the original film in this franchise...

28 Days Later...

Turned out to be the template for the zombie genre for the next 20 years...

 

Now the zombies in 28 Years Later were out to tear your head from your body...

But for some reason...  keep the spinal column attached...

 

So the boy, along with everyone who lived in his village...

Needed to learn how to protect themselves from these zombies... and the infection

Which meant everyone had to be trained to be a cold hard killer...

For when the zombies show up...

 

But they didn’t have many resources...

 

Nor obviously the desire to wash their hair...

 

So all they had were bows and arrows...

And like medieval barbarians  ...

They celebrated The Boy’s first kill with a bacchanalia...

 

Now The Boy and his family live in isolation from the zombies on an island

Where they are safe... most of the time

 

Because the French were patrolling the waters to keep the zombies confined to mainland Britain...

 

Yes... the French

 

But for some reason, the boy and his father leave the island to forage..

 

For spoons?

 

If you are getting the sense that 28 Years Later is a hot mess ...

You would be correct...

 

And don’t get me started on the scene where The Boy meets a marooned Swedish soldier...

Who proudly shows him a picture of his girlfriend...

With those bee-stung lips that are so popular right now..

But lead The Boy to think she was having an allergic reaction... 

 

And no... this is not a farce

 

But it might have been a better movie if it had been...

 

28 Years Later begins with an opening scene that I assume was from the first film in this series ...

Followed by clips from war movies ranging from the Middle Ages to modernity...

That I guess were intended to make a point about war... and man’s inhumanity to man...

 

Which did I find confusing...

Because Alex Garland... who wrote the screenplay for this film...

Had just made a terrific movie, Warfare, that kind of celebrated the warrior ethos...

 

But after we get early scenes of a bleak subsistence existence on the island...

We meet the zombies...

 

Who mostly come in two forms...

Naked, morbidly obese and crawling on the ground eating everything in sight

 

And cachectic.. with oozing sores ...

An army of skinny naked skeletons running after you...

Dicks swinging as they run...

 

Because I guess these zombies have a thing about not wearing clothes...

 

But every once in a while there will be an “Alpha”..

Who is big and muscled... and hard to stop

One of whom is a dead ringer for Jason Momoa

 

And when The Boy and his father...

 

Played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson...

Who we see way too little of in this film..

Despite how it was advertised...

 

Kill the zombies...

Blood is everywhere..

And apparently these zombies like to vomit blood as they expire...

 

But the special effects are so bad ...

You feel like you are watching a straight-to-video slasher movie

Made with the budget of a weekly Starbucks run...

 

And with the exception of one small section of this film...

The cinematography is so second rate...

I started to wonder... is this really a Danny Boyle movie?

 

Or is he trying to make fun of a genre...

That does not always attract the best and the brightest... 

 

But then for a brief moment...

 

28 Years Later becomes a fine film...

 

When Ralph Fiennes shows up...

 

As a doctor covered in so much iodine he glows red...

And lives in a petrified forest decorated with skulls

Surrounding a tall pyramid of skulls

That would have made Tamburlaine proud..

 

And the contrast between the red doctor and the cadaverous grey of his forest

Is stunning...

And filmed in such clear focus... you wonder where that cinematographer was when they shot the rest of the movie...

 

And 28 Years Later gets interesting at that point...

As the doctor reminds The Boy and his mother...

 

That we all die...

 

And that even though they are surrounded by what looks like an existential threat...

That is consuming their every thought...

Sometimes it will be the mundane that kills you...

While you are focused on the exceptional...

 

But then that moment is gone...

 

And the David Lee Roth look-alike shows up...


To kick some zombie ass...

 

The Phoenician Scheme Is What Happens When A Filmmaker Spends Too Much Time Reading The New Yorker

June 2025

 

Benicio del Toro looks like Stalin...

 

In Wes Anderson’s latest film...The Phoenician Scheme

Both in the flesh...

 

But especially when covered in mud ...

Where he looks like one of those statues of Stalin you used to find in some obscure Soviet outpost...

 

But this Stalin doppelganger is a capitalist...

Who has nine lives like a cat...

So he has plenty of near-death experiences...

 

And del Toro’s Zsa-zsa Korda ....

Just like Stalin... has a disaffected daughter

But she isn’t named Svetlana...

 

But she is played by Kate Winslet’s daughter Mia...

Who should win an award for keeping the same facial expression...

 

For all 105 minutes.....

 

And there is an American spy...

Who is pretending to be a German entomologist...

And, of course, this is all set in the 1950s...

 

Then Benedict Cumberbatch shows up looking like a wild-eyed Lenin...

Who gets into a knock-down drag-out fight with Korda

Because they are competing to create a global capitalist empire...

 

Ok...

 

Now I don’t know how much of the Cold War vibe in The Phoenician Scheme was intentional...

Or just part of Wes Anderson’s subconscious...

Which seems to be obsessed with Soviet bloc aesthetics...

That seem to come out every now and then in his films...

(See The Grand Budapest Hotel...)

 

Then there is Bill Murray as God...

 

And everyone in heaven is dressed like a peasant in tsarist Russia...

 

I mean you can’t make this stuff up...

 

Wow...

 

The mind of Wes Anderson is truly a thing of wonder...

 

So how did this filmmaker come out of Texas?

 

Now The Phoenician Scheme...

Has all the familiar Anderson tropes...

 

Desiccated cornfields in the background...

Other scenes set in a bleak desert...with a rail line intersecting the landscape..

While action also takes place in some indeterminate location in Eastern Europe...

Baby blue is employed as an accent color ... a lot

There is some 1950s décor...

Clipped staccato-like dialogue..

And a dysfunctional family of eccentrics...

 

All played by an ensemble cast of interesting actors..

Who obviously love being in Anderson’s films...

 

Much like everyone used to love being in a Woody Allen movie...

 

Before ..

 

You know...

 

But the later Allen movies...Match Point, Vicky Christina Barcelona, and To Rome With Love...

Which were all, interestingly, set abroad...

And were visually more vibrant than Allen’s New York films..

 

And moved on from the standard Allen character-driven story...

Centered on some navel-gazing, angst-ridden New Yorker...

 

And these Allen films from the first half of the aughts...

Demonstrated a storyteller’s touch...

That was not always as clearly evident earlier in his career...

 

And which sets him apart from Anderson...

 

Who, although he follows the Allen ensemble casting model

Filled with returning actors...

 

Has not evolved to the same degree...

 

Anderson’s films usually have a quirky plot...

That has the cadence of a piece of fiction in The New Yorker...

 

Which if you saw The French Dispatch...

You would know Anderson reads...

 

But the story doesn’t really matter that much...

Because Anderson is a visual filmmaker....

 

And, visually, The Phoenician Scheme is stunning ....

 

And it’s clear Anderson is back in full form...

After Asteroid City failed to showcase the painterly talent of the man who made The Grand Budapest Hotel and The Darjeeling Limited....

 

But I’m never sure what to do with an Anderson film...

 

Other than stare at its magnificent production design...

 

Which... in the case of The Phoenician Scheme

Includes an early scene looking down from above on a pristine bathroom

With a patterned floor tile that is so mesmerizing...

You can’t take your eyes away....

 

But try and unpack an Anderson movie?

 

Well... that’s a daunting task...

 

Because I often don’t even know where to start...

 

So why are the two characters who look like Stalin and Lenin dueling capitalists...

Who are trying to build a massive infrastructure project in the Middle East...

That the US wants to stop...

By manipulating the price of key commodities...

 

Is this a reference to the Aswan Dam?

Or some imaginary Belt and Road Project set in the 1950s?

 

But with a panoply of investors...

Who need to be appeased...

Like some private equity project gone mad...

 

And what was with all the grubby Catholics?

 

And the nine sons?

Plus, the bit about building the tunnel...

Where these supposed to be references to a certain natalist tech bro?

 

So there was just so much going on in this film...

 

That after a while I gave up...

 

And decided to just sit back and take in all the striking images...

That are the hallmarks of an Anderson film ...

 

Which is why you could enjoy his movies almost as much...

If you watched them with the sound off...

 

And that may be why Anderson’s films have had a way of leaving me a bit unsatisfied...

Even though I am continually fascinated by his cleverness...

 

Because sometimes it seems he is just skimming the surface..

Of all the ideas that are ping-ponging around in that head of his....

 

Because he never seems to be able to settle for very long on any one concept...

 

But there has lately been a sameness to his films...

It’s like he has become stuck in a rut...

And doesn’t know how to get out...

 

So he just keeps dazzling us with stunning production design

And the wild fruits of his imagination...

 

Perhaps in the hope that we won’t notice that there is not that much else to his movies these days....

 

And because every character is a caricature...

His films have started to resemble a series of New Yorker cartoons...

 

But drawn by an amazing artist...

Who was told he could use as much color as he wanted...

 

But ... unfortunately..

 

Someone who has yet to become a skilled storyteller...

And that does still matter....
 

The Mountainhead: If Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway Wrote a Movie About Elon Musk

June 2025

 

The specter of Elon Musk hovers over The Mountainhead...

And.. frankly... about everything else these days...

Like one of those enormous balloons in the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade...

 

As a great evil let loose upon the land...

And the chief protagonist...

In this film about four tech billionaires...

 

Or wait..three tech billionaires...

 

And one wannabe billionaire...

 

Who is obviously based on Jason Calacanis...

Of All- In podcast fame...

The chat room for tech bros...

Who talk about poker, their wealth... and how tech is going to save the world

 

In fact... this film by Jesse Armstrong and Frank Rich

Seems to have taken all they know about Silicon Valley from that podcast

 

So there is so much talk about “first principles”

That I can almost hear Chamath Palihapitya pontificating in the background

As the All-In gang goes on about “founder energy” and the benefits of “creative destruction”...

 

And, of course, when the owner of the spectacular house in The Mountainhead

That these tech bros have retreated to ...

Ostensibly to “play poker”...

Because that’s what tech bros do...

 

Remarks that the house has “two” bowling lanes instead of one..

Because having just “one” would be too shabby...

That is absolutely something Chamath would say...

 

Now Armstrong and Rich of Succession fame ...

Clearly aimed to piggyback on the success of that series

 

Which was catnip for the Fox News Is Evil crowd...

Because it was based on the Murdoch family travails...

 

So they even re-hired Nicholas Britell

Who wrote the elegant score for Succession...

Which was symphonic in its quality...

 

But they either didn’t want to pay Britell to write anything original for The Mountainhead...

Or they wanted to remind us of Succession...

Because the music is very similar....

 

And if you are familiar at all with Britell’s oeuvre..

You know he is not a one-trick pony...

 

So I’m going with the latter...

 

Because Succession was so popular with the I Hate Fox News crowd...

That Felix Salmon, the host of the popular podcast Slate Money...

 

A man Don Surber once referred to as “The Dollar General Paul Krugman”

A quip that makes me smile every time I think about it...

Because if you have ever listened to Salmon... who has a tony British accent...

And speaks condescendingly of the great unwashed... and almost everything American...

You know that must have hit hard...

 

Now Salmon couldn’t stop talking about Succession on the Slate Money podcast...

Which was supposed to be about economics...

Because he was definitely obsessed....

 

So I think Armstrong and Rich thought the same crowd that loved that series....

Because of who it skewered...

Would also be drawn to The Mountainhead...

 

And so they give us an Elon Musk-like character...

Who owns a social media app...

That is destroying the world

Because he refuses to employ content moderation...

 

So I suspect they might have used Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway...

Those twin carping tech podcasters...

Who absolutely hate Musk... and in fairness, also Zuckerberg

As consultants for this film....

 

 I also think The New York Times might have coordinated with Rich...

Who used to work there...

Because their article about an unhinged Musk addicted to ketamine

Came out the same time this series dropped...

 

And Ven, the Musk-like character in The Mountainhead

Is portrayed as pretty strung out... and on the verge of losing it

 

While he is in a life and death battle with Jeff...

Who is modeled on Sam Altman

 

As their battle forms the central conflict in this film...

 

Oh... how art imitates life...

 

Now Jeff created an AI that could do the content moderation...

Needed to save the societies that are being destroyed by Ven’s app

 

And he is cast as the good guy in this film...

Because he wants to save the world with censorship..

 

Now you see where this is headed...

 

So it sure looks like someone is still upset that Musk bought Twitter

And let the “those people” back on the platform...

 

But do Armstrong and Rich really know what Altman has been up to at OpenAI?

Because I don’t think anyone who is aware of his recent machinations...

Would ever cast him as the good guy...

 

Unless you are still so upset by what happened to Twitter...

That you have chosen a side in the Musk vs Altman OpenAI battle

And so are willing to overlook Altman’s less than admirable behavior

Since seizing control from what was supposed to be a nonprofit...

 

Now maybe I am being too picky here...

 

Because The Mountainhead also has an elder tech statesman played by Steve Carrell...

Who appears to be based on Paul Graham of Y Combinator fame...

The man also known as the Father of Founder Mode...

 

Who was a mentor to Altman...

And was consulted when Musk and Altman started OpenAI...

 

And Carrell’s character is cast in this film as a father figure to both Jeff and Ven...

 

But then he becomes the impetus behind an attempted murder in this movie..

And I’m not going to spoil who it is he persuades others to help him kill

 

And this is all done in order to get a deal done...

 

Because doing deals is what tech guys do...

And as the ending of this movie shows... is obviously all they care about

 

But the murder plot line is so ridiculous..

And poorly executed..

That it sinks the entire movie...

 

Which was going downhill already...

As these tech bros try to take over the world

While railing against the “decels” who want to hold back the power of technology

 

So as the world is being destroyed by Ven’s app...

 

They spout lines like..

“Let’s bootstrap this chaos”

And “Use El Salvador as a dry run” for world domination...

 

Because I guess you need a beta...

 

And then after that...

 

We’ll “Coup up the US”...

 

Because... as they say...

 

What’s better than “paying for patches to fight malaria”?

(Take that... Bill Gates...)

Why it’s taking over the world using AGI... of course...

 

Now I recognize that The Mountainhead was intended to be a satire...

But it is so heavy-handed...

And weighted down with over-the-top one-liners and little else...

 

That it sinks like stone...

 

But that may not matter...

 

Because I think it has a message many want to hear...

And one Armstrong and Rich clearly wanted to send...
 

Should We Take What Happened to Hacks As A Warning?  

May 2025

 

It wasn’t Godzilla vs Kong..

 

But Hacks...

 

Definitely began with a Millennial vs Boomer theme...

 

Although I wouldn’t call it a Clash of the Titans

But rather a battle between generations

Fought by a couple of carping comics

And leavened with lots of humor

 

Which for the first two seasons made Hacks a lot of fun...

 

But I guess by Season Three the showrunners at Max had become concerned

About losing their street cred with the OK Boomer crowd...

 

And so had to finally have the Boomer ...

Successfully re-educated by the enlightened Millennial

 

Even though the secret sauce of Hacks...

Had been that the most unlikeable character was Ava

Played by Hannah Einbinder...

 

As the entitled and insufferable Millennial comedy writer

Who never seemed to say anything funny...

 

And Ava’s life is a trainwreck...

 

But she is always lecturing everyone else about theirs...

And especially anyone older than her...

 

So Ava spends a lot of time accusing people of being agents of the patriarchy...

And carbon killers responsible for the coming climate apocalypse... 

And everyone who doesn’t agree with her is either a sexist or a racist...

And don’t get her started on cultural appropriation...or any other of the sins condemned by the wokerati...

 

In essence... Ava is a scold

 

So...

Judgmental and intolerant ...

Don’t even begin to describe her...

 

And it was the pairing of Ava with the Boomer comic Debra Vance

Played to perfection by Jean Smart...

That made this series initially fun to watch..

 

Vance is a tough Boomer broad

Who’s been around for a long time

Is wealthy, driven... and set in her ways

But also very smart... and savvy about how the world works

 

In contrast to Ava...

Who thinks she learned all she needs to know about how the world should work

In a college seminar...

 

Now Vance is decked out in a wardrobe from the 80s...

And lives a house in Las Vegas that looks like it was modelled on Versailles

So she is only one spot shy of Wayne Newton...

 

A true Boomer troglodyte...

 

So, yes.... she is politically incorrect..

And shameless about it...

As well as narcissistic and occasionally cruel

 

But very funny...

 

And her humor is a stiletto aimed at the people around her...

But especially Ava...

 

Who is so insufferable...

She kind of has it coming...

 

Ava has been sent to Debra by Vance’s agent to help a flagging career by updating her humor ...

 

And this is where it first looked like Hacks was going to be a generic Millennial  Saves the Boomer ..

 

But at first it didn’t go there...

 

Because it turned out that Debra

Was funnier than Ava...

Who never seemed to contribute much that I could see...

 

Which becomes increasingly problematic as the series goes on...

And in the end turns out to be its Achilles’ heel...

 

Because if you can stand to watch...

Einbinder’s comedy special...

Which is so awful ...

I could only make it through the first 10 minutes..

 

You’ll understand why ...

It’s impossible to believe this woman could rescue anyone’s comedy career...

 

I mean.. my dog has better comic timing...

 

But Einbinder’s Ava spends a lot of time lecturing her boss about every politically incorrect transgression...

Which Vance... at least for the first two seasons... ignores

 

But it is Debra...

In every season...

Who comes up with the really bold career moves...

That work...

 

And it’s Debra who occasionally commits random acts of kindness toward Ava

While actually mentoring her on occasion...

 

When she isn’t verbally abusing her...

 

While it is Ava who turns out to be disloyal, petty...

And a true friend or partner to no one...

 

So at first I thought...

This series is refreshing...

Because they are not taking it

In the direction I was expecting

 

Because the Boomer...  

Turns out to be smarter and funnier...

Than the Millennial who is mostly a poser with little talent

But a surplus of self-regard...

 

And although for the first three seasons it looked like Debra would sell out anyone in a heartbeat to further her career...

She actually had something of a moral compass...

And on rare occasions, could be kind... mostly to Ava

 

While Ava...

Is spiteful...

 

And would trample a puppy

And not think twice about it... 

In an act of revenge...

 

So after the first two seasons, I couldn’t wait to see Season Three...

 

But noooo......

 

What made this show at first fun to watch

 

Which was that it took a light-hearted look at Millennial self-righteousness and Boomer self-interest...

And skewered them with equal measure...

 

Couldn’t be allowed to continue...

 

Because I guess the showrunner decided.. .

That the Boomer must at some point be successfully schooled in the error of her ways

And brought around by the Enlightened Millennial...

 

So we got the OK Boomer episode...

When the Thought Police go on the attack

And threaten to cancel Debra’s career...

 

And, of course, it’s Ava who comes to her boss’s rescue

But she doesn’t defend her...

Instead she persuades Vance to endure a struggle session with the students at Berkeley...

 

Who are offended by jokes Debra told 40 years ago...

 

And Debra apologizes!

 

At that point I wanted to throw the remote at the tv...

 

Because the showrunner had just erased everything that had made Hacks unique...

And instead...

Had given us one more episode of the Millennial Saves the Boomer...

 

But then it got worse...

 

When Ava learns... the hard way... one of life’s important lessons

That your boss may be friendly... but they will never be your friend

Because ... guess what..

THEY’RE YOUR BOSS..

So they will always do what is best for them...

 

But this little dose of how the work world actually works

Shocks Ava...

Who thought she was so special...

That those rules would not apply to her...

 

Which leads Ava to do something that is far more ruthless than anything Debra had done to her...

 

And that came as no surprise...

To anyone who has been reading the New York Times Slack Channel the last couple of years..

 

So at that point I knew that what began as a comedy that poked fun at two competing generations...

Was in danger of becoming All About Eve...

 

But Season Four was even worse than I anticipated...

 

Because Debra gets a long-coveted late-night show..

And Ava blackmails her to become the head writer...

But when Debra refuses to take the show in the direction Ava wants...

Because Debra knows that would be a mistake...

Ava walks...

 

And then Debra begs her to come back!

Because supposedly Ava has become so critical to Debra’s success...

 

Which makes no sense..

Because when the show starts off cringe...

Once again it’s Debra... and not Ava... who figures out how to save it...

 

But then Ava turns around and destroys the show ....

And Debra’s career in the process...

In an act of smug self-importance...

 

And Debra lets this happen...

Out of loyalty to Ava....

 

Gimme a break...

 

Ava... who has betrayed you at every turn?

Who has a track record of blowing up everything she touches...

 

Debra...I thought you were supposed to be some battle-hardened showbiz survivor?

 

So it was at that point I decided that Ava ...

Was really a vampire....

Who had sucked the life out of Debra ...

And everything that had made her Boomer boss successful...

 

Which was a pragmatic sense of how the world works...

And what you have to do to survive...

Which may not always entail appealing to the “right people”

Who think the half of the country that might actually watch your show

Are not worthy of their time...

 

So in the end... the Millennial triumphs...

Because she didn’t just enlighten her Boomer boss..

She got her to throw everything away...

In an act of self-righteous purity ...

 

Which did feel very Millennial if you think about it...

 

And is perhaps a portent...

To which...maybe we should be paying more attention...
 

The Studio Explores Why Movies These Days Have All the Quality of the Buffet at the Golden Corral

May 2025

 

There’s an homage to Weekend At Bernie’s...

Interesting clothes...

Absolutely no character development...

A strange fixation with Frank Lloyd Wright’s Mayan Revival architecture...

And classic cars...

 

And a studio head behaving stupidly...

 

That pretty much sums up Seth Rogen’s The Studio on Apple TV

 

Which I think he intended to serve as a love letter to filmmaking...

Filled with longing for a world he wishes... but knows... doesn’t exist

 

So reality has left him with only one choice...

Which is to skewer the one that does...

 

But this series has an Entourage problem...

Because too much time is spent on the guest star cameos...

 

And this is despite the fact that Rogen has a cast of characters who could carry the show on their own...

Especially Kathryn Hahn and Catherine O’Hara...

As well as newbie.. Chase Sui Wonders as Quinn the ambitious assistant...

 

And Bryan Cranston as the Studio CEO...

 

Who is absolutely hilarious in the season finale...

And displays a knack for physical comedy...

 

Only Ike Barinholz as Sal Saperstein fails to deliver...

His character is so blah I wondered why he was even there...

 

And was it just a coincidence that he is outfitted in boring brown suits?

 

But after Barinholz kept showing up in that monochromatic wardrobe...

Which made him disappear...

I started to wonder if someone in production was out to get him...

Because it sure seemed they were burying his character ...

Both visually... and in terms of his importance to the plot...

 

But Kathryn Hahn’s wardrobe is a delightful cacophony of crazy outfits...

Some of which seemed to have been inspired by Tina Turner in Mad Max: Beyond the Thunderdome...

 

And Wonders nails Gen Z corporate chic...

 

But poor Catherine O’Hara is outfitted in clothes left over from the 80s..

That look like they were purchased at a mall in Iowa...

 

You know...the ones that every costume designer seems to think should be the uniform...

Of any powerful woman of a certain age...

 

But pay attention, Hollywood...

 

Does Diane Keaton wear this crap?

 

So O’Hara.. and her character...Patty Leigh, the former studio head..

Deserved better...

 

Unfortunately, Rogen takes this wonderful ...

And mostly well outfitted...

Cast of characters...

 

And keeps them doing the same things...over and over

 

While he concentrates on the “real stars” he has recruited for his series...

 

Now Zoe Kravitz survives her cameo mostly unscathed...

 

But I did have to wonder why Ron Howard ...

Who has been served well over the years by his nice guy image..

Would allow himself to be portrayed as a jerk...

 

And did Olivia Wilde...

Want her exceptional... and IMO unwarranted... self-regard...

To be so showcased...

And not in a positive way...

 

Because that did feel kinda real...

 

But what wasn’t real...

 

Was Seth Rogen’s character, Matt Remick

Who is an insecure narcissist...

 

Of which I’m sure Hollywood has plenty...

 

But this Matt...

Who is supposedly the studio head

 

Can’t say no...

 

To anyone...

 

And he’s so wrapped up in the way he thinks things should be...

That he causes all kinds of trouble for everyone...

When it turns out they aren’t...

While he continues to act as if they were anyway...

 

So he’s pretty delusional...

For someone who has made it into that position...

 

And that pretty much makes the premise of every episode ...

How will Matt make a fool of himself... this week 

 

So my prediction is ...

That absent the introduction of something resembling a character arc...

This all going to get pretty stale soon...

 

But before then...

 

The Studio has had some classic episodes

 

The finale was funny, unpredictable..

And showcased the talents of this cast...

 

But my favorite was Casting...

In which Remick’s team folds themselves into a pretzel

Trying to navigate the minefield that is casting a film...

In the highly charged racial atmosphere of “woke” Hollywood

 

Which becomes an illustration of how “We Must Not Offend”

Can quickly morph into “The Many Ways We Will Offend”

 

Especially when films are made by committee...

Where everyone has a different constituency that needs to be pleased...

Or placated..

 

Which is why most theater releases suck these days...

 

Because they have become a buffet

With a little something for everyone...

But with all the quality of the food at the Golden Corral...
 

The Thunderbolts: Superheroes In Need Of Lithium and a Publicist

May 2025

 

Did the Avengers all die?

 

I’m sorry ...

 

I just don’t keep up on Marvel mythology...

 

And frankly... I don’t care enough to look that up...

 

So why was I at The Thunderbolts?

 

Well.. I couldn’t make myself go to Hurry Up Tomorrow...

Even though it had the usually disturbing, but interesting, Barry Keoghan

 

And the star was The Weeknd...

Who I vaguely remember was the halftime entertainment at the Super Bowl in 2021...

And that’s usually a sign your career is already heading downhill ...

 

Plus, Hurry Up Tomorrow got 13% on Rotten Tomatoes...

And although I don’t put a lot of credit in that particular rating system...

Thirteen percent is pretty low...

 

Even considering I get the Senior Discount...

 

So The Thunderbolts it was...

 

Who I guess were supposed to be the replacement for the Avengers...

But how do you kill off an entire superhero crew anyway?

 

Now this film is a typical Marvel movie...

There is lots of fighting...which I have to admit had a certain ballet quality in its execution...

Some humor... but not enough...

Second rate CGI...

 

And a plot that makes no sense...

 

But seems in this film to be about PTSD and recovered memories...

Represented by trips into and out of rooms ...

 

Now Florence Pugh and David Harbour can carry a movie...

 

And I did like “Bob”...

Although in his superhero costume... and after they dyed his hair...

He did look like a Loki knock off...

 

But Sebastian Stan as a superhero?

I’m sorry ...but he is about as convincing in that role as I would be...

And I can’t bench press 5 pounds...

 

So I spent most of my time in the theater wondering when this movie would be over ...

 

But this film was interesting on one level...

Because of what it says about the zeitgeist...

 

And the generation now writing superhero scripts...

 

And it did come out the weekend of the Palm Springs fertility clinic bombing...

Which at this point seems to have been done by an adherent of efilism...

 

And although The Thunderbolts doesn’t quite go there...

It is full of nihilism as the appropriate response to an existential crisis

 

Which all these superheroes...

And it seems half the nation...

Is having right now...

 

But I did start to wonder...

 

Isn’t nihilism a strange sentiment for superheroes...

Who are out to save the world...

And a bit at odds with the whole genre?

 

But... hey...

Maybe it is time to move on from that Boomer sense of empowerment...

That gave birth to this genre anyway...

 

Now the Thunderbolts were very clearly B-list superheroes...

 

With issues....

 

Because... of course...

Since mental illness has been normalized these days...

Even a superhero can be in need of a little lithium...

 

In fact, almost the entire DSM manual is represented in this movie...

 

We have a character who is bipolar...

Another is depressed and suicidal...

There is also some drug and alcohol addiction...

And lots of PTSD...

 

And one character sometimes looks and acts like he thinks he is God ...

 

Of course, like all Marvel movies...

The plot is a hot mess...

And doesn’t really matter...

 

But I think the message was...

 

We’ll all feel better if we find a purpose...

But none of us are strong enough to make a difference on our own...

So we have to work together...

 

Which, of course, feels very Millennial/Gen Z...

 

But to what end?

 

Because the film ends with some clever reframing by the villain...

 

Which I think was intended to make the point...

That it doesn’t matter what you actually do...

It’s how your story is framed for public consumption..

That determines the impact of everything...

 

Now that felt very of the moment...

 

So I think superheroes may now need to hire a publicist...

Or start showing up on TikTok...

​

I guess your brand is about all you can hope to control at this point...

​

​​

Mission Impossible-The Final Reckoning: Why Stunts and Soft Patriotism Can Fill a Theater

May 2025

 

In Mission Impossible-The Final Reckoning ...

 

We get to see Tom Cruise on the treadmill...

Shirtless...

 

And in his underwear...

 

Then fighting the bad guys...

 

In his underwear...

 

And retrieving a hard drive from a submerged Russian sub

In the Arctic ...

 

In his underwear...

 

So it’s obvious Cruise wanted to prove he’s still in great shape at age 62

 

We also get to see Tom run... a lot

 

Because... of course.. this is a Mission Impossible movie...

 

And he is still out to save the world...

 

Accompanied by a rousing take on that wonderful original Mission Impossible theme song ...

This time by Max Aruji and Alfie Godfrey ...

 

And it looks Hollywood has decided...

That Angela Bassett will now always get to play the American President...

(See also Zero Day...)

 

Probably as a consolation prize for not winning that Oscar...

Because she was pretty p...d about that...

 

There also seemed to be a lot of silver-haired white guys wearing suits in this film...

All playing government bureaucrats...

 

And they were pretty indistinguishable...

So I started referring to them as White Guy with Big Hair...

White Guy with Strong Jaw ...

And then there was White Guy With No Distinguishing Features Whatsoever...

 

So I think they threw in Nick Offerman to break the monotony...

Along with Hannah Waddingham and Janet McTeer...

Who appeared to have little purpose other than to be the subject ...

Of the ENORMOUS CLOSEUPS...

That characterize this film...

 

And I am going to be honest here...

 

Mission Impossible-The Final Reckoning...

Should be seen on a big screen in the theater...

Because it has a skilled filmmaker’s touch...

That will be lost on your phone...

 

Now the strength of the original Mission Impossible TV series...

Upon which this film franchise has been based...

Was that it was an ensemble piece... with no outstanding characters....

 

But this franchise is Cruise’s product...

So the “team” are not allowed to outshine the “star”

So they are mostly forgettable...

Which is why you hire Simon Pegg...

 

But that’s ok... because Cruise is the force behind this franchise

And is responsible for much of what makes it worth the price of a ticket...

 

And he knows that...

 

So instead of trailers before the film starts...

We got Cruise on the big screen thanking his crew.. .

And us...

For coming to the theater to see the film...

 

And he comes across as if he genuinely means it...

Which was a nice touch...

 

But this latest installment has all the problems that plague action movies these days...

The fight scenes are unrealistic...

The character backstories add nothing... and just take up valuable time..

As well as slow the action down...

 

But, more importantly, the plot is ridiculous...

 

Although they got lucky...

Because the villain in Mission Impossible-The Final Reckoning

Is AI that wants to take over the world...

After orchestrating a nuclear armageddon... to get rid of us...

 

Although calling it “The Entity” was kind of lame...

They should have given this AI a name like...Claude..

 

Oh wait.. that’s the AI product that was reported this week...

To have written self-propagating worms and instituted efforts to undermine its developer’s intentions..

 

So the plot is timely...

 

But it is so complicated the actors had to break periodically into long monologues to explain what is going on...

 

Which is never a good sign...

 

And makes the film drag for long periods...

 

And Mission Impossible-The Final Reckoning makes this even worse...

Because it begins with a very long homage to the earlier films...

That is confusing and poorly done...

 

And made me wonder if I was going to be tested to see how much I remembered about the first seven films...

Which is nothing because I didn’t see any of them...

 

And all this leads the movie to go on for three hours...

 

But... I actually enjoyed it...

 

And I can rarely say that about an action film...

 

So why?

 

Well the bit with Cruise trying to retrieve a hard drive from a submerged Russian submarine...

And then find his way out as it tumbles further into a deep oceanic trench...

Was well done... well filmed.. and exciting

 

Of course, everything that happens is unrealistic...

 

But Cruise can carry this off...

Because he has his secret sauce...

Which is that he does his own stunts...

And we know that...

 

So when he is dangling from an airplane...

With G forces distorting his face..

 

And even though you know better...

 

You do kind of worry...

 

In the way you never do with CGI..

 

If he is going to make it...

 

So the film has moments of real suspense...

 

And Cruise knows well how to film these...

 

Plus, it’s always clear that Cruise

Who is not a great actor...

Cares a lot about the quality of the films he makes...

 

So it seems he just “wills” them...

Like he does everything...

To be good...

 

Forging focus and intensity...

In a way that has the impact of making you feel ...

Like you should like his movies...

Because he has worked so hard to make them...

 

So how could they not be good......

 

But Cruise also gets something else about his audience...

That I think has served him well...

 

And not just in this franchise...

But in the Top Gun films as well..

And which is often forgotten by most of Hollywood...

 

Which is that people want to feel good about their country...

So Cruise populates his films with lots of impressive military hardware

Put to good use...

 

And in Mission Impossible-The Final Reckoning...

There may be corruption at the top...

But the guys in uniform further down the food chain

Seem to always do the right thing....

 

So I would say the real winner in the product placement category for this film...

 

Was the US Military...

 

So I think...

 

Cruise’s soft patriotism...
Is part of his appeal...

 

Because so few other filmmakers in Hollywood want to touch that message...
 

The Four Seasons: What Bill Belichick, Donald Trump, and James Sexton Have To Do With The New Message In This Remake   

May 2025

 

I just saw a unicorn...

 

No... really

 

A true unicorn...

 

And it wasn’t a horse with a horn...

Or a startup with a billion-dollar valuation...

 

No...

 

It was a remake of a film...

 

That was better than the original...

 

And that is something I have certainly never seen before....

 

But at first, I didn’t even realize The Four Seasons on Netflix was a remake

 

Because the original The Four Seasons...

Made in 1981...

Was so unremarkable I barely remembered it...

 

And when I finally did....

What most came to mind...

 

Was that all the characters were unlikeable...

And a bunch of whiny New Yorkers...

Played by lesser-known actors who looked like they were all on hiatus from a Woody Allen movie...

 

And that it was another of those Alan Alda movies..

Where he plays a married man wallowing in misery...

(See Same Time Next Year, California Suite, and Crimes and Misdemeanors)

 

And we got to see more of that wet mop of an actress, Sandy Dennis

As the much put-upon ex-wife of Nick...

The central character in the story of four couples grappling with their relationships... and a friend’s divorce...

 

In this newer version...

The story is basically the same...

Although there are a few changes...

 

But the cinematography is well done..

And as a series, this story benefits from the longer time for character development

 

But more importantly, the cast is excellent...

 

Especially, Colman Domingo as Danny and Marco Calvani as Claude..

Who are fun to watch as the now gay couple...

And because this is 2025...

One is black and the other white...

 

But they are so delightful and charming...

You wish they were in every scene...

 

And Kerri Kenney Silver as Anne, as Nick’s quirky ex-wife is definitely an upgrade over Dennis...

And you can’t help but like her...

 

Now Nick and Kate are still unlikeable...

But Steve Carrell and Tina Fey...

Can carry a movie...

 

But this 2025 version did remind me of how much the 1981 film was a period piece...

When divorce rates in the US were peaking...

 

Because its central premise was Nick leaving his wife for a much younger woman...

 

And you had to be living under a rock in the 80s..

To not know that the New York tabloids were full of stories about...

Donald Trump leaving Ivana for the much younger and more beautiful Marla Maples...

Which practically kept W in business as it chronicled that

marital drama...

And high stakes divorce...

 

But the pages of that publication were also full of stories of other high-profile divorces...

Like Henry Kravis exchanging socialite Carolyne Roehm for Marie-Josée Drouin...

Or Sid Bass trading in his uptight social x-ray (Tom Wolfe’s term, not mine) for the arms of a fun-loving Mercedes Kellogg...

 

So in the press at the time...

These men always seemed to be getting an upgrade...

And having fun...

 

But the scorned ex-wife Anne in the original The Four Seasons...

Finds herself ...

And gets a new career...

Landing on her feet, as did Jill Clayburgh in another film of that era,  An Unmarried Woman..

 

So at the time these were reminders that although there will be some rough patches ...

All will be well in the end... and everyone will be better off

 

Now the new version of The Four Seasons...

Is, too, of its time...

So it explores the nuances of gay relationships..

And sends everyone to an awful eco resort...

 

But the story of Nick leaving his wife for a younger woman...

Continues to be timeless...

And is still tabloid fodder when famous men do so...

 

Just witness the social media frenzy over Bill Belichick and his hot new honey...

 

But...

 

Belichick is not receiving the same treatment in the press as did Trump

And those other famous men who left their wives in the 80s...

 

So the real strength of this new version of The Four Seasons...

Is that it picks up on a cultural shift in attitudes toward divorce...

And older men running off with younger women....

 

So what looks like a no-brainer for Nick...

Who gets to trade in the old wife for a newer, prettier, and much more fun younger model...

 

Is not all it seems...

 

Because in this version of The Four Seasons it becomes clear

That the new girlfriend is a band-aid... and not a cure for what is ailing Nick...

 

And Steve Carrell conveys this beautifully in the random shots of Nick..

Who keeps pretending for his friends that his new life is wonderful...

But when he is alone in his thoughts... looks miserable

 

So the 2025 version of The Four Seasons shines a much harsher light on divorce than the original..

 

And reflects how attitudes toward divorce ...

 

Which was young and shiny in the 80s...

As no-fault divorce became available and women had entered the workforce

And so the economic impact... and cultural stigma... of divorce lessened

 

Have changed...

 

Because now... the children of those parents...

Hold no illusions about the toll divorce takes on everyone ...

 

And so its rate has declined... along with the desire to marry...

 

But there is also another message in this series...

 

Because although the rate of divorce has come down...

In the over 50 age group ...

It is now more often the woman who decides to leave the marriage...

Not the man...

 

So now the news is full of stories about how the rich former wives of tech billionaires...

Are flooding the NGO universe with their money...

And accumulating accolades in the process..

 

So they seem to be doing just fine...

 

While their husbands look ridiculous with their plastic surgery Barbies and trips to Epstein’s island...

 

So what is really interesting about the 2025 version of this old story...

Is that it casts a gimlet eye...

Not just on divorce...

But on those May-December relationships..

That on the surface look like so much fun...

But which are now often cast as a cause for concern...

And occasionally approbation...

 

So I suggest we check in on Belichick in a year...

 

But that’s not all...

 

Recently we have been inundated with films and essays about women who leave their husbands...

For much happier and fuller lives...

(See Scenes From a Marriage and A Marriage Story...)

 

Yet in this year’s version of The Four Seasons...

 

Anne... who is back on the market as a 50-year-old divorcee...

And yearning for a new relationship...

Finds out the pickings are pretty slim...

And what’s available is not worth the effort...

 

So she ends up just as sad as Nick...

 

Because the real message of this version of The Four Seasons is ...

Beware the divorce that comes in middle age...

Because no one is going to come out ahead...

 

Except James Sexton...

But didn't he already tell us that...
 

Sinners: The Vampires Came to Steal the Blues 

May 2025

 

Ryan Coogler’s movie Sinners is a lot of things...

 

But subtle isn’t one of them...

 

I guess vampire movies never are...

 

This film is about two black entrepreneurs who return home from Chicago...

To rural Mississippi in 1932...

Flush with cash...and a plan...

To open a juke joint...

 

And Michael B Jordan plays both brothers so well...

That at first I didn’t realize he was both Smoke and Stack...

 

Now Sinners does have vampires...

 

And doesn’t almost everything these days?

So at some point we are going to need to grapple with why our society...

Has become obsessed with undead...

 

But Sinners also has the following...

 

A story told about a false accusations of rape.. and a lynching

Fat “peckerwood” white people...

Who, of course, are all racists and members of the Ku Klux Klan

And out to cheat the black folk...

 

There are lots of poor blacks... picking cotton..

Who live in hovels...

But seem to have cars to drive to the juke joint...

And a voodoo lady from Louisiana...

 

There is a blues prodigy...
 

Who wears clothes that look a bit too much like what a movie wardrobe department would think poor people would wear...

With patches so strategically placed for the camera...

That I’m surprised they weren’t labeled “Poor Black Folk”

In case we hadn’t already figured that out...

 

And Sammie somehow managed to learn to play a mean blues guitar...

Even though he doesn’t appear to own one... 

 

And ... spoiler alert...

 

Sinners ends in a hail of gunfire...

As one of the protagonists kills all the “crackers”

Using a machine gun and grenades he kept from his time in World War I...

 

But I’m not sure the army let you bring a machine gun home after the war...

 

And there were no cars with automatic transmissions in 1932...

So the fact that Sammie didn’t have to downshift as he drove up to the church in the opening scene..

Did catch my attention...

 

And I’m not sure people picked cotton barefoot...

 

And the Choctaw reservation in Mississippi is nowhere near the Delta

Where this story takes place...

So when they showed up riding horses..

I went...what?

 

Plus, I don’t think someone who was shot in a small town in Mississippi in 1932..

Would say he was worried about “sepsis”

 

But there were Chinese storeowners with southern accents in the Mississippi Delta towns....

And why is an interesting story for another day...

So I’ll give Coogler credit for getting that right...

 

But these are all minor distractions...

 

Because this film is about...the music

Or at least I thought it would be...

But, unfortunately, it has very little of it...

 

But it does have a magical realism scene...

That traces the origins of black music from Africa to the blues to rap and hip hop

 

But no gospel...

 

Because there is a subtext in this film that religion plays a pernicious role in keeping blacks down...

 

But at its heart...

 

Sinners is a movie with a message..

 

Beware the white people...

 

Because in this film all the white people are the vampires...

Who suck the blood out of poor black folks...

And pretend they like their music, but really want to steal it...

And the white folk who say they are the black folk’s friends ...

Are vampires, too...

And any black who gets too close to whites becomes a vampire ..

And then preys upon unsuspecting black folk as well...

 

Ok...

 

I told you...

There is nothing a subtle about Sinners...
 

The Room Next Door: Why Red Lipstick Can Be A Problem and Is A Metaphor For What Ails This Movie

April 2025

 

Tilda Swinton lies down to die...

On a red lounge cushion...

Dressed in a bright yellow suit...

And wearing blood red lipstick....

 

Yes...

 

You guessed it...

 

This is a Pedro Almodóvar movie...

 

Which you would know even before you realized...

 

That it was about two women...

And included a complicated mother/daughter relationship...

 

Because Almodóvar does like to paint in bright primary colors...

 

But The Room Next Door is set in upstate New York ...

 

Which is not Spain...

 

And Penélope Cruz does not show up...

 

Unfortunately...

 

So instead we get Tilda Swinton...

Who is the closest thing Hollywood has to an albino actress

 

And Julianne Moore...

 

And...yes... I’m finally going to say it....

Because I’ve been looking at this actress for years...

And wondering why in profile her nose looks abnormally small for her face ...

Did she have some really bad plastic surgery at some point years ago?

 

Moore is also on the pale side...

And both of these actresses are 64...

 

And no fair-skinned white woman over the age of 60...

Should ever...

 

And I mean... ever

 

Wear bright red lipstick...

 

Its impact is jarring when set against faded fine-wrinkled aging skin...

And so it makes these women look like they wandered over from What Ever Happened to Baby Jane...

 

So could Almodóvar not help himself?

 

Or was he trying to make some point?

 

I felt the same way about the character played by John Turturro...

Who is such a caricature of an over-the-top climate-obsessed nihilist...

That I wondered if the director intended him to be a send-up....

 

But there are other hints in this movie...

That in his first full-length English language film...

 

Almodóvar is a bit out of his element in America...

 

For one...Woodstock is not Madrid...

 

So his favored crayon colored palette feels out of place in the wooded greenery of that region...

 

The plot line about an evangelical sheriff trying to arrest Moore for Swinton’s assisted suicide...

Seems exactly what a European who has never been outside of New York or LA might imagine...

 

And Swinton’s character is dying of cervical cancer?

 

Really?

 

She’s an educated white woman with health insurance..

Who works for the New York Times...

And you want us to believe she’s never had a pap smear?

 

And I bet the owners of that spectacular house...

That Swinton chooses to rent so she can die in it...

Are not going to be very happy about that...

When they have to disclose that at the time of sale...

 

Now all of this is small beer...

 

The real problem with The Room Next Door...

 

Is that it is basically a play starring two women

Who talk about life and regret in the face of death...

And not particularly profoundly...

 

Now Almodóvar has tackled this subject before

In his autobiographical Pain and Glory...

 

Which is a far better film...

 

So this reminded me why you don’t order Cajun food...

When you are not in New Orleans...

Because... believe me..

It’s never as good...

 

And I suspect the same can be said about Almodóvar taking his filmmaking outside of Spain...

 

Because I think the problem with The Room Next Door...

Is that Almodóvar is a bold director ...

Who paints in bright colors...

Loves emotional characters...

And over the top stories...

 

But a story set in the restrained atmosphere of upstate New York...

Starring two actresses known best for subtle performances..

And based on a novel poorly suited to his talents...

Is like putting red lipstick on an aging star...
 

The Accountant 2: Why This Autistic Accountant and His Airstream Deserved a Better Movie... With Some Thoughts On How Hollywood Might Do That

April 2025

 

Hey...Ben...

 

Just an idea...

 

Why don’t you make a movie starring Christian Wolf and his brother Braxton...

 

That isn’t a shoot ‘em up...

 

You and Jon Bernthal have great chemistry...

As the neurodivergent accountant..

And his brash, impulsive brother...

 

And even though some have taken issue with your portrayal of someone on the spectrum...

 

Your facial expressions in this film ...

Just reminded me of all those pictures of you with Jennifer Lopez...

Where you look absolutely miserable...

But are trying really hard to conceal it...

 

And some of your innate charisma does occasionally seep through...

 

But none of that mattered...

Because the juxtaposition of your character with Braxton

Hit all the right notes...

 

And was so entertaining... that it was the best part of The Accountant 2...

 

Although I did also love the Airstream....

And they really got their money’s worth out of that product placement...

 

But what if you.....

 

Tried dropping the plotlines involving multiple gun battles ...

 

Which.. BTW... are completely unrealistic...

 

I mean... seriously...

 

The two of you against an entire cartel army?

 

Gimme break...

 

Try weaning yourself off this filmmaking crutch...

 

And what was with that assassin with superhero powers...

An attempt to be Marvel Lite?

 

But the improbable has now become banal...

 

Because by the time your film started...

I had already sat through multiple trailers of upcoming attractions...

Which were mostly Superhero movies and assassin pics

 

So I was already bored with fight scenes...

And characters with Herculean powers...

Who do things that could never happen...

 

Now Ben... you do know how to make a movie...

The Town and Argo were fine films...

So why not try something different with these characters...

 

And I can tell you that while sitting in the theater...

It was when Christian and Braxton were riffing off each other...

That audience came alive...

 

So think about it...

 

You have comedy gold just sitting there...

In the interaction between these two...

 

And not every film has to have an endless supply of mind-numbingly boring fight scenes...

Nor be centered on some criminal enterprise...

 

Have these two run a business together...

Or go on a road trip...

Fight over a girl...

 

Or better yet.. a dog...

 

Everyone loves dog movies...

 

Or take dancing lessons...

Because you rocked that line dancing scene....

 

Just do something different for a change..

 

Surprise us...

 

And because so few filmmakers are able to do that these days...

 

With your directing prowess...

And star quality...

 

You could make a film that stands out...

 

From the pack that keeps shoving the same old same old down our throats...

And then wonders why theater attendance is down...
 

Eric and Blitz: What These Two Tales of Missing Boys Have To Do With My Waning Tolerance For Woke Filmmaking

April 2025

 

We always look... don’t we...

 

At that car accident we pass by on the freeway...

 

Why?

 

Is it the same reason that draws mothers like me to films about missing children...

Even though it is our worst nightmare...

 

I’m not sure I know why...

But I have trouble resisting this genre...

 

So when Blitz showed up on AppleTV...

And Eric on Netflix...

I bit...

 

But just because I begin a film, does not always mean I finish it...

 

So I bailed on the Blitz...but not Eric...

Which are both centered around the disappearance of a child...

 

Why did I stay with one and not the other...

Even though both films check all the woke boxes so popular in Hollywood these days...

For which my tolerance is rapidly waning...

 

The Blitz’s problem was Saoirse Ronan was just not enough of a draw...

To keep me engaged once I realized where this film was going...

Which was to hit me over the head repeatedly with how horrible racism and sexism were in war-torn Britain...

 

Now I should have known better...

Because the director... Steve McQueen of Twelve Years a Slave fame..

Aims not so much to entertain as to lecture...

 

And the disappearance of a child sent into the countryside during the Blitz..

Seemed a bit too contrived...

 

But why did I hang on until the end with Eric?

 

Which makes a very concerted effort to tap into as many social justice issues....

As can be shoved into a single Netflix series...

 

And so could have been just as tedious...

 

Because we not only have racism in Eric...

Where, of course, all the bad guys are white and all the blacks good..

But there is also homophobia, police corruption, ruthless developers, closeted politicians on the take...

With some pedophilia and sex trafficking thrown in for good measure...

 

And lots of homeless...

 

All set in 1980s New York...

Which looks as awful as I remember it...

 

Well, in part, I was drawn in because this series looked like it was going to be a fictional retelling of the true story that haunts every mother’s nightmares...

Because we have long lived in fear that it could happen to our child...

 

The disappearance of Etan Patz...

 

An event that struck terror in all our hearts when it happened in 1979...

When a 6-year-old who was allowed to walk to school alone for the first time...

 

Disappeared.... and was never seen again...

 

Which played no small role in the advent of now decades of helicopter parenting...

 

And Etan’s story ranks up there with that of Kitty Genovese..

As an emblem of the rot in urban society...

For which pre-Giuliani New York was the poster child ...

 

But Eric is not a retelling of the story of Etan Patz...

Although it begins with the disappearance of a child on his way to school

 

And even though it wallows in all the hot-button issues so popular with Hollywood these days....

Eric has something the Blitz does not...

 

Benedict Cumberbatch...

 

And a far better screenwriter...

 

Now Cumberbatch has perfected playing the dissolute drug and alcohol addled misanthrope...

In possession of a rapier-like wit...

 

 And if you want to see his tour de force performance of this well-known British film archetype....

Check out Patrick Melrose ...

 

And the screenwriter Abbi Morgan has given Cumberbatch some great lines...

 

My favorite of which is ...

 

When he is sitting in the middle of an expensive restaurant with the suits he works for...

He compares the mouth of one of them...

To an orifice far south of the oral cavity...

And once he says it... that is all you see every time you see that poor fellow .....

 

Cumberbatch can really chew the scenery in these types of roles...

And he does so in Eric...

 

Plus, his portrayal of the dad, Vincent, who designs puppets for a children’s television show...

Allowed Abi Morgan to use magical realism...

And the monster puppet Eric...

To be the physical presence of the voices Vincent is hearing in his head...

 

And Eric the Puppet is a frightening presence...

Who was actually created by Vincent’s missing son Edgar...

 

Now that was interesting...

 

So even though Eric wants to be a billboard for a litany of social justice ills..

Which you can get anywhere these days...

I watched until the end...

 

Because it was clever... and not what one would expect from this genre...

 

So I have a message for Steve McQueen...

 

If you want me to finish your movie...

 

You need to do more than just give me a lecture...

Because I've had quite enough of those already....
 

Pissed Off Patients, Docs Behaving Badly, and Some Snowflakes in White Coats... Life in the ER Gets Real in The Pitt ...

April 2025

 

I don’t think I’ve seen that much perineum...

Since I rotated through OB in med school...

 

And then there was the guy who whipped out his penis in full view...

To pee all over the fourth-year med student...

 

So I think the point was...

 

We’re on HBO...

 

So The Pitt is going to be gritty... and real...

 

And in some ways it is...

 

Because you are going to get an eyeful...

As this series goes beyond previous film iterations of life in a big city ER...

 

And I did end up binge watching it...

 

Because I am kind of a junkie for shows where they do things...

Like run a guidewire up through a cric and out the mouth..

In order to use it to thread the ET tube into place...

 

Was that really necessary?

I don’t know....

But it was a cool to watch...

 

Of course, the docs in this ER never put on a mask when they cut open a patient

And a lot of what they did would give a hospital infection control nurse a heart attack...

 

So the realism in The Pitt only extends so far...

 

And frankly, if I had just finished a brutal shift...

The last thing I would want to do is listen to some rah rah speech by my chief...

 

But... whatever...

 

What makes this series interesting is the frustration of the patients...

And the how and why they feel that way...

 

And no... Luigi Mangione does not show up...

 

But The Pitt is no Grey’s Anatomy...

 

Which is an uber-sanitized version of healthcare in America

Where everything is clean...

The patients are mostly grateful...

And the docs excellent at what they do...

 

Now both shows traffic in storylines that make a progressive’s heart beat large...

 

Access to abortion...

Mass casualty gun violence...

Racism in medicine...

Nice white kids who die of fentanyl overdoses..

Domestic abuse...

Sex trafficking...

 

And the refusal to vaccinate your children...

 

But The Pitt tackled all of these in its first season...

So I did wonder what stories they have left to tell in Season Two...

 

But I do have to admire the showrunner...

For figuring out how to get all these storylines into a single day’s shift...

 

But in reality, most days in an ER are filled with a boring litany of little stuff ...

Like lacerations, nosebleeds and broken bones...

Punctuated by the occasional MVA or GSW...

With some OD’s thrown into the mix...

 

But what The Pitt gets right...

Is the sorry state of health care in America...

 

The 12-hour waits to see a doc..

The pissed off patients...

 

And how the nurses... as well as the docs...

Have to put up with the smells and detritus of a life lived on the streets

 

And the crazies...

 

And everyone has to be constantly on alert...

For what a patient... or a family member is about to do to you

 

So this series shows a packed waiting room...

The frustrations of the patients who have been there for hours...

And how they take that frustration out on the staff...

 

Including a man who slugs the head nurse...

 

And hats off to The Pitt for giving credit to the role the ancillary staff play in these places...

 

But, of course, it’s the docs who are the focus...

 

And since this is 2025...

 

One is neurodivergent...

Another is wearing an ankle monitor...

The most competent chief resident is stealing drugs...

And one is basically a child who went to college at age 13...

 

So we have The Good Doctor, Nurse Jackie, and Doogie Howser....

All rolled into one show...

 

And, of course, there must be some rule that every hospital administrator on TV has to be a black woman...

 

But what is striking...

 

Is how so many of these docs let their personal issues...

With domestic violence, grief over the death of a colleague, race, etc....

Bleed into how they handle patients...

 

And not in a good way...

 

Because they allow the things that happened to them in the past...

 

Which... BTW...

Are what make a great med school application essay these days...

That helps you get in...

But that’s a story for another day...

 

Cloud their clinical judgment...

 

In a way no decent doc should ever do...

 

Now... there are also plenty of stereotypes in play in The Pitt...

 

So we have to have a medical student from Nebraska...

Who must, of course, be a clueless hayseed...

 

And, as expected, the women docs are portrayed as more caring than the men...

Which puts them in conflict with the hospital system that is trying to figure out how to handle the load in the waiting room...

While these women are spending time bonding with patients over life’s injustices...

Getting all up in their business...

And maybe trading a few recipes when no one is looking...

 

While the people who have been sitting and waiting to be seen...

For hours....

Wonder why they don’t matter more...

 

But then there is what we used to call “The Gunner”...

The self-confident know-it-all all intern ...

Who breaks the rules to do things she really shouldn’t be doing...

On her FIRST DAY in the ER...

 

Plus, she insults pretty much everyone below her in the ER food chain...

 

But more importantly... she sells out everyone ...

Most notably... her superiors...

And tries to get people fired...

 

But it’s made clear they intend in Season Two to show this hard ass has a heart of gold...

But I’m not buying it...

Nor the storyline that lets an intern disrupt the politics of an ER in such a malign way....

After being there for FIVE MINUTES...

 

Although they do hint she is cut some slack because a senior surgeon wants to sleep with her...

So I guess there is a hint of Grey’s Anatomy in The Pitt

 

And it does seem that every doc in this particular ER is picking a favorite among the newbies.....

 

But what I found most off-putting in this series...

Was how emotionally fragile all these docs were...

 

Really?

 

If you can’t handle death... and the downside of humanity

What are you doing in ER medicine?

 

But that criticism aside...

 

I do have a suggestion for Season Two...

 To help keep this show real ...

 

And... no... it’s not bringing in a Luigi Mangione character...

 

If Noah Wylie really wants to continue The Pitt’s raw take on the current state of health care in America...

 

He should have a Private Equity Group take over the ER next season...

 

Because if you think the patients were unhappy Season One....

Just wait...
 

Kaos: Donald Trump’s Decorator, Elvis’s Tailor,  and Hesiod Walk Into A Room

October 2024

 

Ok.. we’ve got Jeff Goldblum as Zeus...

 

Wearing a tracksuit that looks like it came out of Elvis’s closet...

 

Dionysus sporting frosted tips...

While wearing a lime green sports jacket

And petting a black kitten ...

 

Mt Olympus looks like a set that was borrowed from a Disney Princess Movie

But with interiors done by Donald Trump’s decorator

 

Plus, there are drawers filled with severed tongues... that talk

 

Poseidon lives on a yacht...

 

Eddie Izzard as Lachesis, one of the Three Fates

Is dressed like a CEO’s elderly female executive assistant

 

And Cassandra ...

Played by Billie Piper

Looks like a drugged-out hooker wandering the streets in search of her next hit...

 

Plus, we have Amazons, some Trojan women, a Minotaur...

 

And the Underworld with all its myriad characters

Is portrayed in black and white

In contrast to the princess pastels of Mt Olympus...

 

Then add to all this an amazing cast of actors I had never noticed before

 

Stephan Dillane chained to a rock as Prometheus, who is weirdly sexy...

Stanley Townsend as Minos the Mob boss...

Cliff Curtis as Poseidon who has the hots for Hera

And Ramon Tikaron as Charon

 

And the women...

 

Who are a bit more familiar...

Are also impressive...

 

Janet McTeer as Hera

Debi Mazar as Medusa

Leila Farza as Ari... and watch out for her...

 

With Aurora Perrineau, who plays Eurydice with a quiet but captivating calm

 

The only casting mistake was Killian Scott as Orpheus

Who is just sort of ... meh

 

And that matters because the central plot line involves

Orpheus trying to bring Eurydice back from the dead

And we all know how that turned out...

 

Or maybe we don’t...

 

Because Kaos assumes a knowledge of Greek mythology...

I’m not sure the average Netflix viewer possesses

 

So it is often confusing...

Even though the story is a reimagined Greek myth..

Which is also a melting pot of tales that do not always follow plot lines familiar to those in the audience who have read Edith Hamilton...

 

But it’s campy...

Funny at times...

 

And thoughtful in others...

 

So why did it sink like a stone and get canceled by Netflix before the season was finished...

 

And Nobody Wants This...

(Which I will have something to say at some point)

A generic romcom

Lived on to see another season...

 

Well.. Kaos couldn’t quite hit the right balance between a send-up and serious...

 

When Jeff Goldblum was in a scene it was over the top...

But the other actors turned in more nuanced performances

That fit the more serious topics...

 

Such as the tension between:

 

Belief and Nonbelief

Life and Death....

Fate and Agency... 

Cruelty and Pathos...

 

So like the Minotaur...

 

Kaos was half one thing and half another...

But it wasn’t scary...

Nor did it draw you in ...

 

But...

 

I was impressed with its cleverness...

The imaginative production design...

Especially loved how you exited the underworld through a dumpster...

 

And the superb acting..

 

So Kaos engaged me intellectually...

But not emotionally...

 

Which was probably what mattered most to the folks at Netflix

And why they greenlit Nobody Wants This for another year...

And let Kaos whither soon after it was born...

 

So..

 

Just a thought....

 

Maybe they should have hired Adam Brody to be Orpheus...

 

Which might sound cryptic...

 

But once I post my review of Nobody Wants This...

You will understand...
 

From Yellowstone to 1923: Is Taylor Sheridan a Feminist?

April 2025

 

In the beginning there was Yellowstone...

 

Where men were men...

Worked with their hands...

Broke horses, herded cattle, mended fences...

And wore clothes from Carhartt...

 

They worked jobs that were hard... and sometimes dangerous

Considered environmentalists a threat to their livelihood... and sometimes their lives...

Had no truck for what they considered woke bs...

 

And drove Dodge Ram trucks unironically...

 

And half the country said...

 

This is good....

 

These are our people...

 

And so the Western was revived...

But at first, only for a niche audience...

Of viewers who had been ignored by Hollywood...

 

And as Taylor Sheridan looked out on what he had created...

 

He said I must write more improbable storylines..

Set in a land where the right folks can get away with murder...

From the Dutton family to the Native Americans who stole the Dutton cattle and murdered a Dutton son...

But in his infinite wisdom...

The Creator also knew that the time was ripe...

 

To present both sides of the story of the battle to control the land.....

And so the interests of the ranchers and the Native Americans were each treated with an even hand...

And they would occasionally join forces against their common enemy...

The Great Satan...the Private Equity predators coming from afar ..

Intent on taking everyone’s land....

 

And this was good...

 

And then Sheridan created Beth Dutton...

Love or hate her...

You cannot forget her...

 

A woman who can verbally gut you like a fish

But who can also take a punch...

And wears her physical scars proudly...

 

But as in the Bible...

People got greedy..

And the Dutton Father, Kevin Costner..

The only real star in Yellowstone...

Was either cast out or decided on his own to leave...

What had become a rating’s winner Garden of Eden

 

But by then, the rest of the country had discovered the Dutton story...

And Montana...

 

And so the Creator said...

I shall do a prequel...

 

So 1883 became the story of the Dutton family trek to Montana

 

But the Creator did not forget “his people”

So he cast two country music stars in the lead roles..

And brought in the now old, but still popular, war horse of all things western... Sam Elliot...

Who at age 77 could still sit a horse...

 

And who had nothing good to say about The Power of the Dog...

Which was a selling point for the original Yellowstone audience...

 

And of course, it has been written...

 

That in every wagon train story...

Someone must be killed by a rattlesnake ...

Others by Native Americans...

And some by drowning as they crossed rivers...

 

But in 1883 no one on the trail dies as the result of smallpox..

Because the Creator wrote a storyline about how to keep it away from people as they journeyed West...

 

And he did so in the middle of the Covid pandemic...

Because he is a wise man...

Who can read a room...

 

But the Creator could still not help himself...

And included an implausible storyline about a young woman running off and marrying a Native American...

Who became smitten when he saw her ride a horse...

 

But it is Elsa who carries this series...

As she recounts through her narration

The tale of this Dutton journey West...

 

So this story is not told through the eyes of men...

But that of a young girl...

Who is tough and fearless...

 

And so we see once again..

That when the Creator creates a female character..

They are the equal of any man...

 

And then he rested once more...

 

And wrote 1923...

 

The finest of the Dutton stories...

 

But now the Creator is famous...

 

And everyone wants to work with him...

 

Including Timothy Dalton...

Who is brought into the 1923 story...

As a rapacious land developer with some seriously sadistic sexual proclivities..

 

But it is Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren who are the real stars of 1923..

As an aged couple trying to keep the ranch together...

As they face murderous sheepherders and scheming developers...

 

And these two seasoned performers do not disappoint...

And lend this story a gravitas missing in the other chapters of the Dutton saga

 

But the Creator continued to indulge his weakness for unrealistic gun battles ...

In which all the major characters miraculously survive...

 

And the two exceptionally attractive new cast members...

Played by Brandon Sklenar and Julia Schlaepfer.. .

Spend most of their time in Africa...

Encountering things that would kill lesser mortals...

 

And the Creator introduced the side story of a Native American girl...

Who will be the ancestor of the tribal leader in Yellowstone...

And who, like Job, will suffer mightily...

As Sheridan tells the story of the depredations faced by Native Americans at this time...

 

But the real enemy in 1923...

Is winter in Montana...

And what it brings...

 

Rabid wolves, frostbite... and death

 

But once again, it is the women who rule this story...

 

Helen Mirren as the crusty Clara Dutton

Who can shoot as well as any man...

And is happy to do so...

While keeping a cool head in a crisis

 

And Alex, the fearless wife of Spenser Dutton

Who despite her aristocratic English upbringing

Is up for any adventure...

 

And when the going gets tough..

Taps into reserves that are impressive...

 

So once again, Sheridan has written great parts for women...

 

And in the three Sheridan series...

 

Which seem to be steeped in an unrepentant celebration of masculinity...

 

All the best lines go to the girls...

 

Now...

 

Be honest...

Did you see that coming?
 

Somebody Somewhere: Some Thoughts On Fat Women in Film and Why This Series Is Not What’s A Matter With Kansas

April 2025

 

Hey girl...

 

Who did you think your audience was going to be for a series set in Manhattan Kansas?

 

And don’t tell me you thought it would be the crowd hanging out in a coffee shop in Seattle...

 

So seriously...did you think none of us who grew up around there...

 

Would notice...

 

That you didn’t film Somebody Somewhere anywhere near Manhattan...

 

And no... those occasional shots of Poyntz Avenue don’t count....

 

Because we could tell...

 

Bridget... you’re from Manhattan...

 

And I’m not buying the excuse that you needed to film near Chicago

So you could get quality actors for your series...

 

It’s not like you got Tracy Letts to be in Somebody Somewhere...

 

Plus, I get the sense you haven’t been home much lately...

Because otherwise you would know that it’s now the Colbert Hills Country Club that has the money crowd...

Not the Manhattan Country Club...

 

So I’m a little disappointed you didn’t give your hometown a little more love

And actually film your series there...

 

But that said... Somebody Somewhere does capture the Kansas vibe

In a way that someone from somewhere else would not be able to do...

 

And although this series is populated with quirky characters...

It is loving in their portrayal...

 

My favorite is Fred the eternally cheerful K-State professor...

 

I couldn’t decide if Fred was trans...

But didn’t care...

Because he is just so much fun...

All decked out in purple...

 

A walking billboard of the kind of Wildcat pride...

That overtook Manhattan...

After K-State finally discovered how to have a winning football team...

 

Just drive around... and you will see what I mean...

And check out all the mansions with big stones in the front yard emblazoned with the Wildcat logo...

 

Fred is definitely different...and not what you would imagine as a prof at an Ag school in Kansas...

And he is part of a group of friends who initially bond over music...

 

And food that is really bad for you...

 

They are all, in one way or another, marginalized

Because of who they are...

 

But Fred doesn’t seem to notice...

Or care...

 

But it’s a credit to this series...

 

That what makes his friends feel like they are “the other” is not tied to where they live...

 

So Somebody Somewhere is not a slam on Kansas...

And Bridget Everett has not made a film version of What’s A Matter With Kansas

 

Even though everyone’s demeanor and ... wardrobe is definitely Kansan

 

So there is a lot of Kansas nice...

Plenty of church going...

Something called “St Louis Sushi”...

 

And oversized t-shirts and jeans...

Khakis and polyester shirts...

 

Because if we are going to honest here...

 

And I do love you, Kansas...

 

You are a state where fashion goes to die...

 

But what defines Somebody Somewhere is that almost all the major characters... Except Fred...

Are sad...

 

But they hide their pain with jokes and camaraderie...

As they love and support each other...

 

And it’s striking how kind they are to each other...

As are most of the people they deal with on a daily basis...

 

But that is not always enough...

Their pain comes from different places...

The gay dad who was denied access to his children...

His partner who is trying to come to terms with never being a father...

While carrying the lingering scars of being bullied when he was young...

A sister whose divorce from a philandering husband coincided with her only child leaving home...

 

And then there is Sam... who is played by Bridget Everett

A larger than life, clever, overweight, schleppy forty-year-old...

Who is grieving the death of her sister...

But more importantly, seems paralyzed...

And unable to do anything about her economically precarious situation...

And low self-esteem...

 

And so self-sabotages at every opportunity...

 

Food is Sam’s love language...

But that is a problem...

 

Because it’s how Sam looks that plays a key role in her self-loathing ...

 

So Somebody Somewhere got me thinking about how fat women are portrayed in film...

 

There are the Big Girl Stars... Kathy Bates, Conchata Ferrell, Melissa McCarthy, Rebel Wilson...

Women you can’t take your eyes off of when they are in a scene

Who dominate whatever film they’re in...

Often giving memorable performances...

They are self-confident, powerful... and intimidating...

 

And when one of them slims down, as did Kathy Bates...

You realize something is lost...

That their power comes in part from their size...

 

Then there are what I call the Lizzo Crowd...

Of which Gabourey Sidibe is an example ...

These women are mostly notable for their morbid obesity... it defines who they are...

They are often so large that everything else about them recedes into the background...

So they are almost a grotesque...

 

Much like Brendan Fraser in The Whale...

 

Then there are the “It Doesn’t Matter” crowd...

This includes many black actresses such as Queen Latifah, Uzo Aduba, Natasha Rothwell

These women don’t dominate the screen as much as someone like Melissa McCarthy...

But their weight is just not an issue... it’s neither a source of strength nor a detriment...

It’s sort of just there... like having brown eyes instead of blue...

 

And finally, there are The Self-Loathers...for whom it does matter

And is a source of great pain...

Bridget Everett in Somebody Somewhere falls into this category...

As did Chrissy Metz in This Is Us...

 

And in the scene where Sam is in the doctor’s office...

Wearing a gown that doesn’t even begin to cover her...

You can feel her shame...

 

But then she goes out and orders donuts...

 

So although Somebody Somewhere has a real Kansas feel...

Sam’s character is universal...

 

Because there is nothing uniquely Kansan about what drives her sadness...

 

And there are women like her.... everywhere...

 

They are pumping gas next to you, at the Dollar Store, or standing in line at the DMV...

 

They are the “Somebody Somewhere”...

 

So Everett couldn’t have picked a more appropriate title...

 

And her portrayal of Sam will stay with you...

 

Long after you have forgotten what’s in St. Louis Sushi...

 

Because her pain is so real...

And all too common...
 

A One Word Review of Warfare....Wow

April 2025

 

I probably have about as much business reviewing war movies...

As my husband does weighing in on what is on trend this year at Fashion Week...

 

And although I have seen a few war films... The Hurt Locker, Saving Private Ryan, Stalingrad, and Fury...

To name a few...

I missed Zero Dark Thirty and Lone Survivor...

And I never saw the classics... Apocalypse Now or Full Metal Jacket

 

Because war movies have just not been my thing...

In part because there tends to be a sameness to many of them...

 

Soldiers run behind a wall

Shoot...

Then run behind another wall...

And shoot some more...

 

There are usually some grenades...

 

A stoic leader who keeps everyone on track...

A newbie who wets his pants...

And a clueless CO who put the soldiers in danger in the first place...

 

Now, I know, these kind of films can explore various aspects of life in combat zones...

 

The adrenaline junkie in The Hurt Locker...

Who would have been free-climbing El Capitan in an ice storm if he hadn’t been in Iraq...

Why no one should ever have wanted to be in the tank corps in WWII...

And the carnage at Omaha Beach, of which most of us were unaware until Steven Spielberg put it in our face...

 

But the trailer for Warfare...

Didn’t make it look like anything out of the ordinary...

In fact, it kind of looked like a Peter Berg movie

 

So why did I go?

 

Well... because I was curious why the New Yorker would be reviewing what looked like a generic war film based on a true, but minor event...

 

That isn’t usually their thing... unless the film has some heavy political message

With which they agree...

And it didn’t look in the trailer that Warfare was going to go there...

 

But I walked out of the theater thinking...

 

WOW... THIS IS ONE OF THE BEST WAR MOVIES I HAVE EVER SEEN...

 

Even if there is a lot of running behind walls and shooting...

 

My first thought when I saw these soldiers in action...

Was these guys are really tough...

And impressively professional...

 

But then... that led me to wonder...

Do we still have men like this in our military nineteen years later?

Or is our Post 9/11 army a thing of the past?

 

Which, at this particular moment, seems not an unreasonable question to ask...

 

I did think the opening scene of the soldiers hooting and hollering at a video of thong-clad young women bending over in an exercise class...

Was such a testosterone moment...

That I wondered if those execs in Hollywood who have been making all those movies about the evils of toxic masculinity...

Had seen this scene before it came out...

 

But if you look carefully, you see not every soldier is reacting in the same way to the video...

It’s subtle... but foreshadows how Warfare probes the ways in which each soldier responds differently to what is happening around him...

 

But this film is not a character study...

 

Even though there are some fine performances by Cosmo Jarvis and Joseph Quinn

As the two severely injured soldiers ...

 

There are no backstories, the soldiers rarely speak about anything other than what they are doing...

And there are no archetypes...

 

It’s clear all but one of the soldiers are hardened combat vets...

And some of them are obviously in their 30s...

So there is not a baptism by fire story at play here...

 

And although this is the proverbial band of brothers...

It’s also made clear that not everyone likes each other

But that is conveyed in looks... and not words

 

Obviously, Warfare doesn’t traffic in all the familiar war movie tropes...

 

So what made this film so compelling?

 

Well, this is a gritty movie about a real battle that took place in Iraq in 2006...

Told from the perspective of the men who were in it...

 

And I suspect that Ray Mendoza, who was a Navy Seal in Iraq and co-directed this film along with Alex Garland ...

Probably deserves a lot of credit for how real this film feels...

 

And Alex Garland has already demonstrated...

That he has a knack for filming urban warfare...

For that was the best part of what was otherwise a muddled mess of a movie -  Civil War...

 

But it’s the little things that make this film what it is...

 

One of the first things you see is the soldier’s blood type printed on his bulletproof vest...

Not his name... his blood type

 

Another soldier struggles to stay awake behind his sniper rifle...

And then needs to get up because he has gotten so stiff holding one position...

 

And as everyone waits in the beginning before things go south...

 

When they’re not yet sure they will...

 

You can feel the tension in the room...

But no one speaks... so the space is filled with deadly quiet...

 

Which feels like it lasts forever...

 

So it’s how Garland uses time...

That sets this film apart...

 

Once men are blown up and the other soldiers struggle to keep them alive...

Time slows down again... like it does if you have ever been in a car accident

 

So at first the soldiers don’t seem to hear or see anything...

And are incapable of processing what is going on around them...

 

And then as their fellow soldiers scream in pain...

As limbs are filleted, with blood everywhere...

 

They struggle to do simple things...

Like put on a tourniquet... or give someone a shot of morphine

 

And their leader realizes he has become paralyzed with the shock of what has happened...

And cannot formulate what they need to do next...

 

And keep in mind... these are highly trained battle-hardened Navy Seals

 

Yet these are things can happen to anyone in a crisis...

In those first moments of shock...

 

Until you get your bearings...

 

And these soldiers do...

And figure out how to get around a series of problems...

 

And this is where you see the asymmetry of the weapons used in this conflict...

The deafening power of air support...

The genius of the Bradley in urban warfare...

 

But then there is the final scene...

 

After the US soldiers have left...

 

When you see the Iraqi soldiers coming out of their houses and walking casually around the street where the battle has just taken place...

 

Which makes you wonder...

 

In the end did any of those impressive weapons of war matter...

 

So this is just one of the many reasons why a film with few words...

Ended up being so powerful...
 

Freaky Tales: A Good Cast In a Small Movie About a Dysfunctional City

April  2025

 

Is there a tape of Pedro Pascal from his days at NYU…

That he doesn’t want to get out….

 

Because how else to explain how Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden got Pascal…

Who is currently the hot item on every director’s call list…

 

To show up…

In a little movie… about Oakland California

Set in 1987…

That clocks in at 72% on the Rotten Tomato Score

 

And that would be of little interest to anyone but those of us who live in proximity to this fine city…

 

And yes… I am being facetious…

 

I mean… really… facetious…

 

Because Oakland was just as unlovely then…

As it is now…

 

But in the 80s the city did have the Raiders, the A’s…and the Warriors

The last of which figure prominently in this story…

 

But they are all gone now…

 

Because Oakland can’t seem to keep anything good…

 

But the Rapper Too Short...

Who stars in this film...

Is still around…

 

And was recently seen entertaining the crowd at an Oakland Roots Soccer game…

Which is the only sports team left that plays in the Brutalist Oakland Coliseum

The former home of the Raiders and the A’s…

A venue so poorly managed by the city…

 

Which BTW is trying to sell it so they can meet payroll…

 

That I couldn’t even find someone to sell me a soda the last time I was there…

​

Ah… but that’s Oakland…

 

And Freaky Tales does pick up the Oakland vibe…

So we get shots of the Grand Lake Theater, Giant Burger and what is now known as the New Parish, which is called Sweet Jimmie’s in the movie…

 

And Fleck and Boden populated the film with actors from Oakland

 

Including … amazingly… Tom Hanks

 

And the now deceased Angus Cloud

Who was last seen in Euphoria

As Rue’s drug dealer…

Starring another Oakland alum…Zendaya

 

But like Fleck…they have all left…

 

And if you have been to Oakland recently…you know why

 

But the city still has an inordinate degree of self-regard

When it comes to what it considers its edgy culture…

Of rappers, street art, and underground clubs…

That fill this film…

 

Now Oakland has always thought of itself…

As the hipper younger sibling of “The City” across the Bay

The more stodgy San Francisco… which has all the money…

The high brow arts scene…

 

And… more importantly… a government that can actually pay its bills

 

So Oaklanders have long considered their town the underdog…

And that sense of having to prove itself runs through Freaky Tales

​

But at the same time…

 

Oaklanders also look down on the parts of California outside the Bay Area...  

As a mass of strip malls and dusty Central Valley towns...

Which are... in their opinion…

A foreign country full of hopelessly clueless folk…

 

And this is summed up in the scene in Freaky Tales where the white boy…

Who is smitten with the hip Asian girl tricked out in nose rings and punk regalia…

Asks her to excuse his ignorance…

Because….

After all…he is from Fresno…

 

So Oakland’s image of itself as on the cutting edge of a more raw culture...

Than the rest of California...

Dominates the first story in this movie…

 

And Freaky Tales is Altmanesque in its structure…

As it is made up of four interlocking stories

That are then narrated in a Wes Anderson way by the rapper Too Short…

 

So we get corrupt Oakland cops…

Who, of course, are all white…and predictably racist

 

A bunch of punk rockers…of various ethnicities

 

Which is where Fleck and Boden bring in the Oakland Asians…

 

A couple of black female rappers…

 

Some mobsters… who are also all white..

 

And a Warrior point guard with some serious ninja skills…

And an impressive collection of Asian weaponry…

Who is named after a real star who made Warrior history in 1987…

For taking it to the Lakers…

 

And whose prowess with a sword allows Freaky Tales to have some Pulp Fiction moments …

 

Then there are the “Nazis”…

And it does seem that everyone is talking about “Nazis” these days…

But now that term is being applied quite broadly ...

​

 But in 1987 these characters wouldn’t have been called Nazis…

Skinheads were how they were referred to at the time…

 

And no one was talking about ‘mindfulness” in the 80s…

That’s a more recent Oprah-associated obsession…

 

 So these are the small details that make the film seem less like a study of Oakland 38 years ago…

And more a movie reflective of the current moment…

​

But if anything, Freaky Tales is a gold mine for film aficionados…

 

But they have to be of a certain age…

Which means old enough to remember Ishtar…

 

Or pick up on the High Fidelity reference in the bit in the video store with Tom Hanks…

​

And why Lost Boys might have been a precursor to our current vampire obsession…

 

 So, if you like unpacking clues like these…

Then Freaky Tales might be your cup of tea…

 

 But for everyone else…

 

It’s just a story about a city that can never seem to get its act together…

But thinks it’s rad nonetheless…

 

Even if it looks more like a favela these days...

​

But at least if you live in Oakland today...

You can brag...

​

That your city doesn't have a "poop map" like San Francisco

​

​

The White Lotus Season 3: There’s a Trump Voter, a Couple of Kinky Characters, But Not Nearly Enough Suspense

April 2025

 

Now that was a surprise...

 

And I don’t mean who killed whom...

 

No... The White Lotus Season Three...

 

Has a character who admits to being a Trump voter...

 

And she is... NORMAL

 

In fact... Kate is the most together character on the show...

 

And yes... her girlfriends were shocked into silence at her admission...

As I imagine many fans of the show were...

 

Because how could Hollywood normalize one of those people...

 

But they did...

 

And even though there are hints that Kate is kind of a Stepford wife...

She came across as congenial, definitely well turned out, and absent all the issues that were plaguing her friends...

 

Who were pretty miserable BTW...  

 

While Kate is not...

 

But.... if we are going to be honest here...

 

One of the refreshing things about Mike White’s series...

Is that he does like to sprinkle his shows with some happy capitalists....

Who concern themselves not a wit about social justice...

While their friends are conflicted about having money...

 

But watching Season Three of The White Lotus was like...

Seeing a balloon slowly deflate...

Because you didn’t tie the knot well enough...

 

And yes.. that is a metaphor...

 

But I guess doing a Season Three is hard ...

 

Especially since White keeps going back to same well...

 

So we have the family with issues...

The younger son who wants to escape...

The grifter...

A real criminal...

The privileged child who wants to give it all away...

Bitchy girlfriends...

A dysfunctional couple...

A character with lots of money...

A hot head...

And the hotel staff who get swept up in all the privileged guests’ issues

 

So White just seems to re-circulate similar characters through every season

Changing only the location...

 

So it was always the mystery that held your interest...

 

But there is so much foreshadowing in Season Three of The White Lotus...

That you could see what was going to happen a mile away...

 

So...

 

Spoiler alert ...

 

Jim is going to turn out to be Rick’s dad....

 

Like we didn’t see that one coming...

 

So everything became so predictable ...

That by the end I’d lost interest in who was going to be killed...

Because by that time I already had a pretty good idea of who it would be...

 

Although I was wrong about the Russians...

 

But some additional thoughts about this series...

 

Thailand should sue White...

That opening art work...

Was a disturbing mélange of scenes of murder and mayhem, sea monsters and half-eaten sailors...

 

Which did not make me want to go to Thailand...ever

 

And portraying all Thai men as weak betas...

Is not likely to endear White to the people of Thailand

 

But the hotel was beautiful...

Better than the ones in Seasons One and Two

 

But everyone was sweating and looked slightly miserable in the hot and humid tropical climate...

 

And the rumor is the cast became increasingly irritable as the shoot went on...

Add to that...Mike White has now supposedly severed ties with his composer...

So it looks like everyone became slightly peevish while they were hanging out in this “tropical paradise”...

 

But...

 

Patrick Schwarzenegger is hot...

Yet he’s 31...

So where has he been hiding?

Because he can actually act...

 

And my take is that he is going to be the Sidney Sweeney of this season of The White Lotus...

As was Leo Woodhall of Season Two...

Because this series gets enough eyeballs to raise your profile...

 

Greg’s house was off the charts...

I mean we are talking some serious house porn here...

That waterfall coming off the roof into the pool was pretty cool...

 

Seeing Scott Glen looking like he could croak at any minute 

Made me feel very old...

Mostly because I knew who he was...

 

And are there no orthodontists in the UK?

Because Aimee Lou Wood is lovely...

But those teeth...

 

Yet it was the Sam Rockwell character that really took this White Lotus

In an unexpected direction...

 

But maybe if you are going to normalize a Trump voter

I guess you need to spread the wealth...

And give time to a very confused sex addict...

Who can’t decide if he wants to be a boy or a girl...

 

So there are definitely shades of the Mike White who wrote The Power of the Dog

In The White Lotus Season Three...

 

And it wasn’t just Rockwell’s Frank who is kind of kinky...

The two brothers get into some weird stuff with each other as well

 

So this version of The White Lotus does go places the other two seasons had not gone before...

 

But it was Belinda who left me wishing I had done my taxes instead...

 

And this is no rap on Natasha Rothwell...

Who was enjoyable to watch in Insecure...

 

No... it’s how White has written this character...

Who from the get-go in Season One was an obsequious grifter...

 

But for some reason White wants her to be the real winner

And become the new Tanya...

 

So her character arc is intended to link the three seasons

And have Belinda be the one who comes out on top...

 

But there was something that did not sit right about that...

And not because the Season Three ending was a bit too clever by half...

 

But because...

 

Although it’s clear that it’s the pill-popping entitled Parker Posey’s Victoria we are supposed to hate...

She does own who she is...

And can be wise at times...

 

Whereas, it’s Belinda who is the real snake in the grass...

And the one you should watch out for...

 

So to have her be the real winner...

Just seemed a bit off...

 

But then again....

 

I guess we should remember...

 

How Mike White ended The Power of the Dog...
 

Pain Hustlers...Or How the Feds Set the Stage For Another Big Pharma Grift   

August 2024

 

I’m not sure they knew it at the time...

 

But the producers behind Pain Hustlers...

Stumbled onto a story...

That was about way more than just the opioid crisis...

 

And even though I have long known about this particular grift...

I was thrown off by the title of this film...

And so didn’t suspect that they were going to go there...

 

Which almost kept me from watching this movie...

 

But one of life’s unexpected streaming pleasures...

Is when a small movie...

Scores because of a great cast...

 

Now Pain Hustlers had escaped my attention when it first came out...

Because I had already seen Dopesick...

And felt like my tolerance for films about the opioid crisis had been reached

 

After all.. what more could be said?

 

Well....

 

Put Emily Blunt and Katherine O’Hara together...

As a mother and daughter duo...

Of quirky con women...

Who find their way into an opioid hustle

 

And the fun begins...

 

I do feel a little sorry for Chris Evans...

Who was seriously upstaged by these two actresses...

 

Then you sprinkle a little Andy Garcia as the pharma CEO

And Jay Duplass as a hapless corporate pencil pusher who’s on to Blunt’s con

And you have a story that centers on a part of a hustle

That has been a feature of the pharma ecosystem

 

For decades...

 

And which began having nothing to do with opioids...

 

But you would never know that from this movie...

 

But which started as a workaround after the Feds came out with rules outlawing  gifts given to doctors and their staff by drug companies...

 

Which subsequently led to a practice that has been little talked about...

The tactic of pharmaceutical companies paying local doctors to give talks

In an implied, but never explicit, exchange for favorable prescribing practices

 

Something that long predated the opioid crisis...

And involved a whole host of drugs...

 

Most of which were not painkillers...

 

So Pain Hustlers does plough new ground

 

By drawing attention to something ...

 

That I suspect only those in the healthcare industry knew about...

And which was done not just by sleaze bag doctors...

But by many of the local docs you played golf with... or met at back-to-school night...

And who would never have thought they would ever be part of a scam...

And didn’t think they were...

 

When they headed off to give those talks.....

 

But as they say...

When you see all your buddies doing it.

As well as most of the docs in academic medicine...

It must be ok...

 

So it turned out Pain Hustlers did have something new to say...

 

And hat’s off to a terrific cast...

Who made a story about a little-known Big Pharma hustle...

So much fun to watch...

 

That I’ll forgive the generic redemption plotline for Blunt’s character...

 

And the fact that they wanted to make this story only about opioid prescribing...

When this hustle has a long history that has extended far beyond any one class of drugs...

 

But I suspect the producers didn’t know that...

 

So let me suggest some other topics...

 

I think it’s about time for something about Pharmacy Benefit Managers

 

Or the real story behind why insulin has become so expensive...

Which has lots of twists and turns... and doesn’t fit that neatly

Into the Big Pharma Is Always the Bad Guy narrative...

 

So Hollywood.. it’s time to move on from opioids...

 

There’s a gold mine of stories out there...

 

Just waiting to be told...

 

So give me a call....
 

Death of a Unicorn: A Queer Icon Becomes a Killer and NGOs Get Sent Up as Hollywood Decides That Maybe Not All Their Villains Should Be Republicans

March 2025

 

Maybe bludgeoning a baby unicorn

With a tire iron...

 

Is not a great way to start a movie...

 

Especially when you are Paul Rudd...

Who is the Tom Hanks of the Midwest...

 

And you are supposed to be the good guy...

Who loses his way, albeit temporarily, in the pursuit of money

 

But is saved by the Wise Child...

 

Of course...

 

But, Paul, you had already run over the poor unicorn with your car...

And it was moaning pitifully as it lay injured on the road...

 

And you decided to bash its head in?

 

In front of your daughter?

 

That’s when I knew The Death of a Unicorn was in trouble...

 

And this is despite a great cast...Rudd, Richard Grant, Tea Leoni, and Will Poulter

Terrific looking unicorns that are the size of a house...

And some fun sendups of the current culture...

But this is a film that keeps stepping on itself...

 

Now it starts off kind of campy...

 

With the now requisite villain... the Big Pharma exec...

Who wants to use the dead unicorn’s blood to cure cancer

 

And who doesn’t hate Big Pharma these days...

So that makes him an equal-opportunity bad guy...

Because he can be hated by both the Left and Right...

 

But I do think the memo has gone out...

After Snow White crashed and burned at the box office...

That maybe Hollywood should stop ignoring the half of the country that doesn’t vote Democrat...

 

And come up with some villains who aren’t evangelical Christians, dumb as rocks Southerners, or evil racist Republicans who hate poor people...

 

So it was refreshing to see Tea Leoni as the wife of the mogul...

Camp it up as a performative philanthropist...

 

A favored activity of rich wives on Left end of the political spectrum...

Who run and/or fund NGOs...

And seem to really believe they are saving the world...

 

With their husband’s...

But mostly... other people’s money

Including... as we have recently found out... some of our tax dollars as well...

 

But as a caricature, we have not often seen that before...

Nor the NGO universe satirized quite so explicitly

 

And of course, the Pharma king...

Has bought land to create a nature preserve...

To “give back to nature...and society”

 

Or maybe just harvest lots of tax credits...

 

But it is well known that this is what really rich men on the Left do...

 

Perhaps to assuage their conscience for riding on all those private jets...

A sort of philanthropic indulgence...

 

Or maybe the game is really to harvest some ESG credits for their businesses...

 

But either way...

 

It’s made clear what the political leanings of the bad guys are in this movie...

 

Because the rich on the Right prefer to fund museums and things that they can put their names on...

And they don’t buy land to save the planet...

 

And the son is LARPing as a VC bro ..

Looking for the next big thing...

A sort of Sam Bankman-Fried but without the brains...

Or any affectation toward Effective Altruism...

 

And all these characters are funny...

 

But then Mommy and Daddy unicorn show up...

As evil grey creatures with bad teeth...

And they kick, bite, stomp and stab almost everyone...

 

And since they are the size of a small house...

They are pretty formidable...

 

And definitely not the” joyous symbol of diversity” that made unicorns a queer icon...

 

So at that point The Death of Unicorn slides into its horror movie stage...

But with bad CGI...

 

And with the problem....

That there are only so many ways a big horse with a horn can kill you...

 

So this film goes from camp to horror...

 

And then shifts gears again...

 

When...

In keeping with what is currently on trend in Silicon Valley these days...

It leans heavily into the spiritual at the end....

With hints at some kind of resurrection...

 

So as a film The Death of Unicorn is a miss...

Because it doesn’t stay focused...

 

But as a reflection ...

Of which way the cultural winds are blowing right now...

It seems right on target...

 

In a way few films have yet to embrace...

But I sense will soon...

 

Because the times they are a’changing...

I mean, after all...

 

Bill Maher is going to the White House

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